Podcast appearances and mentions of mark what

Jerry Parker is on the show with us today to discuss Ethereum's recent rise after a new ‘hard fork', auto-correlation and its effects on Trend Following strategies, how trading extra markets can improve performance, drawdowns as a key to profiting from huge trends, how Trend Following firms who try to be too unique often end up underperforming, the power of pure Trend Following versus over-optimisation, why ESG investing should also take into account human rights issues, why you should love your trading rules but not your positions, and how trading in smaller sizes can lead to much bigger returns. Also check out my interview with Turtle Trading legendary mentor Richard Dennis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94nUnXsYpLY (here). In this episode, we discuss: The recent comeback in crypto markets and trading crypto futures Thoughts on autocorrelation The benefits of trading a wide range of markets How over-optimisation can result in underperformance Why ESG investing should consider human rights issues as well as environmental Why your rules are more important than any one position How decreasing position size can increase a system's profits Follow Niels on https://twitter.com/toptraderslive (Twitter), https://www.linkedin.com/in/nielskaastruplarsen (LinkedIn), https://www.youtube.com/user/toptraderslive (YouTube) or via the https://www.toptradersunplugged.com/ (TTU website). Follow Jerry on https://my.captivate.fm/@RJParkerJr09 (Twitter). IT's TRUE

Jerry Parker returns today to discuss why margin perhaps isn't as important as people perceive it to be, the resurgence of ‘classical' Trend Following, the importance of having a low Sharpe ratio, an update on Jerry's Bitcoin positioning, the drawbacks of trading a single, longer-term timeframe, how European CTAs successfully compete with American CTAs, the best methods for measuring open risk, and why capturing the fewer large trends may be more important than the many small trends. Also check out my interview with Turtle Trading legendary mentor Richard Dennis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94nUnXsYpLY (here). Follow Niels on https://twitter.com/toptraderslive (Twitter), https://www.linkedin.com/in/nielskaastruplarsen (LinkedIn), https://www.youtube.com/user/toptraderslive (YouTube) or via the https://www.toptradersunplugged.com/ (TTU website). Follow Jerry on https://my.captivate.fm/@RJParkerJr09 (Twitter). IT's TRUE

Jerry Parker returns today to discuss why margin perhaps isn't as important as people perceive it to be, the resurgence of ‘classical' Trend Following, the importance of having a low Sharpe ratio, an update on Jerry's Bitcoin positioning, the drawbacks of trading a single, longer-term timeframe, how European CTAs successfully compete with American CTAs, the best methods for measuring open risk, and why capturing the fewer large trends may be more important than the many small trends. If you would like to leave us a voicemail to play on the show, you can do so here. Check out our Global Macro series here. Learn more about the Trend Barometer here. IT's TRUE

Moritz Seibert joins us today discuss the benefits of stripping down your trading approach as much as possible, the various ways to exit a hugely profitable trade, the different forms of research related to your investing approach, simplification vs over-complication, the acceptable amount of margin per trade, spread-betting using a Trend Following strategy, and if you should trade all markets the same way or tailor to each market accordingly. In this episode, we discuss: The benefits of simplifying your trading approach as much as possible Optimal exits from hugely profitable trades How to engage in related to your investment approach Over complicating a trading strategy Acceptable margin amounts Spread-trading using a Trend Following strategy Follow Niels on https://twitter.com/toptraderslive (Twitter), https://www.linkedin.com/in/nielskaastruplarsen (LinkedIn), https://www.youtube.com/user/toptraderslive (YouTube) or via the https://www.toptradersunplugged.com/ (TTU website). Follow Moritz on https://my.captivate.fm/@MoritzSeibert (Twitter). IT's TRUE

Moritz Seibert joins us today discuss the benefits of stripping down your trading approach as much as possible, the various ways to exit a hugely profitable trade, the different forms of research related to your investing approach, simplification vs over-complication, the acceptable amount of margin per trade, spread-betting using a Trend Following strategy, and if you should trade all markets the same way or tailor to each market accordingly. You can find some of Moritz's work here, and over at Real Vision. If you would like to leave us a voicemail to play on the show, you can do so here. Check out our Global Macro series here. Learn more about the Trend Barometer here. IT's TRUE

Mark Cronin '80 and his son John Cronin join Maura Sweeney '07 to speak about how they came to found John's Crazy Socks. A serial entrepreneur, Mark passed along this passion to John.  In the spirit of Holy Cross, theirs is a company created to do good.  Through John's Crazy Socks they are living their mission to “spread happiness,” while also serving as advocates for workplace equality and voices for people with differing abilities. Interview originally recorded on March 17, 2021. Due to the ongoing effects of the pandemic, all interviews in season 2 are recorded remotely. --- Mark : It's the nature of the social enterprise, you've got to have a mission. You can't be, we just want to make money. It's got to be something larger than yourself, an impact you want to have on the world. And when you're driven by that, it's so motivating. All the petty stuff falls away. And that's how you can go and connect with people. We get asked, what's the key ingredient? What skill? A lot if it is just belief. If we have a mission to spread happiness, just believe. Maura : Welcome to Mission-Driven where we speak with alumni who are leveraging their Holy Cross education to make a meaningful difference in the world around them. I'm your host, Maura Sweeney from the class of 2007, director of Alumni Career Development at Holy Cross. I'm delighted to welcome you to today's show. Maura : In this episode, I speak with Mark Cronin from the class of 1980 and his son, John Cronin. Mark and John are co-founders of John's Crazy Socks. A company whose mission is to spread happiness, where over half of the employees have a differing ability. An entrepreneur at heart, Mark has been creating opportunities and organizations ever since his days at Holy Cross. From creating The Lunchbox Theater as a student, to running political campaigns, to founding a software company, his career path shows what can be done when you pursue an idea. Maura : Every step of the way he's been driven by mission. And every step of the way has prepared him for his role at John's Crazy Socks. Our conversation focuses a lot on the incredible work that Mark and John are doing through John's Crazy Socks, to raise awareness about people with differing abilities. They live the motto, to whom much has been given, much is expected, and they do it well. We are lucky to have people like Mark and John working hard to improve the lives of millions of others, because it's not just the right thing to do, it's also good for business. Maura : Mark and John, it is really wonderful to be here with you today. How are you today? Mark : Pretty good, right? John : Pretty good dad. Mark : Life remains interesting. Maura, thank you very much for having us on. Maura : It is my pleasure. It is my pleasure. I have been really looking forward to talking to you about Mark, about your career journey and John, about how you came to help co-found John's Crazy Socks, and the incredible work that you're doing together to really make a difference for people with differing abilities out in the world. Before we get to that, and before we get to John's Crazy Socks, because I could go down a rabbit hole there. First, I'd love to know more about you and your family. I know that you're both New Yorkers. Have you always lived in New York? Mark : So, we live in a town called Huntington on Long Island. I tell the story about that with John. He sometimes laughs at me about this. So, I grew up here on Long Island in part of Huntington, Huntington Station, and when I was 19, I set out for the world. I was leaving and I'm never coming back to Long Island. So in 1997, by that point we had three kids. Our eldest was in first grade and we had moved several times. And if you move two blocks with a little kid, their world turns upside. So we said, we'll buy a house and we'll stay in one place until you get out of college. And we wound up buying a house in Huntington Bay in Huntington, not out of college, out of high school. We said, we'll stay here. And there were a few times where boy, all I wanted to do was travel and move. Mark : There was one point I had this interesting opportunity in Hong Kong, and I sat the family down and I gave them a pitch and they all listened and they nodded and they said, "Dad, that sounds great. And why don't you send us a postcard when you get there, because we're not going." But then, so our two elders, they get up and leave and John, he got an extra three years of high school, but now he's in his final year of high school and I'm thinking, and my wife, Carol is also a Holy Cross grad. We're thinking we can move. We can relocate. Mark : Even after starting this business, we thought you could run an online business from the moon. We could go anywhere. Well, the good news is the business took off faster than we expected. So, we started with a three-year lease and now we have a bunch of employees, and I am going to die on Long Island. I'm not getting away. Maura : No. Well, and I can tell too, just from what I've seen in just the different media footage and the stories about the way you run John's Crazy Socks, is it's also a community organization. Mark : We think about community a lot, we think about the community here. I'm always wary of businesses that say, we're like a family. I don't know about that. But we're building a community there. We think about the community that we're building around here, our customers and supporters. But we also think about the local community and you've got to be good citizens. You got to be engaged in their community and giving back and involved. So, there is a lot of things we do, and that's important to us. Maura : Well, thinking about community and thinking about Holy Cross, because you're an alum from the class of 1980, I know community is a huge part of someone's time at Holy Cross. I'd love to hear about your days on the Hill and what brought you to Holy Cross from Long Island. Mark : So, a different day and age. Okay. I'm getting out of high school in 1976 and I really knew nothing. I didn't really know anything about looking at schools. At a college fair, I got a booklet that seemed interesting. I applied to three schools. I really applied to two. I applied to Holy Cross and Boston College. A third school came in and started recruiting me for football but by that point, I wasn't thinking of playing football. I got in both Holy Cross and Boston College, and was going back and forth. I didn't really know how to choose. So, Boston College had me up for a weekend with a group of students and they greeted us saying, we think you want the leaders of the class of 1980. Mark : And as soon as I heard that, I was like, well, I don't want to come here. If you think I'm one of your leaders, you're in trouble. So, I wound up at Holy Cross and there were a few points. Freshman year, where I was like, I don't know if this is really the right place. I thought of leaving, but once I made the commitment to stay, well, then you're all in. And like most things, the more you put in, the more you get out. And I was thinking, I just sent a package of socks to a guy named Father Carlson, who was my freshmen advisor. And I took him for a survey of Greek lit, but I was particularly thinking of one moment, just a small moment that altered the course of my life. Mark : It was sophomore year, second semester, sophomore year. And he called me in his office. I was trying to think, how did he get me? There was no email, there was no text. But he had me come into his office and he sat me down, and he was the head of the honors program. And he gave me a picture he said, "You should really apply for this." I was like, "Me. Nah." That's not how I thought of myself. I could talk. I was a pretty serious student, but I did a lot of other things too. I didn't do a lot of sleeping. Mark : I walked out of there and thought, oh. I still, I'm not very... I'm kind of... Not counting on it... To inviting you to an honors program. I was really not very smart because I'm thinking, well, I still don't have a chance. Not even thinking well, the head of the program asked me to do this. So I apply and got in the program. And now I spent my junior year at Trinity College in Ireland. Mark : But among the other little things, you got to take the seminars and it was so wonderful. So I took a seminar in non-Euclidean geometry with a guy named, I think his first name was Ted. Ted Cecil, math professor. It was just wonderful. Blew my mind of opening up the world and different ways of thinking. And I could tell the story a little bit, but on graduation, I wind up teaching math and religion. And first question was, did you study any math in college? Yes, I studied non-Euclidean geometry. Mark : And I got to spend a year working with Bob Cording, writing a thesis on a book-length poem by Galway Kinnell, called The Book of Nightmares. And I had met Galway because he was a visiting writing instructor, actually for the Worcester Consortium. So, I was able to take a poetry workshop with him when I was a sophomore. But to spend a year engaged in writing, I learned how to read, I learned how to write. It was so wonderful. Mark : So, just that experience and the confidence it gave me and helped me, it challenged me to think, you're really not that much of an idiot. But then jump ahead a couple of years, I'm bouncing around doing different things. I'm working for a Congressman in New York and I want to get into public policy, public affairs. He's advised me to go to law school. So I apply to some law schools, and I get something in the mail from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. And I read it and say, "This is what I should do." Mark : So, I apply there and I get in. Later, I served on the Admissions Committee at the Kennedy School and realize how the heck did I get in? And I know the crucial factor was, I was in the honors program and Holy Cross. So for some reason, Father Carlson took that time to call in this knucklehead and say, "You may want to do this." And in that way, it was just a conversation, but it had this impact on my life. And I'm 62 now and it's still blooming, and those are special moments. Maura : Well, and that's one of the things that I really enjoy is I get to have conversations with alums like you in this podcast, is to hear how many times individual people reaching out and knowing you as a person has a tremendous effect. And the fact that Holy Cross is small and allows people to get to know you and to see something in you that you didn't recognize in yourself at that moment. Mark : There were things you got to do. Some of this was day and age. So late seventies, there was so much freedom. My sophomore year, I realized that we were at this giant buffet table and it was all you could eat. You could get whatever you wanted. And so at the time, you would take four courses each semester, but you weren't limited to that. So I saw it as, well, naturally I'll take a fifth. I don't have to pay more. And then I would find out and sit in on other classes, then I would find out if you didn't see a class that you wanted, you could just make one up. Now I know Independent Studies, but that wasn't structured then, so sophomore year went to John Mayer, who was the chair of the English Department, and he taught myself and my two housemates a course on Bob Dylan, which was awesome. Maura : That's great. Mark : I remember mentioning it to my parents saying, "I'm taking a course on Dylan," and they were like, "What are you doing?" But it was awesome. Or senior year, my girlfriend, now my wife, we were college sweethearts. So she started on a course, which is not unusual at Holy Cross, of a bio pre-med and quickly wound up as an English major. But now, in senior year and she's got to make up some of her English credits. She's not seeing a lot, she can fill it up, but she needs one more course. We'll just find one. Mark : And I'm like, "Who are some of your favorite authors?" And she hits on Joseph Conrad. I said, "Great. We'll get a class on Conrad. You and I, we'll go do this." And she goes, "How are we going to do that?" "Don't worry." And so, Pat Bizzell in the English Department approached her and she said, "Sure, this would be great." So the two of us would read a book a week, and then we would meet with her, and how awesome is that to be able to have and go and do those things. There were a lot of things like that, but it's also, there were other things that were more extracurricular. Mark : So, sophomore year around Christmas, I read Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test about Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. And they would have what you would call today, a rave. And I'm reading this with the house band, The Warlocks, which changed their name to be the Grateful Dead. I'm reading this and I'm like, I would love to go to something like that. But what do I know? So then decided we'll have our own, and went off and did things, which now I look back like, wow, that was pretty good. I got a group of people together, today we could call a board. Everybody put money in, we sold tickets. We bought some things that we resold. I won't go into that even if the, what do they call it? The standards, the laws say that they can't arrest me anymore. And we had this three-day party with bands. It was just wonderful because you could go do that. Like again, different day and age. Mark : That year, I'm sleeping in Beaven, and every Wednesday night we had a cake party where we would charge money, and $1 would go to buy the cake for the next week, and 1$ would go towards this three-day party. So, I was learning to be an entrepreneur and then repeated it at a different level senior year. I came back from Ireland, wanted to do something and we created something called The Lunchbox Theater. During the lunch hour, we would put on plays and poetry readings, and concerts, and just had a blast doing this. And I'd run around and line people up and get people to agree to stage a play. What great fun. And we could go and do it. No one was going to stop you, and that it was encouraged and that was great. Maura : Well, and I can see now why you didn't sleep at all? Mark : No. Between that and work. I had a professor, Brendan Kenelly at Trinity College who would say, you go to university to find out what you don't know. And I didn't know. Eventually Father Carlson before, so I'm taking this Greek lit class freshman year, and now we come on to our first blue books, and I was in Carlin, which then was primarily a freshmen dorm. You could feel the stress level rising. And I'm like, well, I should be worried. I should do something. And that's when I realized I had no idea how to study. I had no idea how to take notes, no idea how to study. I didn't know really what to do. So I stayed up all night, re-read The Odyssey and The Iliad and I showed up with no sleep, but it's all fresh in my mind now. A lot of it, because I was so unsure of myself and insecurity that gets flipped sometimes as bravado. Mark : I remember it was a Bob Cording class sophomore year, and okay, different time and age, and I am ludicrous. It's a 10:30 or an 11 o'clock class and small class. I think everybody was a senior, I'm the only sophomore in the class. And I'm showing up in my bathrobe, sitting in the back of the class. And he turns, he hands out the first paper, and Bob was so diligent and detailed notes, but very demanding. Hands this out and he announces to the class, "I'm really disappointed and they're poor. And I'm telling you now, you're going to have to rewrite these." Because the highest grade, there were like two Cs and everybody else got a D. And I'm thinking, what the hell? People are slumping. He says, "But was one paper that just hit the mark and I'm going to read it to you." And he starts reading it. And all the people, I'm like several rows back from everybody, they're all looking at each other because they all know each other. Is that yours? Is that yours? Slowly they realize it's the freak in the back of the class. Mark : Again, it was somebody, Bob coming to me and saying... It's a lesson I had to keep learning. Don't be a fool. You can do things and now that becomes an obligation. You got to make something of that. Plus, there's friendships. I was texting last night with a buddy of mine from Holy Cross. We're still close. For a long time at that house that I mentioned, we would have like 25 people come down for president's weekend, bringing their families. We had this at a mini reunion. My wife, Carol, during the pandemic at six o'clock every Tuesday night, there's a Zoom call where they call themselves the Carlin Girls. They're in their sixties. They're not girls, but they do a Zoom call and they'll get 20 people in it. And every five years, they take a trip together and they go to Miami, or I guess, The Bahamas they've been to, all because there's this rich connection that was made at Holy Cross. Maura : It is. It's a special, my best friends in the world are from Holy Cross. It is, it's a special time, and it's nice when you can make those connections. It's amazing to see them last. Mark : And there's something about the Jesuit Mission and the liberal arts that always has you asking, inquiring and asking for more. It directly feeds into the business we have, which is a social enterprise. We have a social mission, and where do you get that from? Well, you get it from some of the activism and some of the yearning that was instilled in me in college. Maura : Well, and it seems like, looking at your career, from Holy Cross, you mentioned the Kennedy School, and then fast forward to today with John's Crazy Socks. It seems like, and I'd love to hear from you, but it seems like there's this thread of entrepreneurial-ism and mission and 'striving for the more' that seemed to be woven throughout your path. Mark : I look back and I guess I've always been an entrepreneur. I didn't always have the language to use it, but early on, everything and again, I didn't always necessarily have the language, but everything was mission-driven. So, I got out, I taught school for two years. Pure happenstance that I did that, I went to graduate school for literature. I was in a doctoral program and I'm sitting in there, sitting in a class the day the US invaded Grenada. And I don't know if people remember. It was this tiny island and we had to go rescue medical students. It was crazy. And I'm like, I should be doing something. So that's how I got the job at the Congressman. I showed up at his office and said, "I want to work with you." They said, "Well, we don't have any jobs." "That's all right. I'll volunteer. I just want experience." Mark : We move into a community and you'd connect. I can remember when we moved into Greenpoint, Brooklyn, we were early hipsters. It was before it boomed, and through the church and we set up a food bank, we set up a clothing depository. We work with the local recycling program to set something up, because you go and do that. I spent much of my career in the healthcare field. I wound up running the Medicaid health service program in New York City, and then ran a series of companies that were trying to figure out, how do you better deliver healthcare to the poor? How do we better organize care? Mark : But some of that Holy Cross thing was always there of the liberal arts and how do you pursue that mission and those values and still be carrying things out? But that wide interest, it fueled a lot. I started a software company. I ran political campaigns. I did a fair amount of writing. I published some of my less than really terrible fiction. And even this enterprise, we've now been doing this for four years, but people would say, well, when did you get into it? How long have you worked in retail? How long have you been in the sock game? Got no background in it. But I'm 62 today, everything I have done has prepared me for this moment. Everything I have done in my life has prepared me for this interview. Maura : Well, and that is the perfect segue to pull you into this John too, and to talk about John's Crazy Socks, and talk about the incredible work that you are doing. Because you're making a lot of change and you're doing a lot of good in the world through this company. Mark : We're very fortunate, but what are the two things you always talk about? John : Try to do for others. Mark : Try to do for others. It sounds trite, but the more we can do for others, the better off we are. We're living a dream. We get to do what we want to do. We have no excuses. We can't blame it on the board. We can't blame it on headquarters. And it also speaks to the way we run the business and our appearance. One of the internal ambitions, and I've always wanted this to be a way, I want this to be a great place to work. I want people to love working here. We work at that and you make that happen, and that runs through... What's our overall mission pal? John : Spread happiness. Mark : Spreading happiness. Well, you got to start at home and people got to be happy, and you have to understand it can't be lip service, it's got to drive through everything you do. So, here's an easy way. When it comes to customer service, you heard the old saw, the customer is always right. Nonsense. The customer can be damn wrong. But we're not in the business of being right. We're in the business of making customers happy. So, we don't limit any time that people spend with customers. People that work with our customers know they can spend 200 hours on any customer, at any time, doing anything they want, just go and wow that customer. Mark : We had something last week. Somebody had ordered something they said they were going to pay by check. That's pretty rare, somebody say they pay by check. And what our folks did was they said, "Okay," but they didn't fill the order until the check arrived. And when they did, it was an item we had sold out. So we sat and I said, let's think about this. First, in four years, maybe we've received 15 checks. It doesn't happen. Every time somebody says, they're going to send us a check, they send us a check. So, why not just live in a world where we trust people. And as soon as we get the order, we ship it out and trust that we're going to get the check. And my colleagues are looking and saying, "Can we do that?" "Why not? We can do whatever the hell we want to do." Mark : And they were like, "Well, what if people do this or that?" I said, "Nobody does that. Would you do that? So why don't we just treat people that way?" And it's so easy. And wouldn't you rather live in that world? Maura : Yes. Mark : Now, if we get burned, if all of a sudden people are fake, but it doesn't happen. We doing the same thing with our returns. You don't have to send us anything. Just let us know. If there's any problem we're going to replace it. We're going to give you your money back. We want to make you happy. What results of that? Well, if we treat you that way, you tell other people. Aren't people happy, because we're not going through stuff. We're just trying to make you happy, and our return rate last month, our refund rate was 0.6%. Businesses would kill to do that. We give away anything we can. Maura : Well, and I know that the origin story, if you will, of John's Crazy Socks is out there for people to read and to watch. But I'd love to hear from you about that moment, because I talk to so many people who dream of starting their own business. Who say, someday, I'd love to do this, but there's a very small percentage who actually do it. So what sparked that courage to really go and make this happen? Mark : Well, first of all, it is, again, it's much simpler than you think. Worst thing that happens is, you fail. And you go on. But ours grew out of a specific situation, this particular business, and origin stories matter. Because you take your DNA and they run through everything. So ours, it's the fall of 2016, and where were you buddy? John : I'm in school dad. Mark : Which school? John : Huntington High School. Mark : So, he's in Huntington High School in the states, and this is across the country. You can remain in high school until you either graduate or turn 21. If you have a disability, you can stay until you're 21. So this was going to be John's last year at school. Like everybody else, he's trying to figure out what do I do next? What are you looking at? John : I looked at shop programs in school. Mark : See anything you like? John : No, I never saw anything I liked. Mark : Well, the answer is, there's not a lot of great choices. John grew up in a household where he saw me starting different businesses and running things. And I'd like to say he's a natural entrepreneur, because he did things like that himself in school. I remember showing up at his summer school, we've got a summer program, and came into some and the principal came out and said, "I want to talk to you about John." And that was always good. Particularly my middle guy, Jamie, the principal comes, wants to talk to me, that's not good. That's the same way with me. But with John, okay. Well, it turned out John wanted to run a talent show, and he organized a talent show at the school. Never mentioned to me. He didn't think why I have to ask permission, I just go and do this. Mark : So, he doesn't see anything he like, the natural entrepreneur doesn't see that as a problem, but as an opportunity. So what do you tell me? John : I want to go into business with my dad. This is my idea. Mark : I was starting some online businesses. He comes and tells me that, it's like, okay, let's go do this. And traditionally, what you do in a business, once you get the idea, is you stop everything to prepare a business plan. Work out your competitive analysis, your market research, your operational projections, financial projections. We did none of that. We went what's known as the lean startup route. We were bootstrapping. Let's just get something up and running. I've worked with venture capitalists before and done that. We didn't want to do that. Just get something up and running. And he's the perfect partner because he just believes, of course this is going to work. Maura : Why wouldn't it? Mark : Why wouldn't it? And so much of what we've been able to do is why not? So, I'll let you know on something that's coming up on March 30th. This is top secret information. On March 30th, we're going to introduce our unity socks, which are blue socks with American flags on them. We want them to symbolize inclusivity and unity, and we get this idea. We want to give them to every member of Congress. So on March 30th, we have two local congressmen coming, a Republican and a Democrat, to help us introduce these socks, and we're going to give them to every member of Congress. We've already been invited to come up to Albany and do it in the New York State Legislature. And we see ourselves that we can go across the country, just symbolizing look what's possible. Have John be handing out these unity socks. What a wild, ridiculous idea and yet, okay, who's going to stop us? Maura : And yet it's so perfect. What a perfect idea. Mark : And it just grows. Not every idea is a good idea. We have bad ones. We do a lot of presentations. Right before this, we were speaking virtually to a school in New York City. Last week, we got a question from a high school student, need to ask permission from to do these things. It's like, no, that's part of the power. You don't have to ask anybody for permission. Just go and do and come back to... It's the nature of the social enterprise. You've got to have a mission. Mark : You can't be, we just want to make money. It's got to be something larger than yourself, an impact you want to have on the world. And when you're driven by that, it's so motivating. All the petty stuff falls away, and that's how you can go and connect with people. We get asked, what's the key ingredient? Which skill? A lot of it is just belief. If we have a mission to spread happiness, just believe. So when you ask on the origin story, okay, we'll find a way forward and we'll go test it. And it turned out it went well, right buddy. Maura : Well, I think even more than just believe, you talked about wanting to make a great place for people to work. And I think that the fact that you care about your employees, and you care about the people, both who work with you and who you serve, that is another really big piece. Mark : It's all the whole. So yes, our mission is to spread happiness. You do that by hiring people with differing abilities and showing what they can do, by giving back and by making personal connection with our customers. When it comes to this workplace, one of the things we're trying to share with other employers, hiring people with differing abilities is not altruism. It's good business. And what do we see? Morale is way up. Productivity is high, retention is through the roof and it helps us recruit. And it makes for a better workplace. You think the benefits would mainly accrue to the people with differing abilities, but everybody is better off and everybody is happier. Mark : But I've worked over the years into, in essence, a formula on employee engagement. One, you have to start with a mission in which people can believe. It's got to be something greater than ourselves. It's got to be something that can matter. Two, everybody has to know how they fit into the mission, how their job matters. There's no leg work. There's no, I'm just a cog in a machinery. Yes, our webmaster knows, but our sock wranglers, that's what we call the pickers on our pick and pack warehouse, they know their job matters. Mark : Three, put people in a position to succeed. Don't ask them to do what they can't do. Give them the tools. If they need a special chair, get them a chair. If they need a software tool, a webmaster needs some analytical tool, get that for them. As a manager, you have to be a leader. And in doing that, what you have to make clear to people is, I work for you. My job is to put you in a position to succeed and if you have problem, if you have a limitation, my job is to try to help remove that limitation. Mark : Four, recognize what people do. People care. It's as simple as saying, thank you. I saw you doing this. What you do matters. We value. And then the last, stay the hell out of the way. Let people do their jobs and they will thrive. But some of this comes down to, it's like a Christian thing. Do unto others, treat people the way you would like to be treated. If you treat people poorly, they will respond that way. If you treat people that I don't trust you, so I have to manage and inspect and micromanage, they will respond in kind. Maura : Well, and I know that you've had a lot of opportunities to spread this message. I recently saw that you joined this CEO Commission on Disability Employment. And I know when we've spoken before, you mentioned going before Congress in the past. Mark : We've been very fortunate. We've had a fair amount of media coverage. We've had some viral experiences, and we go out and basically proselytize. John, you love the speaking engagements, right. John : Yeah. I love speaking engagements. Mark : So yes, we've done things. We've testified twice before Congress, we've spoken to United Nations. We're part of the State Department Speakers Bureau. So they had us take a little speaking tour in Canada. We didn't get tour T-shirts made up, next time we will. And yes, we're on the CEO Commission for Disability Employment. And I laugh. This was founded by Voya Financial and the Society of Human Resource Managers. How are we on this? Like, we're on this National Autism @ Work Roundtable with IBM and Microsoft and Ernst & Young and Warner Brothers, and John's Crazy Socks? Mark : We appreciate the opportunities and you could go back to Rome and find this motto, and you can see it with the Kennedy's and with Spider-Man. To those who are given opportunities, come great responsibilities. So I'll give you an anecdote on that. We're down on Capitol Hill, and we get a phone call here in New York in the office, from a customer in Houston who says, "I see that John and Mark are on Capitol Hill. My mother works there. She's a big fan of John's, would it be possible for them to meet my mom?" Person says, "Sure. Here's Mark's cell phone. Just text him your mom's name and contact information and he'll do it." Who's mom? Nancy Pelosi. Mark : So now, we get an audience with Nancy Pelosi and forget about right wing, left wing. We vilify our politicians too often, or deify them. They're just people. She's a grandmother. She comes in, her eyes light up seeing John, and she brings out pictures of socks that she gave former President Bush, because John had become a sock buddy with former President Bush, George H W Bush, where they exchanged letters and socks, and all this is great. We take photos, but now we have this opportunity that creates an obligation. Mark : So it's yes, but Ms. Pelosi, we have to talk about some other matters. One, we have to talk about repealing section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standard Act of 1938, great piece of American legislation. It created the 40 hour workweek, it eliminated child labor, it created overtime. But it allows employers to pay people with a disability less than minimum wage. So, there are 400,000 people being paid as little as five cents an hour. And we are grateful that we have this opportunity, but we are now going to take advantage of this. Mark : I'll give you a recent one where, despite our best efforts, we contracted the COVID virus, John, my wife and myself. And for Christmas, we gave John a hospital stay. He was admitted on Christmas Day, it was dicey for a few days. People say it's nothing, it's just the flu. Now very healthy, got out eight days later. So, we held an event at the hospital because we know we can attract media attention. So we went back to the hospital and you got to thank everybody, right? John : I did. Mark : But we also used it to do two other things. One, to raise awareness about the risk that people with down syndrome face, they're not more likely to get the virus, but if they do, five times more likely to be hospitalized, 10 times more likely to die. So, we want to get that word out. The other thing, the hospital let me stay with John the entire time, even when he was, because things went bad for a day or two. When they moved him to the critical care unit, they let me stay. Now, Federal Regulations require that people with a disability, that they get access to their caregivers. That's not the way it's practiced, particularly during COVID. So, we wanted to highlight look, this is better for everybody. That there's always a little medicine with the sugar. Mark : So, we keep driving that mission and you can't separate the two. We'd like to make money, we'd like to live indoors, like to pay the rent. And if the business doesn't succeed, then we'll go home and all this stops. So you got to make that happen, but like the giving back. So, we baked into it from day one. We donate 5% of our earnings where? John : Special Olympics. Mark : Special Olympics. Why the special Olympics? John : I'm a Special Olympics athlete. Mark : And then we've created a whole series of products that celebrate causes and raise money for charity partners. So the first one was a down syndrome awareness sock, raises money for the National Down Syndrome Society. But more recent ones, an EMT tribute sock raises money for a local EMT squad. Last April, we wanted to thank people. We introduced healthcare, superhero socks, and they've raised over $50,000 for frontline workers. Mark : And there have been different points when very smart people have said to me, you're not making money. What are you doing making these donations. But we wouldn't have the business we have if we weren't doing that. Willingness for the long haul. So, among things that are really cool, our little business we've raised over $400,000 for our charity partners. Maura : That's amazing. Mark : John here is a special Olympic athlete, who's raised over $100,000 for the special Olympics. We make sure everybody who works here knows they're all philanthropists. It's very cool. We're so fortunate. So in the end, we are these knuckleheads running a sock business and this is a small business, and all we want to do is change the world. How much fun? Maura : And you're doing it too. That's the incredible thing. Is even if it's in small ways, as you showed all of these donations, one pair of sock here, the one conversation there, it's changing hearts and minds. Mark : That has been the thing that has surprised us the most, and it's still hard to wrap our minds around and we have to be really careful about. But people take inspiration and there is a deep, emotional connection. I could tell you all sorts of stories of things we get to see, but I'll tell you one that my wife likes me to tell because I tear up sometimes. Mark : The National Down Syndrome Society sponsors Buddy Walks around the country, but the biggest one is in New York City. Before it starts, they rent a billboard in the city in Times Square, and they want like a video with faces on it of people with down syndrome. So, we go there and John's like a rock star in that community. People are swarming him. But a woman comes up to me and just hugs me and says, "Thank you." Mark : Okay, what's going on? And she explains that she is from Curacao, an island just off of Venezuela. And she tells us that her daughter had gotten pregnant and tested that she was going to have a child with down syndrome. She explained that on Curacao, people were ashamed of people with disabilities, that they hide them. It's something they don't want deal with, talk about it. And in fact, everybody knew that her doctor said, "This is what you're going to do. You're going to get an abortion." And to me, this is not really an abortion story. This was just, this was grant. This is what's going to happen. And the family came home and they saw a news story about John and John's Crazy Socks. Mark : And she said, it changed their entire outlook. And she introduced us to her one year old son. How awesome. We get people coming up to us all the time, thanking us and telling us how they want to do this with their child, or it gave them hope. And we have to be careful. We have nothing special. We're just out doing these things and sharing. So when John stands up in front of a crowd, be it 10 people at a SEPTA, be at 22,000 people at Madison Square Garden, and they see what he can do, it changes people's minds. And we are very fortunate to be able to do that. Maura : I think you really are living that mission of spreading happiness and of doing great things with the opportunities that you've been afforded. Mark : We've been given a lot. We had our family and I could go on about my other boys and the love of my life. We'll be married 40 years. John : It's 39 years still. Mark : It's still 39, I know. Mark : There's a reasonable chance that we'll make it to June. Reasonable chance. Maura : Fingers crossed. Mark : Well, you know. I'm still a Dylan fan. There's that line, when I see you, I don't know if I want to kiss you or kill you. A lot a marriage in that. Here's just some of what we get to do, and how fortunate. We get to see minor miracles all the time. So one of our colleagues, Thomas, his mother calls us in October of 2017 and says, "I understand you hire people like my son. I need you to give him a job." We're not hiring, we'll post when we are. She calls every day and the moms are persistent. She's not the only one who's done this. So I got on the phone with her and I said, "Well, tell me about Thomas." Mark : She says, "Well, he's early twenties. He's on the autism spectrum. And he's in a very bad way. He's very depressed. We have trouble getting him to come out of his room. He won't shower or shave. He doesn't want to deal with anybody. We can't get him to join any programs or activities. It's so bad he hasn't spoken to his father in over six months." Sounds like a great employee. Mark : So, we have an opening and bring him out. And the opening is for our sock wrangler position, that's kind of our entry level position. We pay $15 an hour to start because everybody, you got to pay a fair wage. The way you get the job, you meet with John and me. We want to make sure you understand the mission and our values. Then one of our current sock wranglers will train you and they love doing it. You've trained people. John : Yes. Mark : They love doing it. And then when you're ready, you have to pass the sock wrangler test. You got to pick six orders, 30 minutes or less, show us you can do the job. Well, Thomas comes out and after an hour of training, says, "I'm ready." And he passes that test as if he was put on this earth to be a sock wrangler. Today, on the days he works, Thomas is ready, showered and shaved at 6:30 in the morning for his father to drive one hour to work. When he gets in here, the young man who wouldn't look at anybody or talk to anybody, goes around and wishes everybody in the building a good morning. Mark : I want to be really clear here. We did nothing. We did no special training, no government funding, no special programs. All we did was give Thomas the opportunity to earn a job, and how fortunate are we? And so Holy Cross, the imprint that studying and understanding the liberal arts in the way it gets you to think and prepare, the way you imbue. Some of this comes from studying literature. You imbue different levels, different things all in the same action. That runs through what we do. I've spoken to students. Mark : So, I was an English major, I got out in 1980. There was no internet. Fax machines had not come, they've come and gone. There were no cell phones. We run an E-commerce business, I couldn't have studied that if I wanted to. But the liberal arts let you understand how to learn, how to figure things out, and so this runs through what we do today. And a lot of my classmates would be shocked to think that someone would be interviewing me for a Holy Cross alumni network. You've met those friends. John : I do. Mark : Paul, you should be talking to him. Paul Miles running a charter school and John Flynn, who's got this bicycle recycling program in Hartford. Charlie Brown or Chris Potter and Sue Mack and all these good people. Maureen, lots of good stuff. Maura : John, what's the best part for you about working with your dad? John : One thing I love working with my dad, I'm so lucky to be where he is. I'm never without my dad. He always, I've changed I can, if possible. I love my dad. Third and lastly, about my dad going to Holy Cross. I am a proud son because I am so, so happy of him being my father. Mark : What about your mom? You got to speak up for her, right? John : Yeah. I'll never forget mom. I am proud son. I am so proud of my dad, my mom accomplished. They are amazing accomplished. Mark : And you like hearing the stories of how we met, right? John : Oh yeah. Dad is so romantic. Mark : Romantic? Ricky, Kevin and I were looking for beer. And I can tease something for you. I'm not going any further than this. I've read in the alumni magazine and seen references to the fingers on the Jesus statue in the quad. I can tell you I was there and I know what happened. But that's it. No names, no details. Maura : Living mystery. That's what that is. Well, and my last question, this has just been really wonderful. What is your favorite pair of socks? Mark : What's your favorite pair? John : My favorite pair, my down syndrome superhero socks. Mark : Down syndrome superhero socks. Maura : Yes, that sounds like a good pair. Mark : Whose face is on those socks? John : Me. Mark : You. Maura : Good choice. Mark : You're a funny boy. Maura : I think we'll all have to check out that pair of socks. This has been an absolute pleasure. Is there anything else you want to share with listeners before we go? John : I want to say something. It's something that I said before... Mark : Go ahead. John : I am so proud of my dad's career. I am so proud of my dad's career and college. I am a proud son. I love my dad and what he did. It's wonderful. Mark : Well, there's a late poem from Yates where he recounts his achievements and those were notable, part of the revolution, part of the day of the Senate, winning a Nobel prize. But the refrain is what then sang Plato's ghost, what then are you going to do for me next? And we get to keep doing things, right? John : I love you dad. Mark : My boy. Maura : Thank you both so much. This has been just such a pleasure. John : I'm so proud of you Dad. Mark : Well, you let us know if there's ever something we can do. You got to put the pitch in. Where do people get stuff? John : At JohnsCrazySocks.com. Mark : There you go. Maura : Perfect. Yes. And I can say, I treated the alumni relations team to a pair of donut socks last year for Christmas, and they have been a big hit. So, I am a fan of John's Crazy Socks. Thank you for everything that you do. Mark : Well, thank you. John : I'm a big fan of my dad. Mark : You're a fan of your dad. Boy, you are being nice to me today. Maura : That's our show. I hope you enjoyed hearing about just one of the many ways that Holy Cross alumni have been inspired by the Mission to be people for and with others. A special thanks to today's guests and everyone at Holy Cross, who has contributed to making this podcast a reality. If you or someone you know, would like to be featured on this podcast, then please send us an email at alumnicareers@holycross.edu. If you like what you hear, then please leave us a review. This podcast is brought to you by the Office of Alumni Relations at the College of the Holy Cross. You can subscribe for future episodes wherever you find your podcasts. I'm your host, Maura Sweeney, and this is Mission-Driven. In the words of St. Ignatius of Loyola, now go forth and set the world on fire. Theme music composed by Scott Holmes, courtesy of freemusicarchive.org.

Join us on an interesting conversation on learning the #FutureOfWork panel series. This session 2 leaders, sat together and shared their journey leading their organization through #Futureofwork and sharing their best practices and insights with us Event Info: Mark Avnet, VP, People at Simulmedia Bio: Mark Avnet is VP, People at Simulmedia. Previously, he co-led the global Learning & Development team at Wayfair, built the people strategy for SFO airport, and served as a leadership development consultant with McKinsey. Mark began his career as a software engineer, and he holds an S.B. in Physics from MIT, an M.A. in Science, Technology, and Public Policy from GWU, and a Ph.D. in Engineering Systems from MIT. https://www.linkedin.com/in/avnet/ Kathy Jeffery, Chief People Officer, Pear Therapeutics Bio: Kathy has 15+ years of experience in start-ups and complex environments. Strengths in using data to drive decisions for positive Employee Experiences through Talent Management, Culture, and Communication Initiatives, Change Management, Leadership Coaching, and Learning and Development. https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathyjeffery/ Moderator: Vishal Kumar / President / TAO.ai Bio: #FutureOfWork seeker testing the limits of technology in improving human productivity and life-style. https://www.linkedin.com/in/vishaltx/ Discussion Timeline: TIMELINE Some questions we covered: Questions Planned for the session[provide feedback/changes if any]: Everyone: Tell me about your journey? Everyone: Briefly suggest what is #FutureOfWork means to you? Mark: What are the key elements of an effective learning & development program? Kathy: What have you learned about during COVID Isolation? Kathy: How could an organization help employees as they are going through something like COVID? Mark: What is the role of performance management in learning and career growth? Everyone: What is your 1 takeaways for our listeners/viewers to bring success to their roles in the age of technology and AI. About TAO.ai[Sponsor]: TAO is building the World's largest and AI-powered Skills Universe and Community powering career development platform empowering some of the World's largest communities/organizations. Learn more at https://TAO.ai About WorkPod: Work Pod takes you on the journey with leaders, experts, academics, authors, and change-makers designing the future of work, workers, and the workplace. About Work2.org WorkPod is managed by Work2.org, a #FutureOfWork community for HR and Organization architects and leaders. Sponsorship / Guest Request should be directed to info@tao.ai Keywords: #FutureofWork #Work2.0 #Work2dot0 #Leadership #Growth #Org2dot0 #Work2 #Org2

Thank you for joining us as we kick off season 2! In this episode we begin thinking about the Gospel of Mark – asking and answering, who wrote the Gospel according to Mark? What are its major themes? What happened between the Old and New Testaments? How should we think about the kingdom of God? Next Monday we will jump into Mark 1.  Join us Thursday for our first theology episode of this fall! Next week we will release our first interview for this season as well. As in season 1, we will be diving into our book of the Bible on Mondays and sharing an interview or theological discussion on Thursdays.  Radically Normal YouTube // IG: @radicallynormalpod // Email: radicallynormalpod@gmail.com // Send us prayer requests or Q&A questions for the end of season 2!

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Mark: So Sorie, talking about ocean sports and being on the ocean. Maybe you could talk about your ocean swimming experience in Ogasawara.Sorie: Yeah, I love swimming, you know. It's so peaceful to be there in the ocean. And the ocean in Ogasawara was very clear and you could see so many fishes and I'd love to go swimming and immersed in the ocean. It was like another world. It was very beautifulBut there was one time—oh, that time.Mark: What happened?Sorie: My friends had come to visit and so, we went fishing. But before they started fishing, I decided to go for a swim. And I swam, and I could see all the way to the bottom of the ocean. And I see this fish but they're actually not fish, they were sharks. They were white-tipped sharks.Mark: Wow.Sorie: There were four of them at the bottom of the ocean. And I just remember that one you have to do is to keep calm. So I did that. I swam out. I told my friends, "There are four sharks down there, so get me out of here." So they got me out of there but my heart was beating so fast. I was so scared.Mark: Were they dangerous? Those sharks?Sorie: Well, they're not dangerous. They might be able to like bite a finger off but I didn't want that to happen either. So as soon as I saw them, I came out of the place. Yeah, but that was so scary.Mark: Wow. Oh as far, it sounds beautiful and amazing and dangerous all the same time.Sorie: That's right. So Mark, what about you? Do you have any encounters with fish?Mark: With fish? Well, I remember fish in—don't you remember when we saw it together? We were swimming in that beach called Kominato, and we swam out around those rocks where we always went. How am I looking a pair of snorkels on it, so peaceful and pretty and like just tranquil and I'm looking at all the fish. And then suddenly, that freaky fish, it started at us. Do you remember that?Sorie: Yeah, with huge eyes.Mark: Huge eyes, and then he started coming towards us.Sorie: That's right. So in the middle of the ocean, we decided, okay, let's just split.Mark: We were swimming away from it and it was swimming after us, this little fish.Sorie: It was very small. It was like 30 centimeters long but they're really scary.Mark: Yeah, we were quite far out from the beach and we did split, didn't we?Sorie: And then what happened?Mark: I went that way and you went that way. And just guess which way it went?Sorie: My way.Mark: And it just chased you all the way into the sea, into the beach.Sorie: That's right. So I was swimming really quickly. I'm trying to get out of the beach and it was very close to me. And I thought it would bite my toes. But it didn't do anything. But I can't forget that time that a small fish got me out of the ocean.Mark: It was so weird, isn't it, like, fish don't do that.Sorie: They don't. And it was the only fish, like there were no other fish around.Mark: Strange.Sorie: Mysterious.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Mark: It's funny when we lived in Ogasawara though, isn't it? There were so many positive things but there is also certain things we missed. But firstly, can you recall any of those really, really special positive things that felt when you lived there?Sorie: It was just a very peaceful lifestyle, very connected to nature. The beaches were gorgeous. The weather was really nice. People were very warm, but yeah, after last year, that was the hardest for me. I started to miss so many things about living in mainland Japan.Mark: What kind of things did you miss?Sorie: I missed going to the movies, going to a café and sitting down and reading books and reading magazines, and all of that that comes with a big city, the cultural aspects of it.What about you? What did you miss?Mark: Yeah, those things like everything was so naturally confined, so you could—the entertainment, you knew what was going to happen. So when we came back to mainland Japan, they're so unpredictable, you could, as you say, go for a drive or take a train and stumble across some café or some restaurant that you've never seen before and go in and you're anonymous and they had a menu that you never seen before. And you could sit there and then read and enjoy that. And it was impossible to enjoy that in Ogasawara, to do such things. And there certainly wasn't any cinemas or anything like that or shopping centers or modern things.Sorie: Would you like to go back?Mark: I'd love to go back there because the community was so strong and so solid. And it felt—I wasn't born there and I'm not even Japanese but I felt completely like I was in my hometown every time I was there and totally accepted in the place and in the community.But as we found out since we've left there, the world is huge and there's so many communities and so many places all over the world. And I could go back, but I could go to a new place equally. How about you?Sorie: Personally, I found it too difficult to live so close to nature. I'd say that was a great experience but I wouldn't do it again.Mark: You wouldn't like to live so close to nature anymore.Sorie: In an island. Yeah, that's one of the things that made it so difficult. But overall, it was a wonderful experience and I recommend people to go there and see all the beautiful nature that Ogasawara has.Mark: Such nice memories.

How to break through ROADBLOCKS and get to the next level? You hit those exciting milestones in your business… Whether it’s $1,000…$5,000…$10,000…$100,000, or even hitting your first $1,000,000 in revenue with your funnel (Two Comma Club)! But for whatever reason, no matter what you do, you just can’t seem to get past that first milestone. You get stuck. Something’s standing in your way and you just can’t figure it out. So how do you drive past that roadblock? How do you get to that next level in your business?This is critical because EVERY entrepreneur, every business, and every Funnel Hacker WILL hit this wall at several different stages as you grow and scale. In Part 3 of this 4-part interview with my mentor Mark Joyner, I share exactly what to do to break the glass ceiling in YOUR business. ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up everybody. This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Today you are ready and prepared, I hope, for part three of a four part series, where I had a chance to do an interview with my very first mentor, Mark Joyner. And what's cool about this is, in the past, I've had a chance to interview Mark a lot of times, but it was the first time that he ever interviewed me, which was kind of... Anyway, it was a huge honor to have your mentor asking you questions about stuff. And so, like I said, in the first episode, Mark was my very first mentor online. Someone who I, man, have so much respect for, and so grateful for him and his contribution that helped me to figure this game out. And I hope you guys enjoy part three of our four part series with my very first ever mentor, Mark Joyner. Mark Joyner: Okay, third thing, third thing. Russell: Third thing, all right. So, I think the reason why a lot of people, as they're trying to grow their company, they hit these ceilings. I struggled this. I got stuck between one and three million dollars a year for like a decade. I couldn't break that ceiling no matter how hard I did. And what I realized is, as we launched ClickFunnels, the first phase of the business was like, there's the hyperactive, the first set of customers, which were the easy ones, right? They get it, they're the early adopters, they figure stuff out. And those are the customers that are already there. They're just waiting for you to go and grab them. And I think most companies, that's as far as they ever get. In fact, I've been geeking out on the book, Crossing the Chasm right now. And there's the five different things. And the innovators are the first ones. And I think that's where most people's businesses get to the innovators. And that's where they stop, right? Mark: Right. Russell: Then the second phase is the early adopters. But these people aren't... The second phase, you have to learn how to create a customer. Again, when we first launched ClickFunnels, the internet marketers who knew what funnels were like, "sweet, I'm in." And they came in and they got ClickFunnels, the early adopters, right? But then, after that was done, we ran out... It was like being in a Ferrari on a dead end road. We ran out of road, and all of a sudden we're like, "Hey, we got all the internet marketers. Oh, crap, now what?" And it was like, okay, now we have to create customers. We have to change our messaging, create our front end price. They do things so that when someone comes, they don't come with the desire ahead of time, but they listen to the message, and all of a sudden it's like, "Oh, I need a funnel." If you look at, even strategically, the Dotcom Secrets book was to get the early adopters. People who understood funnels were. Here's my strategy of funnels. We got them in. And then Expert Secrets was like, "Hey, do you have talent? Do you have ideas or advice or things you can make money with? That you could share your advice." And people were like, "Oh yeah, I do." It's like, "Cool. Well, you need a funnel to be able to get that message out to the marketplace." And so we created customers from people, and that's kind of the second phase. And I don't think most people ever get to that where they're in the phase of creating customers. They're getting the low hanging fruit, the early adopters. And then that's the business. And they hit the ceiling and they never get past it. And it's realizing, the next phase is like, "Okay, how do I create customers? How do I create the desire so that they will come from where they are and come to the next phase." And I feel like, just from my standpoint, we just finished... We're kind of at the end of the early adopter phase. And we're now making the leap to the early majority, which for me, this is my big challenge, is crossing the chasm. We can talk about it later if we want it. But, that's the next phase that I'm in. And most people never... It's taken us six years to get the point where we're done with that phase and moving to across the chasm, which is scary and exciting. Mark: Well, that's kind of what I want to end on, actually. Russell: Oh cool. Mark: I want to interject really quick here. This is a very interesting Eugene Schwartz lesson that I think is quite apropos to what you're talking about. And you remember the audience awareness scale, right? Russell: Yes. Mark: So he's got two things in there. The audience sophistication scale and the audience awareness level. And the audience awareness level goes all the way from problem unaware. So, actually I should put yeah… So problem unaware. So imagine you got a guy who is living in the Aboriginal Bush and he doesn't even know that there is such a thing as phones. And you're like, "Hey, here's an iPhone." Well, he's not even aware that he has the problem, that he doesn't have a phone. And then you got guys who are problem aware, and then you got solution aware. And then it goes all the way up to most aware, which is like a guy who's like, "Hey, all you have to do is tell me that there's the new iPhone coming out." Russell: I'm in. Mark: And right, "I'm camping out. I'm going to be in front of the iPhone store for two weeks. So I can be first." So as Russell was changing, he was dealing with guys who were sort of solution aware, and sometimes even problem aware. But as he was expanding his marketplace, he had to kind of reach out to these other areas. But what you have to also understand is that, as you go across this whole spectrum, this area is almost always where the biggest money is, but it's the hardest market to talk to, because the messaging is so much more difficult. Russell: Language changed. Mark: Yeah. Russell: Each step in that... Because people are like, "Well, how do you shift it?" And like, "It's the words, it's the language." I remember Dean Graziosi called me one day. He's like, "This is the weirdest thing." He's like, "I'm at my wife's hairdresser, and the hairdresser was talking about this thing called ClickFunnels." And he calls me. He's like, "You've done something no one else has ever done, because my hairdresser's talking about your company right now." But it's like, if I walked in a hairdresser, "You want a funnel?" They're like, "For my hair? How does that work?" It's like, "No." We had to speak differently to those audiences. And as we go further out to different audiences, we change our language patterns because we have to speak to them in a way that they understand. And then we bridge the gap. Then we take them through a bridge that helps them understand like, "Oh, that means funnel. And this is why you need that thing." And that's part of the game. Mark: That's right. Russell: So much fun. Mark: Because they're not even going to know what a funnel is. Yeah, exactly, exactly. By the way, another really interesting book people could read. So sort of like a spiritual sequel to Breakthrough Advertising, was one written by some of the guys at high level in Agora, called Great Leads. And they talk about, yeah, it's actually a fantastic book and it shows you six different ways to talk about those different audience... To talk to those different audience awareness levels. Very, very good read for people. Okay, now, so this one is... So, I know I want to get into your thing that you talk about, about crossing the chasm. And I think that's a nice one to end on here. And actually, because I wrote it as your plan to reach the billion dollar level. And I think that's kind of the same question really. So, but before we get to that, I want to ask you what your three biggest personal lessons were in this journey, in this entrepreneurial journey. And you can even talk about some of your sports stuff too, because I know some of that applies. So what would you say those are? Russell: Man, I would say to begin with, is like, entrepreneurship... Building a business is the best personal development seminar you'll ever go to. All of your problems get shoved into your face and it gets bigger and bigger. It's like, "Ah." Mark: And you deal with it or you go broke. Russell: Oh, yeah, it's tough. But what's cool about business too, it's kind of like... I have a lot of friends who are having their first baby right now. And I remember our first babies came, and we've got five kids now, but when the first come you're so scared, you're like, "What am I going to do when the baby shows up?" You're freaking out. All of a sudden the baby comes out, and it sits there and it sleeps for 18 hours a day. You're like, "Oh, it's just sitting there." Like, "Okay, this isn't that bad." And then it starts growing and growing. And what's interesting is that your capacity to handle the baby grows as the baby grows. And so right now I've got my twins are 14 years old. And it's like, man, they stress us out. Teenagers are so much harder. Mark: Yeah. Russell: But it's like, if they would've came out at 14 year olds, it would've crushed us, we'd have been destroyed, because we weren't prepared. But our capacity to handle the problems grew as the kids grew. And I think, I look at like the stuff I deal with on a daily basis right now, six years ago, would have destroyed me. I'm so grateful that I had six years to grow in capacity to handle the stuff. It's ridiculous. But that's why business is so much fun too and it's exciting. So, what was the question again? Mark: Personal... The three biggest personal lessons that you've learned along the way. And again, this can be from your sports career, from your parenting and from your entrepreneurial journey, because I think they're all related. As you said, business is the best personal development seminar you could possibly attend. These things are not unrelated. They are all... It's all one life. And the things that I learned in the military, definitely applied to my life in business. And I'm sure things that you learned in the sporting world and in parenting, have also applied to business as well. So, it sounds like the first one is, is that you had to learn how to grow along with the challenges, because the challenges are not going to get easier. They're actually, by definition in life, going to get more difficult. And I think, let's just be really frank and blunt with everybody listening. Look, we all age people, we all age. That means that baked in to the formula for life itself is increasing difficulty, no matter what. And if you think you're going to insulate yourself in some bubble. Everybody has this, they get an entrepreneurial-ism and say, "Well, what's going to happen is, is I'm going to make a whole bunch of money, then I'm going to sit on a beach, sipping umbrella drinks, and all my problems are going to go away." Well, guess what's going to happen? You do that, and I tried there, here's what happened, I got fat, sick, and I became this horrible, disgusting person, that I was not proud of. And I was going to die if I carried on with that path. This is the way the universe is designed, guys, it's designed to continue to get more difficult and to challenge you more. Would you agree with that? Russell: A hundred percent. Unless... And some people nod because they cave, and they go and they sit and watch TV, and they just like, "Ah, I'm going to tap out." And they sedate themselves so they don't hear the voice, the calling, whatever it is, that's pulling you. Because I think all humans have that. I think it's inherent from our creator that there's this thing that pulls us to want to do more. And we want to contribute. And we have this thing. But, the majority of people, they try to sedate it. They sedate it with TV, with drugs- Mark: That's right. Russell: ... with alcohol, with pornography, whatever it is like to get that noise out. Because there's pain with that. Man, it is painful to walk out... And I'll tell a story that maybe this kind of ties into the second one. But, we were about a year into ClickFunnels and this is all of our first rodeo. It was Todd's first time building an app this big and all these things. And I remember when we first built it, he was like, "I'm pretty sure that the way I built it will handle about 10,000 customers." We thought maybe that'll take a couple of years. And within a year, we were 10,000 customers. And sure enough, about a year in, things started happening and the site would go down for half an hour. Then they get it back up. And then all these problems and all these things. And it was just so much stress. And I remember I got asked to speak in London, to talk about ClickFunnels. So my wife, my kids, my family, we fly to London. As soon as we land at the airport, I get out. I'm trying to get my phone connected and get a SIM card and whatever. As soon as it gets in, my phone is just on fire from... And it's all these people who I knew. And I thought they were my friends, but ClickFunnels went down, and they were not... Pitchforks were out and they were ready to kill me. And I'm like, I don't even know what's happening. And so I remember, I messaged Todd and I'm like, "What happened?" He's like, "We've been down for two hours." He's like, "We can't figure it out." He's like, "If we're able to recover from this, then..." I don't know, something, but I just remember him saying, "if". And I was like, "Wait, if?" It wasn't, "when", it was, "if". And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I don't even know how to deal with this." Mark: I've been there, I've been there. Russell: We're in a car and we're dragging the kids to the hotel. And they're like all excited from London. And I'm stressing out. I don't even know what to do. And finally get to the hotel, and we're talking. And everything's still down, and I look at Facebook, and everyone's, literal death threats, it's crazy how crazy people get. And just blowing up everywhere. And all I wanted to do was... And I'm a Mormon, so there's not many things that we can do to sedate. Let's go get some ice cream, right? I don’t have anything! What do we do? I remember that moment, I was just like, I just want to hide. But I was like, I don't think that's the right... I don't know, I don't think it's the right thing. I think I need to talk about this. And I shouldn't act like it's okay, because it's not. It gets... So I decided... So I went to our Facebook group at the time. I think it's still archived in there, you probably find it. But I did this video from the hotel room and I was like, "ClickFunnels is down and it is not acceptable. And I am pissed at myself, I'm pissed at my team, were all pissed. This is not okay." And like, I just went out, "All my sites are down. I'm losing money, you're losing money. I understand it. It's not fair to you. It's not fair..." And I just owned it publicly, live streaming. And it was scary. I'm like, "I don't know what's going to happen. I'm going to keep you guys apprised. But we're doing everything we can. And it is not acceptable. And I am so sorry, and we're going to fix this." And I just led with that. And then got off Facebook Live and then probably balled my eyes out. Like, "I don't know if we're going to fix this." And luckily, I've got an amazing team back home and they're killing themselves. Mark: Awesome. Russell: It'll be a good chapter in the bootstrap book someday. But everything went on. But I think about eight hours and they got it back up. And I remember, after it got back up, then it got stable. And then we're just like, "Oh no, what's going to be the damage from this and the fallout." And I remember... We get graphs every day of how many people signed up, how many people leave, and all those kind of numbers. And man, during that thing, our number of cancellations, almost non noticeable. And I was just like, if we would have went the other way around and hid behind it, people wouldn't trust... Who knows what would have happened? And that was such a good learning moment for me. We can't hide behind stuff in today's world. We just have to come out front. And so that was a year in. And then luckily, from that point, we had some other good partners who came on, like Ryan Montgomery, who came and helped us stabilize things and figured out all these things. And it's been pretty stable since then. It's just those things that you learn, of don't hide, don't sedate. And I think in all aspects of life, that's a lesson. As soon as the company gets hard, man, your brain's going to be looking for a million different ways to say no. Or like, "I don't want to go that way." "No, no, no." And, man, everything good always comes from going to the eye of the storm and pushing through it. And even though the pain seems like, if I sedate or if I check out it's going to be good. But it's not a way to live life. Mark: So, dude, it's funny you say that. I was just shooting a video about exactly that, about how everybody is kind of opiating themselves these days, through the dopamine hits of social or whatever it is. Everybody's got their drug of choice now. Again, you named a lot of them, binge watching, pornography, actual hardcore drugs. There are so many people that are hooked on fentanyl and heroin combinations. And, it's a really ugly cocktail of what's going on. And I want to kind of interject and maybe pause it, what I think another third lesson is for you. I'm actually going to ask you a question. Were you raised in Mormonism or did you choose to convert? Russell: I was definitely raised in it, but I also had a very definite point where I chose it. There, at least for me, I think there's always a time when a storm comes and you got to decide what you really believe. Definitely had that. So yes, and yes. Mark: I want to say, I would just kind of hypothesize, that that played a huge role in your personal development, because you guys are not allowed to involve yourselves in any of those sedation methodologies. They encourage a very morally upright life. And I have to say, being a veteran of the military intelligence community, I actually got to know a lot of Mormons, because Mormons go out there and they get their language training as missionaries. So there are a lot of Mormons in the military intelligence community. And I got to say, almost all of the Mormons that I worked with were really solid dudes, who were just genuine, sincere people, who wanted to live their life correctly, and legitimately wanted to be kind to people. And I know you've got people like Bill Maher out there, saying all kinds of really nasty things about Mormonism, calling it a cult and stuff like that. But my experience with Mormons has been nothing but very positive. And it would seem to me that your choice to really, even though you were raised in it, to decide to take that on very seriously, must have also been very pivotal for you in your personal growth. Russell: A hundred percent. I did go on a mission for two years for the church, and I went when I was 19 years old, which is typically for most people, that's the time when you're in college, you're partying, you're drinking, you're thinking all about yourself, and you go out there on your mission, and you can't do anything for yourself. You get a name tag, where literally, I was Elder Brunson. My name is gone. I'm not even a... And you're out there everyday serving other people during, typically the most selfish time in someone's life. And for two years, that's the lens you look at things. So, when you come home... And I always tell people, "I'm so grateful I made money after mission." Because, who knows what would happen? Both of us have friends that made a lot of money really young and it destroyed them. And so it's like... Mark: Oh yeah, definitely. Russell: Just super grateful that I had that lens to just... The lens of learning how to serve people before yourself, which is... Unfortunately, most people don't have that opportunity. And on a mission, you're kind of forced into it, and you learn to love it. Mark: It's funny for me. I went through... Even though my family was Catholic, I was kind of raised around atheist/agnostics. And I became, sort of what I would call now, a pantheistic spiritualist. But over time, I've become more and more rigid in that. I've explored all of the different world's religions. And the one thing... And I haven't decided yet, if I'm going to settle in any location. I still need to listen to your Mormon apologetics video that you made. I'm super curious about that. I need to make a point of hearing it, because I'm, open to it. I'm open to it. And when I see people who are living a life that represents genuine service for other people. I don't know if you ever heard of this guy, Father Gregory, who has this thing called The Homeboys' Bakery. And basically what he does, he takes these kids who were, they were in prison, and he gives them jobs at a bakery, and then helps teach them how to be decent people. And I saw that and man, I can't help but get choked up when you hear about something like that, man. Because when you see somebody living their life that way, and when you know what the cost of living your life the other way is, it makes you really take those kinds of things seriously. And even though religion gets a bad rap because, yeah, there's a lot of crazy stuff happening in organized religion, the notion that sin, however you want to label that, destroys your life, is an observable phenomenon, man. You can see it. When you do all the things that you're, "not supposed to do", and all of the religions of the world tell you not to do a lot of the same things. And when you see what happens to people who live their life that way, and they think they can get away with it. And then you see what happens to people who live their... And I'm talking about people who were the week, "Oh, I'm trying to be a nice guy as a way to manipulate people." That's a bullshit thing that some people do, right. I'm talking about guys who are like, "Hey, I'm going to make myself a strong person, and I'm going to do good in the world." When I see people like that, I'm like, "That is the path that we all need to be walking down." And the more of us do that, the better the world's going to be. Russell: Yeah, I had someone recently tell me... Learn about my beliefs and stuff and just be like, "Man, that must be really, really hard." And then at the same time, I looked at their life. And I was like, looking at the path that they've gone on, and not to judge them all. But I'm like, that seems so much harder. Mark: Yeah. Russell: I don't know. Maybe, but, I'm grateful for the path and I'm going to stay on it. Mark: Good for you, man, good for you, dude. I'm blessed to see your example, because you're yet another person I can look at it and say, "Hey, here's a guy..." And your life is harder than mine, man. Your company is doing way more volume than mine right now. You have kids to manage, you do all these extra things on top of it. And I'm like, "Man, I want to learn how Russell is managing all of this stuff." You know what I mean? Because you're younger than I am, but you figured some things out that I haven't figured out. I want to learn that. And I'm a moron if I don't learn it, right. This is where the ego less ness has to come in. If you want to be better and better and better, if you want to truly achieve greatness, you got to be really straight with yourself about what you can and can't do. So let's kind of tie this up now with this crossing the chasm thing, man. Russell: Yeah. Mark: I don't know if this is something that could be covered briefly. Because I imagine it's going to be a pretty complex thing, but what can you say about that? Russell: Yeah. And I'll tell you some of my thoughts. I don't know all the answers yet. We're on that journey right now. Mark: Yeah, good answer. Russell: And it's fun though. Because for me, it's been interesting as I've gone on this journey too, and maybe this ties back to the last question as well, but, and I'll tie it back to sports. When I was wrestling for a long time, it was me, I was the all-star. I was out there wrestling, it was my thing, I got my hand raised. I loved it. And now that I'm older and I've got kids now, my kids wrestle. And the transition from all-star to coach is really painful. Because it's like, "I want to be on the mat." Like, "Ah, they're doing things wrong." And like at first it's really painful. And then eventually, for me, my kids, this is my twins third year wrestling. And this year was so rewarding, because the stuff we've been working on, they're finally getting it. And to see them get their hand raised, actually felt better than my own hand raise, which is weird, because I was like, it's been the greatest moment of my life, is getting my own hand raised. And with business was similar, because the first two years of ClickFunnels, I was the all-star. People were like, "How big was your funnel building team?" It was me. I built the funnels, I wrote the sales presentations... Todd was doing the software, I was doing everything else. And I was the all-star. I'm doing the webinars, I'm flying around the world, I'm speaking, I'm doing stuff, my hand's getting raised over and over and over again. And as we started growing, it started getting harder and harder for me to handle that. And I remember three years ago, it was this spot where it's just like the pressure so much. I was just at a breaking point. I'm like, "I don't know what to do." I remember where I was at. It was some other conversation, but the thought that popped in my head was like, "You have to transition from being the all-star to being the coach. At the time, I had hired a couple people and they would go, they'd write copy for me or they'd build the funnel for me. And they'd do it. And I felt like it was like Michael Jordan. There are people that go up to shoot a shot, and he's like, "I shoot better” and grab it and just dunk on them, right. I felt like I was doing that. My team would come in, they'd get some like, "Oh this sucks." I'd go in and delete it all and rewrite it and fix it all. And like, "Oh I'm an all-star, look how good I am." And it was holding me back and them back and everything. And I was like, I have to make this transition to being the coach. So that was the whole second phase was, at first, it's hard. But now I'm looking at my team, now my team is getting so good. They're producing stuff and they're creating without me. And it's like they say to me, now they want something. I'm like that like, "Ah." Same thing, it feels better getting your hand raised when your team is doing it now. It's interesting. Mark: Well, you got a great model, really quick, I just want to interject, from wrestling. Dan Gable was kind of seen as the greatest wrestler of all time. And then he was... Now he's kind of universally recognized as the greatest coach of all time as well, across all sports. Right? Russell: Yeah. Mark: There are very few people who would deny that Dan Gable is the best coach of any sport, of all time. Russell: Think about how many people, making the jump from that, how many great athletes never become coaches? And I think a lot of it is the ego, right? It's been really hard for me, both coaching my kids and then coaching the team. There's this ego thing. You're like, "I can do it better." Or whatever. And it's so hard. And so anyone that can make that transition from all-star to coach, I have so much respect for them, because it takes a lot. Mark: Ego is tricky man, because the ego battle is probably the... That's the battle, right? Because the ego kind of drives you. That pride drives you so much in the beginning. Russell: It's the fuel, initially. It's the reason why I want your hand raised. The ego's the driving force, initially. And then it becomes the thing, that holds you back in the next phase. Like, "What?" Like, "You were such a great friend over here, now you're screwing me over." Mark: What just happened. Well, this is the genius of the design of the universe, right? It's like every time we think we've got to figured out, it's like, "nope, you don't." Because, whatever designed this, whatever your cosmology of the universe is, call it God or whatever, is infinitely smarter than you are. And it's going to come up with so many ways to trick you and keep you off balance, that every time you think you got it dialed in, there's going to be a new challenge that's going to come up. And you have to love that. It's kind of beautiful. Right? Russell: Oh, yeah. Mark: Because that's what keeps life interesting. It would be so dull without it. Russell: Yeah, it's so much fun.

On this episode of the Quiet Light podcast, we talk to Phillip Rivers (not the quarterback). We get into why email is the unsung hero of E-commerce businesses. In his experience, thirty percent of your revenue should come from email connections. Tune in to her more on Phillip's thoughts about the power of email in E-commerce.   Topics: Phillip's background in E-commerce. Why email is still powerful despite expanded advertising options. The misstep of shooting from the hip. How to start out on the right foot. Offers Trust-builders. Content The efficacy of social media advertising. Getting past personal biases. Sharing a name with a famous quarterback.   Resources:  Phil@gotetra.co Phillip on Facebook Quiet Light Podcast@quietlightbrokerage.com   Transcription: Joe: Our buddy Mike Jackass did a presentation not too long ago on his product campaign product with Color It and what he does with e-mail in Klaviyo and did a presentation to I think it was the eCommerceFuel folks showing how much of his revenue came from his e-mail campaigns. And a lot of people were blown away because they felt like it's something that is dated and not an area that's strong in e-commerce anymore. Maybe those folks are doing mostly on Amazon and actually can't e-mail the customers. But in this case, when it's an off Amazon business, Mike presented a case, that e-mail is an important component of any campaign in growing up SaaS business or content business whatever you've got if you've got a list of customers to reach out to them. I understand you had Phillip Rivers on the podcast talking about this very same thing. How did that call go? Mark: Well, you can imagine my delight when I got an e-mail from Phillip Rivers. I thought he's finally returning my fan mail. All the e-mails that I sent to the quarterback of now the Indiana Colts as opposed to the San Diego Chargers; I'm sorry, Los Angeles Chargers. I was like I finally met; no, it's not that Phillip Rivers. I did have to ask him about that at the end. He has a funny story about people not believing it was his real ID when he was going into a bar thinking it was a fake ID. But that's at the end of the podcast. The bulk of what we talked about instead of football is e-mail marketing and the fact that it's the unsung hero of e-commerce marketing. And for all you buyers out there, this is one of these opportunities for where you can find opportunities for immediate gains after you acquire a business. Phillip Rivers at this podcast argues and argues very well that in his experience, an e-commerce business should have at least 30% of its revenue mix coming from e-mail. So if you're looking at where customers are being acquired from currently with an e-commerce business and it does not have a sizable portion coming from e-mail, this is an opportunity. And there are ways to do this with Amazon as well. I've known plenty of Amazon sellers who have healthy e-mail lists and use it to launch products. And that's a great avenue for getting those products to rank well on Amazon very, very quickly. So we talked a lot about his experience with this; with e-mail marketing, some of the best practices he follows and then some of the metrics you should be following in here. I joked at the end when you have a name like Phillip Rivers your open rate probably naturally gets higher than if it's just Joe Valley. Well, probably not Joe Valley, Joe Valley is recognized, right? Joe: In a very small circle of people, yes. Mark: Yeah, right. Anyways, good point. I think it's a bit larger than that. I open the e-mail when I see it, but no, good episode for just learning about identifying these opportunities for quick wins and opportunities that you're evaluating for businesses for sale. Joe: Excellent. Let's go to it. Mark: Phillip, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast here today. I'm really excited to have you on because you reached out to me. You talked about e-mail as the unsung hero of e-commerce and I have a special place in my heart for e-mail as I built my first business on the back of e-mail marketing. So welcome to the podcast. I'm really glad to have you here. Phillip: Thanks for having me, Mark. Mark: Hey, why don't you give a little bit of a background on yourself and why you reached out to me about e-mail as the unsung hero as you put it of e-commerce and why this is something that you want to talk about? Phillip: Yeah, man. So I've been in e-commerce for quite a while, about 15 years now, highs and lows. But in the early days, there was none of these wonderful tools that we kind of now take for granted. And so I sort of skid my teeth on e-mail; building audiences and nurturing them and figuring out ways to monetize creatively. And this dates back to; this is pre-Shopify, Facebook Ads, and all that stuff. And over the years, as the industry matured, I just got really leaned into and sharpening my sword on building audiences and communicating with people. And in doing so, I've had some successful stores and some unsuccessful ones. It's kind of how it goes in this game. Mark: I've only got successful stories. I've never had a failure in my life. Phillip: That's not true. I heard on another podcast a business you bought that didn't work out. Mark: All right, I have more than one of those. Okay, let's move on from my failures on to your successes. Phillip: And so, in any event, I think that to my time in e-com I notice that e-mail is this very unique special channel that the brand or the individual business has complete control over in terms of how they build that audience, how they connect with them over time, and what messaging they put in front of them to get whatever action they aim to get out of it, whether it be engagement or revenue or whatever it may be and so much so that in talking with friends or now clients that are in the e-commerce space, it's just e-mail is one of those things that kind of gets kicked to the curb or neglected in lieu of kind of faster or sexier channels. And so really, I'm here just kind of standing on a soapbox and tell people like this is an important channel for longevity and to have a clean, healthy business long term and an asset that you can own and control. E-mail is very important and vital to long term success of any business. Mark: And I would agree but let's go ahead and play some of the devil's advocate here with the different channels. Obviously, social media is where a lot of people are putting their attention. You're on Facebook for a long time some people are kind of weighing in on Facebook and saying Instagram advertising works really, really well for them. Influencer marketing, it's a matter of time before we get to the next big social media. I was just talking to somebody yesterday who was like I'm trying to figure out TikTok. It's the latest thing out there to try and figure out. With all these things happening, why does e-mail continue to hold a seat at the table in our marketing mix? And then later on, just for those listening, I want to get into the how later on. I think that's the mediary topic but before we get to the how let's talk about the why. Why is e-mail; why does it deserve a seat at this table? Phillip: Well, it's the one channel that you own outright. I think that gets kind of discounted or forgotten a lot. Any other social channels you're borrowing that audience and technically Zuckerberg or one of the other power players is who owns that audience and you can be sort of de-platformed or the cost can go up or the algo can change and all of a sudden you can't reach the same amount of people. So it's just they're not bad and they're amazing tools, you just don't have full control like you do e-mail. So I think for me that's the biggest thing. And the other way that I look at it is all these social channels are great at engaging folks and driving traffic but if you look at the analytics, at any store or any e-com store, the conversion rate; let's just say it's 5% which would be on the higher end of the spectrum. But that still means that 95% didn't buy on any given day and if you're not thinking about how you capture leads from as many of those people as possible and how do you communicate with them to communicate your value proposition and products etcetera, then you're really relying on luck and kind of paying for impressions to get people back again which is it leaves too much up to chance, in my opinion, or for my liking. And two, it just is a very expensive long term proposition and it's hard to build something sustainable that way. Mark: Yeah. With that, though, and again I'm still playing the devil's advocate here, should we own the channel? We own somebody's e-mail, we can hit them up but Google's gotten better at filtering that out. Our updates here at Quiet Light got thrown into the updates folder. Another company I have, things are getting thrown over in the promotions folder which is like spam with an asterisk; it's spam, but you should probably be looking at it. At least that's what I look at that promotions folder. Do we really have full control over e-mail do you think, or are we losing control, and what about the future of that? Is that something to watch out for in the future? Phillip: I think that strategy is the most important part. And so I think that this goes kind of back into the how, but based on how you set forth in terms of once someone pops in and you start to communicate with them, how do you do it and what actions do you ask them for. Doing some of those things kind of at the outset can dictate where your e-mail goes in terms of the Gmail inbox, for example, long term. If people aren't engaging with it, it'll be routed to promo. But if people engage with the early e-mails, that's kind of a way to work around it to land in the inbox. But to go one layer deeper, I think from an e-mail perspective, I don't worry too much about the mailbox tab or the promo tab. The only one I really want to stay out of the most is Spam and that's the one I can control. Whether it ends up in promo or one of the other tabs, there's nothing that I can do about it. As a marketer, all that I can do is think critically about how do I create the most incredible experience for the person that's going to be consuming this message? And if I think about them and value them, then the things downstream that I don't really have control over will tend to work out. Mark: Sure and I think this is a point that might get lost sometimes with e-mail, right? And maybe we can talk a little bit about the how, because I think we're just going to naturally end up there anyways. Phillip: Can I add one more point before we get there, Mark? Mark: No. No, I'm just kidding. Please. Phillip: I was going to say that the other thing is like you mentioned the dynamic changing or Google changes things meaning how that affects us in deliverability in the inbox. Facebook or the players and social are changing algorithms every single day and so increasingly of all of your audience there, fewer and fewer of them see your message unless you pay to play. So e-mail, if you look at them side by side on engagement metrics, e-mail would win far and above every single time from organic social versus e-mail. But the state of play on all platforms is always changing. But I don't look at that as to say like we shouldn't play the game. It's just like what are the rules and kind of where do I have to get creative and that to get the best result possible? Mark: Sure, yeah. And I think talk about a multiplatform approach makes sense as well. It's not an either-or sort of proposition. We can definitely enhance our e-mail marketing with other platform marketing. But for anyone curious as to what's the winner when you are looking at these different channels just do a Google search. I mean, the open rates and the attention that gets paid to e-mail versus social media is significantly higher with e-mail. I'm going to stop playing devil's advocate because it hurts me to do so. Because I do have a soft spot in my heart for e-mail but people do it wrong all the time. People really don't understand how to do e-mail right. And I mean, I go through every day and I unsubscribe from; I have no idea how many people I'm unsubscribing from every day. It just feels like I'm constantly unsubscribing because they're not offering me value. But there are some people in my inbox that I don't remember signing up for but they're adding value so I keep them in there. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about doing it wrong. Let's talk about doing it right, especially from an e-commerce standpoint where you're selling products. I'd love to hear where you start that conversation with people. Phillip: Well, I think that through the lens of e-com, what most people miss, Mark is the strategy first and foremost. So I talk to a lot of business owners on the phone and most of them when it comes down to e-mail, they have no clear roadmap or kind of treasure map, as I like to call it, in terms of what they're going to be doing week to week from a messaging perspective, whether that's value, whether that's offers or; not offers at percentage basis but talking about a product and offering something for sale and also segmentation. So pretty much what most brands do is just shoot from the hip, which is really hard to build a successful channel when you're just guessing and playing with borrowed time all the time. And so that's kind of the biggest misstep that I see a lot of people making. And then it's important with this channel just as any other just like with your Facebook ads where you're putting a lot of budget behind the ads that you're running is like, okay, how do I kind of think about what do I want to communicate to the audience and based on kind of where they are in the lifecycle so that one, I create a good experience for them, but two, I get to little by little move them along the lifecycle to ultimately converting or re-converting or whatever it may be. But that's the biggest thing that I see missing is starting off on the right foot. Mark: What is the right foot and what's the wrong foot? Phillip: Well, I think the wrong foot is sale, sale, sale all the time or just running with offers to people and just mass discounting to get sales which is the strategy or tactic a lot of people use. So I think the right foot is looking at what does your audience care about? The way I like to break it down is into kind of three different high-level kind of categories; offers where we talk about the product, trust builders, where we can pull things from social media or reviews, testimonials, maybe how our brand, our origin story or how a product is created, where we can tell a story. To me, that builds trust or connection. And then also content. That content, again, could be Instagram content, or a blog content, or just things that are important to the brand and they know it's important; the avatar that they can talk about. It doesn't have to be a blog post necessarily, but content. So ultimately, if we take a step back, that's a mixture of offers and value add stuff in one way, shape, or form. And they all sort of cross over it's like a then diagram you can make a content message and offer message and so it's kind of a hybrid, but you're still in that context leading with value and you're offering something for sale but the main point of that isn't an offer or a product. It's you're telling a story around some angle or narrative. So I think the right way to start is to; what we often do is group what things can we talk about from an offer perspective that apply to our brand, our avatar, same thing for trust builder, same thing for content ideas and put all those on paper as wild or crazy or simple or sophisticated as you think those answers or your ideas are. Get them all there and then it's a lot easier to cut things or group them together once everything's sort of out of your brain and onto the piece of paper. That's oftentimes the first step that I take and I recommend people take because that way it's a lot easier to see it. Kind of like akin to Minority Report. Mark: Throwback there to an old Tom Cruise movie for anyone that hasn't seen it. Don't watch it. Actually, it's an okay movie. Well, let's try to actually break this down into an example here because a lot of theory here as far as this. And what I've often found when we talk about marketing, whether it be e-mail marketing or any other type when we start talking about segmenting; it sounds great in theory, right? The idea that, hey, you want to segment your audience, you want to understand and kind of meet them where they're at and like, yeah, that's great and then you sit down and you do it. So how do I know where my audience is at? How do I know what they want to hear from content? And how do I move from that content to the offer? So let's make-believe a brand, we got a pet business here. It sells dog collars; custom dog collars, let's say with nice little chains around the neck or something like that, I don't know. We'll just say a pet brand we don't have to get that specific. You talked about breaking up into these three different levels. I mean, how would we do this with a B2C sort of brand for a hobby niche or a passion just like pets? What are some things to look at there? Phillip: So I'm talking through the lens of campaigns, not flows, just to be clear. And so through this sort of pet leash or pet brand that you mentioned, it's like, okay, what are some offers that we could talk about around the product? So there's obviously discounting, there's maybe product releases, back in stocks. There's a few ideas. There's design inspiration, why they built this product this way. That could also be kind of like a trust builder sort of thing. And again, reviews, even just pictures of dogs wearing your collar. Pet owners love that type of stuff and so that goes a long way. Again, this could also be content or slash trust builder. But I know it's hard to stay organized talking about this and through the lens of the people that are listening now, this is all over the place. But like pictures of other dogs wearing the collars, that could be used in all three of these categories; offer, trust builder, or even a content idea. So the way that I look at it, Mark, is you have these three overarching categories. In a month there is four weeks that you're going to be communicating campaigns to folks. And not to get too into the weeds on segmentation, but let's say you're going to send five campaigns throughout the course of the month. So one a week plus some sort of like wildcard campaign based on whatever's happening in the calendar or in the world that you could sort of ride the coattails of in any given month. So I would say two of those should be offer related e-mails. Two of those or three should be content or value-added. To make it simple it's something that people can sort of sink their teeth into. Like, okay, now I have a clear go forward in terms of what I should be doing each week. Mark: Yeah, you don't want to get into the weeds with segmentation. We're going to do that in a bit. But first, I want to know, does this change when you are going B2B or B2C? Phillip: The only thing that changes when I go B2B is it depends; like what's the underlying product that's being sold and what's the sales cycle and how is that product consumed? So if you're selling cloud hosting solutions for law firms, which I've done before… Mark: That's exciting. I fell asleep while you were saying that by the way but I'm awake. Phillip: So the sales cycle for that is long and they don't really repurchase it. They're repurchasing services from whoever installed the cloud hosting stuff for them. And so for them, one a week might be a little bit too aggressive. It might be a bi-weekly or monthly thing, but I think to answer your question, it's all circumstantial based on the underlying business and what they sell and how it's consumed. And so there's not a hard and fast rule that you have to send once a week even for e-com necessarily. It's what applies for one business won't necessarily apply to the other and I think a lot of people get sort of tripped up on that where they seek advice online and they think they have to do it that way. But it's not necessarily best suited for them or their or their leads or customers. Mark: Yeah, you do consulting for this, right? This is part of what you do. Phillip: Yeah. Mark: Okay, so let's say a new client is coming to you. And I want to just talk about the average client avatar that you have here, like the average client coming in. What do you often see with people's e-mail setups when they first come to you? Assuming that they have something set up what is kind of the most common approach they take? And then the follow up to that's going to be what do you do next once you see that and what are the steps to try and get it in shape? Phillip: Yeah, so what I often see most is there's no strategy like it's just sort of thrown together piecemeal and they send when they send. And therefore they don't know what they're doing with campaigns. There's no plan and there's no measurement because you can't track what you don't measure. So that's big mistake number one. The other thing that I see is people that do use flows; again, this is through the lens of e-com especially, more often than not they kind of just use like the templates that are given to them by whatever ESP they're using so it's like they put forth the least amount of effort just to have something there to cross it off the list. And oftentimes they do this because people don't realize the potential to e-mail has for their business and so because of their; what's the word I want, lack of experience sort of in this channel, they think that if they get 2%, 3%, or 4% a month from e-mail they think that's; their outlook is, oh, we're doing okay. I'm happy with it. Not knowing they should be doing at a minimum 30. Mark: 30% what? Phillip: Of revenue per month attributed to e-mail. Mark: That's a high percent. Okay. Phillip: So without a solid strategy, I would say it's like building a house on quicksand and if you do that, it's not going to be around very long. And so what they do is oftentimes there's no strategy. They do a little bit here and there, and they're quite happy with the results because they don't know any better. But they're also inclined to say e-mail doesn't work for my business. But it's not because the channel is inherently bad, it's because there's no strategy in place to make it successful. Mark: Right, that makes sense. So what's next for you then after you see this? They don't have a strategy in place. Is the strategy that you start putting together just what you were talking about; this kind of planning out the next month and these three different types of e-mails that you would send out or how do you go about dissecting that that strategy and building something for them? I mean talking flows, let's just make a quick point of clarification. Flows would be like automations, there's e-mail sequences, there's a lot of different names for these, but it's e-mails that are sending based off various triggers in sequence. Is that right? Phillip: Correct. So when I'm sort of looking at an account and I'm diagnosing what's currently happening, what are the holes in their funnel, if you will, or what are the pitfalls within an e-mail and how can they improve as fast as possible to start making; squeezing more juice out of this lemon? I look first at how are leads being captured on-site? Traffic is coming from paid social, organic social, TikTok, or SEO, whatever the traffic sources are. But they're coming in. Most people don't buy. So how effectively are leads being captured so that you can communicate with them? Most people don't track these at all. And just for those listening on the low end, anything that you're doing on-site with, like a pop-up, for example, should be converting at minimum 5%. We always sort of measure; our goal is to get to 10% conversion rate. So impression to conversion is 10% and if it converts to 10% percent I'm not touching it. It's like I found the unicorn. I just let it ride until it starts to diminish; the performance starts to diminish. But most people don't even know how the pop-up is performing from a lead gen perspective. So that's the first thing we look for. Second thing is in parallel, what's happening with campaigns is they're sort of a strategy or a framework in place for communicating with the audience, period. More often than not it's no. If they do have a strategy in place, it's like, well, how is it performing? How are they using segmentation to at least be sort of more precise with their messaging, making sure that it has audience message fit to move the metrics that they want to move. And parallel to that on the flow side, again, as you mentioned, Mark, these flows their purpose is to nurture people throughout the customer lifecycle based on their behaviors, attributes, or lack thereof. So if someone comes in and gives their e-mail; they come from paid social, they give their e-mail, they don't buy, you put them through a series of messaging that starts to evangelize them. They learn what's important to you, form some sort of a connection, a deeper one, than you had when they got there in the first place. And so these flows, by and large, there's four, I would say, critical or key flows that any business needs first before they start adding a bunch of sexy stuff afterwards; that being the welcome flow, like when you start to sort of indoctrinate or evangelize folks, browse abandoned flow, so someone's been opted in, they're shopping around, but they don't take an action to add to Cart, abandoned cart flow, which there's a lot of people that add to cart and never buy. So there's just low hanging fruit there. And then the other one that I think is the most important to have at the outset is first time customer. And so at this point, the reason I think that's so important, Mark, is getting someone to buy the first time is one of the hardest things in the world. But once they've converted they're five times more likely to buy a second time than a new person is to buy a first time. So this is really our first opportunity to start to make an even deeper connection with someone that's converted once and to communicate our values and what lies ahead for them when they receive their product in the mail, so on and so forth, so that we can start to then be in a place to position something else for them to buy at some point down the road based on what makes sense for the underlying business and what they sell, obviously. And so usually when I'm a buyer, those are all the things that I look at like is the core infrastructure of flows in place yes or no? If it is okay, is it performing well or are there holes in it that should be improved before moving on to something and moving on to kind of more sophisticated flows? Mark: I got it. Phillip: I know that's a mouthful but is that helpful? Mark: No, that was great. I mean I purposely was just not talking because I was soaking up a lot of what you were saying here. With flows a couple of just practical application issues here that I want to go over, one is do you recommend interspersing campaigns with flows and if not, how do you work in holiday specials and stuff like that? And my follow up to that is going to be how do you do this without interrupting things? For example, I've seen this flow set up before where you get the introductory e-mail, and then the next week you get another e-mail that's kind of more trust building, and then week three you have something that's sent out that's more of a promotion e-mail. And this is going to be everybody's experience when they become a new customer, right? They're going to have this sort of experience. Their clock starts the day they buy or the day that you capture them as lead depending where their starting point is. Do you recommend using campaigns as well and how do you not have competing offers or campaigns disrupting that flow? Phillip: So I think, quite honestly, I don't worry too much about cannibalizing flows with campaigns or campaigns with flows. Most businesses aren't to the point where they're that sophisticated from a marketing perspective, where there's that much going on, where it's going to hurt them to have a campaign sent and someone also receive a flow. So I think a lot of times they start; it's an outlier and people worry about it and it takes up time, energy, and ultimately it becomes a barrier for them ultimately taking action. So then what happens is they get into the weeds thinking about it and like oh, they end up not doing it because they're worried about somehow buyer implications that might happen if they were to do this. And they don't do anything, which is worse than just doing both. So I think it's a lot easier to keep it simple. But again, this is one of those things where it all depends on the underlying business and what they sell and how they communicate and all of these things. But to answer your question, I don't worry too much about if someone's enrolled in a flow sending a campaign. But what I will do depends on the ESP that's being used. But I'll talk through the lens of Klaviyo because that's where I spend most of my time. If someone is in abandoned cart flow, which is very high leverage flow and they're close to converting. And I also have campaigns going out that generally disperse; these people that are in the abandoned cart would also get this campaign. If I'm hypersensitive to it, or I want to make sure that people enrolled in flows don't want to see this particular; let's just say it's a deep discount, I'll just suppress that segment or anyone that received an abandoned cart e-mail in the last 16 hours from getting this campaign. So it's like an easy sort of fix but if you don't have to go write it all out on a whiteboard and see where all the dependencies arcs is it just becomes too confusing. It's just easier not to do it if you're going to go about it that way. Mark: Sure, and you don't think people are paying enough attention anyways to; not paying enough attention but you're not to worried about cannibalizing and having one interrupt the other not as problems. Phillip: Not really. A lot of what happens to is we have like our own world view, our own biases when we're thinking about stuff as the business owner market or whatever like I don't like this or I'm worried about that. But at the end of the day, to answer your question to this specific example, I'd rather look at the metrics of the e-mail to tell me what's working or what's not working or what I'm doing wrong or right. So, for example, if I just let it ride, people get flows, people get campaigns, and I start to see there's an uptick in spam complaints then that tells me, okay, I need to pull back a little on the aggressiveness of the campaigns. That's the first place I would look. But I'd rather know in black and white than me, just come up with something, not know what the upside or downside, but then I don't do it. But I also don't know how it affects my business in a positive or negative way. Mark: I got it. What's a good opening, in your opinion? Phillip: That's a loaded question because there's so many factors but what I would shoot for, at a minimum, I would say 25%. Mark: That'll be great. I mean, again, it's a loaded question and it's difficult. Every business is going to be a little bit different. If you're not at that, let's say that somebody is listening and they are 15% right now or 12½% or something like that, which I think is kind of common, depending on how long and how old your listing is. Lists in my experience tend to get old and sometimes get a little bit tired, especially with the older people on there. What are ways that you can increase that open rate and is it something that they should really be worrying about as well, in your opinion? Phillip: I think it comes down to a lot of the underlying business, but also like what do they care about most? From my perspective, revenue is the most important thing. The audience is important. I don't want to blow up a list and degrade the engagement metrics in favor of revenue because ultimately revenue is just a lag indicator of the engagement metrics anyways. So that's going to start to diminish over time if that's the approach that you take. And so to answer your question, if the open rate is 15%, I would look at how old is the audience to your point, how long have they been around for, what other behaviors or actions have they taken since they've been on the list that would tell me that they are interested in receiving more messaging from me. Sometimes I do this, too and you probably do also but I subscribe to lists. I open their e-mails. I don't necessarily consume them, but I don't want to unsubscribe because; this is e-commerce but I don't want to unsubscribe because there might be something I want to see in the future so I stay on but I also am not really engaged. So I think that on the one hand it's looking at kind of the age of the audience and are people engaged with your site overall? Like when was the last time this cohort of people has even been on your website? At some point, this is one thing that a lot of people don't think about is like, how do I start to clean my list or my audience or where do I draw the line in the sand to determine these folks who want to be here, these folks don't, and come up with a strategy to either ask them finally, do you want to stay or just suppress them or remove them altogether? But to get the open rate up, that's one place I would look. Also, if it's a new, relatively new audience, and your open rate is only 15% what that tells me is there's misalignment between the message and the audience. So there might be a bad resource or another example that a lot of people do these days in e-commerce is they run giveaways, but give away enrollees aren't necessarily the best subscribers because they're not there because they want to hear from you. They're there because they wanted something for free. And that has its own sort of implications and how do you deal with that but from my experience, the list that I see that are at 12%, 15%, there's a combination of not the best audience, not the best message for that audience, and also an audience that's probably decaying because the strategy for e-mail isn't buttoned up and so the audience doesn't know what to expect. Therefore, they're relatively unengaged. Mark: Yeah, let's close out with this question here, because we're getting up against the clock here on our time. What are some key metrics that you do look at with your list? Obviously revenue, and obviously open rate to an extent as well, depending on some other circumstances. What should people be looking at? If there's going to be one thing that somebody is going to look at as soon as they stop listening to this podcast and leave in a rating on iTunes because I know everybody does that; a cheap plug there. What is one thing they should go over into their ESP and take a look at to say, am I doing well here? Phillip: Okay, so I can rattle off a bunch if that's helpful. Mark: Please, yeah. Phillip: But I think starting with revenue at the top just to be able to assess overall performance of e-mail as it applies to revenue for your business is just look at what is the revenue contribution like from Klaviyo, for example, the last 30 days, 90 days and then breaking it up. What did flows contribute to that? What campaigns contribute? That'll give you a really good idea in terms of the heartbeat of the performance of e-mail overall. Like I said, I would strive for 30% so if that's at 6% there's a lot of room for improvement. If they're at 25% they're still upside but again, I don't like to quote higher than 30 because there's things about businesses. But let's just say you still have room to improve, but obviously not as much as the folks at six. So that's what I would look at first. On the campaign side, I look at open and click. I look at click to open ratio, which really tells me of the people that open how engaging was this message for them? Did it resonate with the audience? I'll look at revenue on a dollar perspective; dollar amount, and then also the percentage of the people that received the message that bought just so I can see kind of a take rate and placed order from this particular campaign. Mark: I got it. That's great. Anything else that you'd like to add and if people had questions or wanted to bounce some stuff off of you regarding e-mail marketing, where can they find you? Phillip: I don't have anything to add other than just think about adding e-mail to your marketing mix if it's not something that's a focus right now, that's all. Mark: Can I double down on that? I mean, if you're going to buy a business, we talk often about doing an acquisition, finding places where business is weak, and bringing a strength to that. That's an easy way to get a fast return on your investment. If somebody is not doing e-mail marketing with their e-commerce, then that is an easy opportunity to add more revenue to a company, especially if the target is 30% revenue mix. I mean, that provides a nice metric to take a look at to see what is somebody doing right now and maybe where can we grow this company. I agree with you 100%, e-mail is the overlooked channel. One of the few areas where I keep harping on this is and frankly if I see a business; if I'm selling a business that has a good, solid e-mail list for somebody to optimize that, I typically give it a higher valuation because I don't worry about the algorithms changing like I do on Facebook or any other social media network or getting overly crowded. E-mail is going to continue to be a champion for a long time and I know that other marketers agree with this, especially some seasoned marketers. Where can people contact you if they have questions about this? Phillip: You can find me on Facebook, just Phillip Rivers with two L's or on my site on the contact us form or something like that. But my e-mail address is at phil@gotetra.co. Mark: Awesome. Phillip Rivers with two L's not one. Phillip: That's right. Not the quarterback either. Mark: Not the quarterback. You probably get asked all the time. Are you a Chargers fan or now Colts fan is it? Phillip: By coincidence when he got drafted I was going to school in San Diego and I also turned 21 at this time so I would always get double takes by the bouncers. Like who is this guy with his fake ID. Mark: You don't look like Philip Rivers. Phillip: And I'm only six feet. He's like 6'7. But I was a Chargers fan for a long time. I kind of like just don't have as much time to watch sports. But yeah, I'm a Chargers fan, but I always appreciate him just because he's my namesake. Mark: And there you go. And I'll tell you what, it gives you a higher open rate because when I saw that I have an e-mail from Philip Rivers, I'm like, sweet Philip Rivers is contacting me. Hey Phil, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I really appreciate it. Phillip: Thanks for having me, Mark.

