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Welcome to InSights, the staffing podcast designed to help staffing specialists and recruiters maximize their content marketing, social recruiting, employer branding, and digital marketing.    EPISODE 66 SEGMENTS: Email Marketing - What Works in Candidate Recruitment? Should you start sharing the names of the clients you're working with? And we check in with Matt - Are people applying to jobs yet?   LET'S CHAT: Have a question or comment on the information shared during this episode? Follow Haley Marketing (@HaleyMarketing) on Twitter and let us know what you’re thinking.    HOSTED BY: Brad Bialy (LinkedIn / Twitter) Matt Lozar (LinkedIn / Twitter) Mackenzie Froese (LinkedIn)    Referenced in this Episode: Permanent jobs rise as employers sweeten pay, benefits for gig workers amid labor shortages  

Sometimes an opportunity comes along that’s too good to pass up. For Matt Hulett, that happened when a friend approached him about a job at Rosetta Stone. The famous language-learning company was stuck in the analog world and they wanted Matt to be the guy to bring them into the digital future. It was no small feat, but Rosetta Stone has made progress on the digital transformation and Ecommerce journey, including introducing a subscription model and overhauling its tech stack and app. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Matt discusses the challenges of transforming a world-famous brand, including how he chose a free-trial subscription model over going freemium, what it was like to achieve buy-in from investors, and the future of Ecommerce and why he thinks social selling still hasn’t reached its full potential.   3 Takeaways: Even the most well-known brands need to earn their stripes when entering a new space. When a previously offline product starts playing in the digital world, it has to prove to customers that their investment in this new space is worth it AR and VR are tools that Ecommerce platforms will be exploring more in the coming years. If you can provide a more immersive experience, you differentiate yourself from the competition and create more value to your customers Stay true to the brand and don’t try to compete on business models that don’t fit For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length. --- Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce --- Transcript: Stephanie: Welcome back to Up Next In Commerce, this is Stephanie Postles, co-founder of Mission.org and your host. Today, we're going on a digital transformation journey. Matt, how's it going? Matt: Oh, really good. A little cooped up here like we all are, but I'm hanging in there. How are you doing? Stephanie: I'm doing well. Yeah, same hot, very hot. It's 92 here and the places in Silicon Valley usually don't have air conditioning so just a little sweaty in the studio. Stephanie: So I must admit, I have not checked in on Rosetta Stone in a while and when I started browsing through you guys' website, I was like, "Whoa, you all have come a long way from CD-ROMs and everything that I was used to when I was growing up and thought of Rosetta Stone." So I'd love to hear a little bit about what brought you to Rosetta Stone and your background before you joined. Matt: Yeah. It's interesting, just before I dive in, it's rare to join a company where everyone knows your brand and your product like just about everyone in the United States does Rosetta Stone. Matt: And so actually, it's an interesting story because there's not many ed tech companies that are a public companies, you could count them on your hand and the company has been a public company for over 10 years. Matt: It's been around for 27 years and it's a really interesting backstory on how the company was founded and so some of that came into play with what got me attracted to the business. Matt: So a friend of mine who's a recruiter talked to me about this opportunity and I typically do restarts, pivots as they are [crosstalk] for startups. Matt: And even the startups that I join are typically pivots. So there's kind of this pivot transformation story that typically is a draw for me for whatever weird reason why I attracted to these things and when he said, "Oh, it's Rosetta Stone." Matt: I was like, "Oh, the CD-ROM company, the yellow box." I was like, "Yeah, but they're trying to be digital." I'm like, "They're not digital yet?" Matt: And so the draw for me was typically, I take on jobs and assignments that are very difficult where I have to either completely change the strategy or get new financing on a new idea. Matt: There's generally something really, really wrong and Rosetta Stone was so intriguing to me on the surface for the intellectual reasons why they brand the product, people love it. Matt: It's not one of those iconic brands that people are afraid of. It's not like saying, "Matt, do you want to restart Myspace? I was like, "Oh my God, it's Rosetta Stone, of course." Stephanie: That's your next project. Myspace. Matt: Yeah. Stephanie: Just bring it back. Matt: Making it great again. Too soon. But what personally drew me, that's kind of the intellectual business level, what personally drew me into the company was and is the fact that I'm dyslexic, and a third of the revenue for Rosetta Stone is actually one of the fastest growing. Matt: We sell software into K-12 schools primarily in United States that help kids learn how to read, better learn how to read which is a problem. I've seen my own youngest son struggle with his dyslexia as well. Matt: And so on a personal level, it's very emotional when you can kind of tie that emotional tie to a company to its mission and vision. It's really intriguing. So it's been one of the best career decisions I've ever made. Stephanie: Yeah, that's great. Were there any universal truth that you discovered as you are kind of pivoting from different companies and trying out different roles and turning them around? Was there anything like yeah, universal truths that you saw while doing that? Matt: Well, that's a great question. Yeah, a couple things. One is it's so crazy to me, when I step into a company how basically from week one, maybe day one, no one really understands how the business works, like truly understands it. Matt: The key insight, what makes the business special, what can you do to apply capital or a time or attention to improve your strategy or your outcomes? It's just so, it's so weird when you go to a business that's operating, and maybe these are the only businesses I look at where it's not quite tight inside around the strategy and what makes the kind of the economic engine run. I think that's the biggest one that I see off the top of my head. Stephanie: Yeah, that's interesting. I can definitely see a lot of companies struggling there especially as they grow bigger and they have many business units and everyone's kind of chasing a different path, I can see people losing sight of what's important and what's actually driving this business like you're talking about and making it profitable or maybe it's not, but it's the lost leader, something that we still need. So yeah, that's really interesting. Stephanie: So when you joined Rosetta Stone, it hadn't been digital. I mean, only a few years, right? I think it stopped, maybe it didn't stop doing CDs, but it went online. Wasn't it in 2013? Matt: Yeah, I would say it was like half digital. What that means is we were selling one of the most expensive products in the App Store at the time and we didn't really have the concept of really effective sales funnels, a well thought out pricing and packaging strategy based on the type of customers that we're going after. Matt: We didn't have a lot of mobile native features and capability. So I would say it was kind of a port of the CD product in the mobile environment and that was kind of the approach. Matt: And also the approach was really not to focus on the consumer business. So not only did we make this kind of business model and digital transformation move, but also when I came into the business, the big focus was for the language side of the business was to focus on enterprise customers. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Matt: I thought that was actually the wrong move because enterprise is difficult, it's a smaller market, yet consumers where everyone knows Rosetta Stone, everyone likes the product. They actually remember the CD products in many cases and want to use them again, but they want to use them on your phone. Matt: So I thought, "Well heck, everyone knows who I am from a brand awareness perspective, I'll have an easier time deploying less capital against the consumer space and enterprise space." So there was not only just a business model shift, but also a strategy shift. Stephanie: Did you end up sticking with that business model shift to focus on enterprises or did you kind of make it a mix of 50/50? Matt: Oh, good question. So it is about 50/50 today, although consumers now are growing fast. I mean, we're a public company so I can only speak to our public company numbers, but in Q4 of last year, we grew the consumer business about 20% year over year and this is from a business step was growing at single digit. Matt: And then our last reporting earnings quarter, we grew the consumer business around 40% year to year and the enterprise business has struggled more primarily because of the C-19 impacts this year because obviously, we're in a never before seen macro economic headwind, but generally, it's the right decision to make and I view the enterprise business as more of an extension of what we want to do for all adult learners versus creating as a separate entity. Matt: That's a long answer to say consumer turned out to be the right move. It was not clear when I joined the company that even joining Rosetta Stone was a smart move. Matt: I had a lot of folks that I know, acquaintances more so than friends say, "Good luck. There's a lot of error in this company." And I just think it's just a really exciting problem and it's a ... Sorry to keep going because I've had maybe 80 cups of coffee today and just, I don't know. Stephanie: No, keep it up. Matt: It's like the two big verticals that are the most expensive that increased their prices to consumers over the last 50 years are healthcare and education and they have the lowest penetration of digital, and like, "Well, those are hard problems to solve. Why wouldn't you want to be involved?" So anyways, I think it's really fun. Stephanie: Yeah, that's fascinating. So when you came in, what were expectations for your role? What did people want you to do? Did you have a 90-day plan? How did that look? Matt: Oh yeah, if anyone thinks these are scripted questions, these are not scripted questions. These are very good questions. So during the interview process and I'm sure you've had this experience before, when you meet with somebody in a company, you're like, "I'm going to do whatever it takes to get this job." Stephanie: Yup. Matt: And I had one of those experiences with Rosetta Stone. I knew I wanted this job and so I came into maybe the first or second interview with a 90-day plan before I even started, this is the first or second interview. Matt: And the 90-day plan did change slightly because then I knew a little something, but I've done enough of these transformation projects, these pivots where I knew there's these basic building blocks in a format, I have a toolbox of things that I do that really didn't change. Matt: The inevitable strategy didn't know before I started, I didn't know the team members, were they the right fit or not, I didn't know any of that, but the basic building blocks I definitely put together. Stephanie: Got it. So what was on your roadmap, did you have to think about how to re-platform to support your commerce journey and shifting into enterprise and then consumer? What was on that plan that you laid out? Matt: Yeah, and I kind of learned some of this years ago when I was ... Sometimes I think my best work, I can't speak for you or anybody else, but my best work is when I'm completely ignorant of the challenges in front of me and so when I was younger, I worked for ... Well, actually, we sold our company to Macromedia and they had a division called Shockwave. Matt: And Macromedia at that point was not bought by Adobe, and this is Web 1.0 bubble, so I'm dating myself which is not legal in Washington State and these jokes have all jail time. Stephanie: [crosstalk] get us in trouble. Matt: I know. And so we step back through that experience and I learned a lot from the Macromedia Adobe kind of M&A folks about how to approach a problem. And that plus some other work experience over time really got me to the point of thinking through things from I call it the insight, the math in the heart. Matt: And no one framed it that way to me, but that's kind of how I framed it and so when I think about the insight, I think about the addressable market, the position that we are in the marketplace, so supplier's demand competitors. Matt: Then I think about what value we're driving to consumers, what value are you driving to your suppliers if you have them. And then what are the decisions you're going to make based on the strategy that you're laying out for the best outcome? Matt: So you want to grow market share, you want to grow revenue share. Do you not have enough capital? Do you actually need to raise capital and buy companies in order to get size and scale that's the outcome? Matt: So it's kind of a process that I've done over time and I want you to figure all that out, and it takes a while, maybe 90 days, maybe a little bit more, then it's really like how do you put a process together and dashboard is a little trite, but how do you actually run the business so you understand what things are working, the unit economics, what key layers of the business are you looking at, and then figure out an organization to support that and then you find the right team. Matt: And it sounds kind of exhaustive in terms of an answer, but I think too many people come in situations and they say, "Okay, I started this job, I got to restart it. What's my team look like?" Matt: And it's always I think the tail wagging the proverbial pivot dog and I typically, you can find startup people that are good at startups and sometimes, you find startup people that are good at later stage. Matt: You can find every dynamic possible, but until you do the work on, "I need this type of person for this type of growth stage, it's the right person the right time." Matt: If you don't do the work upfront, then you end up having a team that isn't the right team for the outcome that you want. Stephanie: Yup. Yeah, I've heard ... I forgot who said that startup advice where a lot of startups especially around here, are looking to hire that VIP level person, you have to pay a bunch of money to and someone was making the point of like, "Well, will they help you right now where you're at?" Stephanie: And it's okay to kind of grow out of people, but it's not okay to hire someone who's way above that actually can't get their hands dirty and do the work of what needs to be done right now. Matt: That's right. There's lots of people that have different approaches. I actually like to be pretty data driven in terms of how I think about people so I use like employee satisfaction studies and I use different personality profile tests. Matt: Obviously, you're not trying to like ... Hopefully, no one is like applying an AI filter looking at my reactions on this live video, but you can go overboard with data, but I do feel like you need to get the right alchemy talent for your team. Matt: And I've made mistakes where you have that senior person that doesn't want to get their hands dirty when you're like, "Look, I'm in build mode, I'm painting the fence, and I'm the CEO and I'm painting the fence and then I'm talking to the neighbors and driving Uber ..." Matt: The alchemy of that is hard to do, but that's a long winded answer to say there's there's a process and I think it's figuring out what's special about your company, how do you improve it, how do you run it? How did the inputs become the outputs and then what team is required for that? Stephanie: Yeah, very cool. So with the company having to shift as they did to go online and create mobile experiences, what kind of challenges did you see come up when you guys were going through that shift? Matt: Yeah, so there's multiple. So I always think about kind of the four constituents in most businesses, its investors, its customers, it's your internal employees and society. Matt: Not in that order. The order depends on lots of different things and so when I kind of checked down all those boxes, I think the big one, the first one I pick is investors because you're having to explain a model where the CD is purchased up front, it's very expensive versus you don't get all the revenue upfront, you amateurize that revenue and recognize it over 12, 24 whatever terms of the span of the subscription. Matt: So it's a change in terms of how you're reporting revenue, explain it in a consistent way, explaining the new metrics of subscription is challenged one I think from an investor perspective explaining why we have a language business, the Lexia business that I mentioned that focused on literacy is a 20 to 25% growth business, it's growing pretty nicely and language was declining. Matt: So then explaining to investors why do you still have this business and why are you changing the direction from enterprise to consumer, I think for employees. Matt: I always like to think through the employee piece, get the employee piece right, you can do anything and so getting the employees reason to believe, I was the first president to actually run the language business. Matt: It had multiple owners of the P&L and I was the first person probably since the CEO, we had one CEO that that started Rosetta Stone and took it public 20 plus years ago. Matt: I was the first single leader to ... I also tried creating a reason to believe a compelling vision, mission and culture and then when I think through kind of the customer piece, it wasn't as hard to be honest because there was so much brand equity that was good brand equity that doing little bit of things in a way that was kind of planful and data driven actually generated a lot of great outpouring of support. Matt: So the customer side of what we were doing wasn't as difficult as I would have thought and we also had an enterprise business that had already integrated things like digital tutoring with the software and demanding Fortune 500 companies. Matt: So there was some DNA in the company where we knew, "Boy, you can earn every interaction with every interaction." So that was that piece and then later, I started building more hooks into society as part of that and so I kind of view it as a self-fulfilling positive effect of you take care of your employees, they take care of your customers, the investors get great outcomes, and society benefits and you keep kind of turning this crank and you start getting much more reflective about it. Matt: And it does have, it does pay off. It takes I think, in general, I think people brag about how fast they can turn around companies. I don't know why people brag about that. Matt: I don't know, my experience is two years and taking a business from bad to like growing, at least, believing in itself is very hard and so I look at those four factors and I think the society piece is one that's super important that a lot of companies pay lip service to and there's a lot of discussion especially in Silicon Valley about some large companies that are controversial there. Matt: But I'll give you a for instance why if you can tie together the vision, mission, culture values to society, how that's self-reinforcing, we had a obviously horrible global pandemic that we're still pulling ourselves out of and everyone's kind of living through this experience at the same time. Matt: And we basically took just two days to decide that we're going to give away our software for free for three months for students. And we run a current business and selling software to enterprises and adults and we said, "You know what? We know that parents are actually going through hell because there's kind of a make your own adventure right now and schooling." Matt: [crosstalk] and I can feel it myself and we are like, "Oh my God, this is so stressful and the anxiety I heard from our own employees about it was overwhelming and I'm asking them to work harder." Matt: And so we said, "You know what? We're going to give away three months subscription and we're going to just do it and you just have to ... The parents have to put their email address in the school and that's it." Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). That's awesome. Matt: And we're not a free ... We're a paid subscription product. We're not, there are other competitors that have a freemium model and as you know, changing models or mixed models generally don't have a long history of working and we said, "You know what? We're just going to do it." Matt: And so the team decided to do it, I just said, "Yeah, let's do something." They said, "Here's exactly what we're going to do." And it was live, and then the amount of positive benefits, we got that from pure impressions. Matt: It actually helped our adult business to ... Adult language learning business. That's just one quick example of when those things all start working together. Matt: It's transparent, it's engaged and it's consistent. It becomes kind of operating leverage as well. So it's fun. It's fun to see how that work. Stephanie: Yeah, that's great. It's definitely a good reminder of do good things and good things will come back to you. Did you have any struggles with maybe like surges and people logging in and trying to get on the platform that maybe you hadn't experienced in the past? Because it was maybe a bit more predictable since it wasn't free? Matt: That's a really good question. Not on the system, the system's basis, but certainly from a support basis because we had a lot of, we outsource most of our customer support, and we debated for a while whether we we're going to continue phone support, we still do and I still debate that one, but a lot of our service providers were in outside United States and they all of a sudden had to work from home and then some facilities shut down and so we are just constantly playing whack-a-mole with our support organizations. Matt: And then also, I would say to our frontline heroes were our tutors and we employ a lot of highly educated tutors that have degrees in language learning and they all work from home primarily, they're part-time employees. Matt: And they turn out to be like our heroes because they took some support calls in addition to one-on-one digital tutoring. And so there was unique ways in which we had to adapt with the demand, but I would say more on the demand side regarding the support elements and we definitely saw a surge do the work from home trend as well, but that didn't impact kind of service levels and general software. Stephanie: Okay, cool. And I could see it being a bit tricky to develop and maintain a platform that has so many different layers to the business. I'm thinking about the enterprises who are going on there and buying seats for employees, and I'm thinking about the school is going on there for students, and then the individual consumer like me who's maybe like, "Hey, I'm going to Italy and I want to learn Italian." Stephanie: I don't know, but like it seems like it would be pretty tricky creating a platform that does all of that. How do you think about creating that so everyone gets a good experience and also being able to monitor and measure it in a successful way? Matt: Yeah, I've never seen the complexity Rosetta Stone before at the smallest scale, but what I mean by that is we have three businesses and we're a small cap public company. So that's unusual and the business was run on the language side ... Well, let me step back. Matt: So the literacy business is a business that was acquired seven, eight years ago and that's a 30-year-old company that was acquired, it's called Lexia and it works as a distinct operating unit from my business and is run by an awesome gentleman. Matt: And I use that word loosely and if he's listening, sorry Nick, he's a great guy and so passionate and his team is so good and it's ... I've never seen before a product that's built with like academic research combined with awesome data product engineering that gets results. Matt: It's just, I've never seen anything like it and they had the time to build this product over these many years, it was always digital first and so they're run separately. Matt: My language business was run on two different tech stacks. Actually, it was like five and when I started, I was like, "Well, wait a minute, why is this product that looks the same running off this underlying architecture? Why don't we move everything to react?" Matt: As I kind of went through this morass of tech stacks, it was a lot of M&A that generate a lot of complexity and a lot of tech debt. And so I would say majority of our innovation was not innovation, it was just keeping these old tech stacks up. Matt: So from an R&D perspective, in addition to all the other complexities we just talked about in this interview, I was trying to grow the consumer business, trying to change the business model, swapping out new team members for more growth orientation and doing a huge tech migration. Matt: And the complexity around that is mind boggling. We finished that late last year like de-flashing like old weird services, moving to a services architecture. All that stuff we end up doing and