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Thanks to our Partner, NAPA Autotech Matt Fanslow dives into listener-submitted questions, covering:Multimeter recommendations (why he prefers insulation testers/meggers over basic DMMs).Electrical diagnostic strategies (schematics, scan tools, and stress-testing circuits).The "Flat Rate Test Drive" (a drivability diagnostic trick for load/PID analysis).Gaming picks (Elden Ring, Assassin's Creed Shadows, and Days Gone Remaster).Scan tool advice for techs doing more drivability work.Timestamps:(00:00) – Intro (02:33) – Multimeter recommendations: Why Matt avoids basic DMMs and prefers:Fluke 1587 or Pico TA467 (insulation testers for EVs/future-proofing).Used Vantage/Vantage Pro (graphing + scope functions).Curien (Bluetooth-enabled multimeter).(11:44) – Electrical diagnostic process:Start with a wiring schematic.Use a scan tool to check module inputs/commands.Stress-test circuits (e.g., load with a headlight for power/ground checks).Leverage relays for centralized testing (control/output sides).(22:48) – Shoutout to trainer Richard Velko.(23:17) – "Flat Rate Test Drive" explained:Monitor PIDs (load, MAF, MAP, O2 sensors) during WOT pulls to isolate drivability issues (fuel vs. restriction).(34:42) – Gaming corner: Elden Ring, Assassin's Creed Shadows, and Days Gone Remaster.(38:53) – Scan tool recommendations for drivability:HP Tuners (budget-friendly, fast data logging).Used Snap-on Solus Edge/Ultra (enhanced OEM data).Shop responsibility (tools should be shop-provided!).Quotes"I don't buy just a pure multimeter anymore... Get an insulation tester. You'll need it for EVs/hybrids." – Matt"The ‘Flat Rate Test Drive' stresses the engine while watching PIDs to split the problem in half." – Matt"For drivability, HP Tuners is my top pick—great data logging without breaking the bank." – MattTools & Resources Mentioned:Multimeters: Fluke 1587, Pico TA467, Vantage Pro, Curien.Diagnostic Tactics: Wiring diagrams, scan tool bi-directionals, current ramping.Games: Elden Ring, Assassin's Creed Shadows, Days Gone Remaster.Scan Tools: HP Tuners, Snap-on Solus Edge, TopDon XTool.Final Thoughts:Matt's takeaway? Invest in versatile tools (like megohmmeters) and lean on schematics/scan tools to avoid diagnostic rabbit holes.Thanks to our Partner, NAPA Autotech NAPA Autotech's team of ASE Master Certified Instructors are conducting over 1,200 classes covering 28 automotive topics. To see a selection, go to napaautotech.com for more details.Contact InformationEmail Matt: mattfanslowpodcast@gmail.comDiagnosing the Aftermarket A - Z YouTube Channel...