On this episode of Quiet Light, we talk to Steven Pope about how to handle any problem you're having with Amazon. Steven is the founder of My Amazon Guy, a full-service Amazon agency, currently assisting 80 clients. They seek to help their clients and others with all of the possible Amazon travails businesses face. Topics: How and why Steven started his agency. Dealing with Amazon account suspensions. Best ways to rank organically on Amazon. The outlook for American-made products. The number one action item in advertising. A major success story for Steven's agency. How to hone in on what changes will make a difference. Transcription: Mark: Joe, one of the things that you do with Quiet Light is you have a pretty wide network of people that you're now talking to. And I know you recently talked to Steven Pope. He is an agency owner. He helps Amazon business owners solve problems. I know that it's like crazy generic for me to say that but when it comes to owning an Amazon business, there's a lot of different problems you can have; everything from suspended accounts to; I mean, you name it. And I know you guys talked a little bit about the services he offers. But not just the services he offers, you talked about some of the problems that people face and how he goes about solving them. Joe: Yeah, there's something; look, we generally don't have people on pitching their products and services, simple as that. And so when I got this email introduction to Steve and set up a 15-minute call to grill him a little bit on who he is and what he does, the first thing I did was ask for five rapid-fire questions about what to do on Amazon if this happens and he answered them all and it was great. And then he said I've got 300 videos on YouTube that does the same thing. I give it all away for free and if people want to hire me as their agency, then I'm here for that as well. So I just dug into those videos and I love it. I think that you should hear him talk folks. You should listen to some of the things that he suggests and he gives it away for free in this podcast as well. I ask him the questions. I drill deeper when there needs to be a follow-up question. But then he also and it should be in the show notes, he also has a YouTube channel. It's My Amazon Guy on YouTube where he's helping people solve problems. One example is a woman and this is; and I talked about a little bit, single SKU, 100% of her revenue is coming from a single SKU on Amazon and oops she got suspended. Mark: Oh. Joe: Right. And for a week and a half or so, she cannot solve the problem and so she's losing five or six thousand dollars a week in revenue. And Steven has a process for that. It's not rocket science. It's three separate sentences that help get your account unsuspended quicker… Mark: What are those three sentences? Joe: He goes over them in the podcast. I can't recall. I recorded it yesterday Mark. You know how my memory is come on. Mark: I was hoping to tease it so you actually listen to the episode. Joe: Yeah, okay. So you actually have to listen to the episode. Mark: There we go. Joe: Why don't we just go to that? So that's our teaser, go to it… Mark: We are really not pros of this already. Joe: Not at all. If you have anybody else like this that's an expert in the space that gives it all away, regardless of the fact that they also have clients that pay for the service, introduce them to us, because I think this type of information is fantastic. Because everybody hears yeah I hired an agency and my customer acquisition went through the roof. We hear it as well. But this person was referred to us. I grilled him. I know who referred most of his clients to him and I have great respect for that person and they've been on the podcast as well. So give it a listen. Hopefully, it's going to help everyone that has even if it's just 10% of your revenue on Amazon, it's worth a listen and worth getting over to that YouTube channel to get educated as well. Joe: Hey, folks, Joe Valley here again with the Quiet Light Podcast. Thanks for joining us. Today I've got the pope with me this morning I had the was that was last week's podcast and today I've got the pope. You probably get that a lot, don't you? I'm sorry. Steven: The Popemobile jokes when I was a television reporter days, yeah, I remember them. Joe: My full name is Joe Valley when I was in college the Peanuts folks; the Snoopy, Charlie Brown, and all that, it was a big Valley girl craze back then. And there was actually a Christmas or birthday card that said something about Joe Valley Beagle for sure. That's my only connection with something semi-famous. You've got a big one to the pope. Anyway, we're here to talk about Amazon. Your business is The Amazon Guy and you're going to share absolutely every possible secret you know about… Steven: Every single one of them. Joe: Every one of them. It's going to take a while, folks. Steven: Yeah, everyone who's listening to this will be a millionaire just by simply listening. Joe: No action taken whatsoever. Okay, well, let's over promise and deliver right now. We just did. All right enough of the jibber-jabber. Let's talk about you. Give us for the audience a little bit of background in yourself; who are you, what's your business, how did you start, and all that kind of stuff. Steven: You bet. So my name is Steven Pope. I'm the founder of My Amazon Guy. We are an 18 person digital agency at the Atlanta, Georgia area. One-stop-shop. All things Amazon. Everything from search engine optimization, to PPC, design, and logistics all in one place. My background, I started my agency after a side hustle in consulting Amazon for several years and one day I lost my job. And very much like the private labelers that are listening to this who are running their current day job and they're looking for something else to change their lifestyle or whatever else, this one forced me to change. So within 48 hours of getting laid off and I was working for a lighting company, I decided to start an agency and the rest is history. We just help people grow sales. Joe: And you're also living it as well because you have a brand that you apply your own services to and share that information on your own podcast as well, right? Steven: I do. So I own a brand called Momstir and it's M-O-M-S-T-I-R. And it's a brand where we sell funny wine glasses with funny sayings on them and very much a side hustle brand to try and figure out and keep my skills sharp. So a lot of agencies try and build out their like, hey, let me go network, let me go show up and shake Jeff Bezos' hand and plaster a photo on my website. We just get crapped on. We just go into accounts. We don't leave our house. We don't go to conferences, complete referral-based business. And I think that's the right way to run an agency. We just go solve problems left and right and grow sales every day and go in and get our hands dirty. Joe: And you folks know my position here. You know that I get e-mails and calls all the time from agencies and I have the privilege of working with clients and seeing if they have agencies or not. When Steven and I connected, I just went with some rapid-fire questions to see if this guy had any idea what he was talking about and it turns out he actually does. So I want to duplicate some of that here on this podcast for you. E-commerce business owners that are 90% Amazon or 20% Amazon and want to be 90% Amazon. But let's first start with the fact that you do have 80 clients now, active Amazon business owners that you and your team of 18 work with, right? Steven: We do. Everything from air purifiers to tweezers and everything in between. Joe: All right. Let's talk about Amazon Suspensions. You mentioned in our pre-call that you had a woman call you and her account has been suspended for several days or something like that. Tell that story briefly but how you go about getting something reinstated? Steven: You bet. So there's a difference between suspension and listing yank. So suspension your account is down, you can't even log in or get your money out. Listing reinstatement and this is where you have a product that's been yanked from the catalog. Each has their own problem and their own solution. Amazon is a siloed organization and so it can be a very daunting and confusing process for sellers, no matter what the problem is. We could be talking about anything that goes wrong at Amazon. It's literally impossible to have a single point of contact at Amazon so like me as an agency, we don't even have a single point of contact. We got one guy that we talked with on a monthly basis and talked about advertising with and outside of that, we're doing the same thing sellers are doing; brute force, sellers support, ticketing, emails, you name it. The difference is that because we've seen the trends between the accounts, we're able to see what works currently. And I say that because what I talk about today may not work 90 days from now and that's because the platform is shifting at such a rapid pace. It's entering its maturity phase. We've seen Amazon change all the rules constantly on a whim, which is why you shouldn't be 90%  Amazon sales. You probably need to diversify if you want my opinion. But let's talk about this, so I got a call today from a single mom and her listing was yanked. This account, $30,000 a month in sales, one product, and all she could do… Joe: Bad idea, first of all, but go on. Steven: So she was in tears talking to me today. And I share this with genuine care and knowing that this is her livelihood and Amazon took her livelihood away. And it wasn't even for an egregious thing. It wasn't like she broke a rule. One day the algorithm crawled her catalog, looked at a bullet point, and said, this looks like something we don't like, yank. And so she did all the right things. She fixed it. She made the changes to the ballpoints. She contacted the support team. She got on the phone with what's called the captive team in America. She sent listing evaluations, e-mails. She did all of the right things and can't get the listing reinstated. And so for seven days, her business has been down. And if it doesn't get fixed, she can't afford what she needs to do to live or run a business or run her household. Joe: So that's something you're confident you can fix based on the phone call you had with her? Steven: 100%. Joe: How long will it take? Steven: That's the part I can't guarantee. If an issue like a listing yank is down we have a near 100% reinstatement rate, but what we don't have is a timing reinstatement guarantee. For some accounts, we'll get in there and we'll fix things within 48 hours and other times it takes 30 days. And it has nothing to do with the talent that we have or the process. It's just that Amazon's system sometimes just is absolutely breaking and they don't have; they use the 80:20 rule to an extreme. If they can get rid of 80% of the bad actors with 20% of the effort knowing they're going to screw over 20% good actors, they're okay with that. Joe: Lots of actors these days, I guess. Steven: And because of that, even if you're doing all the right things, you will eventually run into this problem. Your listings will get yanked. You'll get suspended. Whatever it might be, you will face a challenge that economically damages you and you have to act quick and you have to be concise. And whatever you do, don't submit 10 tickets. Don't do that. Your appeals need to be concise. You need to be giving them exactly explicit what they ask for and make it easy on them to help you. Joe: Do you have any language on your site that tells people exactly what to do? Steven: We do. Yeah. We have a page. I'll give it to you for you to put in the show notes, which is basically a plan of action to do when you run into a situation like this and in high-level summary, you do three things; admit the problem, how did you solve the problem, and what are you going to do to prevent the problem from reoccurring? And those could be two to three sentences a piece. If you do that and you format it, just like I mentioned, you have a greater chance of success. Joe: You don't think that they should write 17, 59 paragraphs for that seller account to Representative Reeve? Steven: No. Joe: No, I'm kidding. Of course. Steven: Nor do I think you should mention that you've been on Amazon for 15 years and you're a half a million-dollar business. They don't care. Joe: They don't care, yeah. Steven: The person reading this is looking for reasons to not approve your requests. They're not looking for reasons to approve it. So give them exactly what the request with no fluff and then you'll have a higher chance of getting approved. Joe: Okay, so I'm just going to say to those folks that have a hero SKU like that, knock it off, takes some of the money, launch a new listing, and spread out your risk so that you're not in a situation like that. What's the best way to rank organically? You're launching a new product, what's the best way to rank on Amazon, how do you get from page nowhere to the top of Page 1? Steven: So two types of situations we could be in; situation one is you're launching a brand new product and situation number two, you've had a product on Amazon and you're trying to take it to the next level. I'm going to talk about the product launch first because there's what's called a honeymoon period in the first 14 days of having an item on Amazon. You want to maximize traffic to the listing and maximize sales during that honeymoon period because it will leapfrog the listing rankings in a very rapid succession. If you can show Amazon that you're for real, you're the real deal, this is your first product in the account and you got a hundred sales in the first two weeks, they're going to pay attention to that. In the past, people would use programs like viral launch or some sort of giveaway to make this happen. Those programs no longer are as effective as they once were so you can't just solely rely upon that. What I recommend you do is; I'm assuming you've got a budget for the product you're doing a launch for so I'm assuming you spent two or three grand on the product. I would set aside $2,000 for Google and Facebook ads in the first 14 days. Spend it. No guarantee you're going to get sales out of it. No guarantee that you're gonna get a good ACOS. That's not the point. You're trying to train the algorithm that the product is important and that you personally can bring traffic to the Amazon platform. They will reward you accordingly. From there, it's almost 90% Amazon PPC in the first couple of months. And then from there, you can start relying more on SEO. For the other products that have already been there, the longer you've been there and the lower the run rate you've had, the harder it's going to be for you to start gaining. So there's a bunch of core key practices that we could discuss; back end search terms, make sure you've got 250 characters that are unique, have no commas, no duplicate words, make sure you got misspellings in there, and include a couple of Spanish keywords, front end, you got titles, bullets, images, A plus content, all of those need to be maximized. If you don't have every one of those fields maximized you're going to be losing out on keyword rankings you could have gained otherwise. So everything you do on Amazon to grow sales can be boiled down to two things, driving traffic and improving the conversion rate. SEO is almost primarily a traffic generation strategy. However, if you rank four words you don't convert on, you will stop ranking for those words. So if you're selling an apple slicer product and you want a rank for foot rubs or foot lotion or whatever; it's the first thing that came to my mind, it's not going to work. I guess I need a foot rub right now. Joe: I guess so. Steven: But in any case, there's so many different things that help with ranking on Amazon, and the one that I would say is your quick five-second hack today for those that are looking for like, okay, that's cool, I understand I need to optimize but what can I do right now? Go into your A-plus content and make sure every single photo is maximized with a hundred characters per A plus content photo. So if you've got 20 photos, that's 20 times a hundred characters of keywords you're probably missing out on right now. And throw one of those to be Spanish, put misspellings under one of them. Amazon claims that they don't index the A-plus content. I believe they're big fat liars and I can prove it. I've put Spanish behind one photo, I didn't put it anywhere else and guess what? We indexed for it. Joe: How important are product demonstration videos in this conversion aspect? So ranking is one thing that's important but if you're not converting, what's the point? And eventually, their algorithms are going to say people are looking, but they're not buying so we're going to de-rank you I assume. How important are videos in that conversion process? Steven: Minimum. Joe: Really? Let's talk about that. Steven: So I'm coming from a background in television where I thought video was king, right? Content is king. But video on Amazon, I'm utterly surprised by how few people are actually watching the videos. And so, in my opinion, instead of spending $5,000 on some professional photoshoot, grab your cell phone and just talk on camera about the top product features for 60 seconds and call it a day and put it on your listing. Now, if you're running a corporation that's not going to resonate with your management staff. They're going to throw a conniption fit. Obviously, that's not going to work. But if you're a side hustling brand and you don't have a video today, fix it. Go out and get one. Shoot it on your cell phone. Put on the target demographic, whoever you want to buy it. It will help. But of all the things that we could talk about on today's podcast, video will be at the bottom of the pile and it's because nobody clicks it. Joe: Let's talk about American made then because we've got a situation in the world where we're in trade wars with everyone else. How important is; and I know you don't have a crystal ball that I see on your desk. Apparently, you need a foot rub. You're thinking about that while looking at me on video. Again, I don't know why people help me out here. But crystal ball American made products, given the trade wars that we are in. Is it going to be something it's going to be important on Amazon in the future? Steven: I consider myself a thought leader in the Amazon space, and that's why I'm going out and getting on my podcast. I want to talk about where I think Amazon is going. I personally believe manufacturing is coming back to the United States. Is it here today for B2C products? No, it's not. I think it will be soon. All of the symptoms are there. If you're looking at the symptoms there at present; you talked about the trade wars with China, tariffs increasing currency exchange wars, and all that good stuff. COVID is a second reason the entire supply chain and the entire world broke down. Globalization takes a hit when international events happen. So nationalism and hyper localization are likely to occur under these circumstances. In addition to that, the user base who may blame COVID on China is going to start actively looking for American made products. This is going to help you with margin issues where you're selling a product for sometimes 40, 50% more in cost. They're willing to bear that market just because of principle. And the question is, how do you manufacturer in the States and do so profitably? I do not know the answer to that question. Joe: I was going to ask that and maybe you know, the answer to this one, how do you find those manufacturers in the States? They can go to Alibaba and eventually get to the manufacturer in China and there are some services; we've had folks on, Zach from Gembah can help you with finding manufacturers but how do you find them in the States? Steven: I have tried to solve this problem for the last three years. I joined what's called the Georgia Manufacturing Alliance. So I'm in the Atlanta, Georgia area. I toured several different manufacturing facilities. And what I learned is that for the most part, the United States is a B2B manufacturing country and most businesses are focused on B2B products. So, for example, a facility I went to, they made toilet seats for airplanes and it's a special process to do that. Joe: Sure. Steven: They have to fire-resistant, right? Couldn't you can't buy that overseas because there's lives on the line. B2C products like gifts or day to day households; anything that's not topical or consumable, because obviously most of those are made in the states currently. Joe: Exactly. Steven: But home goods, if you will, it is absolutely cheaper to go overseas right now for that. There are brands like American Giants who hires 100% from end to end American made, American laborer and they are doing well. They're selling the Mercedes Benz version of a hoodie right now and they've proven it works, but it doesn't work on every vertical or every catalog, every type of item today. I think technology is going to be the last category that this will work for. But I do see the symptoms and I think if you were an investor today looking for how do I get ahead in five years from now; not today, but in five years from now, I would definitely set yourself up for American made manufacturing and an American made company run by Americans selling to Americans. Joe: Okay. Crystal ball. I love it. Let's talk about that person who has the American made products or an overseas product and they sell on Amazon, what's the secrets to sponsored ads? What can you tell folks that are listening that you do that they should be doing to help them lower their ACOS and increase their conversions? Steven: If there's one area that you need to hire out for if you don't have the expertise while selling on Amazon, this is the one. And it's because advertising is changing at such a rapid pace. If you haven't been watching two webinars a week or spending two hours a day on your ads you're behind currently. In the last two weeks alone, display advertising, the cat is out of the bag. That's what I would have given you two weeks ago but because segmentation approaches and every avenue available to advertise your product and generate traffic right now everybody is jumping on. Everybody's looking for that edge and so you have to be very quick. You're going to have to rotate your funds around. There are three types of ads today on Amazon, sponsored products, sponsored headline ads or sponsored grants, and finally, display. Every single month we have seen a new form of segmentation come out under one of those three core areas. Three months ago it was custom brand images. Display came out even more recently than that. The one that's coming out on 10% of accounts right now is retargeting; hitting people off of Amazon who have already viewed your products or who have already purchased your products. So those are two different things and then there's a third one that's coming out that is people who have search-related keywords off of Amazon to bring them into the platform. Two of those three are only available to 10% of accounts right now but the moment you get a glimpse and you see it on your account; nobody's giving you an announcement. Amazon is not emailing you and saying, hey, this is now available. You literally need to check your seller central portal in every nook and cranny on a weekly basis, because I'm telling you, you will find it 30 days before somebody shows you it. Joe: And the advantage to that is? Steven: You can quickly execute it and then generate additional traffic at a lower cost and get into additional areas where nobody else is paying attention to. So if you are on that display bandwagon before two weeks ago, you would have had record low ACOS, new sales you wouldn't have gotten otherwise, you could have shown up on your competitors page in ways that they couldn't predict or know how to combat. And you should still do display today, by the way. I think that's probably the number one action item in advertising right now. If you don't have display ads up, go do that. Joe: I got you. Okay, your average client is doing a million dollars a year in revenue I think, right? Steven: Yep, somewhere around there. Joe: Okay, give me a success story. Steven: Sure. So I have to think carefully now which brands have you made public permission. Joe: You don't have to name brands, you can just talk about the story itself. Steven: Yeah, so let's talk about a generic men's supplements company; let's call it that. Joe: Okay. Steven: The hardest category to sell in right now in Amazon is supplements so if you're looking for a product to launch, I wouldn't go into supplements and that's because of all the challenges and listing yanks and stuff we kind of ended about earlier. It's egregious right now how bad it is in that category but in any case, when I first started, my first client as an agency was a men's supplements brand and they tried to other consultants before me. They couldn't get past four grand a month in sales. Within 60 days we got them to $80,000 in monthly sales. A couple of months ago, they clocked in at 400,000. And it's because the grind; the My Amazon Guy process, the grind if you will, it works. You go in every day and you look for as much traffic as you possibly can get and find as much conversion as you can get. And it takes going attribute by attribute, ad by ad, design by design; every single layer has to be fulfilled. Where they may have previously failed, they didn't load their entire catalog to Amazon. That might sound like a core issue and some of you are like what you mean they didn't load their entire catalog but if you're an omnichannel brand today, sometimes you purposely don't load all your product to Amazon. I think that's a big mistake. The fastest way to grow an Amazon is load more product, launch as many as you can. Every three products you launch, one is going to fail flat, one is going to break even, one is going to succeed. So you've got a one out of three ratio to work but load as many new products as you can to your lifecycle on average on Amazon. Second, get on as many platforms as you can. Diversify. Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Walmart, Shopify; all of those are important. Joe: Not necessarily in that order, I'd like to know where would you go to first beyond Amazon US. Steven: Yep, Amazon US and you could talk about more marketplaces like Europe or Japan or Singapore and Middle East and Australia, I guess let's pause on the location geos for just a second, let's talk just marketplaces. And so after Amazon, if you have a product that can sell on Etsy that's the one I would go to next. It is the easiest to get on and will produce at a higher rate than it would have six months ago. And it's because when Amazon supply chain took a hit and the shipping timeframes went down Etsy doubled in size overnight. Doubled in size but did not double in competition which means that's your opportunity. We are seeing massive success on the Etsy platform right now. Joe: Any particular category? Because if I'm just selling supplements, I can't sell them on Etsy, right? Steven: You're not supposed to. It's supposed to be handmade and they're supposed to be hard to obtain items. I've seen everything on Etsy, though. So even, you know, it may not be the first platform of your choice if you're selling supplements or if you're selling something that doesn't go well on Etsy. Maybe launch on eBay and Walmart first before you go there, but I would still give it a look. Joe: I want to say that the transferability of an Etsy account may be a challenge. And transferability is one of the four pillars. If you can't transfer the control of the assets of the business, your business is not sellable or much more difficult to sell so we'd have to look into that again. The last time I had any significant Etsy account as part of a sale, it was tuck in hopes that you couldn't squeeze through to try to get the transfer of the control that Etsy account. So I would say caution there but if you're looking for that short term gain, it's fine. Where there's a will, there's a way. My particular buyer wasn't willing to go that route and he could have but he chose not to and that's okay. What about the idea of just simply feeding your stallions and maxing out Amazon.com if you're still growing and there's lots of more opportunity here in the US, why divert your attention to an Etsy or a Walmart or whatever it might be or the EU? Steven: So this is a good debate between focus and diversification. They have a massive amount of friction between the two. I believe it's easier to do diversity than do focus. The shotgun approach generally will lead to more success. That's my personal style. If you're a perfectionist, focus will work a lot better for you. So I would say that's a choice the business could make, a business decision if you will. Joe: And I have to say and interject that it depends upon your goals. If you're going to run the business for the next five years, I think diversification is really smart because if your business is more diversified, it's going to be risk-averse. The lower the risk, the higher the value in terms of the multiple. If you've got two businesses that are equal in revenue and discretionary earnings size, and one is 90% Amazon and the other is 40% Amazon, 30% Shopify, and 30% something else or other marketplaces but the discretionary earnings is the same, same number of SKUs, same hero SKU count and all this other stuff, that diversified business is less risk. Less risk equals a higher multiple. You're doing the same amount of revenue, but your business is much more valuable because buyers see that it is less risk and they'll pay more for it. My two cents. Steven: So I totally agree with that and you're definitely the expert on buying and selling, so I won't even go there. Joe: Have you noticed how I like to interject my opinion on buying and selling when I'm talking to somebody else about Amazon rankings and things of that nature? Steven: I couldn't have guessed why. Joe: It's amazing when you run the podcast and you get a microphone and you can say these things. You had talked about 80% of the work that you do in a seller account is fairly SOP oriented but there's 20% that requires just instincts and a deeper dive into the why of the particular problem or ranking solution. Can you talk about that 20%; what are those things and how do you really hone in on what's going to make a difference in your particular brand and ranking? Steven: So for the 80% that's SOP or standard operating procedure, you can follow a checklist and it can be clerical in nature. If you go through that checklist and you do an 80% job, you're probably going to succeed. The other 20% is the experience, the nuance, the analytical understanding to forecast, predict, and see what's going to happen under the chaotic nature of Amazon and e-commerce, understanding the landscape, and understanding what happened in the previous situation. So as one small example, understanding the notion or the difference between a coopting of demand versus a demand gen product, this is an easy to understand concept but doesn't even cross the mind of most individuals. So what do I mean by this? If you go on Amazon today and you want to sell an apple slicer, that product has been commoditized. You're basically trying to sell a commoditized coopting demand product. There's already demand, you just need to go get it and tsxake your share of it. If you're trying to come out with a patent protected product, gadget, widget; whatever it is that does something that solves a problem that nobody even knew was a problem, that's demand gen. The guy doing demand gen has a one out of 20 chance of succeeding, the coopting demand guy has got like a 12 out of 20 chance of succeeding; much harder but if done correctly, the demand gen product that wins., the one of the 20 will be gigantic in size and will dwarf everybody else. GoPro is a good example of this where they solved the problem nobody knew they had and now they have an entire empire. So if you're looking at analyzing data and you're looking at like how do I solve my problem, you're going to have to consult either an expert or you're gonna have to grind it yourself. You're going to have to spend so much time analyzing this question and watching all the podcasts, watching all the webinars, reading information, submitting the tickets in Seller Central on a daily basis until you hack it, or figure it out. That's what it takes. And that 20% is very hard and you want to understand like, what do I do in this situation? If you've never done it before it's really hard to learn. Joe: And it's probably going to end up producing 80% of the revenue if you click the rules there. You actually have book a coaching call on your website. You're not just working with clients and taking agency fee on a monthly basis, but you are doing coaching calls as well. Can you talk about what type of calls those are and how often you do them? Steven: You bet. So I probably do one a day on average. And I have a very different vision of what agency should be than the typical agency. I would give away all or trade secrets. I got 300 videos on YouTube answering literally every question. If you have pesticides gating on your product and you sell tweezers and you're like, why does this on my account, I don't even understand this? We give away the answer key right on the YouTube video. Joe: And how do they find that; is it My Amazon Guy on YouTube? Steven: Yes, and if you were to literally Google pesticides gating My Amazon Guy, you would find it. Or even just pesticides gating Amazon it'd probably still come up. But the point I'm trying to make here is we share all our trade secrets openly. We're trying to add value to the community because it comes back. I know that if I had value to you today over the next year; let's say you follow me for a year before you even pay me a dime, you will then come and say, hey, shut up and take my money. And so sometimes I will hear from people that have watched 40 of my videos and they just want to say hi. But on those calls, typically we're getting in and we're solving a specific problem. That's usually the number one reason one of those comes up is because, hey, I've got a business problem I need a solution today. I can't wait around and figure this out. Joe: Like that woman's account who was suspended. Steven: Exactly like that woman's account that was suspended. I offer ala carte services on my site for those that aren't ready to make a monthly commitment. Now, I prefer having monthly clients. It's an easier business model, don't get me wrong but we are going to serve wherever we can. We're going to add value where we can. We'll get our foot in the door. One of my largest clients; we did a one-hour coaching call and now they're my largest client. And it's because, from day one, we will teach and show and offer value and grow sales. That's what we do. Well, yeah, it's kind of fun doing a coaching call, you jump on, you're opening up a seller central account, I can draw on your screen. We can go in there and figure out hey, here's all the mistakes you're making, here's where you can best practice improve. We'll hand it all over. And if you don't want to do the work yourself, hire us. Joe: People, do it. I think that it's worth it even if you're just trying to learn something new and manage the business yourself. Go to YouTube, take a look at all of these three things. They give it all away. Normally, you're not ever going to hear me talking about an agency on the Quiet Light Brokerage podcast, we're here to help first and serve you first and in this way, I think we're doing that well. I think my initial conversations with Steven were me grilling him and seeing if my bullshit meter went up and it really didn't at all. So he's a straight sharer. He's helping first. He's educating, sharing it all; he's giving it all. If you want to do it on your own go to his website. Go to the YouTube channel. If you want to have a coaching call, go to the coaching tab on his Web site and spend an hour working with him and learning. Your business is very likely your most valuable asset, you should be spending time on learning how to run it well, number one. But strategically self-serving; look, this is what we do, folks, if you're not understanding the value of your business, what are you doing? You're just driving revenue for what? To put more money into inventory? How much do you take out with 80% year over year growth? Not enough. You will probably make more money on the exit, times two or three than you make running the business on a daily basis. So if you work towards that, understand the value of your business, set an exit goal, and reverse engineer a path to it, even if it takes two, three, four years, you've heard us with those types of clients that we'd love to have on the podcast that have successfully sold their business for millions of dollars. You should do it as well. Go to My Amazon Guy. Check it out. Reach out to Steven and learn as much as you can to improve your own business. I think he's one of the handfuls of people in this space that I've trusted within five minutes of speaking to him. I think you should. Steven: Thank you, Joe. I appreciate it. Joe: My pleasure man, good to have you on. I'm looking forward to working with you in the future. Steven: That sounds like a plan.   Resources: My Amazon Guy My Amazon Guy YouTube Channel My Amazon Guy Podcast How to Appeal Account Suspensions Listing Reinstatements Marketplace Launch Assistance for Walmart, Ebay, and Etsy SEO Articles Advertising Articles Campaign Segmentation Articles Quiet Light Podcast@quietlightbrokerage.com

Show Notes: https://outdoorsonline.co/006 Dave Jackson shares his best tips to help you launch and grow your podcast including some tips on when to post your first episode.   We talk about how to find sponsors for your show and some good and not so good podcast hosting companies.   Show Notes with Dave jackson 05:25 - I noted Pat Flynn who started the Smart Passive Income podcast back in 2008 and was a big mentor for me in 2014. 10:10 - Profit From Your Podcast is Dave’s new book that should be out soon. 12:10 - We talk about Fish Nerds Podcast and Clay Groves podcast on fishing. 13:50 - The best microphone for under $100 is the Samson Q2U.  16:00 - The School of Podcasting walks you through the steps to launching a new podcast. 18:15 - Podcastbranding.co or Canva can help you get your podcast artwork ready to roll. 24:40 - We talk about Captivate and Buzzsprout and the differences between some of the podcast hosts.  27:00 - The Mark Maron episode with President Obama 30:25 - Dave’s video on Anchor and the best podcast hosts out there. 40:20 - The Stacking Benjamins Podcast and what hearing no should mean to you. 49:10 - We talked about FreeUp.net and my Sam Kabart from the Clone Yourself Podcast who shares the steps to getting started with a VA. 53:10 - The Yoast SEO Plugin is a must have on your website.   57:50 - Dave is sponsored by Focus Right. 58:40 - I note the Joe Rogan podcast and the sponsorship model. 1:02:00 - Hindenburg is a software that is made for journalist and is what I now use for my editing.  Audacity is one of the most common free editing software.  1:04:05 - Descript is a new software that transcribes your audio file and deletes the filler words if needed. 1:08:00 - Super Fans by Pat Flynn is a great book and resource about growing your influence. 1:10:20 - Podcast Fest and Podcast Movement are the biggest events and a couple that I'll be attending soon. 1:11:17 - Van Halen with David Lee Roth is Dave’s goto band in this show. You can find Dave Jackson at the School of Podcasting.   Resources Noted in the Show The Samson Q2U is the best microphone for under $100 President Obama with Mark  What you need to launch your podcast Who are you talking to Why are you doing the podcast Know what format What tech you need Need to setup a website Need a media host like Libsyn Need artwork  Submit your show 30 days prior to your launch date Conclusion with Dave Jackson The Podcast Hall of Famer, Dave Jackson, gives us some insight on launching and growing a podcast.  Dave also works for Libsyn and has tons of great content online and on the pod.   Show Notes: https://outdoorsonline.co/006

Chief Investment Officer Mark Dowding provides his views on the last two weeks, black swan events, what hasn’t changed and where we go from here.We asked Mark:What’s changed in the last two weeks (since your last podcast)?Looking at the rest of the Q2, what do you think we will see? And more long term?

Chief Investment Officer, Mark Dowding, speaks about recent market volatility and what he is focusing on now, as an investor.We asked Mark:What are your overall thoughts about market events in the last three weeks?With market dislocation comes opportunities – are you seeing any green shoots?What is most important to you for the next few days?

Are you engaged in meaningful work? Do you know what to look for? How about the word meaningful, do you feel you have a deep understanding of what it means and know how to tell if you’re on the right track? If you’re not sure about any of that, how about this: Do you like the people you work with? The job itself? The tasks you do? If so, then fantastic! You’re one of the rare people who have figured out how to be truly happy at work! But if it’s a no, or you’re just not sure, then this episode is definitely for you. I this episode of Level Up Your Life, Mark is joined by fellow speaker, author and podcast host Eric Termuende to discuss work, and more importantly, the meaning behind it. What starts off as a simple concept grows into a very high quality conversation about creating a life with less friction, and more happiness, and truly levelling up to your true potential. Mark and Eric also share their mutual opinion on the single most wasteful activity a person can spend time doing, and why taking responsibility for your own happiness is kind of a big deal.   What is considered to be meaningful work? What is success? Resistance and challenge within the job could very well be a big part of what makes it fulfilling. How do you go about finding something you’ll enjoy? 5 questions to ask yourself when you want to know if you’re on the right track or not. You are responsible for your own joy and fulfillment. Can you be a little bit happier than yesterday? Not all advice is good advice for you.   “I recognized at a very young age, because I was forced to, that our time is finite” - Mark “What is the life you want to live?” - Eric “We’re still trying to paint success with one broad stroke of a brush” - Eric “Who is working where at the places you frequence most?” - Eric “A ‘Why’ attracts talent, but a ‘How’ keeps it” - Eric “Outside of everyone we have contact with is a world of bystanders” - Eric “Maybe where we are right now is exactly where we need to be” - Eric “Where can there be more happiness?” - Eric   More Eric! www.erictermuende.com   Level Up! www.levelupimpact.com Use code PODCAST   Share the show! www.markblack.ca/podcast   More Mark: Your Best Year Yet transformation Program  Mark's website  Mark's LinkedIn profile  Mark's Twitter profile Mark's Facebook profile   Click HERE for one month FREE Audible

It's not about how much you sell your business for, it's about how much you get to keep. A lot of sellers get to the point of selling and see an opportunity to cash out on all their hard work. Unfortunately, there are these entities called the state and federal government whose pockets get lined before the sellers get their bottom line. Shanyn Stewart is a tax specialist who works with sellers in the acquisition process. She goes as far as to claim she can actually structure a sale where the seller pays 0% taxes. The process and benefits of the different structures she offers can allow for more money in the seller's pocket. Tune in for a very useful episode for both buyers and sellers on how to prepare for a sale and legally keep the IRS from getting too big of a slice of the pie. Episode Highlights: The power of knowledge and ways that Shanyn claims she can reduce and potentially eliminate taxes for the seller. How capital gains tax really works. Understanding the basis of your business. What qualifies as basis in various types of businesses. The difference between basis and expenses and where to pay attention when it comes to capital gains tax. The importance of planning well before the LOI. Shanyn explains deferred payment structured sales using a third party. How to mitigate the capital gains in a transaction and reduce the net effect of the taxes over time. A case study of a transaction Shanyn has worked on and ways she increased the seller's profit. How the structures Shanyn proposes can serve as a safety net. Where charitable strategies and trusts fall into the spectrum of planning for sale and profit. Transcription: Joe: So Mark one of the conversations we have all the time; I think I probably had at least 3,000 of them is that it's not about how much you sell your business for, it's about how much you get to keep. And I understand you had Shanyn Steward on the line on the podcast and went through a lot of the different scenarios about the different types of transactions and which one might get more beneficial than sort of an all-cash deal to help sellers out in the process of keeping as much money as they can after the sale. Mark: Yeah. You know it's an interesting discussion because I think a lot of sellers get to the point where they've been putting their money into the business. They've been growing their business over many years and they look at that sale as their opportunity to finally cash out and take that money off the table and be rewarded for all their hard work and they should be. But there's this pesky little thing called the federal government and state government and they want to take their share. Joe: It's getting bigger all the time; it's not little at all. It's bigger [inaudible 00:02:11.5]. I'll stop. Mark: Well no, you're right. Look you go into this process; actually it's funny Joe, you and I were talking to Ryan about this yesterday and he was saying how he puts people through this exercise of here's what your net proceeds are from the sale and let's go run through some scenarios and it's eye-opening for a lot of sellers. Shanyn is a tax specialist and she specializes in acquisitions and saving sellers money on taxes. And she makes the claim that she can actually structure a sale where the seller is going to pay 0% taxes. Well, she and I went through a lot of different scenarios. I want you to listen to this and tell me how many times you heard my mind explode from just some of the things that she suggested in here. I think from a perspective of restructuring a sale she offers a lot of great tips and things that think about rather than saying I just want to get my cash and move on to ways that you can protect your investment, get more money off the table. Here's the tease, here's the hook and I then I'll get right into it. We used a case study in here on an 11.6 million dollars sale where she was able to increase the net proceeds by over 3 million dollars on the 11.6 million dollar sale net proceeds by over 3 million dollars, a 46% increase in the net proceeds on that. Remarkable stuff. Joe: Yeah. Look full disclosure to everybody listening here. I talked to Shanyn a year ago and gosh it just sounded amazing; so amazing it felt too good to be true. And then things fell off and we didn't get a chance to follow up. Mark had the opportunity to follow up and chat with her and get some of the real cold hard facts on the process and the benefit of different types of structures than just all cash. As a seller, everybody says I want all cash mostly because you don't know who your buyer is and you're not going to trust them until you get to know them. It's great to keep an open mind because ultimately what you want is to keep as much of your proceeds as possible. You'll have a great attorney working with you on that asset purchase agreement to make sure it's secure and safe in the event you take a non-all-cash deal. We'll refer a few out if needed but it's a great idea to listen to the entire podcast for both buyers and sellers. Buyers you're out there listening, you're learning, and you might be buying a business that's not going to be 8 million dollars like the example that Mark is talking about. You might buy something for a half a million or a quarter or just a million; just a million, I should stop that, or a million and… Mark: Just around a million dollars. Joe: Right. Mark: It's chump change for you. Joe: Brad sold one of his $40,000; everybody that is listening to this you saw the launch, it was a one to one multiple $40,000 which is exceedingly small for us these days. But he had 20; I talked to him this morning, he had 25 offers on it and over 500 inquiries. Not just the automated inquiries but directly to his inbox so it's a frenzy and I think it launched on Tuesday and today's Thursday that's already closed' that type of situation. But buyers you're buying these businesses no matter what size and you're growing them. You're taking it to another level that the person that's selling it could not because they reached their threshold for staff and management or their own level of incompetence as we often say you got to figure out what your own level of incompetence is and they decided to exit. You're stepping in because you've got a different either level of working capital to help grow that business and expand SKUs or buy more inventory or you're better at scaling from 20 million to 100 million or 1 million to 10 million whereas the seller is not. So this is great for both buyers and sellers is my point. And I'm excited to listen to it myself because my level of incompetence is all about what you're left with after the sale. So I'm going to learn a ton as well. So thank you for following up with her Mark and getting her in the podcast. Mark: Yeah I was just about to ask you what is your level of incompetence? Joe: We don't have time for that. Mark: But what's my level of incompetence? Joe: No don't mention that. I always talk to Megan about that. Mark: Alright let's get to this episode. She talks a lot about preparation. If there's one takeaway for people both on the buy-side and sell-side and we had Joseph Harwood on a few episodes ago talking about how he saved a ton of money on the sale of his business is be open to different structures even from a broker standpoint. I know you and I Joe like hey we actually like these cash deals because that are really simple but when we're looking at saving hundreds of thousands of dollars it's worth looking at some alternative structures. And it doesn't get too complex with the right preparation and that's a lot of what Shanyn suggests here is prepare before you sell. Joe: Gosh that sounds familiar. Please, everybody, plan your exit. Prepare before you sell. If I had a drum I'd be beating it right now. One last thing before we go to this amazing podcast with amazing information that you can learn. I don't like ruining people's weekends, months, years when I tell them, man, you're doing 10 million in revenue that's great and based upon the P&L you gave me it looks like you're probably worth about 6 million but everything is wrong so you have to go back to the drawing board and start over in terms of your financials. I don't like doing that and I did it recently so please prepare; plan. Don't wake up and decide to sell your business when you're emotionally toast and you want to move on. If you plan it in advance and you do that; the four pillars, but the fourth one we're talking about now which is documentation and planning, get that done. You will make so much more money and you'll have so much more peace of mind in the process. And after listening to the podcast you'll have so much more money left over in the bank because you get to keep more of it with the structure and deal size that Shanyn is talking about. So let's go to it. Mark: Shanyn thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. I know you and I have just recently met but I'm really, really excited about this conversation because you and I talked only briefly. I think we talked just for a little bit on the phone and in just about 10 minutes you opened my eyes to some awesome strategies that sellers can use to reduce their tax burdens. And look I've dealt with so many sellers who go to their accountants and say what is my tax burden? Oh here's what it's going to be, 22% or whatever of cap gains tax and I said well what can I do to reduce that? I really can't suck it up and pay for it. And you're like no that's not the case. Shanyn: Exactly. Mark: So let's start out with just kind of a quick introduction of yourself. I want to tell everyone who you are the firm you work for and kind of what your mission is. Shanyn: Yeah. So I am the chief strategist here at Advanced Accounting. And we are a little bit different than your average tax professional. We actually do proactive tax planning for our clients. So what we do is we want to help mitigate those taxes before we actually have an occurrence of sale. And then even on the backend, we can help you after you've actually sold the company as well. It's not as advantageous for you but we really like to be proactive. And that's what we're going to talk about today is how do we after we hopefully the profit on the sale of our business how do we keep the IRS from getting a slice of our hard work legally. Mark: Legally right that's the big thing. You know my eyes were open on a recent transaction that we did hear at Quiet Light, in fact, we had Joseph on who is the seller in that case and it was a little bit of a different deal because he was a UK based seller. But we brought in a tax specialist on that deal who ended up saving lots of money. I mean significant amounts of money from a tax perspective. And so to be able to talk to someone like you who does this as a specialty is going to be really exciting. So let's start off real quick with this and just a point that I know you made to me before our call here which is whenever there's money changing hands the IRS wants a slice of it; like they're going to get something out of it. What would you say to the tax professionals that are saying just suck it up and pay it? Shanyn: Yeah. You know I actually was talking to a tax professional the other day and he was like well nothing is certain in life but death and taxes and just be thankful you're not dealing with death. And he said there is a cap on capital gains and I was like right there is a cap on capital gains after the seller sells has company but there is actually a way that we can mitigate taxes, reduce them dramatically, and sometimes even eliminate them which is like everyone's excuse me how can that be? Mark: Yeah, excuse me, we can eliminate taxes on the sale. Okay, I'm intrigued. Shanyn: Yeah, you caught my attention now. And of course one of the things that when we're looking at the IRS code there was a senator that once I heard quote that the first nine pages of the IRS code is all about the definition of what is income and then the rest of the code is just a web of preferences and deductions and how to actually work the code and work income. And so when we're talking about tax planning that's what we're talking about really being proactive so that we're not giving the tax professional who says suck it up and deal with it you're going to pay capital gains and don't worry about it it's cost of doing business and that's not the truth. It's not. Taxes can be legally mitigated. And if you have enough knowledge that knowledge is power and can really put more money into your pockets. Mark: All right so the first nine pages just define what income is, do you know how large the tax code is; how many pages? Shanyn: You know what after the new revision I really don't know. I think that it's thousands and thousands of pages. Mark: So there's a lot in there. And I met with some tax professionals personally recently for just my own benefit and we went on a conversation with them which was hey we'll look at all the things that you're basically handing over the government where legally you don't have to if you're doing these different things. And it's more than anyone of us can really decipher on our own because I don't have time to sit there and read and stay up to date on all of this. Alright, so where do we start? Shanyn: And I don't mean to bash any type of tax professional because keeping a taxpayer in compliance is in and of itself is a full-time job. So what we're doing is really by being proactive this is a specialty from that standpoint. So I think the first thing that we start about is we talk about how does capital gains really work because that's what happens when you sell your business, you actually have a capital gain. So the methodology is buy low and sell high and pay the tax on the difference. And that's the whole concept really in nine words but really Taxes are never just as easy as just buy low and sell high. The first thing that you have to understand is what your basis is. And basis basically is what did I actually purchase my business for or what did I invest into my business? Sometimes we call it original basis or adjusted basis. So basically it's just anything I paid for the asset and anything I added to it. So we have to understand what our basis is when we ever go into a sale. In fact, the IRS has a 13-page document just on basis. So if you're really excited about basis you can read the 13-page document on it. Mark: I can say I haven't been really excited about it but I am now. And maybe I'm jumping ahead, how would you deal with bases in a startup situation? Shanyn: So basically a lot of service-based businesses are going to have a zero basis. That's one of the things that we deal with on a regular basis is that there is no basis. You started an Amazon business and you really have no assets to speak of. And so, unfortunately, your basis is zero. Mark: Okay, what can you count as part of the basis; what qualifies as that? Shanyn: So equipment would qualify; if you purchased a building sometimes depending on the business it could be that you added furniture and fixtures and things of that nature. Mark: What about things like molds for those that are making their own products? Shanyn: Exactly. So anything like that. So anything like if you have a mall or sometimes depending on the patent copyrights things of that nature can be the basis if you're actually transitioning into another business. Mark: For those that are not in e-commerce; let's talk about like a content site, a lot of content sites are start out by hiring a bunch of writers to build kind of a foundational amount of content on their site and that can be tens of thousands of dollars of content being written. Could that qualify for a basis? Shanyn: It could. It depends on how it was expensed. Sometimes accountants can be creative in the way that they're expensing things. So really basically when we're getting ready to do a sale we get a look at the balance sheet and determine what's been depreciated. So basically if you're depreciating it then that's part of your basis. If it's just been completely; so if you hired a copywriter and you've expensed that then it's not going to be considered basis. Mark: Oh, I get it. And this is one of those things; we talk about this all the time in this podcast, we talk about making sure you understand your own financials. And so many entrepreneurs are really weak in this area when you look at the balance sheet as its kind of cryptic report where we don't really understand it. And then there's also this idea well I want to expense as much as I can to reduce my income tax burden. But this is looking at a little bit different. So if I were to start up a content site and I realized look I'm going to invest $50,000 into seeds content. You're saying look you might initially not be making any money anyway so maybe it's better to put that in and record that as an asset investment that I can depreciate. Shanyn: Right. And see that's one of the things you always want to think about the end in mind. You're always going to want to like look at what is my exit strategy? Even when you're starting a business you want to look at what your exit strategy is to determine. And I know in those early years; I mean most businesses in the first three to five years are not really making a huge profit. And so I look at different expenses and really a lot of those can be capitalized over time instead of just expense in that year. And that's something to take a look at. That's where proactive planning and understanding your financials become so important. Mark: Yeah. Now from a buying standpoint if you're acquiring a business obviously you're going to capitalize expense investing in the business right away. That's going to be an investment so that's going to form basis but then also things that you're doing right after as well. Shanyn: Correct. So anything that's going to be adding capital value to that business is something that you're going to want to kind of look at and see if it is something that we should; is it really truly an expense or is it actually adding a capital value to the underlying business and should be depreciated over time. Mark: Okay. So how does this shake out on a sale basis so I would know we the buy low sell high; I imagine there is a simple subtraction coming up here, right? Shanyn: Right. So I mean basically the difference between the sale price and your basis is where you're going to get capital gains and you're not going to get capital gains depending on your filing status you're also maybe getting hit with something called net investment income tax. And that's a new tax underneath the Obama administration where they're going to kick in a 3.8% tax for those that are $200,000 of adjusted gross income for individuals and 250,000 for joint filers. And so that basically, you're going to hit with capital gains and that net investment income tax. And so that can be pretty hefty so one of the things when we're talking about mitigating taxes on the sale of a business preplanning, becomes very important. And one of the things is that if we have enough time before the sale of a business there's a lot of planning we can do. I mean there's a few after the sale offsets that we can kind of facility to mitigate tax but it's nothing like the time before the sale. And one of the things is we're going to talk about several different strategies. It's really important to understand that we actually need to start our planning; there cannot be a binding contract you're going to say repeat this again, there cannot be a binding contract in place when we start this preplanning. Mark: So a binding contract again from a sales standpoint we're looking at LOI which is it's usually non-binding but then those purchase agreements which are going to be binding. Shanyn: Correct, exactly. So we even like there to be no LOI and we want no question by any type of government organization or court system. So we even tell our clients even before there is an LOI we want to have our planning done. So oftentimes when people come to us to sell their business they know they're going to sell their business. That's the goal. And so that's when the planning should start right then and there. Mark: Alright. And we preach all the time that if you want to sell your business it's best if you're actually planning 12 to 24 months in advance because from our standpoint we want those other metrics that we look at; the influence, the valuation to be as optimized as possible. So I would imagine this pre-tax planning would also benefit if you're at 12, 24 months out. Shanyn: Well definitely because there's a lot that we can actually do in the current year to help them mitigate taxes but then on the sale of the business definitely. Now the quickest we've done; we can do this in 60 to 90 days. But one of the things I found is that what we have to do is we actually educate our seller on these strategies because a confused mind always says no. And one of the things we want to make sure is that our clients understand what they're doing and why they're doing it; what the advantages and disadvantages are. So we really start an education process with them so that they understand exactly that they could sit down and explain exactly the transaction that's about to happen in their own words and have that confidence. Mark: Right. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Alright let's get into the example of a transaction here because let's say that knowing that we're going to sell the business we're getting into this here and we've said okay we've got maybe a little bit of basis we still have a pretty large delta on what we're selling for versus what our basis is. Maybe we'd be able to form 50 maybe a hundred thousand dollars basis but we're selling a business for two million dollars. The savings is nominal on that side. Where else should we be looking at here? I know we talked a little bit about short term capital gains taxes and our pre-cal stuff. How does this play into this? Shanyn: Well I think one of the things is when we start to look at the fact that we have a capital gain and that's what we really want. We have to really immediately step in and say okay what are the strategies that I can do to mitigate these taxes? So one of the strategies and we usually use a combination of strategies. So I know you and I are going to kind of break down just the simple line strategies but oftentimes they're actually strategies that are interwoven together from that standpoint. So one of the strategies we often see is something called an installment sale. And an installment sale is just simply a sale where you receive payments installments in more than one year. And so basically what that means is you sell your business in year one and you agreed to take three equal installments over a three year period. Now that works with some people. The advantages are that you're going to defer the gain until you actually receive those payments so taxes is divided throughout the years. So for example, we just did a transaction where let's say you have a business that you bought for 600,000 and you sold it for a million. So 40% of your sale is a gain. So when you receive those installment payments over the years 40% of each of those installment is going to be taxed as capital gain. So why is that important? A couple of different reasons; it's going to actually if you split out the capital gains over three years or five years you actually reduce the overall taxation that you're absorbing from that standpoint. And so you're not getting stumped all in one year with a big tax bill. But the devil's in the details with that one because not all assets are going to qualify for an installment sale. So that's one thing to remember. So anything that's publicly traded is not going to qualify for an asset sale. You also have tool items we find that buyers and sellers want to get a really, really low rate interest rate and so you have to charge adequate interest to the person who's buying. And if you sell depreciated assets; so let's say you're selling equipment; you have to recapture all of that depreciation and pay ordinary income tax rates immediately. So there's some things where an installment sale works really, really well with and sometimes it's not going to work really well but that's one of the simple strategies that we see. Now, one of the problems with that is that you're going to get your income over a few years. Sometimes it's a big deal. And I actually sent you an example earlier and we can talk about that in a few minutes where our buyer actually got his money over five years. And that worked out perfectly. We are actually able to eliminate the taxation on that. We're going to talk about that because that's huge. And he was given over two million dollars a year so he was pretty happy. Mark: Right. So real quick are you able to reduce the effective rate by doing an installment sale? Obviously, the amount that you're paying in one payment is going to be reduced but you are able to reduce that rate? Shanyn: It does. It depends on the taxpayer's adjusted gross income but we are able to reduce the net effect of taxes over the period. And oftentimes we're talking about that sometimes depending on the amount of the sale or the amount of the proceeds we're able to even get payments five to 10 years out so that we're able to keep that; kind of make an individual pension for that person. And that way they can also do things like delay Social Security and keep their taxes down and so it really becomes very much not just a planning for the sale event but planning for the next few years of what happens with those proceeds. Mark: Alright so I already know most of my clients are going to say with this which is I don't want to defer my payments because what happens if they don't pay; what are my collection options? There's always this worry especially with the Internet and acquisitions where so much of the business is wrapped up in blue sky, goodwill, non-tangible assets. And so what happens if the buyer runs a business into the ground two years from now and they still have about $400,000 payment well what are my options? Could you ask for those funds upfront and pay them out? Shanyn: One of the things you could do is actually do a structured sale and actually bring in a third party. Mark: Okay. Shanyn: So a structured sale is sometimes very advantageous because it actually takes the installment sale tax treatment. It does require a buyer to pay a little bit of cash upfront or all of the cash upfront. So basically what you're doing with a structured sale is you're bringing in a third party and you're exchanging your business for a stream of income. So basically what happens is; and let me say this is appropriate for businesses between the 100,000 and the five million dollar. So if you're over five million it would not work this way. But basically, in a structured sale you're going to negotiate a traditional sale. Your buyer is going to sign their obligation to make payments to an independent third party. So there's a lender involved here or an insurance company involved here. And then that third party is going to take that cash. And so you never actually get receipts. So we avoid constructive receipt rules which would actually make if we actually took that money in our hands immediately that would make it taxable immediately. So then the third party now has your cash and they're going to buy you something like [inaudible 00:26:30.4] to start income to you immediately. So you pay taxes on as you receive those payments over the years you're going to pay taxes on the capital gains again defer it. But this is a way to bring a third party in; it's called a structured sale in order to help mitigate some of that risk. Mark: Okay. So who is this third party company; what would be some examples of these third-party companies? Shanyn: So it could be a lender. It could be an insurance company. There are third parties that actually facilitate deals like this. Mark: Okay. And then from the seller standpoint, the benefit here is that they're not having to act as a collector of funds. You have a certain party that's doing that work. Shanyn: Correct. And so here's something that what we're seeing gain popularity; so one of the downsides of most installment sales, either structured sale or an installment sale is that you sold your business, you've deferred the tax, but you don't have all your money. Mark: Right. Shanyn: You have a stream of income but you don't have all your money. And so one of the things that we have found is that if you're comfortable exchanging your equity in your business for just a stream of income that's perfect; if you don't need it all at one time. But oftentimes I think that entrepreneurs want to go to another venture. It's in their blood. They want to close one chapter and start a new chapter. And so that becomes an issue because there's no capital to actually work with them unless the sale is very large. So here what we're finding is that we can take an installment sale and we can couple it with something called a monetizing loan. Now, this is a complicated concept. It takes months to actually really kind of; we do webinars and PowerPoints to really educate our clients on this and we bring in the legal team to really explain this but I'm going to try to kind of be very simple in my explanation. What we do basically is we take an installment sale and we couple it with a monetizing loan. And so basically the way that business works is we're going to defer the taxes for 30 years. Mark: Okay. Shanyn: So basically you negotiate a sales price with your buyer just like you would. And when it comes time to close there's going to be simultaneous things that happen at closing. You're going to sell your assets to an unrelated third party in exchange for a lump-sum payment in 30 years. Step one that third party simultaneously sells your asset to the buyer in exchange for your agreed-upon price. Now you've sold your asset. You're going to use installment sale treatment to defer the tax but you're still going to have your money. Here's where the monetizing loan comes in at the same time that you and the third-party and the buyer close the original sale the third party lender is going to step in and he's going to extend to you a loan equal to 93.5% of the sale. So remember loan proceeds are not taxable because they come with an obligation to repay. Now you have your cash in your hand and that's almost equivalent to what you had for your sales price. And you're free to do whatever you want with those funds. Now it's a loan. While that loan is outstanding the third party pays the interest. In fact the terms of the loan specify that the interest is non-recourse to the seller which is really important because non-recourse means that the lender can't come after you for the payment of that interest. So 30 years goes by and you have all of your money. You do whatever you want with it. And at the end of the 30 years, the whole transaction unwinds. The third-party pays you or your heirs the purchase price in cash. You use the proceeds to repay the loan and then you pay the tax. So there's some magic that happens here. I always call it the eighth and ninth wonder of the world; that deferral and the time value of money. So the question really happens to be what's going to be the tax in 30 years. So if you think about this if inflation continues at 2½ %; that's kind of what it's been for the last 20 or 30 years, and it continues and long term capital gains remains at 20%, the tax bill on a million dollars of pain in 2019 would be equivalent to about $94,000 in 2049. Mark: Wow. Shanyn: That's less than half of today's tax bill and you've got to use your money for 30 years. Mark: Right. So with the installment sale and the monetizing loan you get that money upfront it's just coming in a different vehicle; it's coming through essentially a loan. Shanyn: Right. Mark: My mind is spinning right now. And you said it earlier a confused mind says no. My head is a little bit confused right now but I'm seeing where you're going with this. This is really, really brilliant. What are some reasons why people both on the buy-side and sell-side wouldn't want to do this other than confusion of the concept. Shanyn: And you know what really when we actually walk; so oftentimes we get clients who are like right in the middle like I've got an LOI I want to sign I need to do something now. This structure takes a lot of time to explain and to be comfortable with and to show how all of the numbers move. So really what are the downsides of this? Confusion, that's probably the number one thing or lack of understanding of how it can really; can this really work? I mean people are like really defer taxes for 30 years? They're skeptical of lenders sometimes that would actually be extending the loan. So there's a lot of skepticism I think and lack of understanding. But really this is a win-win for everyone involved. I mean really the buyer doesn't care. The buyer is going to give his asset and he's going to walk away and he's going to have this new business. So he probably doesn't care. Mark: And they're paying just as they normally would if they're buying the business upfront, right? Shanyn: Exactly. And the seller sometimes they don't understand. But I mean there's legal agreements in place around the loan. You're making sure that you're working with a reputable third party from that standpoint so you're making sure that the loan is non-recourse and how it's going to unwind. And of course, you're going to have your own attorney look at all of the documents and paperwork as well. So basically you're doing your own due diligence. But any tax professional that's utilizing these kinds of strategies has done their own due diligence as well and they're picking at third parties to actually work with that and a lawyer or legal team to work with that's what they specialize in. Mark: Right. How do you handle this with more complex sales where you have a portion of like an equity rollover over, a cash upfront, and maybe some debt as well coming in there. Can you structure this as a component of a larger structure? Shanyn: Correct. So that's what I said we often use multiple strategies. So right now I'm working on a deal where someone is selling a restaurant franchise along with the real estate that some of the franchise franchises sit on and there's debt. And so we're actually restructuring debt to flow through like a different entity on the real estate side so that we can use and monetize installments. So we've got like three or four actual strategies that are in play and that's where the preplanning comes in. So if we got 12 to 24 months to sit down with you and figure out a game plan we can really kind of put several different strategies together. Sometimes we're just deferring the tax sometimes we're able to eliminate it altogether. But it's just different components of the sale will be treated differently. Mark: Alright. So I want to get to our example because again I can hear the question in people's minds which is is the juice worth the squeeze here; the fees to you, the amount of time, the headache, trying to convince a buyer to do this which doesn't look as traditional as maybe everyone is expecting going in. So let's run through an example here and you sent me a PDF with an example; is it okay if I post this on our site? Shanyn: Yes definitely. Mark: Okay so we'll make this available for download in the show notes so that people can follow on with us if you want an actual example of this but let's talk through the example here that you gave me. Shanyn: And this is just one; so this is just one strategy, so I just illustrated one. This was actually a business that's being sold in Michigan. Equipment was included. So they had molds and dyes and they sold on the Internet. So they are a combination business. So the sale price was 12 million dollars. And the cost of the sale was about 360,000. They had actually found a buyer outright. But this is what the legal team was kind of charging. So the gain overall was 11.6 million dollars. So at the end of the day you'll see here underneath projected taxes we have federal taxes, we have that net investment income tax, we also are recapturing depreciation, and then we have the state tax. So all in their total gain is 11.6 million and they're losing 4.3 million dollars to taxes. Mark: Yeah. I can tell you when I sold my business that wasn't for a million dollars but when I sold my very first business one of the most sobering moments was getting this first tax bill. And again just to reiterate this; the tax will gain so the cost of the sale on this we have 12 million dollars on the sales price 360,000 towards advisors and fees here so 11.64 is what they're gaining after those advisory fees and then the government at different levels comes in and says thank you for that 11.6 we're taking 4.3 of that and reducing you down 7.2, 7.3 million dollars. Shanyn: Yeah so about 7.3 million dollars is what you're going to walk away with. That's a lot of money but it can be a lot more. Mark: You're still buying dinner the next time you go out but if you look at 12 million and it gets reduced to 7.3, that's pretty hefty. Shanyn: So one of the things that if you look here is that we're able to increase this seller's profit by over 3.3 million dollars and so basically what we do is that you'll see here that the sale price didn't change, the net sales price didn't change, we're actually using a combination of different strategies and the seller is actually taking payments over five years. So over a course of five years, he's going to get 2.1 million dollars and then there's some additional tax savings that we found in there over time. So he's getting a little bit more cash flow from that standpoint. So after just a coupling a couple of strategies together instead of walking away with 7.3 million he walks away with 10.6. Mark: That's a huge gain. That's 3 point…my math here is 3.3 million dollars. Shanyn: 3.3 million, a little bit more than 3.3 million. Mark: Because some of that money is deferred now with those deferred payments you mentioned briefly the time value of money. How do we capture some of that time value of money? Shanyn: So with those deferred payments I mean basically you are actually getting a little bit of an interest rate in that as well. So that all has to be inside the different strategies. Remember when I said we're doing installment sales so we've got to charge interest and have an interest in things of that nature. Mark: It has to be reasonable. Shanyn: It has to be reasonable. Exactly. So over five years, you're going to receive that 2.1 million dollars. So this person is giving up; they're comfortable giving up a little bit of return on investment in order to actually eliminate the taxes. Mark: Yeah and that right there I can totally see being worth the effort of going through this and I know you know we talk to sellers all the time. They get so nervous about doing installment plans. They want their money and they want their money now. And for a lot of people especially growing a business they're profit rich but cash flow poor where they're showing good profits and the selling moment is the first time where they're really getting the cash out of the… Shanyn: They're reaping their harvest. Yeah. Mark: Yeah exactly. So it's kind of a hard sell initially to say okay I know you're now selling a business for 12 million dollars. Shanyn: Right. Well, I think one of the things that; like the conversation I had with them when we proposed these strategies because they're one of the things that we're looking at is okay you're used to living on 250,000 a year in income and now you're going to get two million. What are you going to do with it? Mark: Yeah [inaudible 00:39:19.4]. Shanyn: What's the difference if you are given a check for 7 or you're given a check for 2? How is think going to change your day to day life? That's a conversation you actually have to have. You have to understand what the seller's ultimate goal is. I mean if it's just to go live on the beach in Delray Beach Florida that's kind of my dream then you can probably do that for two million dollars a year. Mark: Yeah, absolutely. Shanyn: It's kind of you know; and also one of the things and this was the eye-opening experience for me I actually had a brother set and one of the brothers wanted all the money up front and the other brother said to me if we don't structure this on installment sale my brother will blow through this money and he won't have anything because money burned a hole in the brother's pocket. And so the other brother was willing to both of them saw the validity there but the other guy just saw the big numbers and was like ah if I could open up my bank statements see that money sitting there. And the other brother was like no if we do that I know I won't spend it because I'm I will hold onto my money but you'll go through it and you won't have anything. Mark: Right. And I think something that entrepreneurs need to keep in mind and I personally went through this myself when I sold my first business is that a lot of entrepreneurs especially in the Internet space are bootstrappers, we get things going and we do it with a lot of grit. And then when you come into a lot of money you're trying to replace some of that grit with spending and so the second startup is way more money thirsty than that first one. And if you don't get the right payout and I've seen it happen with our clients and I had it happen with myself with that second startup I threw away more cash than I anticipated. So this is kind of a nice little lever on that to make sure you're not following through. Shanyn: I call it a safety net because sometimes we see entrepreneurs who actually sell their business and they say I'm going to retire and that retirement lasts like a year and then they're itching. They're like what do I got to do? Mark: I'm bored. I want to do this again. Shanyn: Right. I want to go do this again. And so basically when we're going into our planning process, not every strategy is going to work for every client but what we're doing is we're doing a full discovery and we're figuring out what's really important to that seller. And then we are working to mitigate taxes through the legal channels that are available so that they get the best deal at the end of the day. Mark: I want to hit on one last thing on the notes that you provided me here because we didn't get a chance to talk about it and that's the charitable strategies section here and we only have about five minutes left here so hopefully I'm not uncovering like an enormous topic that we could have spent… Shanyn: We can talk all day about charitable strategy. Mark: Or maybe we'll do a secondary podcast just on that because that's something that's near and dear to my heart; making sure that entrepreneurs are contributing or we should. But where does this fall into the spectrum of planning? Shanyn: So basically charitable strategies is one of the strategies that we use and it's a foundation of tax planning. It's also a foundation of capital gains planning and that's because charitable organizations can sell appreciated assets without paying tax on the gain. Mark: Wow. Shanyn: So again it's a very convoluted type of strategy but basically what happens is you actually establish a charitable remainder trust and you transfer those assets into the trust. It's important that there's no; this is preprinted, there's no binding contract before you transfer something into the trust. The trust then sells the assets to the buyer. And that's where the magic happens because the trust is tax-free and see there's no capital gains and then that trust then reinvest those assets from the sale price and then it pays you the after-tax amount over a period of time. So basically it's a way that we can eliminate a lot of taxation. Mark: Wow that is absolutely mind-blowing right there. And the worry that I think some people would get into is okay I know you said this is legal how much red tape and how fine are the rules that you have to follow for something like that? Shanyn: So basically; I mean there are rules and so by charitable remainder trust you have a legal team that actually specializes in this. You're not going to your mom and pop local lawyer who handles everything from drunk driving to criminal. Mark: My uncle who's a lawyer and not going to charge me a retainer; that type of a deal? Shanyn: Right. I mean so here's the thing; this is a place where when you're doing these strategies you want expert advice. You want somebody who has done this again and again and again and who understands these concepts. And so you're picking individuals that understand how to put together and to write a charitable remainder trust; how to facilitate these third party transactions. Mark: I got it. Okay, we are up against a clock. Shanyn, how can people reach you because I guarantee you're going to get a lot of calls and a lot of e-mails from this so careful what you're giving out right now; how can people reach you? Shanyn: So definitely they can reach me at AdvancedAccounting.com in the right-hand corner there's going to be a button that says a free consultation. And I would love to have a 30 minute Xoom call with them and just kind of talk them through what their particular situation is and if we can help them. Mark: That's fantastic. We will put that in the show notes; a link over to your website, we'll also upload this really simple example that you put together of tax savings which amounted to three million dollars in tax savings on a 12 million dollar sale, really interesting stuff. And I think the big lesson that I would like people to come away with is to think about the selling process in a little bit more strategic way because so many people are just looking at let's get it simple, let's get it done, let's move on with our lives, I'm going to eat this fee. There's a lot that can be done by hiring the right people to reduce those fees. You are one of those people for sure that can certainly help. So thank you for coming on. I can see having you on and maybe digging deep into one of these strategies maybe in a future episode if you'd be up for it. Shanyn: Yeah, perfect. I'd love it. Mark: Awesome. Thanks so much. Shanyn: Thank you.   Links and Resources: Shanyn's Firm Website Free Consultation Link About Shanyn Stewart: She's a serial entrepreneur and fearless single mom who has a background in military tactical training and is not afraid to stand up to anyone, including the IRS. A gun-toting, libertarian proactive tax strategist, Shanyn has built a team of tax and financial experts to assist clients in legal tax avoidance. Shanyn began her career with General Electric as one of two advisors that worked directly with GE employees and executives to mitigate taxation throughout the country. Armed with years of tax navigation experience, in 1996 she started Advanced Accounting to help clients apply those principles she learned at GE to assist in reducing their tax liability. A former American Baptist Pastor, Shanyn owns Gunpowder & Lace, a concealment garment and holster company for woman. She also coaches women on how to give themselves permission to channel their inner goddess and inner badass and make no apologies for it.

From surfing waves to making waves by fixing exploding toilets for tenants—how an entrepreneur and creative technologist leveraged design to streamline simple solutions.  Today, I am talking to Mark Rojas, CEO and founder of the Proper app that streamlines the building repairs process. Mark has spent his career creating positive user experiences and adding value by solving problems related to efficiency and human connectivity.  You’ll Learn... [04:40] Definition of Design: Viewing how something works in the real world and creating a corresponding experience to make your life easier and more enjoyable. [05:34] Proper app idea originated with possibility of becoming an accidental landllord. [07:13] Maintenance is the bain of their existence. There’s got to be a better way to fix building repairs process and problems. [09:30] Maintenance is more than one issue. It involves many problems for many people.  [10:10] Lack of Communication: Leverage “chat room” to create efficient and effective dialogue between contractors, property managers, and tenants. [13:07] What makes Proper different? Visibility and shared platform for centralized communication between all participating people and places.  [14:50] Building Repairs Process: Submit image, describe problem, create work order, send notifications, add contractors, diagnosis issue, complete fix, submit/pay invoice. [19:50] Property Management Platforms: Proper’s integration and import/export plans for increased visibility for systematic way to save time and money while simplifying lives.  [22:42] Common Questions and Concerns: Is Proper app intuitive? Is training provided? [28:15] Future Feature: Email integration and aggregation to avoid duplicate data.  Tweetables Every elegant solution involves some element of intelligent design. Design isn’t all about pixels. It’s applied via various mediums by viewing how something works in the real world. Maintenance is the bain of a property manager’s existence.  First Step with Proper App: A picture is worth a 1,000 words, so describe the problem succinctly. Resources Proper Mark Rojas on LinkedIn Venice Art Crawl Buildium AppFolio Propertyware Intercom Help Scout GatherKudos DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you’re crazy for doing it, you think they’re crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I’m your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show. Today’s guest, I’m hanging out with Mark Rojas. Mark, welcome to the show. Mark: Hey, it’s good to see you again. Jason: Mark is coming to us from a company called Proper Chat, correct? Mark: That’s correct. Jason: Mark, I’ll read a little bit of your bio. It says you are the CEO and founder and it says, “While you might not think of hiring a designer to fix an exploding toilet, Mark Rojas still might be the man for the job. From starting his own surfboard manufacturing company at 16 to founding multiple tech companies focused on creating positive user experiences, Mark has spent his career working to add value by solving problems of efficiency, and human connectivity. An entrepreneur and creative technologist from Queens, Mark is the founder and CEO of Proper, an app designed to streamline the building repairs process. He first began befriending property managers while producing the Venice Art Crawl, a passion project that transformed vacant properties into temporary art showrooms (aka fun, free open houses). Shortly thereafter while subletting his apartment in 2017, Mark was blessed with the invigorating experience of needing to manage repairs for a bathroom explosion involving multiple tenants.” Why don’t you take us from there? Mark: That’s a good intro. Jason: I’ll let you tell the rest of the story. How did you get into this from surfboards? Mark: Surfboards was a little I went to when I was 16 years old, but that did throw me into design and ultimately product design. Right after college, my career quickly became into web development, app development, and working with a lot of startups here in the Bay Area, which is where we’re based out of, to leverage design to solve water problems. It came with the advent of mobile, really becoming this fast-growing platform, where your everyday user now is expecting this very seamless experience that is solving various problems we’re on. That transitioned from building a product, starting a company, and then continuing to wanting to build products for others. I think one of those things that continues to be a passion of mine is finding a problem and leveraging design to simplify, streamline it, and make everyone’s life better. Jason: I love it. That’s entrepreneurism in a nutshell. We see a problem and we’re crazy enough to think we can solve that problem. We can make money solving that problem and create a win-win. You love that you say that you focus on doing it through design because really, every elegant solution involves some sort of intelligent design, whether it’s a system, whether it’s something visual. People think design, they think it’s like graphic design or something creative. Mark: Yeah. I don’t think of design as just pixels. There’s various mediums through which one can apply design. It’s really viewing how something works in the real world and seeing how can you create a corresponding experience that can streamline it, that can make it simpler, that can make it more delightful, more efficient, and really give you a lot of your life back, whether that’s time or even just joy. Jason: What problem then did you really see that you’re like, “I’m going to create Proper”? Let’s try to build this problem up. Mark: I’ve seen a lot of different thoughts to my life in being a tenant, but it really became a problem for me when I almost became an accidental landlord. I was traveling for an extended period of time, I have known my landlord for a while, and she was happy to actually let me sublet it. It’s like, “It’s okay. Go off, I trust you, and when you come back, it’s all good.” But there’s still a level of responsibility that was pressed upon me. As I rented out my apartment, I quickly realized that I have become a landlord. So, two days into it, the subtenant called me to let me know that there was a major problem. I was like, “What? What’s going on?” It turned out that the pipe above our ceiling under our neighbor’s bathroom had burst. To say the least, it’s quite a mess. This set up a flurry of emails, phone calls, text messages between the tenant and myself, the property owner, neighbors, contractors, plumbers, et cetera, and it was happening over phone calls, emails, text messages, WhatsApp calls, FaceTime calls. At some point, I was like, “Wow, this is rather ridiculous,” and my design mind immediately started thinking... Jason: Broken. This is flawed. There’s got to be a better way than this. Mark: Yeah. My wheels are just spinning and spinning and spinning, and I started designing it in my brain. Then, one day I just whipped it out of my computer, I just mocked it up, and I was like, “I’m going to build this.” I started building it and I think one thing that’s true then and now, and even more true now, is we spend a lot of time talking to our users and our customers, and really dissecting their problems or processes. I immediately started doing calls with property managers that I already knew. As you saw in my bio, I knew a lot of property managers. When I started the Venice Art Crawl, which is a crowd-sourced art event, we have 40 different art shows going on at the same time in Venice beach. The way I did it was I found vacant spaces, [...] the property managers and basically said, “I know I can bring high net worth individuals to these empty spaces and we can treat it almost as an open house.” That worked not only well—I was creating value for them—they all basically love me. When I started working on this idea, they were happy to talk to me for hours at a time. What I found is that maintenance is almost the bane of their existence. Jason: Oh yeah. We did a survey inside the DoorGrow Club Facebook group—property managers listening, you should be in there if you have a property management business—and we asked—just an informal poll in the Facebook group—“What’s your number one challenge in your business?” There were two or three items at the top of the list that were connected to maintenance. It was sourcing vendors, it was maintenance coordination. Maintenance is the biggest headache or challenge in property management. Mark: Yeah. It’s very painful to the point that I actually thought that I was becoming a therapist. Sometimes, they would talk to me for three hours at a time just talking about it, and I was like, “Wow, this is a very real problem.” I was able to take those learnings and turned it into a product that corresponded with it. What started off was really just a project. I didn’t think, “Oh, I’m going to become a billionaire off of this. This is my next big thing.” This is more, I was traveling, I wanted to start building a product, and I wanted it to not be something that I built in bane, but rather, to possibly solve someone’s problem. Initially, it was my problem, and when I talked to property managers, they actually laughed at me because I was building an app already and only dealing with a monthly maintenance issue, while they’re dealing with hundreds a month, if not more. Jason: Right. You’re building an app for one maintenance issue. Mark: Yeah, so talking to them totally validated that this is something worth pursuing. Then, I just went deeper. I kept talking to them. I started talking to the contractors, the tenants, and I realized that this is a problem on all sides of the equation and set out to start building a solution that could solve a lot of the issues with it. I think a lot of my history in design has been focused on communication, really making it richer and removing barriers. Essentially, a lot of friction and a lot of time wasted happens when poor communication happens. That’s why it’s proper.chat and leveraging chat as a platform to remove a lot of the bottlenecks that happen, like playing Whac-A-Mole between an email for this contractor, phone call for that tenant, and really starting to centralize everything where we could remove those bottlenecks and with the oversight of the property manager, the contractor and the tenant can speak with each other. Anything from scheduling, updates, “Hey, I got to go to Home Depot and get this part. I’ll be back tomorrow.” In the world today, the tenant would know. Three days could pass and that creates frustration and friction for the tenant because they don’t know what’s going on, and that means another phone call to the property manager. Jason: Right. Communication in a business, for any business, causes a challenge; internal communication. For a while, as I was growing from solopreneur to building a team, I have freelancers. I thought this was so great because I only have to pay them when there’s work. “Here’s the job, do this work.” But the challenge with that is the communication level was just not strong enough. I didn’t realize that until I started getting full-time employees. The communication level is dramatically different when you have somebody that’s dedicated because you’re reducing the number of people that you need. That person is giving more of their time. Two people that are doing 10 hours a week versus 1 person that’s doing 20 hours a week, I would take the one person any day of the week, especially if those two have to communicate. The communication back-and-forth wastes so much time, and there’s always a percentage of loss when there’s any sort of communication. If there’s communication between two parties, there are gaps. There just always is. It could be a misread and body language. It could be somebody doesn’t understand something. Somebody’s a poor communicator. There’s some sort of flaw. The more you can reduce that, the less friction there is. One of my recent hires was one of these unicorns that can do web development and design. The communication level is way shorter. He can get things done in such a short time. Normally, I want a specialist, but he’s able to create something so much quicker because he’s not having the communicate and negotiate between another party that doesn’t understand what they do. A developer and a designer are two different universes, right? Mark: Absolutely, yeah. Jason: [...] crazy guys setting you both. So, I get it. Explain how this helps reduce the communication and why is this better than the other stuff that’s out there, what other people have been doing? What’s unique about Proper that you’re noticing? Mark: A lot of it comes down to visibility and a shared placed for everyone involved with the maintenance, to communicate with each other. Where we really differentiate is that we started on mobile. We’re a mobile-first solution. We do have a desktop and a web experience for the property manager. In terms of being able to report, what we notice from a lot of property managers, whether they have Yardi, AppFolio, you’re still getting these maintenance requests from many different places. You’re getting from phone calls, emails, text messages. What we set out to build and we’re building right now is one place I can centralize all that. Not only centralize it but make it a more useful format. When someone writes you a three-paragraph email, a lot of it is frustration. Jason: Right. There’s all this emotion and they want you to understand their pain. They’re like, “I got to relate this. I got to paint this picture.” Mark: Exactly, and part of it is because they’ve waited too long to write this email. This frustration has built up and they want to write this email. With our application, which is native, you as a tenant are able to create a work order very quickly, and it’s very visual. An image is worth a thousand words and it really is in this area. Often, these emails don’t even include images, so a tenant is able to quickly snap a photo, almost like Snapchat or Instagram. You don’t train anyone. There’s literally billions of users on these apps who know how to use this and they’re able to create a work order in under 30 seconds. The format is not to write paragraphs and paragraphs. It’s to be succinct, 140–200 characters max and you choose a category. This gets fired off to the property manager, you get a notification on your phone or on your desktop, and then from there you have your contractors that you can add this this conversation. The idea is that it turns into a group chat at this point, with the property manager still being involved. Instead of trying to get back and forth between scheduling, instead of the contractor having to ask questions to the property manager to then go ask the tenant to further diagnose what’s broken, the contractor’s able to immediately see what’s broken because there’s always going to be a picture. We pretty much make that almost mandatory for the tenants. What we’ve seen from contractors is that they’re able to save time and cost by more quickly able to diagnose where the problem is, what tools to bring, what materials to bring. Everything just happens there. The property manager is still part of the process, but they don’t need to insert themselves. When they insert themselves now, it really takes up a lot of their time. Not only because they have to go back and forth, but often they’re fielding phone calls, they’re fielding emails, and then this really, really adds up. Jason: I love that it’s prompting them to take a picture. Mark: Yeah. The first step is to create a work order, take a picture. That’s the first thing. Jason: And a picture’s worth a thousand words. They’re not going to have to write a thousand words in order to get it across. You can see it and you go, “Okay, you can fluff it up or make it more dramatic, but I can see it. Here it is.” Or they might do the opposite. They might say, “Hey, there’s a problem with the faucet and it’s flooding the whole bathroom.” So, you can see it. They send you a picture. In a lot of apps, a picture’s an afterthought. They have to do some serious extra work in order to get a photo into something or to do it. I’ve had maintenance companies ask me, “Could you email me a photo?” or, “Can you take a picture so we know what to look for or what type of fixture we need?” whatever. It slows down the communication significantly. Mark: Totally and I think there are these added benefits that currently property managers don’t have the bandwidth to do. Because of the contractors there, they can easily provide updates themselves like, “Hey, I have this question.” “Hey I have to come back.” Right now, that has to go to the property manager, the property manager then has to tell the tenant, and then often this doesn’t happen. So, you have this built-in benefits of transparency that you have with the tenant that really builds trust, but also stops them from calling you, which once again takes up a lot of your time. The very nice thing is that at the end, the contractor is able to close up the job by providing proof that they’ve done it. So, they have to take pictures of it. Then, you have these records of the conversations that you have with everyone, the images at the beginning of the job, the images at the end, and it just creates a ton of transparency and documentation that you can have, that’s very easily searchable, filterable later on. One thing we’re starting to work on is really reporting. You can start to really understand the volume of workers that you’re getting, the stages that they’re at, the amount of time it took to complete it, and really how much time it’s taking up for you. Jason: It makes a lot of sense. If you can cut out one phone call, you’re probably saving your team, at a minimum, 15–18 minutes of productivity, simply because one interruption in a team member’s day, typically they say, cost about 18 minutes of productivity. Even [...] take 18 minutes, they got to rebuild the house of cards they were working on or go back to whatever project they’re trying to figure out. So, if you can cut down the phone calls significantly, even if you don’t have that large of a portfolio, it’s almost like getting a new team member on your team. It’s that significant. People are really expensive in property management businesses. It’s the highest cost in the PM business. I know what property managers listening to this are going to be thinking. They’re going to be thinking, “Well, that sounds great, but another piece of technology. How is it going to work with my Buildium, or my AppFolio, or my Propertyware? I got these, they’ve got maintenance requests built into them. How will this work?” Mark: In terms of the different platforms, there are ones that permit direct integrations and we’re starting to work with building some of those. Then, we’re also building a way for you to be able to easily export, search, and import this data at the end. I think the difference really is that the maintenance offerings that they have don’t create the same level of visibility and don’t save you the amount of time. Even if their integration is not there, the amount of time that we’re currently saving you and that we’re going to continue to increase, really starts to outweigh some of the cons of doing that. That’s the way we’re moving through with all these things. Jason: Can you tell us who you’re working to start integrating with yet? Mark: We have a couple of partners, mostly in the Los Angeles area. One has about 1000 units, another 2000 units, and we’re working with both of them. They’re both on different platforms and seeing what’s going to be the most efficient way. It’s not just integration of the maintenance, but also I think what’s really important here is their accounting. We’re really looking at accounting and how we can start to streamline with that because there is one of the things that we’ve seen with the contractors is a lot of them don’t have a systematic way of not just keeping track of their work orders or invoices, but even just generating invoices, so it takes up a lot of their time. On the property management side, you’re getting all these different types of invoices coming in, totally different formats, and then you’re manually doing double data entry into all these different systems. It’s kind of a pain because it’s like, “Why is it formatted this way?” You have this hurdle that you’re dealing with all these messed-up invoices. One thing that we’re seeing is there’s the ease of use of our invoice. A lot of the maintenance techs and workers are actually enjoying using it and starting to use it as a way to create a uniform way of generating invoices for their property managers. What we want to do is actually make that very easy to export so you can import so that you can import it into your accounting system. Jason: Cool. What are the big questions that people ask about this? What are their frequently asked questions, concerns? What are the big questions that they’re asking so that we cover all the bases here? Mark: There’s quite a few, but I think there’s this very chat-focused, very simple, clean design. There isn’t a lot of other platforms that we’ve seen in the space yet. They’re starting to show up, but really there’s very few. I think a lot of people are like, “Hey, do you provide training? How much is training going to cost?” Jason: You’re like, “Do you know how to use instant message?” Mark: No. We don’t want to be sending that at all. We really care about our users, so we offer like, “We’ll train you,” and then the funny thing here is that we do a demo and not for a minute we train them. Jason: And by the way that demo was the training. Mark: Yeah. If you know how to use iMessage or any of those things, it’s very intuitive. That’s really the core principle of the company is designing something that is not only beautiful, but it’s extremely easy to use because we don’t think that we should be paying and send somebody out to train you or that you need to hire some expert to use the software. Jason: All right. I’m going to go to the devil’s advocate on the other side here. It’s so easy, it’s just chat, it’s so simple, why don’t I just sign-up with Intercom or Help Scout and get a chat tool and take tickets? What’s different between those solutions and something like Proper? Mark: Proper is really geared towards maintenance. Even just the terminology, the flow, the understanding of the whole workflow of maintenance getting done, is what is unique to us. You could theoretically use text messaging to do. The reality is you can start to use that, but then very quickly it breaks down and it becomes cumbersome. For example, Intercom. There’s no mobile app. There’s no way to really add photos into what’s going on. There’s no way to categorize it into the type of problem that might be related to maintenance. For us, we provide all those things but then, you’re also able to search, filter, and zoom in on a property and be like, “Okay, these are all the work orders. This is how we spent maintenance on this property.” As we move forward and we start to integrate with other systems, that’s something that Intercom would probably not do. Jason: They’re going to put this chat tool probably on their website, so people coming there if they have maintenance requests, do they hide it like, “Go here for maintenance and then the chat is there”? Or is it [...] and if so, the maintenance coordination is one side, but they also have lead gen that they’re trying to do. They have sales. They’re trying to target owners and capture people with their live chat tools. How do you usually recommend they segregate that or can Proper help up with that other challenge as well? Mark: Good question. The way the application is working right now is that the live chatting or website, if you’re using something like Intercom, that is something that we’re not providing right now. Essentially, what happens is that property managers will announce that they’re using Proper to their network, share the app, then they’re able to install it, and then start reporting through there. It comes into our web app and mobile app. As a property manager, you can use the app from anywhere, but you could also use it at your desktop. From there, is where to start to field everything. Jason: So, Proper works more like an internal tool. When you onboard your new tenants, you can say, “Hey, get this. This is how you can communicate with us.” It’s probably not just functioning as the live chat tool that’s capturing leads on the front-end of your business, but you could always take that tool and put links into it or pre-written messages to say, “Oh, it’s a maintenance request. Go here.” [...] Intercom a button that they click, that I’m here for maintenance and it takes them to Proper to take care of that. Mark: Yeah and one of the really interesting things is that we’re starting to build email integrations, so the initial one that we built is that if you receive an email that’s coming in from a tenant and it’s maintenance-related, we build the Chrome extension where very easily just sends it to Proper and then it turns it into actual work orders. You’re not actually trying to do double data entry there. The next step of that is making it so that your tenants and contractors don’t have to join Proper. They can submit things via email, but then you have one place where it’s starting to aggregate everything, whether it’s submitted directly to Proper or through another channel like email. That’s one of the really exciting features for these next two months that we’re working on should be out. Jason: So, that will be similar to Intercom, which you can have a certain email address like maintenance@businessname.com and have that forward those emails into Proper? Mark: Yeah, it all vacuums it right up and then as it comes in, you’re able to categorize it and make it something that is not mixed with thousands of other’s emails but rather centralized and easy to find just like any of the other maintenance tickets. Jason: It sounds like it would make sense for them to have some sort of support solution and still use Proper for the maintenance portion for the back-end, and internally with tenants. Very cool. What other questions then do people tend to ask? Mark: One of the big ones is really that email integration that I just mentioned. That’s essentially what we’ve been doing is tons of user research and starting to find what are the biggest problems. Using that is like having it bubble up to the top and turning it into features that are usable to them. Jason: One of the challenges in maintenance is the communication between vendor and owner is getting paid, payouts. What if the vendor starts messaging and they’re like, “Hey, property manager, when do I get paid? Here’s my invoice,” and the tenants are seeing this stuff. How do you deal with that? Mark: I’m glad you asked that because that’s literally the feature we’re rolling out right now. We’re waiting for the upstart to approve and by the way, we’re on iOS, Android, and web. The next thing I told you, we make it really easy for your maintenance staff or techs to create invoices and generate them. We’re actually about to roll out payments where they’re able to get to pay through ACH and really it’s cut out a lot of time for the contractors to generate those invoices or even for the property managers to [...] and all these things which I still see very frequently happening. Jason: In the app, the contractor maybe see something a little different and they can submit invoice or something like this? Mark: Yeah. Basically, when the contractor closes up the job, they provide proof that they did it and they’re prompted to create an invoice. Jason: And one proof would be another photo, something along these lines? Mark: Yeah. You’re able to add multiple photos as the contractor. This then generates an invoice that the property manager receives. This is a separate view where the tenant is not part of it. They’re not anything around cost, they’re not seeing this. The property manager is actually able to pay via ACH directly to the contractor through the app. There’s no need to go elsewhere and try to cut a check, having anyone pick it up, or mail it, or anything like that. Jason: So again, it’s reducing a lot of the friction and communication challenges between the property manager or maintenance coordinator and the vendors. Mark: Yeah. That’s one thing that we’ve seen on both sides of the equation. A lot of property managers are still spending a lot of time just doing payments. On the contractor side, they are spending a lot of time generating invoices. They have a good support, so at the end of the week, they’re tying up all the work that they did. They don’t even necessarily have the good system to keep track of all the jobs that they did. So, they’re often once again spending this admin time where they’re not actually getting paid to do that. What happens now is that with the invoicing feature, although it’s simple and very intuitive, it actually reduces the amount of time that they’re doing this stuff, they’re able to get paid faster, and they’re able to spend a lot less time worrying about the stuff and actually getting more work done, which means your maintenance is getting done faster, which means your tenants are happier, which means you’re happier as a property manager because you’re hearing less from them. It’s really an interesting problem because you have these three different groups of people and you’re trying to design the simplest solution that takes into account their unique set of problems. Jason: If you imagine, what would be the ideal situation so that all three parties could communicate the most efficiently? You would just have all three of them sitting in a room face-to-face talking like, “Hey, you’ll do this. I’ll do this.” “Okay, I’ll pay you then. I’ll do this.” “Okay, team. Ready? Great.” Everybody’s there, it would be fast, but that’s not reality, right? Mark: Yeah. Jason: You’re trying to run a business and so is the vendor. The tenant should hopefully has a job and making some money to pay rent. There’s all this stuff going on, we can’t just all hang out, but Proper really creates a room that they can all hang out in and communicate. Mark: It’s great that you actually put it that way because that’s very much how I think about solving this problem. When you’re in person with sometime, it is the richest form of communication. If it’s a group of people, then the bottlenecks or the walls that exist, that is created through distance, creates all these inefficiencies. Essentially, that is actually how we think. That is what we want to be able to create these rooms and make this very efficient, yet rich way to communicate with each other, to eliminate a lot of these barriers that are currently costing a lot of time, which includes money, and often just frustration. One thing that I didn’t mention here is that I spent a whole year working out of a property manager’s office. You can call it extreme customer development and I really understood a lot of their operations and just so much of their time is spent on communication, but because they don’t have good tools for it, it just generates a lot of frustration on each side of it. Assuming that it’s hard to measure, the quality of life when you’re constantly doing frustration just really goes down. Jason: Yeah. Plus there’s a lot of turn-over. Among the property managers that are working for a property management business owner, it’s very difficult. Mark: What’s true of us as a company is to improve that quality of life because we know how gruesome the job can be, how hard it can be, how taxing it can be. If you use our app, it’s very colorful. We kind of joke around in the copy and we try to make it not just extremely efficient but fun. We want to make it [...] inject a little bit of fun into it. I don’t think that I see that very much in the space yet, which is one of the things I’m very excited about is that I want to bring that to the space. Jason: Some of the things I’ve seen in some apps lately that people have been doing to gamify things, which is really funny, that once you complete something or you finish something, you get confetti and balloon noises and stuff like this, like this is a little celebration. So, I’m just going to throw this is a feature request that after a maintenance is completed and somebody marks complete to get […] and they get this little celebration thing. It gives them that dopamine boost to get things done and they feel good about it. Mark: Oh yeah. That’s actually something that now that we’re starting to mature as a company and we’re getting ahead with the feature set and the road map, that’s something that we actually can bring into it. So, given my part of design background, I also know a lot of animators and illustrators. As you can see, we have a lot of illustrations. We very much want to use those opportunities. When you’ve succeeded at doing something, really just letting you know. Jason: Even rewarding a tenant for using the system. Instead of calling you, like they submit a ticket and you’re like, “You’ve done it! Good job!” All these little things just create positivity and they add a positive feel to the property management company. The tenants are usually pretty upset if there’s a maintenance request. The vendors are having to deal with that, the property manager. Anywhere you can add a little bit of fun and gamification into an app, I think is [...] world a little bit more fun. Mark: Yeah. There’s no reason you can’t have fun doing this job. I want to save you time, but like in this, get you to crack a smile a couple of times a day. It’s not just about saving time but it’s about being able to continue to do that job and be happy doing it. Jason: All right, cool. Mark, I really enjoy having you on the show. One thing that might be cool, it would be after a maintenance request is submitted, if we did an integration with GatherKudos, real super easy, super simple. [...] whether they’re happy or sad. Mark: I’m totally happy to talk about that. Jason: All right. That would be cool. It’s really great to have you on. How can people get in touch with Proper? How can do a demo? How can they find out more? Mark: We actually created a unique link for the show, so if you go to proper.chat/doorgrow, you can definitely learn a little bit about our products and then very easily set-up a demo with us. Again the tool is super easy to use, so we are happy to set-up a demo with you. It shouldn’t take more than five minutes. Once you start seeing the product it becomes very quickly evident how this can start saving you time and also maybe make you smile. Jason: Awesome. All right, everybody check that out. I appreciate you setting up that link. That’s awesome. Go to proper.chat/doorgrow and check it out. You get a little special perk for being a DoorGrow Show listener. Mark, really grateful for you coming on the show. I love hearing about new technology. I think this sounds really innovative and I think it solves a problem. I think that it will really be beneficial and I’m really excited to see what you guys do in this space and start hearing some feedback from my clients on what they think. Mark: Yeah. Thanks for giving me time and always a pleasure to talk. I look forward to checking in again soon. Jason: Cool. Yeah, we’ll be talking again soon. All right, I’ll let Mark out. If you are a property management entrepreneur and you’re looking to add doors, you’ve been struggling, you’re wondering why does it feel like there’s scarcity in an industry and 70% are self-managing. There’s no scarcity in property management right now. There just isn’t, but they’re not looking on Google. You’re going to have some trouble if your whole goal is you have people find you through Google. There are ways to go out and create business and we’re focusing on that. So, stay tuned with DoorGrow, keep an eye on us, and if you’re wanting to grow your business, if you want to short some of the leaks in your sales pipeline, you want to dial in trust engine, have generate more warm leads and warm business, it’s easier to close and have less conversations about price, price sensitivity, and comparison to other companies, that’s what we do. Reach out and talk to DoorGrow. We’ll be happy to help you add doors to your business, figure out how you can optimize your business for growth and creating trust. Again, I’m Jason Hull with DoorGrow here on the DoorGrow Show. I appreciate you tuning in. Please like and subscribe on whichever channel your hearing this on, whether it’s YouTube, iTunes, Facebook, whatever. Stay plugged in and make sure you get inside our DoorGrow Club Facebook group where we are putting out discontent. We have an awesome community of DoorGrow hackers like you. So, check it out doorgrowclub.com. That’s all for today, everybody. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. You just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet, in the DoorGrow Club. Join your fellow DoorGrow hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead, content, social, direct mail, and they still struggle to grow. At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today’s episode on our blog at doorgrow.com. To get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

The TWiV pro-vaxxers reveal viruses that infect endangered wild salmon, and how iron in host serum modulates dengue virus acquisition by mosquitoes. Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, Alan Dove, and Brianne Barker Subscribe (free): iTunes, Google Podcasts, RSS, email Become a patron of TWiV! Links for this episode New viruses that infect endangered wild salmon (eLife) Host serum iron modulates dengue virus acquisition by mosquitoes (Nat Micro) Image credit Letters read on TWiV 569 Timestamps by Jolene. Thanks! Weekly Science Picks Brianne - Retraction of new CCR5/lifespan study Alan - Nomad Press illustrated science books, and illustrator Lex Cornell Dickson - RARE: Creatures of the Photo Ark Vincent - The Odyssey of Eradication by Thomas Abraham Listener Picks Justin - Mass spec pen Mark - What really brought down the Boeing 737 Max? Intro music is by Ronald Jenkees. Send your virology questions and comments to twiv@microbe.tv

The TWiV pro-vaxxers reveal viruses that infect endangered wild salmon, and how iron in host serum modulates dengue virus acquisition by mosquitoes. Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, Alan Dove, and Brianne Barker Subscribe (free): iTunes, Google Podcasts, RSS, email Become a patron of TWiV! Links for this episode New viruses that infect endangered wild salmon (eLife) Host serum iron modulates dengue virus acquisition by mosquitoes (Nat Micro) Image credit Letters read on TWiV 569 Timestamps by Jolene. Thanks! Weekly Science Picks Brianne - Retraction of new CCR5/lifespan study Alan - Nomad Press illustrated science books, and illustrator Lex Cornell Dickson - RARE: Creatures of the Photo Ark Vincent - The Odyssey of Eradication by Thomas Abraham Listener Picks Justin - Mass spec pen Mark - What really brought down the Boeing 737 Max? Intro music is by Ronald Jenkees. Send your virology questions and comments to twiv@microbe.tv

Welcome To Plotpoints Podcast! This is Plotpoints Podcast! www.plotpoints.com Show Notes SEPTEMBER 27, 2019 EP 161 Author/Screenwriter Christopher Stires Joins Mark Sevi. #Starbeasts #PaladinsJourney #RebelNation #TheInheritance #DarkLegend Starbeasts Chris' Amazon Page Chris' BarnesAndNoble Chris' webpage See Chris' full bio at end of the show notes. Creative Screenwriting Magazine - Mark's Article: ENDINGS ARTICLE LINK 00:00:00 Intro Mark (podcast theme music by Mark Sevi) Hill Street Blues theme snippets 86by Mike Post 00:00:20 WELCOME/TABLE TALK/USELESS CHATTER EMMY PREDICTIONS All 00:03:00 WHAT ARE WE WORKING ON #novella #pilot #featurescript Mark, Chris 00:4:30 WHAT ARE WE WATCHING All #lasttycoon #crimestory #cagnyandlacey #megfoster 00:7:00 PROFILE OF STEVEN BOCHCO Mark #hillstreetblues #nypdblues #coprock #doogiehauser #dennisfranz #davidmilch #jimmysmits #davidekelley #murderone #columbo #mcmillanandwife 00:13:30 TOP AMERICAN COP SHOWS Mark, Chris CHRIS' LIST: #barneymiller hillstreetblues #justified #bosch #bluebloods MARK'S LIST: hillstreetblues justified #thewire columbo #southland #homicidelifeonthestreets #theshield 00:17:00 Q&A Mark What is the hardest scene to write? 00:20:00 THANKS AND OUT! All Need a Writing Class?  For info go to www.scriptwritingclasses.org   UPCOMING AT C3 Vape and Coffee (www.ocfilmandtv.com) MEETUP DETAILS Need a Writing Class?  For info go to www.scriptwritingclasses.org #scriptwritingclasses.org #ocscreenwriters #ocfilmandtv #alejandroseri #finaldraft  QUESTIONS?  COMMENTS? 919-Scripts www.ocscreenwriters.com #ocscreenwriters Creative Screenwriting Magazine www.ocfilmandtv.com #richdalessio #c3vapeandcoffee Call 816-WRITERS for info on the MeetUps Meetup www.ocscreenwriters.com / www.ocfilmandtv.com HEY! Tell us what is your favorite Scifi, Romantic Comedy or Comic Book movie? Call (919) Scripts (919/727.4787) and shout it out to us. Resources: 919-SCRIPTS to leave a message/ask questions. www.plotpoints.com (show blog and more) www.ocscreenwriters.com - by writers for writers. Be Inspired, Do Good Work! Need a Writing Class?  For info go to www.scriptwritingclasses.org #scriptwritingclasses.org Writers Guild Registration – www.wgawregistry.org U.S. Copyright Office - www.copyright.gov Podcast available on iTunes All Material copyright (c) Mark Sevi #marksevi Mark's IMDB page. Mark is repped by legal-eagle Wayne Alexander, ANLF.COM #waynealexander #anlf.com Christopher Stires is a novelist, short-story writer and screenwriter living in Riverside CA. He has four novels currently in print. PALADIN’S JOURNEY, REBEL NATION, DARK LEGEND, and THE INHERITANCE (Winner of the 2003 Dream Realm Award for Horror) are available from Zumaya Publications (http://www.zumayapublications.com/). PALADIN’S JOURNEY: SABIAN (the sequel to PALADIN’S JOURNEY) will soon be released by Zumaya. STARBEAST (a reprint/retitle of TO THE MOUNTAIN OF THE BEAST) will soon be released by World Castle Publishing (http://www.worldcastlepublishing.com/home.html). He has had more than 70 short stories and articles appear in publications in the United States, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Finland, France, Greece, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. With co-writer, Mark Sevi, he has had one screenplay optioned. He is a member of Facebook and Goodreads. Fair Use Act Disclaimer This podcast is for educational purposes, commentary, and criticism and is not-for-profit at this point in its life. Fair Use Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Fair Use Definition Fair use is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as commentary, criticism,

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Todd: Hey, Mark, I heard that you might be interested in buying a computer.Mark: That's right. Yeah, I'm interested in buying a Mac computer because I've never used Mac before.Todd: Well, that is actually perfect because I have two Macintosh laptops and I'm selling one of them.Mark: You're kidding.Todd: Yeah.Mark: How much?Todd: Well, I'll sell it to you for 20,000 Japanese yen, so that's almost 200 dollars. That's a pretty good deal. But there's a problem with it.Mark: What's the problem?Todd: The problem is the disc drive is broken, so sometimes if you put a DVD into the disc drive it doesn't work.Mark: OK.Todd: Sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn't work.Mark: Well, that's not too bad because I have another computer that I can watch DVDs on.Todd: OK.Mark: How long have you had it?Todd: I've had it for about three years, and it works great like it's great for the internet. It's great for lots of things. I just unfortunately accidentally broke the DVD because I had a problem. I couldn't get a DVD out and I foolishly tried to get it out the wrong way, so but it still works. There is one other problem. It has a power cord and I lost the original power cord for it.Mark: Right, OK, so I need to buy a new power cord.Todd: You need to buy a new one.Mark: And how much will that set me back?Todd: That will probably cost you about 6,000 yen.Mark: 6,000 yen.Todd: Yeah, so it's not too bad.Mark: So that new Mac that you got over there, how much was that new?Todd: If you buy it new, well this is an older edition, but now they're about 100,000 yen. They're actually quite a good deal. That's why I'm selling it so cheap because you can buy a new Mac for pretty cheap.Mark: Right. OK. Sounds a good deal. Can I build websites on that one?Todd: Yeah. You can pretty much do anything. It has a lot of capabilities. It's very easy, and if you like the TV show the Sopranos, I'll throw in a bunch of DVD's as well.Mark: Really.Todd: So you can watch them for free.Mark: Right, so 20,000 yen and how many DVD's?Todd: Well, there is a set of four so there's probably, I don't know, there's four DVD's but there's probably 18 episodes of the show the Sopranos.Mark: Right.Todd: It's a good show.Mark: OK. That sounds like we may have a deal.Todd: Cool.Mark: Yeah. Let me talk to the girlfriend about it. See if she wants to buy a Mac because it's her money, too. Maybe I need to borrow some money off her.Todd: OK.Mark: And then we can do the deal.Todd: OK, sounds good. Alright, thanks, Mark.