inevitably, the goal is to have one learner experience, just like you use Google, Google Mail for your enterprise, or personal. Matt: There were some admin privileges and other things that are associated in the back end, but in general, the product kind of looks and feels the same and that's, the inevitable goal which we're very close to execute on. Stephanie: Got it. Were there any pitfalls that you experienced when going through all those different pieces to the business or anything where you're like, "When we implemented this, or we move to this type of tech stack, this is when we saw a lot of improvements with conversions or anything around the consumer or enterprise business." Matt: Yeah, just on conversions, yeah, one thing on that is interesting is the amount of improvement we saw just with like putting different team members with specific goals and this is going to sound kind of crazy because everyone is going to like, "Yeah, he's talking about agile." Matt: Just getting very specific about areas in the funnel to improve and how to adjust the trial experience at certain times, and experiencing and showing customers different things at different times. Matt: That had like a crazy amount of upside for us. And I would say less architecturally that we see an improvement other than we had just less stuff that wasn't moving the innovation forward, but just these small things have big impacts and get and I must say like if any one of my team members is listening to this and say, "You haven't solved all that yet is." Matt: It's very difficult to take a business that is so complex, and then all sudden kind of say, "Look, we're going to reduce all the complexity, networks are innovating again." I think there's still a challenge of like, faster, smaller teams, we use a safe framework which is kind of scrum like. Matt: I don't think we figured all that out yet, but it's way different than when I came in and felt very waterfally to me. We're going to issue a press release, what this release is going to look like in one year and we're going to work back from that, I'm like, "Yeah, that's very Amazon." Stephanie: Yeah, yup. Matt: I'm like, "Well, how do you even know this is the right thing if you don't have any customer?" So there was there's a whole evolution of trying things, validating them, making sure that you're deploying enough capital against that makes sure it gets a fair shake, but not too much where you're, you're in over your head and we've had some public black eyes on some of our tests, and I don't care. Matt: We were trying some things internationally with tutoring, it didn't work out, it didn't have the capital honestly to support some of it and I kind of feel like those are good experiences to understand whether you're going to invest more in something or not. Matt: And so I think the fact that we can start doing those things now because we simplified the platform or if possible. Yeah, I think it's hard to say no to things and yes to things. And some of that discipline is easier when you're a startup because you just don't have people to outsource to. Stephanie: Yup. There's always an excuse. Nope, no one else can help us with that. Can't do it. Matt: Yeah. There's never like I'm a product manager by training and I've used every product manager tool under the sun and now I've kind of just resulted in my using Google Sheets again and what I'm trying to triage like epics and themes and stories, and I still like to play around with those types of planning elements, I just always look at all these people in these points available. I'm like, "You guys have no idea the luxury we have." Stephanie: I'm sure they like hearing that. Matt: Yeah, there's nothing more pure than a startup and it's like five people, five engineers and like a product manager that codes and the seat goes, doing UI, UX and it's ... Stephanie: Yeah, that's really fun. So you mentioned earlier a free trial which I actually went on Rosetta's website and I ended up going through the entire trial of learning Spanish. How did you all think about creating that free trial and actually convincing people to do it? Stephanie: Because a lot of times, I think I would see something like that and I'd be like, "Oh, that's too much time and I don't want to start that process right now." Stephanie: And I eagerly jumped in and started doing the lesson plan because it was engaging and fun, and it kind of felt like the real world with the person walking around and you're stopping and talking to them. How did you think about creating that? So it actually converted users into paying customers? Matt: Oh, thanks for saying that. Yeah, I think we have a long ways to go. I think in terms of what we could be doing is we're just, I just feel like we're sprinting to the start line because of the late start, but I think the core piece is for most companies and they think about like what business do you want to be in a lot of people will default to like whatever their venture capitalists said they should do from their other companies they manage or whether they read on TechCrunch or whatever, or listen to on this program is I think you have to be very specific once you figure it out the approach to the product that you're going after. Matt: Are you going to be freemium? Are you going to be paid trial? Or are you going to be for lack of a better term I call it force-trial or upfront trial and there's elements of this that change, there's kind of nuances. Because that's more of a nuanced discussion is the freemium players in the language space for instance would be Duolingo. Matt: How do you get the most amount of MAUs, Monthly Active Users and get enough of them to convert? Or the Spotify example, and you're using basically cap ex as cap, you're using your R&D to drive user and usage and that's kind of Slack-like. Matt: Slack is slightly different obviously. Then the paid trial is, "Well, I have enough of something that's good that I want a lot of people to use it, but I want the conversion to be pretty good." Matt: And so for the first one with freemium, you have to say, "Okay, it's going to be so fun and compelling and I'm going to actually invest in growth that isn't there yet because I think I have scale effects —I can crowd out everyone else." Matt: The second one is I actually have a pretty good product, I need enough people to use it and then feel like I use it enough to want to use more of it. And that's what I decided to do and I'll explain why. Matt: And then on the upfront paid thing is typical like for low ACV, Annual Contract Value SaaS companies you'd see, please just call my ... Just call us and we'll walk you through it with one of my sales reps. Matt: And we'll do a guided tour through the demo or whatever and the decision why we did the second one was it was a good decision and is people knew enough about what the Rosetta Stone brand was like that we knew people would want to try it and that for people that remember what it was like, they definitely would want to use it again and we felt like the pinch was more compelling if we gave everyone a little taste of that. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Matt: We could have said, "Please pay up front." And we're the gold standard and giddy up, but we felt like we needed to earn our stripes a little bit into proving to people that we weren't just like a port of a CD product. Matt: And so that's why we decided to do that and we've played along different roads before. We've never done full freemium and I would argue at this point in the market, we would not be better served to do that because Duolingo has done a really good job of growing their monthly active users and have built some advantages there and we're not trying to play that game. Matt: I'm trying to play the game of being a really good, effective language learning product and I'm trying to set the tone in the trial experience that when you're using the product, it's not going to be like a game. Matt: It's not going to be like Clash of Clans. I guess Clash of Clans is a bad example, or the jewel or like Candy Crush I guess is what I was thinking of. Matt: Every day, I collect coins and I'm collecting coins to benefit my gameplay. It's kind of how I think about Duolingo a little bit and it's ... I think they're masterful of what they do, but I think they're designed to do something different than what I'm trying to do. Matt: And if you're serious about learning a language, and you stick to what I'm doing and you do a couple tutor sessions that we offer, you're going to get there. Matt: And so the business model and what we're trying to do in terms of posture, not market share, but revenue share really drove kind of the philosophy on the trial experience. Stephanie: Yeah, it definitely, it felt more serious especially where you could speak in the language and it would tell you I guess if the tonality was right, and if you were saying it correctly, and it would keep kind of advising you on it, once I saw it had that feature, that to me was when I was like, "Whoa, this is really serious, and I better be ready to learn this language because it's not like a game, it's not just saying random words." Stephanie: You're actually kind of conversating and having to hear yourself which I think is really important. That seems like a big first step to getting people to try it. Matt: It's an interesting observation because we are very oral first in our pedagogy. We want people to engage with the product and speaking is actually just in general a really good way to learn and then the key outcome of speaking well is not sounding stupid. Matt: And so if you're trying to learn a language, you want to sound somewhat authentic. So for Rosetta Stone, I would say, for anyone that really wants to learn a language, we'll get you there, but if you're just kind of trying to build like, it's like counting your calories kind of. Matt: If you wanted to do something like that, then I would say, pick a freemium product over ours and yeah, it's not like super intense scary, but it's like, "Yeah, you better do your lessons before you do your group tutoring session." Stephanie: Yeah. No, that's, I mean, that's great to incentivize people like you're paying for this, you might as well get the best out of it. Is there, so one thing I was thinking when I was interacting with the free trial was, "Wow, this would be really cool if there was like a virtual world where you could be walking around and talking to other students who are learning." Stephanie: Are you all thinking about any technologies like that to implement or is there anything on your radar where you're like, "We're moving in this direction or planning on trying this tech out or this digital platform out?" Matt: Yeah, we've played with VR in the past. I've been kind of like bearish every time someone says, "Let's go into VR." I'm like, "This is [crosstalk 00:39:27]." Stephanie: It's a hot word for a while. VR everything, it doesn't matter to the problem. Matt: Yeah, I know and I have a lot of friends. One really good friend of ours, she has a pretty successful, his definition of success and I think it is honestly successful VR games company, but like I have a lot of other friends that went into VR that gaming or especially verticals that just had a hell of a time just because there's not enough handsets that are available. Matt: Well, we have dabbled in in terms of immersive experience. I think what you're saying is is there a way to since we're immersive, use technology to make it even more immersive and what I really want to do is enable more AR in our experience. Matt: And we have like a little feature called seek and speak where you can ... It's like an almost a sample app where you can use your phone, we use ARKit to do a treasure hunt for things around your house like fruits, objects around your house and incorporate that in your speech practice. Matt: And I always thought that was like a really cool thing for us to expand into and if we ever get the Apple visor, some AR HoloLens or whatever, it'd be cool to start interacting with your world around you, not just with translation, but also to see if you can actually interact with folks that are kind of ambient around that experience. Matt: I personally and maybe this we're going too deep here, but I always thought it'd be cool if like I can visit another country and just decide how much of the spoken language am I going to generate myself, how much am I going to have my device do it because I'm not going to spend the time. Matt: And then how can I phone a friend? How could I have my tutor or my guide integrated experience where I'm going to sound really authentic if I do this or here's an experience that I could do here. Matt: I think the goal for language learning inevitably is different based on where you are in the world, but if you're from the United States or one of ... Maybe some European countries like the UK, it's kind of like this is a cool way to get engaged with a culture. Matt: If you're not in those countries, learning English primarily is a necessity and so I think some of these AR ideas that you just mentioned would be really good and speaking more frequently to other folks that are even not native speakers, but just trying to generate language is a very good way to teach. Matt: We have a product coming out called Rosetta Stone English this summer, literally like a couple months and it is a version of Rosetta Stone for EL kids or English Learners K through six. Matt: And this product is an oral first product and this blew me away. The stat if you're trying to teach a kid English primarily from lots of different countries is written communication. Matt: It's like 20% spoken and so our product is like 70, 80% spoken because this ... And so it's just really interesting. What could you do that's more immersive using AR or VR? Matt: I think there's, I'm with you. I think there's a lot of cool things you could do and I think you could enhance the travel experience quite a bit. I think you could enhance the young learner experience quite a bit. I think there's so many cool things you could do. Stephanie: Yeah, I completely agree and there seems like a lot of opportunities there. So what kind of disruptions do you see coming to the world of ecommerce and online learning? Matt: Yeah, it's a weird market and it's weird because like depending on what we're talking about in terms of overall commerce, it's like a $6 trillion education market, 6 trillion. Matt: Consumer is probably the largest out of that and then obviously, there's higher ed, there's middle school, high school, there's elementary, and then there's adult education and then where it's coming from, is the consumer paying, is the government paying. Matt: And so take all this aside, less than 10% is digital right now and I think there's going to be this massive realization and awakening because of the C-19 pandemic of everything that I do has to be digital. Matt: And it's not that we're replacing teachers, it's how do we integrate digital curriculum and conductivity between the teacher and the student, how do I build a data layer that personalized that experience. Matt: I think that can happen between, language learning, it can happen in lots of different curriculum like reading and writing. And not having a digital enabled kind of curriculum I think is going to be like if you don't have a solution for that, if you're an education system, if you're a college, if you're whatever, and if you don't offer these types of products in the future, you're going to go the way the dodo bird. Matt: I think higher education has a wake up call. J.Crew, I like J.Crew, they're in bankruptcy now. Hertz, I used Hertz. They're in bankruptcy now and I think there's this massive pull forward right now that's happening because the product that we've been using in education hasn't changed in like 40, 50 years. Stephanie: Yup. Matt: It's the same problem. If I time warp myself from 50 years ago into most classrooms, it would look the same. Stephanie: Yup. Yeah, I've always kind of thought that a disruption was definitely coming around higher education, but this seems to have moved everything forward by many years and especially around K through 12 where that felt like it would be much harder to change. Stephanie: For colleges, it's like, "Okay, now it's changing pretty quickly with all the boot camps coming out and company's not really always requiring degrees, at least in this area." Stephanie: But K through 12 felt hard to change and it feels like this is going to be an interesting forcing function now that like you said, a lot of kids are home and parents are figuring out how to be a part of their education more in the online learning process. Stephanie: It just seems like there's going to be a lot of opportunities that come up because of this. Matt: Yeah, I agree. And I also think that now I'm sounding like the tech utilitarian, but I would say that ed tech and I'm not from the ed tech space, but I am in it now. Matt: I would say that the ed tech providers that ... We're now entering the third wave I guess is how I think about it. The second wave which is typical of most other businesses that you and I have seen before, like ecommerce or sales ops tools, now you can talk about those and go, "Remember Omniture and it was badass?" Matt: Yes, it's now part of Adobe Cloud Matt is when you talk about these generational shifts in how we think about things, I think a lot of the ed tech players, people who are selling software to schools or directly to the parents or kids or whomever, they've definitely oversold or oversold the efficacy of some of those products. Matt: And when I talk about digital transformation, I'm not talking about the ability to do things self serve, and have the teacher look at some flat experience. Matt: Right now and this is not against teachers. Teachers, they're like little mini MacGyvers to me. I mean, they're like doing amazing things streaming together curriculum on the fly. Stephanie: Yeah, both my sister and my mom are teachers and I do not know how they're doing it and how they had to pivot so quickly to being in the classroom and my sister is actually a ESL, English as a Second Language teacher. Yeah. Matt: Oh my gosh, okay. Stephanie: Yup, because I have a twin sister and she always tells me about the difficulties that she's experiencing right now trying to bring her students online and develop curriculums online and a lot of them don't have internet access and it's just very interesting seeing how they kind of develop workarounds to make it work for their students. Matt: Yeah, my criticism of education isn't the teacher clearly, a lot of it is kind of the cost basis in the bureaucracy and when I talk about ed tech, it's like I think it comes down to and this is not a Matt Hulett Rosetta Stone specific thing is educating a group of young individuals or even old individuals, it doesn't matter the same way at the same time makes zero sense. Matt: And so building in the ability for the student to do some things themselves, having a data layer so that a teacher understands the areas in which that student is struggling, and so that the instruction becomes very personalized. Matt: It is generally what I'm talking about and it's right now, I think we have a billion and a half young kids around the world that don't have access to computers. Matt: And if they do have access to computers, they're scanning in their Math homework and sending it to a teacher. Well, who knows if I struggle for five minutes on this problem versus long division versus multiplication? The teacher doesn't know. Matt: And so I think the ed tech software that I'm more in favor of what I'm speaking about is how do you build curriculum-based, efficacy-based software, not unlike what your mom and your sister think about because they have degrees and know how to actually educate someone, they're not software [inaudible 00:49:10]. Matt: And if they're wanting to provide very explicit instruction, my guess is they're really swamped. They've got other things they need to do, they're probably paying for materials that are [crosstalk 00:49:22]. Stephanie: Yup. Matt: And so I think about all these stresses and we're asking them to provide excellent education, it's just, it's too much. And so I really feel like this third wave of technology, and I think it's going to happen is it's going to integrate this we call AI and HI, how do you integrate the best of what software can do and integrate that into the lesson planning of the teacher versus let's try to create AI for the sake of AI and disintermediate teachers which I think is ridiculous is and that's what I'm talking about. Matt: Because I see a lot of tech companies playing the game of ed tech versus education companies that are actually trying to be technology companies. Matt: I think the latter will be the software and the providers that will end up actually being the most successful and the most adopted, but obviously, I'm passionate about this because I've seen this with our Lexia software. Matt: And we have like 16 plus academic studies that show that the software works and I'm like, "How is this possible that two-thirds of kids still today by the time they're a third grade or reading below their grade level that continues through eighth grade?" Matt: Two-thirds are reading below level. How is this possible? And I'm not here to tell my own software. I'm just like, "Why is this possible?" Well, it turns out we don't train teachers to teach kids how to read. Matt: There's an approach to it, and we don't do real time assessments of kids struggling, the teachers swamped, they don't know what's going on. Matt: Anyways, I could talk about this for hours, but I do think there's this world where at some point, the $6 trillion business of educating all these kids and adults and young adults will be digitized. Matt: And I think that will be an interesting space. Ed tech is that one space where most VCs wouldn't want to touch. Stephanie: Yup. Yeah, I know. It's a hard ... I mean, health care and education. It's a hard space. So yeah, I completely agree. I know we're running into time and I want to make sure we can jump into the lightning round. Matt: Okay. Stephanie: Is there any other high level thoughts that you want to share before we jump into that? Matt: Nope. I think I hit the verbose button when I answered that question, but I didn't realize you have some familiar background on education which got me going so I [crosstalk] Stephanie: Yeah, no, yeah. Matt: I will be [crosstalk] lightning round. Stephanie: Yeah, we need a whole other podcasts where we can just talk education stuff and I can have my family be the call-ins and they can give us a little advice and ideas. Stephanie: All right, so the lightning round brought to you by our friends at Salesforce Commerce Cloud is where I ask a few questions and you have one minute or less Matt to answer. Are you ready? Matt: I'm ready. Stephanie: All right. What's up next on your reading list? Matt: Words that matter. I don't know the author. Stephanie: Cool. What's up next on your podcast list? Matt: This podcast of course. Stephanie: Hey, good. That's the right answer. Matt: And then Masters of Scale. There's a new podcast actually with one of my competitors from Duolingo. Stephanie: Oh-oh. Very cool. Yeah, that's a good one. What's up next on your Netflix queue? Matt: God, it is embarrassing. Do I have to say it? Stephanie: Yes you do. Matt: Too Hot to Handle. Stephanie: Oh my gosh. I can't believe you're watching that. I'm judging a little bit, but I've also seen a few episodes. So if you were to choose a company right now to turn around, not Rosetta Stone, some brand new company, not a brand new one, but maybe one that's in the industry right now where you're like, "I could jump in and help." What company would you choose? Matt: That's a great question. WeWork. Stephanie: Woo, that would be an interesting one to try and turn around. Matt: Yeah. Stephanie: All right, next one. What app are you using on your phone right now that's most helpful? Matt: I listen to a lot of podcast, I love Overcast. I don't know if anyone ever mentions that. I just love it because I listen to things 2x. Stephanie: Yup, yeah, I know. I agree. I like that app as well. What language are you or your family working on right now to learn? Matt: Well, it's funny. I'm kind of barely competent in Spanish. My 16-year-old is actually I would say pretty intermediate level Spanish and my 10-year-old is oddly learning Japanese. Stephanie: Oh, go. Go him. A boy, right? Yeah, that's great. All right and our last, a little bit more difficult question. What's up next for ecommerce professionals? Matt: Oh boy, ecommerce professionals. I think to me it's a lot of the same topics in ecommerce have been discussed for so many years and I think that the interesting one is how do we actually make social commerce really good. Matt: And I think I spend a lot of time just, I'm not serious with it, but playing with like, TikTok and Twitch, and I think there's some elements to the social selling piece that I think are super interesting that no one's really figured out and I buy actually a lot of products off Instagram, and it's still too much friction and it's not quite working right for me. Matt: So I think there's some ... How do you integrate ecomm and then TikTok in a way that's native to that audience? I think there's some things there. Stephanie: Oh, that's a good answer. Well, Matt, this has been yeah, such a fun interview. Where can people find out more about you and Rosetta Stone? Matt: Rosettastone.com for the company and I'm matt_hulett on Twitter and it was a pleasure to talk to you today. Stephanie: All right, thanks so much. Matt: Thank you.  