Thanks to our Partner, NAPA Autotech Matt Fanslow dives into listener-submitted questions, covering:Multimeter recommendations (why he prefers insulation testers/meggers over basic DMMs).Electrical diagnostic strategies (schematics, scan tools, and stress-testing circuits).The "Flat Rate Test Drive" (a drivability diagnostic trick for load/PID analysis).Gaming picks (Elden Ring, Assassin's Creed Shadows, and Days Gone Remaster).Scan tool advice for techs doing more drivability work.Timestamps:(00:00) – Intro (02:33) – Multimeter recommendations: Why Matt avoids basic DMMs and prefers:Fluke 1587 or Pico TA467 (insulation testers for EVs/future-proofing).Used Vantage/Vantage Pro (graphing + scope functions).Curien (Bluetooth-enabled multimeter).(11:44) – Electrical diagnostic process:Start with a wiring schematic.Use a scan tool to check module inputs/commands.Stress-test circuits (e.g., load with a headlight for power/ground checks).Leverage relays for centralized testing (control/output sides).(22:48) – Shoutout to trainer Richard Velko.(23:17) – "Flat Rate Test Drive" explained:Monitor PIDs (load, MAF, MAP, O2 sensors) during WOT pulls to isolate drivability issues (fuel vs. restriction).(34:42) – Gaming corner: Elden Ring, Assassin's Creed Shadows, and Days Gone Remaster.(38:53) – Scan tool recommendations for drivability:HP Tuners (budget-friendly, fast data logging).Used Snap-on Solus Edge/Ultra (enhanced OEM data).Shop responsibility (tools should be shop-provided!).Quotes"I don't buy just a pure multimeter anymore... Get an insulation tester. You'll need it for EVs/hybrids." – Matt"The ‘Flat Rate Test Drive' stresses the engine while watching PIDs to split the problem in half." – Matt"For drivability, HP Tuners is my top pick—great data logging without breaking the bank." – MattTools & Resources Mentioned:Multimeters: Fluke 1587, Pico TA467, Vantage Pro, Curien.Diagnostic Tactics: Wiring diagrams, scan tool bi-directionals, current ramping.Games: Elden Ring, Assassin's Creed Shadows, Days Gone Remaster.Scan Tools: HP Tuners, Snap-on Solus Edge, TopDon XTool.Final Thoughts:Matt's takeaway? Invest in versatile tools (like megohmmeters) and lean on schematics/scan tools to avoid diagnostic rabbit holes.Thanks to our Partner, NAPA Autotech NAPA Autotech's team of ASE Master Certified Instructors are conducting over 1,200 classes covering 28 automotive topics. To see a selection, go to napaautotech.com for more details.Contact InformationEmail Matt: mattfanslowpodcast@gmail.comDiagnosing the Aftermarket A - Z YouTube Channel...

An episode that's processing all the right ideas!Here's what's in store for today's episode: * In today's advocacy episode, we tackle the beast that is internalized ableism. We all experience it—but how do we overcome it?* Due to the social model of disability, many autistic people say, "But I'm not disabled!"—when in reality, this is internalized ableism at work.* Our autistic meat bodies get exhausted just from processing stimuli and existing. The world is built for neurotypical survival—yet when we struggle, we're met with, “Have you just tried suffering?”* There is nothing wrong with being disabled—but at the same time, a huge part of our success is out of our control and depends on access to accommodations.* It can be hard to find the balance between doing your best and pushing your limits through masking—which, while it may reveal what you're "capable" of, can also be utterly torturous.* Our hosts discuss the dangers of masking to your limits and how it inevitably leads to burnout.* Due to our bottom-up processing, we're constantly taking in way more information at once than neurotypicals. In Uno terms—it's like we're always drawing a Draw 4 card.* We dive into skill regression and how burnout can hit you like a freight train out of nowhere.* In this episode, Matt and Angela discuss internalized ableism, the dangers of masking, and how burnout and skill regression can hit unexpectedly.* Our hosts discuss mourning the opportunities, friendships, relationships, and job prospects lost when burnout hits.* We discuss the subtle discrimination that arises when neurotypicals judge us as lazy or perceive us negatively due to burnout, without understanding the crucial context of our disability.* Coming out of the neurocloset is so important, though it often comes with immense fear of being judged.* In addition to this, we discuss the right to privacy regarding one's diagnosis, considering the judgment from neurotypicals and the fact that certain states, like Indiana, have autism registries—leaving us uncertain about their intentions.* You might not even realize you're autistic until you have an autistic child or reach burnout. The world is definitely set up for neurotypicals, and many people don't realize they're not neurotypical until they examine the systems they've created for survival in a neurotypical-dominant world.