A lot of buyers come to us and ask about the risk of buying an Amazon business. Likewise, when setting an Amazon business up to sell, what are some things to consider? Buying up businesses and creating a profitable portfolio is something that some very savvy buyers are going all-in on. Today we are talking about Amazon FBA with someone who has been doing just that. If Amazon is the past, present, and future of e-commerce and all the others are just playing catch where do YOU want to put your money as an online business owner? Carlos Cashman, CEO and entrepreneur, has started over a dozen companies as well purchased, sold, and taken public many others. He is now CEO of Thrasio, an FBA business acquisition company. Thrasio has a wealth of experience purchasing businesses from all over the world. At Thrasio, the team guides the seller to a deal in record time backed by expert law, due diligence, and financial teams. Episode Highlights: Carlos' take on the Amazon consolidation model. The importance of sku concentration, consolidation, and product stability. How many Amazon deals Carlos has made. Whether he places weight on secondary metrics such as email marketing. Where the efficiencies are in Thrasio's portfolio. Navigating a bad purchase and when to cut losses. Cross-collateral investing and how Thrasio sets that up. Why Amazon? Some statistics that cannot bely the retail ecosystem that is Amazon. If and how any business can compete, in the long term, with Amazon. Product creation and innovation best practices to follow. The importance of having representation when selling your business. Transcription: Joe: Mark, I have a lot of people that come to me and talk to me as either buyers and they say, Joe, what's the risk of buying an Amazon business? And I talk—5, 6 years ago everyone thought the risk was really high but today there are people that are a lot smarter than you and me and you and me combined and maybe all of our team that have raised 10, 20, 30 million dollars to buy up Amazon businesses and build a portfolio. And I understand you had Carlos from Thras on the podcast talking about just that. Mark: Thras.io; he's very careful to approach to actually correct me on that at the beginning of the podcast and he tells me the meaning behind their name which is really cool. I'm going to save it for the podcast so people can listen to that. But yeah what I wanted to know so many buyers look at Amazon only businesses and they discount them for channel risk because they're like do you really want to be on this one platform or competition and products could be sort of ubiquitous, competition can be really tough and your subject in mercy to the whims of Amazon. And so here we have Carlos putting together a fund and buying up a lot of these Amazon Asense and the question is you're a smart guy, you've done a lot of business in the past and we've talked about how he had grown multiple businesses and sold them, so why is he going all-in on this platform and also why are people giving him money to go all-in on this platform; what's the reasoning here to say this is where the future of e-commerce is. And so we talked a lot of statistics on this. We talked a lot about what is the future of Amazon. And here's a spoiler alert Amazon's going all-in on FBA. It's one of their 3 biggest platforms, it's one of the 3 legs to their stool that they have with their aid of US being one and their sellers—their 3rd party services being one of the largest profit centers that they have. In addition, when you take a look at where do they stand in the marketplace, it's staggering. Everybody knows that they're huge. They're 49% of online e-commerce sales. When you look at this in terms of total retail sales; total retail sales make up about roughly 10% of all—e-commerce makes up about 10% of all retail sales. Amazon makes up about half of that. So what do we do here? What are we going to do? Okay, online sales is only 10% which means it's going to grow. Amazon is already half of that online marketplace. What's the future here? Well, the future is Amazon is trying to become the e-commerce internet. They're trying to become the de facto way of ordering products online and everybody else is playing catch up right now. And so they are betting and saying we get it. We know that Amazon growth is going to continue. We know it's going to continue at a rapid pace for a long time; there's lots of room to grow, and yeah there are competitors and we talked about this. We talked about; Shopify just announced recently that they're investing one billion dollars in their Shopify fulfillment network which is great news and he was ecstatic to hear that. He's like competition like this is good. But the fact is Shopify is playing catch up, Target is playing catch up, Walmart is playing catch up, and they're not there yet at all. They're more difficult to work with than Amazon. They don't have the same draw. And so it made me rethink this if we're looking at where do you want to put your money as a business owner. Joe: That's it right there the multiples are going up on Amazon businesses tomorrow guys; that's it. Mark: It's more sure of investment than maybe we've thought about in the past. It was; you know what? We talked to some of these guys that are doing this professionally that are on the Amazon space only; fascinating conversation. I enjoyed it thoroughly to talk to somebody who's doing this and sees things from maybe a different angle than what most buyers think about. Joe: Well I think it's great because probably half the audience here is made up of buyers as well and they ask that question all the time; should I buy an Amazon business? And we know that I say we're going to raise the multiple on Amazon businesses, we actually don't as we always say determine the multiple. The buyers do because we do our best based upon historic numbers and then we get the feedback from the buyers. If we're wrong they let us know by driving the multiple down or driving it up in some cases. Year to date; this is end of June that we're recording this year to date I've seen the multiples on Amazon businesses at levels that I had never seen it in the past. So I think that the buyer pool is getting much more confidence in the Amazon channel. I think that that one channel risk is if you're focused on adding new Asense in growing the business worldwide on other Amazon platforms in countries the risk is diminished a little bit. Historically we've seen multichannel businesses sell for 10 to 20% more than single-channel Amazon businesses but I do think that's creeping up a little bit and catching up a little bit. So it will be really interesting to hear what Carlos has to say. He's a super nice guy. One quick aside I had Amazon businesses that I had for sale and Carlos had to call them, the guy loved him and they both happened to be traveling to Singapore at separate times. They actually got together and had coffee and dinner with their families just because they had met on a phone call. So Carlos is a super nice guy, very, very good at what he does, and obviously an expert on the Amazon site. So I'm looking forward to listening to this one myself. Carlos: Oh that was all good stuff. Mark: Yeah it was all the good stuff you see that's the thing, we always record the good stuff before I hit record. And I'm actually going to enter with that. Carlos, thank you for coming on the show. Carlos: Cool. I'm glad to be here man. Mark: Yeah so tell us who you are. I know who you are but tell everybody else who you are. Carlos: Yeah everybody come look at LinkedIn, they usually do. But I'm a serial entrepreneur. I've started—it depends on how you count them size or whatever but you know over a dozen companies. I was thinking about this in a way because people are like wow, tell us about that. I started I think it's about 6 to 8 I got to figure out better multi-million dollar companies. I've taken company public, I sold them, I bought them, I've sold several for 9 figures, dealt with some amazing people along the way and it's always been tech-related. So software, advertising, some services related to that stuff and e-commerce stuff. So I've got a lot of miles on the road that way. Mark: Yeah no it sounds like the profile for any of our brokers. So if this whole Thras.io thing doesn't work out for you let me know. So you're the CEO of Thras.io. Carlos: I know we have the worst name in the world but let's just make it clear for everybody; Thras.io. Mark: Thras.io, I'm sorry. It's good that I know that now because I've been saying Thras.io; so Thras.io, okay. Carlos: So it's based on the review of your site, it's based on the greek word thrasos which means boldness or confidence but it was actually an Amazon warrior queen hence the kind of Amazon connection. Mark: That's pretty cool. See I learned something. This is awesome. I love this. I love the name now. Carlos: Josh came up with the name in just a second and I'm co-CEO and co-founder with my partner Josh Silberstein. And yeah he just came up with it and yeah I don't like to spend too much time naming companies even though I've done that professionally before so we just went with it. Mark: So it was an Amazon goddess, is that what you said? Carlos: It was an Amazon queen. So we actually had a whole lot of sub-companies for our Amazon warrior queen. I mean like things that do different parts of what we do in the ecosystem. It's got to stay with that theme or words. Mark: I got to ask now I mean is Josh like some Amazon queen ruler aficionado and connoisseur? Carlos: We're both aficionados of mythology and things like that but it just made sense getting into Amazon that we would do something like that. Mark: I like it. I mean I like names of businesses that have secondary and deeper meanings and now I've got something if I'm really bored I'm going to go out and procrastinate by researching Amazon queens. Carlos: There are a lot of them and their names can be very difficult to spell which is kind of a mess when we're trying to do with legal documentation and stuff but it's fun. Mark: That's really cool. Alright, so I had a few companies that I would say is in a similar vein to what Thras.io does and that is this idea of consolidating multiple Amazon businesses under one roof. That said everybody's got a little bit of a different twist on it. So I would love to get your twist on this Amazon consolidation that you guys are doing in trying to acquire companies and anything that you're able to share as well. Like I mean how many acquisitions have you done and how long have you guys been in business so far doing this would be really interesting and if there's something that—alright I'm not going to tell everybody this then don't worry we'll just say it and only the 3 people that listen to the podcast will know. Carlos: Alright so I hope you're calculating right—I've been listening to this for a while now. So I hope you're keeping track of these questions because I'm not taking notes. You just asked me about four questions right there so let me try to take them in any order that I kind of remember them. In terms of do, we have a particular twist on the market; now I don't think we do necessarily. I mean I heard Richard when you had him on here with 101 Commerce I mean that's—the idea is fairly simple. I think people get it. In terms of—I think what they see in this Mark is you know when you mention other people like there's someone who has built a great home goods business and now they want to expand and so looking for other home goods products to roll into that, right? We are really kind of vertical agnostics. So we're only looking on that from that point of view. We would just believe in the ecosystem overall, we believe in the fundamental transformation that Amazon has brought on the way we do commerce and particularly e-commerce, and we just see an overall appearance. We're looking for just great business. I mean look we want great products and now some people have top ranking, great ratings, and good number of reviews; all that stuff. That's really what we're looking for but as far as what it is, it could be all over the board really. Again the most important thing is that they've built a quality product. And it really comes down to the Asense; the Amazon listing itself; the product, the SKU, whatever you want to call that. So that's really what we're most focused on is we look at our business as a portfolio of those. So any business may have a handful of them and I know a lot of people in this marketplace some of the acquires in this place market space or tend to be still I mean you've probably seen a lot, you know, people looking for a single business, right? So yeah with the executive leaving some big company taking an SBA loan whatever we could talk through all that stuff later but for that person they're concerned with customs to concentration and rightfully so. It's going to be their one business wonders and they take out a big loan for it. It's actually kind of the opposite for us. So as far as our interest we are interested in the more concentrated your SKU's are the better because it's less for us to take on and manage the whole thing. And we're not concerned about the individual performance of that one because we've got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of others. But I mean we are concerned about in terms of how it does but it's not going to sink us or make us by the performance of anyone SKU we acquired in one time. So that's kind of how we—that kind of answers how we look at the business and again we're not looking for fad products either just something clear to say. So if you got fidget spinners we're not interested in that. Those are hot for a year. My son has a dozen of them sitting all over his room and he's never going to spin them again. So we don't want things like that. And so we want stuff that is really stable in terms of its demand. Mark: Yeah, I'm just going to put a note to everybody that's given up fidget spinners for swag, thank you for making my room, my kid's rooms just filled with stuff that's lying around because you're absolutely right and you know I will disagree with you on something here. You said that you guys really—you're not sure if you really having any expend but this idea that you guys have of looking at Amazon businesses not so much in terms of the business side of it but you're looking more at the Asense and trying to evaluate individual Asense and the strengths of those relative to everything else that's really what you're looking at. That is a unique way of approaching the marketplace and it allows you to look at something that has SKU concentration or a unicorn product and we do see that from a lot of buyers with a business that has a unicorn product kind of thinking I don't know if I want to bet 2 million dollars on this is unicorn product here and you guys are saying well no we've got a lot of products like that so that's a twist. Carlos: Oh that's good to know. I mean alright so we do have a slight twist on it. Mark: So how many deals if you're able to share even broadly how many deals do you think you guys have done so far? Carlos: I'm going to be a little cooler here about some of these things. But we've done dozens of deals so not high but we're moving quickly and that number is increasing over time. Mark: Yeah. Carlos: So it's been exciting for us and then going back to the ego of the SKU concentration question, I just wanted to add something. You guys are talking about like because there's a lot of interesting; Amazon sellers [inaudible 00:13:56.7] you get this real business straight where they've used these products out there, viral launch or fellows got a [inaudible 00:14:02.6] and they found four different holes in the market so they're selling pot holders and humidifiers and some sort of potted plant for the fruit product you know great different [inaudible 00:14:13.5] and I got 4 of them. And you know to somebody external coming in looking at that would go sheesh they're all over the place. They're not just sporting goods and that's crazy. But we get it. We get that that's how Amazon works and what matters is the listing and it's position relative to its competitors in the keyword space, right? And that's what we look at and we care about. So it's usually like in that sense also that business is attractive to us because it's again concentrated even if it's in strange different products. We don't have to have like this suite of products around like I said one vertical where you're building a brand into it. Again that's an interesting point to discuss is the position of brand in the Amazon marketplace because let's face it were all talking about FBA businesses here and frankly most people who buy these things; I see a product in the wild all the time and I love it. You go to a friend's house and they've got one of your products sitting there. Like oh, it's great but where did you get it? Well, do they say the little brand that we happen to buy? No, they say Amazon, right? They got it on Amazon. They got it from Amazon, if they had a problem they would drive it to Amazon. We're at a place right now where we're still; we're all sitting on the coattails of Amazon; the brand halo that Amazon provides. So we recognize that and we're going to be very clear about that and how we look at the products and the ecosystem. Mark: So do guys place much weight at all on a business building a brand or even building customers outside of Amazon such as email list and being able to drive that to products and new products or is that kind of a secondary metric that you look at? Carlos: It's a secondary metric. I won't say we don't look at it, we certainly do and there is some value there but it is dwarfed by the value presented by the Amazon ecosystem. And so we care 1st and foremost about how you are positioned on Amazon. But of course it's nice to have someone that you know the e-mails and people that love your product or you know if you do because what happens now is oftentimes we will have or we'll acquire a product that is in the same space but we have 5 more. And so that becomes what we start to now as a business uniquely perhaps accrue some value from things like that. Because if you have that email list of 40,000 chefs or something; people who love cooking and I have 4 other cooking products now I can cross-promote our stuff right through there. So it does start to have some value the longer we go out there. I think that value will increase the more we do this but right now we're still pulling stuff in all sorts of different spaces. They don't always overlap and it's something we look at but it certainly is a secondary metric. Mark: When I look at companies like yours not just specifically within the Amazon space and I want to talk about that in little bit here but when I look at companies like yours that are consolidating businesses and millions of them the portfolio the approach is typically to find efficiencies in combining things together. So if you're looking at a content network of websites so completely divorced from the Amazon world what you have usually is a staple of writers, editors, and an editorial process that can turn out new content to be able to build up a network that way. So bringing a new content site isn't as labor-intensive you have this natural efficiency. E-commerce stores in the past what I've seen have been logistic efficiencies. You're able to have maybe the same warehouse staff fulfill more products. When you guys are doing what you're doing and again I think it blends itself maybe to this Asense approach I think from my evaluation; I'd love to get your comments on this, it seems like you're doing this for 2 reasons. One I would imagine efficiencies which I'd love to know where those are but also a portfolio sort of approach to things and that you're spreading out over lots of different Asense niche vertical agnostic as you say but it's more of let's not bid on one winner let's bet on a lot of winners potentially. But I'd love to get into 1st of all have you confirm that and then get into are you doing this also for efficiencies within your company that you can run these businesses may be more efficiently and if so where are those? Carlos: So that's a great point and something worth to think about. So I've done your traditional rollups before. We sold the company in the late ‘90s to a company called US Web; a lot of people may—you probably remember a national brand of webshops doing person websites and stuff. But you know the traditional kind of rollup looks more for the—like those efficiencies are more important there because it's all about pulling costs down, right? If you go acquire a 100 30 person companies and each one of those 30 person companies has inside person finance team or a 3 person finance team whatever and 3 salespeople I am sure you don't need all those, right? You need 3 finance people for all 100 of them or maybe 6 but still not a linear scale. So that kind of efficiency is certainly more important in a traditional rollup. Like you said rolling up content on websites that would be important there also because you have editors and writers and HTML people and designers and that can be where there can be leverage across more stuff certainly if you template size that. It's less of a big deal in this Amazon ecosystem. And what some reasoning about what Amazon has down here in creating all these millions of solopreneurs is they've taken not just Amazon also it's all the supply chain companies, it's the manufacturers. They've simplified this interaction so much that you can get a single person running a 5 million dollar business which is unheard of in history. It's incredible. So it's taken out a lot of the complexity. Now, most of the time when you get to that scale you've got a couple of assistants; part-time assistants, VA's, someone like that so it could be drive efficiencies there. Yeah, we certainly can if they're good but it's more about being able to improve the performance than it is a simple efficiency. So [inaudible 00:19:54.9] a lot of these, we meet a lot of great sellers who I just love them. Like classic entrepreneurs that dropped out of college or I just got out of college and started selling on Amazon and I travel the world and living the life and they built great products and they just hustle. And they're smart. That's great but when it comes to global sourcing and your supply chain I mean from all over the world and getting into different places in Amazon you're not going to be as good at it as the team that I have here. I've got a leader here who ran a 2 billion dollar supply chain in 140 countries for one of the largest shipping companies in the world. And we have a whole team of people under this on the side doing this work. And so we can do it better and more efficiently. We can negotiate better. We can do both on the shipping side and the manufacturing side with volume discounts. So we can do that better and we, therefore, carve out more profit from these products. I mean I'd look at it from creative; we're doing stuff across hundreds of products in all sorts of different areas. We know things that are working that are very likely work what the impact is and what is it and we are—I can afford to have photographers on staff if I want to because I don't have to try a different outsource for all this stuff all the time. Let's say advertising and marketing that's another key place where it's not necessarily about the efficiency of having less people doing it for more things. It's really about the knowledge. I've come from a performance marketing background. I sold 2 companies with our Google performance marketing company and a Facebook performance marketing company that were top of the line but we did. I've got a team here that is 2nd to none in understanding performance marketing and driving traffic from all these various sources. And Amazon is just another PPC marketplace so should we be able to do better than the individual seller who did a good job with their business? Yeah, we should. So I see it as efficiency in deploying new resources for new revenue; resources to improve the performance of the products where they are. It's not like a cost efficiency, right? Mark: Sure. Now that makes complete sense. I want to ask; you know one of the problems I have seen companies run into when they're consolidating either businesses or in your case Asense but I would still consider them businesses to some extent but be the consummate of Peter robbing Paul. You buy a dog and it starts draining the resources of the companies. What have you guys done to protect yourself against that? When you do multiple acquisitions you're going to buy a bad one at some point. It's just going to happen. So what have you guys done to help protect yourself against draining the resources of the company? When do you pull the plug? Carlos: You know it's not even so that you buy a bad one in this ecosystem; it's that you bought one that has bad competitors; but screw with that, right? I mean Amazon sellers know what I'm talking about very well. I mean the wrong complaint even if it's fake even if it's not correct put into Amazon can shut you down or slow you down or cause problems. So yeah look I mean we have to know the difference between a problem like that that we're going to fix versus someone like you said just a bad egg or we're going to pull the plug. I think we've done this a lot. My partner Josh and I both started a bit part of a number of startups, started companies ourselves. He's one of the most creative and experienced financial dealmakers I've ever seen. He's done more debt deals and equity deals than anybody. I think we look at those dispassionately with—I mean I think that's the key, think about capital allocation which is really what we're doing and you can go listen to a podcast about that all day, there's some great ones. You've got to know when to cut your losses and do it fast. That's the key. And we don't get emotional about it. That's hard to the seller who builds their family of 20 products and each one is kind of—this business is their baby and each one of those is another baby of theirs and they may be getting chilled on the [inaudible 00:23:47.8] or something or letter openers but they love it and they think they can get back to it and they're going to hold on to it longer than they should. We don't have that. We have no baggage on it. If the letter opener just sucks then we'll cut it off. So quite often if we buy a business that has a lot of SKU without the SKU concentration we like, we'll look at it and we'll cut the losers day one. I mean we're not even going to pay for them if we're not making money on it. In some cases we will actually—sometimes it's underperforming ones and the seller may want to keep them and keep working at them. We have actually—we'll buy individuals SKUs or separate SKUs from somebody so our Asense—I think everybody knows [inaudible 00:24:21.5] Asense it but more people have SKUs and SKUs are so. I think it's just a question. You just have to be dispassionate about it and have a financial mindset towards it. And you know look sometimes it's worth setting because you know you can get back but sometimes you cant. Mark: I mean you may not have emotions related to some of these products but you do have investors within your company, right? I mean how much has that play into it as far as not wanting to pick that losing SKU or an SKU with bad competitors as you put it? Carlos: It doesn't. I mean we have great investors but they're not that involved in the business for the looking at individual deals we're doing. We cross call there early on a decision we made that was really—I think really important. And that was the only way we're going to do it was we cross collateralize investors across everything we do. So there are some people who look to this market by saying hey I'm going to do an SPV and acquire this— Mark: What is SPV? Carlos: Social Partners Vehicle. So you can raise money in a single; it's almost like separate companies and then they're all related in some point in the future [inaudible 00:25:22.7] together and rationalize based on revenue and EBIDTA or whatever it is. But then we have a different set of investors and that ends up; that's a really bad idea because then you have your intent and what you want to do can be across purposes, right? At this group of investors over here their product is going down and I shouldn't focus on it anymore but this group over here the product is doing great and if I put more effort there I'm going to make a lot more money. The right thing for me and for the business is the focus where I need to and approve there but if you've done your financing that way then you're kind of shackled. That's what we did not do. We were not going to do that. It just doesn't make any sense. So it was important to talk about cross collateralizing across everything and say look everyone we buy that was into this and you all are part of this. So that allows us to have that broader focus. Mark: Why Amazon? I mean there's a lot of different rollup place within the online space and you've got a really remarkable resume with tech companies. You could have gone for ad networks, you could have gone for content sites, you could've done any number of things as in the video— Carlos: The advertising space. Mark: Alright so maybe not that; bad example. But why choose Amazon? Carlos: It's funny. This started actually as an e-commerce rollup. So you go back to it because maybe I [inaudible 00:26:39.0] why Amazon is probably one of the reasons you said why we were kind of coy about talking about what we're doing for a while and now we are talking about it. We discovered this and it looks super easy. It's not as easy as we thought but it never is. So we originally were going to do e-commerce like my Facebook Advertising company Orion CKB, we were all performance marketing which is not [inaudible 00:26:59.0] you know change names again but a fantastic group but we were very, very good at performance marketing on Facebook and so all of our customers were either e-commerce or lead gen but people who made money from what we did. And so we started looking at that and saying hey e-commerce companies are getting smaller and smaller and they're able to produce more value and this whole supply chain kind of thing is figured out maybe there's an opportunity to go out and rollup the small ones and take what we know how to do which is all the performance marketing which ultimately was adding value to these businesses more so than the other piece of it and we could create additional value by putting them together. So we were doing and looking at e-commerce and when you do that you start to look at Amazon as a channel obviously. So we thought Amazon would be a channel for our e-commerce play. I just started looking into it and started meeting people in the ecosystem and at the same time my e-commerce customers at my Facebook advertising agency were asking us like you guys are good at Facebook can you run our Amazon ads for us because we're not doing well there. So we started really looking into that. Once we looked into the Amazon ecosystem it was really—it was amazing. I mean to me to see the leverage that you've got. We all pay for it certainly to Amazon but like it's the green traffic; that's a sure thing. You're paying for it but anyone who is looking for product that you've got to build [inaudible 00:28:13.6] you'll get it. Or you can have great product and you don't have the right team driving traffic to you on Facebook and Google and no one is going to know about it. You're not going to get it. You're not going to get it to [inaudible 00:28:22.8]. So we just started to see that the Amazon ecosystem was really, really much more powerful and we think the deals were better and the opportunity to move here was quicker and to find these companies and then I think we—I would rather be lucky than good any day Mark but I think we just hit the right time when we sort of started looking at this and there were more and more businesses. We really just kind of went out to sites like yours and looked around to see what was on the internet available and we started to see these Amazon businesses and we said let's give it a try. Let's nab a couple of these. Then we really all started to gel from that. Mark: So many Amazon sellers look at Amazon obviously with big eyes of opportunity but also wary eyes of distrust for what Amazon is going to do. And frankly for some people that have been selling on Amazon; let's talk about Amazon vendor central you know maybe that's been justified. Amazon as of the time we're recording this podcast well it was about a month ago they sent basically non-renewal just to so many vendors that saying we're not going to be buying any more products from you and poof those businesses are basically gone; not entirely but very, very damaged. How do you get over the suspicion of Amazon bad or evil I don't trust them but I'll make money from them? Carlos: We get asked this a lot and I've dealt with these behemoths. That's all I've done for the last like 10 plus years 12 years. So Google I thought; I have an SEO company I've been doing SEO for a long time there we did Google PPC the company we grew here before we sold to the post companies like Facebook and Facebook Advertising company. I've dealt with these you know the fangs whatever these giant companies that seem kind of harmless in a move without caring and you can try to read the [inaudible 00:30:07.7] in what they're doing but I think the most important thing—I have longevity in all those places by doing a couple of simple things. Like by following the rules, being a good actor in the ecosystem, and understanding what they're looking for. And frankly this vendor central change; it's tough for a lot of those guys and you can go back to 2002 and start reading Jeff Bezos' shareholder letters and these telegraph—not telegraph I mean just really writing down in words this is what we're going to do, this is where we are. People asked if he was a competitor of Barnes and Noble back in ‘99 and 2000 and he said no. He's always had a vision for building a platform and a marketplace. He said they sell books. We're a marketplace. They needed to be the 1st party seller to be the whole vendor central platform to get it to the scale and size that they want to be. He's been writing about the marketplace since then and there are some great quotes about—he talks about the businesses they get married to that are great. They try a lot of stuff. And third party seller marketplace is one of them. It's that, AWS, and product. Those are the 3 pillars of their business. So think if you think about that, they're not going to destroy one of the pillars of their business. And then if you get into their numbers outsized portion of their profits is driven by—actually all of their profit is driven by these 3 businesses. And we all know that AWS provides an enormous part of profit for them and the marketplace they don't want it all breaking out independently. You can kind of read between the lines there and see its producing profit; a lot. And that's where these decisions are gotten from. And again profit is not always his goal that's why he's moved so much inventory and product over the years. But again I think it's been telegraphed there. So I really think that Amazon's positioning in this space is to be the marketplace to do what they've done. They say they have 500 million things or items for sale on Amazon. They didn't get there by having a sourcing team like Walmart does you know going out and sourcing individual products. You got to have a 20 million person sourcing team. They have 6 million person—there's 6 million accounts on seller central. We all know that a lot of people have double ones whatever the Chinese companies do different things but there was probably a couple of million sellers there for real make any kind of money. And they are doing all of that for them. So I just think if you look at the business it's clear what Amazon is all about and where they're going and from that standpoint [inaudible 00:32:28.5] after the ecosystem and you'd be in good shape. Mark: Yeah I've quoted the actual number here and I don't do show prep but I actually prepped a little bit for this here and looked at some Amazon statistics 229 billion dollars in 3rd party services and then in 2018, 1 million new sellers joined their reseller services. About 3,000 people per day. Now again probably some duplicate accounts and there's probably some even 3rd or 4th accounts in there. Carlos: 6 accounts yeah. There's a lot of real; I mean they've released the numbers. There's 200,000 sellers that make 6 figures and up, 100,000 a year and up US dollars. I mean there's 2 million who have made any money I think as the states or you know the 50,000 might be a lot of money to somebody I'm just saying in a year, right? So I think there are 50,000 sellers that do half a million a year and up someone like that. So that's a city man. Mark: Yeah, I know absolutely, in fact, one of these statistics was if Amazon was a country they would be 140th largest country in the world something like that in terms of gross domestic product; absolutely amazing statistics. I tend to agree with you in the past I've been pretty publicly bearish on Amazon because I felt like it was a gold rush. However, seeing where they're going and you are ahead of the curve on this reading what Bezos was saying that they wanted to be a marketplace and they want to be that de facto ecosystem of the internet where people buy stuff. Alright, they want—when you think I'm going to buy something online, they don't want to think about any other solution other than I'm going to buy it through Alexa or through the Internet or through my app or whatever because that just works and that's where all the products are. So I agree I think they're going all-in on that. I don't think it's much of a mystery and so because of that, I think 3rd party sellers are actually really well positioned especially right now because it's still relatively immature but I have to ask you about competitors. Shopify recently announced that they are going to spend over a billion dollars on the Shopify fulfillment network which is going to be able to power all of their sellers with customized packaging and full-on fulfillment services. Obviously, Target and Walmart are offering free today shipping without having the Amazon Prime subscription. You said you don't want to read the tea leaves but I'm going to ask you to read the tea leaves. Let's talk a little bit about the future here with some of these competitors. Do they even stand a chance and are we going to see a consolidation of the marketplace or do companies like Thas.io—I'm going to get this right, need to have more of a multi-channel approach? Carlos: I think that Shopify announcement was awesome. I love that. I think it's a brilliant idea and I hope it works. I mean we would love to have more channels. And we sell in other channels I mean in small amounts. It's really for us it's a question of focus; I've started a lot of companies and you know the platitudes and stuff about it you've got to focus strategy and saying no. If we have lived through that a bunch of times you don't really get it. It's like you don't always have to feel if the oven is hot to understand that we can have someone tell us. But it really is about having that—the focus is about saying hey look this is what we do, we do really well right now, let's perfect this and then let's worry about other things. If that thing is big enough and takes enough of your time that's worth doing so there's a lot of complexity in the Amazon ecosystem alone with some of it like I expected it's been more than I thought I expected it's been crazier and surprising but there's just some stuff in there that's even surprised me. The competition is quite [inaudible 00:36:11.1] stuff on there. But we fully intend to look at other channels and well I mean we are exploring. As I said we have some small alternate channel sales already. We're looking at retail. I mean let's face it as large as Amazon gets that I think retail is over 10 trillion [inaudible 00:36:26.7] or something like that and 90% of it is still transacted offline. I mean people are still buying a lot of stuff in stores so you'd be crazy not to be looking at that as a channel. So it's really a question time for us of when. So where we've been at this less than a year really, around a year, so that's a lot to do in a year where we're both acquiring all these products but then having to operate them and having to worry about improving them at the same time we're building the company. We're building the teams and the systems that allow us to do this and the processes and procedures. So it's really just a question of looking at that way and that's kind of just traditional kind of start-up thinking and how you go about this stuff. But I do think that whether they succeed enormously or not; Shopify, they have a good chance of succeeding with this. It's always just a question of what portion of revenue it accounts for. I mean we looked at a lot of these businesses that say they're going to start to sell on Walmart and stuff. We've seen people that are selling on Walmart and have been doing it for a while and it's 5% of their sales on Amazon, 10% of their sales and I'm like Amazon is so dominant when you talk about sort of pruning like how do we deal—what do we do the bad product. Well to an extent like if I can focus on that 90% of revenue that's on Amazon and do better with it I'm going to make more than my trying this hack out a little bit more on Walmart which is a more difficult to work with ecosystem right now. So I think those guys are going to have to up their game. I mean for everything I hear they're not as easy to work with and let's forget all the other channels beyond that. Shopify I imagine will do a good job of that. I mean they understand user interface. They understand simplicity as well better than anybody. So I'm excited to see what they do. But let's face it so I've been throwing around the statistics, some like 50%, 56% of product searches start on Amazon now. From all the products ranks and more than all the search engines combined including Google. But I just saw a new figure that among millennials and below it's like 76% chronic searches are starting on Amazon. Come on it is [inaudible 00:38:26.8] great when you're looking for something and you want to toothbrush you just pull up Amazon now and you go and you get it. It shows up at your door anywhere from 2 hours depending on where you are to 2 days, right? Or even 3 whatever but you don't have to think about it anymore. So I think that dynamic is just going to continue to play itself out. I don't think of Amazon as this company so to speak anymore really. It's a commerce internet. And so you're telling me you have channel risk, it's like telling me I have channel risk because I'm on the internet. People told me that and you probably too like 15 years ago [inaudible 00:38:58.1] problem that you're only selling yourself on the internet. I was like, okay, next [inaudible 00:39:02.6] person, right? And so from that perspective, I hope these other things are successful. I hope Shopify makes a go of it. We will certainly be in all these channels over time but right now Amazon is a great place to focus your efforts to drive value. Mark: Yeah to your point about 90% of all retail sales are still happening offline and validated by the statistical research I was doing before this that Amazon accounts for 5% of all retail sales. So what does that mean? That means that the 5% of this highly fragmented online sales happening and that's been fragmented by Walmart, Target, and other big box stores that have gone online but then also the millions of onesie twosie sort of sellers online that are playing in 100 to $500,000 of revenue per year and there's a lot of those little businesses out there doing just that. So I think your point is right. Right now in the marketplace where we're at Amazon is dominant. Amazon is the new Google as for just e-commerce transactions online. So then that leads us to the question of how do you compete on Amazon? What are the most and this is going to round out our conversation, we're almost coming to the time here but how do you compete in the long term? The one criticism I hear about Amazon is look it's a marketplace so products tend to be somewhat ubiquitous and you kind of get into a race on the bottom because the only way to differentiate yourself in many ways is on price. You don't have better customer service because that's been equalized by Amazon. So you can differentiate on product or on price and where do you see the best way to set up a defensible long term position? Carlos: So 1st I would say that I slightly disagree in a way customer service is handled by the companies themselves. Like how quickly you respond to queries, what you do if something has a problem, grand Amazon is kind of front line there but there's a lot you can do in that space. Yeah I mean look overall people don't always buy the cheapest product. Heck I know I don't. Maybe it's dumb but I'm the guy who goes to the page and I'm looking for a 2 grand [inaudible 00:41:15.4]. I don't just buy the cheapest one on the page. Some people do but I got to look for someone and someone I got to go researching, I look for quality. I mean it really comes back to what I was saying earlier like about playing with these giants these ecosystems is being a good actor in the ecosystem. Now people used to ask me about Google SEO like how do you guys do this? I've been running SEO properties for 10 plus years now through every Google change with penguin, panda, whatever animal name you want to bring up. They change multiple times a month and people will say what's your secret, how do you keep doing that? And my secret was I said those pages on Google, those site where they explain to you what to do for SEO. And that's what we do. We follow their rules. There's a lot of rules and we follow them all and we do a good job of that. Amazon says here's how to play, here's what to do, have a great product and make sure you're treating customers well and you're responding well. If your ratings are going down is it a problem with your product or how you deal with that right. So I mean I may sound silly hear [inaudible 00:42:18.2] but like the reality is make a great product, service the customer—where you can do customer service do a good job of it and be a good actor in this ecosystem. With that being said there is an element of Amazon that is cheap [inaudible 00:42:33.2] race to the bottom and you've got to think about how you differentiate yourself. I mean look if your supply chain is more efficient and you're better off than going to the bottom you'll win that battle and you'll sell a lot. I think you're going to start to see some branding differentiation over time. Right now as I said earlier we kind of discount that because everyone feels like they're buying from Amazon and this is just the evolution of marketplace as I think a little bit. But if you're in a category where you know tennis shoes or something someone is going to buy a Nike or Adidas or whatever they like. You got to think about some categories that will matter some it won't. I mean if you're buying a letter opener you don't really care if it's a Nike letter opener. Not really, right? So you have to be able to play by the other things I'm saying. Just be a good actor, have a great product, and make sure your supply chain is tight. I think for individual sellers looking at this marketplace, certainly new ones, I mean it's just tough to get into now. I mean that certainly is an issue because it's really just blown up in the last 5 years; 4, 5 years. And so there's people in almost every space crowding it out. But I don't want to—again it's a price differentiation already. We've actually seen products, deals, and you may have heard some of these said once or kind of funny like where they raised the price every week for like 6 months and kept selling more. There's counterintuitive examples of all these stuff and there's reasons people do things when they're buying and shopping and you don't necessarily know all of them but it's not necessarily just one [inaudible 00:44:13.2] press. Mark: Yeah, I agree I mean I obviously look at a lot of Amazon businesses and more and more I'm seeing the ones that are consistently growing over the years are the ones that never really actually compete on price, to begin with. They've looked at a product or maybe even in a crowded category and said how can we innovate on this and create something just different enough that nobody else is really going to want to compete against us but we're going to create something that's super useful and then magically; of course it's not really magical like you said it's being a good actor and doing what Amazon wants and creating a good product that people like. It works for the long term and it's more sustainable. So I'm happy to hear you say that because of the broad experience with different Asense that you guys at your group have just kind of validates that. Now the last question I'm going to ask you it revolves around this idea of product creation. I am going to ask you for more of a general rule maybe it's not the right way to go because I do think that there are multiple ways to compete on Amazon but I want to see if we can get to a generic sort of here is maybe the best practice and how to be a good actor in the community. Where would you recommend sellers put most of their effort or break up their efforts and I'll put it into product creation and innovation and quality versus the Amazon-specific metrics of making sure that you have high ratings and maybe even going out and gaining those if you have to or being aggressive of as ways get those versus the PPC side I'm going to try and get as much sales velocity as possible whether that be on Amazon or setting off Amazon traffic as well to Amazon to get that most sales velocity. So kind of 3 groups here, right? You have the sales metrics that kind of influence things, the customer service and ratings, and then the product quality. Where do you think people need to really be giving up their time and again you might come back to say Mark you're thinking about this completely wrong. That's cool if that's what you think. Carlos: No, but I would just say you just kind of summed up how do I be good Amazon business. It's all of these things. Like I don't think there's anyone magic bullet. PPC works for some parts, it works great. It doesn't work for all of them. I mean it's like—the thing I love about Amazon, to begin with, it is that there are certain products you can sell stuff on there you could never sell directly in another channel unless you somehow had magical viral take off or something. But like when we were on Facebook for instance; Facebook advertising, it's going to cost you 30 bucks an hour give or take something to acquire customer leads for a consumer kind of drive by product. Which means [inaudible 00:46:49.8] for 70, 75 bucks at least to make any money back after your COGS and all these kind of stuff in advertising cost. It's expensive so you can't sell a $10 item. Can you sell $10 items on Amazon? All-day, right? Because they're bringing to the people they are taking so much stuff out of the equation. But then you just have to play in the Amazon ecosystem well whether that product may not make sense to advertise to be paying to acquire customers on that one. It's tricky. I mean I think for individual sellers a product launch and new products are important. That's not something we sort focus on and particularly care about again because now you're talking about having more Asense and we're interested in having less. Lots of sellers that we've talked to it's actually they have—now you've learned all this and they know how they can launch something and they know how to do the quality of the stuff and how to get the initial purchases, they need capital. Again we don't focus on that [inaudible 00:47:48.4] one capital to do and so we will buy in like the top-performing Asense from them and they take that cash and put it back into these things they want to do and test out advertising and purchasing new product and stuff like that. I think the most important thing is just that there's more stuff now there, it's the quality question. It's the number of reviews and quality reviews. I would not—going back to what I said earlier, I would not suggest being aggressive with that or—being aggressive with following Amazon's rule is great and so whatever they say you could do. You can't ask for 4-star reviews or good reviews hence I wouldn't break in [inaudible 00:48:24.8] because my experience going back to 10 years with Google is you get away with it for a while but they catch you. They ultimately catch you and they'll burn you for it. I mean Amazon is coding reviews every month and their system is going through that probably every day but I mean they're going through it doing cleanups. And if you're doing something that's a bad actor thing in that space you're going to get busted for it. So I say do that but there are things you can do that are legit. Now if you've seen your ratings are going down because you've got some product quality issue then go fix that and send out free versions to all those customers whatever it is. Be a good actor in the system, have a voice, respond to queries, the question, and FAQs as quickly as you can and let people know you're on top of it and if that takes an external site that's informational where you talk to people about where you are who you are what your product is then do that too. I think that's an important to focus but it's hard for people to get a tall hold here now if you're not already in the ecosystem and with a product. Mark: This has been fantastic. Carlos thank you so much for coming on. Do you have any last thing that you would want to share with the audience here or maybe a question I didn't ask that you think would be useful? Just something general Amazon or what you guys are doing over at Thras.io. Carlos: No not really. I mean it's an exciting time to be in the space and it's a good time too for people to be selling their business and we're happy to do that help them—I'll buy them. I think you guys are an excellent brokerage. I've really enjoyed working with you guys. And I'd put a little plug there for you would. Getting someone on your side that understands what they're doing and how to represent your business and how to talk about it and help you understand what you should get and what you shouldn't; that's very important. And not all brokers are created equal, not all business people help you sell your business or equal and you guys have all done it and I've really appreciated that work with you guys. Mark: Yeah, we've always appreciated working with your group as well. You guys have been fantastic to work with. I really appreciate you coming on here and sharing as much as you have. I mean I know what you guys are doing is pretty innovative. Not a lot of people are doing it. There are some doing it but it's great to get the insights from a company that is working with so many diverse different Asense because it just brings a different perspective to everything. I've greatly enjoyed this conversation so thank you so much. I know that the Amazon queens of the past are smiling down on your company and will continue to do so. So thank you for sharing that with me as well. And there you go. One moment do you sell that on Amazon; just curious? Carlos: We don't sell those. [inaudible 00:51:03.8] I bought them on Amazon. It's great. Mark: [inaudible 00:51:08.1] on Amazon. Alright, awesome. Carlos thank you so much for joining me. Carlos: Cool. It was great talking to you, Mark.   Links and Resources: Thrasio Company Profile

I don't think there is a topic we're more passionate yet equally in the dark about as CRO. For every dollar a business spends on Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) they get nine back – which is a staggering statistic. You immediately see ROI if you use a CRO expert who is good at what they do. There is an entire user journey that happens with CRO, and those businesses that embark on the journey can massively grow their business quickly. Jon MacDonald is the CEO and founder of The Good, a Conversion Rate Optimization firm. The Good uses data science to help brands turn their traffic into customers by tracking everything on their site and using the data they collect to come up with solutions for growth. Some of the world's largest companies convert their website visitors into buyers through their services. Jon is here to talk to about this little known powerhouse toolkit for both buyer and sellers. Episode Highlights: What Jon looks at before starting a CRO project for a client. Where CRO fits in for buyers and sellers in the e-commerce space. The four key areas of data to be looking at to optimize e-commerce conversions. Why CRO gets ignored so often. Helpful dashboard elements for the three types of online businesses: e-commerce, SaaS, content-based sites and how those elements improve business. How microgoals can add incrementally change your flow. What CRO advice Jon has for someone who may be getting ready to sell a business. Where The Good gets their information and what they do with it. AB testing tools Jon recommends for a new business owner getting started. How much time an entrepreneur should spend studying and preparing for a good CRO approach. How CRO practice can increase asset value exponentially for sellers and buyers. The benefit of working with an outsourced CRO team. Transcription: Joe: Mark, one of the things that we see happen often is people—we go to these events that we sponsor, meet some amazing entrepreneurs, and sometimes in little pockets of them you hear people talking about their top line revenue. It's really not what the focus should be. In many cases, it should be about their gross profit, their processes, and what they do to optimize and maximize their bottom line revenue. Because ultimately that's what the value of these businesses are based on. And as I understand you had Jon MacDonald on from The Good talking about CRO; Conversion Rate Optimization and how important it is to drive that up and what a great return on investment that can be. Mark: Yeah, that's right. I don't think that there's a topic I'm more passionate about yet equally horrible at than I am CRO; Conversion Rate Optimization. It's such a phenomenal field and when we look at what you can do using CRO techniques and methodology with a business it's rather remarkable. In fact, Jon quoted me a statistic in here that for every dollar a business invests in conversion rate optimization on average they get $9 back which is really, really amazing. I know that in the past I've hired a conversion rate optimization expert. And they cost a lot of money, right? So I was paying out I think like $2,000 a month. But you know what the first thing they did was? They saved me like $6,000 a month in advertising costs. Joe: That's incredible. Mark: I mean it's a net win. You're immediately seeing an ROI if you have somebody good at what they do. And when we think about CRO oftentimes we think okay we're going to change the color of this button bar, we're going to change the title on this, we're going to increase our sign-ups. What Jon and I talked about quite a bit more is the fact that CRO is much, much bigger than this. There is an entire customer journey, there's an entire user journey here, and there are all sorts of points along the way where this journey can be optimized and can be made more efficient for our clients. I know I've talked to clients in the past who have grown businesses massively by just spending literally years doing this and their traffic doesn't substantially change. But their revenue changes and their bottom line earnings change as well. It's a discipline that most of us ignore; low hanging fruit for almost all of our businesses. We should be doing it. Jon and I got to talk about some of the methodologies that you need to implement in order to really get going with some CRO optimization of any business for that matter. Joe: I think it's going to be a fascinating podcast. I'm going to listen to it myself. Before we jump to that folks be sure to tell us what the movie quote is. Send us a note so we can give you a shout out on the podcast. Alright, let's jump to it. Mark: Jon thanks so much for joining me. Jon: Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Mark: If you could can you provide a quick background on yourself to all the listeners? Jon: Sure. So I am CEO and founder of The Good. We are a conversion rate optimization firm. Now what that means is we help brands to convert more of their existing website traffic into customers. So we do that through data science. Helping brands to track every click and movement that's happening on their site and using that data to understand where people are dropping off in the process, why they're not converting, what's engaging and not being engaged with, and how to solve those problems. Mark: That's great. CRO is something of a—I wouldn't say a hobby of mine, I'm not very good at it but it's something that I'm fascinated by. I love the idea of being able to grow and sometimes pretty significantly grow a business without adding more traffic and scrapping forward for that more traffic but basically by improving that customer experience to the point where everything just kind of smoothens out and it just opens up more traffic internally but with the revenue of course; the conversions and everything else. Now in my understanding with your firm you guys have done some work with private equity firms as well that are coming into an acquisition of a web-based company and want to find some of those opportunities. Can you talk a little bit about that and maybe some of the scenarios that you've looked at there? Jon: Yeah. So typically when you're buying an e-com company the first thing you're looking to do is optimize the return on the investment you've just made. And that's why a lot of folks end up with us. Typically these brands have a lot of traffic coming in already. They're spending a bunch of money to drive traffic to the site but perhaps that's just not converting at the level they'd liked or they're not seeing as high of a ROAs or return on ad spend as they would like to see and they see that that's an opportunity for optimization. And that's typically how we end up starting those conversations. It's not unfamiliar with us. A few brands we've worked with have increased their conversion rates, gotten their ROIs up and then made an exit right after. So it happens on both sides. Brands who are looking to make a purchase and or have made a purchase come into us to help them to kind of optimize a little bit and then also companies who are looking to improve their site and optimize it as they get ready to sell and want to increase the value of their company. Mark: I often think that the CRO portion of a marketing mix is one of the items I think it's ignored the most often and is often one of the lowest bits of hanging fruit. And one of the things I think people forget about; I forget about it myself but CRO actually has kind of a double whammy effect for you, right? I ran an experiment on another business that I owned outside of Quiet Light Brokerage for getting people to sign up and I know my numbers pretty well. I know that every person that signs up even though they're signing up for free the value of that client is about $10, right. So I said okay I want to increase these free sign-ups more. But the result was I did increase the sign-ups, I did increase that conversion rate pretty significantly but the other benefit of that is that my cost of acquisition dropped. So not only was I getting more out of what was being sent to me but my advertising dollars dropped at the same time. And so I had this double effect of seeing an increase in my ROIs on both sides just from focusing on one thing. When you're talking to somebody who is preparing to sell; let's say it's an e-commerce business, what are some of the areas that you start to look to see where can you—what are you sort of tracking at a CRO project? Jon: Well, the first thing is are they tracking the right data? True conversion optimization should not be about going down a checklist of best practices. You can find those and Google those online and I can tell you that really the most effective way to optimize a site is to base it on every click and movement of your specific sites visitors and to make data back decisions on those actions that are being taken. So the best way to do that is to make sure you're tracking the right data. Now, of course, you want to follow GDPR and all of the other privacy regulations that are in place. So all the types of data that you really should be tracking are done in aggregate meaning it's not personally identifiable information. And really you don't need personal identifiable information. But there are really four key areas of data that you should be looking at. The first of course is Analytics. If you're looking to sell you're likely going to have Analytics and the buyer is likely going to dive into those Analytics. So if you're looking at something like Google Analytics out of the box let's be honest here it's meant to help you buy more Google Ads. So it's not that helpful in terms of optimizing your site. Now the best way to do that is to build some dashboards in Google Analytics that are more focused on conversions. And also make sure that you're tracking the right events on your site to get that data in. So that's one of the first places we look. The second pieces of data are interactions on your site in terms of content. So looking at things like heat maps; where are mouse movements happening around the site, click maps where are people clicking on a page, perhaps they're often—we almost always find that people are clicking on things that aren't clickable, and that's a good indicator that they should be. So it could be as simple as that. You know we also want to look at scroll maps; how far down the page are they going. We do eye tracking as well to understand what people are looking at and how long they're looking at that content. Lastly—well third I should say you want to do what's called user testing. So we've just talked about all these quantitative pieces of data that really tell you what people are doing. But it's really hard to get the why behind that from all of that data we just talked about. So user testing comes in and helps us understand why. Now, this is where we send people to the site who match the ideal customer profile and we ask them to complete tasks. And while they're completing those tasks we are recording their screen and their audio and we also have trained these people ahead of time to talk out loud about the experience that they're having. So they're going through a site and they're saying hey I'm trying to find this page and I can't find it in the navigation or understand how to get to that content that I'm looking for, I don't understand what the value proposition is here, or just common struggles that they might be having. And that really kind of coincides with the numerical data to tell us not only what they've done but also why they're doing that and it gives us some context behind that. And we really we do what's called remote unmoderated user testing. And what that is is a software tool we use usertesting.com most often. And what that means is it's a piece of software that lives on their home computer that allows us to collect all this data so they can do it in the comfort of their own environment as opposed to somebody standing over their shoulder. Now we've done both. We've been optimizing sites for over 10 years now and we've done both. And what we found is that we get much better data when its remote unmoderated. The people are comfortable and they don't feel pressure to come up with something on the spot and always be telling us what they're thinking. We just find it naturally happens when it's remote and unmoderated. So that works a lot better. The last piece of data is A-B testing or multivariate testing. This is where you say you have 100 people coming to a site, you can segment those visitors and show 50 the current version of a page or even small change on the site, maybe moving content around on a page, or adjusting some headlines things of that sort. And then you would show 50 the alternate page and you test some metrics out of that to understand which one is doing better; the page that exists or the changes that have been made. And we can get really large tests like changing entire pages or we can go really, really small like just changing one headline and seeing what the differences would be and then stacking a lot of those tests and the variations of those tests to truly understand how to optimize each step of that funnel again based on data. So instead of just guessing and launching those changes with this piece of data you're actually letting the consumer's actions, your specific sites visitor's actions and tell you what should be done to permanently change on your site. Mark: Okay. So I think that explanation was just great. I love the framework that you set up here but I think you just explained why CRO gets ignored so often. And that is there is a lot of stuff to set up here and to configure and I just let's start right at the beginning with Analytics. You're right right out of the box how useful is Analytics. It's interesting. You get to see how many people are coming to your site. You can see what pages are popular and some decent information out of the gate. But really Analytics starts to blossom when you start building dashboards and segments and everything else. But getting into that; I mean that's kind of a discipline in and of itself. Jon: Of course. Mark: I know we could probably talk about this all day and different dashboards for different types of businesses, what are some things that are some useful elements with a dashboard that somebody might want to consider building? And I want to break this up into maybe three different types of sites. And if you don't work with any of these types of sites that's fine, just let me know. But e-commerce would be one, SaaS would be another, and then content-based sites that are really looking more for that user engagement and reading and how much are they digesting the information. So what are some dashboards that you would recommend people look into for each of these? Jon: Well, there's a couple built into Google Analytics that get ignored pretty quickly. On all three of these sites it would be helpful. But the first is page flow. What is the flow that people are taking through the site? And most people ignore this because in Google Analytics the view is one where it shows the funnels but then has lines drawn between them and it looks extremely complicated at first. So most people see that, they get overwhelmed, and they leave and don't really pay attention to the data. But there's so much rich data there you can dive into. And you don't have to do anything other than have the snippet on your site. So it's not requiring you to set anything else up necessarily. So that's a great place to start. For e-com businesses we often find one tidbit; a lot of companies no matter what their size is when they first come to us one of the first things we always check is do they have the e-commerce tracking engaged. It's one button to turn on and off. So many brands don't have that turned on and they lose so much rich data that Google automatically starts sorting through and looking for. So for e-com just having that turned on could be amazing. And it's so easy. Now in terms of metrics that we're looking for on e-commerce conversion rate in terms of to purchase but also what are the other metrics that you're looking for? We call them micro conversions; things that you know people are doing that influence that purchase. Is it signing up for an email? Is it where they visit certain pages on your site? So we know that if they are visiting or even just like a great instance of this is if they're visiting a product detail page but then they click to read more of the user reviews. That's always a great indicator because what we find is consumers who read reviews convert much higher. Because often consumers are going to trust the content that's in reviews much more than what the brand even says about their products because it's coming from people like them. They also; for a clothing site for instance or shoe site, it's really helpful because they will use that to better understand sizing, especially relative sizing. So a medium runs a little larger you're probably going to want a small things of that sort. That's really, really helpful for people who are really there to dive deeper and answer specific questions that are all buying questions. Mark: Let me stop you on that real quick because let's say that you start measuring these micro goals. What does that give you? I mean I would imagine a lot of the people that are taking those actions already have a high user intent. Jon: Right. Mark: In my head I'm thinking okay let's say sizing options, you said I want to increase the number of micro-goals of people checking out the different sizing options. Does that really increase each individual user's intent or you're really just more making the flow easier for those that are already there? Jon: Both. If you're finding that out of 100 visitors that 50 of them are looking at sizing and of that 50, 25 convert you really want to try to influence that metric. So if you know that people are looking for sizing then make that information surface at higher so it's easier to find. Now people only visit websites for two reasons. This is outside of Facebook or anywhere that you're just trying to maybe perhaps spend some time; kill some time. Now they are there because they have a pain or a need and they think that your website can help solve that pain or need. And two once they realize that it can or they believe that it can, they want to do research on how to convert as quickly and easily as possible. And that means that they've done that research and now they're ready to purchase. So you need to make those two things as easy to do as possible. Now it sounds pretty simplistic but understanding as you go deeper on those what people are looking to research and then surfacing that information as high as possible is really important. So making that as easy to find and do that research. So if you know that people who convert always are looking for sizing information but they have to go into the reviews to find it. That's a problem. So instead make it easier for people to understand what size they should wear. And if that's the case they're going to convert much easier. And then when they're ready to convert it'll make that checkout flow, that conversion process as easy as possible. And when you look at lead generation sites which is the second one of this one that you've mentioned, it's the same thing with form completions. We often work with companies who have made it very easy for somebody to come to the site and do research about what particular products or offering that that company has that aligns with their need. But we also see at times the consumers come to the site and they're looking at the home page and the value proposition is not clearly stated. And so how many times have you been to a B2B service page website and you look at it and you said I have no idea what these people do. So that can be a big challenge; just understanding is the consumer in the right place and allowing them to do that research. But then once they get to the form they're asking for a ton of information that isn't really necessary at that first step. So they might be asking how many employees do you have, or what industry are you in; all these things that could have been filtered prior to them filling out a form by just saying this product is best for people who have this many employees, this much revenue, this industry, and things of that sort. So trying to help people understand if they're in the right place and how to convert as quickly and easily as possible can apply to both e-com and lead gen. Mark: That's helpful. Let's go on to one of the other ones here and that's the scroll maps and click data. A, where do you get this sort of information? Do you have any servers that you recommend? And then B, once you get in what do you do with this information once you start to get it? Jon: Yeah. So Hotjar is likely your best fit. Now there are tons of different heat mapping softwares out there right now. Crazy Egg is another good one. There's a few of us who—we find Hotjar has the most reliable data and also for the cost has the best benefits. So I believe it's about $9 a month and it's totally worth the data you get back for $9; easily a large return on your investment there. Now, what should you do with that data? Well, Hotjar will let you track again all the mass movements that happen on your site and give you a heat map of those. Now for those people who aren't familiar with the heat map it just shows you from red to—and then cools off from there; so red, yellow, green, blue, and then the lack of colors where people didn't use their mouse at all on a page. So it allows you to really look at that and say where are people interacting. Now, a quick tidbit on this; on desktop, your eye will follow your cursor. So heat mapping is not so much about the cursor movement as it is about a good indicator of where people are looking and what they're engaging with on your page. Understanding just where a cursor is going on a page is not as helpful. So that's a better way we think to look at it is what content are people engaging with. And that's what's really helpful there. Now, what can you do with that data? Perhaps you find that there is a piece of data that you had found earlier that people really engage with every single time they purchase. Well it's really helpful to surface that content up higher on the page and then track whether or not people are engaging with that over time; so testing that by understanding what content to engage and moving that content to a different area of the page and then looking at the heat map to see if it's being engaged with. Mark: So let's move on then to A-B testing and this is a personal pet peeve of mine because all the tools out there just feel—at least that I've used feel expensive and kind of shoddy and maybe I'm not using them right. Are there tools that you particularly recommend? What do you think about let's say Google Optimize as a free option there? And we'll start with that. I would also like to get into setting up experiments that actually make sense. Jon: Right, of course. Mark: Let's talk first about the tools. Jon: So there are a numerous number of tools for optimization as you mentioned. It's pretty common now to try to sell a whole optimization platform; so one tool that can do everything. The great thing about Google Optimize is that it doesn't do that. It focuses just on running those tests. And it also integrates extremely well with Analytics so you can pull segments out of Analytics that you've set up and run tests just for those segments. Now it is free and it does have some limitations in the sense that you can run a limited number of tests at the same time. There are some ways to get around that. I would be happy to chat about that with anybody at some point but really the idea here is Google Optimize has come a really long way over the past year. It has in terms of pure testing the same functionality as a platform like VWO or Visual Website Optimizer which is another one that I would tend to recommend if you want to get over the number of tests limit that Optimize has VWO is a great tool. It works extremely well for the testing side. It has a whole bunch of other functionality that at The Good we don't typically use. But if you're looking for a full platform it could be okay. And then if you're in the enterprise space Optimizely is really the gold standard. They were the first really solid tool. They made a shift about two years ago to focus exclusively on the enterprise side. So we still have some clients that are on their legacy plans from five to six years ago that are paying 200 bucks a month. They don't offer anything like that anymore. It's now probably closer to 10,000 a month just for their platform. But if you are looking to optimize every experience; your mobile experience, and your app experience, and your desktop or web experience as well Optimizely is really where you'd want to play. But you need to have the budget and the traffic levels especially. This is another thing and I think most companies tend to want to jump into running testing but they don't have enough traffic to do it. And they sign up for something like VWO and start paying the fees for the platform and they aren't seeing the results very quickly. That's where it can get frustrating. You really need to make sure you have enough traffic to be able to see statistically significant results in a meaningful timeframe to get the return on that investment. Mark: What would you recommend for sites that have low traffic amounts? Jon: I would recommend playing around with Google Optimize but running bigger tests. So what do I mean by bigger tests? Try changing an entire page content; don't just change one piece of content on a page. So the bigger the test the quicker you're typically going to see some results positive or negative. Now it's hard to get fine-grained but testing even bigger tests like that you will see increases in the key metrics that you should be tracking like conversion rate, average order value, things of that sort that really are going to drive impactful meaningful improvement for your brand. Mark: Yeah, that's great. I've noticed the same thing in the testing that I've done there where—and this leads to the next segment that I wanted to talk about that and that is saying that meaningful tests where the whole sale page changes. I just ran a test on another business I own where we did a whole sale page difference and the lift was significant. It was almost definitely the conversion rate on a completely different page design. When you're setting up a new test especially if you're coming in cold and say that you bought a business and you're now working on different ways to be able to grow that business that you just acquired, where are some places that you would typically start with testing? Let's assume that there is enough traffic there to be able to run more of this fine-grained sort of tests. Would you recommend some of these bigger tests to begin with or maybe a more nuanced approach? Jon: I would typically recommend a little more nuanced approach that is based on the results from that user testing. So by starting; I mentioned four areas and I mentioned the A-B testing last because the other three are really going to help you determine what you should be testing. And that's almost as important as running tests at all. So if you are going; there are so many brands that we see that just sign up for these platforms to run tests and start running tests and they just randomly cherry pick ideas to run but they don't have any hypotheses behind them or data to back those up. So really again understanding the data has to come first so that you can make some data back decisions about what to test. Now, what's going to be impactful? I'll tell you that if you start reading general articles online about testing the first thing they're going to say is things like button colors, or maybe a headline change, or image change. Those very rarely actually move the needle. So you need to find that balance between a whole site or a page change and changing one small element on the page because it's in the middle where you're really going to see the results. But also the best way to be thinking about this is the testing needs to be a three or six-month plan. So that doesn't mean that you should expect one test to run that long but you should be thinking okay I'm running this test to make what learning do I want out of that test; positive or negative change? That's fine but you should always be learning something. In fact when a test doesn't have the outcome that we want here at The Good or that we were expecting I should say we don't call it a failure; we call it a learner. Because we're always learning something out of that. That will influence what the next test is that we want to run. And then you continue to stair step that. Conversion optimization should really be thought of as an iterative compounding effect over time. There's nothing that you're going to change on your site that is going to double your conversion rate overnight short of massive discounting. And I just call that margin drain. That's not an optimization. So you really want to be thinking about this in small incremental gains. That each test is going to help you get that will have a compounding effect over those three to six months. And so impactful tests are ones that you know are building the foundation for a larger change that you would like to see. Mark: Talking to about this it seems so clear that you're setting this up into almost two distinct steps, right? The bulk of what you suggest of these four suggestions really relies and rests first on having good data and a good data framework for understanding your site and your business and knowing what sort of metrics you want. And once those metrics are set up then you can take a look and say okay well let's look at this or what would happen if we were to change this micro goal? Does this micro goal really have a correlation with revenue or is it just something that we're kind of seeing right now? Maybe there is no correlative effect. Maybe we can increase a micro goal and it doesn't change anything at all. But I think the challenge then becomes not necessarily how do you run a really great A-B test but how do you set up a really good framework of data and data collection and those dashboards as well. What advice would you give to an entrepreneur who's thinking about their business and saying okay I know I need to get data on my business, I know I have Analytics set up maybe I turn on the e-commerce tracking but I've not ever created segments. I don't really know how to use segments; 10,000-foot view, what's a way that we can instruct the entrepreneur here to just start understanding what they need to start setting up for a good data framework? Jon: Well I mentioned the other three areas besides A-B testing and you don't have to go super deep on those. I know there's—you could. As you mentioned earlier we could spend a whole hour just talking about each of those individually perhaps. I think you need to start somewhere but just having that data tracking in place and then paying attention to it; look at it once a week spend; set an hour side on your calendar, just spend an hour once a week looking at that data. You will start to see trends. You will start to see things that help you to better understand how people are engaging with your website. And just giving that that hour per week will put you miles ahead of the competition because you're going to start to see those trends and the actions that people are taking on your site. And you'll start to have empathy for how they use your site. Now I often like to say that it's really hard to read the label from inside the jar. So many site owners or brands or e-com managers what they do is they build the site and all the content and the navigation for them because they know the product. But what happens if somebody comes in via Google to search in a topic. Google thought that site might be the best answer they send them there. They're missing all of that knowledge about the products they sell. So when they go to the navigation and if it's not set up appropriately the consumer has no idea what they're looking at or how to figure out what product is the best one for them. So that's another way that user testing can really kind of help. It's brief empathy for the end user and helps you see it from that perspective as opposed to somebody who built the site or is on the site every single day. So I think two things; one, just have the data and look at it and you'll start to build up that empathy. And that's really going to help you understand what you should test and where you should go from there. Then secondly you can really start to dive deeper. You can then say oh I want to run scroll tracking on these pages because I'm finding that people aren't reading this type of content that's further down the page and I want to verify that. So you start to post questions. It's not about the data; it's really about asking the right questions once you have that data in place. Mark: You're echoing exactly what I heard at Traffic & Conversion this past year. I went to a CRO talk and one of the bits of advice that he gave was to start with the questions that you want answered because then the reports will build themselves. If your question is how many people are signing up for this email list and then taking a second action well now you know the report that you need to build there is a report that shows just that information. The other thing that you're saying that I think is fantastic and this is the trend in marketing in 2019 and frankly it started I think as early as 2017 and has been building steam and that is this personalization; both of the user experience but also in the way that we think as far as marketers and the internet is no longer just a big cold faceless place. Let's start putting a face to those numbers that we're seeing in Analytics and understand those are real people, real eyeballs and what is their experience like. And what you said you have some empathy for the user and what they're going through because then you can start asking those questions and building the reports. And then once you build the reports, you've answered the questions, now you can start forming the thesis of okay this is what we're seeing as far as the answer to this question. Now finally once we get all this in place lets A-B test. Does that summarize it? Jon: Yes; very, very well. Mark: Awesome. Alright, let's talk about wins. Jon: Yes. Mark: I could do your job. Jon: I'm looking forward to it. Mark: I know that for a fact. Let's talk about wins. Let's talk about some of the—without getting and divulging clients or anything like that, let's talk about this is what you want to put on your site as far as the testimonial because it's eye-popping and then also the realistic sort of wins that you would see say over six to 12 months from a CRO campaign. Jon: Yeah. You know on average we see about a 9:1 return on investment. So for every dollar that's put into conversion optimization on average, you're going to see about a $9 increase in revenue. Now there is not one single metric that you can do that's going to have a bigger impact on your site than focusing on conversions. But I think the industry of conversion rate optimization gets shoehorned often into that one factor which is conversion. We've talked about a lot of different metrics today that really need to be improved and optimized and that all goes back into conversion optimization as a whole. Of course, average order value, cart abandonment rate, we talked a lot about ROAs and return on investment of ad spend. I think in a lot of that is what needs to happen there. Now specific wins, I have a bunch of case studies up on our site. They're public so I'm happy to talk about some of those. For instance, Easton Baseball; if you don't know who Easton Baseball is they make aluminum baseball bats mainly and softball bats. About 99% of college swings are done with an Easton baseball bat. They pretty much own baseball bats for Little League. And if you're a Little League player you're going to use one of their bats. Now, having empathy for the consumer; what we found when we came into their site was you go to their product page and it would be a wall of bats. Now if you imagine what a bat looks like online and you see a whole bunch of them. You have no idea what the differences are, right? And they're just maybe different colors but you really don't know because you can't feel the weight difference or really see how the size differences of the bats online that well. And especially if you're a parent with a kid in Little League, you have no idea what bat you should be buying. And we did a bunch of user research and what we found was that consumers were coming to the site to buy a bat for their kid and they would buy the bat take it to practice and had spent a couple of hundred dollars on this bat and then the umpire tells them they're not allowed to swing with that bat. Now the reason is that all these different Little Leagues have certifications for their bats and if their bat does not have that certification stamp on it you can't use it. Also, either your kid swings for the fences or he's just trying to get on base. And there are different types of hitters, and different bats fit with different types of hitters. There are also different price points that parents want to spend. So there's some that might want to spend $100, some are willing to spend 500. It really varies. Using just those three metrics what we found was that so many parents are buying the wrong bats that they were getting frustrated and there was a high return rate. They were calling customer service quite a bit. Well, what we did after learning all of that is we built up bat finder. So instead of having parents navigate through all these bats and look at all of them and spend time trying to figure that out, they simply just answer three questions and those three questions kicked out three or four bats for them. And so these are the ones you should really look at. Now once you got to those bat pages they often had; Easton had put in a ton of technical terms that were branded around what the bats did. So I can't remember the names exactly but instead of just saying this bat reduces sting because with an aluminum bat if you hit it really well and you're hitting for the fences you can sting your hands really bad. And Easton has some wonderful technology that eliminated that bat sting and still let you get the great pop of the bat to hit it over the fence for a home run. Well, what we found was they had branded that term instead of just saying it reduces bat sting they came up with some random term for that. And consumers didn't know what it meant. So we helped them solve that problem. And that was found through user testing and just having empathy for what the consumer is going through. So we fixed those two things on their site and they saw over 600% increase in revenue year over year and their conversion rates skyrocketed. I think it was 187%. And you know when you think about it just having a little bit of empathy and making those two small changes can have such a big impact. And that's really what conversion rate is about. It's understanding what people are doing, what they're not doing, and how they're engaging, and using that data to then inform what should be changed and tested on a site. Mark: Yeah. And just to put this in terms of acquisitions; bringing it back to really the subject of this podcast here, I want people to think about this in terms of what I mentioned earlier on the podcast. If you're seeing a 600% increase in your revenue which is phenomenal you're also seeing a reduction in your cost of advertising to acquire a client which means your bottom line margin is actually probably improving more than that 600%. And that's an assumption on my part. But let's for the sake of argument just say that it also is increasing by 600% at a minimum, it might be even increasing more. And now you're taking the multiple approach of maybe for an e-commerce business 3, 3.5, maybe 4 and you can start seeing how much you're growing the asset value of a business that you own; maybe you acquired or you're preparing to sell. You are seeing significant gains in that asset value of what you're hanging onto to the point where the numbers really become kind of silly to even say it because it doesn't sound believable. But that's the low hanging fruit of CRO is the money that you said 9:1 investment to payback ratio. That's phenomenal and for preparing to sell or buying and trying to grow a business asset value you're not only getting that 9:1 you're getting the multiple on top of that as well. That's phenomenal. Jon: Yeah. And I've specifically mentioned Easton because it's a public knowledge but after about 18 months to two years after we helped them optimize their site and then moved in and help them optimize their mobile as well for even larger gains there they did sell to another private equity firm and had a very good return on their investment there overall and that was almost entirely fueled by the digital side and the effort they'd all put in there. Mark: That's awesome. Where can people learn more about you and more about your company? Jon: Sure. Yeah. So The Good you can find us online at TheGood.com. That's just TheGood.com and you can sign up for our insights there. So if you liked a lot of the tidbits and helpful tactics I talked about today we do produce one great article per week about learning. There are no sales pitches involved it's truly just educational content about conversion optimization; things that you can take home and do to your site and start thinking in this way. We fully recognize that it is really hard for one person to have all of the skill sets at their company to do conversion optimization. I think you talked about this earlier when you said hey you just mentioned all these things and that's the challenge most people have around optimization. It's true. It's really hard for one person to do all of that. And so we try to help educate as much as we can around all of this type of things. But TheGood.com is the best way to get a hold of us. Feel free to email me directly if you have questions. I'm happy to answer questions that come my way it's just jon@thegood.com. And I do try to read and respond to every email. So I will do my best. Mark: Yeah. That's great. And as far as the task list, I mean you're exactly right. The fact is CRO is a mix of being somewhat of a data scientist and there's also a technical side to it as well being able to get all the integrations right and then there's also the creative side as well to understand how to really understand the user testing and how that empathy and then be creative with the tests and ask the right questions. It's very difficult to find somebody who can master all three of those skills and those abilities. So working with an outsourced team; I think CRO is one of those things where doing it alone is probably not the best approach unless you're just really, really some sort of a renaissance man who can have these multiple disciplines. Thank you so much for coming on Jon. This has been an awesome discussion I'd begin maybe because I just love CRO but I appreciate you coming on and sharing some of the tips. Jon: Well, thank you so much for having me, Mark. I really do appreciate it. Links and Resources: The Good Jon's Email Hotjar Optimizely

Getting his start in e-commerce proved to be a series of false starts for today's guest, Jaryd Krause. While he knew that getting away from a career in plumbing and having the opportunity to travel the world was the ultimate goal, it took him some time to figure out how to get there. After several failed attempts, Jaryd realized he was not approaching his e-commerce career the right way and still had a lot to learn. Armed with the realization that what they say about ninety percent of all startups failing is true, he figured out that he needed to go in and buy an established business that had successfully passed the startup phase. He started to buy businesses and be so successful at it that people began asking him for advice on doing the same. Nowadays, Jaryd is running his businesses and coaching people on how to buy websites and earn passive income while following their dreams. Episode Highlights: How Jaryd got his start and some of his past failures in e-commerce. Where and how he found the first business that he bought. The advantage of looking for listings with professionals brokers. Some mistakes Jaryd has seen with buyers he's advised. How he guides buyers to align the business they are looking to buy with their personality and past experience. How Jaryd teaches his clientele to become attractive buyers. Advice he would give to someone who is coming into the e-commerce realm for the first time. Trends in e-commerce and where Jaryd sees the opportunity for growth. One last tip Jaryd would give to someone just starting out in e-commerce Transcription: Joe: Hey Mark one of the things we need to do is to plug the movie intro. Folks if you know that what that movie was shoot us a note and we will give you an audio mention. Chris our content director is big on that. It's awesome and no cheating though. We've had a few folks that admitted that they looked it up on Google. Don't do that just send us a note by listening. Mark: Yeah, I think both folks have actually guessed right. Joe: Yes. Mark: I'm looking at you, Mike Nuñez. Joe: Alright, listen. You had Jaryd Krause on the podcast talking about something that we talk about all the time but it's good to hear it from someone else. We technically as Jason will always say our client is the seller. We have a contractual obligation to the seller. But as I always say to buyers look I can't help my client unless I help you as well; the buyer, and constantly having conversations with buyers on the approach to buy a business. It's great to hear from someone else. That's what Steven does. You say he's from Australia. You had a—not Steven; Jaryd, you had a conversation with him about this and his job. His process is actually teaching entrepreneurs or people that might be from the corporate world how to buy an online business is that right? Mark: That's right. So he does coaching in this and obviously, he has a lot of background experience in this as well. He started out buying smaller sites and kind of building up. And we just talked—had a conversation about his views on buying which is I think fascinating for us to do in our role because you and I have some pretty set ideas as to the best way to go about buying online businesses. We do this from the seat that we sit in which is working on behalf of sellers and representing them. But like you said we can't do our job well unless buyers are also doing the job well and a good deal; a deal that's good for a buyer is oftentimes a good deal that's good for our client as well. Because if everybody wins, everybody's happy afterwards, everybody's making money; that's the goal, right? So Jaryd and I talked a lot about some of the things he looks at. What does he look at and what does he coach when he's teaching people how to make that first acquisition. So some of the things we talked about are like what are the struggles that people run into? How to get over this imposter syndrome that some buyers might feel when they're coming into an acquisition like I'm really not the same class of this guy that built this business. And he gives some really nice practical tips on how to overcome some of those problems and address those head-on. So I want to get right into this episode here and just listen to what Jaryd has to say and this conversation. And just by the way a huge asterisk, here I apologize. My microphone wasn't working properly on this. I thought I was recording through my regular podcast mic and was just going through my laptop mic so it's going to be awful. But here's the good news. I'm not really the person that you need to listen to. You need to listen to Jaryd. He's got the good information in this episode. Joe: Well, let's get right to it then. Mark: Alright, Jaryd thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. I don't know if you've listened to many of our previous podcasts but we typically have our guests introduce themselves. I figured you know yourself quite better than I know you. So tell us a little bit about yourself. Jaryd: Thanks so much for having me on. I really appreciate it. So with about myself I'm from the Gold Coast, Australia. I love surfing and that was my goal to start making money online so I could travel around the world and surf. I got started in this a few years ago now and I started buying one business and then I bought another one and another one. And the reason I came into this is because I tried to start my own websites Mark and I just sucked. And I failed a fair few times. And I started failing forward and came across that saying 90% of startups fail. Well, it's actually the studies being done with that one. So I realized if 90% of startups fail why don't I go and buy a website that's past that 90% failure rate so I'm not just struggling and struggling and struggling. And I did that. I taught myself how to buy a website and then I got a little bit of help from different mentors along the way. And then I bought one and another one and it kept growing and eventually replaced my income to a point where people started asking me how to do it. And that's where I am [inaudible 00:05:30.1] in that position of teaching people as well just basically from my learning. Mark: So you said you tried starting some websites and they failed. Can you share any of those with us? Not to make you relive failures of the past but [inaudible 00:05:43.7] so you should know. Jaryd: Yeah. Well, the hardest one was—so I was in Egypt and I realized I didn't want to go back home broke to my job as a plumber. And I'm like I need to go here. So I thought what I really want to do is travel the world to make money online. So I typed into Google how to travel the world to make money online. I literally typed that in and what popped out was people travel blogging. And I just went yeah that's me. I'm going to go away and start travel blogging. And I did that for I think bit a bit over two years and I made a little bit of money. But what I realized eventually was just the competition was so fierce. Everybody with an iPhone was my competition pretty much. And it was a good value because I learned a lot on how to grow websites and how to build websites and all that sort of stuff. And that was—they did flop though like I'm just spending so much time on it and it wasn't really worth what I was getting back like at all. I was spending a lot of time on it. But that time grew into a lot of knowledge and then I thought alright I'm going to start; the second one was I'm going to start a drop shipping business. And I got home and I got my phone and I just spent a month calling people to become suppliers for this store. And it was called AusGlobetrotter—oh no it wasn't called that, my blog was called AusGlobetrotter and my drop shipping store was Trotter Gear. And I just wanted to put up a whole bunch of travel products like backpacks and heaps of these different types of travel products. And I got a bunch of suppliers and I built this store and I started making a few sales but it took a fair bit of— Mark: What year was this? Jaryd: 2013. And I started making a few sales and I'm like alright cool now I need to double this down and I forgot how long it takes to really build a business and get traction. Especially if I was doing it for free and not using paid advertising. And eventually, I realized that I was just coming up against some pretty fierce competition. You know all these big guys that are selling hundreds of these a week and I'm selling like one every now and then. And it was pretty deflating where I just I bit the bullet and ran around I'm just going to have to turn everything off and start again. And that's been two businesses that I started and I learned a lot. I didn't make a lot. Mark: You value was in the education of going through that. Drop shipping is something that is a tough category to compete in especially if you're doing that around 2013. There's too much and a lot of people are getting [inaudible 00:08:43.4] drop shipping. So how did you start to realize well why don't I go ahead and buy businesses and websites that are already been established? When did you buy your first site? Jaryd: So I bought my first one in 2014; at the end of 2014. And I was pretty hair locked; I rushed off into it and it was a good investment and I got all my return back and everything like that and it kept growing but I should have taken a bit more time and a bit more—build a better process on due diligence. So I don't know if that's the same for everybody when they're buying their first website. But it was certainly the case for me. I didn't really seek out coaches or help or mentors I was just running it on the fly and yeah early 2014 and that—but when I did buy it I realized like wow I'm earning so much more money from the share market when I was investing the share market. Any sort of investment I have ever made I was making more money and I realized that was the norm at that time with the returns or the multiples that were around just in that year. Mark: So how did you start looking for your first business and how has that changed? I think one of the problems that buyers have today is deal flow, right? Every business I just put on the market that is worth looking at has literally dozens if not hundreds of people looking at it at the same time. Where did you find that first one and what are you doing these days to really secure good deal flow? Jaryd: Yeah. So I found out about this marketplace Flippa. I went on there and realized that was a lot of not so great listings and much like—and I've spoken to the CEO of Flippa a couple of months ago and they're making some amazing changes; new CEO, it's really coming around which is great. But then they just hadn't had people that like though you were allowed to sign up anonymously and people were listing a lot of junky sites on there and it was—I felt it was a bit of the Wild Wild West. And I was just trying to find this diamond in the rough. And I looked for a long time. And that's where I bought my first business. And where it's changed now is I'm not so much on those marketplaces that are out now. It's because you've got to sift through so many listings to find something that's decent. And a lot of my clients they do that and they say I don't really spend too much time on there. I say have a look every now and then but where we're really finding them is the brokers like you guys where the listings; you guys have your brand name. You have a reputation. You don't want to list something that's a junky website or not so great. And that's why you have your process before you list it for sale. You don't want to sell something to somebody and it just goes down that go blow like that because people are going to complain and bad reviews; all that sort of stuff. And that's why I like to look to the brokers like you guys because they're more quality listings and there's already been a slight bit of vetting done and it makes the process so much easier when you come to do your due diligence. You guys actually help us buyers get more information rather than us to have to rely on sellers as like yeah maybe I'll sell my site here and I'll see if I can get some interest and they're just not like very prompt with their response should I say. Mark: Sure. So are you still active in buying sites? Jaryd: No. Personally I haven't bought a site in a while. I'm really—I do look at a fair few sites though especially through my clients. I help vendors in due diligence processing and stuff like that. So it's great to keep me in the game. If I wasn't doing that I'd be actively just purchasing. But yeah, I learned stuff. It's great too because I learned so much from that process too with my clients. How I can sort of take a backward step and not be fully in the game but I'm a bit out and just have a better—it's a really good approach for both clients and myself. We've both gained so much from it. Mark: Yeah. So now you've transitioned over into this [inaudible 00:12:58.8] because of just how you're doing and all that so [inaudible 00:13:01.7] learn is that—I'd like to pick your brain a little bit on what you're telling people in this coaching process and some of the problems that you're seeing. So let's start off with this, out of the coaching clients or the clients that you're coaching, these are all people that are looking to buy websites and they're going out there and looking to maybe build a portfolio of these sites and getting into the game. What are maybe some of the top mistakes that you see most commonly among people that are looking to buy? Jaryd: Yeah. The most common one is where people just start seeing dollar signs. They start to see—and a lot of my clients haven't really known that this industry even existed. And they start looking at sites much like a lot of people listening to this already know that your website is much like a property website where they can scroll through and look at listings. It's the same when people find this out. I noticed when I first come to this like oh my god I can buy this business this much and the multiples this much and I just go and this is in my end and it's only taking x amount of hours and they just go; they want to rush through it. And that's probably the biggest mistake is they sell themselves into the business. And what I've noticed is that sometimes whether you like this guy or not—what Donald Trump says sometimes the best investments are the ones we never make. And I find—and this is what I tell my clients as well is that if you can't sell yourself out of the business because the data shows it is so good. I feel that it's an investment that you need to really pursue. But instead of trying to sell yourself into the business why don't you try and sell yourself out of it and if you can't then move forward with it. In saying that cover all your steps during due diligence. And that's probably the biggest thing that I find when people come and want to buy a website. The second thing is a lot of people don't know so much about SEO and traffic and websites; how they work and stuff like that. So I have a few—a process and a few lessons teaching people what it actually is first, how it is incorporated in websites, and what it means for a website, and how important it is to gain traffic and to build your business up. And then there are obviously different techniques of marketing. And I think whether it's paid or SEO and a lot of SEO now is paid SEO. But that totally; they are two very important things. I would say a top thing as a third thing would be people being confident in speaking to the seller and knowing what questions to ask and knowing how to ask those questions in a way that it's a conversation. I noticed when I first had my first conversation with the seller is I asked a question about SEO and then I started talking about the finances for 10 minutes and then I went back to SEO. And I could tell after I came back off that call and a few months later I could tell the seller was just like these guys need to be game and I made the call really clunky because I was asking questions haphazardly. So that's a big thing is coaching people to have the confidence to speak to sellers because when they're first doing it they're like oh my god I'm speaking to like—I know that when I first did that I was like I'm speaking to a business juggernaut here that's owned business. They're a gun, I'm nobody. And just teaching people that like hey you've learned so much through this process of working for me, you actually know a lot more than you think you do. It's just a state; the state of being really. So getting them to state and really understanding like you've got this and that's a huge thing that we have to teach for sure. Mark: I want to go back to your first point here, the first mistake that you put out there, and that's the people that are seeing just the dollar signs, right? [inaudible 00:16:52.3] into the business and it's just that I've definitely seen that. Personally, I've experienced that as well [inaudible 00:16:58.1] a couple of years ago where I talked about in that position that I made that was a mistake and I did just that. I sold myself into the business and I just flew completely past all the red flags and caution signs and everything else and I thought I can take care of this [inaudible 00:17:16.0] I know what I'm doing like I can somehow get around the work which you can't. But I don't want to talk about the extremes of that because you talked about being able to sell yourself out of this. So you sell yourself out of this, you [inaudible 00:17:29.8] it doesn't make sense. In my experience, there are some personalities though out there that A. either will privately still look at the data in a way that they're selling themselves into the business. So you look at the data and you rather excuse the stuff that doesn't make sense or you rationalize ways that makes sense for you. Or you just hyper focus on the benefits. And I've seen the flipside as well. I've talked to buyers that have been looking for businesses now for three or four years and there's always something wrong with what they're looking at which I get. How do you coach your client to balance that out and to be able to really take that objective step back to say look this buyer I know that you're risk-averse and buying any web-based business is risky. There's going to be risks in there. Or on the flip side hey slow down pump the brakes a little bit we need to take an objective standpoint. Generally just how somebody can do get that on top of text maybe of what type of personality they are? Jaryd: Yeah it is definitely other than just a personality thing I think that's a huge point and probably is but it's also where you are at in your journey and whether you're just on a; at different times on my journey I'm being so gung ho and then a lot of times like just being very stand back-ish. As for tips on how to navigate that is I think people if they ask themselves like alright here's if I just do a massive pros and cons list. And they go here's what could happen that I don't want to happen. And you know here's the cons and here's the pros and then not just have yourself look at it but have somebody outside of being invested in this vehicle of investment to look at it as well. And I think that's very helpful and that works for most of my clients because I get to look at it because I'm not like invested. And I had a call with a kid yesterday and he was like yeah I want to go out and buy this business. I'm like do you think this is—and I didn't say like don't buy this business. I'm just asking questions in a way that helped him understand whether it was right for him or not because that's when we get the most profound learning; it's when we ask them questions and they come up and they ask these themselves rather than I just blurt the answers onto them. But I feel that that's a really good technique of getting somebody else to outside of it have a look at the numbers and the pros and cons and then that person asking the person who is looking on the business like are you willing to weigh up these risks, are you willing to take on these risks with the possibility of achieving X result? And I've done that with my second business with my dad and my third business with my dad. And my dad I love him so much but with parents what I find is they just want to protect you. And they love you but they just want to protect you. And dad was like saying like no this is a terrible, terrible business. And a lot of the business was—the financials were like; because I was buying in Australian dollars; I wanted to buy in Australian dollars because I was buying it from an Aussie seller. But I converted to US dollars for where the platform they're selling it on and then also from US dollars into a different currency that they were trading through. And it made the financials very, very messy. And my dad just like flat out refused. Do not buy this business. And I rushed off and I didn't rush off; sorry it took me like—I went through and I thought about this and our process for over a month. And I asked myself am I willing to take this risk to possibly achieve X? And the answer was yes because I knew the risk. I was willing to take it to achieve that. And it worked out amazingly well for me. But I think that's a great process that people can do. Mark: Yeah. That's good. I think a lot of this actually ties into my next question because you have said the third mistake that you see was that confidence speaking to a seller. Now when you were speaking to sellers you had a little bit about imposter syndrome. First of all wondering why am I even on the phone, and you're kind of all over the place with that and giving the impression of not really being up for the game. I know we talked a lot to buyers and on this podcast, you talked a lot about making a good impression to a seller, right? Sellers in today's market they have choices in who's going to buy their business usually. And sometimes the best offer doesn't win because of their buyer. So there might be another buyer who has a better offer and [inaudible 00:22:15.2] paper. But if a seller might know the buyer better then they'd go with them. So there a process that you really use to ask the right questions and stay on track in making sure that here's the financial questions and now here's your product sourcing questions or your content guidelines or whatever type of business. Do you teach a method for this for looking at approaches to buyer and seller conference calls? Jaryd: Yeah. And that's definitely a good question. Like how do you become an attractive buyer? Because you're so right; there's people that know their business and there's people that want to sell their business to somebody that can take it to the next level and not someone is going to just butcher it since they get it. And that's hardly—I think that's really important for everybody who's a buyer looking to buy a business if you can understand that and really respect that business, not just go—I mean they come in and just be a Wild Wild West cowboy and do this sort of stuff. I think that's a really good place to come from when you do go to jump on the phone is respect that that person has put a lot into that business. And if you come from a place of respect the rest will fall into place. But as in the techniques I feel on how to be attractive buyer is to ensure that you do as much research and you know as much as you can about online businesses. And you know the lingo. Like when people first thought they may not know what SEO is or SEM or CRO and all these different types of terms. If you can speak the language of the seller that's going to definitely gain you some points I feel. And if you are respectful and you make sure the conversation flows quite well and you're not too hard like you don't make the interview or your sales questions too much like an interrogation; if you can have some enjoyment and make sure it's a fun and safe conversation then I feel that you come across as a far attractive buyer. And there's also so many other techniques that you can use through—what's it called an NLP; neurolinguistic programming in matching the seller's energy and how you contact and phrase your questions with a middle that sort of stuff. But if you could just forget about that and throw that out the window if you come from a place of respect and you really understand the business and not just the business but the industry as a whole then the buyer is going to see like okay well this person's really done a lot of due diligence. They're asking really good questions. And I can see that they care about this business not just in a financial way but that they could be investing in this business to ensure it grows. And I want to be careful with invested in the business with emotions because you do need to be attached to a certain point as well. I feel that I think they vary; all those things help quite largely into being an attractive buyer. Mark: And a lot of that's very, very good advice there. I want to talk about some of the suggestions you would give to somebody who is getting into this initially. You talked a lot about knowing the language and understanding some basic concepts is SEO and you teach some of these things as well. I know for myself with Quiet Light Brokerage we get people that are coming in from the offline world; brick and mortar world who are coming in first time and many of them will just say I want to buy an online business, others might say I want to buy an e-commerce business then I have a few ideas of what they want and don't want. But a common question I get is do I need experience before buying an online business? So I'm going to throw that question at you. What do you think? Do you think somebody needs experience to buy an online business? And if so what type of experience? Jaryd: Yeah. I wouldn't say you need experience to buy one. But I would say you definitely need experience to grow one. And not just experience but education. Because everybody says like I should you have experience and you can't just—I know this when I first started looking for jobs when I was younger I was like you just you can't go away and get a job you got to have some sort of experience but you've got to start somewhere. And that somewhere is education. So if people do decide that like hey I'm going to go from brick and mortar to online businesses is like invest in your education in that. So then you can become more confident not just when you speak into the seller and become an attractive buyer but like hey I know what I'm going to do when I purchase this business. And I think it's an unnerving thing for somebody to come to the online world and go I'm going to buy a business but not know what their plan of attack is or what their strategy is once they do end up owning that business. And if you have anybody that's listening and has that feeling of like I don't know what I'm going to do I would suggest that you go away and get a bit of education. And there are so many people out there that do teach people how to start online businesses and that could be a place who will teach me where to buy websites as well. But understand and get some education on how the online business realm actually works. And then you put yourself into a better position for sure. Mark: Yeah, that was what I would say as well. I often recommend the people to just understand the language. You don't have to be an SEO expert but understand the business and what people are talking about. But then understand what you are personally good at; maybe it's negotiating contracts [inaudible 00:28:01.0] look for a business that you really could get that optimized in that area and accelerate that. What are some of the trends that you're seeing recently? You're looking at a lot of deal flow and working with a lot of buyers who are currently in the market. Are you seeing any trends emerge over the past 12 months and maybe even forward-looking as well, are there any trends that you see coming up here? Jaryd: I think hugely obviously Amazon, right? They're making some massive changes. We're seeing a lot of Amazon associate and Amazon FBA up until now. It's been big. Like a lot of Amazon FBA businesses are popping up and they had started quite a few years ago. But it can take time for it to snowball and traction on the shore. And Amazon FBA is a great way to go about it. People I think before these even existed didn't realize that there was like things like Zappos and different companies and different ways you could do order fulfillment for instead of having to do just drop shipping you could buy bulk from wherever you want in the world and send it to an auto fulfillment agency. But the way Amazon does it is they make things so much easier for you and feasible for everybody. So that's something that I feel is definitely been trending or whether it's had its trend or not, I'm not so sure. You can always speculate but you can't always be certain. And I feel now that with a lot of changes that have been happening with Facebook advertising and different types of advertising where it's getting more expensive and I've talked to a lot of people especially a boss over the world in Australia that they've been having troubles with getting results in marketing on that platform. I feel hugely that SEO and great content is going to come back into being a massive way to grow your business; the ones that you do buy. And I feel that's definitely going to start trending a lot more. That's what I feel and that's what I see. Mark: That's fascinating. I want to pick your brain a little bit on that. Why do you see that coming back and then how do you counter that people that are saying voice aided search; Google Now and obviously Amazon website and Siri are pulling away from SEO? Where are you seeing the growth there, and what leads you to believe that that's going to be a good opportunity in the future? Jaryd: Sorry, what are you saying they're pulling away from SEO? Mark: Voice aided search as opposed to just type initiated search where you get results. You know you ask Google for when [inaudible 00:30:38.5] form and you're going to get an answer right away as opposed to coming to process with content sites. Where do you see the opportunity in SEO? I guess that would be the main question. Jaryd: Yeah. Where I see the opportunity in that is in particular search as opposed to just where people hey Siri or hey whatever it is and give me an answer is that those deeper questions where you can get a profound value not just like a quick little win like you know what's the temperature today or whatever it is but for like something that's more in-depth like hey Siri how do I scale my business by using a specific type of conversion rate optimize—sorry my Siri just went off then. Mark: [inaudible 00:31:20.0]. Jaryd: Did you hear that? Mark: Just a little bit. Yes, that was pretty funny. Jaryd: Sorry guys. And so I feel that if you want to go like hey I want to learn how to do this type of conversion rate optimization on my business on my website. I feel that if you got really good content behind that as—I'm not so sure if that's a blog post but it could be podcasting or definitely some sort of way people can consume content in audio or video. I feel that that's going to come up the top a lot more. That's a way people are consuming it a lot easier I feel these days. And I feel that that's going to win in content in audio and visual. Mark: Yeah. I think watching how content has evolved in the past 20 years is fascinating. Jaryd: Yeah. Mark: But [inaudible 00:32:13.0] not as much content as we can and it's really matured to the point where if you're not offering clubby content you're just not going to compete at all. Jaryd: Yeah, that's right. Mark: Yeah. It's gotten way more difficult. Alright we're pretty much at the end of our allotted time but I do want to ask you what sort of; just as you were [inaudible 00:32:32.7] somebody for. You know a 30-second ride up and down and they said oh man that's really cool. What would you want to tell me to get me started in this route? What would you give somebody that's just starting out? Jaryd: Yeah, I would say hey go to website brokers such as you guys and see what is available out there and start learning about the different types of business models. And you can see how much the businesses cost, what their expenses are, what their income is, and then also what the multiple would be. And you can see the sort of returns; start running the figures, running the math. And then dig deeper into those business. And when you start getting prospectuses on different business models then you start to get a bit of an education based on different types of online businesses and then grow from there. And then once you start doing that and you get more experience in looking at that. And it takes time to do so then you can decide if this is a route for you or not. Mark: [inaudible 00:33:28.2] that's fantastic advice. Where can people learn more about you or reach out to you? Jaryd: Yeah. So www.BuyingOnlineBusinesses.com; businesses plural. And then you can search that in Google or any search engine or go to my Facebook or social handles which is just Jaryd Krause. So Jaryd Krause. Mark: Awesome we'll link to those in the show notes. Jaryd thank you so much for coming on. Jaryd: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.   Links and Resources: Jaryd's Website Jaryd's Podcast Facebook YouTube Channel

Royal Affair Tour Book Produced by Jeffrey Crecelius, Wayne Hall, Preston Frazier, Bill Govier and VR Hoisington It’s a packed programme this week because not only did Mark go to the Toronto Royal Affair tour show but we also welcome Jon Kirkman back onto the show to talk about his brilliant new project. Listen and let us know what you think! How was the concert, Mark?What's Jon Kirkman got up his sleeve?How has Cruise to the Edge been for host, Jon? If you would like to support the Yes Music Podcast financially and also have access to exclusive activity and opportunities, there is a special page you can use to sign up and 2019 is the time to join us:Become a Patron! Show notes and links Mark's Tour Book images: Royal Affair Tour Book YMP Patrons: Producers: Jeffrey Crecelius Preston Frazier VR Hoisington Bill Govier and Wayne Hall Patrons: Aaron SteelmanDave OwenMark James LangPaul TomeiJoost MaglevDavid HeydenMartin KjellbergPaul WilsonBob MartilottaLindMichael O'ConnorPeter HearndenBrian SullivanDavid PannellMiguel FalcãoLobate ScarpChris BandiniDavid WatkinsonNeal KaforeyRachel HadawayCraig EstenesDemPaul HailesMark 'Zarkol' BaggsDoug CurranRobert NasirFergus CubbageScott ColomboFred BarringerScott Smith Geoff BailieSimon Barrow Geoffrey MasonStephen LambeGuy R DeRomeSteve DillHenrik AntonssonSteve PerryHogne Bø PettersenSteve RodeIanNBSteve ScottJamie McQuinnSteven RoehrKen FullerTerence SadlerJeremy NorthTim StannardJimTodd DudleyJohn CowanTony HandleyJohn HoldenJoseph CottrellJohn ParryKeith HoisingtonJohn ThomsonWilliam Hayes Barry GorskyMichael Handerhan Robert and David Please subscribe! If you are still listening to the podcast on the website, please consider subscribing so you don’t risk missing anything: Subscribe with RSSSubscribe on AndroidListen on Stitcher Theme music The music I use is the last movement of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite. This has been used as introduction music at many Yes concerts. My theme music is not take from a live concert - I put it together from the following two creative commons sources: thanvannispen and archive.org

- Another study shows Americans are struggling to save for the future. What can be done? - How do you convince others to save, build an emergency fund, and understand compound interest (Mark) - What stock would make a good graduation gift (Jason) - What is the best robo advisor in the UK (Emma, UK) - Can you explain how you buy company stock in a discount purchase plan (Sydney, Waterbury,Connecticut) - The pitfalls when it comes to house flipping and hiring contractors - In the band - Trevor pays off his last debt. Mentioned on the show: Wealthify - https://www.wealthify.com Get The Complete Guide To Saving Money FREE printed copy of Scott's new book - How to Save $1,000 This Week: http://bit.ly/2w30ZWs

Joining host Leon Cox, in this podcast is Jan Morgenstern , composer for the turn-based tactical role-playing game Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark What we aim to bring you with Sound of Play is a diverse […] The post Sound of Play: 197 – The videogame music podcast appeared first on Cane and Rinse.

Questions from the Gospel of Mark: What is Most Important? Lee Hinkle Mark 12:28-34 28 And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” 32 And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. 33 And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”34 And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions.   Lee Hinkle, Pastor 0457 375 867 lee@hinkledownunder.com Find us on Facebook: Facebook.com/FremantleChurch   Our Sermons can be found on: iTunes Podbean   © Fremantle Church 2019

Questions from the Gospel of Mark: What must I do? Lee Hinkle Mark 10:17-27 17 And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 18 And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” 20 And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” 21 And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” 22 Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. 23 And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” 24 And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” 26 And they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him, “Then who can be saved?” 27 Jesus looked at them and said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.”   Lee Hinkle, Pastor 0457 375 867 lee@hinkledownunder.com Find us on Facebook: Facebook.com/FremantleChurch   Our Sermons can be found on: iTunes Podbean   © Fremantle Church 2019

Good news from Mark - What's so different about Jesus? - Isaiah 58:13-14, Mark 2:13-28 by St Michael's Church, Chester Square

Questions from the Gospel of Mark: What does it profit? Lee Hinkle Mark 8:27-38 27 And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” 28 And they told him, “John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.” 29 And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.” 30 And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him. 31 And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” 34 And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. 36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?37 For what can a man give in return for his soul? 38 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”   Lee Hinkle, Pastor 0457 375 867 lee@hinkledownunder.com Find us on Facebook: Facebook.com/FremantleChurch   Our Sermons can be found on: iTunes Podbean   © Fremantle Church 2019

Since 2013 Quiet Light's average transaction size has grown up to ten times. Back in those days, there were no private equity firms poking around the e-commerce space for these listings. Today it is a completely different story and more often than not we're seeing private equity firms come into the buyer spectrum. In fact, once a business reaches a certain size, it is more likely than not that a seller's potential buyer is going to be in the private equity space of the buyer pool. Today we are going to dissect the PE process a bit further. We'll delve into the process, the advantages and disadvantages, and give a general education on the subject for those who are curious about it how it works. Today's guest, Brian Rassel, is Vice President of Private Equity with Huron Capital. He's responsible for sourcing, evaluating, and analyzing investments made by his firm. Brian delves into ways he finds that e-commerce has entered into almost sector of investment that his group is involved in these days. Prior to joining Huron Capital, Brian was an Associate at Prophet, a global growth strategy consulting firm. Prior to Prophet, Brian was a consultant with New England Consulting Group where he led project management in their private equity practice for buy-side clients. Brian is sharing his wealth of private equity experience and how PE is entering more and more into the e-commerce space. Episode Highlights: How Brian defines private equity. How PE funds traditionally start up and get solidified. The difference between small, medium and large equity funds. The holding periods that private equity funds usually need to secure capital. Is PE all about acquiring to grow and sell or is there a category for buy and hold? Do evergreen funds exist? The difference between platform and bolt-on investments. Three things funds do to generate deal flow and types of business spaces they favor. The behind-the-scenes processes of putting a deal together. How many people are involved in the deal on the PE side. The backend investors committee and if that hinders the deal for the seller. Why time commitment is actually a good thing. How many deals Brian's PE firm evaluates per year. The defined process that gets them through the numbers. The growth potential for e-commerce – multiple appreciations and the role of private equity. Brian frames an ideal acquisition structure based on the general private equity model. Why the buyer/seller fit really matters. How private equity can work for sellers who want to get their business to the next stage. Transcription: Joe: Back in 2013 Mark I closed 23 transactions. It was a busy year for me. Do you have any idea what the average transaction size was? Mark: I … what do I guess? Well, it's you so I'm going to say like seven million dollars. Joe: I love putting you on the spot because you do it to me all the time. The average transaction size— Mark: You got to be like 250. Joe: It was 125. Mark: Holy cow. Joe: 125; very small. Mark: Okay. Joe: And at that time there were no Private Equity Firms poking around the e-commerce space for these smaller listings. Today it's a completely different story and my average transaction size was 10 times that last year. And a lot of buyers or a lot of sellers, the question I get asked all the time are who are your buyers? And it's a mix of everyone but more often than not now we're seeing Private Equity Firms come into this space. And I understand you had an expert in that area on the podcast. Mark: Yeah private equity is a topic that's coming up more and more frequently with sellers especially on the higher end of that revenue spectrum that we really work with. And it makes sense because once you get to a certain size of business your buyer is more likely than not going to be at least somewhat in the private equity place … area of the buyer pool. In addition, we've talked before … I had Ryan Tansom on and we talked about selling to a strategic buyer versus a marketplace buyer. And obviously, people always look at this especially at the higher ends and say I kind of want to have a strategic buyer. Well, one thing to keep in mind here is that this is kind of a spectrum right? It's not binary; you're either strategic or marketplace. But when you get into that private equity world, private equity is almost always going to be something of a strategic play. So I thought … look this private equity world is something that people keep asking about let's actually start to dissect it a little bit. So Brian and I talked and we spent probably about half of this interview just kind of going over what is private equity. How does that work? What is the definition of this? What are the sizes of it? And really just trying to ask some of those silly questions that maybe you kind of wonder about but don't want to ask because you don't want to sound like you don't know what you're talking about. And so we went over a bunch of those questions but then we also went over what does the process looked like. What does it look like to sell to a private equity firm? What are the drawbacks to it and what are the benefits of it as well? And really it's kind of a general education podcast but I think also … and maybe more importantly for those of you out there who are thinking about selling down the road and you're looking and trying to peg the different values that you want to get from an exit and maybe you think well I want a 10 million dollar exit or a 15 million dollar exit, if you get to that point what's it going to look like to sell to a private equity and what do you need to do to really make yourself appealing for a Private Equity Firm? And how does the deal change when you're signed to private equity as well. So we really covered a lot of ground in about 30 minutes. Brian is super knowledgeable obviously. He works in this space. And I really appreciated him coming on the podcast because … again I just downloaded a ton of information. Joe: Well let's get right to it. Mark: All right Brian thanks for joining me on the podcast. I really appreciate you coming on. Brian: Yeah I know. It's great to be here. Thanks for hosting. Mark: All right so I don't expect people to listen … my guests to have listened to the podcast in advance and I know … I don't know if Joe's been doing this, he records like 9 out of 10 episodes and I don't know if he's continued on the tradition but we like to have our guests introduce themselves mainly because you know your story better than I know your story and I figure it's a little bit easier. So why don't you give just kind of a quick 30 second to one minute rundown on who you are? Brian: Yeah I'm Brian Rassel. I'm a vice president with Huron Capital Partners which is a middle market private equity firm based at Detroit Michigan. The firm is 20 years old and has invested in … we're typically enthralled buyout investors where we'll buy a majority of a business and have done that through five successive fawns starting back in 1999. And the industries that we play in are business services, consumer, and specialty manufacturing. You know it'd kind of be interesting how I got to know you Mark for those listening is that believe it or not all of those basins are being affected by e-commerce or different kind of SaaS business models that are internet based. And I'm taking it upon myself to maybe be the person of the firm who is trying to understand those influences on all of our companies and make sure that we're in a position to incorporate those changes that are going on out and new coming at large number and being done by a lot of people who probably listen to your podcast and make sure that we're bringing more of the [inaudible 00:05:51.4] in the businesses we own so that they can be successful today and be well into the 21st century. Mark: All right, well I got a lot of questions for you because this world of private equity is encroaching or coming into the internet business acquisition world more and more. And whether it's because at Quiet Light our deal value is moving up or private equity is starting to look at different price ranges and maybe this convergence of these worlds and also private equity looking more in the online space is just becoming an increasing topic that we're seeing more and more of. We're also seeing individuals that have started up on their own raising funds to do large acquisitions or to string acquisitions together. Brian: Yeah. Mark: So what I'd like to do and I already kind of told you this in our conversation before I hit record, I'd like to go over some of the basics here of the private equity world and how it looks in the Internet space as well. And then know a little bit more about your fund and some of the things that you guys are doing over there and all that. So a quick shout out to Chris from Centurica and Rhodium I know that we've talked about him so much that it's almost as if he's a sponsor. He's not. But this is again how we got introduced. You spoke at the Rhodium and then you and I had a chance to speak after that and a good conversation. So thanks Chris for the introduction again. So let's start out really really basic here. How do you define private equity? Brian: Private equity is capital … private capital being put to work in private businesses. And so I like to name [inaudible 00:07:22.6] for folks who really don't know much about it a little quick stat just kind of on the US economy. There are half as many publicly listed companies as there were in 1996 or 1994 something like that. So even if the value of the public markets is larger the amount of places you can park that capital in the public markets is small in the total number of listed names. Private equity is a big part of either big institutionally managed money. Whether that's from insurance companies, [inaudible 00:07:52.4], pension funds, universities, those kinds of things. This is their way to go participate in the forces of economy that are still private companies that they can't get access to otherwise unless folks like me help them get access to it. It also includes folks that can kind of go into different flavors of private equity but depending on the size from the bing capitals of the world down to very very small funds that are more entrepreneurial. There's sort of every flavor under design in certain family offices and other things like that. That would be private equity, pooled private capital going into private businesses. Mark: Well how did these funds start-up traditionally? And I imagine that there's a lot of ways that they can start up. You've listed a number of sources of money and I think sometimes we forget just how much money there is in some of these places. So yeah [crosstalk 00:08:46.6]. Brian: For sure I mean there's just [crosstalk 00:08:49.4] I'm going to get this off, I'll be wrong by a hundred billion dollars. But I think something like 600 billion dollars flowed into private equity firms last year. So these … and the source of a fund or the way a fund works is that a fund manager like the folks I work for here where I'm a part of, they go out and they make their pitch about how talented their professionals are and what their track record is and the fact that they can get access to great deal flow and great opportunities, places to put private capital where it will go earn a reasonable return. And they raise this money from these other institutional or independent investors. It could be high in net worth individuals or anybody like that but … so they get started that way. They'll hold this farm estate back to the 1960s and there are new ones being created all the time. And frankly, as hedge funds have declined I believe in a large way in popularity just because of the efficiency of public markets there's been more and more money directed towards these private pools of capital and the private equity market. And when I say private equity I mean both kind of traditional buy-out funds for more mature businesses that have healthy positive cash flows on the one hand and on the other hand I mean venture capital is the son segment of private equity. And that might be for really really high growth businesses like the next dewberry of the world or whatever it might be. Mark: Right, absolutely. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And as far as the breakdown as to sizes what would you consider to be a small private equity firm and what are we talking about in terms of their capitalization rates when they start up? What would be the difference between the small, medium, large type of firms? We can get an idea for how much money we're actually dealing with? Brian: So I would say just kind of from my understanding again all this caviada being dead this is sort of Brian Rassell's take on private equity and my interpretation and may not really be the opinions of United Capital, I can only speak for myself as an individual but they have a dedicated fund. And when I say dedicated fund these are groups of people that other folks, other investors have made a promise and a pledge that is legally binding and written their name at the bottom that that dedicated fund, the small one might be 50 million dollars. That'd be very small. Folks who are trying to invest less than that, generally speaking, have something more akin to a pledge fund. They have a number of people that they can pass the hat with to raise money in a deal by deal basis versus having committed capital to go invest in five, six, 10, 12 companies in that particular fawn. So just kind of … back at the envelope type map that you can think of is every firm should have plus or minus roughly 10 investments that have enough diversification in it. So a 50 million dollar fund is looking to put five million dollars to work in the 10 different companies. And that would be the equity capital going to those companies. There's oftentimes a mix of equity and debt coming into those companies and we could talk about that later. And then a midsize fund might be three or four hundred million up and pawn up to the 2KR's of the world or Apollo or the very big managers who are doing 15 billion dollar funds and so all different world. Mark: Very. Brian: They're taking hotels private or something like that. Mark: I was going to say they're buying something completely different than your Amazon business. Brian: Yeah that's right. It's a whole different world. Mark: All right you talked about you have successive funds. In my understanding again is that we go through these rounds of investment that coming up. We had Andy Jones from PrivateEquityInfo.com on and he talked a lot about the holding periods that private equity looks for. Can you just again quickly touch on that? We're kind of doing private equity 101 here. Brian: Yeah. I didn't hear Andy's remarks but just as it relates to a whole period I would think of it just to be linear about it that a private equity firm once our capital is raised [inaudible 00:13:01.9] the time that it takes to raise that money they committed capital or even the past they had capital they're going to take that money and let's just use this fictional 50 million dollar fund. And they'll take something like four years to deploy the first 80% of it. And the goal would be you take 20% of that money and get it into a new platform company. Companies they had no money in before. In the first year or the next year next 20%, next year next 20%, next year next 20% thus 80%. The point at that point you can't do necessarily new investments you're reserving that last 20% for either a company that's struggling that you need to give more money to to keep it going or to do an add on investment to buy something else and add it on to something that's in the portfolio. That might take four or five years to really deploy the majority of it and then another four to five … you know an investment from year one that you only … you're exiting that investment three to seven years later and let's just use five as kind of a round middle of the road number there. So an investment from year one is maybe gone in year six so it's being harvested. It could be sooner, it could be later. And the investment that was your last platform investment from year four might be heading out the door in year eight or nine. So fund life is something like eight to ten years. It can be longer. And a traditional as you kind of draw it up on the whiteboard like I have behind me here is sort of a five year hold. Now there's … I've seen many that are much much shorter and many that are much much longer but those are the fat parts of the [inaudible 00:14:36.2] if you want. Mark: Sure. So is private equity … is the goal of all private equity companies to grow and sell? So acquire, grow, sell, or are there other strategies? Buy it and hold for long periods of time? Brian: There are certainly evergreen funds out there. They're much more … when I say evergreen they have the ability to hold and recycle the capital. They may be designed to have heard of a number that has committed capital from particularly family offices that never want to do the tax consequences of becoming liquid in an investment and actually realizing the gains so they're structured to reinvest the money that they make. Or if they sell something to quickly find someone else new for it to go into. Now that would be a more unique situation. And then certainly family offices there's a number out there that looks for longer hold periods and there are certain funds that are designed for a longer hold period. Mark: All right so this is going to be again another basic question but I want to make sure our terms are all well-defined here. We hear these terms of platform versus bolt on or add on investments. Just real quick the difference between a platform investment versus a bolt on. Brian: Yeah I'll just keep it simple. I'll say anything that is a brand new business, new industry for that firm to go into. They don't currently own something in that space. Whether that's a tiny initial acquisition or a big one that would be the platform investment. So let's just say with a … I don't know Internet broker pencils, I'm just making this up, all right? And they don't have any other investments in the internet broker pencils space and they invest in a company in that space that would be the platform [inaudible 00:16:17.1] that. And maybe there are 10 companies that make … that do internet broker pencils and they buy two other ones of their competitors and they make it bigger or somebody [inaudible 00:16:25.3] and now they're putting it all together those might be add-ons to that original entity that they purchased or recapitalized. That's what we mean. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with size which can be confusing. Sometimes you start with something small and you get the opportunity and do an add-on that's much bigger than the original investment. So it's more just where is the starting point in you can do a space or an industry. Mark: And if we think about the terms it makes sense right? Brian: Yeah. Mark: You build on top of the platform and you add-on top of the platform. So it makes … that makes complete sense. Brian: Or bolt-on, yup that's where the nomenclature comes from. Mark: Or bolt-on, absolutely. It's amazing when you dig in to definitions it's like the terms actually have a meaning and it makes sense. Brian: They do. Generally, they come from somewhere. Mark: They come from somewhere. There's logic to this stuff. I love it. All right so now I'll get into questions that I'm starting to be genuinely interested in and that is how does a fund develop a thesis or an entire direction to go after a particular platform investment? I mean if you're selling blue widgets and also if somebody comes and says no you don't need widgets what you really need are sprockets, if you don't do anything with sprockets at all how does that enter into a fund's psyche at all? Brian: There's really three things that we're doing here to generate the sort of deal flow and the ideas and spaces we want to go into. So here I'll speak more from Huron Capital. There are other firms who follow a similar philosophy potentially. So the first is businesses we didn't know about but are being represented by a broker or an investment banker like yourself Mark who … those are opportunities that are coming to us. They are being listed. They're being actively shopped around. We may have never thought of the sprocket industry before or we didn't know too much about it or we read materials on it and we say it has a lot of characteristics and things we like; great cash flow, seems very resilient, seems countercyclical, if the economy goes down it'll still do well, it's a leader on its space, any of those kinds of things. Those are opportunities that come to us and that is more of a passive thing. And then we get active once we realize that it fits a lot of criteria and we believe we could be successful with it. And that sets into motion a whole chain of things where we kind of prove out of the pieces that we might like this business and we try to get educated. The second that we spend a lot of time on is networking with executives from a broad, broad variety of industries. Those people know where there are spaces that are changing. And generally speaking, change creates opportunities. Change creates winners on one side and losers on the other side. And less be to the losers but you need that kind of disruption to create any sort of sort interesting investment outcome. The study ID is probably the market's sufficient enough that the study ID is not going to return the greatest returns. So we've spent a lot of time with executives unless I knew them about spaces that could be interesting and trying to listen to areas they know about and start to build some [inaudible 00:19:37.4]. And then even more proactively than that there's a lot of opportunities where we meet the executive who has a view of one particular thing they want to do here at Huron it's got a registered trademark or the like of the firm. We call that an exact factor investment where we will actually flip the process and say we really believe in the sprocket industry. We met Phil who is going to be our perspective CEO in the space and he has this vision that is going to totally turn the industry [inaudible 00:20:11.5]. To do that we need to go find the platform, we call that like getting fuel behind the wheel. We need to find a car to fulfill the drive. We believe he's the best driver in that industry. And we will do all the work, we'll go write a hundred page white paper on it to prove to our investment committee why it's such a fabulous opportunity and Phil is the greatest operator in this space. And then we will commit dollars into going and finding businesses in that space and find Phil the car he can drive and we'll get off to the races that way. So it starts with a commitment from our farms for a certain amount of money behind Phil to go do an acquisition more and more in this space. So it … I guess ranges from that passive we find things and then we get educated too. We educate ourselves as much as possible and align ourselves with an executive who can execute and work the process the other way. Mark: Cool. All right that [inaudible 00:21:04.07]. So let's talk a little bit about the process that goes on behind the scenes when you are evaluating an opportunity. And I think for a lot of potential sellers this sort of conversation is going to be really insightful. So let's say we have somebody that they have an e-com business, 30 million in revenue, eight, nine million in earnings on an annual basis and they've got a couple of private equity firms looking at their business. Where does that start and what is the process going through? And you can talk about maybe Huron's process and then if there are variations that you know as well. The number of people that are going to look and touch that deal as it goes through the steps. Brian: Yeah. Mark: What are some of those behind the scenes looks? Brian: Yeah so once you've got that moment where there's a couple of firms interested there's going to be an incredible amount of information about the business across insurance, benefits, compliance with laws and regulatory statutes, information about the market; anything the business can possibly produce about itself, fairly every file that's off the shelf that they have, every non-disclosure agreement they have with somebody that they on boarded or employment agreement, every contract they have with a customer, or maybe it's an industry where you don't have a lot of contracts with customers but you have a lot of contracts with suppliers. All that information needs to be made available for these perspective buyers to digest. And the more they can be made available, the more that that's organized into different pockets of legal, employee, insurance, benefits, all of that, the better. It's going to save the company a lot of time from serving requests versus being proactive by getting that stuff out there. And you know well everything here all the buyers be under a non-disclosure agreement and that's just a very kind of well-oiled machine around making that information available to give your last few buyers down to the one you would like to choose and have them under a Letter of Intent. And that starts to be an exclusive relationship where the buyer is going to spend a lot of money in due diligence and in exchange for spending that money, they would like the exclusive right to [inaudible 00:23:19.3] business for a period of time. 60 days … 90 days where they engage and here is where it starts to get to be a lot more kind of in your trousers and really analyzing your business but they're going to engage in quality of earnings earned to go and understand did you actually produce the amount of revenue, if you put it in the right time periods, if you really counted for every cost etcetera. They're going to engage legal professionals who are going first to sort of just again a full work up of registration, compliance, [inaudible 00:23:51.9] and then those folks are going to work on the actual transaction documents as well as a host of other advisors. And that would be like again a 60 to 90 day process. It could be 30 days on the short end. There are firms who can do it in that time particularly if you're a smaller business and an add-on to a much larger or a very simple business. Mark: So how many people are we talking about there that are going to be involved in the process? Outside of the consultants like a Q of E … a quality of earnings report that's going to be an outside accounting firm right? Brian: Yeah. Mark: So we're not going to— Brian: Okay so from the acquiring firm? Mark: Mm-hmm. And we can start at the beginning. We can start at your interns that are digesting deals. That's going to be part one. Brian: Sure call it four and they're going to be answering to the remainder of their firm particularly their investment committee. Ideally, it's a tighter team and there's four and if it's an add-on expect more. So you'll have the management team of that kind of platform investment as well. So four to eight and then when you get to the advisor well now you're talking 20 something more. Mark: Right, getting all those outside advisers. Now one of the things I know people get worried about during this process is you start out again with that guy who's that in deals up front and he sees some he passes it on to the team and they end up liking it so now you're dealing with a handful of people that are asking the questions digging deep in that due diligence right? Pages and pages of collecting information possibly even submitting an offer because on the surface things look okay. Brian: Yup. Mark: There seems to be these back end investors committee as well which can also kind of wash the deal far in the process. What would you say to people that get kind of frustrated when they hear that and they think do I really want to work with private equity because there are so many people that could potentially disrupt this deal? Brian: So I would think about the time investment to it. So the private equity firm is in no way interested in wasting any of their time. Huron looks at something like little over a thousand deals a year. That takes a lot of time and we're very thoughtful about moving things to the funnel and connecting our firm's resources to evaluating an opportunity. So if somebody is spending the time I would tell the listeners that they are encouraged. If everything checks out the way I told to them so far or they've written so far about that business then there are absolutely no issues. The firm, an organized and real firm is going to be thoughtful and time is kind of their most valuable resource and they're set up to be able to make a number of staged gates kind of we're interested and we're not interested. We're interested subject to confirm affirmation I want two and three. And you can have a very quick conversation like you and I are having now to say is this the case is this not the case? Here's a big concern we have, should we be worried? And they will both take your answer and that gives them that kind of gumption to proceed. And they'll probably have to go validate that as well later. And that validation just has to support what's been told to them. But they are also making a big commitment with their time in the same way that the seller is and I would take it as genuine on their part that they're not looking for it to fall apart. It's just things do. Certain deals fall apart because new information becomes available. I've seen that happen a number of times where the seller learns things about their business or thinks about their business in a way they hadn't before and can agree that that's a genuine risk and may be something they want to work out within a course of another year and then they might be back to market. Mark: Yeah, that happens often. We see that all the time even in the amount of work that we put a seller through upfront it pales in comparison to what you guys are going to be doing in your actual dig deep due diligence. And the number of times that we have people come back and tell us that was a lot of work but that was really useful. Brian: Yeah. Mark: I have learned a lot about my own business, right? Brian: Yeah a great advisor like somebody like you and using a broker who's been through and understands the questions that are going to be asked is going to save a tremendous amount of time. And we call folks like you Mark a river guide we're using on our side and we love them. Sellers use them too because they're that much more prepared for the process. Mark: Yeah. And I can tell you like the one thing that … I'm going to play both sides here, I would say the one thing that can be difficult with working with private equity is because there are so many people that can come in with a dissenting viewpoint. You're not trying to … convince is a bad word but show the opportunity to one person and have them agree to it; you're having to show a number of people. But the great thing and I love working with private equity on is that it's completely unemotional throughout the process. Brian: Yeah. Mark: I mean it really is does this check the boxes we needed to check and if it doesn't we're going to find out as quick as we can. You said something, I was going to ask this question, you guys evaluate you said about a thousand deals per year? Brian: Yeah the pipeline you think about now it's working its way down at the top of the funnel and so we're a thousand and then that's working its way down to 250 that real solid time is being spent on and then 75 that we're spending real tons of resources and traveling around to visit them … maybe 80. Now I'll get these numbers wrong this is kind of directional and then down to the 30 or so that are getting a Letter Of Intention and we'll close 22 transactions a year. Mark: Yeah so that's an amazing amount of data to be pulling in. And you guys have criteria at every stage I assume that you're looking for up front? Brian: That's right. Mark: Okay. All right that makes sense. Do you publish those criteria? I know we get a lot of just the very broad stuff sent to us. Brian: We don't only because it's just so bespoke for every company. There are so many things that really are as you just said that are check the box and we're highly confident that we will go confirm later. We're highly confident that's not an issue and we are trying to get to it very, very quickly. The three or four things we want to make sure are the reasons we're most excited and confirm that that is factual and that was going to continue. Whatever that might be; on the customer relationship or the recurring purchasing or … whatever it might be. And then at the same time the three or four things that are kind of we're concerned that could be deal killers. We believe we're spending the time because we think that's going to turn out to be true or we need to get to a yes no about is this a real problem very, very quickly. And so you know it's just they're different for every business. Mark: Yeah I know a lot of people listening right now you guys are buyers that are out there looking to acquire. So technically Brian you guys are somewhat of competitors although I think that you operate at a range that a lot of our buyers wouldn't. But I think one thing interesting that they should hear is this idea of having this defined process number one and then number two the amount of deal flow that you have to look at. I've talked to buyers that been out there looking for a year, year and a half but then you find out the number of deals that they're actually looking at doesn't really … this is a numbers game. I mean it's purely a numbers game. Brian: It is and one thing I want to say on that numbers game for us and it may be different for some of your buyers or not is that we're looking for situations that are great for us and we're also looking for situations where the seller in some ways choosing us. Now I don't want to overstate that but I do want to say that there has to be a great fit in every piece and why we're a better owner than someone else for that business. Some angle that we have, some affinity we have for what they do, or some prior experience or something. Otherwise and it could be a little different for particularly small businesses. Maybe it's a little bit less like that and it doesn't need as much of the chemistry but that's a big part of what we're looking for, for sure. Mark: And we talk about that a lot on these pockets. I know you guys are probably tired of hearing Joe and I talk about the need for a buyer being a good fit. And we talked a lot about this general concept of being likable because sellers do eventually choose and for most of these sellers they do have a choice. I mean right now it's a seller's market. They do have a choice of who they're going to work with. I want to talk about the exciting stuff. Let's talk about the actual deals; the money. Brian: Sure. Mark: Why is selling to a private equity something that people should be excited about? Brian: I think I spoke a little bit about this at Rhodium but I just … I see then the difference in multiples that are paid for businesses that are exclusively e-commerce or SaaS based businesses. Those multiples are so much lower than what private equity firms are paying for more traditional businesses out in the economy. And I believe that those worlds will come together. And I believe that businesses that are a hybrid of both or have excellence in both and are flipping both worlds are going to be extremely, extremely valuable. Because on the one hand, they have the relevance for the future, it's coming from kind of the types of businesses that you represent. And also they have that anchor of the traditional business that makes them more under writable and it makes them more predictable because it's a less dynamic place that they're out in. And so that's where I think private equity firms in the coming two, three, four, five years are number one going to become much more comfortable with standalone e-commerce business models that are exclusive that and there are going to be people participating from the much more kind of like formal private equity world participating in your markets. And then I think there's going to be a convergence where a lot of more traditional business models are going to look for the influence and the DNA as well as the revenue and the profits but the influence and the DNA and the growth that comes from the types of businesses you work with Joe. And I think that means that the market that you're playing in, the multiples will rise there. For every dollar of earnings they'll be more valuable in the future and I believe that's for now in a very significant way in 2018. Mark: Yeah and we talked about this this idea of multiple appreciation that we see. And a lot of it reaches over to the fact that this is where private equity starts to play right? So we often talk if your EBIDTA is less than a million dollars per year the … just again for the sake of a multiple, it's going to vary for each business but maybe 3 … maybe 3.5 would be the multiple on that EBIDTA depending on the type of business that you have. But once you start getting up into two, three, four million dollars of EBIDTA now we start seeing the multiples jump up in the different ranges. And the reason for this again is that we're no longer playing as much with an individual investor who really has a much higher risk profile because they don't necessarily have the entire team behind them or a portfolio behind them to be able to take some of that risk but also get the staff in the background and all the resources in private equity. Brian: Yeah. Mark: So let's talk … I am not going to pin you down because it would be a really bad idea for you to say hey we generally paid 25x on earnings which I know you don't. What does a deal structure often look like? Because I know these deals structures do change as well when we're talking about a private equity acquiring a small company. What does an ideal acquisition look like for you in terms of its structure of cash that the owner is going to be getting, maybe equity or debt that you would hope that they stay around and I'd also like to address the idea that a lot of private equity likes to have or prefers to have an owner stay on board with the new company and why that's a good thing also for that owner to think about that. So that's a lot; the general structure, the ideals for a structure. Brian: Okay so let's keep this out of your space and let's just talk about the general PE model. When deals were cheaper a couple of years ago you might get a higher ratio of debt than equity in a deal but for this sake, I'm just going to make it 50-50. I think that more reflects the market today in terms of underwriting. But let's take a deal where a private equity firm is paying at least eight times. That's still a relatively rich multiple. I could have said six but let's use eight times. So we're paying four times the earnings in their own cash that they're talking and they are going and putting the company on the hook or raising four times and they do it. Private equity firm does it but on behalf of the company of debt for the business to take on. So let's say it's a business with 10 million dollars of EBIDTA. So it's an 80 million dollar transaction and a firm like Huron is putting 40 million of equity and raising 40 million of debt in that transaction. And that 40 million of equity can come either from Huron or some portion of it could be rolled over from the seller. If that seller has no debt on the business today, no capital leases or anything else that could be thought of as indebtedness over the normal trade payables. And in your day to day you've got cash coming in and cash going out; that thing that keeps the shop running. And they have no debt on the business theoretically on the day of closing they're getting a check for 80 million dollars. If they choose to roll over some of that … let's just say 10% of the purchase price, eight million of it I would argue that a private equity firm or somebody like me would take that as them stating a high degree of confidence in the future of the business that they want to continue participating and have a relatively [inaudible 00:37:34.7] portion of their net worth tied up in that outcome. Or that they see the opportunity to turn that eight million into 16 or whatever it might be that there is a great opportunity to continue driving growth and equity value in that business. They'll … I start there that the rollover investments are very useful because if you're saying you want to do no roll over whatsoever and you just want to walk away from the business it's not conveying a lot of confidence in the future of the business. There are certainly reasons to do that but it's not conveying a lot of confidence in the future of the business. And where somebody might have been agreeing to pay you eight if you were rolling over and giving that kind of tacit support for the business going over, they might kind of say this is we're not so sure. It makes them a little more nervous and it might be a seven times deal. So you may actually be shooting yourself in the foot in terms of the total proceeds you perceive. Again so it's an 80 million dollar deal, 40 million of debt, the seller is choosing to roll over. They got their 80 million dollar check, it doesn't work like this you're actually [inaudible 00:28:28.9] but they got their 80 million dollar check and maybe we wrote one back for eight and so Huron holds 32 million of the equity and that seller holds eight million of it. So Huron owns 80% of the business and they own 20% and we've got some obligations to pay. That would be kind of the middle of the road structure. There's certainly a lot more that happens as it relates to creating incentives for management teams and that's a very, very big part of what we do to make sure that if we do well they do well and vice versa so that we're all talking in terms of growing the underlying equity value of the business. And that can often be very different for a business that didn't have that before. And it was just solely kind of the founder driving it or minding the growth of equity value. We believe in creating a broad base of ownership so that we're all on the same page. Mark: Yeah. Brian: Our management team is on incentives exclusively through their salary or bonus or both. Mark: Right so one of the things that I've talked a lot in the past especially on like the main street sort of deals is this almost dichotomy and it really shouldn't be set up as a dichotomy of a marketplace based sale where you only have an investor looking to acquire business in a strategic sale where you have a company that it would effectively be like an add-on acquisition in your world right? They already have the sort of strategic advantage to acquiring that company. Within your world, it seems like so much of what you do is going to be the strategy based type of acquisition anyways. Brian: Right. Mark: So it's like you're not going to do an acquisition unless you think that you have a strategic advantage. And when we … you and I talked out in Las Vegas back last October one thing that you talked about quite a bit was we want to pour gasoline on the fire that's already existing. So whatever that might be and so as a seller who's out there thinking about this and saying man I've been growing my business like crazy but I'm investing all this cash back into acquiring more inventory and expanding the product line and I'd like to take money off the table and then keep growing it. This is that perfect sort of handoff to a private equity because you can say you know what you [inaudible 00:40:54.0] your income statement rich in cash flow pour. Brian: Yup. Mark: We got cash. We'll help you out there. You're going to get some cash on the table and then let's grow this from a 30 million dollar business to a hundred million dollar business. Brian: Right. Mark: And so there's an incentive there for that owner to double dip that [inaudible 00:41:11.7]. Brian: Absolutely. Particularly in situations … we see this all the time where additional capital is going to be an accelerant to growth. So capital is what we have and we're trying to find a smart place to put it work and if that means we can buy a business and continue and support that business with more dollars and we believe in the strategy and what's going on in the way it's being operated there's nothing … that's the easiest dollar for us to put out versus the whole re-under writing process of a new investment. And then for that seller to have all their eggs in one basket … I don't care what their life situation is they could be in their 30's and just want to diversify or they could be somebody who's looking at kids who are about to go to college and it just doesn't make sense to have 100% of their net worth or close to it tied up in their business. And if they could diversify a little bit or generate a little bit of cash but their vision hasn't changed at all that's a great situation to bring on a strategic partner like a private equity firm. And that's where that [inaudible 00:42:11.9] fit it really matters and the chemistry between the seller. For the most part, you're not going to sell it to a private equity firm, they don't want to be in the business or definitely not in the business of operating these companies. So round the business and investing in them helping to bring the right resources to it and bring the right capital solutions or capital availability all that. Helping them set strategy and all the other things but the actual day to day operations. So it's not going to be for your sellers or for buyers [inaudible 00:42:45.1] sellers who are looking to exit the business and hand it off somebody else private equity is not going to be the right solution. But for those companies that they either want to go to be a division of something larger and they think they can be a great cross selling opportunity or the way they've built their mousetrap if just they had more to sell in the same way, and I'll say like let's say you're the number one muffler seller online and you also want to do transmissions and drive cams and stuff but you don't have the capital and you don't have the ability to go source and expand that way, going and selling to a larger entity and being that e-commerce division is a very powerful idea. Or just continue and do your own business and double down … accelerate the organic growth, private equity firm could be a great partner. Mark: Yeah, we're just about out of time in fact we've gone a bit long but one thing I wanted to emphasize here, you said that capital obviously is the resource you guys have and are able to invest and I know a lot of people that I talk to say look I don't really need money from this, the business is making money and I feel good about this. But what I find when I actually start to dig in with these guys is I say well what would it take to move to that next level. Oh well, I would have to hire out this other division or create this other division and you know okay but what's the obstacle to that? I don't want to invest in it. It often comes up. Okay, that's the area where a firm like yours can also come in and say well look we have the capital to be able to invest in this. You know what you need; do you want to invest in it to get to that next stage? And even if that means bringing in someone and you can help with that let's do it. Exactly we can do that and we could— Brian: Not to mention that I think we find that often business owners are willing to do one out of their five ideas that are like that and were willing to do all five knowing that three won't work but two should work out beautifully and we're willing to go [inaudible 00:44:39.4] the bodies of the business and the capital and have the appetite to take two steps backward to take four forward and understand that they're not going to all work. And where maybe an independent owner would do those sequentially, try idea one it wasn't really working, didn't feel pleased with making that investment and losing that cash flow, fired that new sales person who was supposed to do something else. We're willing to go do things faster and make sure that that doesn't hover around in the business and the core of what we're interested in the first place. And so we'll work through that with the business owner by giving them that support and the dollars needed to make that happen. Mark: Brian, I really appreciate you taking the time here [inaudible 00:45:19.8] some of the small questions I had but really good to get those things— Brian: No it's my pleasure. It's fine. Mark: So thanks again and maybe we'll have you back again in the future at some point. Brian: That sounds great. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Thanks, Mark.   Links and Resources: https://www.huroncapital.com/member/brian-rassel/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianrassel  