Derrick and Matt Are joined by singer songwriter Patrick Murray prior to his songwriters circle at Parkindale Hall. Patrick and the boys talked about his advocacy for mental health, inspirations for his songs, and military terms we knew nothing about. As per usual format, we get 3 great songs from Patrick and 2 studio tracks to end this one. One from Patrick and one that inspired a song of his. Enjoy!!

   Episode #1 Description   Welcome to “What the Lyric?!?” In this episode, we bring our favorite bad lyrics from Pop Music (c. 2016-2019). One song from an artist who desperately wants to fix her “Reputation” with some cringe-y spoken-word lyrics. And another from a Brit whose time would best be spent learning to “let go” of the booze.   Transcript of Episode #1   Becky: Welcome to What the Lyric?!? -- the podcast that confirms...yeah, that actually made it to radio.   Matt: Is it recording?   Becky: Oh now we’re recording. Oh fun!   Matt: Oh yay!   Becky: Hello everybody and welcome to What the Lyric?!? where we talk about how much we love awful, awful lyrics. A little bit about me: I’m Becky. I will listen to anything once, and over and over again if it’s really bad. And then there’s Matthew over here, my partner in crime…   Matt: You know, honestly, if you had to summarize my musical tastes, the best way to look at it would be to say that my go-to karaoke song is “Promiscuous” by Nelly Furtado ft. Timbaland.   Becky: So you know we have good taste. That goes without saying. How this whole podcast is going to work is...We have one song each that {...} we get to pick off the theme of the episode. Today’s theme is Pop Music from 2016 to 2019. We get to do a dramatic reading, and after the dramatic reading, we talk about why the lyrics are SO bad and why we had to call it out. All right, so starting first is...Matthew.   Matt: Okay.   Becky: Get ready.   Matt: Definitely get ready for this. So I chose a song...just to give you a little context for this: it comes from, I believe, August of 2017. So put yourself in that state of mind. It’s a year after the election; things are terrible...still.   Becky: I was probably high.   Matt: I mean, weren’t we all?   Becky: Yeah.   Matt: It is Seattle.   Becky: You’d have to be.   Matt: And so this person has decided to reshape their image and, you know, I’ll just let the lyrics speak for themselves:   “I don’t like your little games Don’t like your tilted stage The role you made me play Of the fool, no, I don’t like you I don’t like your perfect crime How you laugh when you lie You said the gun was mine Isn’t cool, no, I don’t like you (oh!)”   Matt: And that’s the first stanza.   Becky: Okay, so I’m guessing… Who’d be packing heat in 2017, you said? August?   Matt: Uh huh. Changing the image!   Becky: Could be… Oh! Changing the image? Only because of the changing image thing, that would be Taylor Swift?   Matt: Correct.   Becky: Oh the Swifties.   Matt: But do you...do you know the song?   Becky: Oh Jesus! Is it that...It’s the one where she then breaks it down and says, “Oh, Taylor Swift isn’t here right now. Because she’s dead!” Something along those lines? *Laughs*   Matt: This would be “Look What You Made Me Do” by Taylor Swift.   Becky: Oh yes. *Repeats the phrase “Look What You Made Me Do” twice.* Or however the rest goes.   Matt: Exactly. And really, my choice for all of the songs in this podcast are based on what I like to call “Cringecore.”   Becky: I love that. We are going to copyright that.   Matt: *Laughs* Really any songs that have lyrics that [make you go] “Oh!” You’ve heard of cringe comedy; that’s kind of how I view these lyrics.   Becky: I like it.   Matt: And specifically the -- what makes this so cringey is what you already mentioned, the, let’s find it…”I’m sorry the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now” set to the background music of, “Ooh, look what you made me do.” “Why?” “Oh ‘cause she’s dead! Becky: The old Taylor is, like, what? 23? 24? I mean, she’s not old.   Matt: She’s got a guitar. I mean, her…   Becky: She’s country. Country Taylor.   Matt: She’s Country-Pop.   Becky: Yeah.   Matt: Don’t you remember when it was just a love song, baby?   Becky: Oh man. Oh God. Ohh...Getting a little gag reflex going.   Matt: And don’t forget the “I knew you were trouble.”   Becky: Oh is that the one with the turtle sex noise meme?  *Laughs*   Matt: *Laughs* That is exactly what that is. *Laughs*   Becky: My favorite ever!   Matt: So really Taylor...I had a lot of options, just based on Taylor, but I have to admit, the lyrics are just...a mess. Let’s keep it going. I mean, we’ve already heard the first stanza.   Becky: Oh yeah.   Matt: But then she continues to say she doesn’t like being the fool, but “[she] got smarter, [she] got harder in the nick of time.”   Becky: How does one get harder when they’re carrying their cat around everywhere? I see a lot of photos of her with her cat. Don’t get me wrong, [I’m a] crazy cat lady, but I’m not taking Kink with me...My cat’s name is Kinky Disco. I’m not taking Kink with me to the grocery store, to the gym...Okay, I don’t go to the gym, but like, I’m not taking her out on a night on the town.   Matt: Unlike Taylor Swift, which I will also say I find it interesting that for a woman whose last name is Swift, she didn’t choose “faster” for the lyric. Like, that would have made AS much sense… “But I got smarter, I got faster in the nick of time.” Okay! I’ll still take that!   Becky: She got badder? I’ve never heard her swear! I’ve never seen her not smile.   Matt: She doesn’t swear in this song either. The real question, and we can answer this question at the end of the analysis, but what, what, WHAT did we make her do? I’m just very curious.   Becky: Maybe make her carry a cat around all the time. *Laughs*   Matt: *Laughs* We did this to ourselves.   Becky: Maybe she has to date all these DJs. Maybe we forced that on her with our expectations of her music and turtle sex noises.   Matt: And her Starbucks lovers!   Becky: Oh God, that’s right.   Matt: “But honey, I rose up from the dead. I do it all the time.” Necromancer, interesting. “I’ve got a list of names and yours is in red, underlined. I check it once, then I check it twice. Oh.”   Becky: Wait, what does that mean? What are you doing? You checked it. Yup, still there.   Matt: Based on the lyrics alone, we have realized that she has gotten harder in the nick of time and also, presumably, become an elf of the Santa variety. She’s making lists; she’s checking them twice. Don’t know why she’s using a red pen.   Becky: Well it is festive. Red -- Christmas-y. Becky: See I can’t get past the “hard” part. She’s not like, all of a sudden, turned to Nicki Minaj-hard. Or like, back in the day, Lil Kim hard.   Matt: She’s not going to be Beyonce carrying around a baseball bat, breaking windows.   Becky: No, but she did bust out the band, the marching band.   Matt: Oh we can always get into that!   Becky: I saw that! I saw that!   Matt: But if that’s the case, then she still did not get harder in the nick of time because she’s still following Beyonce.   Becky: Yeah. And pink isn’t really a “hard” color for me. Like, it’s not a color I go, “Oh! I see Notorious B.I.G. is wearing pink. He’s hard.” That isn’t why I would have classified him as hard. I don’t think I’ve ever seen B.I.G. [in pink.] Maybe he did? I don’t know; I’d have to go back and look now.   Matt: *Laughs*   Becky: I feel like I’d have to look that up. *Laughs*   Matt: And then really, the rest is chorus, which in case you haven’t realized it, is just: “Ooh, look what you made me do. Look what you made me do. Look what you made me do. Look what you just made me...OOH, Look what…” Okay, I think we’ve got the idea.   Becky: I feel like someone got lazy. I feel like that happens a lot in lyrics. And that’s lazy.   Matt: Which part?   Becky: The just repeating the same line over and over and over again.   Matt: Yeah, it’s not a good look. And worse, is the next stanza:   “I don’t like your kingdom keys” Kingdom keys.   Becky: Keys? As in house keys? Car keys?   Matt: Yeah, apparently someone’s got a kingdom.   “They once belonged to me.”   Becky: Okay.   Matt: Uhhh, questions?   “You ask me for a place to sleep Locked me out and threw a feast”   And the best part of this is at the very end of the line is, “What?!” So even Taylor looked at these lyrics, “Locked me out and threw a feast...WHAT?!” And they just included it.   Becky: Yeah, they said fuck it. It’s Taylor Swift; it’s going to be huge. That’s exactly how it happened.   Matt: And ultimately, it was.   Becky: I know!   Matt: “The world moves on, another day, another drama, drama But not for me, not for me, all I think about is karma And then the world moves on, but one thing’s for sure (sure) Maybe I got mine, but you’ll all get yours.”   Becky: All of a sudden we’ve gone from one person to all?   Matt: Oh yeah. So whoever took her kingdom keys apparently stole her keys, stole her kingdom and was like, “No bitch, you don’t live here anymore.”   Becky: Could kingdom keys *laughs* be a metaphor for virginity, here?   Matt: But then which one? Which one of the Starbucks lovers is guilty of that.   Becky: *Laughs* I wish I had kids so that I could be like, “Kids, keep your kingdom keys as long as you can. Just lock them away.”   Matt: “Your chastity belts won’t rust. Don’t worry.”   Becky: “Just keep those kingdom keys to yourself and be sure to give them to the right person.”   Matt: Abstinence-only education.   Becky: “And if you are going to give them away, just keep them protected.”   Matt: Just keep them on a carabiner. Becky: *Laughs* Those Schneider keys that had the chain you could just pull and snap back.   Matt: Exactly!   Becky: Keep them safe. You’ve got to know where they are at all times.   Matt: Taylor did not follow that advice. She is thinking about karma apparently. She’s not going to do anything about how angry she is, which again really contradicts the meaning of the song.   Becky: The “Look what you made me do”!   Matt: Exactly. She’s like, “Oh karma will take care of it. I won’t do anything about it except sulk.”   Becky: I’m going to sit and just bitch about it.   Matt: Yeah. And honestly, the rest of the song. A) It goes back to, “I got smarter, I got harder in the nick of time.” Return to that and then another amazing chorus of “Look what you made me do.” And the final, original set of lyrics is:   “I don’t trust nobody and nobody trusts me. I’ll be the actress starring in your bad dreams. I don’t trust nobody and nobody trusts me. I’ll be the actress starring in your bad dreams.”   And it just repeats until it transitions flawlessly into “Ooh, look what you made me do.”   Becky: Taylor. Taylor, I get that you’re young, probably started partying, started drinking a little bit and that’s where this came from, maybe. I don’t know.   Matt: Girl’s nearly in her 30s.   Becky: Yeah, I don’t get it.   Matt: Britney had a weird stage; I’ll allow Taylor one, but this was a…   Becky: Britney had a good one because she shaved her head.   Matt: *Laughs* She put on a show!   Becky: *Laughs* She is a showman through and through. Like, she shaved her head, tried to attack somebody with an umbrella…   Matt: I don’t remember the umbrella… Becky: Oh yeah, that was after she shaved her head. I think she went for somebody’s car window because they were taking photos of her in the car, so she went for that. Yeah. That’s a good photo to look up. It’s priceless.   Matt: That’s the next segment.   Becky: Yeah, that’s the second podcast. Photos of people going crazy.   Matt: That’s the first one!   Becky: Okay, so I think, universally, this song is incredibly awful. I think we can both agree.   Matt: Do we have a rating for this?   Becky: I would say she’s mild. Like, on a scale of 1 to 5 -- like, 5-star spicy crappy lyrics -- she’s probably right in the middle there.   Matt: I am inclined to agree.   Becky: It’s like a 3-4.   Matt: Right. It depends on your own taste buds, your ethnicity. Certainly when it comes to this song.   Becky: Oh god, yeah.   Matt: Honestly, on a scale of 1 to 5 yikes, I’m inclined to give it a 3. What nudges it toward 4 is the spoken lyrics...   Becky: Yeah.   Matt: “The old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now.” “Why?” “‘Cause she’s dead.” And then I just hear the teenager in me slam the door and yell, “You’re not my real mom and you never will be!”   Becky: *Laughs* I will say, also, [those lyrics are] my favorite part of the song.   Matt: It’s only the original part of the song!   Becky: It really is! It really is. That’s like her acting out. And you’re like, “Oh. Ohh. Taylor got edge.”   Matt: To be honest, what would have kept it at a 3, if they would have just deleted the spoken word portion. This would have been a goth “Call Me Maybe.”   Becky: Yeah. Ooh, yes! I like that. I agree with you on that one. So we’re going a solid 3 to 4 yikes on the awful lyrics scale.   Matt: I am inclined to agree. It’s not the worst. It’s certainly not the best lyrics.   Becky: It’s definitely not. *Noise of a truck* Sorry for the trucks in the background, people! This is what happens when you record in an old building. Alright, so mine...Honestly, I don’t know when it came out. This song is the reason this podcast is existing because my coworker heard me bashing these lyrics and said, “Oh my god, please record this.” So Ellen, here you go!   Oh God, how do I do this? Okay:   “I met you in the dark, you lit me up You made me feel as though I was enough We danced the night away, we drank too much I held your hair back when You were throwing up   Then you smiled over your shoulder For a minute, I was stone-cold sober I pulled you closer to my chest And you asked me to stay over I said, I already told ya I think that you should get some rest”   Becky: And then it goes into the chorus. Go ahead, see if you can guess this one. Yeah.   Matt: I’m going to need some more lyrics.   Becky: I’m going to go into the chorus right now:   “I knew I loved you then But you'd never know 'Cause I played it cool when I was scared of letting go I know I needed you But I never showed But I wanna…”   Becky: I can’t even get to this part without laughing.   “But I wanna stay with you until we're grey and old Just say you won't let go Just say you won't let go”   Becky: ...Which is the name of the song.   Matt: Ohhhh my God.   Becky: That is James Arthur’s “Say You Won’t Let Go.” Now James Arthur, if I remember correctly won, like, X Factor, which is a British TV show like…   Matt: America’s Got Talent?   Becky: Yeah! I think it’s something similar.   Matt: Are there buttons?   