* We talk about how internalized ableism fuels unnecessary infighting within the autism community, such as disputes over functioning labels and levels.* Matt and Angela discuss non-speaking autism and how, contrary to neurotypical opinions, AAC devices actually facilitate speech rather than prevent individuals from ever learning to speak.* Guess what? Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs) are actually often just autistic, with it being a rebrand of Asperger's, especially among women.* Internalized ableism is often passed down through your autistic lineage, creating patterns that you need to actively work to break. You may slip up and engage in ableist behavior, but it's important to recognize that and know how to address it within yourself.* Angela and Matt talk about their own autistic children and how, for them, doing the work against internalized ableism means making the world better and safer for their kids, while advocating for them.* We talk about autistic pride and how important it is—be proud that you're a zebra, and don't let the world beat you up for not being a horse!* The more you learn about your own needs, the more leeway you can give yourself—whether it's wearing big sunglasses, turning off the bright lights, using the little spoon, or whatever else helps you thrive.* Accommodating yourself and learning more about your own needs is one of the best ways to combat internalized ableism, build a happy, healthy autistic life, and advocate for the community as well.“Due to the social model of disability, we autistic people are disabled. And if you say, ‘but I am autistic and I am not disabled', then that actually is the internalized ableism.” - Matt“When you think, ‘everyone else can do this, why can't I?' - it's the same as a person in a wheelchair saying, ‘everyone else can use the stairs. Why can't my legs work?” - Matt“It requires a certain amount of therapy & personal exploration to identify, ‘what are my actual limits?' Like, where am I disabled? What are my things, versus where should I maybe not be giving up so quickly on certain things?” - Angela“Every machine has limits. A bulldozer can push more than a Camaro. And if you try to make a bulldozer act like a Camaro or vice versa, it's going to damage either machine.” - Matt “For me, the booby prize of having a major burnout episode is that I can't - I literally can't do it anymore. And I'm like, ‘where did it go? I used to be able to do that. Where did it go?'” - Angela“Neurotypicals look at [burnout] and say, ‘wow, how lazy of him not to be at work for a month. There must be something wrong with him. He must be crazy.' And then there's all sorts of discrimination based on that.” - Matt“We can't come out of the neurocloset and be ourselves if we can't be publicly proud of who we are. We're going to judge ourselves based on this artificial standard. Because if they're going to judge us, we say, ‘then in that case, there's a reason that they're judging me.' Because again, we're very reason-oriented people. We have the data, we have the logic. And it's incredibly hurtful to carry around this guilty secret that we can't say to people.” - Matt“We are the autistic culture. We come from a long line of autistic people. We see the traits better than a lot of neurotypical people with many degrees. We live the life. We know what it is. And we are people, same as any other. We're not worse than other people. We're not better than other people.” - Matt“Don't be so judgmental - of yourself, or others. And I think you'll live a longer, happier life.” - MattDid you enjoy this episode? We dive deep into internalized ableism, the challenges of burnout, and how masking can lead to exhaustion. We also touch on the importance of autistic pride and how to accommodate yourself for a healthier, happier life. In the comments, let us know what resonated with you, and use #AutisticCultureCatch to share your thoughts on social media and connect with other listeners!Related Episodes:Bad Autism DiagnosisReframing DSM DiagnosisReady for a paradigm shift that empowers Autistics? Help spread the news!Follow us on InstagramFind us on Apple Podcasts and SpotifyLearn more about Matt at Matt Lowry, LPPJoin Matt's Autistic Connections Facebook GroupLearn more about Angela at AngelaKingdon.com Angela's social media: Twitter and TikTokOur Autism-affirming merch shop This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.autisticculturepodcast.com/subscribe