Here at Quiet Light we often like to hire people who are just a bit smarter than us. Amanda Raab is one of those people. She has been helping our clients through her own expert entrepreneurial experience since 2012. Having started the famous Pure Pearls online retail company at just 25 years old, Amanda has gone on to buy and sell multiple businesses. She's with us today talking about the benefits of building a business without working herself to death. Amanda shares tips on how she's acquired multiple businesses, outsourced their growth, and sold them successfully. The buy versus build topic truly never gets old and every time we talk to a guest about it there is something new to be learned. Amanda makes a good case for both. Episode Highlights: Amanda takes us back to how she got started in the online world. Her pearl company story and the press surrounding her success. What it took for Amanda to realize she could hire people to run her businesses. The absentee owner business model that she's been able to replicate several times over. Reasons to hire someone who is good at every component of your business. What Amanda looks for when she's hiring and what building a solid team requires. How much she manages her creatives and monitors their input. Where Amanda lands on the buy vs build spectrum and why. The first areas Amanda outsources when starting a business? The last thing she would outsource. Amanda's number one piece of advice for buyers looking to invest in an internet business. Transcription: Joe: So one of the things that you and I have talked about over the last few years is that we keep hiring people that are smarter than us, maybe smarter than both of us combined which may not be saying much. Mark: Yeah you set the bar pretty high there Joe. Joe: For you anyway but Amanda is talking about a number of different things in this podcast coming up. Amanda and I started at the same time back in 2012 and I'm really looking forward to listening to it because honestly, I don't know that much about her history. But every time a new broker connects with her, talks with her, they get kind of blown away with her experience. Walker, as we all know, wrote a bestselling book and we like to make fun of him and prod him on and we're proud of him for it as well called Buy than Build and in this episode, Amanda's doing the opposite. She's talking about the benefits of building a business, outsourcing some of the things that people don't like to do themselves, and then actually selling them off. Kind of the opposite of what Walker talked about. Mark: I mean you're right she's kind of a more private person and I think I was working with her for three or four years before I realized that she was … or I even learned that she was featured in Time Magazine when she was in her young twenty's for some of the entrepreneurial work that she was doing. And she actually had a documentary filmed on her about sourcing pearls from China of all things. Joe: Oh. Mark: Yeah I know right? Joe: I didn't even know that. Mark: Yeah to think we've been working with her for seven years and you didn't know that there was a full documentary on this person that we've been working with. And also that she was invited and actually spoke at a conference. Did you know this Joe? She actually spoke at a conference in the past. Joe: She did? Mark: I know right. Joe: I have absolutely no idea. We're underutilizing her talents. There's no question about it. Mark: That's what I'm saying. And she is actually crazy smart, one of the most talented entrepreneurs that I know and have known. So in this conversation we ended up just talking a lot about her background because I wanted to find out just in this conversation what wisdom would come out and what revelation would come out of this and getting in a couple of things right away, finding out how did she start multiple businesses, grow them but not work herself to death because she's always building a new house or a new rental property. She's always got some other project with a business on the side. And then she's been working with us for as long as she has. So her time management skills are great. So we talked about this idea of how do you outsource your business people. And I know we've covered this before on past podcasts but I don't know if this topic really gets old because people are doing this in different ways and every time I talk to somebody about this I learn something new about how they're doing it. And so I asked her what is the first thing that you outsource when you start a business? And I'm not going to share the answer now because it actually surprised me a little bit as to what the first thing was and what the last thing was that she does. And then we talked about this idea of is it better to actually build a business or is it better to acquire a business and when should you look at both options? And I thought it was a pretty good conversation, a very honest conversation as well that hey there's room to actually start a business in this entrepreneurial world of ours where people might think we only want to talk about buying a business. She made a pretty good case for when it makes sense to actually start something from scratch. So a fun conversation honestly and really just lots of interesting tidbits of information throughout the entire podcast. Joe: Well I think it goes to the depth and breadth of the quality of people that you've hired at Quiet Light over the years so I'm looking forward to listening to it. Let's go on and so people can stop hearing us chatter. Mark: Well I'm going to say one more thing. Joe, did you know that she decided to start an affiliate business and within four months became the number one super affiliate for that product? Joe: You know I had no idea because the only one who I thought was ever a super affiliate was Jason because he wrote the Bathrobe Millionaire. Mark: He's our other author. Joe: He's our other author, our super affiliate. Wow, no I didn't know that. She's never said a word. I wasn't— Mark: Exactly, I love it. So anyway let's get to know Amanda a little bit and hear some of her past and some of the things that she has to say about online business. Joe: Let's go to it. Mark: All right Amanda thank you so much for finally agreeing to come in the podcast. I've been trying to get you on the podcast for a while but I know you've been building houses, building rental properties, doing business … starting businesses, and of course helping Quiet Light Brokerage clients as well. Amanda: Yes, I've been busy that's for sure. Mark: That's for sure. Amanda: So now I have some down time and I decided to take on the challenge of doing one of these podcasts. Mark: Yeah well, of course, doing the podcast is always a little bit interesting but I think again we're just going to have a conversation here about your background and everything else. So I tell … I don't want to embarrass you right off the bat here but when I talk about the Quiet Light Brokerage team to people I often say well Joe is a client, Jason is the one that kind of forced his way in the door of Quiet Light and I tried to scare him away by giving him all these awful leads and the next thing I know Jason is breaking every record in the book. Joe came on and has been doing the same. But when I talk about you I said … I always say one of the smartest buyers I've ever worked with. And that's how you and I initially met; you were looking at one of my transactions … a deal I had. Do you remember that deal? Amanda: Yes I do. Mark: Yeah. Okay so … and a real lot of competition for that deal but of all the buyers you're able to kind of hone in on some of the key metrics right away. [inaudible 00:06:06.8] was super impressed. I deal with a lot of buyers so super, super impressive. So let's do this. Let's go back a little bit to how you got started in the online world because you actually started with a website called PurePearls.com. You were featured in Time magazine at a super young age. And then you filmed a pearl documentary in China as well right? Amanda: Yes it's kind of crazy to think about it because that part of my life was much of a whirlwind. But I was actually in grad school when I started my pearl company and thought it would make a great hobby. Something as a creative outlet outside of the day to day just what I was doing already in grad school. And so it kind of just snowballed and I just loved it. I was super passionate about learning the business not just the pearl business but just e-commerce, internet marketing, what it would take to get in front of customers. And that opened up so many other opportunities from public relations to search engine optimization. At the time those were big channels for marketing and it just kind of went from there. At the time I was focused on the pearl company I realized there's much broader market and I started getting interested in other opportunities as well. I was invited to a conference in DC to do a speaking engagement for Yanik Silver's Mastermind Group. And as much as I do not like public speaking I decided to face my fears and do it. And I met so many awesome people there. And I just kind of basically looked at what everybody was doing and thought wow there's just so many things that we can be doing with this internet space. And that was kind of a long time ago so I'm thinking that was probably around 15 years ago. So at that point, I just started another company and built that company, sold the pearl company because it was exploding at the time and I just … I couldn't manage it all. So I kind of started small with my new company in the printing industry. So its check printing and I started five new websites. So I just kept building, building, building and developed relationship with manufacturers and started printing basically our own custom products. I scaled that up and realized that I could develop a team to make sure that was a lifestyle company and I didn't have to be in the business. And that's kind of where I got the idea of starting my self-company. Businesses that I did have to work in that I could work on building teams to run them and basically allowing me to do a lot of different things. And so I didn't have to focus on just one niche. Mark: I've just run being been in the business. I've met a guy over the weekend. I was at a conference in Los Angeles … not it the Internet marketing world it was just kind of a more generic business conference. And he used to be a professional fighter and then we were talking about his business career. He said well I have 13 companies so I founded 12 and acquired one. I'm like oh my goodness and he said well I don't really do that much I've put teams in place. And we've talked about this on the podcast as well. We had Shakil Prasla on twice talking about this and how he hires CEO's and puts people in place. And this seems to be kind of this recurring theme with a lot of what we're doing here talking about that. At what point did you learn to put people in place with your companies? What did it take for you to be like you know what I'm going to hire people? Was it … well did you have kind of like a moment where it kind of struck you or was it more organic over time that you realized this is a good way to go? Amanda: I'd say both; a combination. With my pearl company, I realized I needed to put systems in place because I wanted to do a lot of different things. And so I went to an event and I heard somebody speaking about outsourcing things that you don't like to do. And I was like wow that's really smart because when you run a business there are going to be things you don't like to do. There are those dreaded tasks that you put off and put off and put off right? But you need to do them to run a functional business. And so at that point, I started outsourcing things for the pearl company. When I first started obviously I was wearing all the hats in the company but then I started hiring a customer service person. I was lucky enough to have somebody to handle all of the manufacturing and the shipping for me, the packaging so I don't have to actually even touch the product. And from there I hired a marketing team, content writing and things like that. So basically all I did was make sure that the marketing was on point, develop new ideas for marketing channels, and keeping the books in line. And then when I brought on my new company Check Printing, a financial printing company, I kind of used the same system and developed it for that business and it worked really well. I started that from the very beginning and so it was very much an absentee owner business outside of me looking at new marketing channels and keeping the books and whatnot. And so I was able to replicate that with each of my other businesses as well. I think it comes out of a necessity because when you want to do a lot of things you realize you have to create these systems right? But also I don't think you can be really good at everything and I'm not. And so you hire people that are really good at each individual component. So somebody who's customer service is likely not to be the greatest at book keeping, right? And somebody who's great at Search Engine Optimization may not be that great at Facebook Marketing. So I think it's really important to hire somebody that is really in tune with each different component of the business. It just makes more sense. Mark: Okay so we're going completely off script here because we're going to talk about the buying versus building and kind of building off of Walker's episode that we filmed. You know Walker who is a … we always have to say now best-selling author Walker Diebel because he's done such a great job with his book Buy than Build. People are like … we're at CapCon this past weekend and we gave away his book and when people realize he was there like oh the author is here, oh that's super cool and like he's kind of a big deal. So we'll get to this I do want to talk about building versus buying and making sort of the argument of why would you want to build a business someday. But I want to go back something you're talking about here, hiring out different pieces. Okay, it sounds so easy to do to say hire a marketer and hire somebody who's really good at what they're doing. Okay, great. Look I've hired people before, I've fired people before, these are all … it's usually in the agency sort of roles. When you're looking for somebody to hire specifically for marketing let's delve into that, how do you A. qualify them or what do you look for? Are you looking for an agency? Are you looking for an individual that works for you directly? Or does it really matter to you? And then also how do you … you said keep the marketing message on point? How? What are you doing to keep that marketing message on point and to check that? Amanda: That's a great question. I was actually reading something last night that said there's no such thing as a getting rich quick scheme. They often take a lot of work to get there. Even though it sounds simple it's actually really difficult. And it kind of goes with the same thing that success is like an iceberg, you only see the top part but there's a huge component at the bottom to making that work. And so there's a lot of trial and error with that to find the right person. Obviously, there's going to be a lot of hiring and letting go and finding somebody else because you learn what you don't want, you learn what you actually need. And sometimes that can be an agency if they have all those components built in. So if they have everybody you're looking for and they're doing exactly what they say they're going to do and holding themselves accountable then great since that makes sense. And to me, that's ideal because there's less hand-holding and less training involved. A lot of times though, it does involve finding one contractor to do something very specific. And it does require constant monitoring to make sure that they're staying on task and basically meeting those milestones that you've put in place for them. So I think that building that team does come with trial and error. It does come with some unfortunate firing of team members because they're not performing. But at the end of the day finding those quality team members are what kind of drive your business. So it's really important to stay on top of it. Mark: Yeah and I think it's important as well when talking about letting people go. Like this is the unfortunate part of being an entrepreneur, sometimes you have to let people go. But I do think it's important to look at the options available to you as well. Maybe like you said somebody is really better suited for customer service and you can really apply that. I often think about like sports teams and what do they do right? Sports teams are often handicapped by who they actually have on their teams and so a lot of times they play to the strengths of the team members that they currently have. And so this is something that for those of you that are currently like me that kind of cringe at the idea of letting people go this is something that you can do; it's invest in the people that you do have to find out where they do thrive. That doesn't mean that you should just need and see hold on to somebody. Everybody is an adult and should understand that obviously, it has to be a good fit. But you can definitely invest in people as well. How involved do you get with that marketing message when you are taking a look? Let's say that you hire somebody to do some Facebook Marketing for you and they're going to set up the creatives and everything else. How closely are you monitoring their ad work and how much are you kind of saying okay I'm going to let you run and possibly fall and this is your gig … I guess my question is how do you avoid micromanaging versus letting them run wild with a completely wrong message? Amanda: Well that's a good question because I think that first of all I am a natural manager and anybody in my family will tell you that … so especially when it has to do with your marketing dollars and getting a return on investment. However, there are things that I just don't know how to do really well and … for example Facebook Marketing or an email, like Amazon PPC or something of that nature. And a lot of times you will be told that they need a ramp up period so they can kind of test campaign. See what's working and then dial in on a more targeted marketing after they do broader match term. And so they do require a period of time to really get those conversions up or an Amazon to take the a-cost down and so with that I really only check in every three months to see if they are meeting our goal. And if they're not then you have to decide okay am I going to give them another three months period or do I need to move on? And so … I mean it really depends on what it is, what channel. Obviously, with SEO, there is a really long period of time that you kind of have to wait to see if its working and that can be really hard for people who are not patient enough. Because with Google with all of the algorithms that have come through in the last couple of years it can take a lot longer than it did previously before that in the old school days to get results. So it just really depends whether it'd be Instagram, Facebook, where I think you can see a lot quicker results versus Amazon or Google PPC and SEO. It's just a completely different ballgame. Mark: Are you an old enough internet marketer … and I don't want to call you old but are you old school enough to remember the Google Dance? Amanda: Yes. Am I showing my age now? Absolutely. Mark: I'm so glad that we got that recorded that I'm here calling you old publicly to everybody. No, I just … you know I often … I love talking to entrepreneurs. I have been doing this for a while because we remember the Google Dance. Every 30 days or 45 days and then the forms will light up like all right the Google Dance is happening and you'd want to see where you … everything is shook out and did you gain, did you lose? How— Amanda: Worse than the stock market. I tell you … unbelievable, yes. I don't miss that. There's a lot more opportunities for diversification now it seems so— Mark: Yeah. I think Google has done a good job of … because if you got edged out by like a spammy site or somebody that was just been [inaudible 00:19:19.4] the search results you're done. Amanda: Right. Mark: You had to wait 30 days minimum to be able to correct it and it was just torture but exciting at the same time. All right let's get to the topic that we were going to talk about. I want to talk a little bit about building versus buying. And I know I brought this up with Chuck at CapCon and he's like why would you guys talk about this? You're going to shoot yourself in the foot because we obviously make our money when people buy businesses from us. But there's an argument to be made as well especially for creatives for building something. So let's start right there and just ask you've done both, you've bought businesses and you've built businesses. Amanda: Mm-hmm. Mark: Where do you fall kind of on that spectrum and why? Amanda: Well I'm more on the builder side. I'm just a natural builder, a natural creator. I love the challenge of it. I love actually creating something from nothing. That is very much who I am. And you can't buy something without having somebody to build it right? So there is the other side of that coin and so somebody has to build a business, hopefully, a great business for a buyer to want to invest in. And so I love talking about building businesses because that's really where I'm passionate. I'm also very analytical as you know with data and statistics and marketing. And so I just … I think that when you're looking at buying a business versus building I think there's great opportunity for both right? If you're … if you have a portfolio of businesses for example like Shakil does and obviously he's willing to buy businesses because he doesn't want to invest the time to just necessarily or take the time to grow because they have a team ready to jump into something and run with it. Whereas I like to take some time to build it and see kind of where it's going to go and then run with it that way more organically. And that's kind of where my passion lies. And I like to kind of have that control of what I'm … the product how it's being made, packaged, the overall message around it. And that goes with pretty much everything whether I'm building a home or a business kind of my thoughts on it. Mark: Yeah and I met him. You've built multiple properties physical like … since you've been with Quiet Light one rental property, two homes at least that I know of. Amanda: Yes, three. Mark: Three? Wow. Amanda: Uh-huh. Mark: Holy cow. And I know you're really involved in the design process as well. When we met down in Austin you've had floor samples and everything like that in the car because you were going through all this. You do like to get in to that. Do you think it makes more sense? Let's just talk purely investment strategy here from just an investment standpoint. So I'm looking to place money into something and really kind of grow from a financial standpoint, do you think that there's a benefit in buying versus building in that scenario? Amanda: Today it is harder. It's more competitive to build. There's no doubt about it. It's much harder than when I started out. When I built my pearl company it was in 2003. We launched in 2004. Obviously, that was a total different time, kind of similar with my check manufacturing company. And then with Amazon, I still think that there's easy room for building obviously and even with Facebook Marketing you can see some pretty quick growth there. But there is something to be said for businesses that have really paved the way and are established and the foundation is there. And so I think it just depends on how you want to invest and so if you want to invest in something that's established and that has a history, a foundation that's already been done, they've already built a team for you and you're just walking right into it. That makes for a very sound and smart decision versus taking a risk and just seeing where it takes you in building a business. Because I mean I've experienced this, I've built a lot of businesses that haven't been successful either because I either burnt out or the marketing just didn't pan out. But I've learned from those and so I think one of my greatest successes is built off of just learning from the failure and then building off of that platform. So I think there's something to be said for both. From an investment standpoint though I'd say if you're looking to invest in something investing in a business that's established makes more sense. So I guess it's just different. I am a creator and a builder but at the same time, I do like to invest in sound vehicles so I've done both. Mark: I've asked this question to a few people before. If you were to guess how many domains you own right now how many would it be? Amanda: Oh gosh I don't know. And I'd hate to look because I'm sure I'm spending a lot of money just wasting away. Mark: Yeah. Amanda: Yes I actually purchased domains for my daughters as well because I don't know where this internet space is going and so I just want them to have the opportunity when the time is right. So yes I have a lot of wasted domain right now. Mark: Yeah I've logged in to my domain account and it's kind of like going down memory lane of bad business ideas or maybe— Amanda: Yes isn't it? Mark: They're not always bad but some of them are bad. Some of them are like oh my gosh what was … was my diet bad when I did that … decided to because this is— Amanda: The someday businesses; yes, what I might do someday. Mark: Exactly, there's a couple in there like you know what I actually still want to do that. It's just a matter of A. it doesn't pay anybody if I do it and B. the prime. Amanda: Right. Mark: But I think before that you were actually getting on to a point that I thought was really interesting and I found this with buyers. You've been with Quiet Light now seven years I think? Amanda: Yes, seven going on I think eight; crazy. Mark: I know right? So you've dealt with a lot of buyers over the years as well and I find that buyers tend to be … tinkers a lot right? The people that love to buy and do really well they're great at taking something existing, tinkering, modifying it, improving it. But a lot of buyers … and this is speaking generally; this is the rule for everybody. The creative process of starting up something from scratch and having to create and have that runway isn't really of interest to them. You know those are things that kind of bore them. And I know in Walker's book he talks about this. He starts out saying that he had start-up companies and they … it failed, including companies that received quite a bit of funding. And that process, that ramp up period was really painful. But once he started buying he really enjoyed that part of it. That was super exciting to him. So I think some of it does come to just personality. Amanda: Yes. Mark: What do you get excited about? You are a creator. You're a creative person. You love design. You love creating systems and you are data driven and data oriented. So that makes sense that you are going to really go towards that starting side to help exercise some of those creative muscles. So what are some of the first areas that when you're starting a business you like to outsource? Amanda: Obviously, the website design that would be the first step and it really depends on what the business is. But the first step would be product manufacturing, a website design, and how to start your first layer of marketing. And I would outsource all of that. And basically, I would just be managing that process to make it look and feel like I want it to so the business imparts the message that I want to integrate into the business. But that part is the hardest part I think of running a business. It does require a lot of thought, creativity, and management. At the same time for me, that's really what drives me when I'm creating something. That push and that challenge is what I look forward to everyday or stay up super late at night thinking about. And so I think it really is important to start outsourcing from the beginning. Because I'm obviously not a manufacturer, not a web designer, and I don't do the day to day marketing per se. I hire all of that out. Mark: Yeah and I've heard it a lot. Start at the beginning don't try and run a bootstrap with and then think that it's going to be easy. It's going to be easy just to hand that off because it's really hard as an entrepreneur to do that. What's the last thing that you would outsource? Amanda: Probably bookkeeping, to be honest, because … yeah, it pains me to say because I want everybody to have clean books right? But the last thing for me is bookkeeping because I know how to get a bank account and a credit card. That's easy; those are things that most people can do if we're generic. But running your books, you actually need to have a history of at least a couple of months and so it's pretty easy to integrate that into Quick Books or whatnot from your bank statement. So typically that's the last thing I would hire out because it seems to me that it doesn't take them very long to catch up. Mark: That's interesting. So I'm actually reversed on that. I like to outsource books first because I just don't enjoy it at all. Amanda: Right. Mark: And like you said outsource the stuff that you don't enjoy and keep things that you do so cool. Well, this has been interesting, it's been useful, it's not everything that we planned to talk about but I actually liked what we talked about and that there was something interesting. So I'm going to end with this, you've been advising buyers and sellers for a long time now and most of the people that listen to the podcast are looking to buy, there are some people selling. If you were to give one piece of advice for people buying an online business whether it'd be through Quiet Light Brokerage or through any other place; you find it online or another brokerage firm, what would be just kind of the one thing that you would advise people on? Amanda: I think the best thing that you can do is take some time to research just overall broad marketplace. Don't just look at a few packages. Really allow yourself several months at least to get a good feel of what's a good fit for you. There are so many different models of businesses, SaaS businesses, Amazon, to e-commerce and so forth and so one may seem more attractive to you. It may not necessarily need to be a certain niche but it may just be a certain type of model that is attractive. And I just want to add to that that the other thing that I recommend is don't basically pigeonhole yourself into a certain niche because you might find a business that doesn't have an attractive product but everything else could be right; the lifestyle component, the workload, the margin, the net profitability. And so I think that's really important to keep an open mind. Mark: Awesome. Well, hey, thanks, Amanda for coming on the podcast. I really do appreciate you coming on and I'm sure everybody else will as well. Everybody knows where to reach you, amanda@quietlightbrokerage. If you have questions about buying, about starting, about … you know or just have really general questions about this I will stand by the fact that your entrepreneurial background speaks for itself. And I think the success that you've had repeatedly speaks for itself. So we appreciate you sharing some of the wisdom you've gained over the years of doing this entrepreneurial thing that we do and everything else. Amanda: Yeah. Mark: So hopefully we can have you on again sometime in the future but we'll wait a year or so before we do. Amanda: Yes please do. Mark: All right. Amanda: Well thank you, Mark. I appreciate it. Have a great day. Links and Resources: Contact Amanda About Amanda  

Marketing Scoop Episode 2.15 is a ‘success story’ themed episode – specifically focusing on “How to market a podcast”.  Subscribe to our podcast here: https://www.semrush.com/podcast/ Podcasts are growing at a rate of knots, with nearly 68 million Americans listening to podcasts on a monthly basis – that’s nearly one in four people across the country! If you’ve started a podcast, or you’ve considered starting a podcast, then one thing that you definitely need to think about is how to market your podcast. And that’s something that’s covered in today’s Success Story, which features 2 great guests. Firstly Deepak Shukla – Founder of Pearl Lemon and the ‘Life, Love and Entrepreneurship’ podcast – a show that he’s managed to get featured in the ‘New & Noteworthy’ section of iTunes twice. Also joining us is CEO & Co-founder of podcast tech company Rebel Base Media, Mark Asquith. Mark’s a podcaster, speaker (including TedX) and content marketer with a background in successful entrepreneurship, startups and building global marketing agencies. Here's what is discussed: 2:40 What type of podcast episode tends to get the most traction for Mark Asquith? 5:34 Are episodes with guests easier to promote? 7:00 Does Deepak agree that shorter podcasts perform better? 10:00 Why are Joe Rogan’s long shows so successful if short shows are better? 14:00 What is Mark Asquith’s opinion of long-form podcasts? 17:00 What is an example of a podcast episode that Deepak has published that was particularly successful, and why was it successful? 20:00 How does Deepak research his topics that he’s going to cover in each episode? 22:00 What about Mark? What is an example of a podcast episode that Mark has published that was particularly successful, and why was it successful? 25:40 Are trending topics more important than guests? 29:00 Is it important that you ask your listeners to subscribe? 32:00 Deepak’s actionable tip 34:00 Mark’s actionable tip

The most popular Quiet Light podcast episode to date was all about buying multiple businesses without going crazy. That episode featured Shakil Prasla, who at the time had already acquired eight businesses. Shakil is back today answering the number one client question we got from that eipsode – how to hire a CEO for your new acquisition? How can you acquire an e-commerce business, do due diligence, get it up and running well, and simultaneously bring someone in to run it? Shakil has taken on two partners since that episode and together they run ProClick Ventures, a family of e-commerce companies. They now focus mainly on acquiring larger companies and are up to twelve in total. Shakil is here answer our CEO questions and many more while emphasizing the notion of learning to delegate. Doing what he does takes a mindset that focuses on owning multiple companies where HE takes care of the big things while delegating the smaller stuff to others. Episode Highlights: Why Shakil always looks to put a CEO into place when buying a business. His techniques for finding good candidates. All his CEOs are hired locally or nationally and based in one office location. How Shakil manages payscale and bonuses. What he looks for in a candidate. The salary vs. longer term incentive factors. Managing the CEO. How Shakil handles a poor performer. Factors that stop a CEO from going out on their own after a while. How long the longest-tenured CEO has been with Shakil's group. Shakil describes the greatest growth story from his portfolio. How he avoids conflicts among CEOs who are using shared back-office resources. Shakil's top listener tips for hiring CEOs. Transcription:   Joe: Hey Mark how are you doing today? Mark: I am doing really, really good Joe. I want you to tell everybody what was the most popular episode of the Quiet Light Podcast back in 2018. Joe: This is just an intro to tell people that you have the majority of the top 10 episodes. I think that's what that's all about because the top one is Shakil Prasla. You did the interview with him and you had him back on right? Mark: Yes that's right. Yeah, and it really is it's just me trying to make myself feel good. Joe: I told stats on the top 20 and we're even at 50-50 but I don't think that's very impressive because I knew you were going to bring that up on this call today. So I was hoping I'd have something much more impressive like you had the majority of the top 20 but I had the 80% of the top 20 but it's not the case at all. Mark: But you know you hold the records that count in Quiet Light such as largest deal closed and most transactions so you can rest easy with those. Joe: Fortunately we've got people that are incredible coming up like Walker and Chuck and Brad so those records would be shattered by all three of those in the future someday. Mark: Yeah well getting back to the podcast here. Joe: Oh yeah. Mark: Yeah that's why we're here. Shakil … Shakil Prasla, the most popular episode that we've recorded in the year and a half that we've been doing the Quiet Light podcast now. And the title of that episode was “How To Buy Multiple Businesses Without Going Insane”. If you haven't listened to it, go back take a listen to it, a really interesting podcast episode. Shakil at that time had bought eight businesses in two years. And unlike RJ who we talked about with 101 Commerce who had a whole system and team built up, Shakil kind of did this and grew this organically, right? He is sort of buying these businesses organically. He started as a buyer … an owner operator and has moved out into a different format. Now in that first podcast, we talked a lot about how is he getting the financing? We talked a little bit about how he was structuring this as well to keep his time just in check because eight businesses is a lot. But we didn't get into the heart of the matter which is how is he actually going through in managing all these businesses. And the trick to it really at the end of the day, the trick to it is hiring CEO's. He hires a CEO during the acquisition process. So while he's in due diligence he goes out and he finds somebody who's going to run that business. Now the number one question that I've gotten from that episode when I've talked to people afterwards is not funding questions but where does he find these CEO's and how does he structure that so that it works. So I decided to have Shakil back and he was super gracious with his time. You know I was really worried about him giving away company secrets and everything, Shakil just like he does just said “Yeah no, no company secrets. I'm happy to share whatever you know … let's just talk about it and see what we can do to help people”. And that's what this episode is, how to hire a CEO to run your business. Joe: That's great you know we have dozens of folks that have the idea to buy and build a portfolio of online businesses and Shakil has done it. He's … he did it before most people were talking about it and he's done it successfully. So I think it's a great episode to re-air or have somebody back and talk about it in detail; looking forward to listening to this myself. Mark: Yeah let's get to it. Mark: All right so the most popular episode that we've had on the Quiet Light Podcast over the past 15 months that we've been doing this now I think came when I had a conversation with you Shakil. And we talked about your somewhat insanity of buying multiple businesses. And at the time you have bought eight businesses over two years so we titled the episode “How To Buy Multiple Businesses Without Going Insane”. And we talked about just kind of the high level stuff about what you were doing. One we focused a little bit how you were acquiring these businesses and putting people in place to run them from day one but we also talked and probably spent more time on how your financing these acquisitions as well. Well, again this is by far the most downloaded episode that we've had over the Quiet Light Podcast history and the number one question I get when I talk to people about the podcast and your episode comes up is how you're hiring CEO's. And I'm going to step back a little bit and just say look since I've been an entrepreneur and since I sold my first business now [inaudible 00:05:19.3] years ago I've received this question why don't you just hire somebody to run the business for you and live off the cash flow? And has this phrase trite sort of quaint phrase that we like to just tell people just put somebody in place to run the business. But the devil's always in the execution right? How do you actually do that? How do you find somebody? How do you pay somebody for that? How do you set up a system that is still working and at the end of the day how do you manage CEO's? So thanks for coming on board back on here defending your number one title. Maybe you can get number one and number two. And let's start to delve into some of this. Thanks for coming on. Let's start with a very easy question last time we talked which was a year ago you had eight companies, what does that count up to now? Shakil: Yes so now we're at 12 companies now and still aggressively acquiring companies. Now we're acquiring the larger deals. So any company that's making at least half a million dollars in their seller's discretionary earnings is what we're aiming for now. So we're definitely going for the larger companies. When I initially started it was dragging my feet wet, get some little businesses, get the cash flow going and you know long delay I wanted to start acquiring larger companies … yeah and here I am now. Mark: Yeah so now it's not just you doing this now right? You do have a few people together or working together oin this, right? Shakil: Yeah so as you get larger you don't want to … your risk exposure gets higher and so what I've done is I've partnered with a few folks in Houston as well that were already in the e-commerce game. And so what that does is things that I lack or I become the bottleneck that's where my partners excel in. And so it's been a great sort of marriage in that my weaknesses are their strengths. And so … and the way I met them was they're part of my community but we're a part of this Facebook group and we are to make introductions and stuff and [inaudible 00:07:21.6] for Johnny introduce himself saying “Hey I'm in e-commerce”. And so I messaged him and I'm like “Hey I'm in e-commerce too we should meet up”. This is five years ago and we met up for coffee and we brainstormed ideas. I was like yeah I'm acquiring companies do you want to partner up and buy something larger? At this point, I didn't even know this guy, right? But like yeah, let's do this. We had no partnership agreements in place; nothing like that. The trust factor was there, the friendship was there and so we're able to break that off … get that going and so we've been able to acquire much larger companies since then. Mark: That's awesome. So up to 12, you're still not insane? Could go I'm insane at some points, right? Shakil: Oh absolutely I mean a few days ago I have to color my beard as well. It's getting white. It's definitely a different mindset you need to have to be able to run multiple companies. You're not able to do everything for each of the companies, right? So you have to focus on the high level growth goals, two or three things for each company and then that's it. Everything else … everything small tedious has to do … be done by the rest of the team. Mark: Right. You know I often look at people like Elon Musk obviously kind of a figurehead, especially for entrepreneurs. And a lot of entrepreneurs look at him and you look at the fact that he's got how many companies. And it's not like these companies are doing “small things”. I guess our companies in comparison would be doing a small thing compared to what he's doing. He's literally sending people to space digging tunnels under the ground and the other question is how in the world can you possibly do it? But it's that idea of let's focus on the big things and only get into the weeds and the details or necessary but it comes down to having those right people in place. Again the number one question I got from Europe the last time was the idea that you're hiring CEO's. So let's start with this first, when you're looking to acquire a company and I would assume and correct me if I'm wrong, I would assume that you're always looking to put a CEO in place whenever you're doing an acquisition. Is that the case? Shakil: Yeah, absolutely. So the thing is when I buy a business I'm not trying to buy a full time job either. And so the strategy I use is when I make an offer on the business and send them an LOI at that point I know I want to buy the business, so while doing due diligence at the same time I'm looking for a CEO. And the process of that … usually, due diligence if it's 30 to 45 days or if it's SBA it'll take a little longer but during that whole process of due diligence I actually go find a CEO in 20 to 30 days and bring them on at the tail end of due diligence. And so the future CEO gets to kind of see the process, gets to see the operations and everything. And once I acquire the company I keep the old owner on always, whether it's consulting agreements or whatever at least for two months. And I keep them on for two months the old seller so that way they could transfer all the knowledge to me and the new CEO in place. And what that does is it makes this transition much easier and it empowers or gets the CEO ready to start making their own decisions for the business. So yeah, I do definitely keep the CEO in place always. Mark: All right so there's a thousand questions that we can be asked after this and I'm going to … I know people listening are probably asking their own questions. I hope I get to all the ones that you guys have in your heads. Let's start with I think one of the obvious questions and that is where are you finding these CEO's? I mean how are you putting these job listings out? Are these all coming through your network? Are you just advertising on job boards? And what are you doing to attract the candidates? Shakil: Yes so the first thing first because you have to create the role. There has to be a need for the role. It's hard to find a CEO for a business if it's only … if the business is only making $100,000 in profit because the CEO … depending on the caliber of the person you'll at least need to pay him at least $50,000. So half your profits go there so the income has to be there and then he has to be there. Second, you have to create the role right? So with the role, I put on my job listings that hey you're going to be the CEO of the company. You're going to be doing everything A to Z. You're going to be doing vendor management, employee management, hiring and firing, growth goals. And so the type of people that I would look for to apply or would be good candidates are people that have some type of project management background, some type of senior leadership background, some type of digital marketing background; that's a huge thing. A lot of people will apply with the digital marketing background. And so I guess the perfect type of person that would apply would be a digital marketer that works for an agency that has VA's that meet them or that has junior assistants that meet them. They have that sort of project management role. They've worked with clients to get their goals aligned and they have the marketing experience. So that would be a great candidate to kind of fill that CEO role. Mark: Where do I look for them? Shakil: You know it's … I go to a lot of conferences. I go to a lot of networking events. I talk to a lot of people. Podcasts like these help too and so there's a lot of people reaching out to me. There's a lot of people I'm reaching out to through that network to just tell them hey I'm in e-commerce and I'm looking to hire a CEO always but stay in touch. So the network is one thing but there is the job boards that also help, right? So there's LinkedIn. I think LinkedIn is a great platform, ZipRecruiter which is another great platform. There's E-commerce Fuel Jobs, so that's specifically just for e-commerce jobs. That's a great one as well. And then there's to also staffing agencies I've used where they pretty much will go to different candidates in the Austin or Houston area with people with e-commerce jobs and just message them on LinkedIn saying hey we have a job available would you guys be interested. So there's multiple ways with all these different ways of kind of attracting. And remember I'm … you're sort of on a timeline because during this due diligence phase it's not going to go on forever. As much as I want to have patience to find the right candidate, I don't want to be in a position where I buy the business and the CEO is not training me or I have to bring another CEO from my other company to come in either. That doesn't make things efficient and so I have to be aggressive in finding someone but I have to find the right candidate. And so I have to look everywhere and I think those … these places where I talked about networking, job boards, staffing agencies, they're all going to help you find several candidates. And then the process is next how do you identify the right CEO through all these applicants. Mark: Right and that's … I want to get into the process a little bit here. Do you mainly hire a local or are you open to hiring across the country or does it depend? Shakil: I'm open to hiring across the country. And so part of our listing we also offer a job relocation bonus as well. Because if I'm only going to be looking in Austin and Houston you have a … sort of that limited parameter and limited people apply. That only works with staffing agencies because they have like the local networks but on LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, E-commerce Fuel Jobs, that's nationwide. It's open to anyone. So if you're in New York City, if the position can be remote we'll keep it remote but the new strategy we're going for now is just keeping everything in house; getting everyone to the headquarters. We could brainstorm easily but we would give a relocation bonus to come to our headquarters in Houston. Mark: So do you have like a … this headquarters in Houston do you have all these CEO's coming into one office complex? Shakil: Yup. So we have a nice sized office there where we have our CEO's. So each CEO has his own little office every Tuesday or Thursday that's when our weekly meetings are. We will have weekly meetings with the CEO. And then once a month we also have a meeting with all the CEO's. So if a CEO for one business has a certain strategy they'll share those. If something's not working out for another strategy they'll share those as well. So it's a nice collaboration of sharing strategies. And then we also have a what I call a shared back office which is our content folks, we have our design team, we have our SEO specialists, we have our ad guys as well too. So we have that shared resources across all the platforms which all the CEO's and companies are able to utilize as well. And then that's in the headquarters Houston. Mark: Awesome. Well, let's talk a little bit about pay. Because one thing I look at with this is you hear CEO and I think really expensive. It sounds like … you said that you started as low as $50,000 for that are people actually responding to that sort of a pay scale? Shakil: Yeah look I mean the higher the salary the higher the caliber of folks. This all comes back to how much the company is making. If … you know I'll give you an example, one of our companies I think when we bought it was making 300,000. I'm not able to afford $150,000 a year person just based off that rate. So it depends on how much the business is making but yeah our CEO's make anywhere from 50 to well over 6 figures … 50,000 to well over six figures in salary. Mark: And then do you work on different bonus structures as well? So kind of salary plus a bonus? Shakil: Yeah so at the end of the day you want to incentivize these folks to treat it like their own business. There's a reason why they're not starting their own business. There's always that thought at the back of my mind that … or even others as why don't they just go and start their own company? And at the end of the day some folks like a steady income versus business cash flows that are not steady. So there's that one aspect. To answer your question the incentives, so yeah our CEO's do have incentives. We do multiple incentives. One of them is besides salary you get an incentive based off the profit of the business. So we used to do topline incentives, top line growth but it wasn't helping our bottom line either. You could spend a bunch of money on Google AdWords or Facebook and grow the topline but that does not mean you're growing the bottom line. So our CEO's have access to Quick Books, our financials. They get to see how the business is doing. So they get a percentage of the profit. That's one incentive. Number two is we do what it's called an anniversary bonus. So if they stayed on for one year they get a bonus. If they stayed on for two years they get a bonus you know and 3 years and so on. And the reason for that is you're spending so much time with these folks to train them, get them on board, learn the business and if they're really good you don't want them to walk away. So you kind of give them that little incentive to keep staying on for those anniversary bonuses. And then we also have another bonus where if we sell the company they get part of the sell price as well. So that's another incentive for them to stay towards the end, right? My goal is not to keep all the companies forever. It is to sell the whole portfolio to a larger buyer. Mark: Sure so when you're working out these incentive it sounds like you're … one of the incentives is just the bottom line profits of the company and I would assume certain growth percentages there. Either just a flat percentage on maybe if you get this much growth. Do you work with CEO's to identify maybe other metrics that would be important to grow within the company whether that be more efficiency in ad spend or anything else or do you try and keep it just simple that's for a percent of the profits? Shakil: Yes so that's a good question. I would clarify that. They do get profit sharing but it's based off the growth of the company. And so I'm not trying to … I mean the goal is definitely to grow the company so yeah the higher the business grows, it's a tiered incentive, right? So the more the business grows the more they make as well. I apologize what was your original question? Mark: I'm wondering about the different bonus structures that you set up for them. So I know we had Bill D'Allesandro on recently and I know he incentivizes some of his people based off of other metrics as well right? So he's looking at … maybe it's with his deeper metrics and I know with like Quiet Light Brokerage one of the metrics that we measure here are conversations. It's a really simple sort of thing that we look at to say how many conversations are we having because we know it provides the rest of our business. Do you do that with your CEO's or do you try and keep it just simple and say let's focus on the profits and you're going to worry about identifying what's going to drive those profits. Shakil: That's a great question. My only incentive is the bottom line because everything that you do, improving conversions to making ad spend more efficient, to making operations more efficient, to make it more lean, everything adds back to the bottom line and that's what it comes back to. So part of our weekly meetings is we look at where are we being inefficient? Where are we spending too much? Where is our ads the … return ad spend too high? And we identify those and we lower those because at the end of the day as we're being more efficient it should lead to a better bottom line and that is extra money going into the CEO's pocket. So yeah my only incentive is definitely the bottom line. Mark: When you're looking to hire a CEO how much emphasis do you put on them being able to understand that business model? And I guess maybe some of that would come from who you are hiring and knowing their background but let's say that you're selling right away and ready to fire away and … do you look for somebody who is familiar with the toy industry at all is that really a concern of yours? Are you looking more of just generic e-commerce experience? Shakil: Man, that's a great question and that's the thought process I have too is if I bought a socks company I want to make sure that they're sort of familiar with the industry. But at the end of the day it's pretty hard to find those kind of niche focus people. And so that is something, it's a plus, it's preferred. If I don't find that then I'm okay with something else. As long as they understand the model, as long as they understand e-commerce and digital advertising and management, learning the product or the industry is sort of second hand. It becomes … if you have the skill sets of what I just mentioned, learning the product isn't going to be hard for them. And so yes it's preferred but not required. Mark: Okay I'm going to ask you another question and if I'm getting to detailed and I know that you have … you've built something that works really well and I don't want for you to necessarily have to give away the company secrets and everything so feel free to gloss over this if needed. You brought up something that I thought was interesting and something that I want to get into in a little bit here and that's the idea that why wouldn't these people just start up a business on their own. And the answer, you answered your own question and you said well they prefer that steady income. They like to have that steady income. So I'm looking at this mix of steady income kind of a base salary plus a bonus structure on top of that if you find that there's a sweet spot in there of mixing those two things together? I think people inherently like the idea of a bonus. You know it's out there is like this nice frosting on top of the cake but is there a balance? But obviously, you can't be 100% performance based because if you were there then these people will be like forget it I'm going to go do it on my own. Do you find there's a sweet spot there? Is that based off a percentage or is it based off there as just kind of a floor to the amount of money that somebody needs to make before they can really be incentivized and then the business tells the rest of the story as to how the bonus has to work? I don't know if that question makes any sense or not but… Shakil: No, it does and again there's no secrets to anything I do. It's just a process that we really refined. Whenever we look at a lot of candidates even folks working with us, even people that have applied, it's definitely the people that have applied … it's first one it's hard to be an entrepreneur. You're now working an eight to five job Monday to Friday, you're working every single day so having that mindset, first of all, is hard. Not everyone can do it. But people are okay to work for entrepreneurs, learn from them as well. And the different part about me is I don't expect these guys to work for 10 years for me. My goal is a three year sort of timeline. And you know I'm pretty open with everyone too, it's just we're looking to grow aggressively for the next three years and then just sell. And so in the back of their mind, they're going to try … what they try to do is learn as much as they can in the next three years and stay on and then well hopefully when we sell they also get a bonus there, right? So it's definitely you have to have the right mindset. It's hard to be an entrepreneur; it's hard to work every single day staying up late at night. And then number two it comes back to the pay as well. You know and I look at so many businesses and stuff what if … if you're getting a lot of traffic from Google what if you get a Google update, your income now is slashed, right? How are you going to pay for your house? How are you going to pay for your family? That's just the stress that a lot of people do not want to have. They want to have a fixed income, right? And so we offer … our salaries are very competitive especially for our larger companies they are very well compensated. And then the bonus is just the cherry on top. It's just for them to show us that they are really into this for this growth. And so as they grow the company the valuation of the company goes up. And so I definitely want them to have the upside on that as well. So your salary has to be good enough just in case the incentives are not met, right? They have to not only live off it but be happy with it as well. Mark: All right cool. Let's get into managing the employees because this is the second half of this question, managing the CEO's I should say. This is the second half of the question, one obviously is how do you find these people, how do you compensate these people, you know that upfront sort of process; the back end of it is once you have all these people in place and it sounds like you have multiple now, you have probably 10 or even a dozen CEO's, managing the CEO's on a regular basis and that's not a small feat by any means. You already alluded to it a little bit but let's go over it again. You do meetings every Tuesday with those that are local and then once a month for everybody all together? Shakil: Correct. Mark: Okay. And then how often do you check in on their performance of their company? So is that a monthly task? Do you meet with them individually? How does that work? Shakil: Yeah so we look at the numbers every week actually. And so we use a template where it should show month over month growth, week over week growth, year over year growth, and then it's broken down by where the revenue is coming from, how much we're spending on ads, where our conversion rate is, any notable achievements in the last week, any disappointments, any customers that walked away. So we have like this template … this checklist which the CEO's have to fill out every week and that's where … that's what our meeting is based off of. Mark: Okay so you'd meet with them weekly. Let's ask the uncomfortable question, the one that is kind of in the back of my head. I was saving it but I'll ask it now. What do you do with poor performers? Shakil: Yeah so you know and I am not going to make this sound easy or anything, this is … when you're … when you buy a company you're investing your own money and now you're trusting someone else to run that for you. You're pretty much making sure that they … make sure that your investments work out, right? That's really hard to do. As entrepreneurs, we try to hog all the work. And it's true like you do what you do the best. I do what I'm doing the best. But at the end of the day, you have to let go of that … those tasks, those powers. And when you start to do that you start to be able to delegate these tasks much easier. I haven't started these businesses from the scratch. It's easier for me to empower these folks to sort of go do these tasks, right? If it's someone that's starting off they've been doing everything; customer service, graphic designing, SEO and everything. So it gets a little harder when you … I started something but when you buy something it's a little easier to let go of those tasks. So does poor performance. Yeah, we've had CEO's that have not done well. You know when you're interviewing someone you try to build that relationship with them, you try to build that trust with them. And their job is to sell themselves. And they do really good job. Sometimes they're not trust … you know sometimes not truthful in the experiences and the skill sets that they have that we're looking for, right? If I'm looking for someone that has … for example an IT background in our custom platform. We had someone that said yeah I have really good experience in it. They checked our backend and they said some really good things that made them sound so experienced and when it came time and we hired them they weren't able to perform. And so when that happens you have to terminate and move on quickly. And one thing I forgot to mention is my CEO's … these ranges but we always do a contract basis first. So this is called a trial period where for three months we get to sort of feel each other out to make sure this works for you and for me. We want to make sure that our goals are aligned. And so during that trial period, I'm able to really tell … me and my partners is this going to work out or not. So yeah sometimes they don't work out and we do fire them and we have to move on to the next person quickly. Mark: The CEO's pay … this three months trial period after the three months is their pay guaranteed after that? Shakil: Yeah, exactly. Mark: Okay, yeah that makes sense. So that three months is really important for you guys to be able to do that. If you have to let that CEO go after those three months are you looking for a CEO in month two because you know that you're going to be replacing them? Shakil: That's where our stress happens quite often, right? You have this whole plan of transferring knowledge more from the seller to the CEO. You're going to be dependent on the CEO to running … working 40 hours a week. What happens when there's no CEO and you have a seven figure revenue business and all these customers, employee, supplier relationships. Who are they supposed to go to? So that's where one of us partners will have to step in or we … the CEO's that are with us right now they're amazing. They're really good folks and they understand our systems well. So temporarily we may have to kind of make the CEO or one of our other CEO's come in place of this one just to work a little bit as well while we look for someone else. Or we may reach back up to that old seller and say hey let's kick in our consulting agreement. We'll pay you whatever it is to run the company while we look for someone else just because knowing this is during the three month process. We haven't had anyone leave after the three month process and that's what makes this kind of system work flawlessly right now. Mark: So you brought this earlier on, why wouldn't these people start their own business on their own, and I know I've had some … early on in Quiet Light days when I would hire a broker because I'd hire entrepreneurs. These guys look at the deal flow and they're like you know I want to buy these businesses myself. And I've actually had a couple of them back out so that they could pursue other ventures. Have you had CEO's after they've run the business for a little bit whether in a friendly way or maybe not so friendly way either compete or end up leaving? Shakil: All right so, fortunately, I have not. However, that thought is always in my mind. And you know as much as I want to reason with it saying people want a fixed salary, people want to take on the risk; they can leave. I mean it's … they can leave at any time. They've learnt so much through these acquisitions we've done through all the systems we've built. They're very capable of starting their own business. They're running our business. So yeah that thought is there luckily we haven't had that happen yet. But if it does happen that's unfortunate. But we do have a really strong SOP's in place to where if someone were to leave … it's me and three other partners so there's four of us and so we'll just jump in and run the show. And so that's what's helpful with a big organization now is I could pull in a CEO, I could pull in a partner if someone were to leave. Mark: What about some of the great success stories that you've had with your CEO's? It sounds like … let's start with how long is the longest tenured CEO been with you? How long have they been with you? Shakil: So when I first started buying acquisitions Mark I was buying them for cash flows. I was running them myself. I think the first three I was running myself and I think I bought my fourth one 2015 so that's when I first hired my CEO and he's still here. So I got into e-commerce five years ago. I hired my first CEO in 2015 so three years. Mark: All right and out of these are you able to share maybe the greatest success story of growth that you've had with one of your properties? Shakil: Yeah this was actually a company I bought from you guys from Amanda was … it's called metalpromo.com. We make metal promotional items; coins, pins, metal business cards. It was doing … I think when we bought it it was doing $600,000 in sales and we want … so that was the business we bought in 2015 and I … so that's 10X now. And when we bought the company it was just the best. It's dealing with different suppliers. It's not having any quality assurance in place because these are custom products. It's made in China shipped directly to the customer; 10 to 12 days lead time. It's just nothing in it to make sure that everything goes well. So we were able to refine the process, grow the company through a really good SEO and AdWord strategy. And you know at that time we had a team of two 2015 now we're a team of 20. And so that was a great success story. My … the CEO he's a partner as well; William. He's amazing and the unique part about him was we went to MBA program together. He had no e-commerce experience at all. He had a drive for success. And because I knew him and he was a good friend we decided to partner up. It was a little smaller acquisition at that time and man things worked out really well. And he's running the show. He's happy running these. We're both being paid really well from the company. So thank you, Amanda, for that deal but it's … you know that's a great success story. Mark: Yeah I have a theory that you only buy from Texans because you bought multiple businesses from Amanda. In fact, I'm trying to think if you bought any business through us that have not been through Amanda. I think they've all been through Amanda. Shakil: Yeah well … we're working on one deal right now through one of the other guys so hopefully, that works out. Mark: Well hopefully. Amanda is one of those ones … I mean she's a little bit quieter at Quiet Light. She doesn't come on the podcast and stuff. We're working to get her on the podcast but man she's effective. All right one last question, I've been taking up a lot of your time now. I mean we're running a half an hour or so more than half an hour here but you guys have the shared backend office here with content writers and other people doing other sort of work. Do you ever run into conflicts between the CEO's when it comes to those shared resources? Do you have any way of allotting those resources on the backend? Shakil: All right so that's a really good question. Yes, we do run into issues sometimes because when all the companies are on growth kind of mode you want to utilize these certain people more than the others. And so then that resource becomes a bottleneck then we have to go hire someone. But during that process, we do have a trailer board that we use that basically shows what that specific employee is working on. So if it's a content writer, our content writer can do so much articles a week, right? So we have this calendar as well sort of built in trailer where it shows our December 25th to December 31st they're going to be working on this property so on and so forth. So it is a sort of a tug of war so to speak there. We do run into a little bit of problems but I always consider that good problems because we need these resources. We'll just continue hiring until we don't have a bottleneck. Mark: Yeah that makes a lot of sense. All right I think I asked all the questions on my list here and I know there's probably people in the car screaming no you didn't ask about this question and I apologize for that. So I'm going to have two things here to end. First of all what question didn't I ask that you think people should know about hiring CEO's? Shakil: So I think first thing first is you have to have the correct mindset. As I said before it's hard to trust someone with your business when it's worth let's just say millions of dollars right? And it's … if they do one small mistake, if they piss off one of our suppliers you sort of cut off that relationship, right? So you're really trusting this person to do a good job. So definitely deal with … do a good job of trying to find that person. If you have time, use that time. Be patient. If you don't do a series of tests with them to make sure you hire a good CEO. Do personality tests. Do a bunch of phone calls. If they're not in your city fly them in, get to know them. Go to casual dinners. If you want to see how that person interacts, how they are off the business as well. So definitely get to know that person really well. And number two as I said the mindset has to be there. You have to be willing to empower these folks. You cannot micromanage anyone if you want to go. When you want multiple companies you cannot focus on the small things. Yes, sometimes the small mistakes will happen when you want to step in and fix it. You're going to have your step back and let it sort of absorb the situation. You have to let it kind of fix itself. One thing I think I'm really good at is I empower these folks. So I will intentionally … if they have a question on Skype, e-mail, I intentionally will take my time to respond to the majority of these questions so they can go figure it out themselves. They could go ask the supplier, they could go ask our customer service reps, they could go look it up. And it's because I want … it's a mindset I want them to have to go figure these things out themselves because one of the main reasons why I have these CEO's in place is because I want to be able to relax. You know acquire these companies make the money work for me but also just go on vacation and if I'm always just working in the business that kind of defeats the purpose of having a CEO in place. Mark: Yeah I think that balance … you've said that several times, that balance of empowering somebody to run the business and the idea that as entrepreneurs we're not very good at this. And I can totally relate with that and I bet a lot of people out there who are entrepreneurs can relate to this as well. It's very very difficult like you said to take that step back and just say this … I'm going to let you do it. I know in the episode with Bill D'Allesandro I listened to him speak and he talks about the comfort that he has knowing that there are people that he's paying to obsess about one particular aspect of his business day in and day out. And that is something that I think as you scale up and grow up into more businesses you realize that you can't obsess about every detail about everything that you own. There's just not enough time to put them into bandwidth into the business. And that's going to be … I mean that's some skill that you think that you've grown better at or is it something that you think that you're pretty naturally good at beside of being able to empower and take that step back. Shakil: It was something I had to sort of self-groom myself into. It's because my initial few acquisitions I was doing everything myself and it's … you know it becomes stressful at the end of the day. So I'm pretty obsessed with processes and procedures and SOP's and stuff. So I have well built out SOP's in place where yes the CEO has it but it became … you had to train yourself to be able to let go of certain things and so … and I've become better at it. I understand as entrepreneurs we want to hog everything up. That's the thing; it's a natural thing to do. That's just why we're good entrepreneurs but at the same time, you do have to step back and let other people do these tasks so you could focus on the high level goals so you could focus on acquiring bigger customers, bigger companies as well. Mark: Fascinating. All right so the second that I want to end here is if people have questions that I didn't ask how can they reach you? And I'm going to just throw in here a quick [inaudible 00:42:40.5] and just let people know look please be respectful of your time. You're always very generous with your time and I definitely appreciate that. I know you talk at conferences now and you've come on our podcast twice. But if you have questions for Shakil then give them straight to the point how can people reach you with any questions that maybe I missed? Shakil: Yes so just feel free to email me at shakil@proclickventures.com. Mark: We'll include that in the show notes. You can go to the Quiet Light Brokerage page and you'll be able to see that on there. You're always respectful of your time and I really do … generous of your time I should say. I really do appreciate that very very much. And if somebody is out there who's been thinking about maybe buying but they hear this and think you know what maybe it'd be better if I actually took that intermediate step and became a CEO. Are you open to hearing from those people? Shakil: Yeah absolutely. I mean we're in acquisition mode. We're always acquiring companies and we're always looking for talented individuals that could run these companies. So yeah if you … if anyone out there is interested in sort of this role definitely reach out, please. Mark: Awesome. Well, hopefully, you'll get a flood of resumes from that and maybe a couple of good candidates as well. Thank you so much for coming back on and talking about this fascinating topic and I have a feeling it's going to jump towards the top of the charts again. Shakil: Awesome thanks a lot Mark for having me. See you in a few weeks. Mark: Yes absolutely. For those that don't know that's going to be E-commerce Fuel Live, right? Shakil: Yup. Mark: All right very good. See you then. Shakil: All right, take care, Mark. Bye-bye.   Links and Resources: shakil@proclickventures.com https://proclickventures.com/ LinkedIn ZipRecruiter Ecommmerce Fuel Jobs  

Panel: Mark Ericksen Charles Max Wood Special Guest: Kamil Lelonek  In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Kamil Lelonek who is a full-stack developer and programmer. Chuck, Mark, and Kamil talk about Elixir, Postgrex, databases, and so much more! Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job!  0:48 – Chuck: Hello! Our panel today is Mark and myself. Friendly reminder to listeners: check out my show the DevRev. Our guest today is Kamil Lelonek! 1:23 – Guest. 1:43 – Chuck: Today, we are talking about databases. 1:55 – Guest. 3:10 – Mark: We have your blog that you wrote in our show notes. Talk about your experience with exploring these features? 3:39 – Chuck. 3:46 – Mark: I didn’t know those features are in Postgrex. Can you talk about your experience and your journey? 4:10 – Guest. 6:17 – Mark: I am curious, what problem were you trying to solve? 6:31 – Guest. 8:12 – Mark: I like you saying: rather than modifying the application code itself, you created a separate application. I think Elixir is a good fit for that – what’s your experience with this? 8:40 – Guest: I agree with this, but let’s think about it in the other way. 9:48 – Mark: Yeah I can see that. It’s good to be aware of the upsides and downsides. It’s an interesting idea. 10:40 – Guest. 11:38 – Chuck: My experience is mostly in Rails. The other way I have solved this problem is “pulling” but this way is more elegant. Before we have talked with Chris McCord about LiveVue. Is there a way to hook this handler up to LiveVue to stream the changes all the way up to the frontend of web application with Phoenix? 12:20 – Guest. 12:55 – Mark talks about Elixir and GenServer. 13:29 – Guest. 13:49 – Mark: Please go and read Kamil’s blog post because it’s simple and it’s written well! Mark: I think Elixir is a great usage for GenServers. 14:28 – Guest. 14:35 – Chuck: You setup a store procedure, which I don’t see a lot of people doing within the communities. How necessary is that store procedure that you’ve created there? 15:00 – Guest. 16:16 – Chuck: What if you want to do targeted notifications? 16:28 – Guest. 17:33 – Mark: I am curious if you have experimented with the practical limitations of this? Like at one point does it start to break down? 18:00 – Guest. 20:00 – Chuck: I will be honest I am kind of lazy. Outside of the general use I don’t go looking for these, but when I hear about them I say: wow! 20:09 – Guest. 20:57 – Chuck. 21:15 – Guest talks about solutions that he’s found. 22:08 – FreshBooks! 23:17 – Mark: What other kind of databases have you had experience with for comparison reasons? 23:40 – Guest. 24:56 – Mark: You talked about defaults and I want to come back to this topic. 25:08 – Mark asks Chuck a question. 25:12 – Chuck: I don’t know. 25:23 – Mark talks about the databases that his work utilizes. 26:45 – Mark and Chuck go back-and-forth. 27:49 – Guest mentions a solution to the before-mentioned problem that Mark gave. 28:47 – Mark: It can get messy. I don’t repose this as a permanent solution, but it allows you do a staged-migration. 29:15 – Chuck: Do you run into problems with Postgrex? Most technologies if you don’t run into problems you aren’t pushing it enough (at least that’s my experience). 29:29 – Guest answers the question. 30:26 – Mark talks about active, active, active. 31:14 – Guest. 33:25 – Mark: In Elixir, we talk about the things that are in the box and one thing that comes up is “mnesia.” Can you talk about this please? 33:47 – Guest talks about mnesia. 35:17 – Mark talks about mnesia some more. Mark: It is an available option (mnesia), but I don’t know if it’s something that people want when they are looking for something more traditional. 37:04 – Guest. 37:30 – Mark: Yeah something people should be aware of. If you are encountering problems it’s good to know the different tools that are out there and available. 38:42 – Mark: One question: What are some of your favorite features of Postgrex? 38:57 – Guest. 41:08 – Mark talks about Postgrex’s features. 42:14 – Guest. 43:10 – Mark: I had a case where Elixir and Erlang and you can convert term to binary and binary to term. I took some data structure and converted it to a binary and using Ecto and tell it: serialize this and when it loads back out it is a native Elixir type. It’s not always the right solution, but in my cases it actually worked. 43:59 – Guest talks about a library that he wrote back-in-the-day. 44:40 – Chuck: Anything else? Nope? Okay – Picks! 44:52 – Ad: Lootcrate.com END – CacheFly! Links: Ruby Elixir Elixir: GenServer GenServers Elm JavaScript Visual Studio Code React “How to use LISTEN and NOTIFY PostgreSQL commands in Elixir?" By Kamil Lelonek Guest’s Medium Blog Postgrex.Notifications Redis.io Event Store PostgreSQL MongoDB Erlang: mnesia GitHub: cachex GitHub: meh / amnesia PostGIS When to use Ecto, when to use Mnesia PostgreSQL Ecto.Type GitHub: Exnumerator YouTube: Entreprogrammers Kamil’s Twitter Sponsors: Loot Crate Get a Coder Job! Fresh Books CacheFly Picks: Mark Being professionally proactive! Chuck Get A Coder Job eBook Challenge: Pomodoro Technique Kamil Book: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman My Blog My Site

Panel: Mark Ericksen Charles Max Wood Special Guest: Kamil Lelonek  In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Kamil Lelonek who is a full-stack developer and programmer. Chuck, Mark, and Kamil talk about Elixir, Postgrex, databases, and so much more! Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job!  0:48 – Chuck: Hello! Our panel today is Mark and myself. Friendly reminder to listeners: check out my show the DevRev. Our guest today is Kamil Lelonek! 1:23 – Guest. 1:43 – Chuck: Today, we are talking about databases. 1:55 – Guest. 3:10 – Mark: We have your blog that you wrote in our show notes. Talk about your experience with exploring these features? 3:39 – Chuck. 3:46 – Mark: I didn’t know those features are in Postgrex. Can you talk about your experience and your journey? 4:10 – Guest. 6:17 – Mark: I am curious, what problem were you trying to solve? 6:31 – Guest. 8:12 – Mark: I like you saying: rather than modifying the application code itself, you created a separate application. I think Elixir is a good fit for that – what’s your experience with this? 8:40 – Guest: I agree with this, but let’s think about it in the other way. 9:48 – Mark: Yeah I can see that. It’s good to be aware of the upsides and downsides. It’s an interesting idea. 10:40 – Guest. 11:38 – Chuck: My experience is mostly in Rails. The other way I have solved this problem is “pulling” but this way is more elegant. Before we have talked with Chris McCord about LiveVue. Is there a way to hook this handler up to LiveVue to stream the changes all the way up to the frontend of web application with Phoenix? 12:20 – Guest. 12:55 – Mark talks about Elixir and GenServer. 13:29 – Guest. 13:49 – Mark: Please go and read Kamil’s blog post because it’s simple and it’s written well! Mark: I think Elixir is a great usage for GenServers. 14:28 – Guest. 14:35 – Chuck: You setup a store procedure, which I don’t see a lot of people doing within the communities. How necessary is that store procedure that you’ve created there? 15:00 – Guest. 16:16 – Chuck: What if you want to do targeted notifications? 16:28 – Guest. 17:33 – Mark: I am curious if you have experimented with the practical limitations of this? Like at one point does it start to break down? 18:00 – Guest. 20:00 – Chuck: I will be honest I am kind of lazy. Outside of the general use I don’t go looking for these, but when I hear about them I say: wow! 20:09 – Guest. 20:57 – Chuck. 21:15 – Guest talks about solutions that he’s found. 22:08 – FreshBooks! 23:17 – Mark: What other kind of databases have you had experience with for comparison reasons? 23:40 – Guest. 24:56 – Mark: You talked about defaults and I want to come back to this topic. 25:08 – Mark asks Chuck a question. 25:12 – Chuck: I don’t know. 25:23 – Mark talks about the databases that his work utilizes. 26:45 – Mark and Chuck go back-and-forth. 27:49 – Guest mentions a solution to the before-mentioned problem that Mark gave. 28:47 – Mark: It can get messy. I don’t repose this as a permanent solution, but it allows you do a staged-migration. 29:15 – Chuck: Do you run into problems with Postgrex? Most technologies if you don’t run into problems you aren’t pushing it enough (at least that’s my experience). 29:29 – Guest answers the question. 30:26 – Mark talks about active, active, active. 31:14 – Guest. 33:25 – Mark: In Elixir, we talk about the things that are in the box and one thing that comes up is “mnesia.” Can you talk about this please? 33:47 – Guest talks about mnesia. 35:17 – Mark talks about mnesia some more. Mark: It is an available option (mnesia), but I don’t know if it’s something that people want when they are looking for something more traditional. 37:04 – Guest. 37:30 – Mark: Yeah something people should be aware of. If you are encountering problems it’s good to know the different tools that are out there and available. 38:42 – Mark: One question: What are some of your favorite features of Postgrex? 38:57 – Guest. 41:08 – Mark talks about Postgrex’s features. 42:14 – Guest. 43:10 – Mark: I had a case where Elixir and Erlang and you can convert term to binary and binary to term. I took some data structure and converted it to a binary and using Ecto and tell it: serialize this and when it loads back out it is a native Elixir type. It’s not always the right solution, but in my cases it actually worked. 43:59 – Guest talks about a library that he wrote back-in-the-day. 44:40 – Chuck: Anything else? Nope? Okay – Picks! 44:52 – Ad: Lootcrate.com END – CacheFly! Links: Ruby Elixir Elixir: GenServer GenServers Elm JavaScript Visual Studio Code React “How to use LISTEN and NOTIFY PostgreSQL commands in Elixir?" By Kamil Lelonek Guest’s Medium Blog Postgrex.Notifications Redis.io Event Store PostgreSQL MongoDB Erlang: mnesia GitHub: cachex GitHub: meh / amnesia PostGIS When to use Ecto, when to use Mnesia PostgreSQL Ecto.Type GitHub: Exnumerator YouTube: Entreprogrammers Kamil’s Twitter Sponsors: Loot Crate Get a Coder Job! Fresh Books CacheFly Picks: Mark Being professionally proactive! Chuck Get A Coder Job eBook Challenge: Pomodoro Technique Kamil Book: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman My Blog My Site

Panel: Charles Max Wood Mark Ericksen Special Guest: Brujo Benavides  In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Brujo Benavides (Argentina) who is a software engineer and uses a mix of Elixir, Erlang, and GO. They talk about the similarities and differences between Erlang and Elixir. Brujo talks about conferences that he organizes. You can find the guest through GitHub, Twitter, and About Me. Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job!  0:58 – Chuck: Our special guest is Brujo B.! Let’s talk about the topic today, which is: Lessons from a decade of Erlang! We really haven’t talked about Erlang in the past. 1:47 – Mark: Can you give us your introduction, please? 1:55 – Guest: I started programming at 10 years old. I translated a guest to Spanish. Then after school I started working with other languages, until I did my thesis at the university. I got hired and then while there they taught me Erlang. After 2 years the company went away and died. When that happened I had my honeymoon plan to go to Europe. I went to Poland and found a company that interviewed me, I passed the test, and got hired. The best solution I could ever make. I moved from developer to another position, to director and then to CEO. 6:16 – Chuck: You have been doing Erlang for a while. My brain said 10 years of Elixir and that’s not possible – my bad. When Erlang came onto the scene how did that affect you? 6:40 – Guest answers Chuck’s question. 9:06 – Chuck: See show note links, please. It’s cool to see that you took cautious approaches to the language. What’s the balance between Erlang and Elixir? 9:33 – Guest: It’s about 45/45, because I also do GO. I don’t really like GO, but it’s whatever. 9:59 – Chuck: What has changed in the last 10 years? 10:09 – Guest: It’s my personal view on this and what I see at conferences. I saw a change from beginning Elixir as much acceptance and the community is more open. The people are already so developed already. 11:53 – Mark: I know there is an effort to make the beam languages more compatible. I know using a colon in the name and there’s a lot of communication there. At the last conference, they were talking about this. I think it’s neat that the community is not fighting this. In the early days it seems that the Erlang community were fighting it – what’s that transfer been like? 13:00 – Guest: There were other languages outside of Elixir with the beam. They failed and didn’t catch-on. 15:00 – Panel: How have you liked/disliked coding in Elixir vs. Erlang? 15:14 – Guest: I like many things that Elixir and Erlang can offer. Elixir is a mature and young language. There are many things that they corrected from day one. One thing I don’t like about Amber is that... 17:36 – Mark: I also use it b/c it does give that consistency. It normalizes all the different ways you can code. When I review people’s code I will take the code formatter and get it to be normalized. I am happy with it and I will take it. 18:17 – Guest: Everybody understands everybody’s code. 18:48 – Guest mentions Elvis. See links below. 19:00 – Chuck: It’s interesting. It comes down to community and in some ways it’s not that Erlang community isn’t a good one, but sounds like... 19:17 – Guest: The other thing that happened with the Erlang community is the topic of building websites. In 2015 it was in the Elixir Conference in San Francisco – I think – this is what happened... 20:47 – Mark: I think it’s a credit to both communities. I’ve watched those talks before. I was watching these Erlang Conferences and there have been Elixir speakers there. Good collaboration and I’m happy for that. 21:19 – Chuck: Will these 2 technologies grow together? 21:30 – Guest: Great mix of talks from Erlang and Elixir and talking about how to build systems. 22:49 – Mark: This blog post that you wrote – see show note links before. Can you mention the main topics that you wrote within this blog post? General lessons you’ve learned? 23:23 – Guest: The most important is how we start building stuff over common abstractions. 26:07 – FreshBooks! 27:11 – Mark: You mentioned the behaviors and the abstraction that is available through OTP is through the genserver. Those are and yes it’s true to educate people you will start with a spawn to see how simple things are. Yes, you don’t build a system on that. 27:55 – Guest: I recommend the talk to Spanish speakers. See links below. I asked for a translation but he said no. 29:10 – Mark: You talked also about test-driven development. How has testing in the Erlang community from the past and how has it been influenced by Elixir if at all? 29:53 – Guest: I am not sure. 32:34 – Mark: I don’t know how to spawn another node and have a disconnect in a testing framework? There might be other ways to do it? I would like to borrow that between the two. I’ve built some code that is cluster aware. Yeah I would love to have integration tests. Maybe that is available through Elixir- thanks for talking about that! 33:27 – Chuck: Anything else? Let’s talk about the Sawn Fest! 33:40 – Guest: It started in 2011 and started with a contest that anybody could participate. Judicators judged it and then awards were given. 34:38 – Chuck. 34:44 – Guest: The next year in 2012 the sponsors gave prizes. We were eagerly waiting but there was no contest that year. 37:47 – Chuck and guest go back-and-forth. 37:57 – Guest: There is a team of four now. If you go to the website it actually looks amazing unlike last year!! 39:19 – Mark: People will not hear about this, though, at the time it broadcasts b/c your episode is coming out after Nov. 24th - 25th. Can you do the game/contest remotely? 39:54 – Guest: Yes, people are playing from around the world from India, Denmark, Romania, Africa, and China! So yes you can do it from your house. 40:18 – Mark: What can people do or see or read about the winners? And after-the-fact? 40:32 – Guest: Yes when judges are judging we make the depositories public!! 42:05 – Chuck: My Sunday’s are usually pretty full. 42:19 – Guest: Yes that happened to me. As an organizer I cannot quit b/c I still have to be there. Time with my wife and kid is important, but yes it’s fun! 42:43 – Mark: Yes that shows how passionate they are about the community and the language. 42:56 – Chuck: Mind-blown! 43:10 – Chuck: You organize some conferences right? 43:17 – Guest: Yes. 44:25 – Chuck: Anything else? 44:30 – Mark: Dialyzer and curious about you organizing a Meetup? I have organized an Elixir Meetup. With Meetups how can you tell us how to make it successful? Are you doing both Erlang and Elixir? How are you running it? 45:10 – Guest answers the question. 51:53 – Chuck: How can people find you? 52:00 – Guest: GitHub! Twitter! About Me! (See links below.) 52:19 – Chuck: Picks! 52:20 – Ad: Lootcrate.com END – CacheFly! Links: Ruby Elixir Elixir: GenServer GenServers Elm JavaScript Visual Studio Code React Erlang Solutions Inaka Inaka Credo_Server Erlang Solutions Elvis 114 RR Elixir Show 048 RR Show 10 Lessons from Decade with Erlang YouTube Video in Spanish Erlang: Common_Test ExUnit Smalltalk SpawnFest 2018 SpawnFest Zoom Brujo’s Twitter Brujo’s Website Credo Sponsors: Loot Crate Get a Coder Job! Fresh Books CacheFly Picks: Mark Zoom Meeting Charles Mastodon Brujo Katana Test

Panel: Charles Max Wood Mark Ericksen Special Guest: Brujo Benavides  In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Brujo Benavides (Argentina) who is a software engineer and uses a mix of Elixir, Erlang, and GO. They talk about the similarities and differences between Erlang and Elixir. Brujo talks about conferences that he organizes. You can find the guest through GitHub, Twitter, and About Me. Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job!  0:58 – Chuck: Our special guest is Brujo B.! Let’s talk about the topic today, which is: Lessons from a decade of Erlang! We really haven’t talked about Erlang in the past. 1:47 – Mark: Can you give us your introduction, please? 1:55 – Guest: I started programming at 10 years old. I translated a guest to Spanish. Then after school I started working with other languages, until I did my thesis at the university. I got hired and then while there they taught me Erlang. After 2 years the company went away and died. When that happened I had my honeymoon plan to go to Europe. I went to Poland and found a company that interviewed me, I passed the test, and got hired. The best solution I could ever make. I moved from developer to another position, to director and then to CEO. 6:16 – Chuck: You have been doing Erlang for a while. My brain said 10 years of Elixir and that’s not possible – my bad. When Erlang came onto the scene how did that affect you? 6:40 – Guest answers Chuck’s question. 9:06 – Chuck: See show note links, please. It’s cool to see that you took cautious approaches to the language. What’s the balance between Erlang and Elixir? 9:33 – Guest: It’s about 45/45, because I also do GO. I don’t really like GO, but it’s whatever. 9:59 – Chuck: What has changed in the last 10 years? 10:09 – Guest: It’s my personal view on this and what I see at conferences. I saw a change from beginning Elixir as much acceptance and the community is more open. The people are already so developed already. 11:53 – Mark: I know there is an effort to make the beam languages more compatible. I know using a colon in the name and there’s a lot of communication there. At the last conference, they were talking about this. I think it’s neat that the community is not fighting this. In the early days it seems that the Erlang community were fighting it – what’s that transfer been like? 13:00 – Guest: There were other languages outside of Elixir with the beam. They failed and didn’t catch-on. 15:00 – Panel: How have you liked/disliked coding in Elixir vs. Erlang? 15:14 – Guest: I like many things that Elixir and Erlang can offer. Elixir is a mature and young language. There are many things that they corrected from day one. One thing I don’t like about Amber is that... 17:36 – Mark: I also use it b/c it does give that consistency. It normalizes all the different ways you can code. When I review people’s code I will take the code formatter and get it to be normalized. I am happy with it and I will take it. 18:17 – Guest: Everybody understands everybody’s code. 18:48 – Guest mentions Elvis. See links below. 19:00 – Chuck: It’s interesting. It comes down to community and in some ways it’s not that Erlang community isn’t a good one, but sounds like... 19:17 – Guest: The other thing that happened with the Erlang community is the topic of building websites. In 2015 it was in the Elixir Conference in San Francisco – I think – this is what happened... 20:47 – Mark: I think it’s a credit to both communities. I’ve watched those talks before. I was watching these Erlang Conferences and there have been Elixir speakers there. Good collaboration and I’m happy for that. 21:19 – Chuck: Will these 2 technologies grow together? 21:30 – Guest: Great mix of talks from Erlang and Elixir and talking about how to build systems. 22:49 – Mark: This blog post that you wrote – see show note links before. Can you mention the main topics that you wrote within this blog post? General lessons you’ve learned? 23:23 – Guest: The most important is how we start building stuff over common abstractions. 26:07 – FreshBooks! 27:11 – Mark: You mentioned the behaviors and the abstraction that is available through OTP is through the genserver. Those are and yes it’s true to educate people you will start with a spawn to see how simple things are. Yes, you don’t build a system on that. 27:55 – Guest: I recommend the talk to Spanish speakers. See links below. I asked for a translation but he said no. 29:10 – Mark: You talked also about test-driven development. How has testing in the Erlang community from the past and how has it been influenced by Elixir if at all? 29:53 – Guest: I am not sure. 32:34 – Mark: I don’t know how to spawn another node and have a disconnect in a testing framework? There might be other ways to do it? I would like to borrow that between the two. I’ve built some code that is cluster aware. Yeah I would love to have integration tests. Maybe that is available through Elixir- thanks for talking about that! 33:27 – Chuck: Anything else? Let’s talk about the Sawn Fest! 33:40 – Guest: It started in 2011 and started with a contest that anybody could participate. Judicators judged it and then awards were given. 34:38 – Chuck. 34:44 – Guest: The next year in 2012 the sponsors gave prizes. We were eagerly waiting but there was no contest that year. 37:47 – Chuck and guest go back-and-forth. 37:57 – Guest: There is a team of four now. If you go to the website it actually looks amazing unlike last year!! 39:19 – Mark: People will not hear about this, though, at the time it broadcasts b/c your episode is coming out after Nov. 24th - 25th. Can you do the game/contest remotely? 39:54 – Guest: Yes, people are playing from around the world from India, Denmark, Romania, Africa, and China! So yes you can do it from your house. 40:18 – Mark: What can people do or see or read about the winners? And after-the-fact? 40:32 – Guest: Yes when judges are judging we make the depositories public!! 42:05 – Chuck: My Sunday’s are usually pretty full. 42:19 – Guest: Yes that happened to me. As an organizer I cannot quit b/c I still have to be there. Time with my wife and kid is important, but yes it’s fun! 42:43 – Mark: Yes that shows how passionate they are about the community and the language. 42:56 – Chuck: Mind-blown! 43:10 – Chuck: You organize some conferences right? 43:17 – Guest: Yes. 44:25 – Chuck: Anything else? 44:30 – Mark: Dialyzer and curious about you organizing a Meetup? I have organized an Elixir Meetup. With Meetups how can you tell us how to make it successful? Are you doing both Erlang and Elixir? How are you running it? 45:10 – Guest answers the question. 51:53 – Chuck: How can people find you? 52:00 – Guest: GitHub! Twitter! About Me! (See links below.) 52:19 – Chuck: Picks! 52:20 – Ad: Lootcrate.com END – CacheFly! Links: Ruby Elixir Elixir: GenServer GenServers Elm JavaScript Visual Studio Code React Erlang Solutions Inaka Inaka Credo_Server Erlang Solutions Elvis 114 RR Elixir Show 048 RR Show 10 Lessons from Decade with Erlang YouTube Video in Spanish Erlang: Common_Test ExUnit Smalltalk SpawnFest 2018 SpawnFest Zoom Brujo’s Twitter Brujo’s Website Credo Sponsors: Loot Crate Get a Coder Job! Fresh Books CacheFly Picks: Mark Zoom Meeting Charles Mastodon Brujo Katana Test

After 10 years in the music industry, Dustin Ray started to hear about entrepreneurs in the tech space and felt the pull towards the flexibility that the online entrepreneurial field had to offer. As Dustin points out, there is no ceiling in the industry – as long you can build something scalable, you can take it as far as you want. The notion that you can create a value and see return relatively quickly was also an intriguing concept to Dustin. Dustin's company IncFile, specializes in the formation of business entities. Since starting, they have assisted more than 150,000 entrepreneurs and small business owners form their businesses. When Dustin got his start with the company they were not thriving but he and his team managed to grow it into an 8-figure company in a relatively brief amount of time. Today he's here discussing how modifying funnels and honing customer acquisition strategies allowed for that growth. We also touch on the challenges of scaling a team to that size in a short time span and navigating the growing pains that inevitably pop up. Episode Highlights: How Dustin got into IncFile. The processes that Dustin and his partner put into place to ensure the rapid growth of the company. How IncFile is filling a gap and taking care of the stuff that no entrepreneurs want to deal with. Through streamlined tactics and low costs, IncFile has become the leader in the industry and has continued to grow despite increasing competition. Dustin shares the key elements to a good sales funnel and the tools his the team uses to work and refine their funnel. Dustin shares his a 3-point strategy for finding a good starting point to getting into entrepreneurial tech. How Dustin's company was able to pass those pivotal “choke points” that many growing companies experience. Scaling doesn't necessarily equate with hiring. Hire slow and get the right people. The importance of worrying about what you're good at and building on that rather than trying to improve what you are not good at. Double down on your strengths. Buyers who are often the most successful in their acquisitions are those who hone in on what they are good at. Transcription: Joe: So it amazes me, Mark, the people that we meet at these different events and that are just laid back casual seem like just good guys you want to go hunting or fishing with … not that I hunt or fish, it's been a long time. I live in a lake but I haven't gone fishing for a while or I haven't caught anything for a while. Anyway, Dustin Ray strikes me as one of those people. I met him at Rhodium a few years back; totally laid back. I think you introduced him to me and surprised me later when you start talking about the numbers and what this guy is doing and so humble yet doing such incredible numbers. You had a chance to have him on the podcast recently. Mark: Yeah I did and Dustin is one of those guys whenever he and I talk on the phone and you know it's not as frequently as maybe I would like but whenever we talk it ends up being like an hour and a half conversation. Rest assured this is not an hour and a half long podcast but it could have been because he's got a ton of information. His background is fascinating. He started out in the music industry promoting some of the biggest artists that we know. He was telling me that when he was driving down through Las Vegas and seeing some of the artist's stuff on the board that are coming in, I mean these are … he knows who's behind these things. This was his industry for a long time but he decided to leave that industry and was really drawn to the internet world and got his start with a company that was not doing that great at the time. He didn't know it at the time but didn't know at the time and he's now a partner of that company. And really under his guidance and some of the other work his team has done they've grown it into an eight figure company relatively quickly. And really just through being able to modify their funnels, understand better customer acquisition strategies, and get that conversion rate as high as it can and really make it a product that works well for his customers. A really cool discussion about modifying those funnels, modifying your customer acquisition process but also we touched on and I want to have him back on again. I say this with a lot of guests but I definitely want to have him back on again about some of the challenges as well of scaling a team when you go from this one million in revenue up to five million in revenue, up to ten million in revenue and then beyond that as well. There's always this natural choke points where it's not as easy to scale that team and they've been going through that. They've been going through some of those growing pains but doing it really really well. So we talked about a little bit of that as well in this episode. Joe: Well Dustin's much more interesting than the both of us so let's jump right to the podcast. Mark: Sounds great. Mark: All right Dustin hey thanks so much for joining me on the podcast. Dustin: Hey thanks for having me, Mark. Mark: I know you're a loyal listener like you don't miss a single episode of this thing so you know what we do. We know that we'd like you to introduce yourself. Why don't you give just kind of a quick background on yourself? Dustin: Sure my name is Dustin Ray and I'm a co-owner at the IncFile.com. We're an incorporation service that services all 50 states. We help people form LOCs incorporations. We've been in business for a little over 15 years now and we've helped over 150,000 entrepreneurs get their business launched. Mark: You didn't start in this though, I mean this is … you have a background beyond that and you … full disclosure you and I met at Rhodium. What was it three years ago now I think? Dustin: Yeah. Mark: Yeah and we talked over dinner a little bit and you shared some of your background. You have a background in the music industry as well. Dustin: That's right so I kind of accidentally fell onto the tech space I guess you could say. So I grew up playing sports, going to school. I kind of grew up in the music scene and that meant recording stuff with friends and then throwing parties and club promoting and working at eventually a managing company, a record label, and then I went over and launched the hip-hop division for music marketing nationally for Monster Energy Corporation. So I was in the music business for about 10 years and it was ironic that we're here talking on the podcast because literally as I'm in the music business I kind of stumbled upon entrepreneurship in a podcast about it and that was kind of how I got introduced to the whole tech space. And when I was listening to just the different entrepreneurs … you know I didn't have any friends around me in the tech space. I didn't grow up coding. I'm not a coder. I'm not a technical person. So it was very much like an outer space experience when someone mentioned something tech. And so for me, it opened up a whole new world for me and it started speaking to every existence in my body about it. I love the fact that it was flexible. It's not like a physical store that you're at every single day. You need your laptop, you need your phone and you could be anywhere in the world. So I like that flexibility and I like the fact there wasn't a ceiling. As long as you can build something scalable you could take it as far as you want. And then the other thing, of course, is the trading was I mean the value creation right? It was like you would read an article and it was like how in the world would somebody build something in 18 months and then they're selling it or it's getting acquired for millions of dollars. Like how is that even possible? That was like a foreign concept to me. I thought you got work hard, put in the time, be a savvy investor and when you have a lot of white hair then you have your money. So that was kind of how I got introduced to the tech space and then I'll let you take it from there if I'm not rambling on but that was my introduction into the tech space. And then I found my way in through Incfile. Mark: Cool. Yeah, I want to get into that but I just made a quick observation and something I've noticed over the years is that people who come from outside of the tech world depending on your background it's fascinating to watch what you're able to bring in. The music industry and the entertainment industry in general and you can correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure this is accurate; crazy competitive space right? You've got to be top of your game if you're going to be promoting artists and I mean everybody wants to be a music star of some sort. So if you're in that promotions game you've got to be on top of your game there. I mean- Dustin: Yeah just like a lot of businesses I mean competition is fierce. You got a singer or a rapper or something on every corner and just like really in any other businesses it's how are you going to stand out? How are you going to break through? It's not always just talent. That's where it starts but it's really the first events that really … it's what separates an entrepreneur, a musician, an artist, a rapper from the next. So yeah it's completely … and it's not a pretty industry either. I mean you hear some of the horror stories. I mean you've got to fight and claw your way to just get the money that's even owed to you. It's not like we have this automatic draft where if you owe me it's got to be paid or this automated payments like we do in the tech space where it's automatically … an invoice comes in and it's paid. I mean in the music industry you have to have some fight in you. You have to know how to do all of that. Navigate and fight your way through to survive. And that does translate into any business but in tech space too I mean super competitive. Anybody can come in and make you either irrelevant with new technology or they could come in with more resources and push you out. So you still have to have that the same perseverance inside. Mark: That's fantastic and I have a story to tell but I'm not going to tell it right now. Maybe you and I can talk about this another time or anyone that's listening if you meet up with me at a conference I'll tell you the story about the time I sat on an airplane and sat next to a multiple gold album recording artist who was sitting back in coach and had made millions and millions of dollars at the music industry and had almost none of it to his name because of managers and stuff like that that were taking the money from him. A fascinating conversation, a spoiler alert he was crying by the end of the conversation. So fun story but we would definitely go down a rabbit hole I don't want to get into right now. I want to talk about Incfile. I want to talk about kind of your background there, how you got into it and also the scalability and some of the challenges that come along with scaling a business like you have with Incfile. So that's about 15 years old, how did you get into Incfile in the first place? Dustin: So I've been with Incfile now for 4 ½ years in all in perspective. So the way I got in was a good friend of mine and business partner for a time; we had a graphic design company. And parlaying into the music conversation we were working with record labels in designing all the marketing packages for some of these artists that they have. You know the album covers, [inaudible 00:09:31.3], mind spaces at the time, anything graphic design wise. And ironically through a mutual friend, my business partner now at Incfile who grabbed me in, co-founder Nick he liked for what he saw out there as far as one of the designs we have put out. And by way of a mutual friend, I got introduced to him and we started working in a design capacity for Incfile. And at the time Incfile was much smaller than it is today and so there was ups and downs and I started kind of building rapport and Nick and I shared a lot of the same philosophies on business and perspective. It was interesting for me at the time because just like I mentioned I was listening to podcast and super fascinated with this world at that time and this is back in 2009 probably. You know we started working, Nick was open to new ideas and I didn't have experience but I was just kind of sharing thoughts and experience because when you think about design you think about user experience at that time. I didn't have any training but a lot of it is just psychology. It's human behavior, human nature, kind of how people operate. And so Nick and I would collaborate on these efforts and be speaking late until the night and then into the early morning building that rapport. So at the time Incfile really needed to kind of turn a corner and so I started consulting with Nick. He asked me to help him to kind of redefine our sales funnel and our work process. And at the time it was a big deal, I didn't realize how big of a project it was for Incfile it was … there wasn't a lot of business coming in at the time so it was a kind of critical moment but I didn't know that at the time or there would have been more pressure. So I started helping Nick and we started collaborating on redefining the order process and it really was our big sling at trying to turn a corner. And luckily enough through the efforts and months that we put in doing that it started to turn a corner and things started getting better and Incfile started growing. And we kind of continued helping each other out over the course of the next few years and it just finally got into a point where we're saying look what we could do part time what could we accomplish together if we are both all in? And then that's when I'd left Monster Energy and jumped in all in with Incfile at the time. And that was in 2014. Mark: That was in 2014. I don't want to get into specific numbers and ask you to be sharing numbers but you guys have been growing pretty much consistently since 2014 right? Dustin: Yeah. We've been steadily growing year over year. Our business has been growing at a healthy rate as well. So anywhere between 50% to 80% year over year and that's both top line and bottom line. And so we really are at this point we're focused on growth. We're a growth company. And we're just constantly trying to redefine and push the anvil up to continue that growth. Mark: Yeah. So let's talk about the funnel work that you did when you first came on. Did Incfile have funnels in place before that or did you come in and tweak what was already existing or did you have to kind of rewrite that book? Dustin: Now we had to rewrite the book. And I mean, to be frank, this is both from Nick who's at Incfile and started the company and then myself coming in and helping. You know these are two guys that are just figuring out at how to go. He didn't have previous experience in the tech world or building an online business and neither did I. So it's literally just two guys figuring it out. So there wasn't any specific processes in place or any sort of funnel analyzation or anything like that going on because again it's back in '08, '09. Things are a lot more sophisticated now in terms of analytics and marketing and tools and things like that. But we were literally just figuring it out. We didn't … we weren't … at the time we didn't have a lot of data to kind of drive some of the decision makings. So we just figured it out as we went and that's why I think I said luckily we did something right and it started turning around. And to be frank and to be honest I mean we're still figuring out as we go. We've been growing and I guess part of that is intuition with part of the strategy that we're deploying. The other half is having a phenomenal team. We have great team members to help. I mean everybody is … it's an understatement to say everybody is working hard because it's beyond working hard. Everybody is really pushing a full play and we've been able to grow but literally, we're starting to figure it out and getting a little bit more pieces in place to be more strategic and more structured. But up until really recently I mean we've just been figuring out as we go. Mark: One of the things that I love every time that we talk you're always talking about tweaking and finding other things of that sales funnel that you missed before. I absolutely love that because I tend to set and forget. A lot of times I'd get a sense from you guys that you're always looking, always experimenting with your funnels. Dustin: Yeah and that's a good point to touch on because one characteristic too that Nick and I share is that we have this obsession with a fish in sea and process. And so tweaking it is really the game that we like to play. So we like to be building the product. We like to be refining it. We take pride in trying to be innovative and have the best product in the industry. Not even as a strategy but just more of a personality and characteristics traits. That's what we've been doing since day one. It's just constantly keeping our head down focusing on the product and making it better every single day. Mark: Yeah and obviously having a good product helps quite a bit. And we've talked a little bit about your product privately and what it does. I mean some of the services you guys offer are phenomenal. Making sure things are kept up to date and having that subscription portion of it as well. People can literally not worry at all about their filings. It's a really cool service because I know I had to file actually in Texas for a company of mine and I started getting these notices and I'll tell you as a business owner and entrepreneur you get all these things from the government all the time and you're like I don't want to deal with this. I don't want to have to spend an afternoon trying to decipher all of this. And so you guys are really committed to filling that gap which is cool. Dustin: Yeah and I'm sitting in the same seat as you. Having private companies to even working at Incfile same thing, I didn't know even what a registered agent was or what a franchise tax report was for the state of Texas. Somehow I must have put myself or something down for it but it wasn't until I got to Incfile where I actually even understood it. And that's where I think we fill a big void in the entrepreneurial journey. It's just taking care of that stuff that really no entrepreneur wants to take care of. It's not a sexy business in terms of like the way we might talk about the music industry or celebrities but it's a fundamental core piece of running a business. If you're going to be an entrepreneur and you're going to be in business you're going to have to take care of these things that we offer. So we try to make it … we streamline the process and make it easy. So we're constantly innovating to make things faster and at the same time, we're the low cost leader in the industry so we drive the price down. So where most people that may go to … historically speaking it's a little bit more out there now because a lot of people are comfortable with doing business online now versus 10 years ago. But it really was the kind of fundamentals where people would know that they need to have a registered agent. There's this state mandate that's saying you have to do these things. But like I said it just frankly isn't fun or people don't want to deal with it. When you're starting a business you've got 15 hats you're wearing and you're putting out fires, and you're worried about sales, and doing all these other things. So we've really drove down the prices well to make it convenient and affordable to where a lot more entrepreneurs these days. It's just part of starting a business nowadays. Nowadays it's like okay I know I don't want to worry about that it's only going to cost me this much money so let them worry about it and they can deal with it for as long as I'm in business. Mark: Yeah, that's cool. I want to go back over to the funnel stuff and ask you kind of a basic question. What in your opinion makes up the key elements to developing a funnel, a good sales funnel? Dustin: One is always … I mean some of this stuff may sound rudimentary but simplicity, right? Because in an industry like ours where things are very technical, you've got secretary of state, you've got government agencies, and the IRS and a lot of formalities with these bureaucracies that it could become intimidating and cumbersome when you think about legal services in general. So us not being attorneys for one has kind of served and helped us in a lot of ways as well. We are entrepreneurs our self so we can put our own hand on and think about how would we want this to work and simplicity is number one. I mean don't make me think is the philosophy. If I had to think about something it's already too difficult, too hard, and our sales funnel isn't as fast as like selling a t-shirt. I mean you still … even though we've simplified and streamlined it you're still going through in some cases depending on which package you have you may go up to 15 pages to get through the end of the funnel. So it's very important to be fast. Just ask me the basics of what we need and in some cases, we'll [inaudible 00:19:15.7] process where we will gather additional details that may be needed. But if you frontload your funnel that's a recipe for disaster because people get exhausted and if you get in too many decisions you give them too many chances to change their mind. And really they want to get it done that's why they came there. So if you can make it a simple process to go through and then worry about making the connection and introducing yourself and working one on one if need be to solve the rest of the information gaps. But we see a lot of our competitors … I mean it is very word heavy and very cumbersome to go through their cellphone. So we just try to streamline that. Mark: Yeah, keep it all simple. When you say front loaded you mean asking all the questions on that page one and somebody sees this big huge form and they have to get through that he would form it with complex language? Dustin: That is one but also I mean front loaded just meaning the entire funnel. So if once you get to the back end of our system, if there's additional information or if there's something that is unique to your business that we may need additional information on those are emails and conversations that we can gather afterwards. But I mentioned we may have a funnel that could be 15 pages but if we put everything into the funnel they may need … it could be much longer and people don't want that. They want to get in, they want to pay, they want to have information; know that we are taking care of it and if you need something let me know but I'm already … once I click pay if you're handling it and I'm off to the next thing. Mark: What are some of the tools that you use to really work and refine that funnel? I mean it sounds like you're trying to gather some intelligence from your customers and watch their behavior to see where is the sticky points, where people are tripping up, do you guys use different tools to be able to collect some of that information and figure out hey you know what this is just not working? Dustin: We do not. Like I said we were just figuring it out and working along intuition for years. It's kind of how you are where any business is focused on sales, you're focused on sales and then you're focused on servicing those sales. So years go by and business grows and at some point, we're like man it's a lot harder to implement these processes now that the train is moving at 120 miles an hour to implement the process. So that's been an extreme challenge for us for the past couple of years. But we're at the point now to answer your question about tools where we now have complete tracking setup for all engagement. So a lot of it goes through GA but we're using a lot of different … whether it's a UDM code or whether it's an event tracking code on the website to understand where people are coming in and coming out. We're using user testing on the back end so things like VWL for user testing and constantly refining that. Just tinkering with every page or basically not everybody married to anything on the page. So it's kind of a philosophy where hey just because we've stared at it so many times for so long don't get stuck in it. Everything is fair game, anything can go. And now we're using VWL and Google Analytics and a lot more tracking into Google Analytics to tell us some of that data behind what's happening in there. And we just started doing live user testing as well. So besides the quantitative data we're using web services that actually have live users coming in that aren't familiar with your page and then going through and giving you kind of like we are with this podcast a stream recording with their … they're speaking while they're going through it and giving you all the pitfalls and challenges and get things that they like and don't like about it. So marrying that quantitative data with qualitative has really helped us just in this year alone. Mark: Yeah and just to be clear GWL being Google Web Optimizer I would assume right? Dustin: Yeah we use that as well, the search console but VWL is a— Mark: Oh VWL. Dustin: VWL. Mark: Okay. Dustin: In other words, it's a Visual Website Optimizer; VWL.com for user testing. There are other competitors for that but that's worked for us so far. Mark: If you can answer this … don't feel like you have to but how many experiments would you say that you guys run in any given month? Dustin: Not that many. Because we were running at least … or I should say we wanted to run five to 10 in a week and just kind of push it up, push it up, push it up. But now we're content having more patience and so we want to get it right. So we're not being short sighted with it and now we're really trying to really just run things that don't interfere. It may just be one test a week, two tests a week at the most that we're introducing only because we want to compare apples to apples. So if we make too many variable changes then the numbers and the statistical significance get kind of skewed and then assumptions come into play. So we limit it to one to two now. Mark: All right so you're throwing around words statistical significance and you're looking at biases and you're looking at all these different assumptions that are coming into it but you started off on this without really any background in CRO and kind of this funnel optimization. Somebody listening to this that they just bought a business or maybe they're looking to do something similar on their own, what's a good starting point in your opinion for somebody that is just starting out in this area? Or maybe somebody that's intermediate and knows a little bit about it but hasn't really seen the returns yet from focusing on this continual tweaking and improvement? Dustin: Yeah I mean and you're right I didn't know anything coming in. So for me literally not having friends in the industry, peers of any sort, nobody around me locally, I rely heavily on podcast. You know podcast people speak freely, it's a casual environment, people want to help other people, like minded individuals and I benefited tremendously from podcasting just from learning. And of course now with hands on training, being … working in an environment in the tech space you're learning things every day. So one, learn by doing. Two, reach out for the resources like podcasting. And then the third thing I would say too that is when you reach a point when you could come up for air I would encourage to try to go to different networking events and meet other individuals and just get their perspective outside of your own that they might share that maybe you wouldn't hear at podcasts. It might be more frank or direct or they might have encountered a situation that they can actually help you … give you advice for a scenario where as a podcast it's more educational and you're listening but you can't just jump in and ask the questions so to speak. So those are the three areas that I would focus on. Mark: Okay, cool. I'm going to change gears completely here and spend our last 10 minutes or so. I want to talk about the growth with your company. And in my experience, because I watched a lot of companies grow, you know people that I'm just friends with and we talk about the challenges. But then also people that I have been advising as well. And I tend to find that there is this … there are certain choke points with companies where they have troubles turning certain corners. You know when you're first starting up a company oftentimes that's when your revenues start hitting 250 300,000 and then there's another choke point once you get to about seven figures and trying to get up to the higher seven figure range so on and so forth. What's been your experience? You came on at a critical point with this company when you guys weren't really sure about the future and then you've been able to grow it since. What has been your experience with some of these choke points within the company's growth, the company's culture and I guess I should probably ask instead of assuming I mean have you guys experienced that? Dustin: Absolutely. You know it's funny because… and this is a great topic. We should spend some time on this. As an entrepreneur or as a small business owner on the startup of a small company and I kind of am speaking more in the vein of like bootstrapping because we've been self-funded from the beginning. We've never taken any rounds of funding so I don't have experience to speak on there. But as far as doing it yourself one thing I can say is focusing on … or I usually think that hiring people right is going to solve your problems. And it does … that comes into play later but it comes in very strategically later but what I figured out was that … like for example our biggest our advantages when we were smaller became our biggest challenges as we try to turn corners. And I'll elaborate a little bit on that and so for example in our industry we were bootstrapped, we're a small team, we're still a small team. We're competing side by side with companies that are Goliath's in the industry that have either been acquired or have raised funds and are billion dollar companies. And we're competing with these guys directly and we're a very small team. So we're probably 15 people in our office and then additional people in terms of remote resources outside of that. But what I'm getting at is that that worked into our advantage when we were small. So when you think about it we were able to think about it and have a conversation today and then we could start building it tomorrow. And we could … we were very efficient and we push and we work hard so we could roll things out at tremendous speed. And that kind of led some of the innovation that we now have that's really industry leading now at this point because we were small and we can move fast. We're still small but now that we've grown in size it's … you face new challenges right? And so the challenge for us now is now it's our disadvantage being this small. Because now we need to accelerate growth beyond where we are and our capacity is limited in terms of what our team could do beyond what they're doing now. Because as I mentioned earlier everybody is pushing, everybody is already at capacity. And so even though you feel like conceptually okay well I … we're managing the advertising so to speak, all the PPC and all that stuff. It's been self-managed all the way up until this year. We had to bring on a team to help manage that. We've had to bring on team members to help us in different areas from SEO, content marketing, we've expanded our dev team. So the other things that we're doing now to help turn the corner but what you realize is that you could keep iterating and moving but when your smaller you can solve problems quickly. Because the problems you have are generally something that can be solved quickly. When you grow, the challenge has become not overnight fixes. So you're going to spend a longer time fixing it and then for your growth, there's a reason why not everybody grows to be giant companies it's because it gets harder, it doesn't get easier. And so what we've realized too is we could see an opportunity and seize it and go take that hill so to speak and then we experience growth. We open up a new channel and we experience growth. Where we are now is we actually have to have a strategy and team to forecast ahead six months or more so we can invest in that today and then experience that growth hopefully six months, 12 months from now. So that's one area that we have certainly run into a wall on and had to figure out how to maneuver around it. Because you get used to thinking that your core strength and your competitive advantage is always your competitive advantage. So it's something like we've got to always be objective and look in the mirror and say oh wait a second is that now [inaudible 00:31:10.2] is this now the one thing that's holding us back? Maybe it's not so great. I need to think that was like what we hang our hat on but now you really got to think how to move forward and you have to remain objective about it. Mark: Why do you think that is? I mean why do you think that as companies grow … and this sounds actually by the way very similar to the same conversation I had with Rob Walling from Drip because they were the same sort of environment. A few dabs working together and they had an idea for something, they rolled it out and coded it out and pushed it out within a day and that was it. They were able to do that and then as they grew the same sort of challenges. Why do you think that is that as you grow it's not as easy to just flip out new solutions? Is it because there's more people involved or is it because the growth and the changes that you need to make are more sophisticated or … I mean what's going on there? Dustin: I think it's competition. Because once you kind of turn corners or try to go to the next level it's a new game. You're playing against different competitors and their strengths and what they do best and why they were in the top positions that you're taking market share away from is because they're doing something really well. And so you have to be able to then compete directly with them and do what they did well and take market share from them. So you have to constantly evolve. It's not just internally what's happening but just in the industry for competition, nothing in business is just standstill. So you're in the gaining realm or losing realm and when you reach new heights or next levels the competition gets more fierce and you have to have even deeper strategies. You have to be thinking future, you have to have more of a focus because we could cover a lot of ground and a lot of places and growth but it might be more short sighted. It might be just low hanging fruit and we're catching that. But at some point, you're going to run out of low hanging fruit. And so once you run out of low hanging fruit it becomes all about strategy and long term strategy because you have to build things that are scalable and you have to compete against these guys in the course of six to 12 months and beyond. So it really takes a different mindset to turn the corners. I mean you can operate in the same manner as the same culture and the same type of people and teammates but the game and the rules become more fierce. Mark: You said something a little bit ago about you used to think that the scale you just hired or something to that effect but then you kind of learned that that wasn't the case. Why is that? I mean obviously you need to hire to scale at some point but— Dustin: I think a lot of people try to scale too fast and I don't … I mean some people can do it and some people are that experience so they can pull it off. For us, if we could have hired earlier then we potentially could have got further faster. We were reluctant to hire rapidly because we knew we were growing but we didn't want to take the growth for granted. Expecting the growth to come so we would make sure that we had the business, captured the business and then when the need was dire we bring somebody in. But honestly, if we would have brought somebody in and forecasted at six months in advance we might have been able to keep the momentum going faster. But looking back in hindsight I do think there was some benefits of not hiring faster because again we focused on product and we focused on our customers. And so the product was constantly improving and essentially when you think about scaling what are you really scaling right? You've got to have a strong foundation to scale or build on top of it. So not hiring people at that time … I mean the last several years and the investments we've made and you know we weren't … in our industry we were known but outside our industry, it's not like we're flying on anybody's radar. And that's because we have our head down and we were just building the product. And now that the product and the machine and so on is really strong in terms of foundation now we're hiring rapidly in a sense. We're really trying to accelerate it and bring on very strategic hires to fill specific niches or voids that we need to fill in terms of areas of expertise. And so it's working for us now in terms of hiring for your right and not to hire to scale but at the same time if we wouldn't have focused so much on the product and building the foundation that is … you know everything innovative and automated that we have it could be the death of us. We could grow too fast and then if the machine doesn't work then you got sizable problems and when you're talking about thousands of users and thousands of people on your platform, it's not just two people calling and saying [inaudible 00:36:02.9] we're talking about your phones ringing by the thousands and people trying to get those needs resolved. Mark: It's fascinating. With culture and when you're growing a company like that and you're bringing on people and hiring quickly after a certain amount of time because you need to be able to support that growth. Have you guys been able to keep that kind of grinder spirit that you seem to exude with every time I talk to you? You know it's that classic entrepreneur hustle. Have you been able to keep that culture with your company? Dustin: We have. So that's a big deal for us too. I mean the people that you worked alongside with and the people that you entrust in helping to make decisions and contribute they kind of have to be in line with your philosophy and with the rest of the team. Otherwise, they're searching between team or there's a conflict of philosophies. And it's a lot easier if there's a culture fit to be able to rally everybody together for the common good and push forward. So in a lot of ways … in our case we certainly want people who are capable but if we had a scale of one to 10 and the most talented person was a ten we would still rather work with eight. Let him come on to the team out work everybody, fit with the culture and then we're not going to have the kind of pitfalls or speed bumps that we may have if we have friction with somebody. So we definitely identify and work better with those types of folks and at the same time, I think that they appreciate that about us as well. Because depending on what environment they came from if they had the same spirit or they're a fit for our culture generally it's a place they like to work and with an environment people that they want to invest their time with. So I think that's been huge for us and up until this point it's work and as we continue to scale and grow it becomes more of a challenge to try to keep everybody in the same culture fit. But it's important to hire slow and make sure you get the right people than to hire fast and then be reverse engineering that and figuring out how to let them go and get somebody else then. It's counterproductive. Mark: Right we've gone a little bit over time but mainly because it has been a fascinating conversation so any last bits that you would want to put in or if anyone wants to reach out to you are they able to do so? Dustin: Yeah, absolutely my e-mail address is ray@incfile.com I'm on LinkedIn, Facebook, my name is Dustin Ray or my handle on Instagram or anywhere else would be drayonline. But if I was going to leave any other nugget of information with folks just from our experience or my experience one thing that people kind of find interesting but I think is very important is that a lot of people in our society try to focus on self-improvement. We all work on self-improvement but I think it kind of gets lost in transition with entrepreneurs because we're constantly … we're builders and we want to improve but society kind of teaches us in a way to work on our weaknesses. If you're already good at something don't worry about that, you've got to worry on what you're not good at and improve in that area. And really just through experience life not just business, I kind of think it's more important to focus on your strengths as for a self-improvement and be self-aware to say this is the area that I'm good at let me build you, fill gaps, and bring on people to help me execute whatever the task at hand is. But I think too many people focus on improving on what they're not good at. Like for example, we ran a graphic design business for a while, okay I was interested in design. I like design. If I stuck there and invested my time into getting better at design and using Photoshop yeah I'm going to improve. I'm going to get better. But at the end of the day, my best is going to be mediocre. So I'm never going to be able to compete with the guy who's a phenomenal designer. So rather than focusing on your weaknesses just be mediocre at them, I think you got to double down on your strengths. Be self-aware and know what you're good at. And I think it kind of encompasses more of a positive mindset when you're focusing with confidence on what you're good at. You know even when you're trying to improve on what you're not good at it's kind of a negative feeling right? It's kind of you know you're not good at it and you're kind of getting down about it because that's human nature but if you … you know the entrepreneur journey is tough so if you focus on your strengths and bring people on to help you where you need I think you could get further faster. Mark: Well, don't tell my kids that because I keep telling them to work on the stuff that they're struggling with in school. But I think when you are applying it where you're applied it you're 100% right. Dustin: Your kids they're learning right so they don't know exactly what they're good at and what they're not so I do the same for my kids. Mark: Right. Dustin: You're teaching them to work through the problems. More problem solving than self-improvement at this point. Mark: Right. Exactly and also if you want to become an all-around good person work on finding those things. But you're right as far as with your business and entrepreneurs and we see this with buyers all the time. Buyers that just kill it are the buyers who come in and they know their strengths. They might be CRO gurus, they might be SEO gurus, they might be really really good at just setting up operations or what have you and they look for the businesses that are deficient in those areas so that they can take them. And those are the guys that come back with two X, three X, five X businesses in a few years because they've taken their strengths and they're not going to bother trying to work on the stuff that they're bad at. They're going to outsource that if they have to, make sure that somebody else is taking care of it and they won't deal with it and it works. Dustin: That is so true. I gave up Mark … I gave up on trying to be smarter. I said well I'm going to self-improve but I'm not going to get any smarter so now I tend to focus more of my time on becoming a better leader than trying to get smarter. And so you can only build a company so big on your own so if you want to get smarter you're only going to get it so big, you're going to have to work with more people and bring in people to grow a sizeable company. So for myself today I try to focus on being a better leader and working with people and empowering them to be the smartest person in the room. Because their areas of expertise, they are always going to be smarter and better than I would be in that space. So I just try to focus on becoming a better leader and I gave up on trying to be smarter. Mark: I love it. That sounds like a great way to end this episode of you on the podcast. Thank you so much for coming on this has been awesome. Dustin: No, I can't thank you enough for inviting me. I hope your audience gets something from it and I'm looking forward to catching up with you soon. Mark: Sounds good. Links and Resources: IncFile Dustin's Instagram Dustin's LinkedIn