Becky: There are people who are guest judges or whatnot. I think it might just be music, so it’d be like an American Idol situation. And [this song] is one of the more popular wedding songs, which I find offensive.   Matt: Oh no.   Becky: Yes! Yes, this is played at weddings. People pick this as their wedding song. So I’m going to go ahead and we’re just going to start again. So he starts with:   “I met you in the dark, you lit me up You made me feel as though I was enough”   Sweet enough sentiment. Right?   Matt: I will say it sounds like they’re both getting high at a party, which I’m just like, “Oh okay.”   Becky: They’re young. They can do that. I mean, I don’t remember the last time we’d dance the night away. Here’s where I start to have some issues with this being at all a good song and even a wedding song, where he says:   “I held your hair back when You were throwing up”   Now, there’s so many things here for me. You just met her and now you’re holding her hair back. While she’s puking.   Matt: Wow.   Becky: Do you want to be with a girl who can’t handle her booze is my number one question. *Laughs* Like, is that a thing?   Matt: I mean, I have to hand it to him. I can definitely see a couple of things wrong with the dating culture. Number one -- women who look at this song and think, “You know what? I’m just looking for a man who’s going to hold my hair back 30 minutes after I’ve met him.”   Becky: She’s gotten to that point. It’s like in Singles where she’s like, I was looking for all these things, and now I’m just looking for a man who says “God bless you” instead of “Gesundheit” when they sneeze. That’s where she’s at.   Matt: I mean, it’s a pretty low threshold.   Becky: Yeah.   Matt: But I also think it’s very much a critique on straight men who are like -- there’s no such thing as a red flag to me. She’s vomiting in a toilet? I bet I could get laid tonight!   Becky: She is so beyond her means; if anything, we’re going in for the kill. Okay, so now it says:   “You smiled over your shoulder”   Becky: All I can picture at this point is puke-face, which is puke stuck in the teeth, her make-up is now down around her cheeks, she’s got raccoon-face. She is that girl at the end of the night who is missing a shoe. And is holding the other one in somebody else’s shoe in her hand. Her purse is open; shit spilling out all over the place. That’s the girl I’m picturing, and you’re like…”Yeah.”   Matt: Say you won’t let go!   Becky: *Laughs* This is the girl for me. Forever. No. No, I can’t...And a wedding song! I’m going to keep saying this. This is a wedding song. People pick this for their freaking wedding.   Matt: See, what I love about that is that it explicitly gives the couple permission to drink too much, to dance the night away. And THEN, as she’s puking, he’s going to be like, “It’s like the first night we met!” *Laughs*   Becky: Open bar at this wedding! Very clearly. We’re not going to have food, just booze because we’re going to relive our first night. I can’t. And then he says:   “For a minute, I was stone-cold sober”   Becky: Now, when you sobered up for that second, did you go, “What the fuck am I doing?” Because that’s [when] I would have gone, “What am I doing? Why? This girl is puking and I’m holding her hair back and that’s the girl I think…”   But then he went, “Nope! We’re good. I don’t know what that was about. I’m pushing that to the back. Pushing it to the back. That is not a red flag in any way.” I don’t get it. And clearly, puke-face is a turn-on for this guy because then he pulls her close.   Matt: He’s got a thing.   Becky: *Gagging noises* It’s giving me the gag reflex thinking about it. Then he says:   “And you asked me to stay over I said, I already told ya”   Classy. He’s good.   Matt: Wow.   Becky: Yeah:   “I said, I already told ya I think that you should get some rest”   Becky: Now I’m not sure if he’s just being nice because she just lost the contents of her entire stomach in front of him and he doesn’t want to embarrass her any more or he’s like, “I’m going to go in for the kill even though I said ‘Let’s just get some rest.’”   Matt: He’s closing the deal. Honestly, if he cared, he’d be like, “We’re going to get you some water and medical attention.”   Becky: This is a “Me Too” movement issue.   Matt: Yeah, a #MeToo moment.   Becky: And then he goes on: “I knew I loved you then.” Got to be a fetish. Like, puke-face fetish. I don’t know. Not anything I go for. “But you’d never know.” Yeah because she’s black-out drunk. Who remembers during black-out drunk-ness? And then he says: 'Cause I played it cool when I was scared of letting go.” Yeah because she could die of alcohol poisoning. *Laughs* There could possibly be a death that your fingerprints are on the body now.   Matt: He’s scared of letting go and yet, at no point does he think, “You know, there are medical professionals who are paid to take care of this.” Becky: Yeah, maybe urgent care. That’s all I’m saying.   Matt: She deserves better at this point.   Becky: Yeah, and then he goes into, “I know I needed you.” More like she needed you rather than the other way around?   Matt: Yeah, she needed you in the same sense that she needed to be hydrated.   Becky: Yeah, maybe needed to be told, “Maybe not that last drink.”   Matt: Exactly. And this is going to be a bad decision.   Becky: Stop spinning while you’re dancing. Doing that little spinny-dance. That hippie dance thing. I don’t know. I don’t dance. I have no idea what the kids do these days. So then we go into the he wants to stay with her when she’s gray and old.   When you’re gray and old and you’re still puking into a toilet, holding her hair back. That’s old.   Matt: My brain went the opposite direction. Of course he’s excited for her to get gray and old because then all sorts of bodily functions go haywire. He definitely has a kink for this.   Becky: He’s waiting for the diaper stage.   Matt: Yep. 100%.   Becky: So then we get to the next bit:   “I'll wake you up with some breakfast in bed I'll bring you coffee with a kiss on your head”   This is an intervention. She’s daydrinking; she’s hungover. That’s what this has to be.   Matt: Too many damn mimosas.   Becky: “And I'll take the kids to school.” ...Because Mom’s had too much Mom-juice? What is happening here? Now we’ve established there’s a cycle. There’s a problem. “Wave them goodbye.” Because Mommy’s going to rehab and you’re not going to see her for a little while is what I’m getting. I could be wrong. “And I'll thank my lucky stars for that night.” The puke night? You’re thanking your stars because now you are having to take over care -- ALL the care of your kids -- because your wife can’t get out of bed because she’s been day-drinking and going on the Mom-juice.   Matt: Alright, two things. Well, actually, two kinks really come out of this. Number one, he definitely has a thing for girls who are messes. Like, full-on messes. Number two, the dude was playing long-game. If I can get with an alcoholic woman, enable it…   Becky: There will be diapers sooner [rather] than later!   Matt: Exactly. *Laughs* And I cannot wait to get custody of the kids who don’t exist yet. So...interesting, James Arthur.   Becky: Maybe that’s all he wanted was kids. And he just needed some drunk, crazy lady that would believe anything he said to her just to get those kids.   Matt: I hate to say it, but I know a fair number of straight women who, if a dude held their hair back, they’d be like, “Aw, he’s got a caring, tender soul.”   Becky: Yeah, I probably would have said that in my twenties. I’m also 45 now, so I’m like, “There’s something wrong with this guy.”   Matt: That’s because it’s amazing when you get out of your twenties...the clarity through which you can see the world!   Becky: Oh my God, yeah. Okay, so then we go back into the whole, “When you looked over your shoulder. For a minute, I forget that I'm older.” And here’s where I become an asshole for picking this song because the next line is, “Because you’ve been too busy hiding her alcoholism from the family.” The song’s about alcoholism! People are playing this for weddings! Again, top wedding song -- alcoholism is mentioned in the lyrics.   Matt: Wait, repeat that exact lyric.   Becky: “Because you’ve been too busy hiding her alcoholism from the family.”   Matt: Wait, who is? He is?   Becky: He is. His whole little stanza is:   “When you looked over your shoulder For a minute, I forgot that I'm older Too busy hiding her alcoholism from the family.”   Matt: This took a turn…   Becky: I know! I’ve never gotten past the first stanza where he’s holding her hair and she’s puking. No idea that they would all of a sudden mention alcoholism. THEY MENTION ALCOHOLISM. How is this a wedding song? You people have got to listen past the first stanza. And then it goes into, “I wanna dance with you right now.” I’m assuming now because shouldn’t she be in rehab? And then, “Oh, and you look as beautiful as ever. And I swear that everyday'll get better.” Everyday’ll. That’s everyday, apostrophe, L, L. Get better. “You make me feel this way somehow.” I don’t know. What would that way be? Afraid of drinking?   “I'm so in love with you And I hope you know Darling your love is more than worth its weight in gold.”   Now we’ve just completely gone past the alcoholism. That was just a little blip. Just a little mention.   Matt: Just going to drop that in as a reminder.   Becky: Yeah. Then this one gets me, “I wanna live with you/Even when we're ghosts.” Really?   Matt: That’s eternity.   Becky: That’s really...no.   Matt: I have yet to meet a single person in my living life who I would want to spend an actual eternity with.   Becky: I don’t want to spend that much time with my cat.   Matt: Ah! But see, that is the precise lyric that made that a wedding song.   Becky: Yeah. OR “I'm gonna love you till/My lungs give out.” Till my lungs give out?   Matt: But then he just literally contradicts what he’s just saying. He’s like, “I’m going to…” What?   Becky: Be with you even when we’re ghosts. But now it’s just till my lungs give out. He backed it up a bit. He was like, “Ooh…”   Matt: There was a rug that he pulled out from underneath her, which is that he doesn’t believe in ghosts.   Becky: OR he’s thinking he’s got a better shot in the afterlife of hooking up with, like, Anna Nicole Smith or something.   Matt: I’m guessing. But no one says what Anna Nicole Smith looks like after she died. What form of Anna Nicole? Becky: He’s thinking ahead. FAR ahead since he cut it back down to just till my lungs give out. “I promise till death we part like in our vows”?   Matt: Yikes. That’s just poor sentence construction.   Becky: Well, again, this song is about alcoholism and it’s a top 10 wedding song.   Matt: That’s a winner.   Becky: I think it’s a top 10 wedding song mainly because he’s British and the Brits do love their booze. *Laughs* So I’m sure it hits home with a lot of Brits.   Matt: I’m going to give you the win on this one. It was never a competition. I’m giving you the win. That is a clusterfuck of a song.   Becky: That TOP hit...I don’t even know what it topped at, but it’s up there. Not only that...WEDDING SONG.   Matt: First of all, he didn’t just have a thing for ladies who were messes, he then also proceeds to move forward with it to be like, “You know what I really love about you? How you hide your debilitating substance use from your family. That’s a major turn-on for me.”   Becky: See? He gave us a little hint in the beginning, and we’re all like, “This guy’s just an idiot. They’re just young.” And then it’s, “Oh shit. They’re alcoholics.”   Matt: She’s got a problem! And then it should have just been, “I’ll love you until we’re ghosts, which will be soon because your liver won’t last much longer.”   Becky: Because cirrhosis is bad. I say this is right up there. I say this is a 4.5 on the yikes scale for me.   Matt: I was precisely thinking somewhere between 4 to 4.5, but I will give it credit. There’s no way it’s going to be a 5, only because there was an emotional journey there.   Becky: There was. He took you on a little bit of a ride, albeit a crazy rollercoaster of alcoholism clusterfucks.   Matt: I don’t think I would have ever..No, no no. AMENDMENT: I would have never guessed there was an actual major pop song that had the word alcoholism in it.   Becky: Now I feel like I’ve got to look it up, but he was up there. I can’t remember where it was, but it played a lot, and I was like, did anyone actually listen to these lyrics before it went anywhere outside of the recording studio?   Matt: I think they saw it and thought to themselves, “Oh my God -- the UK -- this is going to be relatable.”   Becky: *Laughs* These people drink like fish and they are going to love this song. Alright, let’s see if I can find it...where did this damn song hit. I can’t believe this song about alcoholism made the charts. Let’s see, Brit Awards...Video of the Year and Single of the Year in 2017. Also, Oh thank God, it wasn’t for Teen Choice Awards. Thank goodness!  He also won American New Artist of the Year that year!   Matt: No. This is #MeToo moment. First of all it was a #MeToo moment and then, following that, was alcoholism and neglect?   Becky: Peaked at number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100. In May 2018, it was reported that The Script, also another classic band, had launched legal proceedings against him due to alleged copyright infringement in regards to this song.   Matt & Becky: OHH!   Becky: It just got ugly.   Matt: Although now I’m intrigued at the title because...does the title, “Say You Won’t Let Go” refer to…   Becky: The booze?   Matt: ...a Jameson bottle? Or James Arthur?   Becky: I’d go with the bottle of booze. *Laughs*   Matt: I think she’s certainly loving that!   Becky: THAT is good when you’re a ghost.   Matt: You know what pairs best with cirrhosis? Jameson. Informal plug.   Becky: Jameson if you would like to sponsor us…   Matt: Please let us know!   Becky: Please!   Matt: Please get us out of this studio.   Becky: This studio is hot and there’s guns a-blazin’ probably somewhere in Seattle right now. Okay everybody, thanks so much for listening. Please join us next time when we take a peak at the riveting lyrics of songs from the ‘90s. That’s right. I’m Becky.   Matt: I’m Matt.   Becky: And this was…   Becky & Matt: WHAT THE LYRIC?!?

Can Lizzie and the gang overcome language barriers to win money? Will Lanny ever find Matt? Are people with Italian heritage good at wiping counters? All this and more! Be sure to rate and review us, then join us on social media @4oclockpod!