Mark Wellman is a nationally acclaimed author, filmmaker and motivational speaker. Despite being paralyzed in a mountain climbing accident, Mark has inspired millions to meet their problems head-on and reach for their full potential. A two-time Paralympian and former Yosemite Park Ranger, Mark's NO LIMITS philosophy encourages individuals to adventure into new horizons; to go beyond the seeming unreachable. Mark is used to being on the road since he travels throughout the year, bringing his adaptive climbing wall to companies, organizations, and schools. We caught him during one of his road trips and he agreed to swing by Golden, Colorado to the No Barriers podcast studio and catch up with his old friends, Jeff, Dave, and Erik. Mark is unbelievably accomplished but also reserved and humble. He talks about his legendary, groundbreaking athletic achievements with the same tone most use to describe what they had for lunch. But there was a time in Mark's life where he was unsure, depressed, and hopeless with no clear path ahead. Mark discusses his near-death injury that he sustained on a climb that left his paralyzed from the waist down. He spent months in the hospital unsure of how to go forward and lost. That was, until he received some wisdom. I had this one physical trainer, she was from Germany, and she said: “You need to train like your training for the Olympics!” And I just really took that to heart.” Mark first was determined to find employment where he could stay connected to the outdoors. So, he went back to school and got his degree in Park Management. He worked as a Park Ranger in various capacities, already shattering people's ideas of what he was capable of, but that was just the beginning. He soon discovered the world of adaptive sports and threw himself into learning more and designing his own adaptive equipment to get back out into the field. It was then he came up with the crazy idea of climbing the sheer granite face of El Capitan. He found a partner, built an ascending rope pulley system, and started to train. Now, folks of many different abilities have climbed El Cap, but until Mark, this was unthinkable. He pulled it off and became the first paraplegic to make the ascent. “Are you crazy to take this paraplegic guy up El Cap? Seems like a really stupid idea. Something could go wrong,’ but fortunately we didn’t really listen to that.” Mark went on to gain tons of media attention, made national and international news, met the President, lit the flaming torch up a 120-foot rope at the Paralympic games in Atlanta; a fun story he shared with us, and continued on to break even more records of athletic achievement, like being the first paraplegic to sit-ski unassisted across the Sierra Nevadas. Listening to Mark describe his epic achievements it's easy to forget he has a disability or about all the struggle that led him to this point in his life. But for Mark, it's about mindset. “I learned my disability wasn’t a death sentence - let’s get on with life, dude!” But Mark wanted to share what he learned with others. He details the spark of an idea he had with a friend that led to the formation of the nonprofit, No Barriers, and the humble beginnings of an organization that is now becoming a movement. He uses his time to speak to groups and offer inspiration, as well as lead hands-on adaptive activities that get people out of their comfort zones. “Let’s get out and enjoy life.” Read Mark's Autobiography Here Visit Mark's website: No Limits Learn more about No Barriers autobiography Climbing Back. The first paraplegic to sit-ski unassisted across the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, --------------- EPISODE TRANSCRIPT ------------------------- Dave: Well welcome to our No Barriers podcast. We are thrilled today to have Mark Wellman with us, who's one of the founders of No Barriers. Can't wait to hear some of his stories about what this organization was founded upon. He's really the heart and soul behind why many of us are here at the organization. Before we get into that conversation, Erik, you just came back from a really interesting experience, why don't share with our listeners a little bit about it? Erik: [00:00:30] Yeah, I was at a conference with all these authors. There were four of us, and the first was a lady, she was the author of Hidden Figures, this great book that was made into a movie, these African American women who were behind getting us to the moon, didn't get any credit at first, but then their stories were really illuminated by her book. And this guy who is falsely sent to death row for 30 years. He was incarcerated- Dave: Wow. Erik: In a five by [00:01:00] seven room, had to kind of go into his mind and think about how to expand his mind. He said in his mind he married Halle Berry. They were married for 25 happy years. Dave: When was this set? Erik: Recently. Literally just got out of ... he got out of jail, no apology from Alabama. But he wrote this amazing book, so ... And then a lady who wrote a book called Beauty Sick, mostly [00:01:30] about girls who struggle with body image, and how much productivity is lost in the world because girls are having to pay attention to makeup, and weight, and all the things that they worry about. Guys too, but mostly the focus was on girls, and I have a daughter, so I was sitting there just hanging on every word, thinking about my daughter and her struggle, so it was really book because it was four very No Barriers... Dave: That's a lot of No Barriers. Erik: ...authors right there. [00:02:00] Maybe we'll get them on the podcast at some point. Dave: That sounds like perfect fit for the kinds of topics we explore. Erik: Yeah. And I am totally thrilled... this is great. I'm so psyched to have my friend, all our friends, Mark Wellman on the podcast today. Dave: The legend. Erik: The legend, the dirt bag... is that okay to say? Mark: Yeah, yeah. Dave: You embrace it, right? Mark: It's great to be here. I embrace everything. Erik: Mark almost doesn't need an introduction, but Mark is [00:02:30] a world class adventurer, and an innovator, and is the key founder of No Barriers. Has done amazing things that blow your mind as an adventurer. Has skied across the Ruth Gorge. Has traversed the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Has mountain biked the White Rim Trail. Has climbed El Capitan, Half Dome. We were just talking this morning, your Half [00:03:00] Dome ascent was 13 days? Mark: Yeah, it was. Erik: On the wall. Just, Mark, a hero of mine for sure. You're a few years older than me. When I was a teenager and you were just a little bit older climbing El Capitan and doing all these amazing adventures, you were a huge part of my motivation, so I'm psyched right now. Mark: It's great to be here, thanks a lot Erik. Yeah I guess I could [00:03:30] start off with... 35 years ago I was an able bodied climber and we were climbing a peak called Seven Gables, which is pretty close to the Mount Whitney area. We had a 20 mile backpack to get into the base, and this is back in 1982, I was 22 years old. My good friend Peter Enzinger and I were back there to do this climb. [00:04:00] We set up a base camp about 10,000 feet, and the next morning we got up pretty early, grabbed our technical rock climbing equipment and left most of our provisions at the base camp, our sleeping bags. Sure would have been nice to have that sleeping bag with us but didn't have it. And we climbed Seven Gables. It was sort of technical, kind of a mixed route. There was a little bit of ice, a little bit of rock, and made [00:04:30] the ascent. By the time we topped of it was a little bit late in the afternoon, about five o'clock. We just embraced this beautiful view from the summit. American Alpine Club places sometimes these cairns, or climbing registers, at the top of the mountain. It was kind of cool to see this. In this case it was just a pile of rocks with a Folgers coffee can. And I opened up the Folgers coffee can and dumped out the little pieces of paper, and there's my [00:05:00] hero Royal Robbins had climbed it. "Cool man, I'm gonna put my name next to Royal." Did that, and then we decided we're gonna go down a class four descent on the backside, just scrambling, not roped. We were just kind of walking down a tail of slope. I'll be the first to kind of admit my guard was down. My partner said, "Hey, maybe we should put a rope on [00:05:30] this one section here." I go, "No, no. I wanna get down to base camp, I'm really hungry. There's some really good freeze-dried food I wanna eat." You know that wonderful Mountain House stuff. Erik: And 35 years ago. Dave: Delicious. [crosstalk 00:05:44] Mark: So next thing I knew, I slipped on some scree, and I pitched forward and I started rolling. I made a couple of somersaults and I rolled off about a 100 foot cliff. When I landed I broke my lower back at T 11, T 12. Of course at the time I didn't know it. [00:06:00] I was 22, I didn't even know what a wheelchair was. That happened, and my partner thought I possibly could have been killed. But he heard me yell back at him. He got down to where I was... he said he spent a couple hours with me stopping some bleeding on my legs, and some other stuff. Jeff: What's your recollection of that period of time... Mark: He said he was with me for two hours, it felt like ten minutes. Erik: Right. Mark: And then he left. [00:06:30] He left an orange, an extra jacket, and some trail mix and said "Man, I gotta get out and get some help." So after 30 hours, the best sound I've ever heard in my whole life was the sound of this... [helicopter sounds] ...coming up the canyon. Erik: You almost froze to death. Mark: It was cold that night. Yeah it was real cold. I was laying on some ice. That probably helped because it kept the swelling down in my back. So I'm an incomplete [00:07:00] para. I have a little bit of movement in my legs. They said that might have helped me, the swelling. But the helicopter got up there, it was actually a ship from the Forest Service. They were gonna just go up and see if it was more of a body recovery, but fortunately I waved to them and the helicopter disappeared. About an hour later, a second helicopter came up and this time was from Lemoore Navy Base, and they did [00:07:30] a technical rescue. Flew in, brought the rotors within several feet of the cliff surface, lowered a navy medic, got me in a stokes litter, got me back up into the ship. I was down at a trauma center, they were cutting my clothes off, and a nurse said, "Who's your insurance company?" And fortunately I did have insurance, I had Kaiser. I went through stabilization of my back with Harrington rods. I was in the hospital in 1982 for seven months. Dave: [00:08:00] Wow. Erik: Including rehab? Mark: Including rehab and the whole nine yards. And nowadays, a paraplegic if you go to Craig Hospital, it's kind of the factory up here in the west. A paraplegic will be in the hospital for about six weeks. It's pretty dramatic... in those days, it was a much longer hospitalization. Learning how to take care of yourself. And then... Erik: More time is better, right? I mean, [00:08:30] would make sense right? You can develop more time? Mark: Yeah, a little bit. I think seven months was a little excessive. Erik: Right. Mark: But you know, there's a lot to learn. Your life has really changed. Your spinal cord runs your body, and you're paralyzed from your waist down. You have bowel and bladder issues. You have skin issues you have to be careful about. So all those things were really important, and I had this one [00:09:00] physical therapist who was from Germany and she goes, "You need to train like you're training for the Olympics." I just really took that to heart and started lifting weights. Was ambulating with long leg braces. This was sort of the beginning of the wheelchair revolution where wheelchairs weren't a stale piece of medical equipment, they were a lightweight piece of aluminum that was more of an extension of your body. And the wheelchair [00:09:30] could take you from point A to point B. Fortunately, in 1982 was really when these wheelchairs... they started making lightweight chairs. And I was a part of that. Erik: Not the clunky Vietnam-era things, right? Mark: Exactly. The old Everest and Jennings chairs were more obsolete, and they were using... well there was a woman who started Quickie wheelchairs, Marilyn Hamilton, she got hurt in a hang gliding accident. They took hang gliding technology, clevis pins, aluminum, powder coat. [00:10:00] And they kind of messier of manufacturing these wheelchairs sort of like... taking the technology from hang gliders and applying it to wheelchairs. Erik: We're still less than ten podcasts in here, but we've already heard a lot of stories of people... these No Barrier stories of people who go down deep into these dark places. I don't want to bring you down, but you have a lot of experience right now and so you can look back. You went to a dark [00:10:30] place, obviously. Mark: Yeah. It was close to saying goodbye to this Earth. Fortunately I made it through. I remember getting back into rehab, then I met a state rehab counselor who said, "You know Mark, you have this great love, this great passion for the outdoors, why don't you become a park ranger?" And I'm thinking, "How's somebody in a wheelchair gonna be a park ranger?" I'm thinking [00:11:00] law enforcement, search and rescue, and she goes "No, there's many hats in the National Park Service, or many different jobs." She took me down to Fort Funston where I met a ranger who kind of showed me the ropes and said "Hey, you could maybe do a job, this would be an entry level position, but you could help us plant dune grass and work in the nursery, or you could go to the entrance gate and help out there." [00:11:30] So I did that for a summer and then I went back to school and went to West Valley College and studied park management. Erik: Cool. Mark: And became a ranger at Yosemite. I remember my first job wasn't exactly my idea being a ranger. There I was sitting in this little kiosk, this little booth, at Big Oak Flat, the entrance to Yosemite. In those days it was a three dollar entrance fee and I'd collect the money and be breathing in auto fumes all day long. That really wasn't [00:12:00] my idea of being a ranger. But it was entry level. The next summer I went down to Yosemite Valley and started working at the visitor's center doing interpretation. Interpreting the natural processes of the park, the public. Bear management, geology, climbing was a big subject too. I'd give programs on climbing, talk about A climbing versus free climbing. Jeff: Were you transparent with people that would come through the park, with how your injury took place? [00:12:30] When you'd talk about the [crosstalk 00:12:31] Mark: I was, I was. I would start my climbing program off with my accident, actually. And bring that in, because I think that was a big part of it. They might say, "Well who's this guy in a wheelchair, what does he know about climbing?" I'd kind of bring that in. That was before I climbed El Cap, I was doing those things. Jeff: Were you percolating on doing something like that when you were there? Mark: I was. It's kind of an interesting story. There was a magazine called Sports And Spokes, it was a wheelchair [00:13:00] athletic magazine. On the front cover on that magazine was a DSUSA chapter, a woman who was being lowered down a cliff in a wheelchair on a river rafting trip. The river went over a waterfall, and then you did portage all the equipment around the waterfall. They had a swami belt and a climbing rope and they had a helmet, I guess they wanted to put a helmet on her for safety, sounded like a good idea. And they lowered her down this cliff in this wheelchair, [00:13:30] and it was on the front cover of this magazine, Sports And Spokes. I got the magazine at my little cabin in Yosemite and I had it on my lap. I was wheeling over to the visitor center to open it up in the morning, and I bumped into my future climbing partner Mike Corbet. And Mike's nickname was Mr. El Cap back in the 80s, he had climbed El Cap more than anybody else in the world, over 50 times. And Mike had never really talked about climbing to me because he knew that's how I got hurt. But when [00:14:00] I showed him this picture, Mike's eyes got really big, and he got really excited. He goes, "You know what Mark, I wanna start climbing with you, but what I really wanna do is climb El Cap." And we had no idea how we were gonna do it. Dave: That's great. Mark: That evening, we were sitting at the mountain room bar, we might have had a beer or two. Dave: Or three. Jeff: That's where all good decisions are made. Mark: Where all good decisions are made. So we had a little beer napkin and we started writing down notes. We said, "Okay, [00:14:30] we're gonna take a jumar..." A jumar is a rope ascender, this was back in the day, kind of like what Kleenex is to tissue. So we took a jumar, and we mounted a pull up bar and a jumar, and then we had a second ascender on a chest harness. And we put a rope up right by the Ahwahnee Hotel. Church ball tree. It was an oak tree. We had this rope and we started ascending up into the tree and then he'd lower me back down. So we go, "Okay, [00:15:00] so a paraplegic can ascend a rope using their upper body strength. Now to get on El Capitan, we got to actually protect your lower extremities from the granitic rock." We knew we were gonna be up there at least a week. I don't have feeling in my legs, so I really needed to protect my legs from any kind of abrasion or any kind of sore that could have occurred up there. We went down to this hardware store in Fresno, California outside [00:15:30] of the park. We bought some leather, a speedy stitcher, some closed cell insulation foam, and we just started making these rock chaps and they sort of evolved over a course of six months. We were climbing Jam Crack, Warner's... Erik: Weren't they... what was the material of those? I've felt your chaps before. That sound's weird... Dave: The truth comes out. Jeff: Hey, we're all friends here. Mark: The original [00:16:00] rock chaps were made out of leather and canvas. But the pair of rock chaps you felt were actually made out of some kind of silky material. No, no... Dave: Oh that was lingerie? Not chaps. Jeff: This was the first No Barriers improv meeting, what you're talking about, with your buddy Mike. Mark: Absolutely. Jeff: That was it, that was the genesis of what... fast forward to today, that was the beginning. What [00:16:30] year was that? 1980... Mark: That was 1988. Jeff: 88. There you go. Mark: Yeah 88. I was 28 years old. Erik: So if you think about it that way, No Barriers began in the Ahwahnee bar. Jeff: Yeah, on a bar stool. On a bar napkin. Dave: I know you guys are all dirt bag climbers. I'm not a dirt bag climber. For our listeners who are not dirt bag climbers, someone paint a picture, because we're getting to the El Cap story. Which is a phenomenal story. Paint a picture of El Cap for us, because not everyone knows what that is. Jeff: Yeah, well. El Cap [00:17:00] is probably the most revered, iconic, monolith in North America if not the world. Uninterrupted, over 3000 feet of granite. It is... when you're in Yosemite, you look up at it and it's got this perfectly symmetrical flank apron on both sides that comes out into this promontory called the nose. And [00:17:30] you can't take your eyes off it. If you look away for a minute, you have to look back at it just cause it's so magnificent and powerful. And it represents so much too. If you want to call yourself a climber, you kind of have to climb El Cap at some point. Erik: When you stand in the meadows below, which is just clogged with tourists just all driving by gawking. What I've heard, is you have to look up and up and up, way higher than [00:18:00] you think you have to. Dave: And if you see a person climbing, as a person who's not a technical climber speaking, you think "Those people are crazy. They're insane. What are they doing up there?" Jeff: Erik and I climbed El Cap. And his dad, Erik's dad, and future wife were down there in the meadow with telescopes watching us. We had one of those little lighty things, little sticks, and we were shining our headlamps down at everybody. It's [00:18:30] a magnificent thing, but it's also very intimidating. It can be very cool when you stand up and look at it, but then the idea of going and climbing it I think is a whole different story. Erik: And as a quote on quote gimp, and that's a word by the way that Mark taught me. I never even heard that word before. It's one of those words I guess you somehow have the license to use if you are... Mark: If you are. Erik: If you are in a chair or you are blind. So what did, when you talked about this out loud, what did people [00:19:00] think? Are people like, "You're nuts." Mark: Yeah, we had kind of a mixture of both. People that knew us, were "Oh yeah you guys should go do this." Mark's been training, he's always skiing, always riding his bike, hand bike around... well in those days it was more of a row cycle. And then we had people say, mainly not to me so much but more to Mike, "Are you crazy? Take this paraplegic guy up El Cap? Seems like a really stupid [00:19:30] idea. Something could go wrong." But fortunately, we didn't really listen to that. We just started training, we made these rock chaps. Like I said, they kind of just evolved over about a six month period. We kind of have a little circuit in Yosemite Valley that we climbed together. We did Jam Crack, the Prude, Warner's Crack, The Rostrum, we went over there. Erik: Oh, wow. Mark: So we did some stuff in the Valley [00:20:00] just to really warm up. And then I actually went up and spent a night on El Cap. Because we wanted to feel what that was like. Jeff: Up at sickle? Mark: We actually went to Heart Ledge. Erik: Wow. Jeff: Over on the south. Mark: Yeah, over on the south. The route we were gonna climb was a shield. So... Jeff: Cause it's overhanging. Mark: It was overhanging... once you get over the shield roof it's overhanging. The beginning of it's not. It's pretty low angle. Jeff: Were you scared at all before you did this or [00:20:30] were you just super fired up and kind of naïve? Mark: I was scared the night before. Jeff: You were. Mark: Yeah. Jeff: Like really scared? Mark: Yeah I was... couldn't sleep. This kind of what happened was... really Mike, about two weeks before we're gonna blast off, Mike goes, "Man we've trained so hard for this, I'm gonna write a letter to Tom Brokaw..." who is the national NBC News guy, who is a climber too, a little bit. And, I'm going, "Okay... " so basically [00:21:00] Corbet just wrote out a note with a pencil. He was a janitor at the Yosemite Medical Clinic to support his addiction to climbing. He just wrote a little note to Tom Brokaw, and I think three or four days later he's talking to... Tom Brokaw called the medical clinic and talked to Mike, and said "We want to come out and do this story." Erik: Gosh. Mark: And all of a sudden the pressure was on. That's when I really was thinking, "Wow you're telling national news, this is gonna add [00:21:30] a lot more pressure for myself." But as soon as we got to the base of El Cap and I touched that granite, all that training and preparation really got into par, and I got relaxed. I started doing pull up after pull up, dragging myself up the largest unbroken granite cliff in North America, El Capitan, and the first night... we do something called, we fix pitches. So we were fixed [00:22:00] up about 800 feet. So we had... Mike used to say, "It's always nice to kind of have a jumpstart." Erik: Right. Mark: You know, fix those lines, get all your water, we had 250 pounds... Erik: It's like a trail of ropes that go up 800 feet so you can just... Mark: The next morning... Erik: Start on the ground and zip up 800 feet and have like a jumpstart on this gigantic monolith. Mark: Exactly. And have all your water, all your gear up there. So he had to work three or four days to make that happen prior to us [00:22:30] leaving. Once we left Mammoth Terrace, we were on our own. We went through the Gray Ledges, and we went over... the roof was really tremendous. Because Mike is basically climbing upside down, and then gets up onto the pitch above it and fixes a rope. Then I kind of untied myself and I swing underneath that roof, and you can hear the cheers of the people down below. It's like [00:23:00] what Jeff was saying, It's quite a scene at the El Cap meadow. You really have to have binoculars. It's hard to see climbers up there, because they're so tiny, they're like little ants up there. If you don't know what to look for, it's hard to see these people. The crowd was yelling, and the green dragon would come by. It's a tour vehicle that has it's open air shuttle. Erik: "If you look upright you will see a nutcase [00:23:30] climbing El Capitan." Mark: We could actually hear them talking about "Mike Corbet, Mark Wellman, first paraplegic..." So that was kind of interesting. Finally when we topped out, it was seven nights, eight days of climbing. This was before digital technology on El Cap, when national news came out. They had a mule train, they brought out a satellite dish that was like five feet wide, and we were live on top of El [00:24:00] Cap talking to Tom Brokaw. Jeff: Sick. Mark: And we've got... between the Today Show and NBC News, and in a week we were on TV for like several hours if you took all the time that they played this. There wasn't really much going on in the news, so they really kind of played this story up in a big way. As soon as we got off that climb, about a week later, we're sitting in the Oval [00:24:30] Office talking to President Bush. It was myself, Mike Corbet, "Writtenaur" who was Secretary of the Interior, and Jack Morehead, superintendent of Yosemite. The four of us are in the White House, in the Oval Office, talking about bone fishing because President Bush loved to bone fish and we presented him with a flag that we took with us on the climb, and it changed my life. Erik: Mark, so you're not that old, but I see [00:25:00] you sort of as the father of adventur e sports for people with disabilities. I want people to understand that the idea to climb El Cap back in the 80s... nowadays, I think... how many people have climbed El Cap in chairs, paras? Mark: Oh the chairs? Erik: Dozens, right? Mark: Yeah, dozens. Erik: But you sort of unleashed that. You opened up this door. And now, quote on quote gimps are doing everything, right? Mark: Every summer there's [00:25:30] a paraplegic. Erik: But you opened that door for all of us. So, it's sort of a crazy thought to me. Mark: It is. You can't take the first ascent of El Cap, you can't take that away from me. That's something I'll always remember. It was a huge accomplishment for both Mike and I, and there's been different paraplegics who have gone up it. A gentleman with cerebral palsy, Steve Wampler, was probably the most [00:26:00] disabled person that's been up there. Lots of amputees. I call them amputees, hardly disabled. Paraplegics wanna be amputees. Erik: Those will be our first complaint letters. Dave: Exactly. [crosstalk 00:26:15] Mark: Quadriplegics wanna be paraplegics. Everybody has their differences. There's been a quadriplegic, incomplete quadriplegic, climbed El Cap with Tommy Thompson, good climber. [00:26:30] Steve Muse. Erik: There's that kid who climbed The Chief, he was inspired by you. Mark: Yep. Erik: He was a quad, and he climbed The Chief. He invented kind of this, almost like a contraption with wheels if I remember right, that kind of rolled up the face. Mark: Yeah it was... the premise was taking the Dolt cart. A climber by name of Dolt had this cart and he used to use it for a hauling system on El Cap. Brad "Szinski", the Canadian guy you're talking about, he came up with this [00:27:00] cart. His hands didn't really work as well as a paraplegic, he lost some muscle mass in his hands and fingers. So he had a different type of system where he could ascend a rope using a crank, and developed that. So there's been all kinds of different adaptations that allow people that are wheelchair users to go rock climbing. Jeff: This sort of set you [00:27:30] on this course to being an improvisational pioneer, those are my words. Were you like that always or do you feel like your accident cued you up for this opportunity to then over the past thirty years... Mark: Thirty five. Jeff: Yeah thirty five years. Now you've continued this trajectory of being this pioneer when it comes to just making it work. You make it work, right? Mark: I was so young. When I got hurt [00:28:00] I was 22. I wasn't climbing big walls, I hadn't got to that point yet of climbing El Cap. Finally, when I did have my accident it kind of made sense. The steeper the climb for somebody in a chair the better. Mountaineering is gonna be really tough. There are ways of doing mountaineering. We got four paraplegics on top of Mount Shasta. Erik: Yep. Mark: And there was a guy named Pete "Rikee". It's funny... people [00:28:30] come to me if they've got an idea, a lot of times they'll want me to be a part of the project. Least... Erik: That was a pod that they were in, that had almost like tractor wheels, right? Mark: Exactly. What we did is we took a snowmobile and cut the snowmobile track in half and made a tractor stance. So you have two tracks and a seat with a bicycle crank, and we actually crank our way up Mount Shasta. We had to get special permit from the Forest [00:29:00] Service. You can only be on Shasta for three days, and we knew we were gonna be up there for a week. So I had to drive up... I was trying to explain to this district ranger on the telephone, he really wasn't getting it. Erik: Sometimes they don't get it. Mark: And he wasn't getting it at all. He was thinking mechanical device... Jeff: Motorized... Mark: Right. He knew who I was, so he said "Come up and bring the machine with you so I can take a look at it." So I brought one of the snow pods up there and I met with the district ranger [00:29:30] and a couple of his back country rangers, and they got it. They said, "This is cool man, we'd like to let you guys do this." They gave us a special use permit. The big thing about the Forest Service and wilderness, or National Park Service wilderness, you cannot take... supposedly mechanized devices cannot go into the wilderness. But if you have a disability, your bicycle could almost be considered a wheelchair, or your snow pod can be considered [00:30:00] a wheelchair. Long as it doesn't have a Briggs and Stratton engine on it. That was the big thing, it has to be a manual piece of a gear that's human powered. So we got that, and we got four paraplegics on top of Mount Shasta. Erik: And El Cap really launched you into being able to do all these amazing things, right? You pretty much became a professional climber, adventurer, doing these things around the world. I know you lit the torch for the Paralympics, right? Mark: I did, I lit the Paralympic torch in Atlanta in 1996. [00:30:30] Muhammad Ali lit it for the able bodied Olympics. They had this torch, and the night before we're training for it... it's a big surprise, they don't want to see the person light the torch the night before, no media, so we're out there. I was gonna climb an 80 foot rope doing rope ascension, doing pull up after pull up. And North Face made me a little, kind of a... we envisioned this Robin Hood thing with... behind [00:31:00] my shoulders, this arrow quiver where I put the actual torch in. I didn't wanna burn my hair, what's left of it, so... Erik: You had a lot more hair... Mark: So I said, "Let's make this torch holder so it comes off your legs." So they made that for me. That night we're training, I get up the 80 foot rope, and I lit the fuse and the fuse blew out. Erik: Oh no. Mark: And the pyrotechnics guy goes, it was windy, and the [00:31:30] next day it was gonna be windy too. So the pyrotechnics guy guys... "Okay Mark, I'll make sure this fuse doesn't go out the night you do it." And I go, "Great." So I get up there in front of 80,000 people, I'm climbing up this rope. Liza Minnelli is singing this song and she's going "Go Mark, Go Mark." The whole stadium of 80,000 people is going nuts. So I lit this fuse, and literally the thing blew up. There was fire all over me. And I'm leaning back, hoping I'm not gonna catch [00:32:00] on fire. Then the fuse went up and lit the actual cauldron, and that was the start of the 1996 Summer Olympics. Jeff: You did not combust. Mark: I did not combust. I had the best seat in the house. Erik: You'd be like a Motley Crue drummer. Mark: Exactly. So that was fun. Erik: Takes us on a little tour of what you did. All those amazing adventures that you did after that. Takes us on a little tour around the world. Mark: What a lot of people don't realize, which I think is harder than climbing [00:32:30] El Cap, or spending 13 days on Half Dome was another big ascent we did years ago... but was doing the Trans Sierra ski crossing. I've done it twice now. I did it in 1993, it was a big winner, and I did it in 2011. So we took a cross country Nordic sit ski. You sit low to the ground, you have two skis mounted underneath a frame with a seat, and you're sitting maybe a foot off the snow. And you have two [00:33:00] poles, and you actually double pole. So you're double poling to make this device go down the trail. I was on the US Disabled Nordic Ski Team. Competed in two Paralympics, in France and in Norway. Got beat up by the Finns, the Norwegians, they're so passionate about that sport. Jeff: And they're vikings. Mark: And they're vikings, man. They're so tough. My best finish out of 30 guys was of fifth place, that was in France. [00:33:30] In Norway, I got even more beat up. I wanted to actually get into Nordic ski racing because I had other things I wanted to do. I wanted to try to get into the back country in a Nordic ski. Back in 93 a guy named Jeff Pegles and myself was also on the US disabled Nordic team. We took sleds, little polks, behind our rigs. We had our bivy gear. And we skied 55 miles from Snowline [00:34:00] on the east side of the Sierra on Tioga road, we got someone to open up the gate. Guy that worked for the power company opened up the gate. We got up to Snowline and we skied from Snowline to Crane Flat, which is 55 miles. Jeff: Wow. Mark: Following the Tioga road. Jeff: Just the two of you? Mark: Well we also had Pearlman with us too. Erik: Filming. Mark: He was filming, yeah. Erik: And, you gotta tell the story about the White Rim. So you biked the White Rim, I think you were on one off mountain bikes? Mark: [00:34:30] Yep. Erik: Or some kind of devices, hand crank mountain bikes. And it was so sandy, the story I heard, you had to get out and you had to pretty much pull yourself on your arms and pull your chair, did you pull the other guys chairs too? Or were the other guys' bikes... Mark: It was an epic, groveling adventure. Seems like everything I do turns into that. Jeff: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:34:50] Mark: If you're not suffering, you're not having a good time. That's kind of how it is out there. We had these one off mountain bikes and [00:35:00] we actually did a Jeep tour to kind of check it out a couple years prior. We did have it a little easier, we didn't carry all our water and food with us, we had a swag wagon out there. Suburban, follow the four paraplegics. Myself, Bob Vogel, and Steve Ackerman. We rode this, 52 miles is the full circumnav of the White Rim. There was times, [00:35:30] yeah, it was an interesting experience out there because some of these washes were like moon dust. We couldn't get our bikes through it. So I had a pair of rock chaps with me and I threw the rock chaps on and did some crawling. Had an 11 mil static rope and dragged the guys behind me. Did a few epic things like that. Jeff: I mean, If I'm riding my mountain bike and I come up on that scene in the middle of the White Rim, who knows what to make of that? Mark: [00:36:00] You can walk man, so best thing to do is just walk your bike. Jeff: Like, "You guys are good right?" and they'll be like "Yep, we're good man." Erik: Leave us alone. Jeff: Leave us alone. Mark: Don't touch me. Jeff: There's nothing to see here. Yeah. Erik: Yeah. Jeff: Wow, that's rad. Mark: And then recently, just a couple of years ago... in the winter we had a drought in California and Tahoe, so I circumnaved Lake Tahoe in a kayak in winter. And that was a really amazing adventure. It was 72 [00:36:30] miles, two nights of camping. But the cool thing was, and it was cool at night, it was really cold at night. There was no power boats. In the winter you don't have any power boats on Lake Tahoe, it was kind of like being out there in the 1800s. Seeing bald eagles, none of the tourists were on the water, it was really a fantastic trip. Dave: So Mark, you are someone who really embodies the spirit of No Barriers and you helped [00:37:00] start the organization. So tell us, all these adventures, all these things you've done to challenge what's possible, what people think is possible. Why No Barriers? Tell us that story. Mark: You know, No Barriers... I did a movie called No Barriers, and I got a poster out called No Barriers. It was a word that really meant a lot to me. My wife and I, we were down in San Francisco at a fundraiser... in those days it was called Yosemite Fund, now it's called Yosemite [00:37:30] Conservancy. We were at this dinner, and I met this kind of wild old character named Jim Goldsmith. And Jim came up to me, knew who I was... we started talking. He had a cabin in the subdivision I live in called Tahoe Dawner. So Jim and I, and Carol, and his wife Connie would get together, we had a couple of dinners together. And then Jim started talking about the Dolomites, and his [00:38:00] son-in-law and daughter. And he said, "Man, it would be really neat to kind of do something for disabled people and able bodied people if we did something in the Dolomites." And I go, "Man, I know a couple of guys who I've done some stuff with, a guy named Hugh Herr, double amputee who's done some rock climbing with him, and Erik Weihenmayer." This was probably after your Everest... Erik: Yeah, after. Mark: This was after your Everest climb. And I said "Hey, these [00:38:30] guys..." we did a climb out in Moab Utah, the three of us, it was kind of gimp helping gimp, it was this real magical event out there. Which was really cool... Erik: Climbing the Fisher Tower. Mark: Yeah. The Fisher Tower. Ancient Ark. Erik: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mark: And it was this really fantastic climb. I'd like to get these two guys involved with what we're talking about. SO I called Erik, I called Hugh, and we ended up putting our first [00:39:00] little... in those days, it was more of a festival, we called it, instead of a summit. We did it in the Dolomites. It was a very obscure little place up in the mountains, this real beautiful location, but nothing was really accessible. The hotels weren't that accessible, everything was kind of difficult to put this together. But it was this real magical place in the mountains... Erik: I remember the chair operators didn't even know how to get people with disabilities on the chairs. Mark: They didn't have [00:39:30] an idea. They didn't... yeah. Erik: On the ski lifts. Thank you. Yeah. Mark: They weren't doing adaptive skiing in those days in that little village. It was actually the home of the 1956 Olympics. SO that was kind of my envision was to start this, and who knew it was gonna get into what it is today. It's just amazing what you guys have done, and all the different things No Barriers has to offer people. Erik: What do you think about when you think about the evolution? You had this little germ [00:40:00] of an idea to go to this town and start talking about accessibility and innovation, and some of your lessons about how you've broken through barriers, or how the three of us had broken through barriers. And now, when you look at it today... Mark: [sighs] It's kind of mind boggling how it's grown so big and how many different people it affects, it's not just the disabled community, it's able bodied community bringing everyone together. Trying new experiences. The youth programs [00:40:30] that you guys have been doing is tremendous over the years. Soldiers to the summit. We're having all these guys coming back doing ten tours, they're not adjusting back into society very well, and taking them out into the outdoors with Jeff and different mountain guides, it just changes their lives. Brings them more back into a reality where they can really kind of adjust back into society. And then the summit is just... I love [00:41:00] coming to the summits. I've been to every one now, I haven't missed one since the beginning. It's gonna be fantastic in New York, I'm really looking forward to that. Erik: And you bring your climbing wall, your portable climbing wall. Mark: I'll have... Erik: Almost to every summit. So that's your mission now, right? To go around and use your climbing wall as a No Barriers tool to help people break through barriers. Tell us about that. Mark: Absolutely. Climbing has been such a big part of my life, that I just like to introduce different [00:41:30] people to the sport. A lot of times, somebody that's... we don't say electric chair, electric chair is something you die in. Power chair. A power chair takes you from point A to point B. A power chair user, a lot of times doesn't have all the... there's not as many things out there for a power chair user to participate in. Climbing on my wall, they can. We have these harnessing systems [00:42:00] that support your core. It's almost like a Bosen's chair, pulley system. If you have the desire to get on the climbing wall, we can facilitate that. We don't turn anybody away. We've had people that weigh 500 pounds on my wall before. Very obese wheelchair users... it doesn't matter. I had a gentleman that had spina bifida and he was unfortunately caught up in the American society of drinking a lot of soda, [00:42:30] and became really big. We got him on the wall, it was really difficult for him. We would talk to him and he wouldn't really look at you eye to eye as we were talking. I saw him a year later, he dropped 150 pounds, quit the soda, got into a training, cut his hair in a mohawk, and it just changed his life. Got out of the power chair and was in a manual chair. So climbing was kind of the responsibility of really changing this guys life, and now I see [00:43:00] him down in Los Angeles. I probably take the wall to Southern California maybe seven or eight times a year, San Francisco, Bay Area. I sort of have different groups hire me year after year, once they experience the wall they really want to have it be part of their event. We bring in, mini El Cap I call it, and we get people on it and we have a great time. Erik: And you're traveling around with your wall, full time. People bring you in to create this experience for their [00:43:30] rehab hospital or organization or team, right? Mark: Exactly. All those venues... I do adaptive climbing seminars. So a gym might call me and wanna know, "how do we get an adaptive climbing program going?" So I do that. And a lot of times I'll do not only a seminar on adaptive climbing, but then maybe that evening do a show and tell about adventure sports and where adventure sports have taken the disabled in the last 35 [00:44:00] years. Erik: And you are like Kleenex now, because... you talk about the pulley system, it's not a pulley system, pull up system, a lot of people say, "Oh yeah, Mark Wellman system." Mark: Yeah, it's... yeah it's kind of getting that way. Jeff: You're like Beyonce now. Mark: I'm like Beyonce. It's just kind of neat that my passions over the years... everybody should have a passion. And my passion has always been [00:44:30] to be out camping, doing something in the outdoors, coming up with new ideas, new technologies... and some of these technologies are more like a backyard technology. It's not that fancy. Sometimes some of the most simplest things can change something. Like mountain bike tires on a wheelchair can change a chairs getting into the back country tremendously. Mounting a pull up bar in a sender can allow a paraplegic [00:45:00] to do 7000 pull ups in eight days to go up El Cap. Just simple little technologies can really change peoples' lives, and you can take that backyard technology, garage technology, put something together that works for you that can help a whole bunch of people. Dave: I'd like to go back to that... You've told us a story, sort of the arc of your life, and when I look at you Mark and think about what you've accomplished I think "God, this is incredible. [00:45:30] This is an incredible human being that very few people who had what happened to you would ever have chosen the path that you have chosen." And I think, when I think about our No Barriers community, every so often you get folks who will say "Yeah, that's Mark Wellman but that couldn't have been me. You're putting someone in front of me that's so incredible, how could I possibly do this?" Erik: Yeah, you're de motivational. Mark: Right, right. I know, I get it. Dave: I'd love to hear, what do you think we can... 'cause this is what we do at No Barriers. We... If you're [00:46:00] listening to this, it's not like we take everyone up mountains, but we try to remind them about something in their spiri t... Mark: Yeah. Dave: ...that teaches them anything is possible. So talk to us a little bit about, Mark, how did you get to that point? Is it just sort of who you were from the beginning, was it an evolution? It just seems like everything you encountered, you are like, "I can do more." Mark: I think it's really important for people to get out of their comfort zone. Nowadays, it's so easy for young people to get... they get into gaming. And they [00:46:30] just, you know... it's stagnant. You're not getting out of your comfort zone. And the outdoors has a way of getting you out of your comfort zone. And you can make it safe... you don't need to think about what I do, it's more about finding, maybe getting some different experiences. And that's what's so cool about the summit. You have all these different activities going on where you just get a little taste of it. And hopefully [00:47:00] that little taste will inspire your imagination to want to try it again. And that's where I think it's really important if you're facilitating skiing or climbing, or whatever you're facilitating, you have to make sure that these people, their first experience is a good one. If they don't have a good experience, most likely they're not gonna go back to it. And, it's really important that the very first time... One of our board members, Sasha. [00:47:30] He was an academia guy, a professor. He came to the No Barriers event in Squaw Valley, the first one. Never had tried climbing before, and we took him to Donner Summit and got him up on this road cut climb that's 80 feet with big exposure, and it changed the guys life. It was something he was real nervous about, but it was getting him out of his comfort zone, and him [00:48:00] really having, you know... it was exciting for him, it was thrilling, it was challenging not only physically but mentally challenging at the same time. All those things combined. Kind of changed his life. And he became a board member of No Barriers because of that. Dave: Yeah. Mark: And there's stories like that all the time. Or Mandy, I remember her... wonderful singer. She got on my wall, it was 25 feet, and she [00:48:30] was really scared. It was a really scary moment for her where she had this big fear of heights. It wasn't like she was on a 1000 foot rope, she was on a 24 foot wall. But she might have well have been. Jeff: Relative for her. Mark: Could have been a 1000 foot climb. But she made it through. And came down... I got a guy that helps me, Wes, he's a search and rescue guy, kind of a big guy. He's just magical with [00:49:00] people, and really helped her a lot. So, you have all these different experiences... Erik: And I think that experience, by the way, gave her the courage to go out and do something completely non-climbing related, which was to write music and to go on to America's Got Talent, and... Mark: Exactly. Erik: Get into the finals, and now skyrocket into stardom. Mark: To fame. Absolutely. Making a better quality life for herself. [00:49:30] A lot of times when you say, somebody that's a wheelchair user... what is it, like 90 percent of the people in wheelchairs don't have jobs. And it's always kind of bummed me out, I'm thinking, "Wow." Why would you wanna be caught in a system like with Social Security and be basically poor your whole life, because "Oh I have Medicare, I have my Social Security disability," So you're trying to live on six to eight hundred dollars a month. And you're caught [00:50:00] in this kind of vicious circle. You've got to get away from that somehow, and get into the workforce, be productive. You're gonna feel better, you're gonna be a more productive citizen in this country, and you're not gonna be wrapped up in this vicious circle of never getting ahead and always having the government thumb you down, so to speak. Erik: Last question for [00:50:30] you from my end, this is Erik, and I wanna know, I've made it kind of clear that I look up to you. Tell me, who are the people that you look up to? Tell us about that guy Larry, tell us about some people who influenced your life. Mark: Oh man. There's been a lot for sure. There was a guy named... actually I think you're thinking of a guy named Mark Sutherland. When I first got hurt, Mark was a quadriplegic ten [00:51:00] years post to my injury. And he was back in the hospital. He had a bone spur, the spur was touching his spinal cord, and he was losing some of his action. Some quadriplegic can move their arms and they can push manual chairs, and he was one of those. But he was losing some of his arm strength, so he was in the hospital, and my room was next to his. We would talk at night. 'Cause I was really bummed out when I was first injured. To me, being a paraplegic was a fate [00:51:30] worse than death. I was on the sixth floor, if I could have crawled over to the window and jumped out I would have cause that's how bad I felt. I was just thinking, "Not having the use of my legs, I'm not gonna ski again, I'm not gonna climb." I was 22, I was just like, "Why didn't the mountain just take me." Those were the kind of thoughts I was having. But then I would go into this guys room, Mark Sutherland, and he would talk about, "Oh I had this milk truck that I converted, and I had a stool. One time I was driving it with my hand controls [00:52:00] and I fell off the stool, and I was on the ground and I had to throw my hand on the brake to stop it so I didn't kill anybody." Jeff: And you were like, "That's the greatest story ever." Mark: Yeah. I wanna do that. So I was just hearing this stuff from this guy, and he was talking about girlfriends, and how he was running around doing this and doing that, and I'm going, "Man, this guy has a life." And it was really inspiring to be... so where I was really depressed and laying in the hospital bed, and couldn't feel [00:52:30] my lower extremities, and "What's a catheter?" And I'm just like, "Man, this is horrible, what did I get myself into." And this guy was really upbeat and uplifting... Jeff: Showed you it wasn't a death sentence. Mark: Yeah. Showed me it wasn't a death sentence, and let's get on with life, dude. And it was like, boom. That just changed me. Then we went into rehab together, we were more in a hospital setting and then we both went into our physical rehab. That's [00:53:00] when it just started clicking for me, and that was it. Dave: Well, just to wrap up this excellent conversation that we're having about the history of No Barriers and all that you've done as well just individually, you've seen No Barriers be this thing that started in the Dolomites in 2003, we're 15 years into this. What's your dream for what it becomes? Mark: Wow. I would just consider it to be... I'd like to see maybe a couple summits a year, possible. [00:53:30] More, smaller clinics would be really cool too. I think you guys are really on a good, good path. But maybe some smaller events too. Just keep growing it. Keep doing more of these kinds of things. More technology. Bringing in more people, better speakers. Better people that are... or people that are doing more things that inspire others that give the ideas [00:54:00] to do more things. I'm amazed in 15 years where it's come to. Who knows where it's gonna go. Another 15 years from now, man this could be a huge, huge organization that could affect a lot of people and bring a lot of people together. This whole family, bringing the tribe together. It's always fun at the summits, and seeing people I haven't seen for a year, [00:54:30] spending time with them. I love getting people out climbing, so that's my passion. Erik: What if people want to learn how to get in touch with you, how to work with you, how to bring your wall to their organization? Mark: Yeah. Google Mark Wellman or just go to my website, No Limits Tahoe dot com. Give me a call. Erik: Although they won't talk to you, 'cause you're never home. You're always out [crosstalk 00:54:55] or something. Dave: Always on the road, right. Mark: Well, no, yeah I'm easy to get a hold of. Talk to my wife, Carol, [00:55:00] and I can get back to you. Erik: Right. Mark: Send me an email. I'm better on the phone, I don't like to email tons. Love to talk to you, if you have ideas lets talk about, lets see you at the summit. Lets get out and enjoy life. Erik: Cool. Well thank you so much Mark. Jeff: Listen Mark, I know you well enough to know you don't need to hear what I'm about to tell you, but, I think it's important for you and the listeners to know [00:55:30] in conversations like this, it becomes so clear how you are sort of the upside down pyramid. And you're the point on the upside down pyramid. And it all sort of funnels up from you, really. And I know there's others, but you're the man. And I know it's important for you, it is important for me to know that you know how many thousands of lives you've impacted. Erik: Tens of thousands. Jeff: Thousands of lives dude. You have been the kick starter [00:56:00] and the imputes. And you're just one of the most wonderful pioneers. I know you know it, but you need to hear it more, because you're the man. Mark: I appreciate it man, it's humbling. And, to take a passion that I had and a dream... and like I said, just simple adaptations, a pull up bar on a jumar. Man, how that changed other people to go climb up El Cap, or do Castleton, or whatever [00:56:30] mountain you want to get up, it's been a pretty cool experience. It's been fun to work with other companies. We're making more adaptive climbing equipment now. It's really kind of evolved from just handmade rock chaps to a real sophisticated pair of rock chaps that allows people to get out there and do a lot of cool stuff. Dave: Well it's been an honor to have you here Mark, I know many of our listeners are part of that No Barriers tribe. Many of them will know you, but a [00:57:00] lot of them won't. The movement has grown so big that it's well beyond you. But per what Jeff was saying, it's so important I think for the people of our community to know where this began. Mark: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Dave: And you are the point that Jeff mentioned where it began, and so, thank you so much for joining us, we appreciate having you. Mark: My pleasure. Erik: What did you guys take away from that? Might take us a while. Dave: Yeah. Exactly. Jeff: Might be a lengthy debrief on that one. Dave: I guess for me, as someone who's helping to build [00:57:30] this movement, like I was ending with there, just to remember the roots of where No Barriers began which is individuals coming together in small communities around creative ideas to do stuff that people didn't think was possible. And as we start to move to tens of thousands, maybe millions over the next ten years of people that we impact, that there's something in that special sauce that's still about the [00:58:00] individuals getting together having a fun, creative idea and going out and pushing their comfort zone. Erik: Yeah. I think that, No Barriers recipe is sort of hidden right in the story of El Capitan, which is... Mark's a smart guy, but he's not a scientist or anything, he's not Hugh Herr, who's inventing stuff where you go, "I could never do that." What he said is a pull up bar and a jumar. These are commercially available things. I think he had to adapt a few things, but [00:58:30] not all that crazy technology. Pretty simple. You combine that series, that innovation with the human spirit and a great friend or great support system, a great rope team, you do this amazing thing that opens up the door for a lot of people. It's a pretty simple recipe. Dave: It is. Jeff: All the big things that have happened with regards to our species all started with this small [00:59:00] germination of somebody sitting in their theoretical garage just being like, "How do I do this? Hmm?" And head scratch, and start piecing these things together, and then, boom, the movement begins. I think Mark embodies that, and what a great cornerstone for this organization. Dave: Well, and the movement continues. So if you're sitting there listening saying, "I wanna be a part of this organization, I wanna be a [00:59:30] part of No Barriers," please go to our website, No Barriers USA dot org. You can join us at the summit that Mark mentioned that's coming up in October in New York. There are many more ways you can join us but please, No Barriers USA dot org is our website. You can also share our podcast with your friends and colleagues and families, and follow us on our Facebook page. Thank you so much for listening. Erik: Live No Barriers. Dave: Thanks.

Today, another serial entrepreneur, Rob Walling, joins us to discuss founding and generally running a bootstrap startup. We sat down and talked to Rob about his journey of getting his software startup off the ground, developed, and eventually sold with no outside funding. Rob Walling is not only the co-founder of Drip, which recently sold for eight figures, he also writes a blog and hosts two podcasts for startups. He is most known for starting, running and selling Drip but he has also bought and sold several smaller SaaS applications, including HitTail. Finally, Rob is co-founder of Microconf, a bi-annual conference for software startups. Rob's goal is to continue to acquire new businesses while maintaining the time-clock free lifestyle his years of software startup and acquisition experience have afforded him. Episode Highlights: The story behind Drip and what led Rob into marketing automation. Building and growing a SaaS company. Launching a new software business without a lot of staff or cash. Building the automation that ended up being the key factor that got Drip on the consumer radar. How the company managed to compete against the larger players. The luxury of being a small team and working primarily in person. Why Rob would now choose remote over local. Tips for hiring high quality candidates that fit in with your company's principles. When you know it is time to scale up your startup. Knowing when you have something that people really want. How to recognize when the option to sell comes on the radar. Knowing when you've found the right buyer. The importance of putting all the deal-breakers on the table and sticking to your guns. What small startups learn in the acquisition and transition process and how that changes their teams. The story behind Microconf, Rob's bi-annual global software conference unlike any other. Transcription: Joe: So this morning we were deep into a program called GetDrip and it's what we use for our automated email sequences. And I understand you had the founder of that gentleman … with that software as a service program on the podcast that's all right? Mark: That's right and I think a lot of our listeners are probably familiar with Rob Walling. He writes over at Software by Rob. He is the host over at Start Ups for the Rest of Us Podcast. He's the founder or co-founder I should say of MicroConf the SaaS conference. He is also the founder of HitTail an SEO software and of course Drip – Email Marketing Automation; one of the leading email marketing automation softwares out there which was acquired by Leadpages a few years ago in an eight figure acquisition. So really cool guy, tons of experience in a lot of different areas especially in that start up environment. And Joe you and I like to have these calls with people … these conversations with people where we try and like pull out a certain lesson or something else. Remember the episode with Mike Jackness and the crazy high open rates and returns that he gets on his Facebook marketing. I went into this without any specific agenda. I just want to talk to Rob about his story and kind of the adventure he's been on since he started up Drip and some of the other things as well. But we didn't get into much else because we just kind of talked about his journey with Drip which was fascinating. And one of the things to think about with Drip, they started off in a world where there was really big competitors. You had Infusionsoft, you had Klaviyo that was still big at the time, you had MailChimp which was absolutely a monster, AWeber which had been around forever. And here you have this little start up with no funding just a handful of coders working out of basically a closet as it were. And they ended up blowing up into one of the biggest email marketing automation softwares out there and being acquired for eight figures by Leadpages a few years later. And so we talked a lot about how they do it … how do they go through that, how does he hire people? We covered a lot of territory but it was fascinating. Joe: Well I think you said founder maybe five or six times there so I would think you would have to be fascinating when you're founding that many companies and that successful. So I don't think anybody wants to hear you and I talk about this anymore. Let's just go right to Rob. Mark: Yeah let's get to him. Mark: Rob thanks for coming on. Rob: It's my pleasure thanks for having me. Mark: All right so you've listened at a couple of the episodes of the Quiet Light Podcast you know how we work. Why don't you give people a quick introduction as to who you are? Rob: Yeah so my name is Rob Walling and I'm a serial software entrepreneur probably most known for running … founding and selling Drip which is email marketing or marketing automation software. I've also or run a number of other SaaS apps including HitTail which is an SEO tool. I co-founded MicroConf which is a conference for self-funded startups. And I have a couple of podcasts. One's called Start Ups for the Rest of Us and the idea there is to help people … give people an option in starting software and SaaS companies that's like you don't need to raise funding to do it. And that podcast has been running since 2010 so we have like 400 something episodes. Another one is called ZenFounder it's with my wife who's a psychologist and we talk a lot about just trying to stay sane while running a business. Mark: Well trying to stay sane while running a business that's a pretty hard thing to be able to do. Rob: It is, yeah. Mark: Yeah. That's pretty cool so we have a lot that we could talk about here. I want to talk a little bit about just building and growing a SaaS business. But one thing I want to start off with here is you're kind of like a member of the very old guard when it comes to Internet entrepreneurs. When I started in the online world it was kind of expected that you do everything right? You code, you market, you design, and you do everything top to bottom and it's a lot harder to do that today but you've been [inaudible 00:04:35.0] keeping up with that. So are you still actively doing a lot of the coding? Rob: I am not. I backed away from it. I … you know we'll software professionally for a paycheck from about 2008 and I really enjoyed that time and it basically gave me a leverage and a little bit of savings to be able to start acquiring businesses. I mean that's what a lot of people don't know is I really only started a couple of software companies. I've bought way more than I … products and websites and software SaaS apps than I started so … but around let's say 2011, 2012 it just became … it just was no longer worth it for me to code. My time is more valuable doing all the other stuff … that pulling the big levers to move the business rather than sitting behind a [inaudible 00:15:19.12] even though I love it. I still write code on the weekends though. I hack with PHP scripts; I was scraping Twitter feeds and trying to do sentiment analysis. I was … it's just myself having fun. It's just fun to build things but I don't … I have a push production code in probably five years. Mark: Yeah, I used to code … I started to code out of necessity when I first was an entrepreneur and at first, I had no money so I was like I need to build this … I think I built a very basic pay per click search engine and kind of advertising platform. I did that and pearled all things and then yeah again self-taught myself and since then I've missed doing it but I just don't have the time to jump back in. So the fact that you're doing it on the weekends [inaudible 00:05:58.8] for sure. So let's talk a little bit about building and growing a SaaS company because you've done it a couple times, you've done it successfully, and maybe also I didn't know that you were active in the buying world so let's talk a little bit about that. Let's talk about what you look for when you are buying this SaaS Company and how do you go about some of those code challenges. So let's start with a basic question; ball park number how many businesses do you … would you say that you bought over the last five or six years? Rob: Let's go back a little further because see … once I started Drip which was 2012 so I bought zero in the last six years. But before then from let's say 2005 was my first acquisition and 2011 was my last so over that six year period I probably purchased I would say 25 or 30 different. They're either software products, SaaS, or even … I mean I bought like half a dozen Ad Sense websites back in the day. So I really enjoyed it. I mean the idea of being able to skip product market fit and not have to do all the hard work up front and have a great history has always been attractive to me. Especially if someone … I mean when I was writing softwares I was doing, I was contracted, I was doing 125 an hour or 150 an hour sometimes and I mean my time was super valuable. I was booked 40, 50 hours a week and so I was like wait let me get this straight I couldn't … back then it was Flippa, right? I mean it was before you guys, before FE and other folks, and I would go on Flippa and pay 18 months of net profit and sometimes I got totally hosed on it because Flippa can be a little bit dangerous but the ones that worked were life changing for me. By 2009 I was full time just on products. Sorry, that was a long answer but that's the value I see in acquiring over. I've told my wife like if I do this again … because I don't know if I'm going to do it [inaudible 00:07:44.5] have to but it's just a lot of work, there's no chance I'm doing it from scratch. Zero chance that I will do something from scratch for the rest of my life. I will always acquire from this point on. Mark: And obviously, we are big believers in that. I mean that from product fit and like you said and doing our work is difficult. When you started Drip … when did you start Drip? Rob: We worked on the code in December of 2012 and then we launched in 2013. Mark: Okay, and you were originally just sort of an add-on or a layer on top of existing software programs right? Rob: That's right. Mark: So like AWeber and I think mail Chimp was one of the main vehicles. Rob: Yeah, we were just like a pop up and auto responders but we also fed into mails because we didn't … we couldn't even send broadcast emails at the time. Mark: Wow, all right so then you layered on top of that and did you always have in mind with Drip that it was going to be an automation; the sort of kind of logic sequence. Rob: No, we didn't. And in fact, we resisted it pretty heavily because I didn't want to get into the marketing automation. It's just a big … at least in my eyes at the time it seemed like this big, enterprisey, clunky, old, really hyper competitive space with a bunch of funny competitors; just not a market I want to get into. I tend to like really tight niche markets where you can just own that thing and you don't have to … you're not fighting red water every day with someone else. It's not a feature race all the time. But it became clear about a year into running Drip … a year, year and a half that that was where the whole space was going. And not building that would have just relegated us to being undifferentiated; everybody just had another major product and by building an automation and building it in a way that was more elegant and … or you know at least I think so, more elegant, easier to use than Infusionsoft and Active Campaigns and some of the other competitors it … we became, that's how we got on the radar. I mean we were an unfunded marketing automation platform in essence. We didn't raise any money and we were five people basically in a closet in Fresno, California and we were number 12 on Data Analysis Marketing Automation List. And all the 11 ahead of us had raised … decked a million, some had raised nine figures, I mean it was crazy. Mark: Well, that's one of the things I find fascinating about your story. When I first saw Drip kind of pop up you had these really large players out there that you knew had significant revenues coming in, significant funding, very large programming teams of developers, how did you guys manage to stay agile like that at such a small footprint of a company but still put out incredible code? What were some of the things … I'm asking you to go back here and kind of think back but [inaudible 00:10:28.3] so what was all those things that you did to be able to compete against these larger players? Rob: Yeah, that's a really good question because Derek and I … so Derek is my co-founder with Drip and we are both software people. I've written code since I was a kid and so had he. And so we built the company. It was very much a product focused company you know a lot of [inaudible 00:10:47.7] tech companies launch and they're very marketing focused and the software is kind of a piece of crap. And then you'll see them get legacy over the years and eventually they can't ship features so they ship very very slowly, one or two releases a year. And for a SaaS app that's just not the way you need to do it. So Derek and I from day one built a very strong foundation. It took six months to get Drip into people's hands and it really … we could have done it in three months but it would have been shitty code. And so we focused early on of not having a legacy, we took our time to build a really solid foundation architecturally, and then the first three hires that I made were Derek who was a contractor at the time and then became W2 and then eventually got chairs and was retroactively made him a co-founder and then two other developers. So when we were a team of four which was three developers and me and I did everything else. And that allowed us without the legacy; it allowed us to ship really fast. We were super agile. We used to get hub issues and we just … we were, I mean we would hammer out features. We would hammer out an entire integration in less than a day. Because there was one dude who had built … he built 35 integrations for us. And it was just this relentless focus, there were no meetings, there were no … if there was a question we stood up at a white board. It's a luxury of A. being a small team and B. being in person. And I know if I build a team again it's going to be really remote but we move way faster because we were in person two to three days a week and then we're all at our houses the other two or three. And it was just perfect blend of like speed. I mean our velocity it's funny you call that out because so many people call that out and even [inaudible 00:12:22.5] Leadpages called that out early on and said how are you … you're like five people, how are you shipping this many features? And we were shipping multiple features a week and it was just getting in there. Our architecture was stable and the developers … also we hired really good developers we focused very much on that; Derek and I being two developers. We were super rigorous and super picky about who we hired and so there's a lot goes into it and then you know I'm kind of been rambling but it was really this relentless focus on the product comes first and the product is what is we're going to be really good at. And at the same time and I have some regrets you know of like I think I should have marketed it harder early on. I think I should have hired a marketer that was better than me. I think that you know there were certain things now that I look back that it's like didn't we focus on the product a little too much? But I don't know in the end I think it worked out. Mark: Obviously it worked out. And this is kind of an interesting thing I've seen with software companies. I've read a book by the founder of Zoosk [inaudible 00:13:16.3] and they talked about their ability to push out code and features rapidly. It would be we've come up with that idea in the morning and pushed it out by midafternoon because they were able to do that. What sort of approval process did you guys have in place to be able to ensure that you weren't just getting all sorts of really conflicting features? Rob: We had … well A. both Derek and I knew every feature that was shipping. And we knew that until we hit … I mean even … so I left Drip about three months ago it was acquired by the Leadpages you know I think it's kind of the punch line that some people know about that, and even when we were 10 or 12 engineers Derek and I still knew everything we were shipping and so it's just a product management. To be honest when there's only three or four developers you can keep it all on your head or on a whiteboard you don't even need that much process. Now soon as you tip to four or five then you need some type of can ban you know or something and then when you hit … when we hit seven or eight it was like all right we do need a weekly meeting now; 30 minute weekly meeting. But we had no standing meetings, none of that. I mean it was like you're writing code 100% of the time or you're talking about writing code. So we also had extensive unit test coverage. We had I think three lines of unit testing code of unit test for every line of production code so it allowed … that allowed us the safety of like pretty sure this is going to break anything because one of these tests would have caught it and then we do a sanity check on the server and push it. We … you know knock on wood we have very few over the five-ish, five and a half year run like production bugs that really did some damage. And we get a little things here and there but we only had maybe two that I can remember. It was like a scheduling issue, it's like oh crap we forgot to send emails for an hour like that's a big deal you know and that happened maybe once and there is [inaudible 00:14:58.5] so code quality was high and we focused on that. Mark: So you mostly run your team local to some extent but at some point when you started to grow and before the acquisition with lead pages did you have a remote team? Rob: We did yeah. Yes so there were 10 of us total by the acquisition and there were five of us in Fresno in office. And like I said we came in about two to two and a half days a week to that office and worked from home the other days and that was a great balance of there was enough time to whiteboard, there were enough days, every other day you're going to see some people and ask questions but then you could go home and get a ton of work done right. And then we have five people who are all over the place really [inaudible 00:15:38.5] guy in Mexico and we had a developer in another part of California and somebody in New York and stuff so it was … it worked out. Mark: So given … you said if you start something again here in the future it will probably be remote even though you're not really convinced that's necessarily the better way to go about it; why is that? Why would you choose a remote in the light of the fact that you might think it's not the best way to go? Rob: Yeah, I think the ideal way is that everybody can meet in a room a day or two a week. As I've said that was the best working environment I've ever had. I would go remote because it's just so hard to find the right talent at the right price in any given metro area. It's like you can go to Silicon Valley and yes there's a lot of engineers but damn are they expensive. Or you can come to Minneapolis and they're going to be less expensive but how many ruby developers are actually here and how many are going to leave Target or Best Buy to come work for me? It's going to be tough. If I'm making a nationwide search or even as I tip tend to go three time zones in either direction, three hours in either direction from where I am; so I'll go north to south. [inaudible 00:16:40.6] hire in Canada or Mexico Central South America you're going to just find really people who sometimes live out in the middle of nowhere and if you're able to work with them remotely then they can ship some really good stuff for you. Mark: Yeah hiring people is always a challenge. I don't think I've ever talked to an entrepreneur and business owner and I'll throw myself in that ring as well, hiring people has an absolute pain. Do you have any insights that you want to give us right now? Rob: Oh my gosh. We could do all episode on this. Mark: You really could do all episode on this and so we'll keep it a little bit short because I want to talk a little bit about MicroConf and also more a bit of the history of Drip but this is more for me [inaudible 00:17:19.9]. Rob: Totally, yeah I know some quick tips. One thing that Derek and I did was we hired a lot around personality. We really want … especially when we were small it was like I want to be able to hang around in a room with [inaudible 00:17:36.9] hours a day [inaudible 00:17:38.6] I don't do that or I've worked at don't do that they really do hire based on skills and talent and as a result we passed over some pretty good developers. But we could just tell they were edgy or they were a little to opinionated or let you know they were just things it was like we were super super careful. So we did hire slow and then our hiring process took a long time. We also presented it for what it was. The job postings were written very … almost like a blog post or like it was very conversational, oh it was more like a sales letter it would start my job descriptions and say it was all you language, it was like you're an excellent developer the world is your oyster, you can go work at any company you want but here's why you don't want to work at an agency because that da da da da da, you know you could go here but come work for us, you can be fully remote you can be … and then I present the benefits. It was very much like either magic or writing a sales letter where you present the you language and then you're going to present the problem and then what are the solution like come work for us. So as a result we got really high quality candidates and it was a very … I bet I would say look we do not pay, don't come here if you want to make what you are going to make at a Fortune 500 company. We do not pay these exorbitant developer wages but here's what you get in exchange, you get the freedom to do this, there are no set working hours, you're fully remote we're going to send you a MacBook Pro, we're going to buy you two Dell monitors, we're going to … you know just all the stuff that; some developers don't want that. They just want the maximum paycheck and other developers loved it, there were people who came and said I can't get this kind of flexibility in work. So having … like what is your differentiator? That's what we figured out early on and we put it right from the start in the job description of like you … this is either awesome for you or this sounds terrible. And then the last thing on and I'll stop is one thing that I learned once we went into Leadpages, because our hiring process took a long time. It was 20, 30 hours a week for me at times and once we got to Leadpages there were two in-house recruiters, just full time recruiters who were freaking phenomenal. And I … one thing that I would do if I were to do again is try to find someone like that on an hourly basis and not a contingency recruiter where they charge at 15% of the salary but just find somebody on Upwork or whatever who's 50 bucks, 75 bucks an hour who I can have … I can train to do all these stuff, or they can train me frankly. Because once we get to Leadpages like they had bat it down. I mean they grew 50 people a year for a few years. So they had that process down and they taught me a ton of things that I wished I had outsourced more of that in essence is what I'm saying. I felt like as a founder I had to do all the hiring. But it turns out as long as I did the last mile and I would thumbs up or thumbs down someone it was plenty good and sort of the funnel was filtered so much for me. You know by the time we worked and we paid and so I was like I shouldn't have been doing that type of funnel stuff and hiring process. Mark: Yeah, I can tell you, I just went through the process of hiring somebody on for Quiet Light Brokerage and typically with Quiet Light the people that come on and work with us they approach me about coming on as a broker. But we needed some work on the marketing side and so I put out a job application. It's a full time job and going through and trying to vet these people and you know you want to hire slowly but you've got a bunch of other stuff on your to do list. Outsourcing that and if you're able to do so makes sense. So the tip that you gave as far as writing the job post in terms of you … you're the second business owner that I've talked to recently that has given that tip. I think it's a phenomenal way to go about it instead of just saying we need this, we need that, we … or you know this is what we need given the benefits that you attract that top talent is a good suggestion. Okay, let's talk and go back again to Drip here, when did you realize that this was not just like a little project that you were going to have as like a super niche product and really something that could play with some of the big boys? I mean now you guys would be direct competitors with a Mail Chimp and with an AWeber and those guys have had to play catch up to you frankly in some ways or to what you built. So when was that realization? What made you turn and say okay I'm going to go all in on this for a while? Rob: Yeah, it was a very difficult decision and it was a hard one to make as I said because I've had a lot of lifestyle businesses and I value my lifestyle very highly. And it was a decision of boy am I going to continue to have a lifestyle business or am I going to scale up like a startup? Do I want to go all in on this? And I was talking with Derek about it too but it was really a turning point for me. So we started doing our early access in mid-2013 and we launched to our launch list in November of 2013, and it took us until August of 2014 to hit product market fit. We were just struggling you know just adding and it was when we added automations, the initial automation there wasn't even the work for us that are all visual it was just kind of almost like if this [inaudible 00:22:22.1] stuff. That was game changing because we started growing I don't know 20% month over month. We're already flailing around a bit until June as we start rolling out missions then it was like all right now we're going 10%, now we're going 15%, now we're going 20% and it was like boy this is becoming a fact. You know this is we have built something that people really want and we at that point we weren't ahead of … you know Infusionsoft had a visual builder and Active Campaign did too and I don't know it was Klaviyo I mean there were competitors around. We weren't ahead of them but we had just done a very elegant job. You know it's kind of like we had built a really easy to use platform like on Mail Chimp and we added automation to it in a way that really didn't exist quite in the same way. So that was when it was really towards the latter half year of 2014 it was like man this thing is growing fast and we have to hire lift the staff up like that was the realization. Mark: Was that the point in time when you decided that possibly selling was on your radar? Rob: No selling came on the radar in 2015. And it was we were staffing up and I realized [inaudible 00:23:29.7] Derek and I have a lot of conversations that's like we can't hire fast enough. Like we don't have the money you know. Running Drip was … especially with the staffing and trying to keep up with everyone else it was just an expensive thing. I mean SaaS apps obviously have great margins and we had a great gross margin but our net margin was not very good because I kept hiring. You know it 10 grand of MRR and now I go out and hire another developer every time because I know we have to keep up with all these competitors. So that was when I realized you know we had a need to raise an angel round, like a seat round probably half a million or we may want to think about answering one of these e-mails we're getting to acquire us. So we got maybe five pretty serious inquiries, we got more than that they were just you know whatever. You get weekly funding offers from a junior rep at a VC firm and every couple of months we get an email of like we'd like to acquire you and about five of them were people who companies or funds who actually had the money to do it. And that was when it was coming all right so what we do, do we take chips off the table you know cash out in essence, have a good outcome for us and the employees or do we push more tips and basically raise funding you know to at a valuation? Because we probably would have raised funding similar to the valuation we're going to be acquired at and that puts you in for two three four five more years of doing it. So that was a big decision process for us and frankly, I was burning out a bit. I mean I was struggling to run the company. I didn't delegate or outsource as much as I should have. Next time around I would it a little differently for sure. Mark: So how did you decide Leadpages was going to be the partner that you're going to work with? You had five serious potential acquirers. Rob: Yeah, Leadpages was just the best strategic fit and I knew the CEO Clay Collins. We kind of ran in overlapping circles. He was in like the Internet marketing space and I was in more of the startup space but we overlapped a bit. He had been on my podcast and stuff so it wasn't just like oh we have these five suitors and we're going to pick Leadpages. It was kind of like well let's kind of follow each of these tracks you know and then we had … and it didn't all happen at once right it was over the course of maybe 18 months that like these five conversations happened. And so we just kind of followed each of them to the logical extent and the one that made the most sense and just kept coming back up again and again because deals fall apart like this right? Because someone puts a number on a piece of paper and you're just like yeah that's nowhere close and then it's like all right well then we're out you know. And then two months later you get an email and it's like hey so we want to rekindle the … and that's how these things go right. So it took 13 months from the first email when Clay reached out to when the deal closed. And it was really about six, seven months of hard negotiation during that. Mark: Sure yeah and that walking away right? That's so typical on a lot of these deals especially in a strategic deal, being able to walk away and you know people just set goals and objectives change over that time as well so they can re-evaluate things. What was some of the things that you learned going from a complete startup environment where you're a super agile small team that you're building and that kind of hanging on to this year past sort of growth and then being absorbed by a company that had raised tens of millions of dollars and much different sort of environment; what sort of transition was that? Rob: The transition, it was probably one of the best that I've heard about. They did a really good job of kind of leaving us alone for three to four months because we just … we were all shell shocked. I was … it was so crazy I mean we [inaudible 00:27:00.2] moved here and then go on [inaudible 00:27:02.5] pick off [inaudible 00:27:03.0] people we were and it was just this culture shock for us. So they made it as good as it could have been I think. They didn't screw with the product nobody said [inaudible 00:27:11.5] all our people came on board and joined the team. So I feel like the transition went as good as it could have but it was still hard on me and hard on some of the team members because it … we have been just this tiny little team and then you get kind of absorbed into 170 person company. But I mean to Clay's credit he set it up really well. So I learned a bunch of stuff … the interesting transition, there was a mental transition at a certain point is we've gone from basically being kind of cash strapped to having tens of millions of dollars in the bank as you said from the funding they raised. And I just realized we had to think about things totally differently. Like I needed to stop every week checking our AWS bill and trying to turn servers off and adjust things on the weekends. It's like that was no longer … it was not worth saving $500 a month for all that time. And you have to be cognizant of the money but it's like 500 bucks a month is just a rounding error. They probably spend that on toilet paper in a month and it's like focus on some … if I'm going to spend that mental damage do it on something that grows the bottom line or that improves the product. It was things like that and we … when we can finally pay everybody market rate salaries it was so so cool. We had to hire a lot of junior people and train them up [inaudible 00:28:22.5] up so we … it took us a while for people to really hit the ground running. And once we got here and it's like oh man we can pay market rate. We're able to hire senior engineers for the first time ever and that was another game changer of like the luxury of having someone come in and like come with code three days into their job because the code base is solid and they are super advanced. They've been doing it for seven years instead of six months like some of the folks that … who are great developers now but they were just very junior when we hired them. Mark: You have a lot of other projects besides Drip obviously over the years. You've had Start Ups for the Rest of Us, you've had MicroConf; they were totally cool with you just continuing on with those projects? Rob: Yeah that was the nice part is you know as Clay and I talked through the whole acquisition it was like … I was like Clay here are my deal breakers number one we can't … I'm not going to fire anybody like I do not want to lay people off and we didn't. Number two I do not want to screw our customers like please don't pivot us into some crazy niche or leave the customers behind that we already have, shut the product down you know let's not do damage to that. And [inaudible 00:29:23.3] deal breakers although I have like a price, oh I want it … I said it kind of needs to be for enough money that I never have to work again. Like that was one of my things and so we figured all that out. Oh and that was … the third one I was like look I do MicroConf and he knew that and I do the podcast and I don't spend that much time on them. In all honesty like the podcast is about 30, 40 minutes a week and MicroConf typically was off hours and it might be 20 hours aside from when I would go there [inaudible 00:29:54.0] offer and he said yeah that's good. And I said I do a lot of public speaking too and I said you know I'll be representing Drip and Leadpages at that point so it's actually a … perhaps of benefit to the company so it was good. That would've been a really … I was going say be tough but I just that would've been a deal breaker. I don't think I would have not stunned the podcast or the conferences it's just something I've done forever you know. Mark: Yeah, let's talk about MicroConf for a quick … for people that don't know what is MicroConf? Rob: Yeah MicroConf is a conference that's run twice a year in Las Vegas and then in Europe and it is a conference for self-funded startups, so bootstrap startups. And we're not anti-funding. It doesn't mean that companies that raise funding can't come because certainly a lot of … 80% of what funded and unfunded companies worry about is the same thing. It's hiring and it's marketing and it's building a good product and then there's just 20% percent that we just don't talk much about at MicroConf. And so we get about … we have a Growth Edition which is for businesses that are providing a full time income or more. So it's a lot of six seven and some eight figure businesses but it's definitely smaller. Its SaaS focused but we do get e-commerce people we do get Word Press plugins and info marketers and stuff. And that conference the growth one is about 250 people and it sells out every year. And then we have the Starter Edition which is from idea to full time income and that's at the same time right around the same time in Vegas and then we have of course the Europe edition which is here in a few months in Croatia; it's in October. And I'm excited to go to Croatia and now we started selling tickets for that a couple weeks ago. So we try to get … we wanted to build a conference that we wanted to attend. Like Mike and I who was my co-host with the conference, it was like I go to these conferences and there's multi-tracks and there's the vendor halls and there's all this bullshit. I really just want to come, I want to meet entrepreneurs. I want the attendees to be top notch. I don't want it to be the marketing guy, the C level guy from this oracle or it's like that no that doesn't help me you know. I want the attendees to almost all be entrepreneurs in a similar space. And then we want to keep it small. They tend to be about 120 to 250 attendees. And then we want to get really good speakers that may not … these are not like the big name speaker who comes up and pumps you up and you know there's time and place for that but it's super super tactical and so that's what we've … it's kind of like if you want tactics and some inspiration come to our conference. If you want just pure inspiration and you just want to get pumped up then go see Tony Robbins or go to the World Domination Summit. It's just a very very different thing. So that's my spiel on it. That's MicroConf.com if folks are interested. Mark: Yeah absolutely and I absolutely love those smaller conferences the 100 to 150 attendees, you know 200 attendees but where it's really focused again on the people that you get to know from those conferences. I just find that you do get to know people so much better and the partnerships and relationships that come out of that more than pay for any sort of price that you're going to have to pay. Your location is Croatia, are you kidding? That's incredible. Rob: Ain't that awesome? Yeah, I'm stoked. We did it in Barcelona … we did in Prague for two years, Barcelona for two years, and then we did it in Lisbon, Portugal last year, and this year we're upping the game. It's going to be a little harder to get to but man we're stoked because I've never been to Croatia. We do try to like put it in places that A. people would want to go to but that we want to go to as well. You know it's an excuse to visit a cool country. Mark: Yeah absolutely, all right we're up against a clock here but what does the future hold for you? You left there a few months ago. Rob: Yup. Mark: What are you looking at the doing here in the future? Rob: I don't know yet. I started writing a book about my experience. I've written a couple books about software startups and that kind of stuff. And I started writing another one and then I kind of … I got about 12,000 words in and I was like you know I don't know that I want to do this right now. It was all about my experience with Drip and everything and it was funny I just kind of petered out. So I don't know if I'll come back to that. I don't have a deep desire to do anything bigger than Drip. I think I'm going to take another few months off and I know something will come up and I'm probably going to acquire something is what's going to happen. And but I wanted to do something that like it needs to make money for my personality you know like I just I have to that's how we keep score right? But I kind of want to do something in like … even in the hobby space that I really enjoy. I can't imagine going back and then doing another SaaS app. It's just I've been there I've done that what's new? Like could it be a just a completely different thing that I really enjoy that it also makes some money but maybe it's not some big fancy startup that's acquired. Mark: Well awesome. Well, good luck with all of that and let's make sure that we stay in touch especially being local to each other here. But let's make sure that we stay in touch. Thanks so much for joining me. Rob: Absolutely Thanks for having me on Links and Resources: Rob's Website Startups for the Rest of Us Podcast Zen Founder Podcast Microconf Rob's blog

For decades, Harvard's MBA program has been primarily focused on the traditional model of entrepreneurship. In the past 6 years an elective course on the acquisition of established businesses has been attracting as many as 30% of the program's candidates. We had the pleasure of sitting down with Royce Yudkoff, who teaches the course “Entrepreneurship For Acquisition” at Harvard Business School's MBA program. Here at Quiet Light we've also had the honor of collaborating on the course for the past 5 years. Today, we delve into the details of how Harvard is sending experienced professionals out into the business acquisition marketplace with hands-on experience that is invaluable to their success. The trend toward real-life marketplace experience as a replacement for textbooks has taken hold in Harvard's MBA program. These case-study and field guide learning modules are teaching candidates the key ways to enter and be successful in the acquisition arena. The course Royce teaches alongside Professor Richard Ruback is focused on how to screen potential acquisition targets, do the financing, negotiate the typical deal terms, and do due diligence when buying a small business. Episode Highlights: Harvard MBAs are on average 28-35 years old so all they come into the program with professional experience. The course works with real life companies and case studies so students learn about how companies succeed in buying existing businesses. The course follows the entire arc of buying a small business from the search, to the financing, through due diligence, and up to the transition of ownership. The participants are learning how weaving good business practices from the very start of the process leads to better chances of ROI and growth. Royce explains how the candidates are taught the best financial practices for buying for a business, whether through traditional bank or private equity investment. The course follows students through the program and beyond by performing surveys and gathering statistics on success rates for those who go on to acquire companies. Royce shares the single most common contributor to the success and non-success in the search and acquisition process and what he advises all buyers to look for in a potentially successful business. Transcription: Mark: Joe did you know that a dream of mine that has gone unfulfilled in my life was to attend the Harvard Business School? Joe: I didn't know that knowing that your nickname was slacker in college I would think that'd be the last dream you could ever have. Mark: Well, we technically changed my name my last year mainly because I had a t-shirt that said slacker on it. And it made a terrible first impression when you walked in the class the first day the professor sees that. You get targeted pretty quickly. Joe: You know we did a tour of Stanford last summer because I have teenage boys. We happen to be there, my kids probably won't get in; I understand 3% do. And when I graduated from college, I went to Northeastern University in Boston, when I was done I was done. I never wanted to go back to college. Touring a campus like Stanford or I imagine Harvard just at any age would make you want to go back. Mark: Yeah it's a fantastic school. I love their MBA Program there because they do things a little bit different. It's not textbook based, it's case study based. So a Harvard MBA student, when they attend that school first of all the school pretty much requires that you have real world experience. Not 100% but it's really hard to get in if you don't have any real world experience. They want people who have been out there in the field doing stuff. And the entire class structure itself is also based around case studies. So you end up with a group of people that you do these case studies with and you study real life, real business scenarios and go about how … figure out how to address those real world scenarios. It's a way of trying to replicate some of the things that they're going to actually experience when they leave Harvard Business School. So yeah a few years after I graduated college and had a job and I thought well it would be a lot of fun to attend that. I really liked the idea of it but life got in the way. Bad grades got in the way and it never was something that I actually was able to pursue. I went so far as taking a GMAT but I never actually applied. But I bring this up because for as you know for the past five years we've been working with Harvard at Quiet Light Brokerage. They have done what a lot of people that listen to this podcast know, they have really started to turn their focus towards entrepreneurship acquisition or acquisitions and entrepreneurship and the combination. And they have a whole course that they teach on it; how to build … sorry how to buy a small business and lead an entrepreneurial life through acquisitions. And for those five years, we've actually been working with them, they approached us to see if we could support their class with some supportive materials and me being the closet Harvard fan boy that I am was like absolutely that sounds really cool. Joe: Excellent, excellent. Well, I'm excited to listen to this podcast. I know that they did some studies that show the people that go through this course and the success rate that they have. And it's really more about buying versus building which is a little follow up from almost with the podcast with Walker that you had so I'm excited hear it. Mark: Yeah absolutely so there are some statistics in here, people ask us this all the time you know what percentage of buyers are successful. Well, Harvard is actually tracking that. They're taking a look at the kids who go through the courses … and I shouldn't say kids these guys are 30 years old with tons of experience. But they're looking at people who go through the courses doing acquisition and they're tracking to see how they're successful. Also in this episode, we talk about what they're teaching on the course, what they're guiding their students as far as how large of acquisitions they should be making, how to do the financing on these large acquisitions. So it's really a chock full of a lot of information that's been taught at the highest levels at one of the leading institutions in the world. Joe: And all of it hopefully and an awful lot of it can be applied to the businesses that we're listing. Because I'm going to just throw some numbers out there for those that haven't been to the website recently, we've got listings of really all shapes and sizes. But we've got a couple up there in that I think minus under LOI just under nine million dollars. Brian's got one at twice that amount. And then, of course, anything from a couple hundred thousand dollars up to that 80 million dollar range. So these larger listings that take more funding from Venture Cap money or from a larger SBA loan are really becoming more prevalent. So I think everything that these guys talk about and the book that they published as well can be very helpful to the audience here today. Mark: Absolutely let's get on to it. Mark: All right Royce, how are you? Royce: I'm great it's a pleasure to be with you today Mark. Thank you for organizing this. Mark: Oh my pleasure. I'm so glad to be able to actually finally talk to you and see you in person as well. We've been working together I guess sort of indirectly now for what four or five years? Royce: Exactly and you've been a big help to our course in Harvard Business School so we're very appreciative. I should start with a big thank you. Mark: Well it was always my dream when I was in college and then shortly after college to get my MBA at Harvard. I started looking at the GMAT and I took PEP courses for that and then life happened. And I never got around to actually doing it. I actually talked to a Harvard recruiter at one point, sat down with them and was going through that but then it never did happen. So the fact that I actually get to participate in you guys program is kind of like a dream of mine come true that I get to actually work with you guys at least indirectly if not directly as well now. All right so the Harvard Program, how long have you guys had this Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition Program? Royce: That program is now in its 6th year Mark, and for decades Harvard has had a large program teaching people about traditional entrepreneurship; what I refer to as rubbing two sticks together and make fire, meeting … going into startups. But about half a dozen years ago we started teaching about the idea of buying an established profitable company usually from a retiring founder and the idea has really created a lot of excitement at Harvard. About 30% of all of our MBA students take these courses to try if this is a potential career and learn about it; which makes us probably the largest elective course on campus. Mark: Wow, that's fantastic. Now you do this and one other professor Richard … is it Ruback? Royce: Yes Richard Ruback. So Rick and I created a course and we co-teach it and it's really become our … the center of our professional activity. Including following our students closely who go down this path. We stay very connected to them after they graduate from the program. Mark: Yeah I know that's great. So I want to make just one point about Harvard's MBA Program and again I know this because I looked at potentially participating in this program but you guys are a little bit different than other MBA programs in the way that you set up your courses right? That it's a lot of this case study sort of approach to everything is that right? Royce: I think the two differences in our programs from what most people think of as MBA is this first exactly what you said which is we do not lecture, we do not have textbooks. The whole two year program is set up around cases which are sort of short nonfiction business stories. And the discussion the faculty elicits about the decisions they require to be made. And the second difference is our students typically come to us at about age 28 and graduate at age 30. So they have six or seven years of mid-level, junior level, executive experience before coming into the classroom. So they're not kids; they're young professionals by the time they leave. Those are the two distinctions I highlight about HBS. Mark: Yeah and one of the things I love about that … so one of the knocks against university especially among the entrepreneurial community is that a lot of entrepreneurs see university degrees and MBA degrees as being almost wasted money right? Because a lot of them have become successful. But what I love about you guys program is the fact that you do require that experience is not textbook learning, its actual looking case studies. Delving in deep into these actual cases and amplifying a real world experience in the classroom setting. Royce: Yeah you're exactly right. That's the purpose of the case studies. In addition, the faculty is routinely engaged in a commercial world too and thus expecting to bring that into the classroom. And we also utilize experts like yourself Mark, and bring in work done by experts or even experts as guests into the classroom. So we try to stay very engaged with the practical commercial world. Mark: That's great. That's absolutely great. I absolutely love that. Now you guys have also … you and Rick have also put together a book. And for those watching at YouTube at … this is the book here, HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business. And you put this out two years ago is that right? Royce: Yes we'd put it out two years ago and it's been very satisfying. Our goal was to produce a very practical handbook that walks people through each step in buying a smaller firm and to try and reach beyond campus to the thousands of people who are thinking about it or wanting to do it and give them something that's just immensely practical and we've been very gratified. I think almost everyone who goes down this path ends up reading this book and we get lots of comments that it's been helpful. Mark: That's a really good book. I mean I've thumbed through it before and you know I've learned a lot in this industry by doing and that has its learning curve. Frankly, a book like this to start out would have been really really useful in shortening that learning curve. So it was a really good book and I assume that you can get this on the HBR website correct? Royce: The HBR website and even more conveniently on Amazon, so it's just an easy thing to buy and a kind of quick easy read as well. Mark: It is a quick easy read. There's large margins in there as well so that people can take notes alongside it; which is super super helpful. So all of you out there that are readers and soak up as much information add this one to your list; for sure it's definitely one to add. You're getting some good information here. All right so let's do this, let's get into some of the material that you guys actually teach in the Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition Course. What is the format and what is the structure or maybe what is the syllabus that you would look at for a typical is it on a semester basis or is it a full year? Royce: Yes it's a full year course and we start with an overview of the small firms market. Sort of what are some of the management issues in running a small firm, how do you buy small firms. And we let people sort of figure out whether this is of interest to them generally. And then the course gets really really practical. We kind of follow each step in a small firm acquisition beginning with how do you source opportunities, how do you evaluate them, how do you do due diligence, how do you finance them, and how do you negotiate the legal documents and then we move them to sort of a transition because almost always after a firm is sold the seller stays on for a while at least part time teaching the new owner the ropes. And that is somewhere between three months and 12 months part time for the seller but it's a key part of making these purchases successful. So that's how we [inaudible 00:11:59.1] we like to say we're following the arc of the small firm acquisition. Mark: Now the arc is something that our listeners are probably very familiar with. It's something that we have laid out on our site as well. I want to ask a broader question with the popularity of your course. When people think about Harvard Business School I think a lot of them think about graduates going into large financial firms you know working in Boston, working in New York, and really kind of working with a Fortune 500's out there. Do you see a lot of your students now pursuing this more entrepreneurial path? Royce: Yes I do and it's a great comment you made because I do think Harvard is viewed that way. And one of the reasons this program is important is it's highlighting the fact that the business school makes a difference in ways that help ordinary Americans. In other words we send our well trained, smart, energetic graduates into cities all across the country and they create jobs for regular people that make their lives better. I'll give you a quick example, one of our students … and this is very representative is a woman named Jennifer Rouse. She spent about five or six years as an engineer at a couple of leading manufacturing companies in the Midwest. Came to HBS to be trained as a general manager. Fell in love with the idea of running her own company. Instead of getting a job out of HBS she searched and bought a revenue cycle management company in the Pacific Northwest that essentially handles the billing for municipal ambulance services to insurance companies; very specialized complicated set of procedures. And she's grown the business from about 40 employees to 70 employees over the three years she's owned it. So it's been an enormously gratifying experience for her and profitable one. It allowed an entrepreneur who wanted to retire to get his just reward and take cash out of the company. But it's also created a lot of good paying jobs in that mid-sized city. So kind of all the way around it's exactly what our business school ought to be doing, we think. And that's what we're trying to do in this program. Mark: You know one thing I think that people don't understand about our industry and when I talk to them for the first time, they often ask “Who buys an online business?” And one thing I've found is the synergy that exists between the bootstrappers and the startups, these guys that are really really good at the hustle and they can create something amazing out of practically nothing. And then they grow up to a certain size where it now needs management and now needs … it kind of enters into that phase two and a lot of these entrepreneurs don't want to do that because they don't want to be managers. They don't want to do that additional growth step of now managing lots of people. Royce: Yeah and I think that's exactly right. These businesses reach transition point where once they needed someone who is not only energetic and smart but knew service they were providing incredibly well and 15 or 20 years later it's more about a trained manager who's got a certain managerial skills. I'll also add to your comment that there's a life cycle to entrepreneurship. You know the 60 year old entrepreneur who's made a lot of money in their smaller firm quite likely might not want to work as hard as they did when they're 30 years old. And that's a very sensible decision that the business may have a lot more potential in it in the hands of a 30 or 35 year old who's willing to put in those 60 and 70 hour weeks. And that's another transition that makes sense for everybody. Mark: Sure. I remember one client that I worked with. He had … he was selling … well just say durable goods, I won't go into exactly what he was selling, but he was sourcing all the inventory putting it in to a secondary garage and fulfilling all the orders on his own. I mean he was working 45 hours a week and have really maxed out and I asked him I said “Why are you selling them?” because business is growing, it's growing rapidly. Why not hire on some people and kind of expand to an actual warehouse. And his answer was probably the simplest most logical answer I've ever heard it was because I don't want to. Yeah, I don't want to manage people. I like doing this on my own but that's the obvious next step. Royce: Yes. Yeah, exactly and it's a very human thing and the right answer is to put the business in the hands of someone who's going maximize it. I think conversely from the perspective of a young entrepreneur through acquisition, I see this opportunity as so much lower risk than starting a company from scratch. Because you're buying an established proven profitable business with a business model that really works and an owner who will sort of do an orderly transition with you. So it's a way to express entrepreneurial desire without taking the enormous risks of a startup or having to have some idea. Mark: Right you're absolutely … and I think this is something we talked about in a recent podcast and that is the difference between buying versus building a business and how you can get that leg up and get that initial startup so much faster. There's much less friction in working with something that's already established like that. So let's do this, let's follow the arc of the deal that you had talked about a little bit earlier and let's give the listeners here and the few viewers just a little flavor as to what this arc looks like. And maybe some of the things that you guys teach in the course as well. Let's start with this how do you source your deals? This is a problem for so many buyers out there. I've talked to some buyers that are looking for a year and a half, two years for a good business. And the good ones frankly I know from experience when we put something out that's good we're going to get a lot of intent on that within four or five days and so it can be really tough. So what do you guys teach as far as sourcing deals and some of the tips that you would offer there? Royce: You're exactly right. You know sourcing is immensely difficult in a small firm space. First of all, there are two paths people go down. One, which we certainly recommend is dealing with the intermediary professionals in the small firm space. As you know there are hundreds and hundreds of these across North America. And you're required to just do an enormous amount of outreach because unlike say with real estate where there are multiple listing services, confidentiality is extremely important to these owners of smaller firms. And so you only get to see these firms by establishing relationships with reputable intermediaries. So it's a great deal of work to establish that kind of dialogue. And then on top of that, once you have done that, the majority of businesses that are for sale are not high quality businesses. They're average at best and a few of them are really good businesses. So it's an enormous outreach and sourcing process that frankly takes from the time someone starts sourcing to the time they close the average time is about 18 months to find a good quality business negotiate diligence it and close that. So … and that's 18 months of full time work. Probably the question I get asked most often by aspiring entrepreneurs through acquisition is “Is this something I can do part time?” because it would be so great to do it part time right? You could keep a full time job, earn income, and you imagine you might be able to do it next on weekends like rebuilding an old car or refinishing a basement. But the truth is I've never seen anyone do this part time. It is for everyone who goes down this road it is a demanding full time job to source, evaluate, diligence, negotiate and it takes an average of 18 months. So it's hard. Mark: What are some ways in your opinion that people can speed that up if they're really anxious to get going? Like their working a corporate job right now and they want to get out of that corporate job. Do you have any tips on how they can speed that up? Royce: Yes we see that a lot of people that have worked in a corporate job they just find it unsatisfying and they want the professional independence that comes with this kind of entrepreneurship. You know it's hard to make this go faster. I've seen people close quickly because we've seen scores and scores of people do this, I've seen people buy businesses in as little as five or six months. But I have to say my conclusion after years of doing this is that those are just flukes; that in the same way that the person struggles on for two years is a fluke. That you get some outliers but it's just really hard to make the process go faster. And one reason for that is out of those 18 months probably the last four months are spent in that deal you'll close on. You know doing that signing the LOI, diligence, financing, closing. So really you're talking about a little over a year of searching before you finally get to that deal that makes. I wish I could hurry up this process. But it's one of the reasons that I suppose this space hasn't been beat up or overcrowded is that someone has to really want this. Mark: Sure and I think that's really good advice. You're right there's some luck of the draw right? There's just some pure luck on the draw. I talked to one person years ago I was … when we first tried to do the podcast and it didn't really work, but I talked to one buyer who said that he was ready for that sort of 18 month time period and within two months something just spread across his desk and it was perfect. But he didn't have a financing lined up for it and so he had to let it go. But it was that luck of the draw. It came to him perfectly; right away if he was ready he would have been able to move on it. That actually leads well to my next question which is financing. What are you guys advising your students and what are you seeing them actually do in terms of financing some of these deals? Royce: Yeah so the typical acquisition is financed with about two thirds debt and one third equity. And let me deal with each of those. On the debt side in the small firms marketplace, it is almost universal for the sellers to take back some amount of seller paper usually 20 to 25% of the purchase price is taken back in what's on average at four, five year subordinated note. There are few exceptions to this but it's a very large percentage of the transactions. And about 45% on average of the transaction is funded by a senior bank loan. And this comes in two flavors; one, is just a regular way, a commercial bank loan will typically finance a little under half of the deal and it will be repaid over five to seven years usually from a local or regional bank. The first candidate being a bank the company has an existing relationship with. The second path is the Small Business Administration has a terrific program called the 7(a) Program. I'm sure you're familiar with this. It's administered through banks. Most of the banks that lend commercial loans also will do a 7(a) guaranteed loan. It is a wonderful loan product because they will lend against businesses that have no tangible assets; service businesses that just have cash flow. They lend up to 80% of the business. They lend over 10 years. There are no covenants. It's a very very attractive loan with a single exception that you are required to sign a personal guarantee on it. So it's something for very thoughtful consideration by the entrepreneur. But those are the two sources of debt. And as I said with the salary debt they cover the two thirds of the purchase price. One third is usually raised from friends and family. And most common is that these prospective entrepreneurs will go around and raise money in $100,000 here or $200,000 here from anywhere from six to 15 individuals and they will cut a deal to divide the prospective profits between their investor group and themselves. Because this typical small business that we see … when we talk about a small business we're talking about a company with one to two million dollars of EBITDA that might sell for five times EBITDA or 10 million dollars of which three million dollars might be equity. And so it's not that difficult to raise that amount of equity by passing the hat. Mark: I think one thing that a lot of our buyers that come into us feel is that they can't reach that level of a transaction right? They can't reach that 10 million dollar acquisition and so they start out a lot with these $200,000 or $300,000 businesses and then they find that they've effectively buying that job. So it seems like you guys are really pushing a lot of your students to think a little bit bigger than that and do … in buying a business as well. Royce: Yeah I think that's exactly right. You know I think they are … when you get to a very small business and you are the entrepreneur you're showing up every day to process out that day's work and that's that $200,000 EBIDTA business. You know when the business gets to be a million dollars you usually have some department heads who report up to you and you're coming in thinking about the week's objectives or maybe the month's objectives. And then when you get up to a business with say two million dollars in EBIDTA, you're really managing a little further it than that. So the jobs are very different along the way and so with that we tend to point our potential entrepreneurs towards the larger end of that spectrum. But entrepreneurship can surely be expressed anywhere along the spectrum. Mark: Yeah, I think a big phrase that we hear all the time in our space is work on your business rather than in your business. And it's a transition point for a lot of people. But it seems like you guys are really pushing people to start with a business that you would work on because some of that infrastructure is going to exist already. Royce: Yes I think that's right. That is our goal. We recognize that people have different resources including experience in managing and opportunity to access capital. Mark: Right. Do you have any tips for people that might be considering reaching out to friends and family? How do you get over some of the discomfort maybe with asking friends or family for investments? Royce: Yeah I get that question a lot so I do have some recommendations. I think the first recommendation is just a psychological one which is when you go to someone to ask them for an investment you really have to make yourself feel that you're not asking for a favor. It's not like you're asking for personal loan, your presenting an opportunity to that person. And it's one you believe in so sincerely that you're going to dedicate the next five or seven or eight years of your life to it. So it's very important to really be in that psychological headspace. My second recommendation is to actually start with the people who know you best. Because they're going to be really inclined if they respect you and like you to line up behind you and then it's going to make it easier to go to people who know you less well. My third recommendation is the time to approach people for investing is when you start your search; it's not when you find your company. Because what you want to do is collect a group of people who might be interested in investing and update them across the year or year and a half that you're searching. Because when you do this, it allows them to get to know you better. It shows them that you have lots of energy, it shows them your street smarts, you talk to them of that deals you looked at but ended up rejecting which gives them a sense of your high quality standards. So when you finally approach them with a deal in hand they've been expecting this and now you're making one sale, not two. You've sort of sold them on the idea that you're a hardworking and street smart entrepreneur who is being highly selective and now you're simply selling them on the merits of the business. So for that reason, it's tremendously important to approach them early and get them to follow you. It's also a much more comfortable discussion than showing up with a deal in hand because you're able to say look if you're sincerely interested in this I'll make the investment and inform you about my journey and you'll have plenty of time to decide. It takes a lot of pressure out of that discussion. When you approach the types of people I see are entrepreneurs approaching … and here you should think about people who are partners in law firms, entrepreneurs have their own small businesses, these people don't have … while they are wealthy people by normal standards they don't have the resources to invest in private equity funds. They can't just throw up a check for two million dollars or five million dollars that private equity fund would expect. So when you come to them with the opportunity to participate they would essentially as a private equity investment; it's very additive to them. It's not an opportunity they see every day to make the kind of returns you can make buying a private business. Mark: Yeah and I think … tons of really good information in there. You're right as far as that relationship is concerned when you're asking somebody for money, building that relationship over time makes that discussion a little bit easier and also gives you the flexibility. That example I brought up of the guy who started his search and didn't have his funding lined up in advance, he actually gave me that exact same point. He said had I been having these conversations with friends and family in advance I would have been able to do this deal very very quickly. But it was just way too much for him to try and call in together an investment group within a few weeks. These things don't happen in a week, they happen over months and even a year. Royce: Absolutely and as you know from your own professional experience in those last eight weeks before closing the entrepreneur is sort of fighting on multiple directions. He's dealing with a lender, he's dealing with lawyers on a purchase agreement, he's finishing his due diligence, he's dealing with investors; you just don't have time to sort of raise investment capital from scratch. Mark: That's great. All right let's talk a little bit about the transition stuff and then we're going to be rounding out as far as our time here is concerned. Now there's some stuff obviously that happens in between, we've talked about ways to search for a company and source those deals. It can take about 18 months on average depending on a little bit of the luck of the draw, talked a little bit about the finances and some of the vehicles there. So let's assume now that you find that business, you find a good opportunity, you've gone through negotiation. And I know there's a lot that we could talk about just through the negotiation stage but I want to talk a little bit about the transition period and plan. How important do you think it is to keep previous employees, previous key people, previous owners on staff and what other elements do you think are really really kind of you should almost always take these steps in a transition? Royce: The advice I give entrepreneurs through acquisition is twofold. First, the first and most important advice I give them is in your first six months don't make any important changes. You'll have lots and lots of decisions to make but if an important change is one that is expensive or hard to reverse hold off on that. Because you will be a different person at the end of six months than you are on the day you walk into that company. And if it's the kind of enduring profitable business we hope people will buy, it certainly can wait on these decisions. I also find that transition periods can be relatively short. Three to six months is usually all you need in a transition period with some occasional access to the seller after that. By the way, this is another reason why having a seller subordinated loan is important because you want the seller to be financially on side with you after the purchase. That that seller is going to introduce you to his or her important clients. They're going to make an endorsement of you as the person they're entrusting the business to. They're going to answer a lot of process and historical questions that in a small company aren't written down in any textbook. But for most of these businesses that transition can take place well over three to six months. And after all, you want to buy a business that is not so centered on the selling entrepreneur that transferring it isn't easy. In other words, if that transfer is really really really hard that might not be a business that you want to buy. So I think that's a consideration you want to have before you step in and commit to the business. But a three to six months transition I've seen works pretty well. By the way, it might be helpful as long as we're sort of at this point in the arc of buying a small business if I shared a little data we collected over the years of that success in this path. Mark: That was my next question, so perfect timing. Royce: Okay. Mark: Yes let's go there. Royce: Well we've had the chance to survey a fairly large number of entrepreneurs through acquisition and what we've found over that six years that we've been doing this is of the people who embark on a full time search to buy a company about 70 to 80% of them end up acquiring a company and closing on it and about 20 to 25% try it, give up, and go back and get jobs that are pretty much like the jobs that they had before they embarked on this path. Of course, they've spent a year or to a year and a half doing this and that hasn't been a profitable use of time except in terms of experience but they go back and get a job that tends to look like what they had three quarters of them end up closing on a company. And then we turn to the question of is this successful? It's harder to get that data because these are all private companies but over the years Rick and I have had the benefit of actually getting some very active investors in these type of small firms to share with us their financial history of all their investments. And we've collected about 60 different transactions made by a handful of professional investors and what we found is that approximately 80% of those are profitable and about 20% are unprofitable; which is a really high rate of investment success. I mean if you think of that investing in the stock market and do you get four out of five investments profitable, I mean that would be a tremendous bar of success to have. And of the investments that are made both winners and losers the average rate of return to the investors has been about 22% annually; which is also a very high return consistent with what you would expect in private equity investments. Very importantly these results don't tell any specific individual what their results are going to be. I mean you could find a company or not to find a company, you could be successful or not successful. But I think it suggests that the area is a reasonably fruitful area to try and achieve success in. That's what I take away from the data. Mark: That's really good and I get these questions all the time so I actually now have something to go back to people with. This is great. I am curious on the 20% that are not successful; do you guys have any data as to what's leaned to do at not being profitable? Royce: Yeah. Well, of course, there's always a huge element of chance as you and I have talked about earlier in this. But yes I think that there is a single most common contributor to success and non-success in the search. And that is when an entrepreneur through acquisition start searching on their very first day looking at their very first prospective deal they quite rightly set their standards unbelievably high. In other words, nothing would get them to buy the first company they see because they want to learn what's available in the market. And as they see more and more companies they gradually bring down their standards into what normal market is for a small company. In other words, they start to say okay I'm going to raise the price I offer into the range that companies transact that. I'm not going to require that this company be absolutely perfect. It's okay that it has some flaws like every company. And their quality standard gradually moves to market. How quickly they were able to learn what a small company really looks like determines how successful they're going to be. Some people never get there. Some people it takes a year to get there. Some people can do it in 60 to 90 days and they have a much better chance of buying a company in the time period. By the way Mark just as in the side the same thing is going on with sellers as I'm sure you'd recognize that person who owned a business for 30 years enters the market with a price expectation. It is well above market and as they get feedback from the market they're gradually bringing their expectations down to market or they're leaving the market. What you're looking for is the collision between those two forces entering the zone at the same time but that speed of learning is the difference between being highly likely to succeed entrepreneur through acquisition and not. Mark: A lot of the work that we do at Quiet Light Brokerage with sellers is that sphere of expectations in trying to bring them to that place. Or more importantly I guess advising them to only enter into the marketplace when their expectations have moved because it's got to happen, right? Royce: Exactly. And it's a delicate conversation as I'm sure you've experienced many times. Mark: It is you know we try to be very just blunt with people. My personal background is before I started Quiet Light Brokerage I got really good advice from an intermediary who told me to wait but then when I actually went to market with them they actually blew my expectations up higher and when I got those first offers and it's how people at the marketplace is brutally honest. You know I might be nice the marketplace isn't, they'd just be honest and blunt. And when I got those first few offers it was like a punch in the gut. Like wow okay I'm not even in the same neighborhood of what you guys are talking about. I want to leave with this question, if you were to be talking to a potential buyer and you were to give them one or two just solid pieces of advice and that's all you had time to be able give them because that's also all the time we have left, what would you tell them? Royce: I would tell them to look for an established, slow growing, slow changing company because for a first time entrepreneur having an enduringly profitable business is the most important thing. It will allow them to make the kind of mistakes a first time CEO makes and still be successful. Sometimes people are enamored by fast growth but fast growth means change, competition, new customers. So something that's established and slowing growing and proven is what they want to look for. And it's okay that it is in a quote boring type business, you'll find plenty of excitement as being a CEO. That would be my number one piece of advice to a potential buyer. Mark: Well I wish I had talked to you before I did my first acquisition. I think that would have been helpful. Royce: Yeah. Mark: Royce, thank you so much for coming on here. Again I've been completely enamored working with Harvard Business School over the past several years. I hope that we can continue to work with you guys and someday maybe if it works out for your guys you'd be able to come out there as well and I'll meet you guys in person so thank you so much. Royce: Thank you and we're very grateful for your participation. Links and Resources: Harvard MBA Program Entrepreneurship through Acquisition Course Royce's Book