Katrina: We are live. Matt: So you just wanna like rest that on you? Katrina: Sure. Katrina: Is this lighting gonna be good with the beach behind it for your videos? Matt: It's gonna be a bit hard to get it all in. Katrina: Hello. Matt: [inaudible 00:00:19] Katrina: I look amazing on my own live stream, but that's a one-time thing. We need it to look amazing on the actual videos. Katrina: Hello, people. People of the internet. Hello and welcome. I'm gonna turn the camera around so Matt can say hi to you. Katrina: Matt's gonna film, filming myself. I'll explain it in a moment. Katrina: So we're gonna do, hello Michelle. Hello, Amber. See, I find that the only way I can sit properly on this throne is to sit up like this, in some sort of a lotus ninja position. But I don't want that- Matt: It's gonna be like just wear your boobs. Katrina: Okay, perfect. Katrina: Hello, floating devil Katrina. Have you seen this? Come and check this out on my live stream. Centre more Katrina, so Matt can see. He's not seeing it yet. Look at those little floaty Katrinas. Katrina: And look that says 1%. Send some press play ones, guys, be helpful. Send some press play ones. Where are the press play ones. It's so cool. There's some Katrinas. They look like little possessed demons. And that says press play. Matt: That's awesome. Katrina: How cool is it? Katrina: Oh, and if you go watch this replay on my page, it has a banner down the bottom that says- Matt: Oh, [inaudible 00:01:36] idea. Katrina: Which is so next level here. High tech as fuck. I feel like my own live stream here is off-center. Who wants to see behind the scenes of creating my new funnel? Who? Who? Well, presumably all of you, or you wouldn't have jumped on. Hi, welcome. I'm gonna explain what we're doing. Hang on, I've gotta tell my team I'm live. I am live. Please share. Okay, don't forget. I'll just tell you right now. Do it right away. I'm messaging Kat [inaudible 00:02:08]. Katrina: I'm about to film, hang on, do you think I need my press play cushion in the frame there? Matt: I wouldn't see it in this but if you want [inaudible 00:02:17]. Katrina: Okay, yes. Pass it over. Throw it over. Katrina: It's happening here. Katrina: You can never have too many sparkles in a live stream. That's a proven fact. It's in the Wikipedia. Katrina: Oh, that's better. All right. Welcome to the show. Do you know what? Remind me always if we're filming and I have a hairband on my wrist, 'cause I'm always shitty about it afterwards. Lucky I just noticed. I'm shitty about it when I see the footage. Katrina: So Matt's here doing my professional videography. He's gonna create a new episode of what's it even called? Katrina Ruth Unchained or is it still called Kat Unchained? Matt: Kat Unchained. Katrina: Kat Unchained, if you don't know is one of my, it's my publicly created and edited and put together show which Matt films, edits, creates, Katrina: And it shows lots of cool insights behind the scenes of what I'm doing and what my team's doing and how I bring things to life. You should go check out previous episodes of that. You would get a real cool insight into the journey that is me. Even the journey of the evolution of Kat Loterzo into Katrina Ruth. Katrina: And today we're gonna create a new episode of that, 'cause why would you not? We haven't done it for ages, 'cause people are just travelling merrily around the world too much. Katrina: But we're also gonna film three videos, I think it's three videos. Let me find the three specific short videos that will only be like two to three minutes each and we're gonna use these videos, me and my team are gonna use these videos in my new funnel marketing. So i thought that rather than selfishly film only by myself and then you had to wait till you saw it on a Facebook ad and then you didn't understand what I'm even doing, why would I not just share with you the behind the scenes? If you love that idea and you think I'm amazing, send me extra love, hot emojis and extra press play ones. No, 1% ones, 'cause they're pink and they match the throne. Katrina: How's your footage? Am I all set up properly? Matt: Yeah, it's good here. Katrina: Before we start, I wanna remind you, thank you [Min 00:04:18], for dropping that comment right there. Before we start, I would love to remind you that there are, or tell you, because you might not need reminding, 'cause maybe you don't realise this but there's only three places left for reach out empire. Reach out empire has just begun a couple of days ago. It is my most transformational one on one intensive six weeks one on one, you and me, me and you, us together. I will kick your ass with love and compassion every single day and sometimes a little bit harder than that. You're gonna get super accountability. Super alignment. Super ass kickery and all the crazy results [inaudible 00:04:52]. You should check out just all the testimonies we'll be posting everyday. They are bad ass as fucked. I real, as fucked? I realised I've been, this is a confession. Katfession, you should film this, Matt, we can use this for some kind of little page. Who wants a Katfession? Katrina: Soon, I'll tell you what we're doing with the funnel. Here's my Katfession. Hashtag Katfession. I actually have two. But the first one is, I'm talking to this camera now, just so you know. The first one is I haven't been, pretty much in the entire history of my business or maybe back to the fitness business, I don't show client results. Like, I'll show them like once a year, or I'll sort of mumble mumble them under my breath. Katrina: I consistently get insane client results, like people making crazy amounts of money. Fast. But better still, alignment, random weight loss, which just happens from alignment anyway, whole life up levelled, location free stuff, quitting jobs, getting into [inaudible 00:05:42] relationships, whatever it is. And my clients are telling me this stuff every day. And pretty much for years, pretty much since I was showing bikini body results, like years ago. I just haven't shown that shit. And I think, I wonder if anyone else has done this? I think that I had some kind of reverse weird ego thing going on with it, where I was kinda like, "I don't want people to think I'm just kind of flaunting myself on the internet". Katrina: And so just kind of note it down and obviously, celebrate with the client, but then never tell people. And so I kicked my own ass around it. You've gotta kick your own ass from time to time. You can't wait for somebody else to do it. And I just got over myself and started fucking posting them everyday just since like last Sunday, but they're insane, the results that I've been posting and it's been so inspiring for me, 'cause it reminds me how bad ass my clients are. But I gotta admit, I've always been like, "What in the fuck? Do I not like making money?" I mean, clearly I make a lot of money anyway, actually, which is another thing just relevant to the fact that you make money from your energy, not from whether you post testimonials. But it does make a difference. So there you are. Katrina: So if you wanna see all those, you probably been seeing them all week on Facebook anyhow. Reach out empire. Three places left. This will sell out. My estimation is, my prediction is that it will sell out by lunch time tomorrow my time. So let's say, maybe 24 hours from now. So you wanna message me, message me, message me on my Katrina Ruth personal page right away if you'd like the full details and overview of that. I don't know why this is my new thing. I think it works for me. And I'll get you the details and if it's for you, we will get your ass in, it is one on one. You get unlimited one on one access to me, by the way. And also this is the final chance to work with me at the intensive six-week rapid result level for the significantly lower investment than the only other way that you can work with me one on one, which after this will be my $72,000 Inner Circle. And at some point, of course it's gonna be on reach out empire again, but it's gonna be way later on in the year. Katrina: All right. I had another confession, but I'm gonna save it. You can just stew about it and wonder what it is. It's super embarrassing for me. So we're gonna film three videos. Three videos. Here they are. What we're doing. I hate being under command you guys. I fucking hate it. So I know I said that I was gonna live stream this so that you can see behind the scenes of how we're creating my new funnel and I'll talk you through what I'm doing, because I think that's a nice thing for me to do and it's helpful of me. So I give myself credit for being a nice person and a helpful person, but if you wanna know the real initial reason that I decided to do that, it's because I fucking hate making things under command and then the way that I would feel happier about it is doing my own content at the same time. Even though, technically, this is my own content, 'cause it is for me. Katrina: And [Frank Cohn 00:08:33], who's my private mentor, and is the most hilarious man on the internet and also fucking amazing marketer and the only person I'll listen to on internet marketing has asked me to do this and so indeed, I will. Katrina: So what we're doing is were creating, I believe, a five or it could be five to seven small videos that are gonna be roughly two to three minutes in length each, I believe. Let me check the minute time over here of what they want. Katrina: No, okay. So, Matt, what's your take on this? Hang on, let's put Matt on the camera. People who are talking should be seen. So [Brahman 00:09:05] says it could be up to six minutes, but it can't be six minutes just of Katrina talking, can that mesh together with other interesting random stuff, mash up with testimonials and client footage or be [inaudible 00:09:21] stuff? What do you think about that? Matt: What's this for? Oh, for this. Katrina: The videos. Matt: Yeah, we can do that, yeah. Katrina: We can do that. You heard it. Katrina: All right. Of course we can. Like he's gonna be like, "No, we can't do that. I refuse. I won't do it." Katrina: Okay. So basically, I don't know why I'm worrying about how long I should talk for, 'cause I think we all know that I'm gonna talk for exactly as long as I desire to talk for and when I'm done, I'll be done and not before, but really it shouldn't be longer than five or six minutes, 'cause these videos are for Facebook ads and as much as I do think people love to watch my shit, they're not gonna watch Facebook ad videos for no longer than six minutes and they're probably not even gonna watch six minutes either. Katrina: Brahman says, "I would be okay with the video done professionally for six minutes long, but it can't just be six minutes of Katrina in front of the camera." I think everybody fucking wants six minutes of Katrina in front of the camera. I feel like that's offensive, but maybe not new people who don't know me yet. We would need breakaway shots of purpose-built footage samples from live streams and still images from the Kat archives. While I wouldn't wanna tell you what to say in each video, and indeed she should not, because good luck with that, attached is a high-level storyboard of what could be included in the videos. Katrina: Look how fucking strategic I am. I don't think I've ever done so much planning in my entire adult life. I'm gonna go off script now and do whatever the fuck I want. But basically, what we're gonna do is we're gonna have five, there'll be no business to [inaudible 00:10:44], John. I think you've manifested that I always reply quickly to your comments, 'cause I saw you said that the other day, now I find myself responsively doing it. You've somehow trained me on it. Katrina: I don't know if I care for that sort of neurological conditioning. So what was I saying? Five to seven videos. Here's how it works. You'll get the first video in your newsfeed. The first video is gonna be that one we made in Santa Monica, you know the one Chris produced from, the official one that shows the whole story and bad assery of me. That's a good video if you've not seen it. It's super high-level. Katrina: And then if they watch 25%, this is how the campaign works. If they watch 25% of video number one, numero uno, then they get elevated like in a, what is it, video game. They go to the next level. They get to watch the next video, which is gonna be this one. Katrina talking about journaling. See, even though I love journaling, and I'm totally happy to make a video about journaling, when I read this, my inner mind just goes, "Katrina talking about journaling." Okay, fine. I'll talk about journaling. Katrina: Why, what, when, where, how? We need the video to answer a question. Possible questions could be can journaling change your business overnight? No. But maybe. Okay, fine. Yes. Is this one thing the reason you're constantly stuck in your business? We gotta think of a question. Tell me a good question. Katrina: Don't worry, we'll get it. And then we want breakaway video shots. Video shots of Katrina journaling, still shots of Katrina journaling. Shouldn't be a problem. Okay, so we're doing that. Then we're doing a fitness video. What? No, we're just talking about self-care and fitness. And then we're doing messaging, about messaging and sharing and unleashing what's inside of you with the internet. I'm sure I have many things to say about that. And we're gonna do a sales one, as well. Katrina: Those are the four videos we're gonna film now. I may or may not livestream the whole thing. We're gonna let it be freaking real, right? So it's not supposed to look like no mistakes or something like that. There's gonna be outfit changes for this livestream, just so you know. Because that way, every time they get a new video on their feed, they're gonna see, I chose the scenery myself. They're gonna see the same background, but I'll have a different top on, so it'll look a little bit different in the feed. Katrina: So then each time they watch 25% of a video, they go to the next video, 25% or more and that's what they'll then see in their feed. And so the four videos that I just talked through, they cover what you might know, 'cause I've talked about this a lot on my four daily non-negotiables, right? So some form of inner work, like journaling. Some form of self-care like fitness. Some form of messaging and sharing your work when you're out with the world, and some form of sales activity. I say over and over again, these are the four things that you wanna do each day to be super fucking successful as an entrepreneur creator. Katrina: So the purpose of this funnel, this Facebook ad campaign, is to obviously indoctrinate people into me, into my message, into what I'm here to teach, get to know me, have some fun. We'll probably mash through some client testimonial stuff, as well, of course. And then at the end, or somewhere throughout, what it's gonna be promoting, what the funnel is promoting is my inner circle. Katrina: So as I just mentioned earlier, after these final three places for reach out empire are sold out, then I'm focusing only on the inner circle for some time now and really investing my time and attention into my existing private clients who are in reach out empire, as well as into the inner circle and growth of the inner circle. Katrina: And so, that's what I'm doing this campaign for, as well as obviously, general indoctrination into the Katrina Ruth community. And then there'll be other things that get marketed into the funnel, of course, beyond that. Katrina: So that gives you the whole story, now you're up to speed. Are you good with how it all looks? Matt: Yeah. Any chance we can move the front of it a little bit that way? Katrina: Yes. Yeah, that's good. All right. Let me have some water before we begin. All right, so- Matt: Do you wanna have a look before we shoot the whole thing? Katrina: Yes. Okay, we'll go and look how I look on the camera, because- Matt: Can you sit down for a sec? Katrina: Oh. Katrina: Can you get the whole Grateful Dead top in or not? Matt: I can. Katrina: Because one thing that drives me insane is that when I'm doing my own livestreams I can control my appearance, but when somebody else is filming, I have no fucking idea how I look and I feel very out of control. Katrina: All right. So anyway, what I'm gonna film now. I look amazing. All right, show the people. Good job. All right. We're set. We are safe to continue. Katrina: Anyway, so now basically, I'm just gonna talk to you about journaling, so really you can ignore the fact that I'm filming this behind the scenes and I'm just gonna drop some bad ass value and content on your ass and that way you don't even have to watch all the Facebook ads, you can save yourself the time. Matt: So you just look in this camera? Katrina: I can't talk to you guys, though. Did I put that back in the right spot? Matt: Yeah, that's fine. Katrina: I'm not gonna look at you. I'm gonna look at this camera. All right? Matt: When you're ready. Katrina: Do you know what? I'm having a moment of nervousness. I feel like what I need to do first is just watch a minute of Frank Kern's videos, remind myself of how he intros himself. That's right, people, sometimes I'm not sure of myself and I go into a mild panic. Label Frank Kern. We're all gonna watch a minute of a Frank Kern video now. He has 44,000 views on this video. I adore Frank. He's the president of the internet, if you aren't aware. Did you know that? Matt: Nope. Katrina: Just like I'm the queen of the internet. He has Tony Robbins on his video. I don't have that. Video footage: My name's Frank Kern. About ten years ago [crosstalk 00:16:33]- Katrina: What's happening? He seems to be talking fast. Video footage: ... great joy and honour to work with Tony. He's just a real fun guy and the same person that you see on stage and on screen is the same person you'll sit across the table from. Katrina: All right. I've got it now. I just needed some Frank Kern energy in my soul before I began. I got it now. Thank you, Olga. Katrina: Isn't it funny? 'Cause I have no problem live streaming for like 59 hours straight and it would be such gold content and why couldn't my team just not fucking chop the content out of a live stream and use that for the ads, that's what I get shitty about. As soon as I've got like a topic, Matt notices this more than anyone, 'cause he's the one that has to put up with it, then I'm like I don't feel as natural and I get it done eventually, though. Katrina: And then I'm proud of myself, because I'm continually just exploding past those comfort zones, people. All right, let's talk about channelling now. Do I need to turn like that way? Matt: You can if you want. Yeah. That's probably better. Katrina: So should we turn the whole throne a little bit? 'Cause in my- Matt: Yeah. Katrina: ... off centre now? If you know what I mean? Matt: Yeah. Katrina: Okay. Just the normal everyday sermon, should we turn the whole throne a little bit. All right. So now I'm not gonna look at you guys, but you're gonna get some gold about journaling. [inaudible 00:17:54] for five minutes, okay. Katrina: I'd make a terrible camera woman on a news show. I feel so nervous. Katrina: Hey, it's Katrina Ruth here from the Katrina Ruth show and today I wanna talk to you about the most powerful practise, which has transformed my business and my life and allowed me to bring in multi millions of dollars per year, just by putting my purpose book out into the world, connecting with clients who I consider to be my soulmate clients and doing the work that I know I was born to do in the world. Katrina: What I'm talking about is journaling. Now if you've never heard of journaling, or maybe you've not really dived into this as a practise for yourself, or you don't know much about it, then I know that probably the response you might be having right now is like, "Journaling? How can journaling really change your business or allow you to create anything that you want into your life?" Katrina: And that's exactly what I'm here to tell you. I feel so passionately about this that when I hear that people don't journal, or they don't journal consistently, I kinda feel like as if they would've told me that they don't drink water. I feel like alert. We need to tell somebody. This is the problem. This is like a national disaster. How are you living like this? I mean, I understand that you're somehow surviving and getting by, but do you realise how powerful this practise is to allow you to call in and to create everything in your life? Katrina: Now I've been journaling since I was about six or seven years old. I don't think I was using journaling for manifestation at that point in time. I think I was logically documenting my day, like dear diary, and then when I got a little bit older, I'll admit I used to hide in the bushes in the front yard of my parents home and I would kind of take notes like Harriet the Spy. I would take notes. Some people as they were walking by and then I would make up stories about them. Katrina: But by the time I got to about 18 or 19 years of age, I naturally or maybe I read it in some personal development books, probably heard about it from somewhere, but a lot of it just kinda naturally happened. I love to write, I love to be inside of my own head, I'm a natural introvert and I am a writer first and foremost, and so I started to just naturally journal about a lot of my hopes and dreams and I guess, use it as a way to process my thoughts, but also write down goals and ideas, do brainstorming, make little plans and slowly but surely, over time, I noticed that I had this pretty consistent habit of writing down the things that I wanted in my life, so kind of like, yeah, my dreams and my visions and the things that I wanted to bring to life. Katrina: Probably when I was around 21 or 22 years of age, I started to learn about and understand about manifestation and I know I watched the movie the Secret when it came out, which was roughly around that age for me, as a lot of people did and I was sort of fascinated by this idea that you could just focus on what you want and then create it into your life. Katrina: And pretty much like I do with everything to do with personal development and creating your own reality, I straight away believed, even though I didn't understand how. Katrina: Now if you have that same sort of belief inside of you, even if you don't understand how, then I know that you have so much available for you, that you could literally step into within the next several months, the next several weeks, in fact even now, using the power of instant manifestation. Katrina: And this is exactly how I live now and how my tens of thousands of followers and clients around the world and smaller group of private clients, obviously, but how my extended community and clients around the world operate. We call in our reality. We write into reality the things that we want. Katrina: For me, I've now been journaling in that way since, well, at least when I was 21, 22, journaling my affirmations and dreams and goals down, I'm 38 years old now, and so for well over a decade, for a decade and a half plus, I've been actively writing down what I wanna create and I've been learning different things about journaling and the power of our words along the way. Katrina: What I wanna impart to you is so powerful and so important that I feel like it's almost impossible to get it through to you, but I guess to just kind of make my point here, every single thing that I've written down, that I then held a belief with some faith around has come to life. Katrina: When I look around me, like literally right now when I look around me, I'm in my own studio right now in my home. I've got full wall-to-ceiling ocean views on seven balconies in this home. This is a double story sub penthouse apartment. I've got my own studio. I make millions of dollars a year just by showing up and being me and writing and speaking to the camera like this. Katrina: I work only with bad ass soulmate clients who really align with my message and who I feel like are the same sort of person with me. And they kick massive ass, they take names, they create incredible businesses all around the world doing what they love and on top of that, I've achieved my fitness goals. I continue to achieve and maintain my fitness goals, lifestyle goals, love and romance, fun and adventure, friendships, you name it. And every single one of those things started with me writing down my dreams in a journal. Katrina: So here's what I want you to do. I want you to think about what is it that you really want. Firstly, are you admitting to yourself what you really want? I think one of the reasons that journaling is so powerful is it's kind of like a mirror in front of you, right? It's holding up that mirror in front of you. And you can't run from that. You gotta look there, look it in the eye and look your own inner self or your highest self in the eye and confess what's in there. I think that most people out there are continually running and hiding from their dreams and refusing to pay attention to the message that's coming through them. Katrina: So journaling is a powerful tool to simply acknowledge and let what's inside of you come up and put it into words. Words are powerful. Words create reality. Yes, you can do that without writing them down, however the written word is incredibly, incredibly fucking powerful. Katrina: And so when you write that down, you lay claim to it. You take a stand. You create some accountability around it and you already in fact, start to bring it to life just from writing it down. In fact, there's many different tips and tricks around journaling for how to word things in a particular way that brings them to life faster and that's something I can certainly teach you more on and talk about as we continue our journey of discussion together. Katrina: But for now, I want you to think about what is it that's inside of you that you're hiding that you're not maybe admitting to yourself that you're running from. Can you put that into writing? And then from there, it's a matter of stepping into permission around it, right? So acknowledging first, this is what I want, this is what I desire, this is what I feel is available to me inside of me. Katrina: And then through that process of writing it down, taking the time internally to go, you know what? I'm going to give myself permission. No, I don't know how, I have no clue where to start or what I would do to bring this to life, but I'm going to give myself permission that I do get to have this. That can feel incredibly scary. Journaling is a scary and confronting thing to dive into. Katrina: And from there, though, it's faith. It's faith-based. So if I've given myself permission to have this stuff. If I've acknowledged that it's inside of me. If I then choose to believe and have faith that I could bring it to life, then what aligned action am I going to take as I go into my day? Katrina: And so this simple process might take you 10 to 15 minutes in the morning of just kind of checking in, tuning down, writing down some of the things that are inside of you. You don't then have to go and make an action plan, but it's about the fact that you've set that internal compass. You've pointed yourself in the direction of what you want. It will impact your actions throughout the rest of the day. You can take a moment or two to think of what is an action I would take from a place of really believing in yourself, but you know what? Journaling is so freaking effective, that even if you don't do that, you've literally just moved yourself in that direction. Katrina: So I can't tell you how passionate I am about journaling or I feel like I can't, but I just did maybe a little bit of a decent job of trying to explain that to you. I hope you found it really helpful. I hope you get out there and give this a go and if you have a journaling habit that you think that you could maybe increase a little bit, then I really encourage you to do that. Leave me a comment below. Tell me your experience about journaling and what are you gonna make some changes and shifts in that area. Katrina: I'm Katrina Ruth.Have an amazing rest of the day wherever you are in the world, and do not forget, life is now press play. Katrina: All right. First one done. I have no idea how long that took. How long did I go for? Matt: Four minutes. Katrina: Oh, is that all? Matt: Yup. Katrina: Great. I thought it went way longer. Matt: Oh, actually, it's a lie. Katrina: It's a lie. Matt: Six and a half, seven. Katrina: What do you guys think? Was that helpful around journaling? What's going on? People in the comments are saying they never journaled. Okay, John, you need to watch this whole Facebook ad sequence when it goes live. Everyone freaking journals. For the reasons I just explained. By the way, none of that was scripted. I had no freaking clue what I was gonna say, I just opened my mouth and it popped out. So I had a little few fumbles there, but we'll either leave them in or Matt will edit them out and put some other different footage in there or whatever is needed, right? Katrina: So you just saw me like, I know I didn't freak out for ages. I am pretty practised, I guess at doing this sort of stuff compared to maybe a lot of people. But I still, it doesn't feel comfortable for me to do this stuff. I feel like out of my comfort zone. It's definitely why I put this live stream on, so that I would kind of put myself in that accountability and I knew that it would elevate my energy having you here so thank you and I appreciate you for that. Katrina: I knew that it would provide good content for you, as well. Good content for the YouTube show, so I'm literally creating three pieces of content at the same time, if not more, 'cause then we can pop it on Instagram and all that sort of good stuff also. Katrina: But I guess my point to you is, and this probably should be me just doing the messaging video now [inaudible 00:27:14]. But my point is, you've gotta just start, right? Like I feel so squirmy when I do kind of professionally created content. I don't do it anywhere near as often as I do my normal day-to-day messaging, so I'm less practised at it in that regard, but I still step up and I take that leap and I open my freaking mouth and I let shit come out and I get better and better each time. Katrina: Like even now, how I'm presenting and even how I feel inside of myself compared to when we were filming when we first started working together a couple of years, it's a whole different thing, right? So just wanna remind you of that, if maybe creating a high level of content has been something that you're avoiding in your business. Katrina: Okay. So we're gonna do next video now, which is around self-care. Oh my goodness, this is so good. I'm so excited to speak about this. We're gonna speak about self-care, health and fitness being non fucking negotiable for entrepreneurs, except I'm not allowed to say non fucking negotiable on a Facebook ad, so we'll see how we go. All right. Should I just go? Matt: You gonna change? Katrina: Oh, fuck. Thank you. Matt: [inaudible 00:28:14] Katrina: I better get changed. Matt: Do you want me to, just change it all, that'd be fine. Katrina: Okay. Katrina: All right. We'll be back with an outfit change. Katrina: All right. Matt: Good to go? Katrina: Yes. This is my favourite ever top in the world, 'cause you can see my tatties through it. Look you haven't even seen it yet. Matt: Oh, I haven't. It's sick. Katrina: In front of everybody else. It's like psycho. All right. Just a little intermission there. It's not done yet, though, you guys. Go around here next. I'm getting my boobs done in three weeks. Matt: Are you? Katrina: Yup. It's all happening. Matt: Where you getting that done? Katrina: South port. Dr. Ian McDougall. He's apparently amazing. Katrina: I'm gonna do such a post when I get my boobs done. You know how everybody gets their boobs done and then they pretend that they didn't and they just kind of, they don't say anything about it and they just hope that nobody, but probably particularly their parents won't notice. I'm gonna do the opposite of that. I'm gonna post about it, and I'm gonna blog about why I haven't done it earlier, which was largely just that it wasn't a hell yes for me. But there was also a part of me that was like I'm already so out there, I'm already too much. Kind of like who do you think you are type thing. Like I've already got, you know, I've got like a super successful business and I'm in shape and now I've got tatties all over me and my hair is extra shiny and now what? I'm gonna have boobs as well? It's all too much for the world to handle, so I thought about it, but I felt like it makes me seem like I think I'm all that. Katrina: And so then I noticed a lot of times men will post up about, "Ladies, you don't have to get your boobs done or whatever or change your body or any sort of work done." I haven't had any work done at all, actually, but if I wanted to, I will. And they think that they're putting a supportive post up, but I just find it interesting because women would never put a post up about what men have permission or don't have permission to do on their bodies, but it's kind of like women's bodies are up for grabs as far as conversation around whether you should or shouldn't do that. Like sometimes men will post like, "You should be happy to just be, we love you just as you are." [inaudible 00:30:53] a nice intention that maybe they're trying to be nice, but it sort of feels like it's reverse shaming. Do you know what I mean? Like that if you would do that, then you're not being authentic or real. I feel like I can get so much content out of this. And it should go viral. Right? Matt says yes. Okay, you guys heard it here first. That's happening May 29th. Everybody write it in your diaries. Katrina: We should film a show, not the actual fucking surgery, but there should be a show about that, for sure. Because it's a transformational moment in somebody's life. I feel, I don't know. I haven't done it yet, but I would imagine so. Katrina: Okay, and also I should probably be in the Gold Coast bulletin, 'cause I'm probably the last female in the Gold Coast to get her boobs done. Katrina: Have I changed angles now? Oh, no. You just changed angles. Okay. All right. So now we're talking about fitness and self-care. Matt: You good to go? Katrina: Yeah. Katrina: Hey, it's Kat here. Katrina Ruth from the Katrina Ruth show. Today I am here to give you a little bit of a smack down around fitness and self-care with love and compassion, of course. Katrina: Here's the deal. I have worked with entrepreneurs, high performers, driven creators and bad asses for several decades long and I do indeed classify myself as one of those people and what I've learned in that time is that fitness and self-care is non-negotiable for an entrepreneur or should be, in my opinion, non-negotiable for an entrepreneur. Katrina: And it is something that can drastically and massively improve the results that you're getting in your business, in your income, obviously in your energy, in your happiness, in your ability to access creativity and flow, and even in how much time you have available. Many, many other benefits also. Katrina: Here's the deal though. I don't wanna come in here kind of like, all right, I'm here to kick your ass about fitness and you've gotta get to the gym, and you've gotta be in shape and you've gotta do this and this and this. In fact, not too long ago, I heard that there was some people [inaudible 00:32:51] who were kind of like, I guess you can call it, hating on me, or feeling triggered by me is maybe a better way to say it, because they said, "Oh, you know, that Kat, she just thinks that everybody has to be hot. And she just talks about being hot and being fit all the time". Now , if you don't know me well, then you might not know that my background was in fitness. I was a personal trainer for 13 years and my first online business, which I began in 2006, and which I built up to nearly a million dollars per year income before I transitioned into the business that I've created now, that was a fitness business. Katrina: So it is something I'm very passionate about, that I have a really solid history in. I've been actively involved in the fitness industry now for over two decades, and it's part of my everyday life to this day. Katrina: But let me tell you about this everybody should be hot and fit thing. I may have said everybody should get to be hot. I may have said something like that. In fact, I wrote a blog post around this topic not too long ago when I heard that people were getting like a little bit upset [inaudible 00:33:40], but what I mean is, when I talk about everybody getting to be hot and fit and in great shape is that hot AF energy. Why did I just say AF? Hot as fuck energy. That hot as fuck energy that we should get to experience and be able to [inaudible 00:33:54] into our businesses and lives. Katrina: Hot is an energy, right? And it comes from when you're in a place of feeling really proud of yourself, really good about yourself, and when you know that you're in alignment with your values and with what's important to you and with how you're showing up in your business, in your life, in all different ways and areas. So that's kind of the hot thing, right? Katrina: But if we look at the fitness and self-care thing in a little bit of a broader spectrum way, not just about how you maybe look or how you feel. Let's really consider and look at how this relates to entrepreneurs. To me it's quite shocking and I find it, I guess concerning or I feel sad or worried when I hear that somebody who's really wanting to take over the world and just create an amazing empire during their purpose work in the world is not consistently attending to their fitness and self-care. Katrina: Now, I fully understand and have compassion and empathy around the fact that not everybody has that background or history. I am so grateful that I built this habit before I was even 20 years old and it stood me so well until this day and it's definitely crossed over into many other areas of my life. Katrina: So if you don't have that background or that habit, of course it's gonna feel like something that you don't necessarily have time for, or it feels like it should come second to your business or maybe second to business and being a partner or being a parent or whatever it might be. It feels like something that you know is important maybe or that you do in some sort of a somewhat consistent fashion, but that it kind of gets left off on the days when you're busy or on the days when you've got a lot of balls in the air with your business or in the times when you don't really feel like it. Katrina: So I fully get all of that and I'm the same as anyone else, I have habits that I'm still working to implement. Fitness, however, is a habit that's really well implemented for me in my business and life and I really, literally, legitimately consider it to be non-negotiable. It's something that along with journaling, along with daily messaging in my business and sharing what's inside of me, along with sales activity, these four things, fitness being one of them, I consider non-negotiable and I make sure that they happen everyday. Katrina: The reason is, that I know that when those four things come together on a day-to-day basis, I'm moving the needle in all critical areas in my business and life. I'm progressing forward. I'm creating momentum. I'm creating results. And these things all work together to just create faster and faster momentum, flow, results, outcomes, access to the super powers that are inside of me, you name it, right? Katrina: So I feel like when I'm taking care of these four areas, and this is what I teach my high-level clients in my inner circle for example, as well, that I've taken care of the big blocks that are really gonna move me forward. Katrina: Of course there might be a million other things that I wanna get done for the day, which may or may not be given some time and attention through the day, but you know what? Even if all those extra things are ignored, if I take care of my own inner work, my mindset work like my journaling, my fitness and self-care in some way, shape or form, whether it's at the gym, or whether it's elsewhere, my messaging and sharing with the world and my sales activity, that's gonna get me going forward even if everything else got ignored completely, right? Katrina: So where fitness really comes in is it's not something that takes time and energy, it's something that gives you time and energy. In fact, just the other day I was having a conversation with one of my closest friends and she was saying how she's just been eating so much more while in a fitness routine, and she was kinda like, "Isn't that weird?" And I was like, "Not really, because of course you're gonna overeat when you're not working out, because working out gives you energy". So if you're not getting that energy from going and moving your body and moving your digestive system and kind of moving your mind, as well, and clearing out the cobwebs, then you're gonna naturally go reaching for and looking for energy elsewhere. Katrina: And particularly for an entrepreneur and somebody who's building a business from home and maybe you've got kids running around or you just got a hectic life going on and you're kind of on the go, or perhaps you travel a lot, like me. It's really easy to obviously just reach for kind of convenient foods that are not necessarily ideal or even maybe you're trying to be a little bit healthier but it's a load of protein shakes and protein bars and that sort of thing, which is not necessarily real food. Katrina: Look, I'm not here to school you on this what you should eat. I actually don't follow a diet at all. I eat intuitively. I work out intuitively. But what I am here to say and to suggest to you, is that if you were to start making a small amount of space and time for your fitness and self-care everyday, even like 20 to 25 minutes where you gave some sort of time and attention to taking care of your body, to moving it, to expanding it, to freeing it up, to going into some kind of a physical, or mental or spiritual meditation, which can come about from that, that you're gonna find that you have time abundantly given back to you, energy given into you, you clear out any sort of kind of messiness that's going on emotionally, or you had that's distracting you form being in flow in your work. You sort out problems. I like to set intentions at the start of my work out time. Katrina: There's so many benefits that go far and beyond the obvious kind of like, if you want a gym body type thing. If you want that, cool. But really what we're talking about here is getting your body working inside and out in the way that it was meant to. So I really urge you to consider what building blocks you have in place in your business and life at the moment. Katrina: Are you taking care of the fundamental things that are actually gonna elevate you into being that next-level version of yourself who automatically has the energy, the confidence, the creativity and the access to super flow required in order to show up for all the different areas of your life. I don't think I gotta remind you when you're taking care of yourself inside and out, it's not about how you look, it's about how you feel, which dictates how you look and certainly also dictates how you're showing up and what you're putting out there for the world. So I know you have massive dreams and so much you wanna accomplish here and it's all available for you. Everything you feel inside of you is always available. Katrina: We've gotta look at, if I'm gonna be that person, if I'm gonna be that next-level version of myself, and also accomplish all these fricken things in my business and life, I gotta take care of myself like a well-oiled machine, right? I've gotta treat myself as a premium machine. I've gotta treat myself as a temple, basically, that's gonna last for life and that is gonna be operating at a standard of excellence such that I can do all these amazing things that I wanna do into the world. Make millions of dollars. Impact millions of people and change the whole fricken thing. Katrina: That's it for me for today. Leave me a comment below. Tell me about your fitness routine. I'd be happy to answer any questions. And don't forget. Have an amazing rest of the day wherever you are in the world. Life is now press play. Katrina: All right. [inaudible 00:40:08] is watching. That's our second video completed. Cool. How long did that one go for? Matt: Almost eight minutes. Katrina: Eight minutes? We might have to chop some bits of it out. Actually, what do you think? Eight minutes? Too long? My brother's on the live stream. Okay, what are you guys talking about? We have shows here about that. About what? About the boobs or the fitness? Okay. I'm gonna go straight into the next one. Katrina: If you jumped on late to this live stream, we're filming some videos here for my new marketing campaign, teaching people the fundamental stuff that I believe is really important and that can change your business and life, so you're getting all my best secrets right now. We're gonna make these into some bad ass Facebook ads and we're gonna open up the inner circle. There's so many new bad asses. Ash says can work with eight minutes. I'm sure we could chop bits of that out anyway. Matt: Did you wanna change tops? Katrina: Yes. I forgot again. All right. We're gonna go into the messaging video next so if you wanna hear me talk about how to message and why it fricken matters, communication with your audience, stick around. Katrina: [inaudible 00:41:50] Katrina: I think you could wear it over the, check it out, I'm wearing my bodysuit on top of my pants. Looks like I'm about to record a 1980s video for fitness. I'm gonna do a fitness video now. But you won't see that on the video. On my own video. Matt: Where's the kids? Katrina: They are probably at [inaudible 00:42:17] digging through [inaudible 00:42:18] toys. She picks them up today. Matt: [inaudible 00:42:24] Katrina: Oh my God. Ashley, I don't know. Can you remind me, you just reminded me that when we're in L.A., are you gonna be in L.A. July 11 and 12th still? Matt: Probably. Katrina: Oh my god. Matt: I could. Katrina: If you are, you can film [inaudible 00:42:36]. Katrina: And we're all gonna go to Ashley's new house in L.A. and have a slumber party there. But I'm doing, you know I did the retreat here in November. I'm doing the L.A. one in July at the Paley House in West Hollywood, which by the way, I haven't told any of my clients yet and I just randomly announced, so just so you know. Katrina: Can you get me some let warmers and then we can do a fitness video? Katrina: All right. Yes, Ashley or John O., remind me we're gonna film a hip hop music video with my clients and we're definitely gonna film like body suit and leggings fitness video together and Matt's gonna film it. He just found out about that right there. Katrina: Everyone's gonna go to Ashley's place and we're gonna have martinis. 