• What surprises you by the story of John the Baptist in the gospel of Mark? • What lessons about the nature and behavior of oppression and power can you find in the story? • What would happen if we always kept in mind the person coming after us? How would our lives change

Similar to outsourcing fulfillment, today's podcast guest says for many entrepreneurs, it may be best to outsource the collection, management and disbursement of sales taxes with the new Economic Nexus ruling by the Supreme Court. In this podcast, first we cover what the decision means to online entrepreneurs, and how it will impact the average business. For some no action needs to be taken. For others a lot of action must be taken. And ignoring the details is not really an option. Sometimes the least interesting subjects and work as an entrepreneur bring the most value. Well-managed financials are one such thing. Held within the broad “financials” umbrella is now sales taxes. While the answer to the questions, “should I collect” used to be grey. Everything is fairly black and white now. And the subject is never going away. Episode Highlights: Don't geek out on Sales Taxes. Outsource it. See SALT experts below. If you have Nexus it means you have an obligation to potentially register and collect sales taxes or income taxes in a given state. Physical Nexus is where you are, where your business is, where you are storing inventory or where Amazon is storing it. Economic Nexus is the change with the Supreme Court decision. The states could define other ways to define Nexus. For instance either $100,000 in sales or 200 transaction in the last 12 months – and you could be required to collect sales taxes on those revenues that occured within their state…regardless of Physical Nexus. Economic Nexus takes effect immediately for the 24 states that already have them on the books. (Links below will lead to finding the 24 states) Notice and Reporting are other ways to determine Nexus. It's really confusing! You MUST register to collect sales taxes. If you collect and do not remit, it is CRIMINAL. Hire an expert to register to collect sales taxes. There are 45 states that require it. Only register where you have to if you are a small seller. But if you are doing 10-20 million in revenue, “suck it up” and register everywhere. SALT experts can handle almost everything for you. See notes and links below. SALT is an acronym for Sales and Local Tax Experts Use www.WhereStock.com to determine where Amazon is holding your inventory. Seel link below. Taxjar is a good option if you wish to take on managing this yourself. Scott & his outsourced accounting team at Catching Clouds use Taxify (but recommend both options) The Supreme Court Decision may not increase a buyer's liability in an asset sale. Transcription: Joe: So Mark Jason got an e-mail this week and he had a question and it was “What makes Quiet Light different?” And Jason gave it an interesting answer and I want your feedback on it. It says “Well the formal answer is that we're all entrepreneurs but that's not really it. The difference is that Mark … you Mark Daoust is one of the best human beings on earth and that permeates everything we do. As a result, he attracts good people that are always doing good work with the best interest of others even if it's painful for the broker we ignore our own incentive to do what's right.” Did you pay him to say that? Mark: Yeah … well, I'm not going to say exactly how much but he got paid for that. I think it's a little over the top. I mean really. Joe: But he didn't write that down. He said it to someone and someone wrote it down and shared it with me. And I … look I shared this to put you on the spot. You look by the way very much like an internet entrepreneur today. You've got a t-shirt with some ducks on it, a little duck, duck going on there. Mark: Duck, duck, gray duck. I'm from Minnesota and I [inaudible 00:01:53.2] I'm going to put this out there, it's a more sophisticated game. All you parents out there stop this duck, duck, goose crap. It's all duck, duck, gray duck; that's what we're doing here. Joe: Don't know if we have time to go into what the heck you're talking about with duck, duck, gray duck. Well just … I thought you were going into hockey or something like that. I wanted to touch on one more thing you know Jason talks about that and you and the environment that you've created here and the caliber of entrepreneurs and advisors that you brought on. I listened to a podcast last night with Chuck Mullets and for those that are the buyers in the audience today, if you have not listened to the 27 tools for due diligence I think it was, listen to it. Because some of the tools in there were just amazing and I've been doing this for a long time and I haven't heard of any of them. I have to take my hat off to Chuck and give him some compliments for the job that he did there. I was really really impressed. He's a … I'll say it, he's a lot smarter than I thought he was. Mark: Ah, you know the bar was pretty low, to begin with. Joe: But I want to just raise myself up a little bit and show you something. Mark: What's that? Joe: I have on- Mark: Oh you have on Chuck's shirt that he made for you. Joe: I have my Quiet Light logo shirt on. So there you go. Mark: While I'm wearing ducks. Joe: Oh I didn't shade you there. Okay, listen this podcast is about something that's really important. It's about the Supreme Court decision to change the way that sales taxes are to be collected. Let's not get into details, let me just tell you that we had Scott Scharf on again. We specifically talked about the problem and the solution. What does this mean to e-commerce entrepreneurs and how do you solve it? I can tell you right now when you get three quarters of the way through the solution is … if you are up for it just like you outsource your fulfillment to a 3PL you can outsource your sales tax collection and distribution and management. And if it were me that would be my recommendation but it's absolutely there and you don't have to deal with all that little detail and there's a lot of it. Mark: Yeah and I like to say a word to people that share a person holiday with me, and when I read and hear about some of these red tape sort of restrictions that are coming down, I have a tendency to plug my years and go la-la-la-la I don't want to hear it. Joe: Right. Mark: I like the days of the free open web when it was just easy to do things. But the fact of the matter remains this is the direction we're going. Joe: Right. Mark: Restrictions, regulations are going to come into play more and more frequently and these aren't necessarily bad things we just needed to understand how to navigate them. And so an episode like this is timely, I'm glad that you got Scott on the line to do this episode because this is the [inaudible 00:04:34.0] time the episode given that this decision just came down a few weeks ago. Joe: Yeah some of the things that we talk about here on the Quiet Light Podcast are painful as entrepreneurs. Particularly those that don't love this detail, they love the excitement of driving revenue and the marketing aspect of it. These painful things when you pay attention to them will make your business more valuable if and when you ever decide to sell. So again listen to the whole thing. Get through it, he talks about it in detail point by point. But I try to keep him on track so it's not … he doesn't geek out too much. Scott loves this stuff. Mark: Scott? Never. Joe: He calls it geeking out himself. So we try to get on track to … okay how do … how does a guy like me, how does a guy like Mark, like an entrepreneur listening, how do they overcome this giant massive ball of red tape? And really, I think the answer is, outsource it. And we're going to give all of the ability to do that down there in the show notes. Mark: Sounds great. Joe: Let's go to it. Joe: Hey folks it's Joe from Quiet Light Brokerage and today I've got Scott Scharf on the line with me from Catching Clouds. And we're going to talk about the Supreme Court decision that's come down regards to sales taxes, define what the problem is, and then give you a solution to it in the second half of the podcast. Scott welcome … welcome back actually right? Scott: Yeah it's great to be back. Joe: All right so you know we don't do fancy introductions. Tell these folks who you are and what you do at Catching Clouds so they understand what level of expert you are here. Scott: Yeah at Catching Clouds we're e-commerce accountants who are really experts in the accounting e-commerce businesses and of course sales tax management; which is why we can talk about this topic. We've been doing this for the last seven years and we love solving problems for e-commerce, sellers, anybody that we interact with it. And this Quill decision is definitely one of those things. Joe: Quill decision, that it that's the name of it? Q-U-I-L-L. Scott: Well, yeah so Quill was a decision from what 26 years ago that the Supreme Court overturned their own finding that really delimited what states could do to go collect sales tax from small businesses that are selling across state lines. Joe: Good. Okay, so they overturned it. So, folks, you heard Scott say that they're e-commerce accountants and I just want to reiterate … and you know my little soapbox here. E-commerce accounting, accounting, good financials, clean documentations, it's one of the four pillars to get maximum value for your business. So if you're using anything other than Xero or QuickBooks seriously consider talking to Scott if you want to get maximum value for your business. Because Excel spreadsheets for a 20 million dollar company or if you're doing a half a million in revenue doesn't matter, you're going to lose value in the sale of your business if and when some day you decide to sell. So there's my little pitch, definitely- Scott: [inaudible 00:07:24.7] Joe: these services. Okay so if I understand this correctly this is no longer physical nexus which I think everybody that's listening knows the definition of it; what it means. Is economic nexus, can you tell us what the heck that means for these folks? Scott: Yeah so actually physical nexus still applies so it's not that they got rid of physical nexus it's just not the only consideration deciding if you have [inaudible 00:07:52.0] of fancy. Joe: So let's say what physical nexus is anyway then, go ahead. Scott: Okay. Well, physical nexus … well, first nexus is if you cross a threshold and you have nexus based on some parameters means you have an obligation to potentially register and collect sales tax or income tax or other things in a given state. So if you don't have nexus you don't have to do these things. Okay, that's the first part. So there are different types of nexus, the first one is physical. It's been around for quite a while. It's where you are, your business is, your business is founded, you have employees, you have property. Okay for an e-commerce business, it's wherever you're storing your inventory. If it's at a 3PL on either coast you have a nexus where you're storing your inventory. If you're an Amazon FBA seller, when you send inventory to three or five warehouses they'll move it to up to 26 states that's your inventory and it creates nexus. There are a few other ones out there but from a physical perspective … I've been around for a while, there's like affiliates and other things. But the main thing it's where you are and your property is. Joe: Physical nexus, okay. And now we've got economic nexus, what is that? Scott: So economic nexus what states have determined and the brakes were taken off with the Supreme Court decision that they could define other ways to determine nexus to basically either require your business to do reporting and other function or register and collect sales tax in those states. So what they've done is said hey if you're doing over typically in the standard is based on the Supreme Court decision $100,000 in sales or actually more importantly 200 transactions either in the last calendar year or in the prior 12 months and that would mean that they're expecting you if you're a larger business to register and collect sales tax from there … of any consumers buying products you're shipping to into that state. Joe: How many transactions do you say? It was 200? Scott: 200. Joe: So if it's a $20 sale it's only what 1,000? Scott: $1,000. So $100,000 people see the $100,000 and think that oh God there's no way I didn't know you'd do $100,000 in any states last year, but it's totally based on your average. So if you take your average sale price and multiply it times 200, if you've done more than that revenue in any states that have these laws you're over that threshold. Joe: Okay so economic nexus passed by the Supreme Court, when does it take effect is it immediate or is there-? Scott: It's immediate for the roughly 23, 24 states that already had these laws on the books. And the only thing that was holding them back were these court cases that were just … was decided a week and a half ago. Joe: Okay so there's 24 states, not all 45 that collects sales taxes but that is 24 of them. And for folks listening, we will add a list of those 24 states but there'll be a lot of resources in the show notes that we'll give you that through their software as well. Scott: Well and it's not just economic nexus, you have to remember there's now notice in reporting states that aren't doing economic nexuses but have set thresholds for doing notice and reporting. They're basically two different new ways of determining nexus and they're both in effect now and there are other states that have them starting later this year and more. So it's multiple ways of nexus that might impact your business. Joe: Okay so I'm just going to say a few years ago I did a presentation at Rhodium Weekend all about e-commerce selling and part of it was sales tax collection accounting. So I wanted to say to Yana if you're listening I was right. She came after me after that now that's never going to happen. It's right. So really just don't even worry about the 24 states I think physical nexus, economic … basically get prepared to collect and remit sales taxes everywhere and use a special service that can allow you to do that. First though … and we'll get to that but first do you have to register to collect sales taxes? Scott: Yes. You have to if you are not registered you don't have a license and a number from the state, it's criminal to collect sales tax and not remit it and not have a license. It's also criminal to collect sales … have a license to collect sales tax and not give it to those state. Those two things have additional penalties and they'll come after the business owner's criminally. So you need to have a license before you start collecting sales tax and then once you start collecting sales tax you have to give it back to the state either monthly, quarterly or annually; whatever they say. Joe: Okay just to clarify, you used the word criminally three times. That's a little scary. Scott: Well it's … but unfortunately both Amazon and Shopify and these other sites, I mean literally there's a button in Shopify that you can click that says collect sales tax in all states. And it's easy to start collecting sales tax in the 45 states that have sales tax. So technically it's very easy to hit these buttons and not realize and you just want to be careful. And in difference between criminal is there's additional by jail. Everything else related to sales tax is expense and cost which is more likely to happen but maybe not as painful but can be pretty painful based on penalties and interest and other things. Joe: Right. Okay, so first and foremost let's just define and answer this simple basic question that some folks have been asking, does this mean … and I know the answer to this thus do you, does this mean quote unquote I have to start collecting sales taxes? The answer is yes. The answer is you should have been collecting them before, you had to before. Correctly? Scott: Well correct, if you have physical nexus that goes back in time. Okay, most of these economic nexus laws are new. And the way they're currently written is if you pass the threshold then the expectation is you register and start collecting sales tax going forward. So there's going to be nuances and changes but in general, if you exceed most of these thresholds for economic nexus or notice in reporting basically the expectation is you go out, you register now, and you start collecting forward. And there's no … depending on the state but for most states, there's no real risk of you owing money or have not done whatever in the past, you can go forward. But when you have physical nexus because of Amazon FBA or a 3PL then you need to consider if you register and collect going forward where you still have a risk of any previous outstanding liability which I know within a sale you're very aware of to make sure you know both the seller and the buyer are aware of any business liabilities or do you go back in time and pay anything that you didn't collect in the past; which isn't fun. Collecting sales tax or paying in sales tax you didn't collect from the consumer on each individual sale. Joe: Yeah because that's directly coming out of your profits now instead of collecting and just passing it through. Scott: Yup. Joe: Okay, so let's jump to making this easy for people that are listening. The bottom line is that they need to start collecting sales taxes and remitting them. Obviously, get registered to collect sales taxes. There're software out there that does this right? Because you're talking about you need to do this, you need to do that, and for me as a former physical products e-commerce seller, my eyes would roll into the back of my head, I would [inaudible 00:15:15.0] more and I'd never wake up again. Can't … Can I just pay somebody to do this for me and if yes what are the options and how much would it cost me annually or monthly? Scott: Well the first part, so you don't pull out your own hair, is there are multiple services out there that will help you with the registrations and register you in multiple states because it will drive you crazy. Every state is a little bit different. On average I'll pay about $100 per registration plus $20 to $50 in registration fee for some states, that's the first piece. So if you've decided to register in two, five, ten, whatever number of states you need to get registered first and I suggest … it'll just drive you crazy, is would be to get registered and there are a number of services out there that can do that for you. Joe: Okay and we'll put those in the show notes but why Scott only five or ten whatever you decide to get registered? And why wouldn't you register for every state that requires you to collect sales taxes? I guess maybe because you never sell any … somebody in the state of- Scott: So one it's just that overhead in the cost of doing business. So the first thing there are 45 states that have a sales tax and we are all heading sometime … I would have said three to five plus years that we're going to collect sales tax on every e-commerce sale, it's now probably two to four years or two to three years. It's going to happen a lot faster but there is a cost even on the low cost tool or outsourcing it … and I'll talk about some of those numbers in a minute, but you really only at this point want to register for sales tax where you have to. You shouldn't have to if … now if you're already a 20 or 30 million dollars e-commerce business just suck it up and go to all 45. Joe: Right. Scott: Anybody else below there, you're paying more money for compliance and tools and registrations. And in some of these states when you register for sales tax nexus you are in some ways volunteering to pay income tax. Potentially depending on the state and the situation; minimum franchise tax like in California which is $800 a year, and then additional fees, and not only the sales tax cost but paying a CPA to file and deal with franchise tax returns and income tax returns. So you want to as a small business or even a medium sized business minimize that overhead and only do this in the states you need to but you definitely want to start the big states where the population are. California, Florida, Texas, and those other bigger ones is the basics to get that going but you would want an easier way in. So figure it out for the first batch that you're doing and then do another batch and another batch. So you just can't stop your whole business to do sales tax and you just have to balance those things out. But at the same time, you don't want to show this huge [inaudible 00:17:52.3] selling and talking to Quiet Light. This huge compliance overhead and its overkill and it's going impact your own profitability and the money you're taking out of the business. So just want to find a balanced approach as you get there. Joe: How do you determine that? Is there a tool or process inside of Shopify or if you're an Amazon Seller that tells you that you know what sales you have by state? Scott: Yeah so there are two … for sales price there's a couple of ways to do it. So the first if you're an Amazon FBA seller there's a great tool called wherestock.com you pay him $30 and they'll log in … we'll get you the link, and they'll connect your Amazon site and they'll … it'll take them about a day and they'll give you a report showing you all the warehouses where you have inventory and when it started. How far back in time if you had inventory in the Michigan warehouse and if you go through that list and you don't see North Carolina or some states because of the type of your products it'll tell you, you might have had or five of these main states that you've never had inventory in and you don't have nexus there; which is great news. The next piece is really a matter of downloading all of your orders out of Shopify for the previous 12 months or the last year and then just pivoting the data or doing a total if you know how in Excel to show you your sales; both the number of sales in each state and the total dollar volume in each state. So you want to know your own numbers and any that you're over $100,000 in sales or unfortunately $10,000 in Washington State, Pennsylvania, and Oklahoma starting on Sunday I think. I think it just started Sunday. I think it was July first and it's happened right before it. Those are $10,000 in sales which is really low, everybody else is 100,000. So that'll … you'll go through those states and add up the ones that you have, look at the ones that you have the most amount of sales and income in and start with those. You want to know your own numbers and work through your own list. The other option is and I can provide a link to our tax calculator that we have in there … bunch of other people putting them out there that basically take your average sale amount enter it and it will total all those things up. But those are the two things; one, all of your income across all of your sales and then this Amazon wherestock report to let you know what's going on in FBA and that'll be in your information and then you just build a list and you work your way through your own priorities on how many you want to do; all at once or a few at a time. Joe: Okay so just to dumb it down a little bit. If you're doing 20, 30 million dollars just suck it up and do all 45 states. But if you're doing maybe just a million dollars in revenue, which is fantastic, do this report because you don't want to have to register in 23 states that instead of all 45 if you don't have to. Scott: Right. Joe: Someone else talked about it in this way. I mean that registration alone is going to cost you $100 to $150 so maybe $3,000 or so for 23 states that you don't have to register in. But if you're only doing $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 in revenue in the state of Montana it doesn't make any sense to register because a. you're not going to hit that threshold and b. realistically Scott is if someone in the state of Montana that works in- Scott: Montana is a bad example they're not on sales tax. Joe: Okay. Scott: So pick one of the few states that doesn't have one but Nevada or however else- Joe: How about Maine? Scott: So it's always a risk man, your question is so should you or not you … are you going to, can you fly under the radar- Joe: Yeah. Scott: Are they going to find you tomorrow and what's going on? So it's a risk management decision between the cost of compliance to your business versus the overhead and the cost of compliance and then the chance of being caught. There are four million Amazon sellers, there's between five and ten million businesses doing e-commerce these days. The states just had their handcuffs taken off and they're all going to go woohoo let's go get this money from out of state sellers. It's going to take them a while to ramp up and the chances of getting caught are very very low and they have been low and they're still very very low okay? But there isn't really no ambiguity now; there's no more well, maybe, or there's this court case, or whatever else. Joe: Right. Scott: So until now and whenever possibly the Congress does something or more lawsuits happen which take time this is the way things are today and you just have to make that decision of a risk management. So you never want to mess around with the IRS when it comes to payroll taxes or W-9s and contractors but for sales tax, you're going to have to balance those out. But the chance of being audited or being notified by the state is significantly higher than it's ever been in the past. Joe: Okay let's talk about the services that are out there; as in the software or services that you recommend for listeners just … you can do your download calculator that I'm going to provide in the show notes to determine the revenue by state and things of that nature to decide where they want to register. But what softwares or service programs do you recommend that folks check out that you have seen people use consistently that make this a whole lot easier? Scott: Yeah for people doing it themselves I would start with TaxJar it's by far the easiest to use most straightforward they … not only do they pull in all the data but they process the filing for sales tax and the payments in all 50 states. It's both the easiest and I, from what I've seen the lowest cost. They're a great tool. They have a great blog and a ton of information and support and it's the best way to do it yourself. The next one that's a little more powerful- Joe: Hold on a second. Scott: Yeah? Joe: In terms of a TaxJar thorough cost ballpark if someone's to put in all the states what would the overall cost be to … and do they do registration or just compliance? Scott: Okay so TaxJar does not do registrations. Joe: Okay. Scott: It's only the sales tax data aggregation to pull it all together from channels. Pull everything together. One note is if you have sales that are outside of Amazon, Shopify, or BigCommerce you have to import that data into TaxJar so that you have the complete thing. From all the sales so your filings are accurate. But in general, you're going to pay a monthly fee between I think 29 and up to 500 depending on the number of sales. Whether it's a thousand per month, 5,000 you know … in larger apps you're going to pay a base monthly fee no matter what; totally reasonable wherever your SaaS thing. And then you're going to pay a per-filing transaction. So if you're paying filing quarterly you're going to pay four times somewhere between $21 and $30 per filing. I don't have their pricing memorized. Joe: Sure. Scott: So if you're filing quarterly your costs are going to be lower. If you're filing annually it's going to be these monthly fees. So if you're a smaller seller the pricing can work out to be fairly affordable. They also have kind of an unlimited filing piece so if you get over a certain level … and I haven't done the math whether it's 20 states or 30 states but there's a certain point where you can pay it for kind of an unlimited plan and get to a max price. I think that's in the 4 to $6,000 for the year kind of total. But you can using that tool max that out and really lock that compliance cost in. Not counting your time making sure it's being done right. Importing data, dealing with notices, and just making … keeping an eye on it, it's not a set and forget process. Joe: So, on the high side it sounds like maybe $500 a month and your maxing out the services there, on the low side $29 a month so it all depends upon the size of the seller and how much you do. Okay, you are about to mention another- Scott: So the next one I would say is Taxify and that's what we use because we're doing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of returns every month. It's a little more powerful in certain ways. They have integrations. It can handle a wider range of different businesses and there's … it's just they're really kind of head to head but for DIY most people go with TaxJar just because it's easier to use. TaxJar is more powerful if you have a more complex business. You might want to consider it or compare the two. Pricing is pretty similar between those two and- Joe: Those using TaxJar you said TaxJar, not Taxify. Scott: No we're using Taxify. We are using Taxify. Our accounting practice for us to file we use Taxify but I've known the TaxJar guys for six years now and they really do have a great solution. And any of our stuff we talk about those two is really the primary ones to consider third one is- Joe: Hold on I want to just interrupt again sorry. On this option, you're saying you already use it which means that with your accounting services for sellers of a certain size I assume, the collection, the management, and remittance of the sales taxes are part of your services as well. Scott: Correct. Joe: So I don't have to learn the software, I can hire you guys to do it. Scott: Correct. Joe: Okay. Scott: Well and I'll talk about some other … outsourcing is absolutely a viable, just like you outsource fulfillment to a 3PL or to Amazon FBA, sales tax is something you don't want to geek out on. I've done it for the last six years, it drives me crazy but I geek out on it. It just … it will distract you from listing products and buying products and designing new products and all the front end stuff to generate more income. That is absolutely something you want to … you might like that we look at here's how you do it yourself and you should understand anything you outsource but we do that. We offer the service but we also do notice management. The states send all kinds of notices. Even if you pay on time they'll send you a notice but if you don't respond to the notice they'll fine you for not responding to the notice. So there's more to it than just a set and forget tools. These tools are phenomenal as they deal with the complexity. Because every return is different, they have 50 different fields. They really aggregate the data and reduce the complexity of filing and paying which is awesome which is why we use automation. But then there's there is more to it. Joe: Okay, you're about to mention a third option for folks. Scott: Yeah third option is Avalara TrustFile. Now if you really are already a 20 or 30 … so Avalara has two products, they have a smaller and a lower end one which I don't think is as powerful as TaxJar or Taxify called TrustFile which you can use. They've cleaned up their pricing but it's still a little confusing but they're a viable tool. If you're already let's say five or really 10 million and you're doing more than just e-commerce you can consider Avalara AvaTax which is their higher end tool which will give you more control automated. If you have an accounting department it is definitely a tool you would consider. Quite a few CPA's and accountants use AvaTax as well to do more complex larger sales tax across multiple businesses. So those are really the key players, there are other smaller players out there but those are really the key players that are really focused and understand what's going on out there. Joe: Okay. I was listening to your better half Patti on your YouTube channel. She does a great job, by the way, great Q and A's there. I think she mentioned SALT experts and what they do and what not. Can you define what a SALT expert is and why someone listening might want to consult with one of them? Scott: Absolutely so a SALT; Sales And Local Tax expert, these are people that will do one, they can do a nexus study which tells you where you have nexus and it'll tell you whether your products are taxable or not, are they a food, are they a candy, do they have flour in them, are they clothing or … they can go look at all that. You can all interpret what the states say but these are people that do it all the time and will contact the state anonymously or you. The next thing they will do is what's called a voluntary disclosure agreement. If you owe a state tens of thousands of dollars of back tax and you want to come clean because you want to clear out your liability to sell your business and just make sure everything's done right, they'll go to the states anonymously and say I have this seller and they'll represent you. And in some cases get penalties, sometimes interests, and can potentially get a payment plan if you're cleaning up historical sales tax. And you want that person representing you a SALT expert, not your CPA. Unless they've done it multiple times in their own state you really want to talk to someone that's an expert. They're the people you want to call if you're audited to represent you and help you get through an audit. So those are the unique things we haven't talked about but the main thing is you can outsource your sales tax compliance to them. They will do the registrations and most in almost every case they will set things up. Most of them are very technical … in our case we at Catching Clouds we're really great at setting up Shopify to collect sales tax right and Amazon and eBay and in the more technical configurations. So we're very technical accountancy but they will help advise you on those things. They're all over it. They talk to me about the technical stuff, we're really good friends. It's a great community. I'll try to just solve this for sellers but then you can pay them a monthly fee or a per-state fee to take care of the data collection which you have to give them. The filing, the payments, notices, and kind of provide a complete service to outsource your sales tax. You can go to one person, pay them to take care all of your sales tax that's going on and advise you and then they're the ones that are keeping tabs on all the changes that happen every week; every month if that's the route you want to go. Which is a good way to go, in general, I'll give you a safe number, you really want to budget at least $50 per state per month. So you're looking at between $600 and $1,000 per year for this to not be an issue to worry about but you need to budget the right amount. Plus you want to have that same space because everyone's … Arizona's awful that they'll come back the second year and hit you with hundreds of dollars additional fees per county and everything else that you didn't count on and you can't get around and they'll deal with these random issues. Joe: Okay, great. I have a list of those from your website for those listening again in the show notes SALT experts will be available. Sounds like a one stop shopping place to go and just outsource all of this. Of course, some people that want to do the work themselves will have those calculators that you talked about there as well Scott and the links to the Taxify and TaxJar and Avalara. A couple of quick questions before we wrap this up, and maybe they're not quick questions but historically when someone sells their website … their physical e-commerce business in this case, the question of liability for past sales taxes that should have collected is really really gray, right? Scott: Yeah it is. Joe: And only once for those listening how do you solve that problem as a buyer? In most cases, most buyers don't worry about it. They really never have and these are people that are a lot smarter than you and I combined. They don't worry about it; pretty high level folks. In one case I had and think about this as a seller, I had someone that it was … the business sale total value was around $758,000 but they did the math and they said look in the 24 months that you've been around you should have collected X amount of sales taxes and let's call it $50,000 in that purchase price, in that $750,000 in the asset purchase agreement $50,000 was set aside in Escrow for potential sales tax liability purposes. And when the buyer went out to register to get their sales tax in the state of California, Texas, whatever if that state said yes, of course, we'll register you but we know that you owe us from this brand, you didn't own the company but from this brand you owe us $17,000 then that money would have come out of that 50,000. For the record, the buyer was able to register in all the states that he wanted to register and not a single state said okay great but you owe us money hence all 50,000 was released. How does this Supreme Court decision in economic nexus change that liability moving forward for the buyers of these businesses? Scott: I don't think it … I think it only increases the chance of the state contacting you and having to either answer the questions or go through an audit and all of these things are moot until you're actually audited. And you're at that point where you're dealing with an auditor and then then they ask for historical records and financials and everything else. Up until then, it's not really an issue. Unfortunately, though it's the decision of that state; are they going to hold the new business and whoever bought that Amazon seller account? They want to attach the liability to the Amazon account where it was being sold that you buy a continuing Amazon account which is what most people do or is it tied to the prior business and the business owner? The people selling you need to be concerned when you get that big chat to set some of this money aside if the states come after you historically because if you've spent it all, it really … in most cases tends to tie to the original business owner of the business. So I would say that there's … it's really if you're buying [inaudible 00:34:44.4] sale you have to be worried about it more than anything else. If it's an asset sale you're buying this asset, starting a new business, you've got to register fresh and move forward. There's a small risk but only after you've been audited. So it's just a couple of nuances there. Joe: So very very small risk and only after you're audited and the odds of being audited again, incredibly small. Scott: Correct. Joe: Okay. Let's talk about those out there that are wholesaling. They're buying products and wholesaling them, they don't have to collect these sales taxes is that correct? Scott: They don't but you have to follow the rules. The first is and what really does this finding really change is instead of collecting tax exemptions certificates; so for every B2B sale you have to get a tax exemption certificate and it's not just a picture of the sales tax license on the wall of someone's cell phone. You have to have something that has your business name on the top that other companies who you sold it to their tax licenses whether it's one state or multiple states. And it doesn't matter which states they are and an owner or a business manager an approved person of that company signing at the bottom saying they're responsible for the sales tax. Okay? Joe: Is it on a form? Is it an official form that they would fill out? Scott: There's a form per state and there's a great multi-state form. I can get you all of the links and if you want to have a process that you have them and keep in mind that they pretty … a lot of them expire every year. So you want to have all of these forms from your five or 10 or 50 or 500 B2B customers on file. And if you get audited by any given state then you need … then you have these to say hey I didn't have to collect sales tax but if you don't have the forms or they're expired or you're missing them that … then they can say all of that was taxable and you owe the sales tax. Even if the other company sold it and collected sales tax they can double dip and come after the information. What this decision really changed was two things related to B2B sellers. But first, as most people tend to collect tax exemption certificates for their own states where they're filing where they would expect their own business to get audited. Now that it's kind of every state can look at all this information, B2B sellers should start collecting tax exemption certificates on every sale. And if you have your top five or ten B2B customers, go back and get them from those ones and … to make sure you've got this filed. And then just set it aside in case you're audited. The second big impact of this for B2B sellers is now your B2B sales, number of transactions, and dollars volume count towards these economic nexus thresholds. It's all of your sales. It's your B2C sales and B2B. And even if you're 100% B2B and you have no tax you're still going to cross this threshold. And the states are still going to expect you to file a return. And it is going to cost you the same amount in compliance for you as it does. Even if you give them no money like every number is zero. Joe: That's really important for people that are doing both B2C and B2B. I was thinking just wholesale B2B but we have a lot of clients that they'll sell to let's say for instance chewy.com they're selling their own website but they wholesale to Chewy. They need to pay attention to this stuff as well. That's great information. Scott: It's all of their sales. It combines both and it's looking at all of your sales. Because what the really the states are doing and all these laws are meant to do is to get to the point where every transaction is taxed and they get a sales tax from every sale. That's what they're trying to do so pretty much most of the pain goes away if you register and collect in a state. You don't have to worry about different fines and fees or other unknowns, you can start defining your cost of compliance but that's really where we're going. Joe: Okay. Do you think this Supreme Court decision is good or bad? Overall for the individual states that are going to be applied this collect and collect is what I'm saying. Scott: I think it's bad for e-commerce sellers. I really do. The compliance costs just went from an unknown maybe I can avoid them to … and we're heading that way so I think it's bad for e-commerce sellers. Of course, it is great for the state bureaucracies that are going to go out and collect a bunch of money from other states until something else changes to back it down. I think it's going to increase the risk for smaller sellers and even mid-range sellers of having more unknown's that could impact your business. From us, as consumers, we're really getting to the point as a company … a country since we're so consumer based, it's all about products and services and things along those lines that we're really heading to the point where we're going to pay a sales tax on everything. It's just that the cost and the complexity and potential risks to all small businesses, not just e-commerce businesses, anybody that has a product and ships it out of state or does anything else now has to be concerned about that much more in running a business that you know e-commerce businesses are 24/7, running really fast, the rules are constantly changing, you just didn't need this additional in my opinion large overhead of cost of doing business to really impact them. Joe: Right at the end of the day hopefully it would be great for states and the roads and highways and schools in the state in which you live. But for now, it's a major complexity that you as an e-commerce owner have to deal with. Scott, as always you're fantastic. These details are great … for me personally they're overwhelming many times but that's the point of the show notes and simplifying it and really … perhaps hiring that SALT expert to do the vast majority of this work for those listening that choose to go that route. Scott before we depart any last thoughts or recommendations for people that are listening; both buyers and sellers? Scott: Yeah. Just take a deep breath plan out time once a month or a quarter to focus in on this. Add up your numbers, decide your risk tolerance, and then move on. And then don't worry about it for that month or quarter. And then when you decide to do it, think about what it is you're doing and make a decision and move on. You don't have to stop all your business or sales or everything else. Just take a practical approach. This is one more thing that has to be on your regular process; like checking your insurance or other things that you're validating. And just keep moving; keep selling and growing. Balance the risk and then just move on. Joe: That's great thanks, Scott. As always appreciate it look forward to seeing you at the next event and hopefully lots of folks will reach out to you here. And be at peace of mind here with what you've shared. Thanks so much, Scott. Scott: Well, thank you. Links: Catching Clouds eCommerce Accounting Patti's Q&A about Sales Taxes and the new SCOTUS Ruling Catching Clouds Academy Fox News Supreme Court sales tax ruling: The winners and losers MSNBC Supreme Court Rules States Can Require Shoppers To Pay Online Sales Tax Internet Sales Tax | What Online Retailers Need to Know Sales Tax Nexus Threshold Calculator Sales Tax Permitting with SalesPermitted.com Get your FBA stock locations summarized and delivered to your inbox. Sales and Local Tax (SALT) Experts – Outsource Everything Cathie Stanton and Lauren Stinson, Cherry Bekaert ► http://cherrybekaertsalestax.com/ Michael Fleming ► www.salestaxandmore.com ► https://www.salestaxandmore.com/chart… Diane Yetter ► www.salestaxinstitute.com ► https://www.salestaxinstitute.com/res… SaaS Sales Tax Apps: TaxJar ► https://www.taxjar.com/ Taxify ► https://taxify.co/ Avalara ► https://www.avalara.com/us/en/index.html

Alex Lyon from Avask Tax Advisors works with over 2,000 eCommerce and FBA clients. Her role is to help them understand, register for, manage and comply with VAT registrations and payments. Did you know that when selling online in Europe the taxes (VAT) are included in the purchase price? Did you know if you don't increase your list price your margins shrink by the VAT amount? Did you know that if you have a UK company there is a minimum total revenue threshold amount you can reach before you have to collect VAT? Did you know the biggest mistake made by US companies is not registering for VAT, but that you can sell on Amazon prior to having the registration number? If you answered “no” to at least one of the above questions…and plan to expand to Europe, hearing Alex's explanation of the VAT process could be critical to your expansion success.   Episode Highlights: The biggest mistake Alex sees is not registering for VAT, and it is costly! You can sell before being registered, but it'll cost you if you don't increase your prices to account for VAT. You do not have to set up a foreign corporation to sell in Europe, regardless of your overseas location: i.e. US, Singapore, etc. You only collect in countries you are shipping from (there is a caveat). Amazon does not show VAT charges separately in your seller account. The PanEU program makes sense for some, most only register in the UK and Germany. If you don't pay VAT…your Amazon account will be suspended and/or closed (eventually). “Import VAT” is charged on the inventory shipped into the country and paid immediately. “Sales VAT” is charged on the retail price of your goods, and paid quarterly. The UK and Germany are the two largest markets for selling online in the EU. The UK is the easiest to expand to from the US because of language and the challenges of shipping to Germany. Wiring VAT payments can take 4-5 days and a currency account in Europe shortens the wire times. Using an intermediary bank, or currency account, can save 1-3% in exchange rate fees. With Avask, the costs to register for VAT in the UK is about $200 USD, and then about $1200 USD per year. Caveat to costs: “Distance Selling Thresholds”, if met, require more than $1200 per year because VAT is required in countries you do not store inventory in. Transcription: Mark: Good morning Joe. How are you? Joe: I'm good Mark. How are you? Mark: I'm hanging in there. I'm enjoying the weather lately and getting outdoors a little bit not working as hard but we're still recording podcasts. And you recorded one on an interesting topic and something that I think more and more people are having to face that have Amazon businesses and that's some of the tax implications going overseas. Joe: Yes. Actually, anybody who has a physical products business that wants to sell in Europe and it's on value added taxes, oh my God not exciting at all. But did you know real quickly that you know obviously here in the States you buy something and then the tax is added? When you buy something online, or in Europe, UK, Germany, France, Italy, etcetera the price is built into…I'm sorry the taxes are built into the price. So if it's 120$ the item might be 100 but the taxes are 20. And a lot of buyers that ex…by sellers that expand overseas don't quite understand that concept initially and they could immediately start losing margin by not increasing the prices for the value added taxes. A great conversation it was with Alex Lyon from AVASK Tax Advisors they have over 2,000 FBA clients and e-commerce clients throughout the world that sell and need value added tax compliance so really informative stuff. And anybody that's considering expanding overseas should absolutely listen to this because it's not that complicated once you listen to what she says. Mark: What are the consequences if somebody is not taking care of the value added tax? Do you know by any chance? Joe: Yeah absolutely. So they're very-very compliant over there. It's not gray like it is here in the States, its black and white. So the problem is that if you sell in let's say the UK and you're not registered, you're going to be determined. Amazon has to share the information with I think it's the HMRC. They have to by law; they share the details of everybody that sells on Amazon. So the HMRC has access to your sales information and therefore can force you to pay the value added taxes that you should have collected. If you didn't collect it you're going to pay for that out of your pocket simple as that. So you've got two choices: pay for it out of your pocket and lose that 15 to 20% margin and probably make no money at all or walk away and be banned from selling in in Europe on Amazon. Mark: That's significant. I think moving across the ocean to selling in different countries is a huge opportunity for anyone. Buying an e-commerce business that wants to ship overseas that you need to start taking advantage of that opportunity but you also have to go through some of the understanding of what sort of regulations are in play. I think this you know isn't…this is not exactly an exciting topic but you know and I think it's a really important topic for anyone to listen to, to possibly unlock an opportunity that your competitors are not taking advantage of. Joe: Yeah and before we say let's jump into it let me just say this that I've seen explosive growth with people moving and expanding their products to the EEO, explosive growth in particular France. I mean the UK and Germany. And the cost associated with it using someone like AVASK and they're not the only ones who do it, it's not all that expensive. You're looking at maybe 1500 $ to get the ball rolling and get it done right. And you can you can start selling immediately as long as you're registering and then you pay from the date you started selling. It's really not that complicated. There's a lot to it but it's really-really important that if you're going to sell overseas which I think everybody should if they have real growth plans that they listen to the whole podcast. Mark: All right with that I will say let's jump into it. Joe: Hey folks it's Joe from Quiet Light Brokerage and today I've got to Alex Lyon from AVASK Tax Advisors with me. She's an expert on VAT which I believe is value added tax. Something a lot of folks trying to expand their e-commerce businesses over to the UK and beyond really need some help on. So Alex welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast. Alex: Thank you. Thank you, Joe. Hi everyone. Yeah as Joe has mentioned my name is Alex. I am Indirect Tax Client Manager of AVASK. So I've been working here for three years now just helping e-commerce sellers expand over into Europe. So we've got over 2,000 Amazon sellers that we work with. UK companies also companies based all over the world as well. So yeah that's been us. Joe: That's fantastic. Are they all FBA clients (Fulfilled By Amazon) or do they you know sell off FBA as well (off Amazon) with their own e-commerce businesses? Alex: It varies so a high majority of people are FBA sellers just because it's a lot easier to hand everything over to Amazon and kind of let them do fulfillment. But there are quite a large number of Amazon Sellers as well such as shipment from your own country which obviously makes a lot of things easier in terms of the VAT because you don't have to actually declare the sales in Europe because you're not fulfilling from his countries. So yeah it's kind of a majority FBA but we do have MFM sellers as well. Joe: Okay, good. Good. Good. So let's talk about the basics, get things straight here for our listeners because a lot of people here in the states are expanding their Amazon.com accounts beyond Amazon into the European countries and seeing explosive growth. But the big mystery is how to set up the VAT's and how to find an agency like yours to handle it most of the costs associated with it are. So you can start am I getting it right is it Value Added Tax and tell us how it works? Alex: Correct. Yes, it's value added tax. It's the same principle across the European countries but they have different rights and different filing frequencies. The easiest way to explain it would be that it's similar to the sales tax you have in the US. But the main difference would be the way which you include it within the price of your product. So this is kind of the biggest hurdle where people fall over on where they don't actually include the VAT amount within the price of the product which means that you're not actually collecting the VAT from your customer but you still have to pay it to the revenue. So you're essentially paying it out from your pocket if you don't include it. So in the US for someone like myself when I come over I don't realize it works like this when I go to the checkout in sell sites because I didn't know and I'm kind of how…where is this amount coming from. Whereas in the UK you don't know that it's already there in the price of the product so yes its essentially the same as the sales tax but it's more hidden. Joe: So Amazon is collecting that 20% for units built into the purchase price of the product. So if it's 100 $ if the VAT is 20% for instance, 20% is something set aside to pay your VAT…your taxes? Alex: Yes. Joe: Okay. Alex: So you need to list in on Amazon for the straight 120. Amazon won't do that for you. Joe: Okay and do a lot of people make that mistake where they just list their business without bumping it for the value added tax? Alex: Yeah there's a large number of that do. Without getting kind of proper advice on how VAT actually works. So it is…see it's hard enough to in taxes in your own country let alone I'm kind of working out how to do it in a foreign country. So yeah that's a big hurdle where quite a lot of people fall over on. Joe: Okay. So you're located in the UK. AVASK is located in the UK. But I think I saw offices around in different parts of the world, is that right? Alex: Yes that's right. So we've got an office in London and I'm on based on in Winchester which is about an hour south of London. And then we've also got offices in Shenzhen and LA. We try to come over to the US as much as possible as well just because oversea it's kind of US sellers that we've [inaudible 00:08:19.0] work with. So yeah we try and get over to the events as much as possible as well and get that travelling. Joe: So the vast majority of clients as you said are US based clients and they start selling and Amazon.com and then expanded to the European countries? Alex: Yeah, definitely. Amazon is oversea, it's huge in America and it's just kind of been taking off here in Europe as well. So it's a massive market in Europe and I think if you're product is successful and you've been able to make it successive there in the US then there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't also be able to do in Europe. Joe: Okay. So let's say I own an Amazon.com account, I want to reach out to you what…and I want to sell in the European countries, step one two three can you walk us through that? Alex: Yup sure. So step one is to work out where you're going to be shipping your products from. So most people go with the UK or Germany just because they're the biggest markets, UK is obviously a lot easier because you don't have to translate any of your products. So whichever country you decide you're going to fulfill from you then have to get a VAT number in that country and also an EORI number for all of your shipments. So those two numbers you have to have those before you make a shipment. If you make a shipment without those numbers you're going to get charged import VAT and then you won't necessarily be able to reclaim that back whereas you would if you have the numbers. So that's very important. In terms of the registration process, engaging a UK agent is really helpful because you've got someone who can communicate with tax authorities on your behalf. And that also means that we know exactly what documents are needed for each of the registration. We'll process all of that for you. Once the application has been submitted and you're waiting for the numbers to come through at that point you should start getting your listings up. Working out some shipping quotes and kind of working out all the details on actually how you're going to get your product there and what the listings are going to look like. Joe: Okay. And I just had a conversation with someone that is buying an Amazon business and they were confused about when the VAT was going to be applied. Is it to the amount of products being shipped into the country or is it the amount that's sold? Alex: It's both. So if you're doing FBA you're making a box shipment to an Amazon warehouse. That box shipment you're going to have to declare at customs. So any shipment that's out into a warehouse is going to have import VAT at UK customs charged on it that's assuming of course that your shipment has come from outside of Europe, so most people ship from China or from the US. So import VAT is going to be charged on the cost of your goods. When you put together a commercial invoice of that shipment, that's the amount of the import fees then we charge on also with freight charges and things. Joe: And then what time do they pay that import VAT, when it arrives? Alex: Yeah correct so usually depending on what shipping company you'll go for usually they'll pay it for you and invoice it back to you. But they still have to do your kind of clearance number to create a shipment. Joe: And then do they have to…then they collect that VAT when it sells and they keep it or is it a different…are we talking about two different things? The import VAT versus the VAT that's charged to the customer on the Amazon account is that two different things or it's the same? Alex: It's the same tax but it's computed in different ways. So import VAT is non-cost whereas VAT on your sales is on the retail price of your goods. And they're also kind of declared differently so with the VAT when you [inaudible 00:11:35.18] you pay that in your VAT within each quarter. You don't pay that immediately when you make the sale. Whereas the import VAT, you pay it immediately at customs. And the way that those kind of…they tie in together although they're separately you…it's within your VAT return. So you do your VAT filing every quarter. So every three months you declare the amount of sales you made and then obviously you're declaring the VAT that's due on your sales and then any import VAT that you pay you can get that refunded and it's used as a credit within your VAT return. Joe: And how easy is it within the Amazon seller account to see that money that you've collected and have it match up against what you're going to owe? Or is it not as black and white as I think it would be or is it really relatively easy? Alex: It's gotten a lot better, to be honest. And so Amazon have got a specific VAT report that you can now download so you can see the breakdown. But in terms of the actual…when your customer purchases an item they won't be able to see the breakdown of VAT and the amount that's going to the amount that's going to the revenue. Another kind of stumbling block where a few Amazon sellers fall over where they don't get the kind of proper…do the proper research before is that's that although Amazon take their fees from the money you receive in terms of your sales, the VAT is [inaudible 00:12:49.6] on the total sales price. You can't deduct Amazon fees and then the amount that you actually receive from Amazon is what you pay VAT on it's the total amount that you're costumer is paying you pay VAT on. Joe: Why is there any calculation at all that the seller does? Doesn't Amazon calculate it for you it seems like they would since they know the exact sales? Alex: Yes so, unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. You have to include it. You have to price your product you have to do your pricing matrix. If you're expecting to move due your pricing and then Amazon add the VAT on it…that's not going to happen. You have to make sure you're including them. Joe: Well then I was thinking in terms of Amazon that in your pricing you would say this is my price and then this is my VAT amount it's not done that way you just simply mark it up to 120$ if it's a 100$ item. Alex: Yeah, exactly. Mark out straight away. And you can tell Amazon with the VAT calculation service you can let them know if you've got any kind of reduce rated or zero rated items which will reflect on the actual sales report. But it's not going to affect what your actual retail price is on Amazon and what it's listed as. Joe: Okay. Let's talk about volume. Here in the States, there's a lot of question about when should I start collecting sales taxes and [inaudible 00:13:58.6] and all these different [inaudible 00:13:59.8] unfortunately not black and white yet. It's still very-very gray. I had a situation where I listed a business for sale and asked about collecting VAT and he said well I'm not…I haven't hit that threshold yet in the UK. And I think it was a UK corporation as well, can you talk about thresholds and when and if you have to collect. In different [inaudible 00:14:21.4] what if you're a UK corporation or a Hong Kong Corporation if you're someone at the LOC or corporation here in the States? Alex: Okay, so if you have a company that's incorporated anywhere apart from the UK then you have to register for VAT immediately so that's sale number one whether it's going to have 1$, 10$, or 100$ it's straight away so no threshold whatsoever, you have to be registered. If however, you have a UK company there's a threshold of 85,000 Pounds and that's in terms of a turnover over a 12 month loaning period. So if you hit that within three months you have to be registered if you hit that in 11 months you have to be registered but that's just for a UK company. So if you've got an overseas entity you have to register straight to it there's no threshold. Joe: As far as buyers go, when you and I talked about this and have conversations with buyers when they buy an Amazon account that has a European component to it there's always questions about TMI not going to be collecting during a certain period of time, how do we sign up, how do we get that registered, what kind of danger I'm going to be in. I think you said the other day in a call separately in preparation for this that you can start pricing your products right away while you register and you're not going to…you're not going to lose any grounds or sales while you're registering and then paying VAT down the road a bit. Can you talk about that again a little bit so that…and talk about it from a buyer for perspective. If say someone is buying an Amazon account and taking it over and would reach out to you to register how do they ensure that they're collecting from day one of ownership and that they're not going to…not get themselves in a little bit of trouble? Alex: Well, first of all, I want to make sure, well check whether the Amazon account has already previously been charging VAT. So what we've discussed in terms of the pricing, obviously if you're taking over an Amazon account you're buying that account. And if they haven't been including VAT in the prices, you obviously then need to…the first kind of goal is to straight away go ahead and increase everything by that 20%. Joe: Let me just jump in here for a sec. So that's a consideration when someone…this is for the buyers that are listening, correct me here Alex if I'm wrong but when someone's buying an account and the owner has UK corporation, if they're below that annual threshold of 85,000 Pounds in revenue they're not charging VAT. But if I buy it and I'm not a UK corporation I immediately have to increase the prices in order to collect VAT or leave it alone and I'm going to lose 20% of my sales to the VAT. Is that correct? Alex: That's correct. Yes, so you because you're an overseas company you have to charge VAT on your sales even though they haven't been charged previously. Joe: Okay really critical for buyers to understand that when it's a UK corporation. Okay sorry to interrupt please continue. Alex: Okay so once you have then kind of taken over the company you can actually back date a registration. So say I'm talking over…I'm buying an Amazon account under my US company from a UK company we'll stick to that example. From the 1st of May you know going through the whole process it's taken a couple weeks to actually get everything set up. When if it got to the 1st of June and you still hadn't registered you can then back date that to the 1st of May. So as soon as you know that you're going to be buying the Amazon Seller Central, I would make sure that you're charging VAT to your customers because although you may not be registered you can backdate the registration. And it means that you have to pay VAT in all sales you make previous even though at that actual moment in time you weren't registered but you're back dating registration. Joe: Okay just to summarize. Don't change a thing in terms of prices assuming it's a…let's go with back to the it's a non UK entity so that they're a US entity buying a US entity but they have a UK account to it. If they're charging 120$ now and they're collecting VAT you don't have to change prices at all. Alex: Correct. Joe: You're going to register with a firm like yours and then when it's time to pay for the first time you're already collecting those and you'll go back dating and calculate what's due. Alex: Yes, exactly. Yeah. Joe: And how often do you pay? I think you said was it quarterly? Alex: Yes quarterly so every three months yeah. Joe: And is it the same every three months? Is it the beginning of the 15th of the next quarter is when you have to pay the taxes or is it depends upon when you register? Alex: So you got one month and seven days to actually do the filing and make the payment. As you can fall into different stagger groups in VAT quarters so it's not necessarily you are January to March you can be February to April or March to May. So there's three kind of different groups of VAT filings you could fall into. Your VAT advisor should obviously let you know and would be contacting you when everything's due. In terms of the frequency yeah it is quarterly. Joe: Listen, Alex, as you can see I'm an old guy, got some gray hair here. I fell asleep in accounting class in college. I honest to God I did fell asleep, the next class came in and I think I've told the story again so I won't go to much detail. I don't like this stuff. I don't like this level of detail because of what I do for a living it's absolutely critical as an entrepreneur and know how important it is. Do I have to really…if I'm the guy that's buying an FBA business and it's got European components to it, how much do I have to really know or can I just rely on you guys to do the work for me? Alex: You can definitely rely on us to kind of advice you and let you know. But it is…I do think it's good to know kind of the basics of what you're doing. In terms of Amazon, you've got two different programs so European Fulfillment Network or Pan-European Program. Pan-European Program is great you get to move your stock around to seven different countries [inaudible 00:20:03.1] you're stock is close that your costumers time are positive reasons to do that. But if you just kind of turn that on on your Amazon Seller Central and you'd haven't done any prior research, you won't know that you then actually have to get [inaudible 00:20:17.6] registered in seven countries. You have to do filings maybe month in more than half of these countries. So everything that you do in terms of where your stock is located, where your sales are going will have an impact on your VAT registration, your VAT applications within Europe. So yes it's good you should have [inaudible 00:20:36.6] in there. We'd let you know but don't be completely ignorant to what you're doing and where your stock is going. Joe: Hey it sounds like you just touched on being able to shift from seven different countries in a penny you…there's a lot of potential savings in terms of the shipping costs and fulfillment costs that you're closer to the customer. But you talked earlier I think that if you've got your inventory in the UK or Germany in the two biggest centers that you register for VAT in those countries what if your inventory is spread around seven different countries so you're closer to the customers do you then have to register in all of those countries? Alex: You do. Yeah, as soon as your stock is in that country and you can sell in from there you have to be VAT registered in that country. So VAT is basically payable to the country and is being done close at supply. So if your stock is in a Czech Republic warehouse the place of supply VAT sale when it's going from the Czech Republic to the customer in Italy is going to be in Czech Republic. So being VAT registered in the UK is completely useless. Joe: Okay. Alex: So yeah- Joe: Very much like nexus here in the States if there's 15 Amazon centers theory is that if you have 15 different locations of inventory you have nexus in those states and that's where you collect sales taxes. Not as formal as where you are. Tell us about the biggest hurdles and biggest mistakes that you've seen people make…well that you have in been bringing people to the European countries and selling an FBA. What things are really obvious? What mistakes are really common that people can avoid? Alex: So first one is to not get registered at all. So with that threshold, quite a few people get confused that the 85,000 threshold is applicable to them; sounds really appealing and really lovely so they just don't register full stop. And then when you do get registered you just do it from today's date because [inaudible 00:22:27.3] realize but now I know that I'm going to do it from today. There's a huge amount of compliant checks going on with the revenue in the UK. They are hurdling through every single Amazon account and doing tax investigations. You know we've had to help clients where we're going all the way back to 2012 when the legislation came in that they have to register. So that's kind of six years of taxes you're going to have to go back and pay and if you don't your Amazon can get shut down. So the first kind of hurdle is actually getting registered. It's kind of what you'd think is the most simplest part just to do the application. Joe: Six years of VAT taxes you've had people in that situation? Alex: Yeah. Joe: I would think that in some situations people will just throw their hands up in the air, close the account, and walk away, and not pay the taxes. Alex: Yeah. Joe: Is that something where if you're a US resident where you're going to be found and have to pay those taxes in some way shape or form? Alex: Well you spent a nice six years building up your Amazon account. You've got all of your reviews you know you've built up that kind of brand in the UK so to kind of just throw your hands up and walk away is a big thing to do in the first place. Because even if you opened up a new Amazon account you're not going to have all of those reviews and obviously the name of you as a director of that company when you do a VAT application in the UK you have to state that information and you have to kind of give all of those details of yourself anyway and yeah so you'll have- Joe: So if you're going to walk away there walk in away forever. Alex: Yeah. Joe: Unless they cheat and get around the system somewhere. Alex: Exactly and unfortunately like in the US…so as not like in the US there's now amnesty in the UK so if you think that you're going to be negotiating and kind of say that oh I'll make sure to pay everything going forward so I'll pay a percentage you wouldn't get that and you also have to pay mass penalty as well so it do not kind of sound all that great if you haven't done the right thing to start with. Joe: Okay. So I've talked to a lot of Amazon sellers. I've seen their financials. Some people tell me you know I've done the analysis Joe and it's just not worth the effort for me to sell in Germany and Italy in France and in the UK. It's just not worth it. And I think they're completely and utterly wrong because I've seen the explosive growth. You've got 2,000 FBA clients. What country are you seeing people get the most bang for their buck? What's growing rapidly over there and what country should they pay attention to the most? Alex: UK and Germany definitely. They're just the two biggest markets. France is…does follow very closely but yeah 100% they're the biggest. Joe: Okay. And the easiest of those two might be the UK because you don't have to do translation? Alex: Yeah, exactly. And I'm shipping direct into the UK is a lot easier than it is shipping to Germany. Joe: Okay. Okay. There are a lot of concerns about money laundering. I've heard people talk about this and how complicated it is and on the German side and German FBA accounts. Am I just hearing people with sort of the chicken little mentality that the sky is falling and being really paranoid or is there something to that? Alex: I think sales in Germany in terms of my money laundering and everything is all going through Amazon. So amazon are collecting the funds and sending it to you. You don't need for some representation in Germany so payments go directly to the tax authorities whereas in France you've got to pay to your French advisor and then it goes to the tax authorities so yeah I'm not sure of what grounds. Joe: Do you even know who Chicken Little is or what that theory…okay, I see you just- Alex: No sorry. Joe: Okay. It's a cartoon character here in the States disguised- Alex: Okay [crosstalk 00:25:55.9] Joe: I used that terminology when there's so many people online talking about all the horrible things that can happen when you're own an Amazon seller account as opposed to the reality of how many great things are happening and it's changing people's lives. Alex: I think that's like when you go to a restaurant or you go anywhere, you're more likely to leave a bad review if you've had a bad experience whereas if you've had agood review you probably leave any review at all. I do notice that happen. Joe: A hundred percent, you're absolutely right. One of the things that I see often and I know you guys are AVASK tax advisor so I want to talk about that advisory part and the tax part. But one of the things that I see happen is that sometimes when sellers expand overseas they just take the easy route and they'd let Amazon handle making deposits directly to their US bank account. Whereas other people that take a little bit of time, do some research, still use World's First Bank or somebody else to be that intermediary and the money will go there at a lower exchange rate saving them tens in…tens of thousands of dollars annually. Do you find that to be the case, do you would advise folks to do that and if so what world banks do you suggest they use or look at or is that a service that you provide as well? Alex: Yeah, definitely. So if you kind of first of all from a VAT paying perspective there's…most people have to pay via wire transfer. And if you're getting kind of close to the payment deadline it can take for to five working days for that payment to clear with HMRC. They then if any payment is received late they will give you a surcharge with subtentiative liability and that can go up to 15 cents. So if you've got a currency account located here in Europe the time that it takes for the funds to actually clear and consider the payment to be made is a lot quicker. So that is a big benefit of getting a bank account over here even just a currency account. Joe: Can you define what a currency account is and how it differentiates from a bank account, please? Alex: So it has kind of all the benefits of a bank account and they're very similar but I don't think I mean don't 100% take my word for this. Obviously, it's better to speak to a currency account provider. But you can't hold large amounts of funds in that account. It's kind of like an intermediary way. You're basically doing a transfer and a transfer to your local account. You can't also do things like direct debits and buy out checks and things like that. Joe: Okay. And as I understand it just for people listening that currency account I think Amazon, for instance, may charge you if you are a…may charge you 4% currency exchange. Whereas the currency account you may only be charged 2%. And so you might be…and these are ballpark numbers so you're saving 2% on whatever amount of money is flowing through that. And if it's a million dollars, you do the math on that. If it's 10,000 $ you do the math on that. So I see a lot of people do that as well. That's what a currency account is right? Alex: Yeah. And especially with kind of making payments in Europe in terms of VAT you're going to be transferring your money from Amazon to the US and then back so the UK again so you're kind of transferring it a couple of times and to make that payment. So if you want to incorporate a UK company [inaudible 00:29:08.3] you could have get an actual high street UK bank account which is obviously a benefit of that UK company. You could just kind of grow the funds and leave it in a high street bank account in UK. Joe: Well, let's talk about that for a minute. Maybe I should have asked this at the very beginning and listeners I apologize because this is a question I get offset. You know I'm expanding to the UK, I'm expanding to Germany do I have to set up a UK business with a UK address or German company? Do I have to set those up or can I simply be a US based company selling products overseas? Can you explain, you've got 2,000 clients what are they doing? What do you recommend? Alex: You do not have to incorporate a UK company. It's the majority of people use their overseas company just because it is a lot easier and has less administration in terms of the accounts that you are drawing up each year. It's all just falling onto one company. You've got your CPA in the US. He's doing everything for you. You don't have to hire a CPA equivalent in the UK so ask accountants to do your [inaudible 00:30:03.9] paying your kind of all those tax due filings. In terms of what's actually best is really hard for me to say because it is on a case by case basis. It's you know do you want to build a brand, do you want a UK bank account, do you want to take advantage of the VAT threshold, there's so many factors. It's not one, it's one size fits all, unfortunately. Joe: Okay but the simple answer is for anybody listening if you're US based with a US bank account a US corporation, you do not have to set up a European company a UK company or in Germany that's misinformation. You don't have to do that. You can register for VAT and start collecting and paying and still have your one CPA here in the US. Is that correct? Alex: Yes. Joe: Good. Of your 2,000 plus or minus clients, what are their sizes? I mean you have you got people that are doing you know a million, two million dollars a month in revenue and those that are just doing five or 10,000 $ a month? How does it range and how does it flash out [inaudible 00:31:01.5] so we just know more about you guys. Alex: Yeah, exactly that range I don't [inaudible 00:31:05.4] information but- Joe: Maybe I should have said a half a million a month. Alex: Yeah there's a huge range there is. And that's for the UK companies and also overseas companies. You know we've got a lot of Chinese clients as well. We've got kind of a whole Chinese department [inaudible 00:31:20.6]. So yeah the range is massive. We can help you whatever size. Joe: Okay. Let's say that I'm doing a quarter of a million dollars a month here in the States and I decide I want to expand overseas and I'm going to start with UK and Germany. Aside from my inventory costs and getting the product there, what are my costs for someone like you in setting up VAT and getting registered and compliant and all that stuff? Alex: Well it depends which country you're going for. If it's just one if it's selling- Joe: Say I'm gonna start with two. I'm going to start with the UK, actually I'm just gonna go with one. Let's go with UK. Alex: Okay 150 Pound registration one up fee and then 870 Pounds a year annual compliance and that doesn't depend on turnover. So whatever your turnover is it's the same. Joe: That's pretty cheap, if I'm doing a quarter million a month, 150 Euros a couple of hundred bucks tops and then maybe a thousand US dollars a year simple as that. Who calculates what my VAT is owed each month? Is it me and my CPA or is that part of your 870 5,000- Alex: Yeah we do that. We calculate everything. And you can give us limited access to your seller central we'll go in and download all the reports directly. You don't have to be a part of that process. Your sole responsibility is to make the payment. Joe: Can I just have you make the payment for me if you have access to funds or you just tell me what to pay and I pay it? Alex: No we don't do that. We will tell you what to pay and then you have to make the payment yeah. Joe: This is…okay I'm a little [inaudible 00:32:47.2] I haven't talked to anybody about pricing but to me, this is so incredibly fair and reasonable. Are you guys…is this the standard fees? I mean this is normal cost or you're really expensive or really cheap? What's the situation? Alex: I think that's about average. We pride ourselves over the service that we give kind of in comparison to the actual fees to other providers and things. We don't get too hung up on what the actual charges are in terms of that. What I would say though, I don't want to be [inaudible 00:33:16.2] in terms of that 870. Because if your turnover was in the millions you will be breaching distance selling thresholds to all of the European countries. Joe: You'll be what? Say that again. Alex: Breaching distance selling thresholds, we haven't spoken about that so- Joe: Distance selling threshold. Alex: We'll go into that really quickly. So if you've got all of your stock in a UK company…country sorry company the UK country, UK warehouse and is going to customers in Germany. So UK from a warehouse going to a customer in Germany, if their sales go over a certain threshold to Germany you then have to register to VAT in Germany even though you're not fulfilling from that country. Joe: Okay. Alex: Makes sense? Joe: Yeah, all right. This is the part where Joe doesn't love this level of detail but thank you for that. Alex: It's just that I don't want to be misleading in terms of 870 Pounds you know whatever your turnover is because that's all UK fee. If your turnover is massive you will have an obligation to register in other countries as well. Joe: And if the turnover is massive to probably going to be shipping from those countries to save that fulfillment cost anyway. Alex: Yeah, yeah. Joe: And that's something that they would do the math on and you guys may help them with. Alex: Yeah. Joe: Okay we're running out of time. We're about 30 minutes in which is actually a bit long but this is a fascinating subject, a critical one, and I'm sure some people just they fell asleep because it's also not their favorite which is a shame. Because the number one thing people can do to make their business more valuable is get the books right. Get the details like this absolutely correct. It's going to help with the transition of the business as well as well as the value. Alex thank you so much. Any last thoughts that you can share with people listening? Whether they're buying and selling in terms of what they should do and how they should do it other than just do it and do it right. Alex: I honestly I would just say to speak to someone you know we do free consultations [inaudible 00:35:07.0] if you just give us a call then we can just run through everything with you. There's you know all though we've covered a lot in half an hour it's a lot of information, there are still some things that haven't been mentioned so yeah I would just speak so when I mention we've got all the information for before you completely just jump start in. Joe: Okay. Well, we'll make sure that all of your contact information is in the show notes. Alex: All right. Joe: But for those listening that can't see them there it's AVASK tax advisors that's A-V-A-S-K tax advisors and they do free consultations. I think it's really important as a buyer or seller if you're planning on selling over in the UK. Alex thanks so much for your time today I really appreciate it. Alex: Okay thanks. Thanks, everyone. Links: Alexandra Lyon Indirect Tax Client Manager Skype: alex.avask Email: alex@avaskgroup.com T: +1.213.330.4904; +1.213.256.0537 https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandragrant4/ https://www.avaskaccounting.co.uk/   James Shayler International VAT Technical Officer Skype: james.shayler16 Email: james@avasktax.com T: +1.213.330.4904; +1.213.256.053

Your online business is likely your MOST VALUABLE ASSET. And calculating its value is critical to setting goals and knowing your net worth. “But I never plan to sell” is something we hear often…and as entrepreneurs most of us @ QLB have said the same thing. Yet each of us has built, bought and sold our own online business…even the ones we never planned to sell. When I sold my web-based business in 2010 I was a novice. With what I know today if I could go back in time I would have planned my exit and likely sold my business for 2-3x more than I did. Instead…I waited until I was emotionally tired of the business, and sold it when the numbers were half what the once were. Not smart. Don't be like me…listen to this Podcast and implement our suggestions. You risk everything building and running your business, and you should get maximum value if/when you exit. The first step in getting max value is understanding the valuation process and being able to calculate your Seller's Discretionary Earning (SDE). Mark and I joke about falling asleep in this podcast due to some of the content…we're joking…and the material here is incredibly valuable. Episode Highlights: Learn the basic web based business valuation formula. Get to know what parts of a business swing the value range up or down. Net Income, plus Add Backs = Seller's Discretionary Earnings (SDE). What's an Add Back? Learn what are acceptable and unacceptable add backs. How add backs boost the value of your business. Using accrual accounting vs. cash for COGS…critical to understand for both buyers and sellers. Learn the typical multiple (value) ranges for an online business. Why a larger business fetches a higher multiple than a smaller ones. Inventory is SOLD SEPARATELY. If you own a physical products business, while listening to this Podcast your inventory levels will change. Including it in the list price artificially inflates the multiple of the business and results in an unstable list price. Transcription: Mark: Hey Joe how are you? Joe: I'm good Mark. How are you doing today? Mark: I'm good. Today we have an unusual guest at least for our podcast. Joe: That's what my wife calls me unusual. Mark: Well that's because you are the guest right? And in Quiet Light Podcast fashion, I'm going to have you introduce yourself to all of our listeners who have no idea who you are. Actually, they know you probably better than you may know yourself at this point because they've listened to you so much but I want to provide just a quick introduction for yourself. Joe: Wow this is how our guest feels. Now I'm on the spot. I hadn't thought that you were going to do that to me. But who am I? Self-employed since 1997, I'm kind of an old guy. Can you see that? A gray hair. 52 years old. Built box sold own online businesses, sold my last e-commerce business for a company called Quiet Light Brokerage. Jason here was my broker; you were the first guy I talked to. I loved the process in transactions so much. I reached out to you and six months later I said you know I'd love to be a broker and you said yeah let me talk to Jason. Jason thankfully said yeah talk to this guy. I came on in early 2012. You and I are now partners now. You're the majority and I'm just a small guy in the process but since then closed what approaching 30 million in total transactions might get 50 by the end of this year depending upon what happens, been around the block a little bit; lots and lots and lots of transactions of all shapes and sizes. Mark: And I think it's safe to say that you have built a name for yourself in the industry quite a bit. People know you. And I think for the first time in the history of the company we had a client you are working with and your plate was getting a little bit full so you thought about trying to hand him off to me and he said “No, I don't want to work with the founder of the company. I'd rather work with you, Joe.” And that's never happened. I'm totally happy about that though not that I don't want to be working with a client but it just goes to show the reputation that you built in the industry. Joe: Or how your represent…reputation is now destroyed. I'm not sure. Mark: Probably, now the word has gotten out. Well, he's not actually as good as we thought compared to Joe or Jason or these other guys. Well, we did a podcast episode a while ago with Chuck Mullins and we're going to be doing more of these words “Meet the Broker”. We also did one with Jason. So those you can find back in the podcast history but we obviously don't want to just talk about you and your background as fascinating as I'm sure that might be. You've got lots of years of wisdom to share with everybody. But we want to actually talk about a specific topic and I…and today we're going to talk about specifically how to calculate the value of your web based business or any web based business and what is the process that goes on behind the scenes to calculate that value. I know you gave a presentation recently, I think back in January out in California on this and it turned into a lot of questions about the actual valuation process. Like just the formula itself and how do we arrive at a certain number. So for those listening, we are going to talk you through this. But for those that are watching we will have something up on the screen a presentation that you can follow along. If you're listening in your car and you want to come back later you can find this on our YouTube Quiet Light Academy or on our podcast page at Quiet Light Brokerage. So tell us a little bit about the presentation Joe and how you kind of spent so much time just on the first half of this presentation. Joe: Yeah the presentation is really supposed to be about you know the pillars of growth. There's generally four of them and I put planning in there as a fifth. It was supposed to be about the pillars of maximum value but in order to get to that, I had to talk about how to calculate your seller's discretionary earnings in the value of your business and then it got into add backs. I really was going to do about a five minute presentation on that, about a 40 minute presentation on the rest, and then 30 minutes at Q and A. It turned into about 45 minutes of Q and A alone on calculating the value, in particular, the add backs. What was acceptable, what was not, and then the multiples and ranges depending on the net. So today in this first episode I want to touch on how to calculate the value of your business and then we'll get to the four pillars of value after that. So simply put Mark it's an easy formula. There should be no confusion about it. If you're looking at the screen there trailing 12 months seller's discretionary earnings times the multiple equals the list price of your business, simple; right? 300,000 in discretionary earnings times three you got a list price of a business of 900,000 in the key plus the landed cost of good saleable inventory on hand at the time of closing that. All of that language is really critical. Now I've been a guest on podcasts as well as you on other people's podcasts and we've talked about this formula at the beginning of the podcast and then literally 15 minutes in the host will say “So how do you calculate the value of your company again because it's simple but really-really confusing.” So I want to go through it. So we know this formula it's up to the screen again for listeners it's your seller's discretionary earnings for your trailing 12 months times A multiple equals the list price plus the inventory if you've got a physical products business. But the problem here is calculating the seller's discretionary earnings. We'll get to how to figure out what your multiple is but the most important thing is how to calculate seller's discretionary earnings. So it's up there on the screen now. It's simple if you use accounting software which is kind of important. Right, Mark? Mark: Very very very much important, yes. Joe: One of the four pillars. It's net income plus add backs equals your seller's discretionary earnings. So if you run a profit loss in Quick Books or Xero it's going to give you a net income number on the bottom. But every entrepreneur, for the most part, sometimes partnerships have better books…cleaner books. But most entrepreneurs, if you take a small salary, if you have a car that you ride after the business, you have your mobile phone as run through the business, all these things are personal in nature and then there's some one-time expenses as well. Those are considered add backs. So if you run a business and your net income is zero, that doesn't mean your business is worth zero. You could take a hundred thousand dollar salary and that's an add back as it's a personal benefit. Makes sense? Mark: Makes sense. But I'm going to back up just a minute here. Joe: Okay. Mark: Go back to the previous slide. Joe: Yup. Mark: Now where we're talking about the formula that we're using to calculate value. In that formula again, just to drill it into people's heads, it is the trailing 12 months seller's discretionary earnings which is close to a bit in most cases but not always. So we take that we times it by a multiple and that's where we come up with the asking price or the estimated value of a business. But let me ask you or to give an objection that we hear a lot from sellers when they see this. Isn't this too simple, what about all the other aspects of their business? What about the unique relationship that they have with the supplier or the upward mobility or upward scalability of the business and the trajectory of it? Isn't this just looking at the income only and not paying attention to all those other things? Joe: Yes and no. Right? And that's the answer is that we come up with a value range it's not a firm number, it's a value range and your business may swing in that range depending upon some of those things. If you've got a five year old business and you've got 30% year over year growth versus an 18-month old business, one is more valuable than the other. If you've got a patent on a particular skew that you have that prevents other people from competing with you that brings more value. If you have diversified revenue streams, you know Shopify, or your physical…your website, Amazon…different Amazon countries, Jet, Walmart, Daily Deal sites that's diversified revenue. Diversify…diversification means less risk. Less risk means higher in that multiple range. So all of those things come into play but as I say often we can't take an email list of 10,000 and say each email address is worth five dollars and do that math and add that to the value of the business. What it does simply is boost the value range of the business itself. Mark: Right. Joe: I think another way to understand this as well is that although our formula has two main parts the trailing twelve months seller's discretionary earnings in one part and in multiple being the other part, that doesn't mean that is…we're looking at two things. As we're going to go into both sides of this the multiple and the trailing twelve months are summations of bigger calculations. So when we could get to the SDE, when we're calculating that seller's discretionary earnings, we're going to go over that in this podcast episode, there's a lot involved in calculating seller's discretionary earnings just as there's a lot that goes into understanding what makes its multiples. These things kind of summarize the business and all of those intangibles as well. And I think a lot of people that do know this formula they focus a lot on the multiple. But I love the fact that what we're going to do here is we're going to unpack this seller's discretionary earnings number and see what goes into building that. Because this is actually an area where there is a lot of opportunity for optimization [inaudible 00:12:44.4]. And once you understand this aspect of it and you plan in advance sale of your business you're never to sell but someday you may wake up and want to move on, you understand the value you're going to have a much more valuable business down the road. And you know I think we were at a presentation together where someone got up and said adds are the most valuable asset that you own as your business and if you don't take care of it and you don't understand it's value you not really maximizing it; so really important. You know the key point here is Mark the trailing 12 months. It's not the trailing three, trailing six times two or anything like that; the trailing 12 always takes into account the seasonality of the business and we do every…a year over year comparison when working on that multiple valuation as well. Mark: Yeah and just one last [inaudible 00:13:32.3] on this, this is one formula that is used. It's used in this industry for online businesses which is why we use it. It is not the only way to estimate the value of a business but what I would tell anybody out there that wants to look at different valuation approaches they all essentially do the same thing. Some do it more complex than others and at the end of the day, these are predictive formulas right? I'm trying to predict what's base trying to pay. So anyways on with the next line, I took us back a little bit but I did want to get in to that a little bit. So add backs- Joe: Keep doing it I do this every day and it's simple language to me now but it is not simple, it's pretty complex. Mark: Right okay so let's get into the seller's discretionary earnings if I'm going to Quick Books because everybody I know that's listening is using Quick Books or Xero or a professional accounting software right? Everybody's using that I'm sure nobody's using Excel. Where can I go in Quick Books to calculate or see what my seller's discretionary earnings are? Joe: You can't. Mark: That is not in Quick Books? Joe: No. Mark: What is that, what is seller's discretionary earnings? Joe: It's your net income what you get out of Quick Books or Xero plus the add backs. That's what you call seller's discretionary earnings. So the big question is what's an add back? And this is why it took 45 minutes in the Q and A session that I did. So when you get to add backs and I'll go to the next slide here this is a lot of information but really an add back is something that is a personal benefit to the owner of the company or a one-time expense. Now there are always exceptions to the rule and you always want to use math and logic. But an example is owner payroll, if someone takes a payroll of 128,000 dollars to maximize their social security, that's an owner benefit and if your business is doing net income of 500,000 dollars, you add back 128 to that so now your discretionary earnings should be 628. Simple round numbers if you're doing 50 in net income and you take salary of 50 you're discretionary earnings becomes 100,000. And so if your multiple is 3X on the net income it's only 50, on discretionary earnings it's 300,000 big difference. Mark: Right. So why are we adding back these expenses? Because basically what you're doing is you're going through, you're taking a look at a company's income statement or profit and loss statement and that's something that you can generate in Quick Books or Xero or any professional accounting software. And you're going through those expenses and you're looking at some and you're saying okay we're going to add…and right now this is acting as a subtracting number to the revenue and that's how it would get to net income. But you're saying we're going to actually add that expense back so effectively take it out. Why are we taking out these expenses? Joe: They're personal in nature and they're personal benefit but you need to in your terminology taking it out you have to go with full disclosure to the buyers. They want to see every cent and so you don't go into the Quick Books accounting, you delete these personal expenses. You leave them there yet you run the report you export it to Excel and then below that net income you create an add back schedule and you go up to…okay this one's personal mail and entertainment travel or what you did a website redesign you spent 10,000 dollars three months ago. That's a one-time expense, for the most part, we could add that back. And you had an employee that did outside sales and she tried, she was only around for three months it was a 15,000 dollars expense she produced zero outside sales commissions is that an add back? We could talk about in some cases it is. But there's a lot of that today goes deep deep deep in the conversations with the owner of the business in order to get to the most important number which is a seller's discretionary earnings. Mark: All right very good. So when we're doing these add backs what we're doing is we're taking out these expenses because we want to present it to buyers and show them what the business operates from a standard starting point. So we call these discretionary expenses and we call them discretionary expenses because their expenses that the owner is spending at their discretion could be circular about it. So how do you go about or I'm going to hand back over to you, what's the next step for going through and explaining and understanding these add backs? Joe: Let's just give some example, some things that people brought up and I just pop something up on the screen you know question. Can I go to the gym every day? You go to the gym pretty often right? You try to get out and you might run it after your business is that a personal benefit you tell me? Mark: Yeah. Joe: Absolutely. So if you spend 50 dollars a month for the gym that's an add back, it's 300 dollars a year. That's a thousand dollars added to the value of your business if your multiple is over three times. Your car, your meals, and your entertainment; a big one that you and I and the entire team talked about recently was as an entrepreneur you may travel to different events. You may go to the Prosper Show that we were out in March. You may go to arket a conference. You may go to Seller Con, whatever the case might be. Can you write those things off as an add back? And we collectively said yes. Because it's a personal choice of the owner, in most cases you can learn those things online but you're going for the camaraderie and it's helping with your business in some ways but it's not a required expense that carries forward to the new owner. And that's the most important thing; it's not an expense that carries forward to a new owner. Mark: Let's talk about that trade show example because I think that's a really good example where we can get in and show how understanding what gets added back and what doesn't get added back and be somewhat nuance. So let's take two different scenarios and start with…well we'll start with Rhodium we talked about them a bit and we like the guys in Rhodium quite a bit, it's a good community. I would go to that event just for the camaraderie and the networking alone without necessarily have any business…there's always a business interest with what we do but my main reason would be to go there for the camaraderie. Looking at Quiet Light Brokerage would that be considered an add back yes or no? Probably because we're not necessarily selling our services at that point but if we display a pub con, if we get a booth display there, we're making out to contacts would you consider that an add back? Joe: Well let me tell you, let me correct you if you will on Rhodium. When we go to Rhodium and we are sponsoring the event, so it's an expense to us, we stay in hotels, we have meals, we have entertainment, and we produce revenue from it because we build relationships with those people who then come to us to list the business for sale; and that produces revenue. So when you've got an expense that produces revenue it's not an add back; simple as that. But an example of someone going to Rhodium…a real example, someone went to Rhodium recently and her husband decided to go as well, didn't go to the events but was there and then they stayed an extra week and called that their honeymoon. Went on a helicopter ride that…all sorts of different things and it was a complete business expense and write off. Absolutely a write off, she can't tie a revenue to that expense. So it's an add back. There's always math and logic with these, sometimes the buyers are not going to see it the same exact way that the seller or the broker will see it but we don't push them. It's got to be crystal clear because and full disclosure because once you're under [inaudible 00:21:01.9] we don't want any surprises. An example that is not an add back that someone brought up they said well I'm using an ad agency to do all my Facebook advertising and I pay them 15% and I spend [inaudible 00:21:14.4] a thousand dollars a month. That's 150 dollars a month expense. I'd like to add that back because my logic is if the new owner has those…that experience that doesn't need that ad agency then they're not going to have the expense so it doesn't carry forward right? Well, no it's an expense that that ad agency spends money, it produces revenue, you can't…it's a big leap of math and logic. We don't know if that particular buyer has that experience or not. If they do, good for them it's a savings on their part but we can't add it back assuming everybody has that experience. Makes sense? Mark: Yeah absolutely. I think there's a common sense factor here and that is what we want to do is we want to look at the expenses that have been used for the normal operations of the business, so expenses that's been used for normal operations they stay. The elements that are outside of normal operations of the business those are the ones that are typically going to be added back, so personal benefits, those one-time expenses that'll be outside of normal operations because it's…it is part of normal operations but it's such a rare occurrence. We want to show buyers what's their expected ROI from this business if they were to acquire it. And so you can't…you have to have a common starting around and that's where you end up getting into the add backs and taking out those discretionary expenses. Joe: Yeah. Let's talk about one more sort of not black and white example just to talk about what you said which is common sense. So I listed a business last fall and the owner of the business really literally worked five hours a week. He had a full time person doing inventory planning things of that nature customer service…doing inventory planning and design and then he had someone that he had do customer service. That someone that he had do customer service was his brother and he paid him 30 dollars an hour for customer service work. The customer service work involved canned responses and canned responses and email canned responses in a pop up chat. He was grossly overpaid doing that kind of work, 30 dollars an hour. My advice at the time and you laughed at me and called me a Scrooge at one point [inaudible 00:23:24.5] was fire your brother. Okay, you're paying him way too much. I think the total amount that he might have been paying him was roughly 30,000 dollars a year. When in reality he was paying him too much money was paying him for hours that he didn't really work. So he should have fired his brother, hired somebody with half the cost, it made up the difference of 15,000. Let six months pass and he would have…his business when it was listed at 3 ½, so it would have 3 ½ times 15,000 dollars which would have been added to list price. He wasn't willing to be a Scrooge because that was just before the holidays. He didn't fire his brother. So we went with math and logic and we presented an adjustment in the add backs accounting for his brother going away. Mark: Okay. Joe: It wasn't ideal, it was a little gray but the math and the logic made sense and it worked. We had multiple offers under LOI closed with no issues with that add back mostly because it was right there in black and white and detail that talked about prior to the LOI. Mark: Right. So it does work the other way as well too. I've actually had the opposite scenario where somebody had a bunch of friends and family helping out in their business and they were grossly underpaid because they were doing favors. And he was like the Uncle Vido or someone like that was doing the books for almost no money whatsoever. And in that case would go the other direction and we would actually inject a cost into that P and L that will basically say hey they're here in a sweet heart rate that's not going to continue we need to see what this role is important but necessary and here's a pretty reasonable market rate for math and logic once again. Joe: Yeah, it's math and logic in there as well. Okay, I have a look at our time here Mark and where we are but a really really important thing for physical product owners is in the valuation of the business is the thing that put me to sleep in college. Literally, I fell asleep in the classroom and the new students came in and I was asleep in a classroom. It's accounting. Okay if you're driving pop a couple of no doze for this part but it is so vastly critical and this is critical for buyers and sellers. For buyers listen to this closely because if you find a broker that lists something that is growing like crazy, physical products business and they don't do accrual accounting or flipped it to accrual, you're getting that business at a discount because it should be accrual. When it's accrual the business is…it's the right way to do it first of all but the discretionary earnings is higher and the business is more valuable. Mark: Hold on accrual? What are you talking about here…we're just doing something excel at this point. So what is accrual and why is it so important? Joe: You're selling a widget, so let's say you're selling a widget for 10 dollars and your landed cost of goods sold on that widget is two dollars, 20% landed at your 3PL at your Amazon FDA. That's a cost of goods sold of 20% that…that's accrual so that when you sell that widget in the month of June that cost for that widget is applied to that month of June, so it's 20%. So your cost of goods sold…landed cost of goods sold shouldn't be roughly the same every month, month in and month out when it's accrual. If it's cash you're going to see that 20% go to 60%, 102% down to zero back up again to be all over and what it's going to look like on the bottom line discretionary earnings is that your earnings are all over the place; up and down, up and down and it's uncomfortable for buyers. The way that they look at these things and the way that we train them to look at these things is discretionary earnings and then have some working capital for inventory. When you purchase inventory moving up to 4th quarter, if you are cash basis and you're wrapping up inventory and normally you've got 50,000 dollars' worth of inventory but all of a sudden your stroking checks and you've got cash out of the 150,000 dollars that depresses your net income and your discretionary earnings and the value of your business if it's presented on a cash basis accounting. Does that make a little bit of more sense and not put you to sleep? Mark: Yeah, that does make more sense and what I would…the way I've explained it to some people as well is that when you move to accrual basis accounting it's kind of like going from a two dimensional picture to a three dimensional picture because it looks at your business and where its value is in all places. So instead of just taking cash out when as you said your 4th quarter you're stroking checks because you've got to stock up that inventory you're expecting a busy Christmas season so you're writing all sorts of checks out. Instead of saying okay I've just lost that much value of business, no you haven't lost much value you're just taking cash and converted it over to inventory. So accrual says hey you still have value in your business because you have all those inventory, you just exchanged cash for inventory. And then when you sell that product now you recognize the expense of that individual item. Joe: That's the key when you sell that product that's when you recognize the expense. And a good bookkeeper can set it up for you. And trust me if you spend a little bit of money a couple hundred, 300, 400 dollars a month on a good book keeper you will make that back multiple times over in the sale of your business because buyers will have more confidence. Brokers will be able to do a better valuation with less complexities and you won't pull your hair out during the valuation process. And I've seen people do that it's really-really hard to go back and do it. We do it more often than not we do it right Mark? We have to go back and flip it from cash to accrual then and I want to show you how to do that. So right now up on the screen, I've got a sample profit and loss station, a sample statement. Net income you can see there we're going to call it 425,000 dollars. Again, we've got an add back schedule below it for those listening here is some of the add backs; we've got interest expense that they had a loan, legal and professional fees for a patent for example or a trademark those are one-time expenses, meals, and entertainment, office expenses you work from home but you've got your kids' school supplies that you [inaudible 00:29:33.0] your business, your own payroll and I've got vehicle expenses here. So we take that 425,000 in net income plus the add backs on 120 and we're not at 545,000 in change in terms of discretionary earnings. So again you just say a three time multiple we added 360,000 in value to this business just for the add backs. But when you look at this gray line in the cost of goods sold the cost of goods sold as a percentage of total income goes as high as 97% and as low as 5%. It's all over the place. In the next screen, I'm going to flip it down so we know that that's cash because it's all over the place so here we flipped it from cash to accrual. Mark: So this is the same company? Joe: The same company this is the same exact P and L but within the Excel spreadsheet there was exported from Quick Books or Xero or in some cases produced, we've flipped the cash to accrual on the total cost of goods sold line only. We don't change those numbers in the cost of goods sold expenses the only thing that's changed is that total cost of goods sold line. You see sometimes those total doesn't add up to the individual things it's because we flipped it to accrual and we work with a formula on that. So there's more than one way to do almost anything but we work with the seller on calculating new accrual and we'll go into that in a minute but the key difference is when you look at this we went from cash to we were at 425,000 in net income right? Now we've flipped to accrual you look at that net income line that's jumped from 425 to 485,000 so we've added 60,000 dollars in discretionary earnings just by flipping it to accrual. Let me repeat that for those that are almost asleep because we're talking about accounting. By not producing any more revenue, by not hustling any harder, by not renegotiating cost of goods, by not doing anything other than good accounting we've increased the net income from 425 to 485. By you know proper accounting. Mark: [inaudible 00:31:45.6] the question is this dishonest in any way? Joe: No. It's the absolute right way to do it. It's standard acceptable accounting principles. The other way is the ready fire aim approach that unfortunately most of us take, me included because I didn't know any about Quick Books or accounting, I fell asleep in class, I never had a bookkeeper. This is actually the right way to do it. Mark: All right so that [inaudible 00:32:09.8] both cash and accrual are acceptable ways of filing your taxes and doing books. That gap does recognize both, however, accrual for a product space business is going to be more accurate and more thorough and so what you're saying is that the cash basis actually undervalues the business when you record your books in cash basis. Joe: If the business is growing rapidly absolutely because they're taking almost every expendable dollar that they have and putting it back in inventory. So an example is you know you and I talk about this valuation a lot, I had a client that went to every other brokerage firm. They really needed to sell their business because they had a house under contract contingent upon sale of their business. It was for an income they lived in New Zealand they had an Amazon US Business. They had to sell the business [inaudible 00:32:58.7] tough situation to be and a foolish situation to be in. They went to…got different valuations and every broker is trying to push that multiple high to help them achieve their goals. Too high for that 18-month old business, [inaudible 00:33:13.4] we did the proper accounting flipped, we did it in accrual. I was able to push that multiples down and other brokers like 3 ½ it was never going to happen. We were able to push it down to about 2.7 yet the value of their business was a couple hundred thousand dollars higher. So we had a higher value and a lower multiple more attractive to the seller more attractive to buyer. We had a buyer that was really good at accounting, really good entrepreneur, fully understood it, bought it, went through to do diligence, really happy. Both buyer and seller happy. So there's just huge value. Mark: This is actually really good I guess pro tip for people buying as well. If you come across an opportunity that's now with Quiet Light because we are going to almost always be pushing our clients simply in order to accrual in pretty much every circumstance for an e-commerce business. But if you come across an opportunity as a buyer and you see cash based books for an e-commerce business, take a look at the trend of the business. If that business is growing as you point out Joe the net…then the cash basis accounting is going to undervalue the business. On the other hand, though if that business is shrinking and they are not adding new inventory, they are going to have inflated or apparently inflated margins because they've stopped by an inventory, they've stopped recording expenses and you could actually end up over paying for a business if it's on the decline. So that cash basis accounting just for a product based business it's unreliable because of the fact that it doesn't take into account when the expense of the item when it's sold and so you really have to pay attention to the other aspects of the business such as this trend. Joe: Absolutely and you know cash basis accounting is okay for SaaS business and things that don't have accounts receivable…things of that nature. But for a physical products business accrual is the way to go. Buyers will be aware if it's cash especially as Mark said if it's declining buyers get excited. And it's growing unlike crazy as cash basis you buy it hold it for a year or two and then you do accrual based accounting and your value is instantly higher. So in this example again to move things along we've added 60,000 in discretionary earnings if by example we were at a three time multiple that's 120,000 dollars…I'm sorry 180,000 dollars added to the value of the business by not selling a single widget more. Really [inaudible 00:35:34.3] so how do you calculate accrual? It's really complicated, to be honest with you and you've got to have a good history and records to do it. Again, start with a good goalkeeper but the formula is simple beginning inventory plus purchases minus ending inventory that equals your cost of goods sold. And this should all be landed and this is ideally on a monthly basis. Now you can do it, right? If you haven't done it yet you can't do it. So what you got to do is go back in history and figure out what your cost of goods sold are with different formulations and calculations and it's different for each client that I work with. Absolutely doable I get two listings in the last two months where we had to do that and couldn't do this. I'll be honest with you most of the times we can't get to this. It's ideal if we can but more often than not we have to go with another method which is take all of those purchases take all of the shipping cost average out the shipping cost times the number of units that your shipping…it's complicated and I can't tell you exactly how it is because every situation is different. But that's the formula. The end result again when you put to accrual is a higher value. Again going back quick review before we put too many people to sleep with this your most valuable asset is more than likely your business. You should know what the value is within a certain range 10% I hope and then the question is okay I know how to calculate seller's discretionary earnings, the final thing is what kind of multiple range do I put on it? And what I've got here up on the screen is for physical products businesses and I'll talk about content businesses and SaaS businesses and so on so forth as well. So a larger business is more valuable and in what ways Mark? Mark: Large businesses are more valuable. And at today's podcast episode that actually launched today was on that very topic is buying big better than buying small, I'll go back and [inaudible 00:37:27.9] that one fun episode. Larger businesses are more valuable because they are more stable. You have more resources available to hire out work or to reinvest in the business. So generally speaking businesses that have higher earnings and higher revenues end up getting a multiple boost just because they are more stable and have more room for or investing in and changing the format of the business. Joe: Right and the other thing is odds are we've been around a little bit longer too or they have multiple streams of revenue balanced less…essentially they are less risky therefore they're worth more. So in the examples, I've got up on the screen and we'll talk about [inaudible 00:38:10.6] for listeners. If you have seller's discretionary earnings on a physical products business of less than 700,000 you're going to be in the 2 and I'm going to do a broad range 2 ½ to 3 ½ multiple range. So if your business is 100,000 dollars in discretionary earnings, the value big range 250 to 350 plus the landed cost of good saleable inventory on hand at the time of closing. Again as Mark said at the beginning we take all of those other factors, how many streams of revenue do you have. do you have any patents, how do you launch new products, do you have a big social media following that proves that your margins are done without discounts or advertising. All of those things come into play and could push a multiple higher or push it lower even below this 2 ½ times in the even when we do that client interview we do the valuation process, let's say that you have a patent infringement issue and it's still something that's scary and hanging out there. That might push the value down a little bit. Or if you're trends are going down that's definitely going to push the value down a little bit. So again, less than 700 in discretionary earnings 2 ½ to 3 times plus the landed cost of good saleable inventory on hand at the time of closing. When you get that bigger more valuable business with discretionary earnings that are north of 700 and again these are great numbers by the way again nothing here is in black and white but the value is going to be higher. Because it's more established, less risk that somebody is going to pay more because their money safer. That value range is going to jump instead of 2 ½ to 3 ½ you're going to go from 3 ½ to 4 ½ sometimes possibly higher. Mark: And if anyone is listening to this a few years down the road and have dug back in the Quiet Light Podcast archives and are now listening up. Multiples do change over the years as well. So this is where the market is at today and always check with us to see where multiples are if you're listening to this at a different time. Joe: Got it. SAS businesses. SAS businesses is in the last 12 months good ones that are trending well that have a reasonable [inaudible 00:40:14.7] and have a good handle on the metrics, I'm going to talk about that in the next episode, you're in the four to five time range. Content sites again and much of the same dollar ranges here. Content sites probably 2 ½ to 3 ½ times unless you're much larger. I've got one with multiple offers that's between four and five times because of the size of it and because of the growth. It's discretionary earnings are well north of a million dollars. Affiliate sites, same thing. The real separator here is I think the SaaS business because it's generally B2B recruiting revenue and the value is a generally higher at least felt…buyers feel as though they're worth more. Buyers are usually right no matter what Mark and I and the seller thinks. Buyers [inaudible 00:41:03.1]. Mark: And we're going to be doing another episode of talking about multiples and how do you determine the multiple of your business because that's a pretty complex valuation as well. Where there's literally dozens of factors I know I wrote a guide…I think it's on the website right now called The Ultimate Guide to Website Value. I wrote it three years ago. I think maybe four people have read the whole thing because it's long. It was around 30,000 words of all the different things that can really impact the value of a website. I should probably go back and update that because I'm sure there's some things in there that needed to be updated now, a few years later. But there are a lot of things that can influence that multiple up or down. Joe: Let's leave the listeners with this Mark and it's something that we talked about a little bit. If you look at your own values and your own assets, anybody that's listening and you own a business, think about the different things that you own: your bank account, your retirement portfolio, your house, your car. Do you know what the values of those are plus or minus 10%? You probably do but do you know the value of your business plus or minus 10%? You probably don't. Hopefully, this podcast will help a great deal. But even with all the information we've shared you really can't figure it out until you do a proper add back schedule and do all those details. I've had calls, we've had lengthy calls with buyers, we've gone through it all and if I…yeah on my values about 850 and then we get to P and L it turns out their value is at 1.2, really important to get the details down. Get a handle on it even if you don't plan to sell the business either ever or six or 12 or 18 months down the road. Mark: Very good well if you made it to the end of the episode here congratulations and we really appreciate you while listening in. I'd be interested in hearing feedback what do you think about episodes like this where it's Joe and I or maybe we'd bring Jason on or Chuck on again and we delve deep into some of the things that we do on a day to day basis. Are these helpful for you? Do you like them? Did I put you to sleep? Do they…are they things that you would want us to do more of? Let me know send me an email mark@quietlightbrokerage.com if you absolutely hate it then email Joe at joe@quietlightbrokerage.com. So anything left to…anything more to say here? Joe: No, that's it. It's a lot of information it's a bit overwhelming and just digest it. We'll have a link to this presentation in the show notes so people can download it. You'll get a little summary video of it as well that we can share [inaudible 00:43:32.2] can go through their own process. And then one more thing I guess yes I do have something. I have a client recently that I've been talking to for 18 months and you know I said: “What's the one takeaway after all we've gone through?” And she said “More than anything else if I could convey and share something with people that are trying to understand the value of the business and might sell it is don't be afraid to talk to a broker, get a valuation, figure out those things that you need to fix so that 12, 18 months down the road, the business is more valuable and you're prepared.” That's the key thing. Mark: Absolutely we do have resources on the site, articles that break down how to do a seller's discretionary earnings calculation. We'll link to those in the podcast show notes. So if you want to get deeper and couldn't follow along everything in this episode there are some articles that you can refer to which will be easy to follow as well. so thanks for listening and we will be talking again in a week. Links: PDF Version – How to Calculate the Value of Your Business