'Cause she's moving to L.A., my friend actually. I don't know if you'd remember, but you would know her if you saw her. She's from Sydney. So she's moving to L.A., so we're all just gonna go sleep there. Katrina: All right. Now I've lost my train of thought 'cause I got very excited about we're gonna do the hip hop video and the fitness video. It's actually critical. If you're joining the inner circle, just to let you know, you're gonna be involved in shenanigans. It's actually a requirement. It's part of the initiation, except the initiation just keeps going forever after you joined. Katrina: We leave tomorrow. Shit. Shout out. Following your dreams. Moving to fricken L.A. Bad ass. Katrina: Okay, now we gotta focus. Freaking focus. People stop distracting me. So now we talk about messaging. Katrina talking about sharing her message. Why? What? When? Where? How? Possible questions could be how to create and distribute your message anywhere. Spend 6% of your day on this? I spend my whole day messaging. My whole life is message. My whole life is monetizable. I'm just like, if you come into my life, just know that you're gonna be turned into content. I'm just letting you know. Literally. Katrina: All right. I'm ready. Maybe give me like some kind of sign when I get to five minutes, though. I feel like I'm just gonna get longer and longer with each one, 'cause I'm getting more excited. Matt: [inaudible 00:44:45] Katrina: Yeah. Cool. Katrina: All right. Katrina: Hey, it's Kat here from the Katrina Ruth show. Today we are gonna talk about one of my very favourite things to talk about of all, which is messaging and specifically, unleashing your message, your ad, what's inside of you onto the world. And the reason that you would wanna do that is, because you wanna do it. Actually, if you're watching this and you resonate with me and the things that you've maybe been seeing and you feel coming through from my bad ass little videos that I'm making for you, then I'm gonna guess that you are naturally one of those people like myself, like my incredible inner circle private clients, who wants to be seen and wants to be heard. Katrina: Let's just be honest. When you're having a party or you're having a dinner, or you're at someone's thing, you are the one who wants to be the centre of attention and you get kinda loud and kinda shouty and kind of excited, and you tell amazing stories and really, everybody should just shut up and listen to you, right? Right. Katrina: I know this for sure, because it's how I am. It's how my eight year old daughter is. It's how every single one of my inner circle clients are. In fact, it's hilarious when we all get together, because you've basically got a whole room full of people that all think that they're the one person who should be talking and I've even had clients tell me that they get kind of shitty at me when I'm presenting my own retreat or event, 'cause they're kind of like, "When will she shut up so that I can talk?" Katrina: So if that's you and you know that you have powerful stuff inside of you to share with the world, you know that people should actually be paying just to listen to you and to be around you, then I've got fabulous news for you and you may already know this, but I'm just gonna kick your ass with it a little bit more. You can get paid to do this stuff. You can get paid to share your message. Like literally just what you're thinking and feeling with the world on a day in day out basis. Katrina: It is actually exactly how I built my online business to where it now makes multi six figures per month, so it's a multiple seven-figure online business, continually growing. All I actually do is live my life and be me. Okay, I feel like I'm gonna hiccup. It's under control. Katrina: And document that. And show what's inside of me. And so I write a daily blog. It's called the Daily Ass Kicker. I love to write. I'm a writer first and foremost, so there's no rule that you've got to write a daily blog post or anything like that, but that's what I like to do. Katrina: I like to create videos, as well. I do a lot of Facebook live streams. In fact, right over here I've got a Facebook live stream happening at the same time as filming this video for you. Katrina: So I'm continually sharing my message. So messaging is simply the process of sharing your message with the world. And by me doing that and doing it consistently for some time now, for a period of years in fact, on the internet, I've been able to attract in my soulmate clients from all around the world. Women and men who think like me, who know that they're born for more. Who know that they're that 1% within the 1% person, who always also have something to share with the world. Katrina: I've been able to build a location-free lifestyle where I'm never bound to any time or place. I can go where I want when I want with my children. I made amazing friends with people all around the world. I've been able to get this amazing apartment that I love and I guess all the other dream things that I've got in my life. Katrina: But mostly, I've been able to step fully into my purpose work and into a life where everyday I get to wake up and all I gotta do is open my mouth and open my soul and be myself. Katrina: And that's the crux of my whole entire business. I would certainly love to share with you a little bit about how that works, because here's the deal on messaging. There's a lot of people on the internet who are posting stuff online, right? I don't gotta tell you. So posting blog posts, Facebook live streams, YouTube stuff, Instagram stuff, you name it, it's out there. Katrina: However, what is very rare, and the reason why powerful entrepreneurs [inaudible 00:48:26], perhaps even including you, and not getting paid the way that they should be getting paid, is that they're sharing the surface space. Katrina: They're sharing something where it's like okay I told a story. Or I wrote an inspiring blog post or a motivational blog post or I totally [inaudible 00:48:42], or yeah, I did a Facebook live or I did a video or whatever it is. It's got to have the soul in it. Katrina: For me messaging is firstly so easy, it's not something that I find difficult or that I've gotta think about like to think about how to write a blog, how to do a live stream. Yes, I get nervous. In fact, I was freaking out before I filming these videos, 'cause I just felt self-conscious about doing professional videos, which I'm doing today for you. Katrina: All right? So it's not about not having all that. But I don't have to think about what to say. I don't think about what to say ever any day of the week at all, and I create a lot of content. And the reason is that I don't think about it, is that I give myself permission to just say what's inside of me, right? Katrina: So messaging kind of all the time. I write a lot of content and I produce a lot of content, but yet I feel like I'm not really doing anything. I feel like I'm just expressing what's inside of me and that's what I love to do as a person, anyhow. Just the same way as my eight year old daughter and my four year old son want people to shut up and listen to them. And they're not like this is work. I've gotta get paid in order to express myself and make people stop what they're doing and listen to me. That's what they want. Just like that's what I want and that's what I know you want. Katrina: But for this to work, it's not only understanding that it is about just sharing what's truly inside of you and not making it complicated. Not trying to plan it out, not trying to think it out. It's also about understanding that for messaging to work and for you to build a business, based on you as a messenger, as an artist, creator, leader, then you've gotta be giving people the whole truth. The truth, nothing but the truth, and also the whole truth. Katrina: So yes, that means the stuff that feels really vulnerable or scary to share. Or maybe you think like a lot of my clients think and I have this conversation frequently with my high-level clients. Oh, that's like embarrassing, or I feel self-conscious or is that good enough or who am I to speak about this or I already said that a million times. I feel like everything I'm saying is being repetitive. Katrina: These are all exactly the sort of things I fully understand because I've had all those thoughts myself and I work on it continually with my clients and what it's about is plain and simple. Katrina: What if you got out of your own way? What if you dropped your story and dropped all the bullshit about whether or not what you have is good enough or whether you're good enough and what if you just gave what's inside of you permission to live and permission to be expressed and permission to get out there into the world. Katrina: So when I feel stuck or unsure or when my clients feel stuck or unsure, I remind myself or I remind them, it's not about you. It's about the message. Take a deep breath. Do what you gotta do. Put some music on. Put some [inaudible 00:51:06] on. Have a coffee. Whatever. And then let what's inside of you out. Imagine the power of what could happen in your business and life if you just consistently, every day, starting today, began to share what's inside of you in an unfiltered and no holds barred way. Katrina: I challenge you to do this. Drop me a comment below. Tell me when you went and posted a new message. Leave a link, even. I'd love to see it. Have an amazing rest of the day and do not forget. Life is now press play. Katrina: Okay. Hey, Laura. Get out your own way and save lives. Exactly. Katrina: All right. Shot out to everyone that's just jumping on. We are over here filming behind the scenes here. Filming for my new funnel. There's Matt. He's doing my video work. He's gonna match up some amazing Facebook ads from what we're doing today. I'm just live streaming so you can see behind the scenes. We've got one more to do, I believe. And that is around sales activity. So if you'd like to hear me talking about how bad ass, how bad ass? I don't know. That doesn't really relate to what I was gonna say. Katrina: If you'd like me to talk about sales activity. I'm gonna do it whether you'd like it or not. But if you'd like to listen, then you can listen on for this next final video. Katrina: Hang on, wait. Ashley, if you're still in the live stream. I sent you a what's app that I need you to enter. Okay, I have a client here. A bad ass client, who's like do I wanna meet you in New York or L.A.? I think both. Oh, do I wanna do fourth of July in New York or L.A.? What say you, Facebook? Where should I do New York, or where should I go? Matt: L.A. Katrina: Matt says L.A. You recon? Why? Matt: It's fun. Katrina: [inaudible 00:52:44] fun here. Matt: I'd rather be in New York on the fourth of July, so L.A. was fun. Katrina: Okay. L.A. it is. You've heard it here. Katrina: All right. Oh, hang on. I've gotta change again. Forgetting every time. All right. One more outfit. One more video. And then I think there was one other little video, but we'll do that off camera. Katrina: Okay, I'll be back and we'll do the sales video. Hey, hey to everybody who just jumped on. Katrina: All right. I'm making a rare appearance in a t-shirt. I basically never wear sleeves. Look at this cool shirt. [Collette 00:53:32] bought it for me. By the way, you don't have to wait for the, my hand looks massive. You don't have to wait for the Facebook ads to drop in your feed if you know that you're already supposed to be in the inner circle and by the way, you could still get into the room for our July retreat. Oh my goodness. Next-level [inaudible 00:53:55] and money making is what goes down on those retreats. It's always next-level inappropriate shenanigans. You should message me about that now if you know that that's the level you wanna play at. I can tell you all about it. Katrina: Okay, so now. What? More videos? I thought it was only one. All right. Okay. We're gonna do sales activity. So now I'm gonna talk to you for a few minutes about sales activity. Katrina talking about selling naturally. Electrolytes. Going out shirt. How good is this? Just so people know, I'm not going anywhere. Sitting right here on my throne. I guess we'll go out later then. And so some footage of me drinking espresso, 'cause we haven't done that enough times. Matt: And it's Friday. Katrina: And it's Friday. So clearly, it's required. Katrina: Sales is not a dirty word. Do you know what? I don't even wanna fucking market to anybody that thinks sales could be a dirty word. They can all go mosey on along to another town. How selling is a daily non-negotiable in my business. So I'll talk about that. All right. I think we can do it. Katrina: Actually, I'm gonna put some more pink lipstick on for this video. Katrina: [crosstalk 00:55:43] Katrina: Do you think that there's a single man in the world that thinks having those plumped lips where it sticks out on the side is a good idea? I think John's the only man on this live stream. But Matt said no, so John, add your vote. Katrina: We were just talking about it while I was in there fixing up my lipstick. All right. Ready? Do the five-minute thing again. Matt: Okay. Katrina: Hey, it's Kat here from the Katrina Ruth show and I am so fricken [inaudible 00:56:19] excited today, 'cause I'm gonna talk about one of my four daily non-negotiables, which is sales activity. If you've been watching my videos pop through your feed, then you'll know that my four daily non-negotiables are in fact, daily mindset work in journaling of some kind. Getting connected to that inner game. Setting your internal compass so that you go in the right direction. Fitness and self-care, of course. Non-negotiable for entrepreneurs and driven bad asses like you and I. Katrina: Some form of messaging, because you are in fact a messenger, a leader, an artist, a creator, and you wanna share what's inside of you with the world and then fourth and finally, selling. Because guess what? If you wanna be an entrepreneur, if you are an entrepreneur, [inaudible 00:56:58] of course, but if you want to have a successful business, you are going to need to sell. You're gonna need to make money in some way. You need to ask for money. Katrina: Whether you're asking energetically or like on the actual internet, by telling people on Facebook to buy stuff from you. I did not really make any money in the first three years of my online business, actually, I must admit. So I started marketing in 2006, except I wasn't marketing at all, I was blogging. Katrina: And for the first few years, I made no money at all and it took me maybe two and a half years before I realised that the key reason that I wasn't making any money was that I wasn't actually selling anything. So I just kinda laugh about it, but the truth is, I didn't set out to be a marketer, I set out to write or be a blogger and then gradually, back then, twelve years ago, I gradually kind of started to learn that this internet thing was somewhere that you could make money. Katrina: I've actually always been really good at sales, and so, you know, from a young age, I've been selling things and I've always had a hustler side. Hustle. Even as a little kid. When it comes to online marketing, I've been marketing online for over 12 years now. I've made millions and millions of dollars on the internet. I've gradually evolved and fine tuned my business to where it's completely based on me getting to wake up each day, do what I love, make money for my purpose work and live my life on my terms so somebody I met recently said to me when they kind of connected on Facebook and how to look at my life and my business like, "Wow. You're really living the dream, hey?" And I said yeah, I am. And I did the work for it. And so I'm really proud of myself, with what I've created and I'm very passionate about sharing how to create a business and a life that's location free and freedom-based and purpose-based for women and men who are like me. Katrina: And when I say like me, I mean you've always known that you were born for it, that you were born for more. You've always known you're here to make millions. Impact millions and even change the world. And you've always known that there's something powerful inside of you to get out there to the world. And so if that's you, well, probably if you're watching this, then you're already showing up online in some way, shape or form. Katrina: You might be early on in your journey or you might be well down the track and you're already making a lot of money. Sometimes I have clients come to me who jump into my inner circle working with me privately, who are already making 10, 20K, 30K, 50K a month. Other times, they're completely starting out and there's no money coming in yet. But what joins my clients together and the reason that my clients get such rapid results, big money leaps and bounds, big alignment leaps and bounds, big lifestyle shift leaps and bounds, as well as all other areas, is because they are that person who has that inner flame and who's always known that they're gonna do something amazing with their life. Katrina: So if that's you and you relate and maybe you are already selling on the internet or selling off the internet, or wherever it is that you're selling, I just wanna remind you, though, that if you just make something like daily selling and sales activity part of kind of who you are, if you make it inherent to who you are, and you make it habitual, then you can elevate your income 10 times, 20 times, I believe even 100 times more in a very, very rapid period of time. Katrina: Now this is obviously not just about how much freaking money can we make on the internet? That's amazing and it's super cool. And it allows us to have an incredible impact into the world doing our purpose work. I don't think I need

Nasir and Matt discuss various lawsuits against social media platforms in which users are accused of artificially inflating their social currency. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. NASIR: Do you ever just think about how, like, we do a podcast and, in a way, it’s really weird because we’re attorneys and we spend our time on Thursday nights recording a podcast. I mean, I have a great time but, when I start looking at it from a third person’s perspective, I’m just like, “What are we doing?” but I love it. MATT: Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s only – and I guess it’s technically evening for me – it’s early evening. For you, it’s a little bit later. NASIR: Yeah, 7 o’clock. MATT: People don’t really want to listen to attorneys for the most part. NASIR: Yeah, exactly. But people have been listening. We have a nice little following now. I mean, it’s pretty neat, you know? MATT: It’s a lot to live up to. NASIR: That’s true. MATT: Are you sure that we haven’t been artificially inflating our listener counts? NASIR: No, we have, for sure. I mean, I’m saying the number of fake listeners we have is just enormous. It’s in the trillions, actually. MATT: I bring that up because that’s what we’re going to talk about today. You could count that as social currency, couldn’t you? NASIR: Absolutely, yeah. MATT: It’s a pretty broad definition of what social currency is. I don’t think there’s any definite things that fall under it but that’s what we’re going to talk about today – social currency. It raises a lot of interesting questions because I’m sure – well, we know for sure because it’s happened to the firm before with artificially inflating not necessarily view counts or things like that or times someone’s viewed a video. NASIR: But definitely manipulation, right? MATT: Yeah, it was voting, right? When we ran that photo competition. NASIR: We’ve got to tell that. Because it happened so long ago, most people probably don’t know the story. I’ll give you the 30-second version which will probably be a two-minute version but, anyway, it was a really cool idea. We had these – I don’t know what they are – these little piggy banks and we gave them out at events and we had a contest. Basically, take this piggy bank and take a photo with it and make it interesting. Matt’s holding it up. No one else can see it, by the way. We’re not on TV, by the way, Matt, just so you know. And so, we gave them out and the idea was, okay, take a photo with our piggy bank with our logo on it and make it interesting and then post it on our Facebook page and we’ll do an open voting and whoever gets the most votes will get an iPad. Of course, we get a lot of photos but they’d email it to us. They don’t follow the rules and all the stuff like that. We’d get a good number of submissions. By the way – correct me, Matt, if I’m ruining the story because I forget the details but one of the persons got like 100 more votes than everyone else. MATT: It was like immediate, too. NASIR: Yeah, within a day or so. It’s like, “Okay, maybe he got his friends to do it.” But then, we started looking at the actual people that were voting and it was obvious – basically all of them were from the same country and it was like either the Philippines or Indonesia or something like that and there was exactly 100 of them. Then we’re like, “Wait a minute. We’re familiar with the fact that you can just buy social media likes and things like that online.” Of course, you can do the same thing. You can buy people to vote for you online as well and that’s exactly what happened. This person basically cheated himself to get an iPad. Of course, we didn’t give him one but we were so pissed off about it that we literally blacklisted him in our CRM software. Remember that? Because I was like, “Whoever this guy is, we’re not dealing with him,” but anyway.