  Mark S A Smith is the author of 13 popular books and sales guides and has authored more than 400 magazine articles. He is a genuine Guerrilla Marketing guru, co-authoring three books with Jay Conrad Levinson, and is a certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach.   A renaissance man with many talents, Mark is passionate about leadership, team building, teamwork, sales, and marketing. For over twenty years Mark has served as a strategic advisor to corporate leaders and executives all over the world who must develop the best way to bring in the right strategies for successful growth and sustainability.   What makes him different is he brings a holistic view of the business instead of solely focusing on one aspect and ignoring the impact of decisions on the rest of the organization   How to Get the Most Out of 2018 Tapping into the top five trends to grow your nonprofit: Omnichannel – allow members to consume you anywhere and every way How the growing economy creates monetary opportunities The impact of higher unemployment on your volunteer force and how to pivot to get all you need New leadership demands: what's changing and how to stay out front Turning unrest into peace: how to divorce your organization from the media's promotion of outrage Interview Transcript   Hugh Ballou: Greetings, it's Hugh Ballou and Russell Dennis on this version of The Nonprofit Exchange. A dear friend who I see too rarely, we have been talking virtually but now we are together. I said, Why don't we talk about some things that are on your radar?” Mark S. A. Smith, welcome to The Nonprofit Exchange. Mark S. A. Smith: Such a delight to be here. Thank you, Hugh. Hello, Russell. Hello, friends on Facebook. Welcome. We have a lot of interesting things to talk about because 2018 is going to be an astounding year. You might be listening to this in 2020 or 2024. But you know something? What we are talking about today will probably still be issues even in the next five to ten years. Or opportunities, as the case may be. Hugh: We record messages that are timeless. But you're right. We are turning the page into 2018 as we are recording this. If you are a regular listener, you know you can go to thenonprofitexchange.org and see the video versions of these. But you can go to iTunes and download the audio there. Mark, you are in a series of really powerful interviews we have done over three years. We are starting our fourth year of these great interviews. What we endeavor to do more often than not is find people that have business expertise. Let's install that particular business expertise into the charity. It might be a church, a synagogue, a membership organization, or a community foundation, but it's some sort of philanthropic work that we're doing. Before we get into the subject matter, which I'm going to hold off in giving people a title, tell people a little bit about Mark Smith and why you are able to talk about this topic today. Mark: I help people sell complex, expensive, high-consideration things as fast as humanly possible. I am an electrical engineer; therefore, I am a systems thinker. I have recovered. I don't sell or do engineering very much, but I do help people sell complex things. That is where you have multiple people involved in making the decision. Each person has a different view of what creates value and what we need to do. Sounds an awful lot like this nation, doesn't it? Hugh: Yeah. Mark: How do you round up consensus? How do you have people go the same way? Just like when you're working with nonprofits, herding cats is what we have to do. It's the same thing when you have to sell expensive technology. What I'm doing here is applying all the things I have learned about selling very expensive things to the world of nonprofits. It's absolutely identical. I, too, do work with a nonprofit. I am on a board here in Las Vegas where I live. I've been involved in nonprofits throughout my life. I understand, and I am delighted to share with you my business acumen. What I like to tell people is a nonprofit is not a business plan; it's a tax status. Hugh: That's not a philosophy, no. You're very active on social media, especially Twitter. You put out little short memes with a few words on it. I gotta tell you, they are very thought-provoking. They help me focus on what's important. Mark: I am honored that that happens. Thank you. Hugh: There has been this coincidence of you tweeting on the things we are actually talking about. Sometimes simultaneously. I find that to be fascinating. Mark: The issues are the same. Whether it's nonprofits or the for-profit world, the issues we face are frankly identical. Hugh: I laugh when business leaders say, “That might work in the church.” Mark: Or the other side is that the religious leaders say, “That might work in business, but it won't work in the church.” Hugh: If it's true anywhere, it's true everywhere. Mark: We're humans working with humans. Hugh: I think we've stalled long enough in telling people what the topic is. What is the topic? Russell wants to know. Mark: All right, Russell. You're ready? Today's topic is how to get the most out of this year, which happens to be 2018. We are going to talk about five trends that are going on that you need to know about as the leader of your nonprofit to stay ahead of the game, to grow, and to prosper heading forward. Some of the things we are going to talk about are technology, and some of the things we are going to talk about are psychology. Hugh: Say that last sentence again. That caught me off guard. Mark: Don't you know I do that to you? And you do the same to me when you're speaking. Some of the things we are going to talk about are technology, understanding the technology that nonprofits have to be embracing and keeping track of and staying up with. Some of it happens to be psychology, what is happening in the general zeitgeist of the world and how they impact nonprofits. Whether you think they do or not, they do. Your constituents, your members, your flock all are impacted by what they see in the news and what they experience with retail and what happens in the business world. They carry those attitudes and insights into your organization, whether you want them to or not. We have to manage that. We have to deal with it. We have to capitalize whenever possible or perhaps even neutralize it in some cases. That is what I mean by psychology. Hugh: Absolutely. I think we're guilty in any discipline. I know in the church, I have had people say to somebody, “You're so heavily minded you're no earthly good.” We all live in the reality of today. I can say that I served the church for 40 years and probably got to that space myself. I put in very carefully numbered bullet points. I noticed that I numbered them wrong. Our first one is, Omnichannel. Speak about that. Tell us what that means. Mark: Listener, have you ever had the situation where you were multi-tasking, perhaps watching television and checking your telephone for messages or tweets, or maybe even reading the news story you are watching on TV simultaneously to see what if you were seeing on TV made sense to other news channels? That's omnichannels, my friend. The reality is we are multi-screening. You are getting information from multiple locations at all times in all ways. What this means to nonprofits is you have to be able to bring your message, bring your service to your constituents in every way that they consume information. Just by a show of hands, who here has for your organization—I see ten fingers there, well, eight fingers and two thumbs. Sometimes I am just all thumbs. Do you have an app? Do you have the opportunity of having your constituents consume your services, your podcasts, your sermons via a dedicated app that would alert them when something new becomes available? Are you using the technology to your benefit? Now if you're doing that, fantastic. Just stay with it. You have to understand we live in an omnichannel world. We are consuming many things in many different ways. Mobile apps, partner locations, maybe figuring out other locations for people to access your services. Where do your constituents go that you can have a kiosk or a corner or something like that where people can plug in, enjoy, take advantage of, be reminded of, contribute to, consume whatever it is you are bringing to the marketplace? Since I don't know what your nonprofit is, we are spraying and hoping you will catch a couple of ideas here. The concept here is you need to be everywhere that your people are every time you possibly can be. The reality is if you are a church, people are carrying around a sermon in a box in their mobile device. Chunk things up into five-minute pieces to give them a chance to remind, refresh, and renew. If you are supplying educational elements, keep pushing out opportunities for people to learn and to refresh. If you're supplying the opportunity for people to volunteer, if they are standing in line or waiting at a traffic light and they can pull out their mobile device and contribute something in some sort of thought-provoking way, let them do so. That is what we mean by omnichannel. Take advantage of that any way you possibly can. Hugh: You said something about five-minute segments. Remind, refresh, and renew. Talk more about that. Mark: What I am finding is short segments of content that provoke people. Just like when you read something from me on Twitter, you're telling me that I am inspiring you, I am provoking some thoughts, I am causing you to think about new things, maybe connect some new dots. The bulk of those tweets are 140 characters. There are some that run a little bit longer thanks to Twitter's new length limits, but it's a very short little boom. It's a little thought bomb that goes off in your brain. As a nonprofit, most of us are in business to inspire, to have people live a better life, to improve their condition, to stay on target, to stay on task, to stay on the straight and narrow. That requires constant reminders. Another thing to keep in mind is if you are a church or an organization where people come to see you once a week or once a month, it's not enough. They are bombarded by all these other messages and all these other counter-messages that they may not wish to consume. Our job is to remind them there is another way of thinking. There is another opportunity. There is better potential for them that they have already volunteered to be a part of. If we can chunk our messages from a text standpoint, an audio standpoint, or a short video standpoint to refresh, renew, and remind themselves there is a reason why those of us who have a spiritual practice, it's a daily practice if not hourly. Hugh: Yes. Oh yes. That is so important. I think the biggest flaw I see in organizations is when people say, “They should know better because we told them that,” but they told them that in 1903, and you have repeated it since then. Mark: Here's the problem, friends. You may have told them that, but the other side has told them their viewpoint a thousand times since the last time you said it. Hugh: Omnichannel. When I first saw that, I thought it was a piece of software. Mark: It's a concept. Hugh: Russell is taking good notes. Do you want to weigh in on this omnichannel touchpoint? Mark, what you're doing is top of mind marketing, isn't it? Mark: Yes. Let's just keep reminding them what they have asked us to remind them of. Hugh: Russell? He's been very polite. Mark: He's been quiet. He's been smiling. He is giving me thumbs up. He is also muted. Russell Dennis: Not anymore. We can quickly fix that. Greetings and salutations, Mark. Good to see you again. It's been a while. I was just typing that when you're out there in multiple places, where your people are, and that's the important thing to figure out is where your people are and getting out there and getting in front of them. We are in a short attention span society. If you're not out there online, you're left behind. It's not a fad. It's not a trend. It's here to stay. Hugh: I think it's also in person. Where do your people hang out? I am hearing omnichannel as virtual as well as live. Mark: Absolutely. Physical, too. It has to do with digital signage for example. Digital signage is omnichannel. Most of us have digital signage in our houses of worship. As I pointed out, as we talked about, where are they? Let's see if we can put a digital sign in the places our people hang out to remind them of the messages they have agreed to consume. Hugh: Great. We are sitting at the top of 2018. Our market has been growing. There are over 100 companies that announced employee dividends and financial expansion of programs since the tax bill passed at the end of 2017. There are all kinds of energy and economy. Talk about how that benefits the nonprofit sector. Mark: We are sitting at the highest consumer satisfaction index of all time. I think it's for a number of reasons. One is that a lot of people are feeling good about themselves again. A lot of them have hope for the future. A lot of them feel that in spite of the noise we hear on the mainstream news on a regular basis, locally, the communities are doing well. More people have jobs. More people are feeling good about what's possible. Certainly my business has been substantially increased. As you pointed out, yours has, too. A big part of it is that my customers are looking forward to growth and therefore investing in opportunities to grow. As a nonprofit, you can plug into this feeling of goodness and growth, asking for more than you could ask for in the past. Requesting more. Asking people to donate more for perhaps more time, for perhaps a higher level of investment of themselves into the organization. When people are feeling good, they say yes to opportunities because it doesn't feel like it's so heavy. Doesn't feel like it's such a burden. When we feel depressed, it's very hard for people to feel good about themselves. Hugh: What makes people say yes? I still have lots of- Mark: What a great question! I'm so glad you asked it. What makes people say yes is because your request is in alignment with their personal identity. Hugh: Whoa. Whoa. Hey, Russ. What does that trigger with you? Russell: It's everything. Everything revolves around relationships now. People are starting to figure that out. It doesn't matter what business you're in. Now you have to build relationships. In the old days, you could just blurt out at people. There were very few places for them to get a message. They were fed by three big networks messages. Think about Henry Ford when he talked about the Model T. They can have any car they want as long as it's black. Now people have choices. They have different avenues for expression, and they have short attention spans, so you have to resonate with people because they will look for another cause if they feel like they're not being romanced, so to say. You have to keep that connection some type of way, keep thanking them, showing the impact they are making, and staying with it. People change. There are so many different causes that they can get involved with now. It's like anything else to maintain that brand loyalty as it were. You have to connect with your tribe. People want a sense of connection and a sense of accomplishment. Younger people coming into the work force want to do work that matters. Hugh: Mark, I pinged Russell because many times in the interviews, he helps us remember that whether you are creating board members or talking to donors, we have to think about what it is they want, what they are interested in, what they want to achieve. There is a messaging piece that I was honing in on here. How do we form our message so that we do connect with that like-minded person? Mark: Let's get back to the concept of personal identity. People buy things to support their identity or they buy things or engage in things to help them transform their identity into a new place that they desire to be. It's a really important concept because all sales, all marketing, all recruiting, all conversion happens when a person sees their identity as that which you are offering as a nonprofit. That transformation for a lot of people is where we're heading. As people grow, they transform. As young people go from high school to college, they are transforming. As they go from college into the workforce, they are transforming. That personal identity, how you view yourself and how you want to be viewed by—Russell, you said it right on—tribe, we choose our tribe, and the choices that we make determine our tribe. In a model I generated, those tribe decisions are mission-critical. The reason why is because if you make the wrong choices, the people who you might like may just stop calling you back. They may quit inviting you out. They might leave you on your own. That is where that personal identity comes into play. Identity happens way more than people realize. A great example of that is sports. Russell, do you consider yourself a sports fan? Russell: I love it. Mark: Do you have a team? Russell: Believe it or not, I root for the Cleveland Browns. Mark: Why the hell would an intelligent man like you root for such a losing team when a logical person would pick a winning team to root for? Russell: I grew up there. Mark: That's it. Yes! Russell: I haven't lived there in almost 40 years, but home is home. Mark: It's part of your core identity. It is so deeply ingrained in your core identity that I couldn't get you to wear a piece of the opposing team's clothing even if I paid you. That's the power of identity. When you as a nonprofit can tap into that identity, that is where you really get that brand experience where people refuse to go anywhere else. But you have to keep reinforcing that identity. You have to make sure that the identity you're offering continues to shift in the proper direction over time. In a growing economy, people have the opportunity of transforming that identity. That is really where we're going with this #2 point. It gives you a chance to perhaps recruit people, to bring people in that you haven't been able to before because they couldn't afford it, they didn't have the bandwidth or the money. Now they do. Get very clear. A definitive passionate, audience that wants to be recognized or grow their identity can help you as an organization grow. Get really clear. Get really sharp about this. It will have a massive impact for you in 2018. Cool? Hugh: Absolutely. You talked about unemployment. The numbers show the unemployment figures at the end of 2017 were the lowest they've been in forever. But there are still people who are underemployed. They are not unemployed. Mark: In fact, those underemployed people are the ones who are perfect for volunteers. The reason why is as humans, we like to feel we are making a difference. Russell, you pointed that out in your last comments. We really want to feel we are doing good, like we are making a difference. When we are underemployed, we don't have that feeling that we are living up to our potential. People in that environment can be invited to fulfill that in a nonprofit volunteer situation. Whether it's an executive who has moved to a lower position, who needs to give back and still provide that strategic input, that is the perfect person to capture for example. Or perhaps the stay at home mom who went back to work because her kids are out of the house, and as she enters back in, she doesn't go back in at the top level where she started. She comes in at a lower level, and she needs to fill that gap of feeling good about herself until she can be promoted up to that new level. That is the opportunity that you as a nonprofit can fill. Hugh: You spoke earlier about working with a local nonprofit in Las Vegas where you live. Why did you say yes to that? Mark: For two reasons. One is that I have an expertise that the association can use. I can benefit the association in quite a few different ways because of my deep history in business and as a professional. And that association also allows me, it feeds me in that I get to be with other people whose future is my history. And so I get a chance to give back because if I rewind my life back 30 years, I was the person who is being served by the mentor who I get to be today. Hugh: So your input is important to shaping the future of their work. Mark: And they have a desire to have a similar experience that I had. When we are looking for a mentor—this is probably one of the best pieces of advice I've had in my life—look for somebody whose history is your future. They can help you plot the path. While your paths will be slightly different, the fundamentals won't be that far off. Hugh: Russell, did you capture that last comment? Russell: I did not. I was in the process of typing that. I don't type very quickly. This is interesting because what we are talking about, there are three things that a nonprofit needs: time, talent, and treasure. We get obsessed with the money and forget about time and talent. Especially with people who are underemployed, people have different motivations for joining you. When you are clear about what it is you are trying to do and you have inventoried all of your assets, which include time, talent, skills, knowledge, abilities, those are all assets to the nonprofit. When you can leverage that and get other people, it's like money in the bank because you go out, build relationships, get sponsors for media, cash sponsors, you go out and get people to contribute pro bono services, you bring students in, you bring professional firms. There is a number of different ways to approach getting pro bono talent. When you are clear on who you are and what you need, you can offer these folks some time. Maybe they need to build their portfolio. Maybe they are tried and just want to give back. Maybe they are entering the workforce. Maybe they are underemployed and want to have some projects and creations of their own. You can set that table. When you are clear on what it is that people want, then they will come support you and always keep evaluating, putting challenges out there for them to stretch and grow and invest in their learning. They have reasons to stick with you in that case. Mark: Right on. I think if you get the time and talent right, the treasure follows automatically. The reason why is what is money? It is a reward for doing what others want. It's canned labor. That's another way of looking at it. Russell: Canned labor, but meaningful labor. It's not standing at a copy machine all day or making coffee. It's actually creating things. Building your social media strategy, writing policies, it's endless the number of things you can find volunteers to do that they can help support the organization with. Yes, even fundraising. The sky's the limit. It's up to your own creativity and finding out what moves people. If you don't have any money, you probably have time and talent. Mark: They probably know people. There is also ways of converting some of that talent and some of that time into treasure. If you think about it, that's what a business does. It converts time and talent into treasure. As a nonprofit, you can do exactly the same thing. Your tax status permits that to happen. Hugh: Money is also reward for providing value. Russell: Another way to keep score. Mark: That's universally agreed upon. Hugh: Back to where we were talking at the beginning of this interview about installing sound business principles into the charity. I am using charity purposefully here. Sometimes we use the word “nonprofit,” which spins us into this scarcity thinking that we can't generate a profit. But the profit is what pays for the philanthropic work of the organization. Like you said, it's not a business plan. It's not a philosophy. It's a tax classification. It's really tax exempt work. We are getting a lot of useful content today about leveraging what is around us instead of getting stuck in our hole, our silo. You ready to move to the next one? Mark: Let's do it. I think we have beaten that topic up a little bit. I like it. Hugh: #3 is New Leadership Demands. What is changing, and how do we stay out front? I remember years ago people were hiring the motivational speaker. Give me rah, rah. Then people left the room, and it was over. People aren't hiring motivational speakers. They are hiring people with solid, executable content. What has changed in the leadership segment? What are you thinking about? Mark: What I see is the informational speaker and the inspirational speaker versus motivational speaker. Let's talk about that, and then we will go on to the topic of what's changing with leadership. The difference between a motivational speaker and an inspirational speaker is very simple. If we go back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which I see as a fundamental to everything we do, both within the charitable sector as well as the business sector, those two lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy is physical needs and then security. Within those two levels, you can motivate people. It's basically a pain-based motivation. Once we get to that next level, where you have love and self-esteem and move up to self-actualization, that is where inspiration comes into play. If people are in pain, you have to motivate them. If people are out of pain, then you can inspire them. Don't try to be inspirational when people are hungry and tired and scared. That doesn't work. It's just frustrating. They will nod their heads and do what they need to do to get the hell out of your view so they can go get some food or drink or get warm or whatever. We have to help people to the third level of Maslow because we can start to inspire them. With that in mind, from a leadership standpoint, understanding your leadership is 100% contextual on the state of the person and ultimately the team you are working with. That is not a blinding flash of the obvious to most of you, but we have to be reminded of that because a lot of the traditional leadership mantras that we hear are being offered from the top of Maslow's hierarchy. But a lot of the people we are leading are way down the hierarchy, and we have to remember that sometimes it's just giving them a shoulder to cry on and taking them out to lunch or buying them a cup of coffee. Sometimes that's all the leadership they need in that moment. Hugh: Wow. That's a paradigm shift. What are you thinking there, Russ? You're smiling. Russell: The thought came to mind that great leaders always have a pulse on where their people are because no two people are in the same place. Cookie cutter leadership doesn't work. It may have worked back at the turn of the 20th century. Mark: It didn't work then either, Russell. I hate to tell you, pal. It was just misreported. Russell: They pushed it as, “Get in line or go work somewhere else.” That doesn't work. Good leaders build other leaders around them because that is what makes a great leader look good. We have people who can execute or delegate, and she is doing high level functions. Sometimes you have high performance individuals, and it is really hard- When they have been driving the train for a long time, it's really difficult for them to take a step back because they have their vision and it's their baby. They have a hard time taking a step back. This is a way that leaders have to grow in. If people in the work force today aren't getting work that means something. They move on. Do yourself a favor and let other people help you. Mark: I think some of the things we have to take a look at from a change standpoint is that our millennial culture, I raised five millennial children. None of them live at home. I consider myself to be a success. They don't put up with ultimatums. They'll just raise their middle finger and wave you goodbye. The reality is that leadership is now voluntary. It was always voluntary, but it is now absolutely voluntary. People accept leadership voluntarily, and a charitable organization has always been voluntary. We have to become a whole lot more about what it is you are looking for. How can I help you grow? Where do you want to go? What do you need to help you get there? Can we help you get there? It's a lot more of the let's figure out where our tribe needs to go and bring that to them. I think that's a big component of that. We raised our children to question authority. The boomer generation just shakes their head at, “I am a boomer.” Friends, I raise that generation. I raised them to be what I wanted to be when I was their age, which was to have the freedom to ask questions and to push back and to say, “That's really stupid. Why do you make that?” When I was a kid, that earned a slap across the face, so I learned to shut up very quickly. I let my kids ask those questions. They were hard questions. They made me a better man. That also means that military-style, authoritarian leadership will no longer work. It has to be collaborative leadership. But how do we do collaborative leadership? It's simple. You just ask people. You ultimately, as the leader of your organization, get to make the decision. But you also have to have that collaboration of how we arrive at the destination. You are responsible for the destination. Then we collaborate on how we get there. That is what I see as being a major shift. Hugh: That is especially true in nonprofits because we do attract some capable people. We think we have to do it as a leader because we don't want to bother them because they are volunteers and are busy in their real life. Mark: But wait a minute. That's why they showed up. Hugh: You got it. I set that one up good. You are really interfering with what somebody has come to do. That seems like a logical step. That is a huge problem. Bowen leadership systems, Murray Bowen as a psychiatrist created this whole leadership methodology. He talks about that as overfunctioning, and the reciprocity to overfunctioning is underfunctioning. Especially when you have a boomer, me, and you are talking to millennials, like the editor of our magazine, Todd, he says, “Tell me where you want to be, and let me get there.” Nobody likes being told the steps or micromanaged. Millennials like it the least of any particular segment. You raised five millennials, and I don't see any wounds on your body. Mark: I'm a much better man. Before I raised my five millennial kids, I was a jerk. Hugh: Really? Mark: Yeah. I knew everything. I knew exactly how to do it, and I could prove it. If you didn't believe me, I'd write a book about it. Hugh: Wow. Russell: I just sense that pleasure. Here's the thing, Mark. They'll be back. They will bring more with them. Mark: It gets better and better and more disruptive and more delicious. Hugh: There is a story of this conductor, who are known to have healthy egos. This conductor walks into a restaurant with a whole bunch of musicians. One person stood up on one side and said, “All conductors are jerks.” Whoa, it got back like this. On the other side, somebody stood up and said, “I resent that comment.” The conductor looked at him and said, “Hey, are you a conductor, too?” He says, “No, I'm a jerk.” I love it. That is a reframed lawyer joke. Mark: The way I like to talk about conductors is conductors are highly skilled. They can play every instrument in the orchestra. They can. But not well enough to make a living. At the end of the show- Russell: [hard to hear] tickets on the train, either. Hugh: The model you are talking about is the conductor doesn't tell them step by step what they do. The conductor says to the oboe player, the violinist, whatever, “This is the effect I want. This is the result I want.” They guide the process. I wanted to segue into that as a model for what you're talking about. That has been a consistent model over the decades. If we look at that in today's world, leadership as a profound influence and not the micro that you are talking about, do this, do this, do this. It's a nuance of engaging people and empowering people to raise the bar. That is the essence of transformational leadership really: building a culture of high performers that respond to you. So we are looking at what has changed, but also we are looking at- Earlier, you talked about transformation. There is a transformation in ourselves before we can be effective. How does that link with what you're talking about? Mark: Everybody that I know is going through some form of transformation. They are trying to add a new skill. They are trying to let go of an old habit they see as not serving their life any further. They may be going through a spiritual revolution where they are going from less spiritual to more spiritual. It may be that they are looking for a physical transformation, losing weight, adding muscle, adding health. Those transformations always trigger help because if we could do it on our own, we already would have. We need either skills or encouragement or motivation or a tribe to travel with. Let's talk about transformation for just a minute. Let's have some fun with this. I know that we bumped into this idea with me before, Hugh, and let's talk about it. I think we have enough time. It's fairly simple. There is fundamentally a seven-step process in transformation, plus a step zero and a step minus one. Hugh: Ooh, do tell. Mark: The first half is about belief. The second half is about knowledge. The difference between belief and knowledge is a manifestation in the physical world. Step minus one is where they want to go. The transformation they want to enjoy is invisible. They can't even see it. It's not even within their awareness. It's not even possible. They hadn't even thought of it. If you as a charitable organization want to find new people, part of your job is to message the outcome that you deliver so that we can take people who don't even see that as an opportunity into something that is within their awareness. Then step zero, going from invisible to impossible. That is the step zero. “Oh, that's impossible. I could never do that. I don't see how that's possible.” That's step zero. The transformation starts when they go from the impossible to, “Hmm, that could be possible. You have 1,000 people in this community that has made this transformation? Wow. You've helped that many people? It is possible.” Then the next step is to probable. “I could probably do this. I don't have all the answers. I may not know my path yet, but this is probable. I could do this.” Then the third step moves to inevitable. “This is going to happen. Oh yeah. Let's make this happen. Yeah.” Hugh: Minus one is where- Mark: Minus one is invisible. Don't even know it is possible. Hugh: Invisible, okay. Mark: Step zero is impossible. Hugh: Okay. One is possible. Mark: Possible. Hugh: Two is probable. Mark: Two is probable. Hugh: And three is? Mark: Inevitable. Hugh: Inevitable. Mark: This is going to happen! I know how to do this. Whoo-hoo. Help me! Hugh: Russell is scribing these. He is capturing the brilliance. Mark: That is all based on increasing belief because the transformation has not yet become physical. It is still nonphysical. It is thought and that is about it. Now we cross over from the nonphysical to the physical, from the belief to the real. Step four is real. We go from inevitable to real. From real to sustainable. I did it! Okay, let's do it again. I can do this any time I want. That is sustainable. Then we go from sustainable, step five, to step six, which is normal. “I do this all the time. Sure, of course. This is just part of my life.” To step seven, which is historical. “I have always done it this way.” If we are working people through a transformational process—invisible, impossible, possible, probable, inevitable, real, sustainable, normal, historical—if we can run people through that process, we can help them through their transformation. But here is the most important aspect. You can't take somebody from impossible to inevitable in one step. That is the psychology of leadership. We have to help them move from impossible to probable. We have to help them move from probable to inevitable. We have to help them move from inevitable to real. Each one of those is a step, as we are crossing this chasm, let's call it a river, from impossible to historical, going from one side to the other. Every step is a slippery rock that as they reach out with their foot, it may feel like, “I don't know if I can do this.” Our job as leaders is to hold their finger, hold their hand. When I was raising my kids, we would do- Kids were going across the rocks, and I would give them a finger. All they had to do was hang onto my finger. That was enough to give them the confidence to take the step. My kids would grab that finger, and we could move them. You did this, right? Russell, you've done this with your kids? Just give them a little bit. We don't need to hold them in an airman's grip. We just have to give them a finger to hang onto. Russell: If you don't want to carry them, you just give them that finger. It's just enough. Less is more. Mark: That's right. Russell: More, and they step into that power. That's what it's about. Whatever the mind can conceive and make itself believe, it can achieve. That is a process. Mark: You just summarized those seven plus two steps in three words. Hugh: Thank you, Mr. Hill. Mark: Yes indeed. Hugh: That is a profound statement. I was really small, walking with my father, and I would hold a finger. One day, he put a stick there. I kept going because I thought I had his hand. All I had was a stick. When I grew up, I repeated that dirty trick with my kids. Russell: Interesting. That brings a story to mind. I don't know how old I was. I may have been two or three. My mother used to carry me upstairs at night. One night, my mother and sister brought me upstairs, stood me in front of the crib, and said, “Okay. Climb in.” I was baffled. I didn't do anything. So they said, “Okay, well, you will climb in or you will stand there all night.” I don't know how long I stood there. It turns out they were there watching. It wasn't very long. I climbed up in that crib. Oh, okay, I got to do this or it's not going to happen. I never forgot that. I don't remember much that happened before five. As five gets further away, it's harder to remember. But that was something I never forgot. A lot of life is like that. Hugh: That's a great story. That's a big leadership example. The last one of your five topics for the year is Turning Unrest into Peace: How to Divorce Your Organization from the Media's Promotion of Outrage. What ever are you talking about? Mark: I'll be delighted to share with you. With the broad spread availability of Internet and mobile devices, the media got out of the news business. The reason why is the news was available any time I chose to pick up my mobile device and read the news from dozens of news sources. The fundamental TV news made a wholesale pivot from news to opinion and entertainment. You watch any of the mainstream news, and they are not delivering news. They are delivering opinion, not even fact. Opinion. It's the mot hilarious thing. I watch the news now and laugh. I just see it like reality TV. It is completely scripted. Whatever side they are trying to spin, that is what it is. What is truth? I have no idea anymore. The challenge is to get people to watch opinion, you have to generate outreach. You have to go to them and say, “Isn't this awful? Isn't this unfair? This is just horrible. I can't see how we can even stand doing this anymore.” That outrage allows you to sit through the commercials for pharmaceutical products that help you fix the outrage. You laugh because it's true. Russell: Okay. I'm going to give up on MSNBC and Fox Noise because- Mark: It is noise. I can watch Hannity once a week. It's the same story every night. Here's the thing. First of all, you have to realize that the news business is really to do one thing. It's not to inform you. It's to sell advertising. Pure and simple. Their job is to create a community that wants to be outraged a specific way and to promote that outrage so people feel like something is going on. They feel like something is important, but the reality my friends, in the world of charitable organizations, we are offering another way of thinking, another way of feeling. We are offering perhaps a better feeling. I feel way better after going to church than I do after watching the evening news. That circles back to our #1 point today, which is omnichannel. We have to keep providing our message on a regular basis daily, hourly, morning, evening to counter all of the outrage that people are being fed from a commercial stream. Go ahead. Carry on. What do you have in mind there, Hugh? Hugh: Wow. Wow. Where people are getting into an emotional state, not a factual thinking leadership functioning state. We are going into this- Mark: Facts don't matter anymore when it comes to mainstream news. Hugh: We are in a post-truth culture. Mark: We are. It's really interesting. Hugh: When we hear comments like “The media lies,” I watched purposefully for several weeks reports on CNN, CBN, PBS, and FOX. They were all different. Mark: Yes. Hugh: Which one is lying? Or are they all lying? Mark: None of them are lying. They are presenting their vision of what they want you to believe. Facts have nothing to do with anything. They believe It's true. They look you square in the eye through the camera and make you believe they believe it. And they do. Otherwise they couldn't deliver that. Let's circle back to the facts that matter to us and to constituents of our organization. That is what we need to focus on. Hugh: We have eight minutes. We are wrapping up here. That is a perfect segue, thank you. Go ahead. Mark: The whole point is we need to make sure our message and our leadership and our direction and our transformation is absolutely clear. We have to supply at last some rational thinking. When people say, “Did you hear what the news was?” and the answer is, “Do you believe it?” Let's focus on something you can believe. So help pivot people away from buying into something that we keep illustrating over and over again is patently not in alignment with the belief and the worldview that we wish. We have to substitute the worldview that our tribe wishes to see. Personally, I see humanity as growing, expanding, being bigger-hearted than ever before. The people in my environment, the people I bump into, including the folks on the street that ask me for help, are doing better than ever before. My job is to elevate, not to outrage. I think that there are way more people that have that desire than ever before, and perhaps that is why Cartoon Network has a higher rating than CNN. It's because we want to feel good. We don't want to feel bad. As a charitable organization, bringing that good news to people and giving them things they can do to feel better about themselves and to improve humanity and their tribe is probably the ultimate thing we can bring to our constituents. Russell: To piggyback on what you are saying, out of my own experience, I was an advertising salesman for WGAM TV while I was in college. Our most expensive segment was the news slots. That supports that, and that has been the case for quite some time now. That was a few years ago. The other thing is people are looking to raise their level of consciousness. The media likes to exacerbate this idea of taking sides. One thing that happened to me as a result of my experience working with the Native American tribe is I became nonpartisan here. The people who were going to help you may be on other sides of the aisle. I was literally more interested in what was going to benefit my tribe than what fit their politics. What we are talking about really is raising our level of consciousness. Me, for the most part, I am tuned out on those things. I can't watch that stuff. If I do happen to catch glimpses of it, nobody lives out in the middle of nowhere. There are a few people off the grid, but you will be exposed to some of the noise. Does that noise matter? We are trying to raise our level of consciousness, and there are people who need our help. When that is the driving thing, you learn how to play nice with others, but you don't always have to agree on everything, except who is it you want to help and how can you get there. You leave all of the ego and crap on the doorstep and come together to perform missions. I'm glad you haven't said anything that made me so angry I have to go put a nasty tweet out. I have a Twitter account, and I don't want to use it. Mark: Personally, I have a positive posting policy. If I can't say something nice, I write them a letter and burn it. Russell: As long as you don't mail it. That could get you in a lot of trouble. Mark: If you are writing a letter to somebody or emailing, don't ever put their address in there as you write it. Otherwise you might by accident send it. Guilty as charged. Russell: It's good to write letters every once in a while. Us old guys write letters. You can write letters. Younger folks out there, it's a dying art. It's fun. Mark: It's great fun. I wrote myself a letter on New Year's Eve. It's part of our ritual: to write ourselves letters. Just to wrap up this segment, an important component is what is your core principle as a leader? Focus on activities that will provide you and your tribe with those core principles. My core principle is freedom. Everything I do needs to lead me to freedom. Freedom of thought, freedom of action, freedom of life. From that freedom, I can serve people. I can't serve people when I am not free, from a thought standpoint, a physical standpoint, a monetary standpoint. I use that personally as my filter. If I am going to do something, say something, act in some way, the question is: Does this bring me closer to more freedom, or does this take freedom away from me? It could be anything else. It could be oneness. It could be joy. It could be love. It doesn't really matter. All of them boil down to the same situation anyway. Just that word resonates with me. I think ultimately that is what we need to do to bring peace to our tribe. Hugh: Our strategy is Russell and I encourage people to be very clear on their vision while they are doing something. As charities, we have to be very good at defining the impact of our work. What difference will it make? We achieve all of that through setting powerful goals. You have given us a whole lot of ideas for goals. Russell mentioned him before, and he is looking behind you there. Behind you is Henry Ford. Mark: Actually that is Edison. Carry on. Hugh: They lived next door to each other down in Fort Myers. Mark: They did. Hugh: Edison said he never failed; he just found 9,999 things that didn't work before he invented the light bulb. Ford said obstacles are what you see when you take your mind off your goals. They are both dedicated to excellence. They were both in tune with the culture and trends of their day. Mark Smith, I don't know a lot of people with two middle initials. Mark S. A. Smith. You stand out from all those other Mark Smiths. Mark: That is the reason why. That way you can find me on Google. Hugh: They are impostors. Mark: No, they are not impostors. They are just hiding. Hugh: This is really rich in content. Russell, do you have a closing comment you want to leave here? Russell: There we are. I'd like to thank Mark for the thoughts he dropped. You are preaching to the choir. It's about who you are. That's a message that has to ring true. Who are you? Who are you, and that way you can connect with the people that you are aligned with. I love the alignment. Great comments. Notes in the SynerVision Leadership webinar notebook. I have the notes, Hugh. It will also be out there for folks to look at. It's a great day here. Hugh: Super. Mark, thank you for being here and sharing your wisdom with us. Mark: Delightful to be here. Thank you for the invitation to do so. We have plenty more in 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sick Again - Breaking News on James Harrison and the Patriots - Phil Bourque talks Penguins with Mark - What will James Harrison's Pittsburgh legacy be?

Ask an Angel! It's a special episode of "Angel," with Jason Calacanis & Brian Alvey (Clipisode, LAUNCH) candidly answer the burning questions of investors and those aspiring to be. Picking startups, evaluating founders, due diligence, Syndicates ins/outs, deal terms and a lot more. Listen and learn!   What’s the best way to verify the customers of a potential investment are happy with the product? - Alan When completing financial due diligence what documents should I be asking for/what am I entitled to? - Sheila How can I tell if the founder is the right fit for the company? - Mark “What is the best way to evaluate a founder for persistence?” - David If an idea sounds exciting but I don’t have any experience in the vertical how do I intelligently evaluate the opportunity? - Brian When I invest via an Angel Syndicate is my identity kept secret? Is my name on the cap table? - Kyle I have a great company for your syndicate, what’s the best way to discuss investment opportunities with you, Jason? - Marianne What is the standard carry? What is the minimum investment? - Craig Do you only accept US based companies? - Bill What opportunities are currently available for non-accredited investors? - Pam Re: closing mechanics...should I expect/demand an escrow type closing where all the $ of the round comes in at once?  - Anonymous

Ask an Angel! It's a special episode of "Angel," with Jason Calacanis & Brian Alvey (Clipisode, LAUNCH) candidly answer the burning questions of investors and those aspiring to be. Picking startups, evaluating founders, due diligence, Syndicates ins/outs, deal terms and a lot more. Listen and learn!   What’s the best way to verify the customers of a potential investment are happy with the product? - Alan When completing financial due diligence what documents should I be asking for/what am I entitled to? - Sheila How can I tell if the founder is the right fit for the company? - Mark “What is the best way to evaluate a founder for persistence?” - David If an idea sounds exciting but I don’t have any experience in the vertical how do I intelligently evaluate the opportunity? - Brian When I invest via an Angel Syndicate is my identity kept secret? Is my name on the cap table? - Kyle I have a great company for your syndicate, what’s the best way to discuss investment opportunities with you, Jason? - Marianne What is the standard carry? What is the minimum investment? - Craig Do you only accept US based companies? - Bill What opportunities are currently available for non-accredited investors? - Pam Re: closing mechanics...should I expect/demand an escrow type closing where all the $ of the round comes in at once?  - Anonymous

046 | In today's podcast we have a wide-ranging conversation with Ms. ONL from Our Next Life on her decision to stop being anonymous on the blog to what their journey looked like to FI plus what they expect life to be like after FI and much more. In Today’s Podcast we cover: A financial independence discussion with Ms. ONL from Our Next Life The big reveal: Their names are Tanja and Mark What does it feel like for them to come out behind the veil of anonymity? Why have they been so strict about remaining anonymous? How do they view the concept of early retirement? How they can pursue the aspects of their jobs that they still enjoy How is early retirement different than working for yourself? One of the best parts of early retirement is that you can try so many different things Their friends and family are extremely supportive of their early retirement plans Finding their ‘why’ behind early retirement A discussion of how silly the notion of being “bored” in early retirement truly is The Endless Winter: Following the snow to ski for an entire winter How they try to save money on their heating costs How difficult the transition could be from working to not working and to mentally prepare yourself in advance for life after retirement How to mentally prepare yourself for future situations with “disaster drills” The value of finding progress in difficult things in life The questions you need to consider when pondering early retirement: How will you support yourself or your family without a job? They do not plan to tap their tax deferred items before 59.5 How they projected the amount they need to reach Financial Independence What is your backup plan for dealing with financial emergencies? The value of insurance and especially umbrella insurance How will you get healthcare? How your income impacts your health care subsidies and the consideration of FI strategies How will you keep your body and mind healthy? What will a day look like for them in retirement? The importance of community in maintaining a healthy balanced life 

Nick Raithel Jaime Jay welcomes Nick Raithel to today's podcast. Nick is a missionary. Not in the religious sense. He is in the business of promoting business leaders' accomplishments by helping them publish a professional book telling their incredible stories. Why Books? You need to separate yourself and stand out from the noise and clutter. You have to do something to position yourself sway from all that. A book does just that. It's also a way to leave a legacy and be more than just a business owner. What you have with a book is a business card that people don't throw away. It opens up new opportunities you would not otherwise have. Listen to #srtp podcast to learn how you can have your own book created in 7 hours http://www.stopridingthepine.com/nick-raithel/Tweet This A book takes your insights, your knowledge, your unique experiences in your niche and puts them in tangible form. It's easy to find, easily accessible and presents the writer as an expert.  "I'm on a mission to get the recognition that business leaders deserve for their achievements." - Nick Raithel Where to Begin? The first step is to begin by thinking about what it is you specifically within the next 6 months to year-and-a-half want the book to lead to? Do you want a speaking career, consulting career or want it to bring in more leads for your current business? Work backward from your goal and figure out what steps you need to absolutely kill your goal. 7-Hour Book Keep in mind this does not include writing, publishing and marketing in 7 hours. That would be a bit daunting. You might get a half page book. What it really means is the client only has to spend 7 hours of their own time on it. Nick is a marketer and not a writer. A pure writing service like a ghost writer could not be a business. Nick's company makes your book sound good and every word counts. He focuses your book's goal achieving the objective you desire. Your book needs to have real world application and not just sound pretty. If you want to learn how Nick Raithel does it, then make sure to listen to this episode.  You can also check out his links below to learn more about him.  He welcomes all questions, comments, and inquiries! Don't forget to mention you heard about Nick on Stop Riding the Pine:-) ContentCorps Here are the highlights of my conversation with Nick Raithel if you are in a hurry: Who is Nick Raithel? (4:50 Mark) Why is it important for an entrepreneur to have a book? (5:55 Mark) What is the 7-hour book? (11:08 Mark) What happens in that 7 hours? (14:25 Mark) What's the first step? (23:00 Mark) Nick's breakaway moment (34:04 Mark) Special Mentions: (iTunes Shout Out) Denny Krahe Thank you to Alexis Ayala, for providing the incredible editing for this episode. If you need to find an audio editor, send Alexis an email at lex@slapshotstudio.com. Thank you to our awesome sponsor, Interview Valet, A professional concierge guest booking podcast service for hosts and guests - You be the Guest, We do the Rest! Check out their new website at InterviewValet.com. This episode of Stop Riding the Pine Podcast was brought to you by DoneForYouWP.com Are you a busy coach, professional or agency looking to have your WordPress website headaches handled by your very own development team for wholesale prices? Then you should visit DoneForYouWP.com to find the solution that best fits your current challenges with a full-scale approach to managing your WordPress website. Stop Riding the Pine is a lot of fun and we love sharing the shows we've done. We would greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us grow this show by not only downloading the episodes but also sharing them. Leave comments and rate our show so we can make the show even better.

We need to talk about Kevin. On the debut podcast we talk to filmmaker Kevin Smith, from 1994’s “Clerks” all the way through to this year’s “Yoga Hosers”. What have Kevin Smith and his films meant to Mark? What would Kevin change about his career? And, perhaps most importantly, who should a filmmaker make films for – a studio, an audience or themselves? Please support the Mark and Me Podcast here https://www.patreon.com/Markandme

Jaime Jay welcomes Gary Leland to today's podcast. Gary was one of the first 100 podcasters in the world and was recently inducted into the Podcast Hall of Fame in Chicago at Podcast Movement 2016. The Gary Leland Show The latest endeavor Gary is working on is his new self-entitled show called the Gary Leland Show.  It's going to start out as a once a week show, but he wants to take it to five days a week.  There are a lot of shows where people have listeners send in their questions and the host answers the questions when they record the show.  Gary is going to have a live show where guests will come on the show and ask questions.  The show is going to be a question and discussion show, not a question and answer show. Gary's Background Gary arrived in Texas in 1978 with a grand total of $6.00 in his pocket.  Being broke, he was forced to get a job.  He started a small business on the side and within six months, his side business was making more than his day job.  He quit his full time job and went into business by himself and never looked back. In 1996, his podcast website was in Time Magazine as one of the 50 coolest websites on the planet.  In 1996, he started a wallpaper website.  People told him he was crazy for trying to sell something on the internet.  He didn't listen to the naysayers and became very successful. The move into the podcast genre of softball proved to be one of the best moves Gary ever made.  He is one of the most well-known faces, and voices, in the world for girls fast-pitch softball. Achieving Dreams Through Podcasting When asked how he became so successful with podcasting, Gary was quick to say that he uses the medium as his marketing arm.  Most of his shows are about girls fastpitch softball.  At one point, Gary was spending about $10,000 per month on Google adwords.  When Google raised their advertising, podcasting is what he turned to.  Gary creates his own shows so that he can save on advertising and be in total control of his platform. "One of the reasons I do podcasting is because I can advertise on my podcast.  I don't want to give money to someone else for advertising." - Gary Leland Tweet this episode for Gary With so much experience, he's gotten pretty good at podcasting.  Where it used to take him several hours to edit his show and write his show notes, he has learned all the short cuts.  Now he has an assistant to help him.  When asked what does he do with all his free time, Gary said "I don't have free time.  I've found other things to take up my time". The ultimate "because of my podcast" story, Gary was invited to the Olympics.  Softball was awarded to be an official sport in Japan for the 2020 Olympics.  This means, Gary will be the first podcaster to get press pass credentials for the Olympics.  Pretty dang exciting. How Does Gary Leland Monetize His Podcast? This is Gary's sweet spot.  He is much different than the average person when it comes to monetizing his shows.  If you want to learn how Gary Leland does it, then make sure to listen to this episode.  You can also check out his links below to learn more about him.  He welcomes all questions, comments, and inquiries! Don't forget to mention you heard about Gary on Stop Riding the Pine:-) The Gary Leland Show Lelands.org SoftballJunk.com BaseballJunk.com Gary Leland on LinkedIn Facebook Tweet Gary The Fast Pitch Softball YouTube Channel Here are the highlights of my conversation with Gary Leland if you are in a hurry: Who is Gary Leland? (4:50 Mark) How does Gary monetize his podcast? (13:20 Mark) What can you podcast about? (20:10 Mark) Gary can help you edit your podcast. (25:30 Mark) What is the Gary Leland Show about? (28:13 Mark) Gary's breakaway moment (35:00 Mark) Special Mentions: (iTunes Shout Out) The Toy Box Studio with Lij Shaw Thank you to Alexis Ayala, for providing the incredible editing for this episode. If you need to find an audio editor,

Jeff Leo Herrmann Real World Content Marketing Expert Jaime Jay welcomes Jeff Herrmann to the show today. Jeff is a content marketing zealot with an intense belief that brands are better off engaging their audiences with educational, entertaining and problem solving content instead of blasting them with massive traditional advertising campaigns. If you want to get ahead in business, listen to Jeff Leo Herrmann Real World Content Marketing Expert. Jeff Leo Herrmann Jeff began his career measuring emerging digital media like video games, online video and mobile media. All of the emerging media that the networks would have to deal with while driving their advertising strategies. Applying His Knowledge Today Today he focuses on content and SEO to help the mid market companies to punch above their weight and compete against the incumbents with massive advertising budgets. Massive budgets are not the advantage today. Jeff says the advantage goes to the stealth and the agile because there are so many media platforms to command. SEO is Always Changing It's overwhelming to most. As a strategist and a content guy, Jeff says there is still a technological nuance to SEO. BUT, if you create high quality and problem solving content, Google will reward you. It's the place people go to get their questions answered. Share Jeff's Episode 84 on Twitter If you would like to learn what Jeff Leo Herrmann says next about the importance of content, listen to the episode by clicking on the download or the play button at the top of this article. To connect with Jeff Leo Herrmann Real World Content Marketing Expert, check out his links below and remember he welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Don't forget to mention you heard about Jeff on Stop Riding the Pine:-) Connect with Jeff on Facebook Tweet Jeff Jeff Leo Herrmann on LinkedIn Publish or Perish.FM Ardath Albee Marketing Interactions Here are the highlights of my conversation with Jeff Leo Herrmann Real World Content Marketing Expert if you are in a hurry: Who is Jeff Herrmann? (4:35 Mark) Where is SEO today? (8:35 Mark) What is Fathom? (14:45 Mark) Jeff's Break Away Moment (27:05 Mark) Special Mentions: (iTunes Shout Out) Scott Allen Turner! Thank you to Alexis Ayala, for providing the incredible editing for this episode. If you need to find an audio editor, send Alexis an email at lex@slapshotstudio.com. Thank you to our awesome sponsor, Interview Valet, A professional concierge guest booking podcast service for hosts and guests - You be the Guest, We do the Rest! Check out their new website at InterviewValet.com. This episode of Stop Riding the Pine Podcast was brought to you by Done4YouWP.com Are you a busy coach, professional or agency looking to have your WordPress website headaches handled by your very own development team for wholesale prices? Then you should visit Done4YouWP.com to find the solution that best fits your current challenges with a full-scale approach to managing your WordPress website. Stop Riding the Pine is a lot of fun and we love sharing the shows we've done. We would greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us grow this show by not only downloading the episodes, but also sharing them. Leave comments and rate our show so we can make the show even better.

Dr. Phil Carson Discusses His Path to Natural Health Jaime Jay welcomes Dr. Phil Carson Discusses His Path to Natural Health to the show today. Dr. Phil Carson is passionate about helping others. He's a pharmacists who encountered patients whose needs were not met by traditional medicine. Dr. Carson founded Carson Natural Health in 2005. He encourages everyone he comes into contact with to live healthier lives and transform their overall health into a blessing and not a burden. Background Dr. Carson graduated pharmacy school in 1985 and went to work right away in his hometown. Dr. Phil Carson loved his job. One year later, he was made store manager and felt unprepared. He was under so much stress that he developed ulcers. Happily he left the high stress operation he was in for a small mom and pop operation. This was the beginning of his journey to discover natural medicine. Applying His New Knowledge   Patients were asking questions of natural remedies. Dr. Phil was trained in the background and history of medicine but was not trained in the practical application of natural remedies. To help himself, he began attending seminars and meetings to learn as much as he could. He got really excited and passionate about it. So passionate that he opened his own pharmacy and soon a second that was dedicated to natural remedies only. The Struggles In 2009 when the economy sank, Dr. Carson lost both stores. He lost everything but his house. Fortunately he was able to find a job to support his wife and 5 children. Since that time, Dr. Phil has passed through that dark valley and is on the other side. Carson natural is thriving online and he has opened Life Transformation Medical Center. Share Phil's Episode 83 on Twitter If you would like to learn what Dr. Phil Carson says next about a path to natural health, listen to the episode by clicking on the download or the play button at the top of this article. To connect with Dr. Phil Carson Discusses His Path to Natural Health, check out his links below and remember he welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Don't forget to mention you heard about Dr. Phil on Stop Riding the Pine:-) Dr. Phil's website Dr. Phil on Twitter Dr. Phil Carson on LinkedIn Connect on Facebook Here are the highlights of my conversation with Dr. Phil Carson Discusses His Path to Natural Health if you are in a hurry: Who is Dr. Phil Carson? (4:05 Mark) Discovering natural medications (7:50 Mark) What key components to living a healthy lifestyle? (18:50 Mark) Recognizing and relieving stress (22:56 Mark) Dr. Phil's Break Away Moment (33:52 Mark) Special Mentions: (iTunes Shout Out) Angusnelson.com! Thank you to Alexis Ayala, for providing the incredible editing for this episode. If you need to find an audio editor, send Alexis an email at lex@slapshotstudio.com. Thank you to our awesome sponsor, Interview Valet, A professional concierge guest booking podcast service for hosts and guests - You be the Guest, We do the Rest! Check out their new website at InterviewValet.com. This episode of Stop Riding the Pine Podcast was brought to you by Done4YouWP.com Are you a busy coach, professional or agency looking to have your WordPress website headaches handled by your very own development team for wholesale prices? Then you should visit Done4YouWP.com to find the solution that best fits your current challenges with a full-scale approach to managing your WordPress website. Stop Riding the Pine is a lot of fun and we love sharing the shows we've done. We would greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us grow this show by not only downloading the episodes, but also sharing them. Leave comments and rate our show so we can make the show even better.

Aaron Anastasi - The Voice of Your Dreams Jaime Jay and his co-host Emmy award winner Mark Haffner welcome Aaron Anastasi - The Voice of Your Dreams to the show today. Aaron got his first chance with a youth group at 14 years old. As soon as he started singing, he remembers the looks on the faces of the listeners as they were shocked with his lack of having a voice.  Aaron remembers his voice as being really bad. This sent him on his journey to find a method to create his singing voice that became good enough to sing professionally. Superior Singing Method Aaron become obsessed with helping others discover their singing voices even if they were not born with natural talent. it's a systematic 8 week program he shares with others. Recently he has become obsessed with helping others in life in general and not just singing. He took his 8 week program and converted that into a life enrichment program. This led to his book The Voice of Your Dreams. Aaron's Education Aaron attended Princeton University for his undergraduate and master's degree. He attended the theological seminary where he studied philosophy, psychology and theology. Those courses were very helpful in the writing of his book. He credits his ability to think systematically to school in general. He was a free-flowing and spontaneous artist who thought systems would hold him back. Aaron discovered that using a system allowed him to achieve and accomplish so much more. He finds that success is much more sustainable using a system. Get the Results You Want Aaron began his path to success by asking himself who he needs to be to get the results he wants? This question ignited something inside of him and set him on his journey to discover who that person is. Aaron knew he needed to shift his being in such a way that new results come as a natural response to his shift. Share Aaron's Episode 82 on Twitter If you would like to learn what Aaron says next about discovering and transforming yourself, listen to the episode by clicking on the download or the play button at the top of this article. To connect with Aaron Anastasi - The Voice of Your Dreams, check out his links below and remember he welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Don't forget to mention you heard about Aaron on Stop Riding the Pine:-) Aaron's website Aaron on Twitter Aaron's Audiobook discount code Here are the highlights of my conversation with Aaron Anastasi - The Voice of Your Dreams if you are in a hurry: Who is Aaron Anastasi? (4:00 Mark) Did school help with his systems? (9:35 Mark) What was Aaron's break away moment? (12:30 Mark) What are "limiting voices"? (15:35 Mark) The truth about you (29:13 Mark) Special Mentions: (iTunes Shout Out) shout out to us! Thank you to Alexis Ayala, for providing the incredible editing for this episode. If you need to find an audio editor, send Alexis an email at lex@slapshotstudio.com. Thank you to our awesome sponsor, Interview Valet, A professional concierge guest booking podcast service for hosts and guests - You be the Guest, We do the Rest! Check out their new website at InterviewValet.com. This episode of Stop Riding the Pine Podcast was brought to you by Done4YouWP.com Are you a busy coach, professional or agency looking to have your WordPress website headaches handled by your very own development team for wholesale prices? Then you should visit Done4YouWP.com to find the solution that best fits your current challenges with a full-scale approach to managing your WordPress website. Stop Riding the Pine is a lot of fun and we love sharing the shows we've done. We would greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us grow this show by not only downloading the episodes, but also sharing them. Leave comments and rate our show so we can make the show even better.

Angus Nelson - Life Expectations Jaime Jay welcomes Angus Nelson - Life Expectations to the show today. Angus works with large companies as a speaker, coach and facilitator. His podcast was listed in the top 20 business podcasts for Inc.com in 2015. Struggling with Success Angus has spoken at headquarters for Coca-Cola, Adobe and Wal-Mart. He's been incredibly successful but it's not something he is comfortable with. Growing up in the Midwest, there was always a negative connotation that went along with dropping names and flaunting success. This false pride has taken him over 40 years to overcome. It was no longer something that puffed him up. Instead, it gave him credibility with others that he is opening up a doorway to your head and to your heart for him to speak of something with depth, quality and quantity. Angus Nelson - Life Expectations Journey Angus began at bible college with a degree in youth ministry. In his late 20's he moved into non-profits. By his early 30's, he was in the constant struggle to keep his non-profit afloat. He was working 60-70-80 hour work weeks. The stress caused rifts within his marriage. Angus turned to alcohol, pornography and other sexual encounters. Be present and content with the journey - Angus Nelson Angus loses everything and is broken. For three years Angus struggled until he discovered grace. Life Moving Forward Angus relocated to Alabama and enrolled in school. Angus began to experience healing and wholeness within himself. He discovered that so much of what he had done was based upon self sabotage. Angus Nelson was challenged by his wife to write a book.  He wrote about his dark times and everything that he learned along the way. Publishers didn't want his book. Angus self-published and through necessity learned about marketing. This put him in the world of social marketing which led him to his current path. Share Angus' Episode 80 on Twitter If you would like to learn what  Angus says next about overcoming your self-doubt in life and business, listen to the episode by clicking on the download or the play button at the top of this article. To connect with Angus Nelson - Life Expectations, check out his links below and remember he welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Don't forget to mention you heard about Angus on Stop Riding the Pine:-) angusnelson.com/pine Angus' Website Angus on Facebook Tweet Angus Here are the highlights of my conversation with Angus Nelson - Life Expectations if you are in a hurry: Who is Angus Nelson? (3:30 Mark) It's in your head (6:45 Mark) The turning point? (8:43 Mark) Expectations and goals? (12:40 Mark) What was Jason's break away moment? (22:10 Mark) Angus and secret sauce (28:35 Mark) Special Mentions: (iTunes Shout Out) shout out to us! Thank you to Alexis Ayala, for providing the incredible editing for this episode. If you need to find an audio editor, send Alexis an email at lex@slapshotstudio.com. Thank you to our awesome sponsor, Interview Valet, A professional concierge guest booking podcast service for hosts and guests - You be the Guest, We do the Rest! Check out their new website at InterviewValet.com. This episode of Stop Riding the Pine Podcast was brought to you by Done4YouWP.com Are you a busy coach, professional or agency looking to have your WordPress website headaches handled by your very own development team for wholesale prices? Then you should visit Done4YouWP.com to find the solution that best fits your current challenges with a full-scale approach to managing your WordPress website. Stop Riding the Pine is a lot of fun and we love sharing the shows we've done. We would greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us grow this show by not only downloading the episodes, but also sharing them. Leave comments and rate our show so we can make the show even better.

Jason Treu - Finding Your Blind Spots Jaime Jay welcomes Jason Treu - Finding Your Blind Spots to the show today. Jason is a top business and executive coach. He's a leading expert on human behavior, influence, sales, networking and leadership. At the heart of his strategy is the understanding that people and your relationships are your true "wealth." Everything we accomplish in life is with or through other people.. Making a Move Jason worked in the technology field in the Silicone Valley of California. He had a great ride working with the likes of Mark Cuban, Steve Jobs, Mark Hurd to name a few. He acquired the invaluable skills of leadership, culture, teamwork, management and branding. He made the move to Dallas to be closer to his parents. He knew no one and had to build his entire life from scratch. He struggled for a while then curated a massive tribe of people that really love and care about him. Through the process he discovered he could help people through lifestyle coaching. Working at Apple Jason was working at Apple when Apple was just a blip on the radar. The company was a bottom feeder and it was an amazing opportunity. You really could not mess it up. Steve Jobs had such an optimism and had such great attention to detail that he took it from a blip to a giant. What you can't see is what holds you back - Jason Treu Jason's Executive Coaching Jason began by researching the coaching gurus. It led to finding his opportunity. There was not a book that related personal and business relationships. Every business and executive coach he researched were working with the externally healthy. Jason realized that his biggest flaws were internal andhe was the biggest thing holding himself back. Those flaws are all of the negative comments you make about your self. Your self-doubt. Share Jason's Episode 80 on Twitter If you would like to learn what Jason says next about identifying your self-doubt and finding your authentic self, listen to the episode by clicking on the download or the play button at the top of this article. To connect with Jason Treu - Finding Your Blind Spots, check out his links below and remember he welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Don't forget to mention you heard about Jason on Stop Riding the Pine:-) Be Extraordinary website Connect with Jason on Facebook Jason on LinkedIn Tweet Jason Jason YouTube  Jason Treu on Google+ Jason's books Here are the highlights of my conversation with Jason Treu - Finding Your Blind Spots if you are in a hurry: Who is Jason Treu? (4:32 Mark) Working with Steve Jobs the intimidator (10:30 Mark) Understanding blind spots? (14:18 Mark) You are like mom and dad (18:40 Mark) What was Jason's break away moment? (27:10 Mark) Special Mentions: (iTunes Shout Out) Sunshine Star. Thank you to Alexis Ayala, for providing the incredible editing for this episode. If you need to find an audio editor, send Alexis an email at lex@slapshotstudio.com. Thank you to our awesome sponsor, Interview Valet, A professional concierge guest booking podcast service for hosts and guests - You be the Guest, We do the Rest! Check out their new website at InterviewValet.com. This episode of Stop Riding the Pine Podcast was brought to you by Done4YouWP.com Are you a busy coach, professional or agency looking to have your WordPress website headaches handled by your very own development team for wholesale prices? Then you should visit Done4YouWP.com to find the solution that best fits your current challenges with a full-scale approach to managing your WordPress website. Stop Riding the Pine is a lot of fun and we love sharing the shows we've done. We would greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us grow this show by not only downloading the episodes, but also sharing them. Leave comments and rate our show so we can make the show even better.

Bob Burg - Take Your Business to the Next Level Jaime Jay welcomes Bob Burg - Take Your Business to the Next Level to the show today. Bob is a speaker & bestselling author, animal lover and free-market advocate. Bob Burg Getting off the Bench Bob Burg began his career as a newscaster in a small ABC affiliate in the Midwest. He graduated into sales but initially floundered regarding selling itself. He began to study sales and read Zig Ziglar among others to learn the habits he discovered to become successful. He credits his success with having a good system. A system that has a predictable outcome. The 5 Laws The 5 Laws from Bob's book the Go Giver are principles that help bring action to life. Everything is based upon a premise, a way of doing and thinking about things. The book is a story and not a how to. The premise of the book is shifting from getting to giving. When you become that person that is constantly providing value to others. We need to be genuine - Bob Burg Share Bob's Episode 78 on Twitter If you would like to learn what Bob says next about providing constant value to others, listen to the episode by clicking on the download or the play button at the top of this article. To connect with Bob Burg - Take Your Business to the Next Level, check out his links below and remember he welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Don't forget to mention you heard about Stephen on Stop Riding the Pine:-) Bob's Website Connect with Bob on Facebook Bob on LinkedIn Tweet Bob Bob on YouTube  Bob's book The Go Giver Here are the highlights of my conversation with Bob Burg - Take Your Business to the Next Level if you are in a hurry: Who is Bob Burg? (5:40 Mark) What is the importance of predictability? (7:24 Mark) Why should someone buy from you? (9:50 Mark) What does Bob say about being authentic? (11:50 Mark) What is the Go Giver philosophy? (15:30 Mark) What was Bob's break away moment? (19:47 Mark) Special Mentions: (iTunes Shout Out) Jason Shurgott. Thank you to Alexis Ayala, for providing the incredible editing for this episode. If you need to find an audio editor, send Alexis an email at lex@slapshotstudio.com. Thank you to our awesome sponsor, Interview Valet, A professional concierge guest booking podcast service for hosts and guests - You be the Guest, We do the Rest! Check out their new website at InterviewValet.com. This episode of Stop Riding the Pine Podcast was brought to you by Done4YouWP.com Are you a busy coach, professional or agency looking to have your WordPress website headaches handled by your very own development team for wholesale prices? Then you should visit Done4YouWP.com to find the solution that best fits your current challenges with a full-scale approach to managing your WordPress website. Stop Riding the Pine is a lot of fun and we love sharing the shows we've done. We would greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us grow this show by not only downloading the episodes, but also sharing them. Leave comments and rate our show so we can make the show even better.

Stephen Skinner - Unlocking Your Potential Jaime Jay welcomes Stephen Skinner - Unlocking Your Potential to the show today. Stephen is an author, speaker, entrepreneur, real estate developer, pharmacist, Dad and husband. Stephen Skinner is a self-labeled serial entrepreneur. Stephen Skinner the Author Stephen wrote The 100x Life. It's 7 simple daily habits to unlock your unknown potential and change your life. This book was born from the blessings and the curse of a lot of success when he began. The problem was that it went to his head and he did not take care of the things he should like relationships with others including his family. He was happy on the outside but miserable on the inside. Take Care of You First Stephen started his system by taking care of himself first. If you are sick all of the time there is no way you can take care of those that depend upon you. Becoming the best you by starting with simple exercise and diet steps anyone can make changes to become successful and unlock your unknown potential. Acknowledge there is something bigger out there - Stephen Skinner Share Stephen's Episode 77 on Twitter If you would like to learn what Stephen has to say next about unlocking your potential, listen to the episode by clicking on the download or the play button at the top of this article. To connect with Stephen Skinner - Unlocking Your Potential, check out his links below and remember he welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Don't forget to mention you heard about Stephen on Stop Riding the Pine:-) Stephen's Website Connect with Stephen on Facebook Stephen on LinkedIn Tweet Stephen Stephen's Book The 100x Life  Here are the highlights of my conversation with Stephen Skinner - Unlocking Your Potential if you are in a hurry: Who is Stephen Skinner? (4:47 Mark) What does it mean to listen and learn? (7:23 Mark) Stephen's type of soul (13:00 Mark) How does Stephen the first hour of the day? (17:50 Mark) What are the 3 B's? (20:50 Mark) What was Stephen's break away moment? (39:09 Mark) Special Mentions: (iTunes Shout Out) MPZ18. Thank you to Alexis Ayala, for providing the incredible editing for this episode. If you need to find an audio editor, send Alexis an email at lex@slapshotstudio.com. Thank you to our awesome sponsor, Interview Valet, A professional concierge guest booking podcast service for hosts and guests - You be the Guest, We do the Rest! Check out their new website at InterviewValet.com. This episode of Stop Riding the Pine Podcast was brought to you by Done4YouWP.com Are you a busy coach, professional or agency looking to have your WordPress website headaches handled by your very own development team for wholesale prices? Then you should visit Done4YouWP.com to find the solution that best fits your current challenges with a full-scale approach to managing your WordPress website. Stop Riding the Pine is a lot of fun and we love sharing the shows we've done. We would greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us grow this show by not only downloading the episodes, but also sharing them. Leave comments and rate our show so we can make the show even better.

Dr. Marty McDermott - Podcasting Franchise Expert Jaime Jay welcomes Dr. Marty McDermott - Podcasting Franchise Expert to the show today. Dr. Marty began by writing a newsletter about franchising when he was approached by a local radio station to do a live podcast. 10 years later he is releasing his 500th episode! Podcasting and Branding Podcasting has opened many doors for Dr. Marty McDermott just as it has for Jaime Jay. Dr. Marty says it's important to go outside of your comfort zone. Meeting great people has all happened for Dr. Marty through podcasting. It's very natural, you make a lot of mistakes along the way but it's the best thing Dr. Marty has ever done. Stay in the Game - Dr. Marty McDermott Dr. Marty loves the fact that numbers of downloads and users of podcasting just keeps going up and up. What really drew him into podcasting is the sense of community. A community of givers. If you need the information, podcasters are willing to share what they know. Lisa likes to stay on top of the world of web designing trends. The trend today is moving away from stock photos and towards more illustrative designs. Lisa loves this aspect of her job. Share Dr. Marty's Episode 79 on Twitter If you would like to learn what Dr. Marty says about franchising and podcasting, listen to the episode by clicking on the download or the play button at the top of this article. To connect with Dr. Marty McDermott - Podcasting Franchise Expert, check out his links below and remember he welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Don't forget to mention you heard about Dr. Marty McDermott on Stop Riding the Pine:-) FranchiseInterviews Get the book The Illusions of Entrepreneurship Email Dr. Marty McDermott Here are the highlights of my conversation with Dr. Marty McDermott - Podcasting Franchise Expert if you are in a hurry: Who is Dr. Marty McDermott? (4:00 Mark) Podcasting is hard so why do it? (5:36 Mark) What is Franchise Interviews? (7:53 Mark) How did Dr. Marty choose franchising for his podcast? (18:00 Mark) What was Dr. Marty's break away moment? (36:12 Mark) Special Mentions: (iTunes Shout Out) Stephanie Ringslinger. Thank you to Alexis Ayala, for providing the incredible editing for this episode. If you need to find an audio editor, send Alexis an email at lex@slapshotstudio.com. Thank you to our awesome sponsor, Interview Valet, A professional concierge guest booking podcast service for hosts and guests - You be the Guest, We do the Rest! Check out their new website at InterviewValet.com. This episode of Stop Riding the Pine Podcast was brought to you by Done4YouWP.com Are you a busy coach, professional or agency looking to have your WordPress website headaches handled by your very own development team for wholesale prices? Then you should visit Done4YouWP.com to find the solution that best fits your current challenges with a full-scale approach to managing your WordPress website. Stop Riding the Pine is a lot of fun and we love sharing the shows we've done. We would greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us grow this show by not only downloading the episodes, but also sharing them. Leave comments and rate our show so we can make the show even better.

Lisa Owen Lynch - Designing Engaging Websites Jaime Jay welcomes Lisa Owen Lynch - Designing Engaging Websites  to the show today. Lisa grew up in Seattle but now lives in California where she works at Wolfe Interactive.  Lisa has a restaurant background, a political science degree, is an artist and now a web designer. Lisa was a child of the 70's and Watergate was all over the news. For some reason she wanted to find out what Watergate was all about besides it being a hotel. Political science seemed like a good fit for college. Live Event Painting with Lisa Lisa continues her love of art through live event painting. She loves that it's high energy and dynamic. It's interactive for children or anyone who would love to add a few strokes. She paints everything from weddings to polo matches. Web Designing at Wolfe Interactive Lisa Owen Lynch loves her job designing websites at Wolfe Interactive. Her goal is put as much information in a cohesive presence for her clients that are engaging. The better designed, the more engaging. Just Say Yes! - Lisa Owen Lynch Lisa likes to stay on top of the world of web designing trends. The trend today is moving away from stock photos and towards more illustrative designs. Lisa loves this aspect of her job. Share Lisa's Episode 75 on Twitter If you would like to learn what Lisa says about the steps in designing an engaging website, listen to the episode by clicking on the download or the play button at the top of this article. To connect with Lisa Owen Lynch - Designing Engaging Websites, check out her links below and remember she welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Don't forget to mention you heard about Lisa on Stop Riding the Pine:-) Paint Live SoCal Lisa on Instagram Lisa on Facebook Daniel's Podcast Email Lisa Lisa at Wolfe Interactive Here are the highlights of my conversation with Lisa Owen Lynch - Designing Engaging Websites if you are in a hurry: Who is Lisa Owen Lynch? (3:27 Mark) What is live event painting? (6:20 Mark) Why use a professional for your website? (13:30 Mark) Why Lisa loves WordPress (14:47 Mark) What was Lisa's break away moment? (21:20 Mark) Special Mentions: (iTunes Shout Out) John N. Lynette. Thank you to Alexis Ayala, for providing the incredible editing for this episode. If you need to find an audio editor, send Alexis an email at lex@slapshotstudio.com. Thank you to our awesome sponsor, Interview Valet, A professional concierge guest booking podcast service for hosts and guests - You be the Guest, We do the Rest! Check out their new website at InterviewValet.com. This episode of Stop Riding the Pine Podcast was brought to you by Done4YouWP.com Are you a busy coach, professional or agency looking to have your WordPress website headaches handled by your very own development team for wholesale prices? Then you should visit Done4YouWP.com to find the solution that best fits your current challenges with a full-scale approach to managing your WordPress website. Stop Riding the Pine is a lot of fun and we love sharing the shows we've done. We would greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us grow this show by not only downloading the episodes, but also sharing them. Leave comments and rate our show so we can make the show even better.

Daniel Bauer - The Better Leader Jaime Jay welcomes Daniel Bauer - The Better Leader  to the show today. Daniel is a school leader. He has been in education for 15 years. Daniel is excited everyday wake up and do what he loves. He finds so much instant gratification through teaching and leading. Daniel no longer teaches in the classroom but leads teachers as an administrator in the Chicago area. Daniel also has a website, blog and podcast Better Leaders Better Schools. His goal is to give give give and to give some more. his goal is start a mastermind specifically for teachers. Daniel wants to make teachers and schools meet their goals as productive and effective leaders in the classroom or as an administrator. Daniel's Greatest Strength Daniel's wife helped him focus in on his greatest strength. Daniel is an activator. He's a great cheerleader and a coach. He's the guy to give you the motivation and the momentum to succeed. To succeed you must try. Even if you fail, you can try again but change up your approach. 95% of success is follow-through. Daniel's Biggest Challenge Being realistic about and maintaining what you can and have accomplished. Don't bite off more than you can chew. Remember it's OK to ask for help and give yourself permission to be where you are and realize you are moving toward your goal and final destination. Give Yourself Permission to Be Who You Are Share Daniel's Episode 74 on Twitter If you would like to learn what Daniel Bauer says next about becoming a successful entrepreneur, listen to the episode by clicking on the download or the play button at the top of this article. To connect with Daniel Bauer - The Better Leader, check out his links below and remember he welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Don't forget to mention you heard about Daniel on Stop Riding the Pine:-) Better Leaders Better Schools Daniel on LinkedIn Daniel on Twitter Daniel's Podcast Daniel's Blog Strength Finder 2.0 Here are the highlights of my conversation with Daniel Bauer - The Better Leader if you are in a hurry: Who is Daniel Bauer? (4:26 Mark) What Daniel says about fear as an entrepreneur (9:40 Mark) What does Daniel say about Challenges? (10:50 Mark) Daniel's mastermind summit feedback (16:00 Mark) What was Daniel's break away moment? (30:27 Mark) Special Mentions: (iTunes Shout Out) Dee Brown. Thank you to Alexis Ayala, for providing the incredible editing for this episode. If you need to find an audio editor, send Alexis an email at lex@slapshotstudio.com. Thank you to our awesome sponsor, Interview Valet, A professional concierge guest booking podcast service for hosts and guests - You be the Guest, We do the Rest! Check out their new website at InterviewValet.com. This episode of Stop Riding the Pine Podcast was brought to you by Done4YouWP.com Are you a busy coach, professional or agency looking to have your WordPress website headaches handled by your very own development team for wholesale prices? Then you should visit Done4YouWP.com to find the solution that best fits your current challenges with a full-scale approach to managing your WordPress website. Stop Riding the Pine is a lot of fun and we love sharing the shows we've done. We would greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us grow this show by not only downloading the episodes, but also sharing them. Leave comments and rate our show so we can make the show even better.

Cade Joiner - Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur Jaime Jay welcomes Cade Joiner - Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur to the show today. Cade is 37 years old living in Atlanta with his wife and young son. Cade began as a political fundraiser in Washington D.C. straight out of college. After one year in politics, Cade returned home and began a company called Shred X. A company developed to destroy personal information online and in paper form in the Atlanta, GA area. Cade Joiner loves being an entrepreneur. He loves creating businesses and creating jobs. Cade Joiner Says Start Small Cade encourages those looking to make the move from their 9 to 5 job to being an entrepreneur to start small. Look for something you can do on nights or weekends and work it until you can pursue it full-time. When Cade started out he was 22 years old without a credit card. he called on bank after bank after until one believed in him and his idea enough to get his first loan for his first truck. Cade has maintained that relationship for over 15 years. There has never been a greater time than now. Share Cade's Episode 73 on Twitter Cade's Passion Cade is as passionate today about his business as the day he started. Cade began on the weekends in the DC area at the local Barnes and Noble reading a yearly publication from Entrepreneur magazine. He read about Greg Brothy who began a company called Shred It. He took a napkin from the cafe, jotted notes from book, went home and wrote a business plan. If you would like to learn what Cade Joiner says next about taking the leap to becoming an entrepreneur, listen to the episode by clicking on the download or the play button at the top of this article. To connect with Cade Joiner - Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur, check out his links below and remember he welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Don't forget to mention you heard about Cade on Stop Riding the Pine:-) Shred X Cade on LinkedIn Cade Joiner on Twitter Here are the highlights of my conversation with Cade Joiner - Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur if you are in a hurry: Who is Cade Joiner? (3:47 Mark) Fear is normal as an entrepreneur (7:26 Mark) Is there a better time than now to start? (9:20 Mark) What moment did Cade decide to take the entrepreneurial leap? (12:10 Mark) What was Cade's break away moment? (30:14 Mark) Special Mentions: (iTunes Shout Out) Cade Joiner. Thank you to Alexis Ayala, for providing the incredible editing for this episode. If you need to find an audio editor, send Alexis an email at lex@slapshotstudio.com. Thank you to our awesome sponsor, Interview Valet, A professional concierge guest booking podcast service for hosts and guests - You be the Guest, We do the Rest! Check out their new website at InterviewValet.com. This episode of Stop Riding the Pine Podcast was brought to you by Done4YouWP.com Are you a busy coach, professional or agency looking to have your WordPress website headaches handled by your very own development team for wholesale prices? Then you should visit Done4YouWP.com to find the solution that best fits your current challenges with a full-scale approach to managing your WordPress website. Stop Riding the Pine is a lot of fun and we love sharing the shows we've done. We would greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us grow this show by not only downloading the episodes, but also sharing them. Leave comments and rate our show so we can make the show even better.

Linda Wolfe - WordPress Expert Linda Wolfe - WordPress Expert. Linda is a software engineer by trade. Linda Wolfe tired of the defense industry and the long commute she made to work. The internet was just getting started and she was fascinated by it. She self-taught herself web design and now has her own company with 10 employees. Linda lives in Temecula CA, she's married to a pilot, her 3 children are grown and she likes to travel. She loves that she can involve her kids in her business. Linda Wolfe's Keys to Success Her number one tip is to answer your phone and do it professionally. By choosing the right tools you can make your company seem bigger than it is. If you give great customer service, you'll be successful. And remember to be honest. Share Linda's Episode 72 on Twitter Building Passive Income Making residual income is worth the time. Linda wishes she had started 18 years ago. Linda recommends watching Youtube videos and investing the time is worth it for the income you can make. Linda Wolfe started with a side business and has transitioned it into her full-time business. You can do this too! Decide you are going to do it and go for it! Importance of Online Presence Linda Wolfe says if you are starting on a shoestring, build your own site through WordPress and use a premium theme. WordPress is the box and the theme is the wrapping paper. If you would like to learn what Linda Wolfe says next about building a successful WordPress site, listen to the episode by clicking on the download or the play button at the top of this article. To connect with Linda Wolfe - WordPress Expert, check out her links below and remember she welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Don't forget to mention you heard about Linda on Stop Riding the Pine:-) Call Linda at 951-643-4559 Email Linda Wolfe Interactive Website Linda Wolfe on LinkedIn Linda Wolfe on Twitter Wolfe Interactive on Facebook Ring Central Guerilla Marketing Book WordPress Themes Basecamp Here are the highlights of my conversation with Linda Wolfe - WordPress Expert if you are in a hurry: Who is Linda Wolfe? (4:11 Mark) Linda's favorite app for professional phone calls (7:55 Mark) How does Linda handle upset customers? (10:00 Mark) What revolutionized Linda's business? (10:45 Mark) How does Linda choose a WordPress theme? (19:05 Mark) What was Linda's break away moment? (31:43 Mark) Special Mentions: (iTunes Shout Out) Jay Carberry. Thank you to Alexis Ayala, for providing the incredible editing for this episode. If you need to find an audio editor, send Alexis an email at lex@slapshotstudio.com. Thank you to our awesome sponsor, Interview Valet, A professional concierge guest booking podcast service for hosts and guests - You be the Guest, We do the Rest! Check out their new website at InterviewValet.com. This episode of Stop Riding the Pine Podcast was brought to you by Done4YouWP.com Are you a busy coach, professional or agency looking to have your WordPress website headaches handled by your very own development team for wholesale prices? Then you should visit Done4YouWP.com to find the solution that best fits your current challenges with a full-scale approach to managing your WordPress website. Stop Riding the Pine is a lot of fun and we love sharing the shows we've done. We would greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us grow this show by not only downloading the episodes, but also sharing them. Leave comments and rate our show so we can make the show even better.

Matt Fortnow - The Entrepreneur's Coach Matt Fortnow - The Entrepreneur's Coach. Jaime and his co-host Mark Haffner welcome Matt to the show today.  Matt Fortnow is a former entertainment attorney, producer and author of the 7th Edition of This Business of Music which is the bible of the music industry. Serial Entrepreneur In 1995, Matt and his fraternity brothers from Carnegie Mellon started commissioner.com a fantasy sports website after realizing people were paying big money for weekly baseball stats for their fantasy league. Matt's site pioneered live scoring and on-line drafting. They eventually partnered with CBS SportsLine, MLB and the NFL. They attribute their success to having the best product and the best customer service. These 5 fraternity brothers still had their day jobs and worked evenings into the early hours of the morning to answer emails and provide stats. Share Matt's Episode 71 on Twitter Planetary Alignment Matt is still practicing law. It's late Friday afternoon and a new client comes in. He was  producer for a very popular band in 70's and 80's. Here it is the 90's and he hasn't been paid royalties for 10 years. This client gives him a deadline of Monday morning. Really, 10 years you waited and now you have a deadline? The client leans in and says "astrology" as he describes with planetary alignments, etc. Matt worked all weekend, filed it Monday morning and they got everything they asked for and more. What is Matt Doing Today? Matt coaches entrepreneurs even if you are just getting started and don't know what your product is. Matt is a mentor that focuses on getting your business going and growing. If you would like to learn what Matt Fortnow says next about coaching entrepreneurs, listen to the episode by clicking on the download or the play button at the top of this article. To connect with Matt Fortnow - The Entrepreneur's Coach check out his links below and remember he welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Don't forget to mention you heard about Matt on Stop Riding the Pine:-) Matt Fortnow website Matt on Facebook Matt on LinkedIn Peers app Here are the highlights of my conversation with Matt Fortnow - The Entrepreneur's Coach if you are in a hurry: Who is Matt Fortnow? (3:16 Mark) What is Matt doing today? (21:26 Mark) What was Matt's break away moment? (32:02) Special Mentions: (iTunes Shout Out) Harold Reed. Thank you to Alexis Ayala, for providing the incredible editing for this episode. If you need to find an audio editor, send Alexis an email at lex@slapshotstudio.com. Thank you to our awesome sponsor, Interview Valet, A professional concierge guest booking podcast service for hosts and guests - You be the Guest, We do the Rest! Check out their new website at InterviewValet.com. This episode of Stop Riding the Pine Podcast was brought to you by Done4YouWP.com Are you a busy coach, professional or agency looking to have your WordPress website headaches handled by your very own development team for wholesale prices? Then you should visit Done4YouWP.com to find the solution that best fits your current challenges with a full-scale approach to managing your WordPress website. Stop Riding the Pine is a lot of fun and we love sharing the shows we've done. We would greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us grow this show by not only downloading the episodes, but also sharing them. Leave comments and rate our show so we can make the show even better.

Dennis Washington - Content Marketing Dennis Washington - Content Marketing. Dennis grew up and remains in Alabama. Dennis developed a love for weather as a kid which led to his becoming a meteorologist and a tornado chaser for the local TV station in Birmingham, Alabama. During his work as a tornado chaser, he discovered his calling and desire to help people. Dennis Washington was in charge of everything digital at the station, the website, app and social media. About ten years ago he began to see the writing on the wall for how people were consuming content, entertainment and consuming news. Share Dennis' Episode 70 on Twitter Mainstream Marketing Today You cannot connect directly with your customer with traditional media. You have to buy access through advertising. The internet allows you to bypass the traditional media platforms and go directly to your customer and filter out those not interested in your product and provide content in a targeted fashion. The internet and all the platforms on the internet are an amazing way to have a two way social stream. Traditionally through newspaper or TV, it's a one way stream. You receive the news how it is being fed to you. Now, you can pick and choose who you want to get your news from and more importantly you can communicate back to them directly. Content Marketing Strategy The first step is to find your target audience. Not everyone is interested in your product so don't try to target everyone. Don't pretend to be something you are not. Dennis has discovered he is really good at live streaming. He is a content marketer but he's not the go to guy for LinkedIn or Snapchat. Dennis has discovered it's OK not to be the expert at everything, you need to niche down. When you are very specific about what you are good at, your customers will respond more favorably to you. If you would like to learn what Dennis Washington  says next about content marketing, listen to the episode by clicking on the download or the play button at the top of this article. To connect with Dennis Washington - Content Marketing, check out his links below and remember he welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Don't forget to mention you heard about Daniel on Stop Riding the Pine:-) Dennis Washington's Website Dennis on LinkedIn Dennis on Twitter Youversation Podcast Here are the highlights of my conversation with Dennis Washington - Content Marketing if you are in a hurry: Who is Dennis Washington? (3:27 Mark) Connecting directly with customers (10:15 Mark) How critical is "social" in social media? (14:31 Mark) Content marketing and menus analogy? (23:19 Mark) How does Dennis market himself? (29:24 Mark) What was Dennis' break away moment? (37:42) Special Mentions: (iTunes Shout Out) MarkSmith111. Thank you to Alexis Ayala, for providing the incredible editing for this episode. If you need to find an audio editor, send Alexis an email at lex@slapshotstudio.com. Thank you to our awesome sponsor, Interview Valet, A professional concierge guest booking podcast service for hosts and guests - You be the Guest, We do the Rest! Check out their new website at InterviewValet.com. This episode of Stop Riding the Pine Podcast was brought to you by Done4YouWP.com Are you a busy coach, professional or agency looking to have your WordPress website headaches handled by your very own development team for wholesale prices? Then you should visit Done4YouWP.com to find the solution that best fits your current challenges with a full-scale approach to managing your WordPress website. Stop Riding the Pine is a lot of fun and we love sharing the shows we've done. We would greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us grow this show by not only downloading the episodes, but also sharing them. Leave comments and rate our show so we can make the show even better.

Chris Marr - Content Generation for Success Chris grew up and remains in Scotland with his growing family. He began his successful entrepreneurial journey in 2010 when he wrote his first blog. Find out how your entrepreneurial journey can be successful with Chris Marr - Content Generation for Success. Share Chris's Episode 69 on Twitter He began Content Marketing Academy as a general marketing company in 2013. As the company grew, he realized the company needed to educate. The more teaching they could do, the more money businesses would be willing to spend for marketing. CMA started with the thought of educating and teaching but it's more about building a community. Delivering Content Chris Marr's company does speaking, videos, podcasts, blogs, podcast interviews and is out there as often as possible to get exposure for CMA. CMA is changing the way their clients do business. Chris Marr says Scotland is behind compared to the United States in marketing. CMA is ahead of the curve. They are leading the industry forward in Scotland by changing the way their clients communicate forever through content marketing. If you are not creating content today, blog, video or podcast, you don't exist. When people search for solutions and you have not created content, you won't be found. Business marketing is no longer about who is shouting the loudest. Consumers have more choices and think about buying choices differently. Community Acknowledgement Chris compares this to being in a crowd. If you say something and no one acknowledges you, what is the point. Providing or receiving feedback on your content is vital to getting people to like you and building a community. If you would like to learn what Chris Marr says next about content generation, listen to the episode by clicking on the download or the play button at the top of this article. To connect with Chris Marr - Content Generation for Success, check out his links below and remember he welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Don't forget to mention you heard about Daniel on Stop Riding the Pine:-) Email Chris Chris on Facebook Instagram Connect with Chris on LinkedIn Subscribe on YouTube Here are the highlights of my conversation with Chris Marr - Content Generation for Success if you are in a hurry: Who is Chris Marr? (3:51 Mark) Why is content vital for business? (13:20 Mark) Why build a community? (26:40 Mark) What does Chris say about scalability? (27:45 Mark) What was Chris's break away moment? (31:56 Mark) Special Mentions: (iTunes Shout Out) Jeff Augustine. Thank you to Alexis Ayala, for providing the incredible editing for this episode. If you need to find an audio editor, send Alexis an email at lex@slapshotstudio.com. Thank you to our awesome sponsor, Interview Valet, A professional concierge guest booking podcast service for hosts and guests - You be the Guest, We do the Rest! Check out their new website at InterviewValet.com. This episode of Stop Riding the Pine Podcast was brought to you by Done4YouWP.com Are you a busy coach, professional or agency looking to have your WordPress website headaches handled by your very own development team for wholesale prices? Then you should visit Done4YouWP.com to find the solution that best fits your current challenges with a full-scale approach to managing your WordPress website. Stop Riding the Pine is a lot of fun and we love sharing the shows we've done. We would greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us grow this show by not only downloading the episodes, but also sharing them. Leave comments and rate our show so we can make the show even better.

Terry Lancaster - Getting Started Terry Lancaster - Getting Started released "Better Self-Help for the Rest of Us". It's about self-improvement who don't have the six-pack abs, are trying to lose 100 pounds, they aren't the beautiful people they are the regular people. On December 28, 2016 he released the book as a nobody and on December 29the he was a best-selling author on Amazon. Share Terry's Episode 68 on Twitter Terry Lancaster is doing a virtual world tour of about 2 podcasts per week and spreading the word about how you can be better without having to swing for the fences and go crazy. The goal of the book is not to be the best, it's just to be better. Whether it's in exercise or business you don't have to shoot for the fences and double your income. Everyone wants to be the best but in order to get there you have to start with better. The only advice that anyone can give is to go. Just start. Entrepreneurs have the tendency to research things to death. The read everything and attend every webinar and every book and magazine to come out with this perfect business plan. There is no perfect business plan. You have to get out there, get punched in the mouth and see what you do then. That's how you determine if you are an entrepreneur or not. Terry Lancaster - Start Small but Start   You don't have to start big. You don't have to quit your job and go into debt to get started but you can get started by reaching out to customers and building your social media connections. The world has changed in such a way that you can build an empire from your bedroom. You can start where you are using what you have and you can start now. Take care of your responsibilities, feed the family, pay the mortgage. There are 24 hours in a day. 8 are spent sleeping. Stop spending your extra time watching TV. Start building something constructive and begin from there. If you would like to learn what Terry Lancaster says next about getting started, listen to the episode by clicking on the download or the play button at the top of this article. To connect with Terry Lancaster - Getting Started, check out his links below and remember he welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Don't forget to mention you heard about Daniel on Stop Riding the Pine:-) Terry's Website Terry on Twitter Terry on Facebook Connect with Terry on LinkedIn Subscribe on YouTube Here are the highlights of my conversation with Terry Lancaster - Getting Started if you are in a hurry: Who is Terry Lancaster? (3:44 Mark) What does Terry say about the perfect business plan? (6:05 Mark) What does Terry say about getting started? (7;05 Mark) What is imposter syndrome? (8:35 Mark) What motivated Terry to get started? (12:00 Mark) What was Terry's break away moment? (31:30 Mark) Special Mentions: (iTunes Shout Out) No More Obstacles. Thank you to Alexis Ayala, for providing the incredible editing for this episode. If you need to find an audio editor, send Alexis an email at lex@slapshotstudio.com. Thank you to our awesome sponsor, Interview Valet, A professional concierge guest booking podcast service for hosts and guests - You be the Guest, We do the Rest! Check out their new website at InterviewValet.com. This episode of Stop Riding the Pine Podcast was brought to you by Done4YouWP.com Are you a busy coach, professional or agency looking to have your WordPress website headaches handled by your very own development team for wholesale prices? Then you should visit Done4YouWP.com to find the solution that best fits your current challenges with a full-scale approach to managing your WordPress website. Stop Riding the Pine is a lot of fun and we love sharing the shows we've done. We would greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us grow this show by not only downloading the episodes, but also sharing them. Leave comments and rate our show so we can make the show even better.

Michal Stawicki has been working in the IT industry for 12 years. In 2013 Michal decided to begin writing with a goal of being a full-time writer with an emphasis on personal development. Share on Twitter Michal Stawicki on Mission Statements All of Michal's books are based upon personal experiences. His first book "A Personal Mission Statement: Your Road to Happiness" is all about the need for creating your own personal mission statement. In order to achieve your goals you must start with a mission statement. The first step in Michal's formula for finding and creating a mission statement is self-examination. You must ask yourself lots of questions and ask others as well about yourself like family and co-workers. You must find out what is inside of you. The second step is to write everything down. Everything that you have learned or wish for must be put down on paper. Michal Stawicki's final step is chiseling out everything that is not essential. From these three steps you can create your mission statement. Michal suggests that the shorter your mission statement the better and the average is 3 to 5 sentences. Michal has written or co-authored 14 books. He has based all of his books from life experiences and his daily work for his personal transformation and growth. Connect with Michal Stawicki, check out his links below and remember he welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Don't forget to mention you heard about Michal on Stop Riding the Pine:-) Michal's Website Michal's Accountability Coaching Michal on Twitter Connect with Michal on Facebook Here are the highlights of my conversation with Michal Stawicki if you are in a hurry: Who is Michal Stawicki? (4:12 Mark) What does Michal say about creating a personal mission statement? (8:40 Mark) How many books has Michal written? (13:15 Mark) What was Michal's break away moment? (22:12 Mark) Special Mentions: (iTunes Shout Out) Aries53. Thank you to Alexis Ayala, for providing the incredible editing for this episode. If you need to find an audio editor, send Alexis an email at lex@slapshotstudio.com. Thank you to our awesome sponsor, Interview Valet, A professional concierge guest booking podcast service for hosts and guests - You be the Guest, We do the Rest! Check out their new website at InterviewValet.com. This episode of Stop Riding the Pine Podcast was brought to you by Done4YouWP.com Are you a busy coach, professional or agency looking to have your WordPress website headaches handled by your very own development team for wholesale prices? Then you should visit Done4YouWP.com to find the solution that best fits your current challenges with a full-scale approach to managing your WordPress website. Stop Riding the Pine is a lot of fun and we love sharing the shows we've done. We would greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us grow this show by not only downloading the episodes, but also sharing them. Leave comments and rate our show so we can make the show even better.

Tim takes on a recent initiative of Amnesty International to "Legalize" prostitution. His issue with their policy lies in the difference between "legalization" and "decriminalization". He argues that what they are proposing would endanger more children and ultimately undermine the efforts of many people to save kids from sex trafficking.   Tim: Hi! Thank you for joining us! This is a very special bonus edition of the Slave Stealer podcast. If you have been listening to us for a while, you know that there are a lot of aspects to human trafficking. So many drivers, so many factors. Sometimes we don’t always get the chance to elaborate within the context or whatever it is that we are talking about, but one big issue that deserves more treatment is this current push by Amnesty International to legalize all prostitution. What they are trying to do now is go out to all the countries and influence them to legalize this work. Now, there is some merit to parts of their argument, but I contend, and I contend passionately, that this legislation, if it got that far, would absolutely devastate millions of children who would be caught up in the wake of prostitution. They would be caught up in the wake... They would be caught up as victims, they would be rapedthemselves. So after we spoke with President Vicente Fox of Mexico, we got on the topic of Amnesty International’s plan, and I think I got a little fired up, so I want you to go ahead and hear what I had to say. So, let’s go and roll that.   Tim: And, people don’t believe us sometimes - "Oh bull crap, we don’t believe that"- or they will see a trafficking case, we will show footage and they see what looks like a victim going willingly into this place: "Well, they walked in. They weren’t dragged in by chains." And, I get it, but it is also very offensive because I know that these kids are slaves. I see them before and during and after. We could have Elizabeth Smart come in sometime and talk about that. Don’t say anything like that in her presence because she received that criticism: "When you were in captivity, why didn’t you just run away? Why didn’t you tell the policeman who you were when he confronted you with your captors in the library that day?" And she will tell you that a child’s mind doesn’t think like an adult’s mind, and it can be very easily manipulated and really brainwashed and rewired to the point that when Elizabeth was rescued, she didn’t even admit who she was. She was still denying who she was as she was even put into the police car and taken to her father, ok. And that’s the thing people don’t understand about human trafficking, and so they misidentify the victims. Police departments have been doing it for decades. I think...in the last decade or so, I think they are trying to get out of this where they treat all prostitutes as criminals. They didn’t even stop to ask the question, 'How did she get here?' Maybe she is 19 years old, but did you know that she was kidnapped at 12 and forced into this life? And yeah, now she is acting out, and she is yelling and cussing at you, and she "doesn’t want to be rescued." But she is a victim, and she needs to be treated as a victim until you figure out what is going on. And a lot more needs to be done there, but progress has been made where these women and children are not being seen as criminals anymore but as victims, but much more needs to be done in that area. Mark: That is a legislative issue, obviously. Are those national statutes that need to be passed or are they local? Explain prosecution of prostitutes. Explain that whole dilemma to me, I don’t get it. Tim: There is some legislative there, but there is also a lot of just how you administer or how the law enforcement administers or what questions they ask, right. Because to be prosecuted for say prostitution, requirements within that statutes have to be met. And part of that is willingly, and it was your intent to do these things. And it is easy just to make the assumption, 'that was your intent, you wanted to do this, and so you’re guilty.' So sometimes, it is not just the laws. The laws can be clarified, sure - you can always, you should add a requirement and say even if this prostitute, this person you have brought in...even if they are an adult, you have to prove that they meant to do this, that they wanted to do this, that this was the life that they chose. Mark: They weren’t coerced. Tim: They weren’t coerced into it. Mark: Ok. Tim: And so the questions, but the questions... The problem is, even when you have decent legislation and decent statutes, you don’t have law enforcement asking the questions, digging deeper: "Who are you? Where did you come from? How did you get into this? How old were you when you got into this?" And if they would ask that, then they would see that there is coercion here. They are not going to bust out their pimps.   Mark: No, they are scared to death. Tim: They are scared to death. Their pimps have been beating them for ten years, since they were ten years old. So, you have got to stop and ask the question. You need experts in the field - social workers, psychologists in the field - to be able to be there and take this victim aside and talk to them. Frankly, in my mind, every country, every jurisdiction - whether it is federal, state, whatever - they all need to have legislation that decriminalize prostitutes altogether, absolutely. Every prostitute, in my mind, should be treated like a victim. Mark: So, you are saying legalize prostitution? Tim: I am not saying... No, you don’t legalize prostitution at all. You legalize prostitution and that means that the pimps and the johns get away. Mark: Ah. Tim: You criminalize 100% for pimps, for johns. Mark: But you can’t criminalize the prostitutes... Tim: You don’t criminalize the prostitutes. Mark: I like that. Tim: Yeah, I mean, there is Norway and Sweden who have both adopted that, and it is very effective. What happens there, when you do that, is those countries and those cities stop becoming havens for sex, for paid sex. Because you are criminalizing the johns and the pimps, johns and pimps don’t want to work there. Mark: So what you’ll have are a few entrepreneurial women who are kind of like 'Ma and Pa' stores, but you wipe out the industry? Tim: Yeah. You would wipe out the industry because the pimps and johns can’t... They are scared to go there. Mark: Yeah. Tim: And this is a huge debate right now going on with the Amnesty International’s new policy this summer they came out with in August, I believe. They came out with the sex worker shield where they are basically wanting to decriminalize prostitution for everybody - pimps, johns, and what they call sex workers - and make it legal. The idea is bring it all out into the light, and then you can take care of the sex workers and treat them like legitimate workers. You know, it is all focused on helping the sex worker. That’s their choice - they want to be a prostitute, support them, help them. And to do that, you can’t criminalize the pimps who, in Amnesty International’s words... This is very controversial. I mean, this is Amnesty International who is supposed to be looking out for the victims. And they feel like sex workers - who they call sex workers, others might call prostitutes - have been victimized and demonized and not supported in their occupational endeavors. And the problem is, is by decriminalizing this - and I see this in my work - by decriminalizing the whole process so that the sex workers can be seen as legitimate workers, like any other professional in the world and be given all the benefits... Mark: I think the middle management and HR and marketing...they get all the departments wrapped around them: "Hey, go see the marketing guy!" Tim: That is right! Mark: "Make a brochure on this chick." Tim: That is the idea! That is the idea, like you are not letting them live their dream. Mark: Wow. Tim: And then the argument is this - let’s play with it a little bit because there is a strain of logic to it, right. So, the idea is you get them structured that way and then the government...because then my question is, "Ok, what about the kids?" Two million kids or more are being trafficked, sold. How do you protect them in this? Amnesty International says, "It is very easy!" All you do is you tell these jurisdictions and the police officers... These pimps get licensed; they are a licensed business. You go to them and they have to show that they are not selling minors: "We don’t sell minors. Here, look - it's all willing adults." Mark: "Look at our brochure!" Tim: "Look at our brochure! It is very clear." Mark: "No kids!" Tim: And I am thinking to myself, "Ok, you are talking about these underdeveloped countries that, at Operation Underground Railroad, we are filling up their gas tanks so they can drive from point A to point B. You are telling me that your police force is going to have enough resources, time, manpower, so forth, to go and regulate these legitimate brothels to make sure that there are no minors?!" Do you know how easy it is going to be if you are Fuego, right? Fuego, who is the guy… Mark: I remember Fuego. Tim: We met Fuego on the beaches of Colombia and... Mark: And you took his hat! Tim: I still have his hat. I still have his hat. Mark: That guy is such a douchebag. Tim: Can you imagine… Can you say douchebag on this show? Mark: Hey, if I put a little E next to the...we are now explicit. Tim: Ok. Mark: No, douchebag is not explicit. Tim: Is "Slave Stealer Radio" an R-rated show? Let’s just talk about this and figure that out. Mark: I think we are PG-13ish. Tim: I just want to know what I can get away with. Mark: In context, we’re probably considered like an X-rated show just given the general theme, but we don’t really get explicit yet until we get you on the wrong moment. Hopefully we edit that out. Tim: Ok! Mark: Yeah. Tim: So, Fuego... You imagine Fuego, right. How hard is it going to be for Fuego? This is Amnesty International’s plan - Fuego should be a legal vendor as long as they are adults. The kids will be safe because they are safe with Fuego, aren’t they? You spent time with Fuego. Would you trust a 12-year-old girl to Fuego? I mean... Mark: Friendly guy. Tim: Here is what is going to happen: he will line up his 18-year-olds and 20- year-olds, and he’ll say, "Here’s all I got!" And those cops are not going to go the two miles down the road into the little storage facility, right, or the tractor trailer with the ten 12-year-olds and the three or four 9-year-olds. Mark: And they are not going to check his phone to see... Tim: No! Mark: ...you know, all the 10-year-olds with pagers. Tim: Right! He will have those, he will sell those. They are premium! You are going to sell those for $1000; these 18-year-olds you are going to sell for $300. He is going to have those. The infrastructure to sell those little kids is now supported by the state. And he will be able to make money, he will be able to invest whatever he makes legitimately, he will pay his taxes and everything else. He will be a businessman! He is going to sell the premium because it is too easy and now you have just supported his infrastructure. How are you going to protect those kids? Amnesty International decided to ignore those kids. Those twelve kids in the back of the tractor trailer down the road - they have ignored them. And now, guess what? You have created an absolute sex haven. And let's say that they decriminalized it like this everywhere in Cartagena. Every gross tourist from America, Canada, and Germany, and everywhere else - they are going to go to Cartagena, they are going to enjoy the adult sex, and then they are going to make a deal with Fuego on the side and say, "Hey, where do I get the 11-year-olds?" "Well, you come to this other place down the road." And it is a booming business. I am absolutely just astonished and sickened that Amnesty International could be so incredibly short-sighted and idiotic that they don’t see that they are completely neglecting the children. They are creating safe havens. They are making it so easy for the johns and pimps to rape children. Mark: That is pretty inflammatory. Tim: It is inflammatory! Mark: You just called them idiotic. Tim: They are idiots! Mark: What if we need their help? Tim: Well, we won't need their help. Mark: Ok. Tim: But do you know who does need their help? Fuego needs their help, and apparently he is going to get it. Mark: So, an entire industry... You might shut down an entire industry. There might be jobless Fuegos all over Colombia, all over Mexico. Tim: How sad. Mark: Have you ever ordered the 'Sin City'? Tim: No. Mark: Smashburger. You go down, and it is kind of like In-N-Out burger. You can show up and there is the menu, right, there is a Smashburger menu (and they are not a sponsor of this show), but you can order the ‘Sin City’ which is not on the menu. And it is kind of a niche thing for people to go in and they give you the wink and they say, "I’ll take the Sin City." Tim: It is like In-N-Out burger, it is the same thing. They have their Animal Fries, Animal Burgers. Mark: Yeah, the Animal Style. Now, I see prostitution becoming like that. Tim: That is exactly right! Mark: Under the Amnesty plan. Tim: Absolutely! It is exactly what it is. Mark: I’ll take Sin City (wink, wink). Tim: It is exactly what it is. Mark: She is in the back alley. Tim: It is exactly what is going to happen. Mark: It is a brand extension. Tim: It is exactly what is going to happen. And we know this! I know this! I know these guys! I have negotiated with them undercover, I sit across the table from them. And if it was legal to sell, for him to sell adults - which it is not in Cartagena frankly, ok. But if it were, if we all follow Amnesty International, and if they make it legal, and I am sitting across from him... Think about this, just play it out in your head - I’ve been there a hundred times. "Hey Tim, come to my office with the sign that says, 'Beautiful women for sale,'" right, because this is a legal business. I walk in there... I mean, we have set him up, he is totally legitimate. And you don't think we are going to have that little 'Sin City menu' talk? Absolutely we are going to! Because he is going to make double or triple off this sick, horny American who is sitting across from him. Mark: Yeah. Tim: Right? It is so unbelievable! When I saw Amnesty International’s policy, I thought there is no way, there is no way they are going to vote. Sane minds will prevail here. And they didn't. Mark: Who voted for it? Tim: It is the board of Amnesty International. This is a powerful organization that has done good in the world - they are all about human rights. They have done good in the world to protect innocence. Mark: Well, traffickers are humans. They have the right to traffick. Tim: Traffickers have rights too, I guess. Mark: Apparently. So now... Tim: It is unbelievable.   Mark: So now, Amnesty International, for the uninitiated like me, Amnesty International now goes and lobbies the UN, they lobby Washington, they lobby... Tim: They lobby countries all over the earth. They will be going and saying, "You need to decriminalize prostitution!" And don’t get me wrong, I totally believe in decriminalizing prostitutes. They should all be treated as victims, absolutely, even if they are saying, "I’m here because I want to be - arrest me!" No, we are going to treat you like... We don’t know your story. I agree with that, that’s right. But what they do is, because the sex worker can’t provide her service if johns are scared to come buy them. So, who they are really protecting are the johns and the pimps. And they say that in their legislation, or in their proposed legislation. They say that... They don’t call them pimps, they are very careful with all the wording, but they call them 'security': 'security for the prostitutes'. Mark: They call them security? Tim: They need to have their infrastructure, they need to have their security, which means that there could be other people helping and facilitating in their business. So, it is unbelievable. Now, will there be a prostitute that would benefit from this? Will there will be a prostitute that would say, "I truly do want to be here"? Absolutely! I believe there are prostitutes who want to be there. And might they say, "We need this policy so that we can sell ourselves freely and be sex workers by choice," and all this, and this would help them. Yes, that would help them, but you have to weigh that against the twelve 12-year-olds who are sitting in the tractor trailer down the road from the legitimate brothel. Mark: Whom you have seen. Tim: I have seen them! They are everywhere! There are 2 million of them. And you have completely thrown them under the bus because you are so worried about the few prostitutes who want to be there, who love their job, and whatever. Mark: The company guys. Tim: I can’t say I am completely unsympathetic to that - maybe that is what their choice is and I am a libertarian in that way. I want people to be able to choose. But it is a balancing act and when you are choosing that over the children who will now be raped because you have provided the infrastructure for them to be raped, you are in the wrong. I mean, it is so clear that you are in the wrong. I know from our perspective, you know, we spend a lot time in the trenches and we see this. Perhaps the folks from the Amnesty haven’t. I have to assume they haven’t seen this, and see how easy they are making it now for children to be raped.

Tim, Mark & Marisol Interview 00:00 Tim: When you rape a child, you lose rights forever. That’s it! You lose rights forever. Somehow we don’t understand this. And again, you can serve your sentence and everything else, but you still have lost rights. One of those rights you lose is you don’t get to travel around the world with anonymity. We are going to talk about where you are. We are going to watch you. Is that so unreasonable? I mean, the argument is that, well if they travel to some place like Iran and we tell the Iranian Government, they might kill him. Well, you know what, that is his choice to travel to Iran after raping children. Don’t rape kids! How about that?! Let’s start with that. 00:36 Mark: If you do it twice, we are sending you to Iran with a big tag on your head, ‘I rape kids’. 00:40 Tim: That should be the punishment, right? That should be the sentence. 00:42 Marisol: We do that for terrorism and we give up their rights that way. It should be no different. Intro 00:50 You are listening to Slave Stealer. 00:54 Tim: It is a world I know and understand better than most people, because you don’t even know how real and how huge it is. There have been laws put in place to protect kids, and one of the laws - surprise, surprise - is that you can’t sell them. If you guys are traffickers, you have come in just like this. This is what happens, this is the core of the problem. Tim: Marisol, thank you for joining us on Slave Stealer podcast. Marisol: Oh, it’s my pleasure. Tim: Marisol Nichols is our friend, and actress, and social activist. She has been on ‘Criminal Minds’, ‘24’, ‘Blind Justice’, ‘NCIS’ - all these cop shows. Does that have anything to do...or is that just a coincidence with your passion to fight crime?   Marisol: I am sure it does. I am sure it does. I did so much resource playing different kinds of cop roles and agent roles and stuff that it just kind of, by default, dealt with me into this world.   Tim: Tell us about your foundation, and we’ll talk about how we met and what we are doing together with you. Marisol: Sure! So I have got involved in trafficking maybe three or four years ago, and the whole reason I started my foundation was... Well, there are a couple of reasons. One was, like, the more I learned, the more I found out about it, the more I was like, "I have to do something." I can not do something. It can’t be something that I can sit back and say, "Those poor people over there, how horrible for them." That’s… I can’t sleep at night unless I do something. And there were many, many, many nights that I wouldn’t sleep because the more I learned, the more, you know, horrific it is. So forming my own foundation - it was sort of a natural thing that came out of meeting with different organizations and legislators - you know, the people that live and work in this field - to see how I could help, what could I do. I have, you know, many, many friends in the business, both in front of the camera and behind the camera, and anyone and everyone I would talk to were like, “What can I do? How can I help?” And because of that is how I started doing these briefings and big events, educating a particular audience about what is happening not only in our world and on our planet, but also in our own backyard. Tim: So, question for you, because I don’t know the answer to this question but it bugs me. I mean, this is the greatest plague on the planet. There is nothing worse than this and yet, we, our presidential candidates, aren’t talking about it. It is kind of still a vague word, you know, people, trafficking… What is going on? Why can’t people see it? Marisol: Two reasons. And I don’t actually even blame people for not seeing - I blame the people that are in charge of our entertainment. I blame...I really do, I truly do, because I think that we have created a world where we can’t get purposely distracted by Kardashians and social media and whatever other things that they want coming down the line as a buzzword of the week. So we don’t pay attention to what is really really going on. And that our news channels are not very forthcoming - some of them are really wonderfully, will do pieces on it and pieces on it, but to me, like you said, is nowhere near fit to what is needed. And I am sure that you have had this strange [inaudbile] that when you do meet people that find out about it, their world is completely rocked and they are completely changed and they want to help. Tim: Yep. Marisol: And I honestly believe that there are, you know, certain forces out there that don’t want to see this end. Mark: Name names. Marisol: Well look, who is profiting? I mean, you can follow money: who makes the most money from this? Whether it is sex slavery or labor bondage or what. Who is making money from this? And you can trace it back and trace it back. And Tim hit it right on the head - why aren’t our presidential candidates talking about this? This is a huge issue; it is bigger than anything. Tim: Yeah. Marisol: He is right. Why isn’t there a giant spotlight on who is profiting from that? Who is benefitting and keeping people enslaved? Tim: It boggles my mind, but I do believe like you believed it - if we can get people to see it and they become converts, our politicians will have to start talking about it if there is a demand for that subject.   Marisol: Exactly. Tim: And we are not yelling loud enough yet. We are trying to yell loud and be a voice for these victims. Now you got to come with us - we took you down to visit some of the victims that we had rescued in Haiti, and then on our way back we stopped in an unnamed city. Marisol actually went undercover with us, and... Tell me, tell me about the whole experience, how you felt seeing those kids. And then, I mean, you kind of got this cool experience where you got to see these victims and, all of a sudden, you are thrown into this - one of the people who travels and abuses these kids, one of the partakers. What was that like?     Marisol: It is haunting because it is one thing to read about the issue, talk about the issue, hear the stories, look at videos; it is another thing to see it firsthand, and particularly meeting the abuser... I mean, this was... You know, you wouldn’t recognize him down the street. You’d think this is your college guy, this is your neighbor, this is your… You know, he looks like an everyday Joe. And the casualness in which he would talk about doing these things to girls was astonishing and also heart-breaking. You realize that these are human beings, right? You realize that you are talking about someone’s sister, someone’s daughter, someone’s mother, one day hopefully...   Tim: Yeah. Marisol: And it was....you know, it was haunting because you go, “Ok, that is the mindset that allows this to occur.” That is the mindset - partyyy, woohoo, or whatever it is. It was haunting; it stayed with me. Tim: And can you tell us...what was the role you were playing? You were awesome, by the way, and it was obviously natural. You know, it’s funny... People think like, you know, like undercover operators... Just because you are a cop, you think you are going to be good in undercover work. It is not true. And when I was in the law enforcement, it was difficult to find good undercover operators because, again, it is not inherent to a police officer. It is more an actor or actresses, and that is where you were being able to pull it up. So, tell us what role you played in that?   Marisol: Yeah. So, I was playing the person who sets up the sex parties basically, who sets up the situation for men to come and abuse these girls. You know, it was very, very like spur of the moment. I think we had, what, half an hour to plan it or something. Tim: Yeah. Marisol: You know, when I saw that the only way I am going to pull this off with this guy is if I pretend to be one of those people that just don’t care. Mark: What did you do? Give me some lines. Marisol: You know, I have... I did things like, “Hey, yeah, you know, it’s all good.” Tim: Yeah, she was sitting like really sexy, like just loosey-goosey. It was perfect. And the guy was like watching her more than anything else, and he understands that she will be able to get girls for us, better than we can get them on our own. Marisol: One of the facts that I was surprised to learn about is that some of the traffickers are girls - they are. And they lower young girls just as men do. Tim: Even better. Mark: Let’s say you get a big role as a trafficker on a film coming out in a couple of years. What do you do to prepare? Marisol: It is interesting because prior to coming into this world, you know that there are evil people out there, but you think, you know, you just don’t have that much reality. And then playing the trafficker or playing someone like this...now I’ve started to play some sort of, you know, one or two bad guys here and there, and I am like, “Oh no, no, no, it is 100% evil with no remorse and no feeling and no nothing.” That is how you would have to be to do this. You have to be one of those people, that ‘there is nothing left’. Tim: You are looking into their eyes when you see these people - I mean there is no soul. I mean, it is like past feeling. It is just unbelievable. Like the woman we have talked about, the trafficker, the beauty queen, who was going and luring these girls at 9, 10 years old, telling them that she will teach them to be famous. She is famous, she is also in music videos, and the families were sending their kids with her. And she is going and selling them to us who she believed were men coming down to violate. And Marisol, you talked about this guy we met and you played your undercover role... I mean, I am literally sitting here, we are late for the podcast, I have twenty dudes sitting here, and they look just like that guy. I mean, I have a couple - I am not kidding you - I have a couple right now who are coming together to abuse who they believe to be a 13, a 12-year-old and a 9-year-old. And they are all excited - they tell me what they are going to do and they both want to do it together. They will be arrested next week when they show up. Marisol: It sound like how can you not do everything you possibly can, and, like, why aren’t there writings on the streets, why aren't we talking about this? It should be on the tip of everyone’s tongue. And I believe that if we did, it really would end it fast.   Tim: Yes. And the problem is this concept that people think, "Well, I have heard of it, but law enforcement is taking care of it. The government can take care of it." And not to slam the government, but it is too big of a problem. There are 30 million plus slaves, depending on what numbers you look at, 2 million at least or more, probably, kids in the sex slave industry. If people knew… And it reminds me of the slavery in the 19th century where it was the same thing. They were not talking about it. It was just like people knew what was happening, but: "Oh, the government will take care of that." It wasn’t until people learned through, like, abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote "Uncle Tom’s Cabin." It wasn’t until the people rose up and it got so loud that the government said, “Oh crap, we better do more, we better do something.” And then you start to stop it. We can do it, we can stop it! Marisol: And it comes down to people demanding that the government do something about it. These are just demands that it will end, and it will end it. But you need multitudes and multitudes of people demanding, showing more, and educating others to really put an end to this. But it can be done. I believe you, 100% it can be done. Mark: I have a question, Marisol. In your dealings with trafficking, who were the good guys? Why don’t we just start shouting out people that are amazing? You may have worked with them directly or not, you have known them or are friends of yours. Marisol: Yeah, ok! Well, first of all, Tim, Tim Ballard, whom I met at Osborne - for sure, 100% top of the list. Tim: Thank you, you are so nice. Marisol: What they do is incredible. And I have mentioned it before, but it is when you first learn about this, you are, “Let’s go get the kids. Can we just go and just get the kids?” And that is what they do. Mark: Yes. Marisol: And I mean that is vital. There is, obviously, a lot more they are doing. There are so many people doing this particular fight. There is Kim Biddle, from an organization called Saving Innocence in Los Angeles, that has dedicated her life. She is this beautiful, brilliant, brilliant girl, gorgeous, and she has dedicated her entire life to saving girls from trafficking and then rehabilitating them and seeing it through, like seeing it all the way through - not put them in a home and walk away, but seeing all the way through until the girl graduate from the home, goes to college and has her entire life back. She is dedicated. Mark: More influencers... Anyone in your world, acting world? Who are the good guys in trafficking? Marisol: There was this one movement that Sean Penn and other celebs got involved in and it was quick, but it really made a difference. It was "Real Men Don't Buy Girls." I don’t know if you remember that, but it was a whole Twitter and hashtag thing, and they got giant celebs to do this. And I thought it was really effective because people look up to actors, musicians, incredible artists as opinion leaders. For these guys to stand up there and say real men don’t buy girls... I thought it setted up a little bit which was really, really good to set a precedent of like, "Hey, who are we looking at that really does this?" and maybe, maybe make someone think twice about it. There needs to be more. I mean, just to be honest, we need more shows focusing on it. We need more episodes of crime shows focusing on it and really telling the stories. On "Law and Order: SVU," they have done a fairly good job on that because that is their ‘Sexual Victims Unit’ - that is the entire title of the show - but I believe we need more.  And recently - I don’t know if you saw "Room," but "Room" did a really good job of taking you through a girl’s experience, what it would be like to be trapped and under the control of someone else who is monitoring your every single move. I don’t know if you know the story, but she was trapped for seven years and had a baby by the trafficker and eventually escaped. And this particular story in this movie did such a good job. But it is based on so many cases of girls being trapped in the exact same way, having children from their traffickers, all of it… And it really... I thought they painted a really great picture of what it is like for the victim, and they do sort of wake up, like, “Wait, this exists. This happened.”       Mark: Are there certain writers or studios or groups that do a better job of talking about trafficking, and are they getting the ratings when they do it? Marisol: That is a really good question. There are definitely episodes that focus on it, but not anyone where I can, “Oh yeah, this particular writer," or, "Fox is dedicating an entire series to this,” or anything like that. It is still not there. And, like anything right now, it is just an episode or two that would be dedicated to it rather than an entire show. Is that make sense? But when they do air, they make just as equal ratings as they would any other crime, because it usually goes on crime shows. What I would like to see is that at the end of those things, "To find out more, go to www..." or statistics. Mark: Yes. Marisol: Or, like, “Hey, this is actually based on a real case,” to get the audience going, “I had no idea.” Because anything that is based on real life events will always get more interest. Mark: Do you feel like we speak about trafficking correctly? In general, how it is messaged? How should it be messaged in your opinion, if you were PR for the movement? Marisol: If I was PR for the movement, I would call it slavery. I would call it modern-day slavery and I would make sure that it was on the forefront of everything. And I would really, really, really validate the people who rescue the kids - not only OUR, but also police officers, FBI agents, sheriffs...because when I would tell people, they would go, “Why isn’t the police doing anything about it?” I am like, “Because the police is the same people who have to respond to a burglary, to a murder, to a cat caught up in the tree, to all of it.”     Mark: Yeah. Marisol: And I think if we started validating more and more the officers and sheriffs and agents that are focusing on this, and on getting results, freeing girls, and, most importantly, putting the traffickers away... I think the more validation you give that, or anything, the more of that we will get. Mark: Yeah. Marisol: You know, there is a fascination with murder. You know, there are a thousand TV shows about murder, about this, and I have been in all of them, so I do know. And I think we need to shift our focus, because, for one, I think you get whatever you validate. So, if you validate that, you are going to get more of it. We can use that to our advantage and validate those guys that are doing this, and not only getting the girls, but arresting those traffickers and making sure it sticks. Because it is not easy. And I know this from law enforcement, I know this from meeting with different legislators, and all of that. It is that trafficking is not an easy thing to prosecute.   Mark: It is not. Marisol: It is crazy to me, and I have certain ideas that I am working with to make it a lot easier and what I think could be done. But we will get to that whenever you are at that point of the program.   Mark: Well no, if you have certain ideas, let those out. Marisol: What is hard, at least in this country, is you have to get a victim to testify against her trafficker and the johns just walk free: "Well, she approached me," or, "I don’t know… answered an ad," blah blah blah… There is an existing law in the book called statutory rape that doesn’t matter if the girl was consensual or not. It doesn’t matter at all. So if you would start prosecuting johns and traffickers with statutory rape, you don’t have to get the girl to go through a whole testimony, and how he forced her, anything. Is she under the age of 17 or not? Tim: Yeah. Marisol: That... It is done. And when you start prosecuting johns and traffickers with rape, that is a different story now. Tim: Yeah. Marisol: And charging traffickers, by the way, with facilitation of late, where you are creating an environment, where a girl can be raped extremely easily, should be under the age of 17, it is done. Tim: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. In fact, a lot of our approaches to this is all about figuring out how to prosecute these cases without needing to put the victim on the stand. These victims are so... They have been so terrorized and so rewired. For their own well-being, you don’t want to put them on the stand to have them have to relive this. Also, they are not the best witnesses because they do not know who they are, they don’t know who to trust. And so, this solution of prosecuting different crimes to get around that is one approach. Something we are doing, especially in foreign countries, is we do these sting operations and film everything. And they don’t really do that, especially in developing nations. We film every part, from the day we meet the trafficker until we buy the kid. And so, at the end of the day, we just give a hard drive to the prosecutor, and it is like they are watching the movie, and they say, “We don’t need to put the kid on the stand because we have the true intent of this trafficker from seventeen different angles."    Marisol: Yeah. And you know, Tim, I have had these conversations with Lieutenant Mark Evans, who is head of all Los Angeles Vice and all of the trafficking in Los Angeles on the Valley side, and he is like, “We would do this if the DA/district attorney would prosecute.” So my next step is to meet with DA and go, “Would you prosecute them?” Because all depends on are they going to prosecute a case like that or not. The cops can actually charge them with anything that they want, so if we just start instilling the mindset... And also johns... Can we just take a moment about the customers? Because if, right now - and I don’t know if this is the case all over, but at least in California, you know - let’s say there is a 12-year-old-girl. Someone answered an ad on Backpage and went to a motel and had sex with the 12-year-old girl. And the guy is 55 years old - he gets a slap on the wrist and he goes to john school and he gets a misdemeanor and gets it wiped from his record, just like traffic school. I don’t understand - how that is ok? Tim: Yeah… It is not ok. Marisol: And if we started prosecuting the johns with statutory rape, and you advertise that, you are going to take away the demand a lot faster. Tim: Absolutely. Marisol: Because people don’t like to be charged with rape by any means. But right now, there is no consequence. Tim: Yeah. Marisol: There is no consequence. They walk free. It doesn’t matter. So there are mindsets and things that can be changed within our already existing laws, at least in this country, that I believe can go a long way towards making a difference. Continuing with the customers... And then, as the johns get arrested and as they do get prosecuted, or even just arrested, why are we protecting them? If you look on the back of a newspaper, or whatever, you can read like who got arrested for what, drunk driving, blah blah blah blah, but you can get arrested for this and it is not there.    Tim: Yeah. Marisol: So I think we should make the johns, particularly the rich white guys, pay for a billboard with their face and their mugshot in their neighborhood. Tim: The Queen of Sweden did this. She did this thing where if you got caught trying to have sex with a child, you got your face plastered on a billboard for everyone to see. And guess what happened? They stopped. They stopped soliciting kids in Sweden. They left. It is exactly what we need to do. Marisol: Exactly. Tim: Unfortunately, there are a lot of groups out here who would stop us from doing that. Trying, worrying about child rapist rights. Marisol: It is insane to me. And I think, I honestly believe, Tim, that if we could get the certain people in the government that are not scared of that, we could push something like that through. But what I have run into in meeting on the local state and federal level is you get guys that are just, "Oh no, we can’t do that. We will be fought,” and they don’t even try. But I believe if you would try hard enough, we could push something like that through just based on the statistics alone that you ended this.      Tim: These politicians answered to the people. If we would get the people loud enough, then they would say, "Of course, I will put their face on a billboard!" Because the people are demanding it, and that is where we need to start this, right. And that is what you are doing - that is what we are doing - is trying to create this grassroots movement - get so loud that these guys have to start doing stuff like this. History tells us that they will do it if we get loud enough. Mark: You mentioned politicians that are scared, and we don’t know what the exact story is on H.R.515 right now, which is before Congress, which is a big cause that we are going to take up.     Marisol: Which one is that? Mark: It is International Megan’s Law. Marisol: Oh great, yes! Ok. Mark: It will allow better communication between governments as bad guys travel abroad and come in. Right now, you cannot really get the information quickly enough to be actionable intelligence. Now, it went through the House, it went through the Senate, the Senate put some amendments on it, threw it back to the House - now it has a 15% passage rate. We have got a brilliant girl from the Podcast Congressional Web that just dissects bills. She is amazing.    Marisol: Who? Who does she work for, do you know? Mark: She is, totally... It is just her, totally independent. Marisol: Oh, ok. Mark: I don’t know what her politics are. I have listened to her shows - I have no idea, which is beautiful to me. She just dissects bills and sees what the [inaudible], sees what the hold-ups are in...what day, I think February 10th, we are going to be on with her and she is going to walk us through the bill and dissect who is holding it up and why. Marisol: Great! Mark: That is going to be awesome, right? Tim: This thing has been in Congress for over a year. It is ridiculous. Now, I actually testified with [inaudible] of Utah. We testified before the House on this bill because we were so frustrated, like, “Why can’t you pass this?!” It is a place that actually creates what is called the Angel Watch Center, a center where non-profit, private groups, government groups all get together and they talk about... They bring intel together, they start communicating better. And like Mark was saying, it is a notification program. If some French child rapist/former convict comes into our country, they are going to tell us, “Hey, this guys is flying into JFK. You might want to either deny him entry or watch him,” you know. We did the same for other countries. And again, what the issue is is their rights, the criminal’s right to travel without being notified. Mark: As we start to find more about H.R.515, maybe we engage you. Marisol: I am looking at it right now and I am kind of seeing where possibly the hold-up is because they are talking about any sex offender, and what I found in the past of certain other laws was that the definition of sex offender also includes, like, the person who was caught urinating in a park drunk, and he is labeled a sex offender for the rest of his life. And they are using those cases to cause an uproar to stop the whole thing, and say it is discriminatory against them. It is a bunch of bureaucratic nonsense, but that is where I am guessing - it is a guess - some of the hold-up is. One of the things that could go a long way is we will prosecute people for aiding and abetting. If they knew about a murder or they knew about a robbery that was taken place - so they were the driver but they didn’t do it... But we don’t do this with [inaudible].     Tim: It is a great point. It is true. Marisol: That would be another angle to getting the johns going, "Hey, you knew about this?” to get prostitution illegal in this country. So, did you really answer an ad for a massage? Do you know what I mean? And cast a wider net when you can actually prosecute people for aiding and abetting, for helping along, for being an accomplice...you know, looking in terms of existent laws that we already have in the books and prosecute differently to make a bigger dent. Tim: Agreed. We could make a list and shout it out to the world: "So, here are the things that need a change," and just be loud. Get the footage, get entertainment industry, get everyone to be so loud - Harriet Beecher Stowe thing, right - and then say, "What do we do?" "Here is the list, call your congressmen, get this stuff changed." Let’s do it, we are going to do it! Alright. Thanks so much, Marisol, we will have you back soon. Marisol: Alright, thanks guys! Thanks for having me! Tim: Alright, thank you! You know, the thing done is at least there are people out there because what this requires to save kids... You have to think outside the box. Just like to get rid of slavery in America, you had to think outside the box. And the model we are proposing is this private public partnership where we need our law enforcement. They have the badges, they have their prosecutors, they have the jail system, they have the judicial system, they can do this. But the problem is, this is such a unique problem and it is so enormous you have to be proactive and creative. Because these…the bad guys are being creative, and most law enforcement agencies don’t have the wherewithal to cover the homicides, the drug dealers and all the things they have been fighting for years and years and are trained to do. And now, you have trafficking problem on top of that. It is relatively new in terms of trying to react to it and most don’t have the tools they need. And that is why I left the government. Because I recognized all the gaps in the agencies that were fighting this problem. Again, not to slam them, but there are gaps everywhere. I got turned down by half the time when I put out request to do an operation. I got shut down because of X,Y, or Z. I always kind of understood the reasons, and I thought, “Alright, I don’t see the government fixing these gaps anytime soon, so I am going to leave - start my own organization that fills those gaps.” So I can go to any agency and say, “I know your problems because I had them, and I am going to solve them for you. We will do this, this, that and the other.” And the law enforcement agencies that want to save their kids are like, “Yes, come on in!” and we go and conquer together in the private-public model.  There are other law enforcement officers who... I will not name them right now, but have them in my head right now, and I am pissed off at them. So close-minded. Mark: What did they say? Give me a conversation. Tim: "You shouldn’t be doing this work. This is just for us. This is for a SWAT law enforcement." "I was a SWAT law enforcement for 12 years, I know how to do this." "Well, you cannot do it. I do not like you doing it." “The parents of the kids, who are being abused - they like that we are doing it. And where we are working, no one is doing it." So there is no answer, no answer to it. It just the partners we work with - they are not this way. If you are this way, we don’t work with you. But you would be surprised how many come back and say that they literally gave up the opportunity to rescue more kids because of pride, because of ego, because if you don’t have a badge, you shouldn’t be consulting or helping or anything like that. They can’t see outside the box. And it is sad because kids are getting hurt. I have had a conversation, actually - and I will not name the people, the agency - but I have literally had a conversation that went like this: "So you are telling me that you or your boss would rather let these kids continue to be raped than work with a private organization that you know together we can solve the problem?" And they said, "Yes." Mark: Wow. Tim: They said yes. It wasn’t them... The person I was talking to said, “I want to do it, but yes that is... My boss has made that deliberate decision.” They don’t want to admit that they need help or that they don’t have a handle on it. It is sick, it is sad. But you know, you have all sorts of people, and the good news is that there are a whole bunch of law enforcement agencies out there and prosecutors all over the place that put the kids above everything else, and that is who we work with. Yep, that is who we work with. And there are so many of them that we don’t run out of work. So, you know, I was talking to some folks at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children who are a wonderful asset - all law enforcement works with them on so many areas to find kids, to find child pornographers - such an amazing organization. And I was talking to them about some of my frustrations and they said, "You know what? We did the same thing." They went through the same thing in the 80’s when they created the organization. There was a major - and I won’t name the agency - a major agency in the United States government that actually put out a policy/memo to their agents, to their law enforcement, saying, "You will not work with this new National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. You will not work with them. We got this. We don’t need help."    Mark: Farm Bureau. Tim: Yeah. That was a farm bureau. You got it.    Mark: Gosh…you know, the pressure was their heyday. Tim: Between that and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, yeah... They just went...yeah, unbelievable. But now, guess what? That agency has agents in their office that work inside the National Center. And so they say, "Just don’t worry. Buck up, little Timmy. Just work with those that will work with you. And success will be built upon success." And so we just have to put the negative aside and put the haters aside and we will work with those who see the vision. And they are the best ones anyway. They are the ones who are getting it done. Mark: Today, more than any other day, in talking to you, I feel momentum. I feel really pumped. And I don’t know what you had for lunch, or what your pre-workout was, but you are on fire, man. You are going to kill it. Tim: You didn’t feel that before? Mark: I did. Tim: You jerk. Mark: I didn’t... I felt like... Tim: ...how to take a compliment and just throw it in the trash. Mark: No, listen. I have felt like you are pushing a boulder uphill before, but now I feel like the boulder is moving. You know what I am saying? Like, we were getting people and we're shedding light on the problem, but really I just feel a new energy and not sure what it is. Tim: Well, what you are feeling probably is... I am in the middle of a case. I am back in my... Mark: You are... Tim: ...I am back in my agent days right now as an employee of this law enforcement agency. It is… I have been given authorization to get back and get my hands dirty back in this. And when I do that, I get very energized. Well, friends, sign us off, Timmy. Buck up, little Timmy. Tim: Thanks for joining us, guys. Looking forward to see you again on Slave Stealer Podcast.

Who is Heather Havenwood Heather Havenwood began in the information marketing business in 2001. Her first internet marketing business plan was in 1999. She completed her masters degree in internet marketing in 2011. Heather has businesses online that she works full time on. She specializes in information marketing and sales copy online. A couple years ago, Heather did a seminar with Joe Sugarman called Success Magnet Seminar. Some of the fantastic speakers included the likes of Joe Polish, John Carlton, and John Benson. She was so happy to have had the opportunity to speak on stage with them. Share Heather Havenwood’s Stop Riding the Pine Podcast Interview on Twitter It's only really been the past 18 months where Heather has focused on putting herself out there in the market to build her personal brand instead of working to build other, more traditional businesses. Her focus in 2016 is to work with 10 clients and really help them focus on growing their brand and while she is very knowledgable about internet marketing, her clients don't have to be online. Heather Ann Havenwood is a Builder Making the transition from mediocre to achieving your dreams is by focusing and a "never let go" attitude and surrounding yourself with people who positively impact your life. Heather Havenwood didn't really know what she was doing when she first started. She was pretty much thrown into the direct response business in the seminar industry. She traveled a lot when she first started being in the seminar business. She lived out of a suitcase and this is where she got her, what we call now, sales copy and sales training experience. Her job was to meet a stranger and then 1 1/2 hours later you are asking them for $3,000 and she got it. Heather goes on to say that being a successful sales person is an "art". She went on to say that their is a formula to success that, I'm assuming, is based a lot on what she teaches her clients today. While she realized a lot of success early on, it wasn't all wine and roses. She got into business with someone and they did fantastic. Together, they grew the business from 0 to over 1 million dollars in the first year. If you want to learn more about what happened to Heather and the rest of her awesome story, get all the details in this 64th episode of Stop Riding the Pine. Connect with Heather Havenwood, check out her links below and remember she welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Don't forget to mention you heard about Heather on Stop Riding the Pine:-) Heather Havenwood Website E2Lab Website Dating Triggers Website Sexy Boss, Inc. Website Heather Havenwood TV Heather Ann Havenwood on Facebook Find Heather on Google Plus Connect with Heather Ann on LinkedIn Heather is on Tumblr Heather Ann Havenwood on Twitter Sexy Boss Podcast Special Mentions: (iTunes Shout Out) Mark Smith III Thank you to Alexis Ayala, for providing the incredible editing for this episode. If you need to find an audio editor, send Alexis an email at lex@slapshotstudio.com. Here are the highlights of my conversation with Heather Havenwood if you are in a hurry: Who is Heather Ann Havenwood? (3:18 Mark) What happened on December 5, 2005 that changed Heather's life? (8:30 Mark) How to stay positive as a home-based entrepreneur? (13:18 Mark) Once you've built a system, how do you live your dream? (24:37 Mark) What was Heather's break away moment? (35:18 Mark) This episode of Stop Riding the Pine Podcast was brought to you by Done4YouWP.com Are you a busy coach, professional or agency looking to have your WordPress website headaches handled by your very own development team for wholesale prices? Then you should visit Done4YouWP.com to find the solution that best fits your current challenges with a full-scale approach to managing your WordPress website. Stop Riding the Pine is a lot of fun and we love sharing the shows we've done.

Denny Krahe Running Man Denny Krahe Running Man has been a sports fan his entire life. Whatever the season was, Denny was playing that sport. No matter what sport he was playing he was going to be a professional baseball, basketball or football. Around the age of 12 or so, Denny came to a realization that playing professional sports may not have been a realistic dream. Share on Twitter He did still want to be around sports because he had a passion for sports. As he grew older and made the decision to go to college, he ended up attending the athletic training program at Florida Southern College. His goal was to work for a professional hockey team. THAT'S AWESOME! Denny moved from Michigan to Florida to go to school and he jokingly mentioned that was probably one of the smartest moves he could have made because hockey isn't exactly big in Florida. Denny met his wife and started a personal training business. Although he enjoyed the training business and got along great with his clients, it just didn't scratch his itch for wanting to be more involved in sports. He has always enjoyed running, but didn't really know how to work in the running industry so he made it up himself. He started a blog and then eventually, a podcast. If you want to learn more about or connect with Denny Krahe Running Man, check out his links below and remember he welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Don't forget to mention you heard about Denny on Stop Riding the Pine:-) Denny's podcast is really cool. He calls it Diz Runs as if he is running with his guest. Cool concept... cool show! Love it. Diz Runs Website Diz Runs on YouTube Diz Runs on Instagram Diz Runs on Pinterest Diz Runs Podcast Diz Runs Tribe on Facebook Diz Runs on Twitter Special Mentions: (iTunes Shout Out) Defeat the Drama Thank you to Alexis Ayala, host of the Friends and Family podcast, for providing the intro for this episode. Here are the highlights of my conversation with Denny Krahe Running Man if you are in a hurry: Who is Denny Krahe Running Man? (3:00 Mark) Denny gives the background on his podcast. (7:30 Mark) What is one of the main areas entrepreneurs should focus on? (8:15 Mark) What else does Denny like to do besides running? (14:00 Mark) Cool tips to stay in shape when you work on the computer all day at home. (17:24 Mark) What was Denny Krahe's break away moment? (20:14 Mark) This episode of Stop Riding the Pine Podcast was brought to you by Done4YouWP.com Are you a busy coach, professional or agency looking to have your WordPress website headaches handled by your very own development team for wholesale prices? Then you should visit Done4YouWP.com to find the solution that best fits your current challenges with a full-scale approach to managing your WordPress website. Stop Riding the Pine is a lot of fun and we love sharing the shows we've done. We would greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us grow this show by not only downloading the episodes, but also sharing them. Leave comments and rate our show so we can make the show even better.

Daniel Maw Co-Founder Hacksaw Studio Daniel Maw Co-Founder Hacksaw Studio had a punt on what course to take in college and liked web design and development and carried it on to university. He did two years and went out for a year in the industry - a sandwich course - as a paid intern and return for graduating year. It was his sandwich year in which Hacksaw began. It provided Daniel with real world experience. Daniel is the Development Director for Hacksaw Studio. He calls himself the parent of the developing children. He oversees the developers as they make these amazing designs come into a working product. Daniel Maw and Organizing Team  Workflow Hacksaw has restructured their studio. During growth they looked at who they needed to communicate with the most. Who would they be asking the most questions of. At first there was lots of yelling from one end of the room to the other and lots of walking around. As employees were added they changed things around. Designers are on one side of the room and the developers are on the other but that actually just means looking around a screen to chat. Daniel's favorite way to chat is getting people out of the office. he frequently takes workers into separate rooms and throwing things out on a table. They draw it out on paper and get down to how to make a project move forward. Daniel makes sure his employees have the right tools for the jobs. Not just software or technical but also for communication efficiency. He loves Boomerang for their office email communications. Daniel and Hacksaw love to use Slack as a great way to get around emails and works well on mobile devices. You can avoid the email trail and trying to find specific messages. Share on Twitter Daniel's favorite projects are on-line and off-line both. They needed to develop an interior design look to a huge outdoor display. it was fun as they put it together with their website. For a local brewery they re-branded, created labels, cans and t-shirts for their client. For Daniel that is his favorite type of project when they are involved in so much. Daniel and Hacksaw are an international award-winning Top 40 agency as chosen by a creative UK magazine. Daniel Maw - You Have to Sell Yourself There are so many design and development companies today and you have to stand out because they are doing a great job. You have to sell yourself. You have proven you can do the work but you have got to gel. You must grow and flourish into a great business relationship. The better the relationship the better the end project. The better the relationship the more frank you can be with them. You can throw ideas and if they have an idea but you need to tweak it, it's still their idea but you have the relationship to pitch it in a different way that makes it work for the client. Daniel says twisting the idea with experience and knowledge is the big tipping point that gels business relationships. If you want to learn more about or connect with Daniel Maw Co-Founder Hacksaw Studio, check out his links below and remember he welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Don't forget to mention you heard about Daniel on Stop Riding the Pine:-) Hacksaw Studio Website Daniel Maw and Hacksaw on Facebook Daniel Maw on Twitter Hacksaw on Twitter Special Mentions: (iTunes Shout Out) VP Carter Thank you to Alexis Ayala, host of the Friends and Family podcast, for providing the intro for this episode. Here are the highlights of my conversation with Daniel Maw - Co-Founder Hacksaw Studio if you are in a hurry: Who is Daniel Maw? (3:01 Mark) How Daniel Maw organizes his team. (6:37 Mark) What is Daniel Maw's favorite type of client? (13:15 Mark) What was Daniel Maw's break away moment? (24:08 Mark) This episode of Stop Riding the Pine Podcast was brought to you by Done4YouWP.com Are you a busy coach, professional or agency looking to have your WordPress website headaches handled by your very...

Judy Robinett The Ultimate Power Connector Judy Robinett - The Ultimate Power Connector hails from Franklin, Idaho, the high school where Napoleon Dynamite was filmed, population 600. She grew up shy and bullied but worked her way through college to Fortune 500 company employment and eventually the stage of MIT. While giving a speech there, she was handed a Wall Street Journal which she read on her flight home. An article about how to become financially independent in the US caught her eye which said there were 5 ways and the last one said start a business. She took a sizable SBA loan and started a restaurant. She immediately found out how hard it was to start a business. On the verge of bankruptcy, Judy sat in her attorney's office and he shared these words of wisdom: they can break you but they can't eat you. Share on Twitter Her journey led her to discover the world of start-ups. She became the CEO of a small bio-tech public company and worked with  the Skull Candies CEO founder when he was broke and needed funding. Judy became enamored with the start-up world. She sits on the boards and helps them find funding. Judy Robinett - Tips for a Start-up Judy Robinett The Ultimate Power Connector says her number one tip for success is identifying your ideal customer. You must validate you have a customer that will pay. You have to get out from behind the desk to and go meet with potential customers. Click on the image above to purchase this book on Amazon. There are a thousand incubators for them. Go to co-working spaces and seek advice. There are people that are happy to help you. In the US there is the Small Business Development Corp. SBDC and every county in the US has one of these groups. Colleges and Universities have these communities as well. Judy says there are two reasons a start-up fails. Number one is lack of a customer and number two is lack of funding. She fields calls all day from people seeking funding and when asked if they have sales and the answer is no, Judy says that is a mistake. What a Successful Start-Up Has Judy says you need a good management team. In the case of individuals, she looks at the executive summary and looks for three things: Have they done their research and know their ideal customer and proof of the concept that it will work; Create a product, and; Outside money that shows you are vetted. Investors are frantically looking for successful start-ups and when they see someone else has money in they are fearful of FOMO's - fear of missing out. The ROI for a successful start-up is over 21% and has been for 2 years and that is a lot better than a CD or savings account. There is no lack of money for start-ups. Credit Suisse predicts by 2019 global private wealth is 376 trillion! The funding is competitive. In a year a VC sees 5000 proposals. It's critical to have concise, compelling pitch-deck and you focus on what your investors need and not on how wonderful your kool-aid is. The first thing they will look at is ROI and how they will get their money back. If you want to learn more about or connect with Judy Robinett The Ultimate Power Connector, check out her links below and remember she welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Don't forget to mention you heard about Judy on Stop Riding the Pine:-) Judy Robinett Website Connect with Judy Robinett on LinkedIn Judy Robinett on Facebook Judy Robinett on Twitter Special Mentions: (iTunes Shout Out) Sun Devil Thank you to Alexis Ayala, host of the Friends and Family podcast, for providing the intro for this episode. Here are the highlights of my conversation with Judy Robinett the Ultimate Power Connector if you are in a hurry: Who is Judy Robinett? (2:36 Mark) Judy Robinett number one tip for success. (5:26 Mark) What are the traits of a successful startup? (7:55 Mark) Judy Robinett shares how to get funding. (10:55 Mark) What was Judy Robinett's break away moment?

Tom Schwab The Online Business Accelerator Surprisingly the first job Tom Schwab the Online Business Accelerator held out of college was running a nuclear power plant! He sees the world from an engineer's perspective. Tom sees there are problems to be solved and wants to know how can we build better engines and that is how he builds all of his businesses. Great online businesses can be built anywhere and the fuel to run your online engine is content. How does Tom filter through all of the online noise for effective marketing? Tom says not to find your answer online but rather find the oldest business owner you know and ask them for their advice. Share on Twitter The foundations that our grandparents and great-grandparents built successful business on was trust and value. Those same strategies are successful today. Now look at which tools in the modern age will work for you. Think about where your customers are and how to connect, communicate and serve them. Pick your tools with what works best for you. Use a lot and measure what works best. A good blog will convert readers to leads at about 1-2%. For instance, Tom had a client that had a great story to tell. Tom wanted to get him on a podcast to drive business to his website. Tom was blown away that his client's conversion rate was 25-50% better than with blogs! For every 4 people that came to the website, anywhere from 1-3 were filling out a form or engaging with him. The strategy is how to get on a podcast and talk to your ideal customers. How can you tell your story? How can you get them to know, like and trust you? How can you give them reasons to come back to your website and engage you? There is no greater return on investment than taking listeners and turning them into leads. - Tom Schwab What Makes Tom Schwab an Expert? The legal definition is someone by virtue of their education, experience and training who knows more than the average person. Tom Schwab The Online Business Accelerator is not the only expert, he is just one. You have three types. The first are those with degrees like PhD's.  The people are hard to relate to and generally do not do well on podcasts. The second is the veteran. The veteran is the person who has been through it all with the wounds and the stories to go with their experiences. Veterans tend to do great on podcasts. The third type is the Sherpa. They are going through and experiencing it right now. They have the same challenges and the questions that their listeners do. Even though you are working through this you are an expert and you need to share your experiences and questions with others. What is ordinary to you is amazing to others. Tom Schwab encourages everyone to be interviewed on podcasts and share what you know. Just by being a guest on Stop Riding the Pine, Tom has become an expert to the listeners because Jaime Jay views Tom as an expert. Tom says his goal on every podcast is to make the host look like a genius for having him on. It's of great value for interviewer and host alike. If you want to learn more about or connect with Tom Schwab The Online Business Accelerator, check out his links below and remember he welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Don't forget to mention you heard about Tom on Stop Riding the Pine:-) Tom Schwab's Website Connect with Tom Schwab on LinkedIn Tom Schwab on Twitter Special Mentions: (iTunes Shout Out) Keith Ledig Thank you to Alexis Ayala, host of the Friends and Family podcast, for providing the intro for this episode. Here are the highlights of my conversation with Tom Schwab the Online Business Accelerator if you are in a hurry: Who is Tom Schwab? (3:34 Mark) What does Tom Schwab think has the greatest return on investment? (8:50 Mark) Tom Schwab defines 3 types of experts. (10:46 Mark) How does Tom Schwab connect with the ideal customer? (14:45 Mark) What was Tom Schwab's break away moment? (24:40 Mark)

  Interview w/ Timothy Ballard Mark Mabry January 11, 2016 Final Transcript   Intro: You are listening to Slave Stealer. Tim: Welcome to Slave Stealer podcast, where we take you into the dark world of trafficking so you can help us find the solution. We are talking here with co-host, Mark Mabry. Mark: That’s me. And we did a little change in format. This is part two of our ‘Meet Tim’ series, because he has had a really interesting story. And what I found amazing in getting to know Tim over the last few years, is that sacrifice of peace of mind, sacrifice of kind of this level of innocence that 99.9% of the rest of us enjoy. And, to recap, we talked about Tim’s story a little bit, how he got into child crimes, and how he was invited by HSI to be on that team, and then we talked about his family. He has got young kids, and his son is now 15. And, the birds and the bees talk is awkward enough. What about that talk about what dad does for a living?” Tim: Well, you know, yeah..Let me say this first: I was scared to death some 15 years ago when I was asked to enter this dark world of child crimes. And the thing that scared me the most was the fact that I had kids, and I didn’t know how that would affect me. Would I see an image that reminded me of my kids, would that make me a paranoid father, would that turn me... My wife was scared to death that I would turn into just some cynical, just bitter old dude. And I was scared to death. I mean, you’ve got to wade through the sewer to find the crap. Mark: And what if the pornography took, I mean, worst case scenario, you turn into somebody that is actually into it? Not that that would happen with you knowing you, but... Tim: You know, what I have found that’s..a lot of people think that, and they go there, but... Mark: Those people are stupid. Tim: The people who had that suggestion are really idiotic. No, but it’s a logical conclusion. But what I have found is, frankly, kind of the opposite. Because when you are exposed to children - unless you are a pedophile, right - when you are exposed to that, it makes you want to distance yourself even more from all things pornography. At least that was my experience, and as I watched other agents who I have worked with, who have to be exposed to this. It turns you off so much to the whole industry, even the legal part of it, because it’s so, frankly, similar that it actually, at least for me, it has had the effect of major deterrent, even from any temptation my own part to even look at regular pornography. Does that make sense? Mark: Yeah! Tim: And, for the child stuff, it is just a punch in the stomach every time, and it is worse and worse every time. And you learn how to cope, you learn how to be able to see this stuff and still move on. But, like in the last show, I was talking about how the first thing I want to do when I saw particular images or videos, is just grab my kids and bring them to the safest place I know, which is my home, and just hold them. And so the whole concept, the whole idea to your question of how I bring together these two worlds, of what I do outside versus what I do inside - you have to factor in all these things. But my kids do start asking questions. I was addressing a group that was doing a benefit for Operation Underground Railroad just two nights ago. And they had the kids there and they wanted me to talk about it, and it was so hard, because I’m sitting there, and they say, “Tell us what you do!”, and I’m going, “All right, well I’ll start...”       Mark: How old were the kids? Tim: Oh, the kids were as young as five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Mark: Oh, geez.. Tim: It was like all these neighborhood kids. And their parents wanted them to know that there are kids who are less fortunate and that we need to help them. That was the idea. So, I thought to myself, “I’ll start with the software that we are building.” The software is called ‘Stars’. It’s a pretty name. Until one of the kids says, “What does STARS stand for?” And it stands for Sex Traveler Apprehension Retention System, right? So, I say SEEEE ugh...I can’t say it, I can’t even say the name of the software! Mark: Super Terrific Apprehension... Tim: Yes! So, I couldn’t, and it was so..it’s so difficult. A little kid raises his hand after I’m talking about slavery in general terms, and he said, “Why would someone want to steal a child? Wouldn’t they rather steal an adult because they’d be better at being a slave and a stronger worker?” I just looked at this little kid, I was like, “I know exactly the truth of your question, I know how to answer that, but I cannot answer that.” And so these issues that I was grappling with at this charity event, are the same issues I grapple with every day with my kids. When they see something on the news, and with my small children I just tell them, you know, I help kids, we help kids, we help kids who’ve been kidnapped. That’s all they know, and they seem ok with that. But as they get older, they start asking questions. And it intersects at the same time that I need to start talking to them about the birds and the bees. My wife and I are very open, I mean, I think my job has made me the most desensitized to all things sex, like I can say anything to anyone, because the conversations that I have had with people, with perpetrators especially during interrogations, where we were talking about things, or undercover, where they’re selling me kids. There is nothing that makes me blush, right. So, I can just take my kids and sit down, and say, “Hey”, talk about everything, embarrassing things, everything from pornography to masturbation to dating and all this stuff. It is rare that we talk about that, somehow it leads to the fact that - again these are my more adolescent, teenage kids - it always leads to some kind of an explanation that they are asking me for about, “Why would an adult want to do that to a child?”      Mark: When they say THAT, what ..I mean.. Tim: I mean they kind of..they know, I mean, they figured it out. Mark: Yeah. Tim: They do, because they know what is what we’re talking about. And so, I think, in the world of child pornography and sexual abuse of children, you don’t want to be graphic with the kids at all, even with my teenage kids. I kind of let them just figure it out and let their brain stop them where they should be stopped, because the brain will do that. Mark: Oh, adults don’t even grasp it. Tim: Adults don’t grasp it. I was sitting with my father-in-law - a brilliant man, PhD - we were in his kitchen, this was when I was an agent, and I heard him, he started talking.. What had happened was that I arrested one of his friends - not like a close friend, right, but... Mark: ”So, what did you do today, Tim?” “Well, I busted Larry.” Tim: Right! Mark: I have heard this story. Tim: He knew this guy, he had been to his home. So he knew this guy, and he started saying, “You know...I kind of feel bad for this particular individual, because it’s not really their fault. I mean, these girls dress in a certain way that is provocative, and it is not totally their fault.” And, I’m just dying. I’m like, “Wait, wait, wait, what?! You are telling me that a 5-year old puts on clothes, and now it’s not the pedophile’s fault that they look at the 5-year-old!” And his eyes almost popped out of his head! He says, “Five years old?! Why are you talking about 5-year-olds?!”     Mark: He’s thinking the 17 ½-year-old. Tim: He’s thinking 17, 16 years old, where you can’t really maybe tell the difference between a 17- and an 18-year-old, right. His eyes popped out of his head, and he says, “What?!” I said, “Yeah...Dad, you don’t know this, but what George was looking at was 5- to 7-year-old children, boys and girls, being raped, ok?” Mark: They sent a picture in the tub. Tim: Exactly. Being raped by adults. And he just kind of put his head down, shook it, and he said, “Now, that is weird..” I remember he said, ”That is just weird...”, and he walked out of the kitchen. He couldn’t handle it, and I don’t blame him. Our minds don’t even let us go there. And this is the problem. This is the problem that, frankly, is the obstacle to the solution. And the problem is we don’t want to see, we don’t want to believe it. I remember in the very beginning, in the early 2000s, when we were taking cases, child porn cases, to the judges, federal judges and state judges on pornography cases, on child pornography cases. And they were sentencing them to the most minimal sentences. Like this one guy had this collection that was unbelievable, categorized it by the names - he would name the kids in the videos, and create little files for them. It was unbelievable. He had hundreds of thousands of videos, images and everything else. And when the judge sentenced him, he sentenced him to four or five months in jail, but weekends only.            Mark: What?! Tim: And, I thought, “What is going on?!” The prosecutor I was working with, she said, “You know, the problem, Tim, is they don’t get it.The judges don’t get it!” They don’t get it. And we asked the judges if we could please show..during the sentencing they brought me in, and said, “Agent Ballard wants to show you the images.” He said, “I don’t want to see that junk! I don’t want to see that junk.” He’s embarrassed to even look at it. The human side of him doesn't want to even watch him looking at it, so he says, “I don’t need to see, I don’t need to see it!” So, we didn’t show it to him, and then that sentence came out. I guarantee you, I guarantee you that he doesn’t want to accept it. You know, the reports indicated that the kids were as young as five or four years old. His brain - my theory - wouldn’t let him grasp it, wouldn’t let him grasp it. And so he just gave him this super light sentence. But if I would have just opened that laptop, and say, “You have to watch this, you need to see this.” Now, I’m not advocating for showing child porn to people.    Mark: Exactly. Tim: At all! At all! Mark: But, maybe we emphasize, highly illegal: if you download this, even for altruistic, I’m-going-to-expose-myself, but...   Tim: You will go to jail. Don’t do it! Don’t do it! Mark: Yes! Tim: But what I’m telling you is, be aware that it is there, and we have got to talk about it. It hurts...You mentioned that when you talk about this, and this is why people don’t want to talk about it, you hit the nail in the head: you lose part of your own innocence. Mark: Absolutely. Tim: And every time you talk about it, some more of your innocence, even as adults, it goes away. You have to sacrifice that, but you sacrifice it for the kids. Because if we don’t sacrifice a part of our innocence to know this is happening, they have no hope, because we are the adults, we are the ones who will...if anyone’s going to save them, it is going to be the adults, that have the power and the influence and the ability. But if we don’t know about it, we are not going to save them. But to know about it, you must sacrifice some of your innocence. And so that’s what we ask people to do: sacrifice some of your innocence, listen to this show, go to our website, learn about trafficking. It’s the fastest growing criminal enterprise on earth. Two million children, and more, are being sold for sex, over ten million children sold for labor. Add all the adults, we’re on a 30-40 million range. I mean, wake up! Help them out! But it does require a sacrifice of innocence.     Mark: So, back to the question at hand, did you actually have, have you had a sit-down, “Ok, let me talk to you about this, son”? Like, let me ask it this way: have your kids seen the documentary? Tim: Here’s my policy and my wife’s, I mean, every kid is an individual, right. Every kid you treat differently, because it is not a ‘one size fits all’ solution to raising kids. Mark: You have how many? Tim: I have six kids. Mark: That’s awesome! Tim: So, our kind of general policy, guideline on the documentary, which is ‘The Abolitionists’ documentary, which films my team going into different countries and helping the police infiltrate trafficking rings and so forth... Mark: Catching you soliciting pimps for underaged girls. Tim: Right. Mark: Asking “Hey, will she do this, will she do that?” Tim: Oh, yeah. Mark: Your kids have to hear you saying that. Tim: My kids are hearing that, yeah. So, what we’ve decided is, generally speaking, if this particular video or this particular documentary includes children, who are being sold, who are, say, 12 years old, then I’m going to let my 12-year-old watch it. And that is because I think it’s important for him to see what he has and what someone else doesn’t have. “Someone your age is being trafficked. You get to play football; they are being sold for sex.” And, I think it’s important for kids to recognize what they have, and then it instills in them a sense of responsibility: “How can I help that kid, who doesn’t get to play football? What can I do?” And it makes them aware of the world and aware of what’s happening. So, that is kind of how we deal with it. And then again I let them watch it, I don’t rehash it with them, I don’t bring it up too much, at least graphically.           Mark: Yeah. Tim: I let their mind stop them where it needs to stop. Mark: Smart. I like that principle that you said with adults, with kids, with everyone - they will go to a point that they are ready to go to.   Tim: Right. But here’s the point that I was making too - once you are an adult and you have real influence to help, it changes a bit in my mind, right.     Mark: Especially if you are a judge. Tim: Especially if you are a judge. I don’t want it to stop where your mind wants it to stop. And this is our job at Slave Stealer podcast and other places, other people’s responsibility, who are in the know-how, who have seen it, you’ve got to say “No!” No, I’m not going to let you stop. I am not going to let you shake your head and walk out of the kitchen. I’m going to make you stay until your mind grasps this enough to where you are going to act. And that’s the problem, is people hit that point where their brain wants them to stop, and they shake their head and walk away. We can’t have that. If we do that, these kids will not be liberated.        Mark: If that happens in 1860, you have still got millions of slaves in the South. Tim: Absolutely! Mark: Because we have talked about it. Tim: Absolutely. That’s why, because people shook their head and walked out of the kitchen. Mark: Yeah. You have got to show it to them. There are so many questions - I’m trying to think of a logical order here. You talked about it with your father-in-law, and we are not talking about 17 ½-year-old girls.    Tim: Right. Mark: We are talking about kids that are groomed, And, maybe.. let’s define the term. We kind of need to have like a trafficking glossary on our site. But grooming, and, maybe in the case of Lady, that we talked about - that’s when you explained it to me, you know, when I was going to go be a scoutmaster. I had to go through the whole ‘how to identify a perv’, right, and one of the terms they used was grooming. And they’re like, “Well, when you prepare a child for…” whatever. But you really broke it down for me in the case of this 11-year old virgin, who was sold to you in Columbia. I was there watching, she was a virgin. Tim: Right Mark: However, she knew exactly what was going to go down. Tim: Right.. Mark: What do they do to groom a child and how were you made aware of it? Like, give me how you came to that knowledge. Because this episode is kind of about you and the topic. Tim: So I came to the knowledge the only way I think anyone can, and that is experiencing it firsthand. For me, that was going undercover, pretending to be someone, who is interested in that black market, and getting into that market, becoming a player in that market. So, in the case of this little girl, who they were calling ‘Lady’ - and that surely wasn’t her real name, it was a name the traffickers gave her - in that case, we were pretending to be solicitors of child sex. We were working with the Colombian police pretending to be Americans, who travel to Colombia to engage in sex with children. And what had happened in this case, because we were working in that capacity and because we presented ourselves as wealthy Americans, I hinted to the trafficker that we would be interested in sharing profits and investing in his trafficking business. The reason we did that was because that all of a sudden, if they believe us, that pushes them to open their books and open their business and explain the business plan. And that’s how we learn how they do this. I would say things like, ”Look, I could probably get you a million dollar investment in this, but I need to know how it works; I need to know how you get these kids; I want to know you maintain the kids, how you groom and prepare them,” and so on and so forth. And the guy was more than happy to tell me what he does. Mark: I have a photograph of your hands around this little pattern napkin. It was like a napkin business plan...     Tim: Sure, yeah. Mark: Of a sex hotel for kids. Tim: That’s right. Mark: I have a picture of that. I’ll post it, because it is so disturbing when you realize what those numbers represent, volume and quantity and velocity of children and child rape.    Tim: Yeah, it was the dirtiest, most evil business plan that anyone could ever dream up. Mark: Yeah. Tim: ..on that napkin. That’s right. Mark: I’ll post that. Tim: And that was like our third or fourth discussion about how their business operations work. So, what they explained to me was, “Look, it’s easy to get the kids. You find poor families.” You don’t want to do a hard kidnapping, you know like the movie ‘Taken’. Does that happen? Yes. Is that the likely scenario? No. Why? Because you kidnap a kid, a hard kidnapping - meaning go into their house, like what happened with Elizabeth Smart, go into the house, pull them out. Well, you are going to kick up a lot of dust around you. Why do that if you are a trafficker if you can instead make it a peaceful kidnapping. Not peaceful for the child, right.          Mark: Yeah. Tim: Hell for the child, peaceful for the trafficker. In other words, they can kind of do this without fearing much consequence. So, what they do is they go to poor families, and these guys had actually hired or were working with, contracting with, a beauty queen in Cartagena. She had won a pageant, a beauty pageant. So, kind of people knew who she was; she had been on the news, she showed up in music videos, and so people knew who she was. So, they walk into the house with this beauty queen, and they say, “Look, look at this beautiful woman. She doesn’t have a worry in the world. She is paid, she is wealthy, she is beautiful, she is famous.” And then they point to the 9-year old daughter, and say, “we focus” - they told us “9 years old is where we start”. And they say to the mother and father: “Your 9-year-old daughter is just as beautiful as this girl; we just got to train her. We can train her, and she can become a model and an actress.” And they fill the parents with all sorts of dreams that they never believed were possible for their child. And certainly this is legitimate, because they are looking at the star, who is in their living room saying, “I can do this for you. And we’re going to give you a scholarship. You can come to our school and learn how to be a model for free.” At that point, they bring them into the modeling school, and they teach them some things. And when they get comfortable, they say, “Now you are going to watch this video.” And the video will be pornography. “This is part of being an actress, it’s part of…you need to understand this world.” And when kids are at that age - nine, ten, eleven - their minds are still developing and forming, and if someone tells you this is right, this is right, this is right, eventually your mind develops as a 9- or 10-year old into believing, “Ok, this is right, this is right.” And so they start seeing that. We had evidence that some of them were being drugged, you know, threatened: “If you go back and tell your parents that we are doing these things, you are going to be in big trouble.” And again, kids are very… Elizabeth Smart, when we get her on the show, she can talk about this, where a police officer walked up to her, while she was in captivity, and said “Are you Elizabeth Smart?”. I mean that, it would have been over! Mark: Yeah. Tim: And she said, “I am not. I am not Elizabeth Smart.” Because she was scared to death because they, her captors, had told her, “If you ever reveal who you are, we will kill your sister, and your family.” And as Elizabeth tells it, everything they had told her they are going to do to her, they did it. They told her they are going to rape her, and they did it. They told her they are doing this particular thing - sex acts - and they did it. They told her they’d chain her up, and they did it. So, when they told her that they are going to kill her parents if she reveals who she is, why would a 14-year-old not believe that they are going to do it?                        Mark: They’ve got all power. Tim: All power. And she has received criticism for that, you know, like, “Why didn’t you run away? Did you want to be there?”, you know... People just can’t comprehend how the mind of a child works. And that’s what these kids go through - they are scared into not revealing what is really going on. So, they groom them, and they said it, it will be a year and a half, or more, while they are grooming them, all under the hospices of this modeling school. And of course they are being trained to be models as well, and then eventually they say, “Ok, so this is your test. You are going to this party on this island, and these men are going to come from America, and you are going to do the things that you have seen being done in the pornography videos, and do whatever they want.” In a nutshell, that is how it works. I mean, that is how it works, that is the reality. Mark: And variations of. Tim: And variations of that.   Mark: So, they can do everything up until the point that she is not a virgin to claim... Tim: Right. Mark: “Hey, it is a virgin.” Tim: And they can, and they want to do this because their virgins are premium, right.  Already, a child, in most black markets, a child will go for about a double or more than double of what an adult prostitute will go for. But then, if that child is also a virgin, then it’s quadruple, or more of that price. So, it’s a premium to sell a virgin child. Mark: Wow...Give me, you’ve talked about it - like pulling people’s blinders off, and those moments where people are opened up, and the one with I think your father-in-law, who gets it now - that was pretty dramatic. What about..give me another one. You don’t have to name names, I just like hearing about people’s response. Are there any high profiles that you are allowed to share, that, maybe change the name, change the whatever? Somebody that you have shocked, that should have known?        Tim: Yeah. I was in the office, probably a year or two ago, of a governor of a certain state. We were explaining who we were and what we did, and he was absolutely shocked. And, kudos to him for being honest, saying, “Wait, wait, wait, what?! There is how many kids? There is how many kids being hurt and trafficked in the world? And what does that mean? They do what?!” He didn’t know, he didn’t know anything! And again, I’m not blaming him for not knowing. It is not something you go seek out, right? It is not something that your advisors seek out to tell you. It is hard to talk about. And I don’t know that you know the answer - why aren’t we talking about it more? Why, why, why, why? I really believe because it is that.. it is so dark a topic. It is not even...you know, slavery in the nineteenth century - it was politically divisive. It was a political nightmare to get involved: go back to the Lincoln-Douglas debates and everything. I mean, it was a divisive and a political issue. This is not even a political issue. There is nobody standing on the side of the pedophiles - well there are some: NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association, which deserves its own show someday.         Mark: Do they have a logo? Tim: Well, there are all sorts of different..Look them up: nambla.org. Mark: Is that weird? Tim: You might have cops knocking on your door tonight. Mark: That is what I am saying. Tim: No, no, no, you won’t. You can look them up. Mark: What are the pop-up ads I am getting after that? Tim: Yeah, be careful when you go: nambla.org. I mean, it is a legitimate organization, legitimate in terms of legality, right. And, they are just a group that is pushing for a.. Mark: Oh hell! Tim: What did you find? You got...I told you to be careful when you go to that... Mark: No, it is not...and luckily, I’ve retained that innocence: I have never seen child pornography. It is a cartoon on the front their page - it is an adult asking a little boy, “What can I do to make you happy?” And the little boy says, “I like hugs.” Tim: Boom! And that’s their whole message. If you go into...When I was an agent, I would go all into it and learn about it, what they believe in. And they actually talk about how kids, psychologically and emotionally, need sexual healing and sexual exposure from adults. And why not adults, who know what they are doing? And so they make it sound as though the kid wants to be hugged, the kid wants to be touched. Why is it so bad? And they bring up science, where they show that children are sexual beings based on this story and that. Of course, they are human beings! Their sexuality is attached to everybody; we are born with it. But that doesn’t mean you are ready to bring it out and force it on a child, because that’s what you would be really doing, forcing it on a child. Their brains aren’t developed to the point where they can make those kind of decisions, or comprehend the kind of consequences of that activity. I mean it destroys...I’ve seen kids destroyed over this. And here they are saying they just want to hug, “Just hug me, that is all I want.”      Mark: Oh, here’s the other one, right. They are just headlines and we’re not going to go off on NAMBLA forever, because it does deserve its own show. Maybe we bring one of these idiots in.   Tim: Yeah, bring them in, let them take it. Mark: Or, we bring in some of the people they are attacking. And I thought of this this morning, ok. I’ll read a couple headlines: ‘When Labor Loved Liberty (And Before They Changed Their Minds)’ about the labor unions formally supporting..whatever. ‘Remembering Michael Jackson’, and they’ve got the old black version of Michael, ‘Remembering a Lover of Boys’, ‘Michael Jackson’s Dangerous Liaisons’, ‘The Non-Wisdom of Crowds: Defender of Anonymous Outraged by our Lack of Passivity’. Now, this one’s interesting: ‘Hipster Vigilantism and the New Populist Attack on Free Speech’. That is what they are calling it: speech, right. And then, they say ‘Anonymous Decidedly Illiberal Campaign to Silence Us’. Dude, is Anonymous getting on these guys, because they would be an awesome ally.   Tim: I don’t know, but let’s check, let’s look into it - let’s absolutely look into it. But these guys have conventions; it’s a political movement to legalize this kind of behavior. Mark: They called Oprah a liar, by the way. Tim: And so... Mark: Saying she wasn’t, she wasn’t molested as a child. Ok, I’m off on NAMBLA. Tim: Ok. So, we’ll go back talking more about that, but the point is, that, except for these few total whackjobs, who think that this is a healthy thing for children, it is really just obviously serving their own selfish lust and pleasure and evil. Dark, dark souls...But, for the most part, this is not a political issue, right, it is not a political issue. Everyone will be on the side of solving this. So, what is the obstruction? It is simply, “I don’t want to know; I don’t want to see it.” It’s the ostrich, the ostrich effect, sticking our head in the sand: “I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to...I have kids, grandkids. I can’t think about it.” And that’s where we have to make the change, that’s where we have to convert people to look at it.    Mark: What are the more offensive things that people have said to you? Maybe on purpose or not on purpose. I don’t need the top three, because it’s hard to think in superlatives, but give me five offensive things people have said to Tim Ballard, unknowingly or knowingly.   Tim: Offensive, in terms of just this topic in general? Mark: Yeah, that you’re like, “I used to respect you three minutes ago, before that came out your mouth.” Tim:I think the one time I can remember where I got the most offended...and frankly, you actually just did it to me earlier today, accidentally. I wasn’t so mad. Mark: Oh, when I wondered if you would turn into a perv by looking at... Tim: Yeah, it was so...I felt really bad because... Mark: That wasn’t a personal attack, by the way. Tim: No, no no, it wasn’t. And I want to clear this up. I don’t have a whole lot of examples of people, who say things offensive in terms of why this should or shouldn’t be legal or illegal, right. I mean, I’ve had perpetrators during interrogations defended, you know. A guy named Ernst Luposchainsky, for example - you can look him up, we arrested him in Minnesota... And he was pretty, I mean he was offensive, but I mean, geez, he was just such a joke. You are looking at this guy and you are almost, almost...somewhere in between laughter and vomit. You know, you are just like: “Are you serious? You are saying this?” You know, but he would talk about like the benefits of child pornography and how it helps the poor kids. “These kids get paid, they get paid for their sexual services, and we are helping them, we are helping their families.” He would talk about the tiger and the meat analogy. I remember we talked about, and this is all during his interrogation, where he would say, “Look, you have got to feed the tiger meat. If you don’t feed the tiger meat, he will eventually attack human beings.” So, he is actually saying, “Children are being raped, that’s horrible! Now, a consensual sex with a child, that is a different story. But, children are being raped against their will, I’m against that. Oh, I’m so against that!” You know, he would say...       Mark: Just for the record, you were quoting him on the “consensual sex is a different story”? Tim: Yes. Mark: Ok, just making sure it wasn’t like... Tim: Yes, quoting. Mark: You, parenthetically saying “Hey, consensual sex...” Tim: I’m sure some out there would love to misquote me on that and accuse me. So, the tiger and the meat, right. “You have got to feed the tiger meat, you have got to feed the tiger meat, and then he will never rape the kids.” And the meat is child porngraphy. “Make it legal. Let them look at it, because then they will just look at it, and then they will get satisfied and the kids will be safe.” Mark: Oh, yeah, totally! Tim: Because it doesn’t, it certainly doesn’t fuel your evil passion by looking at it, right? Like for example, a man who watches pornography, he never watches pornography with an int to actually engage in sex with a woman. He just watches it for, you know, for the pleasure in itself. Yeah...baloney! Any dude, who watched porn will tell you, right, “I would like to translate this to my bedroom,” right. It is no different with child pornographers. They are looking at this, and they want to act out. So it is just the opposite - you are fueling the fire, not putting it out. But, I mean, that was offensive. And, by the way, that Ernst Lupochainsky case, we got to do a show sometime on that. That was the hardest case I have ever did. In the middle of that interview, ok, while he was telling me all this stuff, he would not break, he would not break, he would not break. So, what I had to do...because he believed that all men were closet pedophiles, he just believed that story... Mark: I love this story. Tim: He just believed that. It was his way to justify his own feelings, of course. But this puritanical society - that is what he called it - has stopped the natural flow of love between a man and young, little girls. But on this show, I have got to read...he had this postmortem message he put on all his child porn collection. We will prep and I will read his message.      Mark: Oh my gosh. Tim: It’s unbelievable. Unbelievable. But the point I am making here is, I had to go undercover - this is just a teaser - I had to go undercover... Mark: Don’t blow it, because I know the punchline, and it is unreal. Tim: Yeah..as myself. So, I pushed my buddy away, the other agent, who was interviewing the guy. I was still wired up undercover, you know, and I said, “Hey, listen man, listen Ernst, help me out. I mean you are right. Reading your stuff - it makes me trust you. I have got to look at this stuff all day long. What do you think that does to me? It makes me want that. But there is no one I can talk to. Can you talk to me? Can you help me?” Sure enough, his eyes just light up. He believed it! I couldn’t believe he bought into it. I was...I was...It is one thing when I am Brian Black, you know, or I’m some alias in an undercover operative.          Mark: That is a cute name. Did you make that one up? Tim: That was the name that I used to use, yeah...Brian Black. So, here I was, Tim Ballard, U.S. agent/pedophile. So it was a totally different thing. I was myself, and that went on for...and then you know, I reported it to my supervisors; they loved it. And that kept on for at least a month, until we could get all the information out of this guy we possibly could about his contacts and networks. And he opened up to me, thinking he was helping me enter into, you know, induct me into the beautiful world of pedophilia. So, someday we’ll do that story, because that is an amazing story. The guy is still in jail.     Mark: Good. Tim: So, that is kind of somewhat offensive, but the time I blew up...the sweetest lady on earth - she was, she was just...Lived down the street, sweet kind lady, and I was working in child porn cases, kind of mad - you know you’re just mad a lot, thinking about it. And she said to me, “So, how many agents, you know, end up…?” And again, the same thing you just said, but I didn’t blow up at you.    Mark: Good grief! I feel like such a schmuck, especially in context of the story you have just told me. Tim: Yeah, it was the first time... Mark: Because I know you are not susceptible to that. Tim: Right. And, I would honestly argue that unless you are predisposed and you enter the child crimes group so that you could access it, I think it is just the opposite. And, you know, she said, “So, how many end up pedophiles themselves, being exposed to this?” Mark: Legit question! Tim: Yeah...I mean it sounds like a legit question, unless when you are in it, you are like “Wait, whoa, whoa.” Yeah so, by the hundredth time I am watching a child scream in pain, by that time I am like, “I am digging this.” But, I went off, I went crazy. I said, “Do you think it is that?! Or maybe it is, ‘I can’t believe I have to watch this again! I can’t believe I have to subject myself again to this video, and my stomach is punched again and again and again.” It was so bothersome to me, because it is just the opposite of what she was saying. It is like, I have got to endure this. It is like saying this, here is a good analogy: someone who has been doing chemotherapy for a year, right, and every three months they got to go get another dose of chemo. It is like someone saying, “So, how many cancer patients become addicted to chemo? Even after the cancer is done, they still take chemo just because they are addicted to it?” Right?! That is analogous right there. Mark: Yeah... Tim: Ok? And, it is just like, “Wow, wow,” you know, it killed me. I get it, but it was just, it is...What they don’t understand is the potency of this. It is not! What they think is, she was probably still thinking 16-year-olds, 17-year-olds. I was like, are you kidding me?! It is not what we are talking about! If there is a 16-year old in a child porn video, we wouldn’t even prosecute that, unless you absolutely knew it was a 16-year-old, in like specific cases where, you know, uncles taking pictures or something. Mark:Yeah. Tim: But otherwise, you wouldn’t. You would be like “Eh...” If you can’t tell...The majority of the child porn cases we prosecuted: 5 years old, 7 years old, 10 years old, that range, right. I know, it’s just... it is just things the vast majority don’t have to see, and I don’t want them to see it. Mark: Yeah. Tim: I don’t want them to see it. But they need to know it is happening, so that they can be part of the solution. Mark: On that same thought of things that people unintentionally say that are offensive, how about this? And I have got this one before, even with my little bit of involvement: “Well, she looks like she wants it.” Tim: Oh, yeah...I get that quite a bit. In fact, right in our documentary, in “The Abolitionists”. Mark: Yeah! Tim: I have heard a couple of people say that. In an early screening that happened, and my wife who was in the room,  it was a very early screening, we brought some kind of influential people in to watch. Mark: I was there! Tim: Oh, right! You were there. That’s right! Mark: I was sitting by your wife. Tim: You were there. A sweet lady - I think you know her, I think you know who she is - totally innocent, you know, she just...she said, “Can’t you show like a little darker side to this, so that people know? Can’t you show us some kids who are not looking like they want to be here?” And, if you remember my wife, she’s like... Mark: Oh yeah. Tim: “Alright! This is tragic, what is happening to these kids! This isn’t a scripted film, this isn’t - we can’t make this up. This is real, and it is their hell. And just because you can’t see it, because you are not the spirit inside of that body,”... know, my wife just… bless her heart, she went crazy.   Mark: She is not outspoken. Tim: No. Mark: Right? For her to... Tim: For her to do that... it touched a nerve. Mark: Yeah.. Tim: And again, back to the misconceptions. Are you going to find cases of kids chained up and locked in closets? Absolutely, you are going to find that! The vast majority, the vast majority? No, that is not what it looks like. And in the documentary - most people get it, it is not usually a big problem - but in the documentary, I mean, you are watching the filmmakers put the ages of the kids - of course cover their identities - but they put their ages, their numbers like over their blurred faces. And so you are watching this 12-year old-girl, it says twelve, you know, and I remember that little girl, I remember that she actually had fear in her eyes. But if you weren’t looking straight into her eyes, she did walk into the party, and she knew what was going to happen to her.   Mark: And she was dressed like a 21-year-old prostitute. Maybe not her, but some of the others. Tim: Some of them were, that one wasn’t, but some of them absolutely... This little girl was wearing like long basketball shorts and a white t-shirt, and you will see that in the documentary. But others were, the 12-year-olds...    Mark: They are not picking their outfit here. Tim: Right, right. Mark: For the most part. Tim: And they are walking in and people say, “Looks like they want to do that! They want to do it! Look at, they... No one is forcing them to walk in.” And again back to Elizabeth Smart. When you will bring her on the show, we can talk to her about it, and she...If you thought Catherine, my wife, got passionate, wait until Elizabeth answers that question. And she says, because they bring it u, she had plenty of opportunities, in theory, to run. She did. She was in public areas, policeman came up to her, right, but what they don’t understand is trafficking, slavery, so much of slavery is mental. These traffickers enslave these kids mentally, emotionally, not just physically. In fact, they don’t want it; if they can get away with not enslaving them physically, all the better. Remember, they don’t want to kick up a lot of dust around them. So, if they can figure out how to enslave them mentally and emotionally, that is always the first choice, and they do it by the grooming process that we described earlier. They groom them, and then they control them. They control them! And this is why the rehab part is so important, because you have got to undo the damage, and that doesn’t happen overnight. It is a long process. I don’t know, I mean, I have talked to a lot of victims of trafficking, who are adults now and have families of their own, and they have told me, “You know, you don’t ever fully, fully heal.” I mean, there is always something there you have got to battle. And that is what happens, that is why when Elizabeth’s father runs to her, she still denies who she is for a second, and then she opens up. Because it is like a spell, and if you haven’t been through it - and I haven’t, so I can’t fully comprehend it, but I’ve been around it enough to know that you can’t comprehend it, unless it has happened to you. And a child’s mind is not like an adult’s mind. Children don’t think like adults think. Their minds are at different levels of development, they don’t have a lot of experience, they don’t understand the consequences like adults can and do. And so, it is not so difficult for the traffickers to play those mind games, warp them, brainwash them, and make them slaves.      Mark: Well, I think that...we’ll get into, I think, in shows down the road, we’ll have Throwback Thursdays. We’ll go revisit missions and do things, but I feel like that can give our listeners a little bit of insight into your passion, your feeling for what it is you do and how it affects your life. It is not a job you leave at the door, as you are hearing. And so if you have any parting shots along the lines of ‘Here’s Tim’, ‘Get to know Tim’, let’s go and leave our listeners with that.    Tim: You know I...I’d say this that I understand completely. We are talking about awareness, we are talking about people’s ability to see this problem. And I can’t sit back and judge and say, “Come on, open your eyes, open your eyes!” I was the worst of everybody; it was right before me and I was denying. I was denying it. I didn’t want to do it. It took me a long time to say yes, and even after I said yes, I was very apprehensive about how far I would go in this. So, I get it. It is a hard barrier to get around. And even when it is in front of you almost...you know, and then, when it is not in front you, of course, it is sometimes near impossible to get around. So, I get it, I get it, but I also understand that when you see it, when you allow yourself to open up to it, you become converted. And part of that I think is from God. I think God, more than anybody, wants these children liberated. I think he weeps more than anybody for these kids. So, if he can find an adult, who is willing to open their mind enough and not walk out of the room, he will help convert you, and put that passion into you, fill you with his spirit, and call you. He will call anybody, if you are going to help save his kids. And I just want people to go through the same conversion that I went through. I am kind of a missionary for trafficking, right. I mean, I am trying to evangelize here and get people converted to the cause, because that is who I am. I have been converted to the cause. And it hurt!        Mark: The cause of freedom. Tim: The cause of freedom. But it hurts to be converted, because you must leave something at the door, and that is your innocence. You must leave it. And who wants to give that up? But you must do that. You must make that sacrifice. And it hurts, and you cry, and you have moments that are embarrassing - and we’ll get into some of these. There were times, when I was like a child in my wife’s arms weeping and she is holding me, and I am just shaking. Still happens to me... I used to not talk about it, but I just talk about it now. It hurts, it hurts to get into this cause, because the cause of freedom requires you to fight evil, and evil hurts. But what we want to do here on this show is make converts, because I know this: converts to this cause equals liberty to children. And what greater thing can we do than bring liberty to children?   Mark: Thank you. And, because your last words were so good, I’ll sign off for you from OUR headquarters. Good night!    

Greg Davis, Master Distiller at Maker’s Mark, talks about how is continuing the tradition that has been set and more about day to day operations. Read Show Notes Below - Today. we go on-site to Loretto to Maker’s Mark Distillery- Breaking News: Users claim there is a bad batch of 2015 Elmer T. Lee. Barrels 256, 264, 266 and 267 are the “defective” barrels but Buffalo Trace has already responded.- Tell us about your story- What was your background before coming to Maker’s Mark?- What are some of the key things you remember from your mentorship?- Can you talk about your wheated mash bill and how it came to be?- Talk about the difference between Makers and Makers 46- Why go with French Oak?- Are there other kinds of experimentation going on?- Talk about the motivation behind the Cask Strength offering- Talk about what you are doing different with your barrels compared to others- How do you pick the barrels that are going into the batch?- Do you sample every barrel?- How many rick houses do you have and do you take barrels from different places?- Are you able to go to different warehouses and taste the difference?- How do you detect “must”?- Can you explain what still you have and why you prefer it?- What is the average bottle count that comes out of Makers?  

Russ Johns - Entrepreneur and Podcaster Russ Johns started out years ago as a professional drummer. In 1987, Russ took a fall while working on a billboard. He fell 36 feet and nearly lossed his right arm. When people shake his hand they are startled because the reconstructive surgery left him without much grip in his hand. He went through about two years of surgery. Because of this accident, he got into technology. Russ has been in the technology industry since the early 90's. He was relocated several times and landed in Houston. His position was eliminated and so he started working on the entrepreneurial side of things to help business owners. He was recruited to operate a couple radio stations where he started broadcasting local high school sporting games. This is what got him into podcasting. Share on Twitter Having helped a lot of people with their shows and delivering podcasts or "radio on demand" to radio stations in a tradition format. He continues to think outside the box. He likes to say that he rents his brain out to business owners when they have to think outside the box. Russ really enjoys talking to other in the industry that he can bounce ideas off of. Sometimes it takes a different lens to see a new perspective. - Russ Johns Russ Johns Understands the Shift in Technology and Media Media is changing. In the industrial age, there was a big requirement for building things and assembly lines for building things. Now that we are in the information age, we are more aligned with the "Story telling 2.0" through online communities. When you have something to share, it's based on abundance and not competition. People are more likely to share rather than hide their knowledge. It's not far-fetched to have a community of 1,000 people, get engaged and involved in your community so that everyone does well. If you like at the big picture of media creation, you are in control now. Future Media Association is based on words, images, video and audio. Russ and his colleagues rotate each one of these focuses each week to share what's going on with technology and these tools with business owners each week. Russ and his partner in crime, Maryanne LaSalle, hold live meetings every Tuesday. After the meeting, they record a video called Raw and Ready. They then repurpose the video in audio form and submit it to several different platform. They've generated interest to open up additional chapters in Wisconsin and Dallas/Ft. Worth so that others can share their knowledge with the group. If you want to learn more about or connect with Russ Johns, check out his links below and remember he welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Don't forget to mention you heard about Russ on Stop Riding the Pine:-) Russ Johns Website Future Media Association Website R&R Uncensored and Untapped Podcast Russ Johns on YouTube Connect with Russ Johns on LinkedIn Russ Johns on Facebook Special Mentions: (iTunes Shout Out) Jason Shurgot Elle Martinez of the Couple Money Podcast Here are the highlights of my conversation with Russ Johns if you are in a hurry: Who is Russ Johns? (6:03 Mark) Russ talks about how media is changing. (14:17 Mark) What is the Future Media Association? (18:00 Mark) How to take the next step in your entrepreneurial journey? (30:31 Mark) Russ Johns break away moment. (41:16 Mark) If you would like to be a part of Russ Johns media training click on the link below: Future Media Association Media Training Group Stop Riding the Pine is a lot of fun and we love sharing the shows we've done. We would greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us grow this show by not only downloading the episodes, but also sharing them. Leave comments and rate our show so we can make the show even better. Here are the links:

Heyang: Hello everyone! 欢迎来到这周的Round Table英语词汇小百科，我是Heyang。今天我和Mark要来聊一聊英式英语和美式英语的区别。So Today we are gonna talk about the differences between British English versus American English, and we will focus on, I guess, vocabulary. Mark: Yes, that’s right. Of course there are lots of differences between British English or World English as I call it. For historical reasons of the British Empire and so forth, British English is actually very very wide spread in India for example, a country with a population in excess of 1.1 billion people. Very extensively throughout many English speaking African countries where it’s one of the official languages, Australia of course and Canada, so it’s kind of like America versus the world. Hollywood should make a movie about it, shouldn’t they really? But they don’t have to, because they make every movie in American English, which acts as a real sort of force for American culture generally. And of course there’s also Microsoft word spellchecker which by default checks in American English, so that’s how American English is spreading around the world mainly, I think, these days. Heyang: I suppose so. I think Mark and myself Heyang, we are the perfect people to talk about this topic. Let’s set the scene a little bit here. A porter in a British hotel comes upon an American tourist impatiently jabbing at the button for the lift. Mark: Madam, the lift will be here in a moment. Heyang: Lift? Mark: Replies the American. Heyang: Oh, you mean the elevator. Mark: No madam, here we call it the lift. Heyang: Well, as it was invented in the United States, it’s called an elevator. Mark: Yes madam, but as the English language was invented here, it’s called a lift. Heyang: Well done! Mark: That was fun, wasn’t it? Heyang: That was fun! Well, I think that sets a pretty good tone of today’s discussion. Mark: Can I just say something about that little sketch we did? It’s not true to say that the lift was invented in the United States, because do you know that two thousand years ago in ancient Rome, there were lifts then, mechanically operated lifts. Heyang: Well, there you go, there’s a fact of triviality that would be useful for our listeners. Americans say crosswalk and what British people say? Mark: We would say zebra crossing. That’s great, isn’t it? Because it looks like a zebra, the black and white rectangular sections across the road for you to cross in safety, so we call it a zebra crossing. Heyang: It sounds more visual, the British version. But for the American version, this is describing the path for crossing road that traffic lights, so it’s kind of straightforward too. It’s coming from different angles. Mark: This is the thing I don’t really like when people speak of American English versus British English. Actually, it could be argued that American is a dialect of English really, because Americans enrich the English language, as do British people as well. And also of course, so to Chinese people, there are words that have been created here in China before the English language. Procuratorate, for some sort of judicial building or office, is a word, as far as I know only exists here in China. It’s been added to the English language by the Chinese. Heyang: And also academicians, 院士. That’s probably something that’s very Chinese. Mark: Why do these Chinese created English words, why they are so hard to pronounce? I would hate to have to say something like “the academician made his way to the procuratorate.” Heyang: Oh my god! That sounds like a major tongue twister. Ok, Let’s go to another one, soda. It refers to anything like Coke, Pepsi, Mountain Dew and all those kind of things. Mark: We call that fizzy drink, fizzy means something with bubbles in it, carbonated, is a more technical word. We call that fizzy drink. There are other things as well, foods and vegetables like eggplant, for example. Heyang: That’s American, right? Mark: Yes, we call eggplant aubergine, which is actually a French word, because of Britain’s proximity to France, and because of the invasion by the Northern French a thousand years ago. There are huge French influences in England and in English language as well, and that’s one of them--aubergine. Heyang: Yes, I think Language is a very interesting subject, and it’s a truly democratic form in so many ways. Let’s go to the last one that is erasure. What do you guys call it? Mark: We call that a rubber. Heyang: Well, that means completely different things in the United States. Mark: What it means, Heyang? Heyang: Ok, I’m just goona say it. Rubber means condom in America. Mark: Be careful with what y ou ask for, when you going to the stationery store, you mention that language is a very democratic thing, I kind of thought to myself, I’ll tell you I thought, what does she mean by that when you said that, but actually you are absolutely right. But first of all, I thought people don’t vote for language, but they do actually by using it when we hear a buzzword or something. By simply using it and repeating it, we are voting for it. So that’s a very good description of language actually. Heyang: Thank you very much. I don’t get that many compliments from you Mark. That’s all the time we have for this edition of word of the week. See you next week!

Xiaohua: A teacher’s pet is someone who is greatly favored by a teacher. To become a teacher’s pet it will take a bit of work, but the results are phenomenal. When you are a teacher’s pet, the teacher is more likely to accept excuses from you, give good opportunities to you, and write positively on your evaluation. But of course everything comes with a price.While favored by a teacher, you’ll risk being hated by the entire class. 在班上老师总是会偏爱一两个学生。他们虽然会被班上的同学鄙视，但是被老师偏爱的好处也是无穷的呀~今天Round Table就来教你如何成为老师的宠儿。Yes, so we are giving you advice on how to become a teacher’s pet. But really is it worth trying to become a teacher’s pet?Mark: What we should do is what we said should be done with teaching gifts. We should all declare an interest if we have one. Were any of us the teacher’s pet? I can say that I definitely was not. XH: What about you Amy?Amy: I think I definitely was. Mark: Really?Amy: I was a total goody two shoes. I definitely sucked up to the teachers. Not on purpose, it wasjust I was usually in the gifted and talented programs and stuff. And so, I don’t know, I just had this compulsion like be good. (XH: Please people.)I could get in trouble I’d feel like terrible and I’d cry if I got in trouble. Mark: You’ve gotten red, Amy. You’re blushing. XH: Amy’s a Cancer. And as a Cancer myself, I can totally understand your feeling. Cancers don’t like to upset people. Satisfying people is their biggest wish in life. Somethinglike that. They cannot feel the same rebellion that’s in other people’s heart. They just don’t want to do that. Amy: I always wanted to be a rebel. I just couldn’t find it in my heart to do it. XH: Exactly, so that’s not your fault. But anyway, Amy, maybe you should read out all these advice on how to become a teacher’s pet. Is there anything that impressed you?Amy: Let’s see. I think asking questions, always having your hand up when the teacher said “Does anybody know the answer?” “I do! I do! I do! Call on me! Call on me!”Mark: I did that. I did that too. Amy: You did? See, maybe you were a teacher’s pet. Mark: Perhaps I was a teacher’s pet anddidn’t know it. XH: Yes, perhaps. Also you have to ask the right question. Asking questions I think is always good. The teacher encourages some class participation. But if you accidentally ask the question that the teacher doesn’t know the answer of, then it’s not very good. Amy: I don’t know. I think in the States, that’s like a sign that you’re a good student. So the teacher will be like “That’s a very good question Amy. Let me figure that out for a second. The teachers like the smart students. They like the well-behaved students. They like the students that talk to them. So I guess if you spend a lot more time with the teacher than you do with the other students, that’s teacher’s pet. Mark: I’ve just remembered a terrible thing I did to our teacher, a German teacher who was actually German. I would take CDs of these sort of German punk songs. I knew there were full of rude words. And then I’d ask her to play it, and “Could you translate it for us?”XH: What?Mark: And embarrassed her.Amy: Really?XH: That would be regarded as a challenge of authorities, and not welcomed.Mark: I think she said something that I knew it wasn’t right. I just had to accept whatever words she said it meant. Amy: See, you were a teacher’s pet. Mark: No, that’s the opposite of being a teacher’s pet. You can see that I really would not want to be a teacher’s pet. For us, it was the last thing you’d want to be. So I’m fighting against this accusation of being a teacher’s pet. Amy: But nobody wants to be the teacher’s pet. That’s like a very bad thing to be. And I think I was only the teacher’s pet because I was just like kind of a weird kid. Mark: Do you think teachers respect the teacher’s pet, or just feel sorry for them?Amy: I think they feel sorry for them. XH: I don’t think so. I think it depends on whether you acted it out naturally or whether you were being too pretentious, and trying to make too much effort. I think teachers can see that. You know, you’re kids. The teacher is like several decades older than you. So they know whether you’re pretending to be nice, or whether you’re just naturally nice. Mark: There’s a difference though. There’s a difference between being a teacher’s pet, like Amy was, or being the English monitor, like Xiaohua was, cause you were made to do it, won’t you? Xiaohua: I was made to do it. Mark: You were instructed. You didn’t volunteer for it. Xiaohua: No I didn’t. Amy: What does that mean, the English monitor? Xiaohua: The English class representative meaning I have to help the English teacher with a lot of assignment collecting and things like that. Mark: That’s fair enough. That’s not a teacher’s pet. Amy: See, if you did it voluntarily, that would be a teacher’s pet. Mark: It would be. It’s easy. It is all to do with not what you do but what your attitude is while you are doing it, whether you’ve volunteer for it. Xiaohua: I don’t think it’s a healthy attitude. What is wrong with being helpful? For example, if the teacher finishes a class and there’s a blackboard full of chalk writing, and the first one who came up and tried to wipe those will that be considered as a teacher’s pet or trying to impress the teacher? Mark: I mean I think it’s all to do with maturity and being an adult really. Cause now I totally agree with you. I mean I think if I was a teacher I think it will be great if someone volunteer to help out. This is how we function at work. Everyone helps each other out. But at school, it’s a different situation. In British school, anyway you must not be seen to be siding with the teachers or helping them. Amy: You will definitely get picked on for helping her clean the black board. Xiaohua: I think even in China, that’s true. What about helping your teacher hand out some sheets of paper or test results? Mark: I think that’s OK. Because that’s a sort of you don’t really often have a lot of choice, do you? You were given them and you have to give them out. Xiaohua: So it depends on whether you willingly want to help out. Amy: Exactly, that is the difference. Teacher’s pet or not a teacher’s pet. Xiaohua: OK. People are being punished for being a good person. That’s all.

Justin Verrengia - The Hippie Jedi and Freedompreneur Justin Verrengia comes out of his mother's womb and he is from the planet earth... after a hearty chuckle, we got into Justin's real background. Justin totally believes in freedom... financial freedom. He is a self described "freedompreneur". A couple years ago, Justin was struggling financially and he tapped into his inner voice and generated a lot of money. He started paying it forward after he found his unusual success. He has his own podcast where he talks to other "wierd" entrepreneurs and finds out what drives them to succeed. Share on Twitter He believes success is more of a belief rather than having a technical foundation like knowing where to place an ad. His mission is to awaken the mentally dead. He wants to help people find their spiritually by awakening their pineal gland, the third eye. He did a video all about the pineal gland. The pineal gland is positioned between a person's eyes. It's shaped like a pine cone and that's why people will see the pine cone represented in so many places like the Vatican. The third eye is one of the biggest cover ups in history because it simply isn't talked about. The third eye is one of the seven chakras in the human body. Justin went to a David Wilcock conference. A lot of time was spent talking about the pineal gland. Basically, Justin describes the fascination behind the pineal gland as a way to tap into higher powers and higher levels of consciousness that most of us don't even know exists. Based on Justin's research, he believes there has been a war on the pineal gland. There are things like sodium flouride which is in our drinking water and toothpaste. Flouride is just like cancer. Many people listening now have a completely calsified pineal gland due to their diet. However, there are things people can do like meditation, maintaining a good diet and drinking filtered water. Stop using flourinated toothpaste... it's poison (read the label). - Justin Verrangia Justin Verrengia - The Hippie Jedi Story People refer to Justin as "The Hippie Jedi". Justin hasn't cut his hair since he was living in China. He and his wife were making $1,200 per month teaching english in China. Justin was very introverted growing up. He gradually came out of his shell the more teaching he did. After living in China for 13 months, he and his wife saved up enough money to move to Costa Rica. Justin used to have a fade and he wanted to get his hair cut the same way. He showed the stylist a picture of how he wanted his hair to look and the stylist completely messed it up. So, Justin said he would never get another haircut again while he was in China. His philosophy carried over to Cost Rica and he hasn't cut his hair to this day. Thus, the "Hippie Jedi". When people see Justin, he rarely wears shoes unless he has a special event to go to. The Jedi aspect comes from his love of the Star Wars movies. Justin studied TaiChi, yoga and Kung fu. He identifies his appreciation for Star Wars and qui gon through "The Force" which is similar to the Tao. Justin really likes Star Wars... he likes it so much that he has a real light sabre. Well, not a "real" one, but it's made out of aircraft aluminum and enjoys playing "Star Wars" with his friends. Embrace your weirdness and people will relate to you even more. Justin Verrengia If you want to learn more about or connect with Justin Verrengia, check out his links below and remember he welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Justin Verrengia Website Weird Entrepreneurs Website Justin Verrengia Videos Connect with Justin Verrengia on LinkedIn Justin Verrengia on Facebook Follow Justin Verrengia on Twitter @justinverrengia (iTunes Shout Out) Jim Harshaw Here are the highlights of my conversation with Justin Verrengia if you are in a hurry: Who is Justin Verrengia? (2:40 Mark) What is Justin's attraction to the pineal gland? (4:50 Mark)

Xiaohua: Recent news shows that the Chinese government is encouraging employees to have two-and-half-day weekend during the hot summer days. Wu Wenxue, Deputy Director of the National Tourism Bureau said this during a State Council meeting. Now, this encouragement comes with the understanding that the weekend will start on Friday afternoon. In an ongoing survey conducted by sina, nearly 80 percent of the estimated 30,000 respondents believe a two-and-half day long weekend is feasible.“未来将鼓励有条件的地方和单位，可根据实际情况，在夏季灵活安排工作时间，使职工周五下午与周末时间相结合，实现小短假。”在最近召开的国务院政策例行吹风会上，国家旅游局副局长吴文学透露，化解带薪休假难题或将有新的解决方案。So this is the solution that this guy has given out, but why is this proposal being raised do you think?Heyang: First of all, I think it’s a bit strange that it’s the deputy director of the national tourism bureau making this statement, and it’s not the state council. So, I think it makes sense for the tourism bureau to want people to have a bit more free time so maybe they can go travel or something like that. But, this is actually a solution that this government official has found to solve the problem of people not having paid annual leaves, I think, which is very innovative to the extent that I think its kind of farfetched.Mark: But, there seems to be a link with “hot summer days.” What is the connection with hot weather?Xiaohua: I don’t know. Maybe it’s that the summer holiday is usually the travel season, and that’s why this tourism official is saying this. However, I have to point out that this is not a rule that is going to be made national or something. He is only suggesting that companies or organizations, who can afford to do so, can give their employees a half day during Friday.Mark: What is this man’s name? I need to go and see him.Xiaohua: Wu WenxueMark: Wu Wenxue. I must go and see him, and you know what I’ll say to him?Xiaohua: What?Mark: Because we’ve been proposing this either on this program or on other shows on this radio station for years, my idea is that two of our weekends every month are three day weekends and our other weekend is just one day. Xiaohua: I remembered it.Mark: So therefore, sometimes we only get Saturday off, and then the next week we only get Saturday off, but then we get Friday, Saturday, Sunday off for the remaining two weeks of the month every month. It ties in with travel because in China, a vast country, you have a limited range of where you can go in two days—Saturday and Sunday—and as a visitor to your country I want to see as much of it as possible, but I’m restricted by having a two day weekend. In a three day weekend, that makes all the difference. I think having that free day in the middle where you don’t have to travel either there or back would make a massive difference. So I’d be all for my own idea not surprisingly of having two three day weekends a month and two one day weekends a month.Heyang: I think your very individualistic take on this issue is admirable, but I think for the authorities to try to manage the country with masses of people, there could be some obstacles when the weekends shift so swiftly so to speak.Mark: Well I don’t know. The one thing is it wouldn’t cost the employees any money because we’d actually get the same net number of days off per month as we do already. This man’s idea costs the employees money, mine doesn’t.Heyang: But what about the paid holidays that’s been promised to people—the paid annual leaves. Mark: I don’t think that this has got anything with this idea where does that come into it?Heyang: Because that extra Friday evening that you’re supposedly going to get comes from your annual holiday.Mark: What?Heyang: Yeah, this is what this is about.Mark: What? So, it’s not sort of like an extra half a day off?Heyang: That extra Friday afternoon weekend you get comes with a price.Mark: Well that’s terrible, I mean that’s even worse. It’s like a death of a thousand cuts of your annual holiday bit by bit every week, and then you’ll end up with no annual holiday.Xiaohua: But this person is not saying “employees, you have to take that half day off.” They are only saying that you can, if your employers say yes, take half a day off on Friday. Mark: Well, I don’t like the sound of that.Heyang: And I love the analogy that, Mark, you just made, and the only people who would agree to this is those who realize that they will never be allowed to have those annual paid holidays in a lump sum time. So I think it’s only those who are already in that disadvantaged situation that don’t have these annual paid leaves given to them will agree to this.Mark: Well, it won’t apply to them then if they’ve got no free time to have gradually taken away from them half a day by half a day. They’ll probably be exempt anyway, won’t they?Heyang: Yeah, I supposed so. So anyway, that sort of is the closing remark on this topic as we arrive to, that is it might not work—it probably won’t work.

A Chinese couple was infuriated after they received their pre-wedding photos taken in Bali which cost them nearly thirty thousand yuan, as friends and netizens say the photos look tacky and the backdrop is nothing like Bali.即将成婚的一对四川情侣在一家婚纱摄影处交纳了28999元，选择去巴厘岛拍婚纱。照片拿到后，发现各种乱花丛、石头、野草、黄土…还有一头牛！So did you take a look at the photos? Were they as bad as people say they are?Mark：I’ve seen them. It made me laugh. Some one of them’s taken… I mean Bali is renowned for its beautiful beaches, but this beach scene kind of look like mud to me. Very unattractive. In one of photos, you can see a herd of cows in the background. For me, the thing is if I pay (how much was it? Xiaohua: thirty thousand, almost thirty thousand yuan.) thirty thousand yuan, I would expect something better than this. These are the photos like your friends would take on their phone without even planning the pictures, just a quick snap, aren’t they, really. So I will be upset about the money. But as for the actual photo, this could start a meme, you know, this could go viral with people looking for the worst place to take wedding photo like on a building site or something. I mean, think of some worse places you can have wedding photo staken. It could become, you know, you could get some real pictures done and then have some really bad ones taken in some horrible other locations.Xiaohua: I hope you don’t plant that idea into your girlfriend mind. Mark: You don’t look convinced by this, Heyang? What’s your idea?Heyang: I’m certainly not gonna be part of that. Mark: What would be the worst place you could have your wedding photos taken? Perhaps our listeners might know. The worse backdrops for wedding photo.Heyang: I think this is terrible advertisement for Bali, (Mark: Yes.) because I can’t imagine Bali looking so terrible, you know, from the look of this. But I think here is really that that photographer does not have an eye for taking photos at all, because when you look at Annie Leibovitz and those really top photographers, they can make a dumpster look fabulous. That’s what I say. So I think here you’re seing someone who is obviously not qualified doing the job and with costumers paying this much. I think this is fraud, this is cheating on people. That’s how bad it is. Xiaohua: It is.Mark: Well, I think, I mean, the pictures are very bad, aren’t they? Xiaohua: They look like they’ve been taken by a passer by. (Mark: Yes.) Someone passed and they said “can you snap a photo of us.” “Yes, sure.” You know, then that’s what the effect will be like. Mark: They do it like that. For me, it’s not really an issue of Bali, or the wedding photo. I mean they’re still great. Actually, this couple has got some great memories, not only the wedding pictures awful and everyone will want to see them, to see how terrible they are. But they’ve got a story to tell for the rest of their life. How it went viral around world in the Internet. Xiaohua: That’s probably true, but I don’t think it’s the effect they want. Heyang: It’s not. No. They’re being known for having really ugly photo taken. I think that’s the last thing people want to be remembered for. And the latest development of things is the groom-to-be said the photo agency agreed to compensate them monetarily, and also redo a photo shoot for them in Chengdu. But I’d like to know if it’s the same photographer. Xiaohua: Yes, that’s right.Mark: I want to know that photographer’s name. Heyang: That photographer should be banned. Never take another photo in your life.Mark: they should get that photographer on the Spring Festival gala to give a little lesson in how to take photos. I mean that photographer Can become a celebrity because of this, really, cause the pictures are so awful.Xiaohua: I guess. One of our listeners Heidi said I guess the couple were cheated, because I’ve been to Wuluwatu temple during this spring festival. I guess that’s in Bali. The scenery is amazing. The water is clean and so on. In short, the photographer didn’t achieve the ideal results, so the costumers have the rights to get the refund or ask the pictures to be taken again. Mark: Fair enough. But wait a minute. The couple were there when the pictures were taken. Didn’t they say “why we are in the field of cows”? I mean you can’t you’re your photo taken in a field of cows and then expect the Tajmahal to be in the background or something like that. Heyang: But the thing is you would never know, because if it’s a good photographer, they can make a minefield look great. That’s the kind of magic a good photographer can make. And here it’s an under-qualified one even taking photos that’s like worse than what I can do. Xiaohua: My advice for people who are about to take wedding photos is you’d better to take matters into your own hand, at least a little bit. When you decide go to a place spent 3, 4 thousand or even more than that, to travel to a strange place, do some research about what’s the ideal place for wedding shots. And then consult the photographers; maybe ask them whether they think it’s an appropriate place. And definitely look at the photo right after they are being taken. Look at it on the digital camera. Mark: Look where you are. One of them looks like it’s a muddy beach. There’s no way that can be transformed into the white golden sands that you’ll probably find on the other side of Bali.

Xiaohua: Recently, Dali University announces that it will turn some of its dorms into a Youth Hostel during the summer holiday. This triggered heated debate online. The university is located in picturesque Dali Town of Yunnan Province, and has already started receiving reservations for the upcoming summer break. 大理大学摇身一变成‘青旅’。该消息日前一经报道，受到了广泛关注。有网友对大量游客入住校园对校园安全保障提出了质疑。So do you think it is appropriate?Heyang: I think this is a very interesting approach on using the idle resources that could be put into better use during summer vacation when students are not around. Why not just turn the dormitories to hostels and earn a little bit of extra revenue? I think this is what the university has in mind.Mark: This is a superb idea. I think it’s a fantastic idea. I mean it’s already done in other cities. If any of our listeners ever go to London, you’re going to be paying out maybe 1,500 or 2,000 Yuan per night for a hotel in London or stay in the dorm of the London school of Economics (LSE) for 40 quid a night. They’re already doing it.Xiaohua: Really? It’s an option already?Heyang: That is. I agree. My dormitory room was turned into a hotel during the summer vacation.Xiaohua: My main concern here is that are students on board? Heyang you don’t seem to be on board with it. You sound pretty unhappy about it. What do the students of Dali University students think?Heyang: Well, I think there is a difference. Because first of all, are the Dali University students being informed that there are going to be strangers staying in your dormitory during summer vacation? Where would you store all your stuff, and also how are the equipment going to be maintained? And, those questions need to be answered before implementing a plan like this. I think because these very practical, perceivable problems were solved beforehand in LSE, so it was a success.Mark: It’s not just the London School of Economics that does it. I stayed in this kind of accommodation in Edinburgh when I went to the Edinburgh Festival, much cheaper than staying in a hotel. Many people don’t know that you can do it. And also if you’re an alumnus, an old student, you can stay in your own university free, which is very convenient sometimes if you don’t want to spend any money or sometimes maybe you pay a little bit towards the cleaning costs. What you said is very important. What will happen to the student’s possessions, for example. I would imagine that they’re put in a locker, safely stored away for the whole summer. But secondly, to put it bluntly, it’s nothing to do with the students, and their opinion is irrelevant because during the summer they don’t live there. The deal with the university is that the students have the accommodation during term time. What the university does with their own accommodation and their own buildings at times outside term time is entirely up to the university.Heyang: So that’s the thing. I don’t know whether the Dali University has made the deal clear to people. By the sound of it, some students seem to have assumed that they still have the rights of usage of these rooms during vacation, then there is a clash of interest. So, it’s really important to establish clearly what this deal is about, and also make sure that safety and possession issues are being avoided.Mark: What they could do is, at the end of a course when someone’s left and the dorm will be empty for the whole summer because the new students won’t arrive until the following academic semester, then that will be a much easier situation to deal with.Xiaohua: Right. Also, Vivian here says that I think the hostel in college campus is a smart way to make money, but the questions is who gets the money. Will it be used to improve school facilities, or go to a few people’s own pockets? Also, how to make sure the safety of the travellers and those students who choose to stay at school? I think that’s a good question. People are concerned about the safety of, say, students, but safety of travellers is also important too.Mark: The University is responsible for the safety of students, so it equally will be responsible for the safety of other visitors during the summer.Xiaohua: And, make sure that nobody steals anybody else’s property if they live in the same space.Mark: As in, they will make a deposit, and the inventory will be checked I assume when they arrive and when they leave.

Kevin Jordan - Author and Owner, Red Point Marketing ConsultantsKevin Jordan is involved with an excellent organization called "Duct Tape Marketing". Just like the name implies, Duct Tap Marketing is about simple, affordable and practicle marketing strategies for small business. What they are doing and why Kevin became involved with them is because they treat marketing as a system. They've put together a lot of tools and resources for small business to help them market better. Kevin is now a certified consultants and has licensed their brand. Kevin got involved with four other consultants within the Duct Tape Marketing brand to write a book. Kevin jokingly talked about how easy writing a book was, but he, along with his co-authors, took the time to pull from each of their expertise to write a book. Here's a link to each of the 5 Authors of "The Small Business Owner's Guide to Local Lead Generation": Mark Z. FortuneKevin JordanRay L. PerryPhil SingletonJustin SturgesKevin faced a couple challenges with his book called The Small Business Owner's Guide to Local Lead Generation. While he acknowledges that it is a bit of a mouth full, he recognized the importance of describing the book in detail and it helps with search engine optimization as well. The main challenges Kevin and his team faced was combining five voices into one voice. Check out Kevin's new book: Share on Twitter He wanted the book to have a cohesive flow so that it was reflected in the content as one voice. The way he solved the problem was by hiring a copywriter. At first, he thought it would be easier to record content and send it to the copywriter and it would be done. He found out that it wasn't as easy at it seemed. In most cases, the content was transcribed well; however, in other cases, the team found out that it was hard for the copywriter to interpret the information so that the information was communicated in a way that was easy to understand. The target audience for this book is someone who may have heard what SEO is, but they really don't understand more than that. In order to make this happen, they had to be careful with the jargon. Kevin said it was challenging to break down marketing in a simple step-by-step process. The content was created with the team on the call and the copywriter would take the information from the call. This provided a great starting point for the team to decide whether or not that was the "tone" they were looking for. If Kevin had to do this all over again, he would definitely hire a copywriter again. Within the team dynamic, they chose two people to do the editing so they would avoid having too many people trying to do the same thing.A book is never really completed - Kevin JordanHow to Write With a TeamKevin actually really enjoyed working with the team to write this book. Kevin really enjoyed it as a matter of fact. He was able to learn a lot along the way. Kevin realizes that you cannot be an expert at everything. Two of the authors were very strong in SEO and web design and then others brought in areas of expertise such as copywriting and video marketing. The hardest part of writing the book was deciding what to include in it. The goal was to keep the length short because the target audience is very busy and has very short attetion spans. Kevin pointed out that he could say that because he was a small busines owner himself. Narrowing the topics down to areas that the team believed would really help the readers out. If you want to learn more about or connect with Kevin Jordan, check out his links below and remember he welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Red Point Marketing Website Kevin on YouTube Kevin on Google Plus Kevin on LinkedIn Kevin Jordan on Facebook Follow Kevin on Twitter Small Business Marketing Show Send an email to Kevin Jordan Here are the highlights of my conversation with Kevin Jordan if you are in a hurry:Who is Kevin Jordan? (3:00 Mark)What is the book about?

Kate Taylor - Staff Writer, Entrepreneur.com Kate Taylor is a staff writer for Entrepreneur.com. Kate covers franchises and anything relating to the franchising and entrepreneurs. She has been with Entrepreneur for nearly two years. She was hired and didn't know she was going to be writing about franchising until the day she started work. Little did she know, she found franchising intriguing and really enjoys learning and sharing her knowledge about franchising. Kate was a history major in college, but she always wanted to be a writer. Before working for Entrepreneur.com, she interned for Forbes and found an appreciation for business writing. Kate separates herself from the competition by consistently writing new content. For example, some people start blogs or writing with the best intentions, but people often quit before they develop an audience because they aren't receiving any feedback or getting any response it's easy for people to stop writing. For Kate, it's really important to just generate the content and get it published. Writing is a lot of work, but working for Entrepreneur.com, Kate has a great editor that helps her out. Most of the time she wants to get an article out before noon. For longer stories, it's less of a direct deadline, but if you are working on articles everyday, you get used to a rhythm that works best for you. Writing once a month or once a week is fine, but you have to be honest with yourself. If you say you are going to write once a month because that's all the time you have, and you miss a month, you really have to get into a routine and make sure you commit. If you are writing once a month, don't skip. - Kate Taylor Kate says a big debate as to how long an article should be. She thinks that shorter articles may be more likely to go viral, but also there are longer articles that Kate put a lot of time and energy in that have a longer shelf life. She recommends that you need to balance the two and figure out what you're voice is when creating content. Kate says that developing a voice is as much as developing confidence and like many other things, it comes with practice. Kate found her voice through trial and error and writing a lot of articles. Getting your own voice is an extension of expressing your personality. This is easier to do when you are writing about topics that you are more interested in. 3 Things That Will Make You a Better Writer The first thing to becoming a better writer is that when you are choosing a topic, write about personal experiences and make sure it's interesting to you. The second thing is just making sure that there aren't any grammatical errors and finally, learn how to make your articles something that your audience wants to read. It has to do a lot with creating a great headline. Make sure you title your article or story with a "clickable" headline. In other words, find out different ways to express yourself and get your point across quickly. To make headlines better, you can start off with trial and error in figuring out what works with different audiences. Reread your article and try to find out what the article is about. If you are writing about someone, it's a good idea to go back through the article and find something interesting they said and use that as a headline. If you want to learn more about or connect with Kate Taylor, check out her links below and remember she welcomes all questions, comments and inquiries! Kate Taylor Entrepreneur Staff Writer Kate Taylor on Twitter Kate Taylor on LinkedIn Send an email to Kate Taylor Here are the highlights of my conversation with Kate Taylor if you are in a hurry: Who is Kate Taylor? (2:40 Mark) What often should you post for traffic generation? (9:30 Mark) Kate defines "getting your voice". (12:52 Mark) What are 3 things to become a better writer? (14:53 Mark) What social media does Kate use most? (22:14 Mark) Deciphering what is ok and not ok to share online?

Episode 123, April 21, 2015. Mark Slaughter Gives the Not So Pretty Details on Vinnie Vincent. What was the very first comment Vinnie Vincent made to Mark? What was the first comment Gene Simmons said to Mark when Slaughter toured with KISS? Who got the Vinnie Vincent Invasion their record deal? How did Slaughter get […]

Donna Serdula is the founder of VisionBoardMedia.com and she loves helping people tell their story while building a powerful professional brand. Her mission is to help professionals take control of their internet presenct and present themselves in a way that inspires, impresses, and builds their abilities, products and services. I have been aching to do more shows focused around social media due to the importance and growth of these platforms. It was truly a pleasure to have Donna on the show and her knowledge within LinkedIn is truly amazing. During this interview, I was able to learn quite a bit about LinkedIn and how important this particular platform is to my overall social signal. I asked several questions and would have loved more time, but we had enough time to learn about the most important aspect of LinkedIn and that was where to start. Whether you are new to LinkedIn or you have been on this site for a while, there are many changes going on that you should be aware of. Donna has been on LinkedIn since 2005, and while she says she is not an early adopter of the site, she has positioned herself as a leader on LinkedIn with nearly 20,000 followers through consistently updating her profile nearly 15 times each day. While this may seem like a lot, this is necessary in today's online market place in order to get your message out in a crowded space. Make sure that you take the time to complete your profile because when people want to learn more about you, you need to share a story about yourself in the best light. For many people, writing is difficult to say the least. It's hard to make sure you are adding the right things to your profile based on what goals you hope to acheive. Donna created LinkedIn-Makeover.com, which also happens to be the name of her book, LinkedIn Makeover - Professional Secrets to a POWERFUL LinkedIn Profile, where she and her staff will tell your story and build your professional brand by creating a profile that will help connect you with target prospects and companies that are looking for your expertise. Whether you are looking for gainful employment or selling products and services, having a complete LinkedIn profile is sure to increase your exposure. Many of the people on LinkedIn are high-level executives and decision makers. This is a great platform for business of all kinds. The more you participate on this network, the more opportunity you will have to get your dream job or do business with people you like. Donna Serdula is easy to find on the world wide web. Connect with Donna on all or any of the links below to learn more about her and her LinkedIn programs below: Vision Board Media Website LinkedIn Makeover Website Donna's Keynote Speaker Website Donna Serdula's LinkedIn Makeover Facebook Send Donna a Tweet LinkedIn Makeover on Twitter LinkedIn YouTube Donna Serdula's Email Donna Serdula is featured on an NBC story to help makeover your LinkedIn profile below: Donna has been a guest on XM radio and a professional speaker. She is not shy when it comes to talking about her passion which is LinkedIn, so you will definitely be entertained by Donna's positive attitude and exuberance in this episode. Below are just a couple highlights of the show, but as always, I recommend listening to the show in it's entirety as it's full of great content: Who is Donna Serdula? (3:00 Mark) What is a digital introduction? (7:12 Mark) What is the first thing you should do on LinkedIn? (11:50 mark) How to set your goals on LinkedIn? (16:11 mark) Do you need a company site on LinkedIn? (16:50 Mark) Should you pay for a professional profile?(22:35 Mark) Should I advertise on LinkedIn? (27:40 Mark) What's the best way to interact on LinkedIn? (30:06 Mark) Learn about Donna's great story behind the motivation of writing her book. (32:20 Mark) What is Donna's "Break Away" moment? (43:20 Mark) Resource links to mentioned on the show:

Drew Griffin is the founder and mobile application developer at Mobile Apps Labs, author and public speaker. He develops unique Mobile Applications for the iPhone, iPad and Android devices as well as mobile marketing strategies that integrate interactiveness and commerce. He consults with businesses to develop mobile applications and and mobile app marketing strategies. He is a National and Public speaker. He continues to present at SCORE.org events, Local Chambers of Commerce, Local and National Conferences on topics related to Mobile Applications, Technology and Mobile Marketing. He is the publisher of Install Magazine, an interactive digital magazine to iOS Newsstand for iPhone and iPad. He is currently partnering with content creators to publish other Newsstand Magazines for iOS, individuals and businesses toi develop mobile apps for iOS. Android and Kindle.Specialties: Mobile App Developer, iOS Apps, iPhone Apps, iiPad Apps, Android Apps, Amazon Kindle Apps, Newsstand Applications. Utility Apps, Directory Apps, Mobile Marketing, Content Distribution Specialist, Author Drew Griffin is Author of Mobile App Formula: How To Develop Mobile Apps Even If You Are Not A Programmer, Founder and Publisher of Podcasting Magazine which is found exclusively on Newsstand for iPad and iPhone, and public speaker on topics related to App Development and Digital Publishing through Multicasting. Drew Helps individuals, businesses and organizations develop their ubiquity footprints, lead generation and conversion and social engagement. He does this by democratizing and leveraging emerging technologies and platforms utilizing Multicast Marketing. Drew Griffin We covered a variety of topics during the show and while I knew we were going to be talking about, mobile app development, digital magazines and Drew's new healthy lifestyle, I learned a lot about what he is doing and why was participating in Visalus. Congrats to Drew for already losing over 20 lbs. and he is super excited about becoming a healthier person. One cool thing about Visalus is their "Project 10 for Kids". To hear what they are doing, listen to the show at the 46:37 mark. The Mobile App Formula by Drew Griffin is available on Amazon today. If you are interested in learning more about creating your very own mobile app without having to know complicated coding, then definitely stop by Amazon and grab a copy of Drew's book by clicking on the book cover image. As promised, visit Amazon and enter the discount coupon code so that you can get 3 FREE months of Podcasting Magazine: COUPON CODE: GetintheGame Learn more from Jedi Knight and all-around awesome guy, Drew Griffin. Here's his contact info: Website Facebook Google Plus LinkedIn Twitter YouTube PodcastMag.com I always learn something when I talk with Drew and I sure hope you get a lot out of this show. Listen to the highlights of the podcast below: Who is Drew Griffin? What did Drew do before he got into app development?(4:02 Mark) What can you do with a mobile application? (12:24 Mark) Now this is a great story... hint - it has do with the power of mobile applications and how you can monetize them (18:46 mark) Drew gets into detail about what a digital magazine is and can do for you or your clients. (30:24 mark) Drew is getting healthy and sheding that weight. Wanna know what he's doing? (40:33 Mark) Giving back in a very special way. (46:37 Mark) Drew shares his "Break Away" moment. (54:50 Mark)

Evo Terra Evo Terra has led innovative and disruptive strategies for 20 years. In business, he's launched and managed enterprise-level commerce platforms and directed international agency teams. As an educator, he's hosted nationally syndicated radio programs, authored many instructional books, and is a nationally known speaker. As an entrepreneur, he’s launched many startups, all with varying degrees of success. Through it all, Evo stays focused on emerging trends, the impact of science on on society, and the importance of critical thinking. Evo currently holds positions in several companies including Podiobooks.com as the President, BigBounce.co as the Chief Disruption Officer and also as a strategic advisor for Scribl.com which sells books online using "Crowdpricing". Definitely want to get into that. In addition to his current duties, he's a published author of multiple books including his latest book, the Beer Diet, Making Killer Google+ Profiles, Writing Awesome Book Blurbs, Expert Podcasting for Dummies and Podcasting for Dummeis (2nd Edition). Evo has been quoted as saying "Innovation preceded by disruption is just natural and predictable progression". Evo Terra Takes Multi-tasking to an Entirely New Level Positioning himself witin multiple companies, encapulates Evo's desire to constantly strive to find the next best thing. While most of us may collapse under the pressure of multi-tasking at this level, this is Mr. Terra's comfort zone. Evo is currently involved in three companies and the first of which is a company called Podiobooks.com wherein you are the President. He coined the phrase "podiobook" in April of 2005 to describe serialized audiobooks which are distributed via RSS feeds, much like podcasts - the combination of podcast and audiobook. All the podiobooks are free of charge; however, they ask for donations to help keep these services available. Evo took the time to thank Libsyn for their help with the hosting. They are a great company and you should check them out for your podcast hosting needs. He is the "Chief Disruption Officer" for a company called BigBounce.co that was an idea drummed up between Sitewire President, Bret Giles, and Evo when he held the VP of Media and Innovation position for five years. Big Bounce transforms disruptive startups into sustainable businesses. We use a variety of flexible, lightweight processes to incubate and accelerate our member businesses, help them master business fundamentals, and provide executive-level guidance and other support structures necessary to run a sustainable business. I read about BigBounce.co and it seems to be a great opportunity for entrepreneurs looking to take their concept to the next level. Evo is also a strategic advisor for Scribl.com. This company provides readers an opportunity to find the right book and pay the right price based on a powerful new software known as CrowdPricing. It's also a platform that provides authors another resource to share their work and help them build a portfolio and even get their books published. Scribl.com is currently in the "Beta" process, but it's moving forward at a rapid pace. Evo Terra on Fox News with Shepard Smith Reporting If you would like to learn more about Evo Terra, check him out online at: Evo Terra's Website Facebook Google Plus LinkedIn Twitter YouTube Here's a great article about the differences between disruption and innovation: Disruption and Innovation Are Not The Same Thing Want some good reading? Check out Evo's bibliography: [soliloquy id="265"] It was a blast interviewing Evo. Listen to the highlights of the podcast below: Who is Evo Terra? (3:15 Mark) What is Podiobooks.com - Evo's even coined the word. (4:24 Mark) Why does Evo apologize for his rant? (9:41 mark) What does CrowdPricing mean? (13;50 mark) Evo talks hockey? (21:26 Mark) What does a Chief Disruption Officer do at BigBounce.co? (23:03 Mark)

Chris Simnick is the founder of FranchiseTeacher.com, a division of the Synergy Franchise Group. Chris has over 30 years of experience in the franchise business business as a franchisee, franchisor and now a prominent franchise consultant. His expertise has taken him all around the world. His "Teach! Coach! Consult! Advise!" philosophy is more than just a phrase, it's at the heart of his company's core values. He specializes in the creation and implementation of key strategies and business plans for concepts, or business looking to franchise, looking to enter franchising. He also helps franchise systems that are looking to take the next step in their business. Chris Simnick has travled the world helping franchises grow their business, and while he is based in Florida, he enjoys meeting people face to face. That said, he understands the importance of establishing a solid online market place. He utilizes both online and offline marketing strategies in addition to a proven training system that begins with a FREE one-hour consultation followed by a feasability study prior to advising his clients of making a commitment to franshise or invest in a franchise opportunity. Chris completed the Fast Track M.B.A. Training in Franchise Mangement at Nova Southeastern University, and received his CFE designation from the IFA in 2004. He frequently speaks at large venues and has been an instructor at numerous seminars, classes and events on a variety of topics including: Domestic, International and Global Recruitment and Development Utilizing the Internet to Build Brand Awareness Lead Generation and Recruitment Tools Training and Operations Processes Franchisee/Franchisor Relationships Chris has also had the fortunate assignment of teaching modules of the Mini MBA Course for International Institute for Franchise Education (IIFE) at Nova South Eastern University and the Philippine International Franchise Conference and Expo in Manilla, Philippines. During this podcast, Chris addresses several interesting topics including: Who is Chris Simnick? (2:20 Mark) How is business done today? (7:28 Mark) Why is "able" so important to your buisness strategy? (9:36 mark) How do you approach your franchise consulting? (15:52 mark) What do you tell people about the business of franchising? (20:14 Mark) What is the difference between teaching, coaching, , consulting and advising? (23:00 Mark) Is free really worth something? (31:30 Mark) What were Chris's "Break Away" moments (he has three - hat trick anyone?) (36:22 Mark) Get in touch with Chris Simnick: Visit Chris's website at FranchiseTeacher.com Connect with Chris Google Plus and Facebook and add Chris to your list on LinkedIn. Email Chris at chris@franchiseteacher.com if you would like to talk with him more. Get your FREE One-Hour Consultation with Chris and FranchiseTeacher.com.

Can you summarize the Gospel of Mark? What is the Gospel of Mark all about?