The guys take the court to discuss the recent lawsuit against a video game company claiming copyright infringement over tattoos on NBA players' bodies. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. NASIR: And I have zero tattoos. How many tattoos do you have? MATT: 32. NASIR: 32. Actually, you know, I just read, by the way – I don’t know what made me think of this but – someone ranked the best football cities and I think San Diego is ranked, like, 34 or 32 or something like that. I don’t know how it goes, but there’s only like, 30-something teams in the country, right? MATT: Yeah. Well, there’s 32 teams so I hope they weren’t 34th. NASIR: Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was 32. MATT: Well, so there’s a couple of things – well, it wouldn’t matter because they’re either going to count Saint Louis or they’re going to count Los Angeles. But New York has two teams. NASIR: Does that count as two cities? No, they did best or worse cities. MATT: They played different spots. NASIR: Yeah, I see what you’re saying. Well, let’s not analyze it too much. The point is that you have the same number of tattoos as the rank of San Diego in their fan base. MATT: Well, you figured it out. I have all 32 NFL logos tattooed. NASIR: Okay, perfect. Well, actually, I mean, that may be a copyright violation. Did you think about that before you put it on? MATT: Well, I’m glad you mentioned that because it’s something I did want to bring up. It’s kind of a second layer. If this episode was an onion, this would be the second layer of what I was going to discuss here. NASIR: What if it was an orange? Same thing – second layer? MATT: Maybe. It could just be the peel or the rind – whatever that is. NASIR: Okay. MATT: Yeah, but the actual juice of this episode is the deal with the tattoos. It’s something I never thought about before. You know, when I go out and get my 32 tattoos, you know, obviously, it’s on my body, but who owns the tattoo of the artwork that’s done on the individual? I never really thought about it at all until I saw this lawsuit this past week with the NBA. Well, I don’t think it’s even with the NBA. I don’t think there’s any players involved either. I think the actual lawsuit is… NASIR: With the videogame maker, right? MATT: Yeah, the creators of NBA 2K are getting sued by this company that did the tattoos. NASIR: They bought the license or the copyright ownership from all these tattoo artists, actually. MATT: Okay. Is that who it is? NASIR: Yeah. MATT: Are they the company that employed or the house artist that did it? NASIR: No, I think what they did was they wanted to license out these tattoo images – who knows why? Maybe other people wanted to get these same images as a fan. And so, I think it was Solid Oak Sketches. They purchased. They went to these different tattoo artists and actually bought the rights to that particular art piece – that copyright image. MATT: I saw that there were these licensing agreements from the artists and this company that ultimately sued but the point is this company sued NBA 2K – whoever has the ownership in that – for copyright infringement because what this game is doing is it has all these NBA players and, you know, it’s 2016 so it gets better. The graphics get better every year. NASIR: By the way, that’s debatable. If anyone plays sports games, it’s like, “Yeah, you can see one more freckle than you did before.” Well, this is my area, right? At least we’re getting into videogames and you can talk the sports stuff. But, from the videogame perspective, it’s kind of frustrating because, you know, especially with Madden, it’s like every year they come up with something new and try to make the graphics a little bit better but, really, you know, we’re still pretty far from where we need to be, I think. I mean, really, we want just realistic, you know,

Nasir and Matt get into a discussion about the Oakland Raiders cheerleaders labor dispute. They also answer the question, "I want to start a fantasy football league with my employees. Are there any legal issues with this?" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to the NFL episode of Legally Sound Smart Business and this is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: And welcome to the podcast where we cover business in the news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. If it’s a question about your NFL football team, then just put in NFL in the subject line so we know that’s you. MATT: Are you going to be able to contribute this episode? I mean, you actually know a good amount about it. In your whole sports realm, NFL seems to be something you know about so I think we’ll be okay. NASIR: Yeah, I think so. I’m not really sure what NFL is though. What does it stand for? MATT: You know. I don’t know. I can’t come up with something funny on the fly. I’ll come up with something funny and we’ll edit it in and it will be funny down the road. NASIR: Yeah, exactly. MATT: Well, like you said, football episode, first one is this – a lawsuit dealing with a couple of the Oakland Raiders cheerleaders and they sued the NFL and that seems to be one of the important parts of this story. A little bit of background, I guess, in the past, prior to this year, the Raiders cheerleaders were paid $125 a game, that’s it. I don’t know how many hours that breaks down to. NASIR: Okay. Let’s say… how long is a game? Like, three hours? Including halftime? MATT: At least, yeah. NASIR: Maybe three and a half including halftime and maybe an hour before at least and then maybe a half hour after so that’s four or five hours? But not including travel time either. MATT: And not including practices. NASIR: So, they don’t get paid for practice? MATT: I mean, I could be wrong but I thought, the way this is worded, it seems like they just get paid the $125 a game. NASIR: Yeah, you’re right, and hadn’t received compensation for anything beyond that so that’s all they get is per game. MATT: If you look at the current minimum wage, $9.00 an hour breaks down to a little under 14 hours for the $125. That’s what they used to get paid. Now, they’re getting paid $9.00 an hour which is California’s minimum wage, and this is just the Raiders. But they sued the NFL for obviously minimum wage claims and the NFL’s response was this, and this is an interesting response saying that, you know, “We don’t have to do anything. We’re immune to these state labor laws and you should have sued the Raiders and not us, the NFL.” NASIR: I don’t know what we’re missing here because I think what the attorney or the argument they’re trying to make is saying that it’s not that they have to be in compliance with any state law but basically they’re saying that they’re under federal law because they’re a national organization and so forth. I understand the argument. I think it’s a silly argument because, when you have a national entity hiring employees throughout the different states, there’s a well-established law that the state where the employee works is the law that applies – very simply. MATT: And this is just so stupid because the NFL makes – let’s see – I think this year they’re estimated to make $9 billion in revenue. I think you can afford to pay the cheerleaders. I guess they are part of the individual teams. Either way, the teams make a ton of money too so it’s not like they’re not making out with anything. This just seems like pretty silly thing all around. Like, the NFL is not doing the right thing and the teams aren’t paying these cheerleaders enough. I don’t know who would even want to be a cheerleader if you’re getting paid this little for so much time. I guess you get a lot of presents. NASIR: Yeah, I don’t really understand that industry and it’s strange.

Nasir and Matt talk about the recent Yahoo sexual harassment claim involving two women and answer, "Why is it that manufacturers refrain from mentioning one another in their advertisements (eg. "Tide cleans better than these other brands - bunch of white bottles with no labels")? This is observed with, well, basically every niche of the commercial market, with two exceptions I've regularly noticed, Pepsi vs. Coke and cars." Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: And this is our business legal podcast where we cover business in the news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com and also follow our Twitter account where you can also ask questions @askbizlaw. I want to say “askbizlaw.com” but it’s just “askbizlaw.” MATT: I don’t think we have that one. NASIR: Twitter. MATT: Yeah. NASIR: We probably have the dot-pizza one. MATT: Are you asking people to send their questions via Twitter? NASIR: Yeah, that’d be cool. MATT: That’s tough – limited number of characters. NASIR: That’s true. I didn’t even think about that but we’re also accepting questions on Reddit. That was cool. We do that every week. We do an AMA. I have lots of options for you. If you have a short question, Twitter is good for it. MATT: They’ll have to find out who we are on Reddit, I guess. It should be pretty obvious. NASIR: Search “Legally Sound Smart Business” and then we should come up. MATT: All right. Well, we have a pretty interesting story for today because it deals with a lot of different things going on. It’s a Yahoo executive. She and Yahoo in general are being sued by a former principal software engineer for sexual harassment and wrongful termination. Now, we’ve talked about similar things in the past but it’s typically been a male superior and the lawsuit’s been brought by a female – I don’t want to say… NASIR: Inferior. Uh, subordinate. MATT: A female employee. Now, we have a female executive or superior and also a female employee. That’s a little bit different. Also, typically, with these there’d be some sort of reaction from the company. Yahoo is just straight up denying any of this happening and is very strong in their stance. NASIR: Yeah, that seems unusual. MATT: Yeah, I won’t get into the specifics of this unless you want to, but we’ll link the article so they can read because there’s a lot of accusations made. This also is taking place in another country, too, I believe, right? NASIR: I don’t think so. I thought it was still in California. I know the suit’s in California so I assumed it’s in California but maybe not. We’ll take a look. But, you know, what’s interesting about this is, well, first of all, again, Silicon Valley is another scandal when it comes to the workplace environment. We covered Tinder. There’s this other case with a Google executive who overdosed on heroine on his yacht and some kind of killing as well. Silicon Valley is just being hit with a lot of issues right now. But I think what people may find significant – and this isn’t the first time that it’s happened – it’s when you have a female supervisor that’s being accused of this. I think people need to understand that these issues, when it comes to sexual harassment and wrongful termination, they stem from having power over another. That’s the main issue and that’s the main concept of employment law protections because, when you have an employee, they’re in your control as opposed to an independent contractor where the control is a little bit more loose. But, when you have an employee, because of that control, you have certain obligations that you may not have as a non-employer and I think, even though people generally understand this, they may not understand the significance and how much they could become liable, especially in California, for things like these. MATT: Yeah,

Nasir and Matt kick off social media week by discussingthe waitress who got fired for going on a Facebook rant after poor tipping. They also answer, "Our company has really taken off but we now need some tech work done. Should we just buy some software or bring in someone in-house?" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: And welcome to our business podcast where we cover business in the news and also put in our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. MATT: Are you just going to not talk about the fact that, apparently, some of the guys – actually, I guess, the whole US men’s soccer team listened to the podcast on Monday hearing that you said that you thought they were going to lose. I guess that deflated them for the match on Tuesday. You’re basically to blame. The whole country is blaming you right now. NASIR: Well, I had a lot of money running on that game. Luckily, I won. No, just joking. Ah, yeah, well, it’s a sad affair. It was a well-fought game though. MATT: A tough one. NASIR: Very. By the way, we’re referring to the Wimbledon match, right? MATT: Yeah. Well, I watch that as well but I guess we turned to Costa Rica? I don’t know who to root for. There’s eight teams left. I guess you root for the team that’s in your own section or qualifying division – unless you have some sort of ties, like your family is from somewhere. NASIR: I’ve always enjoyed watching Germany play. They also came out the same group as US so Germany and Costa Rica are my teams. Costa Rica is more of a Cinderella hope and Germany is more likely to win. MATT: Right. I guess we’ll see what happens. We’ll keep the audience updated for those who don’t watch. NASIR: Yeah, basically, you could get all your scores updates from this podcast – like, a week later. MATT: I don’t know when the final is. NASIR: Final is I think a week from Sunday. MATT: We’ll probably be recording when we have the final two teams or just about the final two. NASIR: Yes, exactly. MATT: We’ll make our predictions then. NASIR: Well, we should get to this podcast that we’re doing. MATT: What do we have for today? All right, this is a pretty interesting story and I’m sure this isn’t the first time this has happened. It’s the most recent time this has happened at least. So, a waitress in Ohio just got terminated but not for maybe a reason you would think – because she went home and complained on Facebook about getting poor tips for the night. Apparently, she was Facebook friends with someone who had been a customer that night and saw it, printed it out a screenshot of the complaint from this girl’s profile, brought it into the restaurant and then they fired her which is kind of humorous. I mean, it’s kind of stupid on the waitress’ part if she knew – unless she had a million friends on Facebook. I think I would know any time a friend of mine on Facebook was someone I was waiting on but, I don’t know, that’s just me. This is pretty interesting because, with new technology, there’s new ways to get fired from a job. NASIR: Yeah, I think Facebook status comments and private messages are probably the best way to terminate your employee, in my opinion. Maybe even have an exit interview just through some Facebook messaging. That would be interesting. Have a third-party witness somehow in there. MATT: Mark Zuckerberg. NASIR: Yeah, he’s spying on you anyway. I was trying to think, you know, this is pretty interesting. Why is this news in the first place? Is she complaining that she was fired? Did she feel that she was wrongfully terminated? MATT: That would have to be the case, right? I don’t see why this would get picked up otherwise other than her reaching out to someone and here’s what I’m guessing happened – she gets fired, she goes and talks to an attorney who is like, “Oh,

In this week's episode, Nasir and Matt welcome attorney Mark Wisnosky to discuss the ongoing legal battle involving patents on podcasts and legal crowdfunding. They also talk about a class action lawsuit against McDonald's, the proposed new rules for overtime pay, and Uber's smart move to increase its insurance policies. Nasir and Matt also answer questions dealing with manager managed LLC's, employees wanting access to their personal files, and what questions you can legally ask in an interview. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: We’re back with another episode of Legally Sound Smart Business! I’m very excited for this one. We have a packed content theme, I think. A lot of employment law issues and some patent law. What do you think, Matt? Are you ready for this? MATT: Yeah, there are a lot of good stories and questions this week, probably enough that it could be split into two separate episodes. We’ll see how long it runs and just see what happens, I guess, but there is a lot of action going on this week. NASIR: Action-packed. All right, let’s get started! MATT: This is a pretty interesting story and I guess it’s been going on for longer. I just heard about it this week but it’s been going on for a little bit longer. Obviously, anyone that listens to this know what a podcast is and is familiar with podcasts and listens to them. NASIR: By the way, that’s a weird assumption. That’s not necessarily. MATT: We’ve hit on this in episodes in the past but it’s essentially these patent troll issues. I heard about this from listening to Adam Carolla. He’s saying there’s these companies – mostly attorneys or law firms – just buying up these patents but there are these people saying that they own the technology behind podcasting. I’m not sure exactly what they’re saying they own but, apparently, it’s getting in this whole law suit that they own all the technology for podcasting and people that do podcasts have to pay them some sort of licensing. This is step one in the story. There are some other things going on, too. To fight this, Adam Carolla who is one of the most popular podcasts and Marc Maron who has another very popular podcast and some other big names, they’re all coming together. I think Adam Carolla is the one who’s running this page but he’s doing a thing on Fund Anything. This is like a Kickstarter – a crowdfunding idea – and he’s going on there and trying to pay the legal fees for the lawsuit through people that listen to podcasts, essentially. We have these patent trolls coming in on this podcast technology. We have licensing fees getting thrown around. We also have a lawsuit – litigation paid for by an audience, essentially. A lot of different pieces going on with this. NASIR: Absolutely. I actually read a little bit more about this guy. Apparently, the idea is some invention that he had in 1996. The process was based upon cassettes and somehow that translated to digital and his later patents that he filed and something to that effect. But all I know is that he has been successful once which is crazy. He actually won a lawsuit against Apple. It was appealed by Apple and then it settled and went away assumingly that Apple paid him off with less than the amount that it was awarded and it was like a 6-million-dollar original judgment. I assume that’s the money that he’s using to fight these lawsuits but I just cannot imagine that he’s going to be here for the long haul. We’re not patent attorneys but we have one in our firm that I wanted to give a call to so I think this is a great opportunity to get his perspective on this. I know we’ve talked about patent trolls in the past but I think this is a little bit more sophisticated. Let’s get him on the line. His name is Mark Wisnosky. Hey, Mark! Thanks for joining the show! We went over some of the details with this podcast fight with this patent troll. We’ve covered patent trolls in the past and I just cannot believe this guy is actually trying to claim this.