Qatar beauty contest........ for um camels Have You Kept Someones Affair Secret? Amy Shark Interview and Performance Abbys Son's Christmas Request Brand New Hyundai GIVEAWAY What's Up With Stav, Abby, & Matt For 2023?.... Subscribe on LiSTNR: https://play.listnr.com/podcast/stav-abby-and-mattSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Agile Coach goes big in its latest episode as Vivek Khattri welcomes Matt Philip, to talk about leading the Agile Transformation in a large organization. Matt has over 15 years of experience in the Software Development industry, and is now the Senior Director for Agile Coaching and Kaizen Lead in Pfizer, leading the company's Agile Transformation.Matt and Vivek will be discussing what it takes to lead the Agile Transformation for large organizations with multiple levels and teams, what challenges you may encounter, and what matters in building an Agile Team. HIGHLIGHTSThe Agile Transformation in PfizerCompanies owning Agile processesChallenges in Agile TransformationAdding value as an Agile CoachCore values in building an Agile TeamQUOTESMatt: “One pattern I've seen across multiple companies, the organization doesn't have the capability to do this stuff.”Matt: “Helping the organization own it, rather than just kind of have something installed on itself, that's the real hard work that coaches, Scrum Masters, and product people do.”Matt: “I try to work at the highest levels, I can't, at some point, you're gonna get frustrated, you're gonna get the resistance. So part of it is understanding how you deal with change.”Matt: “I think a lot of organizations suffer from a lack of psychological safety, organizationally, in teams.”Matt: “For leaders, managers, always be working on yourself first. You know, I realized how much I fail, and how much I want to improve. And so always be reading, always improving.”Learn more about Matt in the link below:Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/matthewphilipWebsite: mattphilip.wordpress.com/Twitter: mattphilipIf you enjoy The Agile Coach and interested in learning more, you can check us out in the Link below:Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-agile-coach-llc

Moon Tea Links: Email us: moonteapodcast@gmail.com Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3iZ4EAqK6TM4olrpjAeVq1?si=xO-AlKidSUiGIWtoTxQHIQ&dl_branch=1 Google Podcasts: https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy82NTlkMTJlMC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw== Anchor: https://anchor.fm/moon-tea - 00:35 Hugh introduces Matt - 2:33 Matt introduces himself - 6:13 Jon: Do you still live in New York City? - 8:26 Jon: How long has Matt been recording his podcast? He's recording his 18th episode! - 9:20 Matt: What's the journey of Moon Tea Podcast been like? - 10:20 Matt: Do we have a specific person we curate Moon Tea Podcast for? - 11:30 If you want a Lunchclub invite, email us at MoonTeaPodcast@gmail.com! - 12:40 Matt: Have you ever done any networking groups before? - 14:20 Matt: Is this podcast G-rated? - 16:00 Matt: Is Lunchclub really AI driven? - 16:30 Matt: What's the difference between Machine Learning and AI? - 18:40 Matt shows his incredible telescope, astrophotography setup - 21:30 Matt shows a photo he took of the Orion Nebula - 21:50 Jon: Is this one of those projects where you buy small then keep buying bigger and bigger camera gear? - 22:45 Matt shows the Veil Nebula → it's an exploded star!! - 25:10 Jon: How did you get started in the astro photography world? - 26:00 Matt breaks down his thought process on how he learns quickly in new topics - example: his Archery rabbit-hole story - 28:50 Jon: So you're into bio-hacking and nootropics? - 30:00 Jon: What are the supplements you've found to have the most benefit? How did you approach this? - 31:15 Matt has run an Ironman! - 38:26 Jon: What changes have you noticed since you've started on this supplement journey? - 41:00 Matt: Red light therapy - 42:50 Matt: White light spectrum therapy for jet lag - 44:45 Jon: What's your travel stack? - 50:00 Matt: For the meditative Muse headband, did you see a corollary between the birds chirping and a meditative state? - 53:30 Matt: The best question is what can you get that gets you to use x more. Not, what's the best? - 57:20 Matt: Why does Dr. Mike swear by the Aura ring? - 59:55 Jon: Hugh mentioned you bought a domain name called, Headshop? - 1:01:50 Jon: Is your web / mobile design company an agency? - 1:02:30 Jon: Which side of the business is more interesting to you? - 1:05:40 Matt: Is it worth poisoning the world by selling an $8 battery instead of selling a rechargeable one? - 1:06:30 Jon: If you have any generic words of wisdom what would you say? - Matt: Ask seven (7) questions, it will change you life! - 1:10:20 Hugh thinks the seven question is better than the five whys - 1:11:20 Hugh: What's your podcast called? What's your astro portfolio called? - Matt: Irreverant health (will be released at the 20th episode recording). No photo portfolio yet, but will open source someday. - 1:12:23 Thanks for listening! Tune in next time, see ya!

A major update coming to WordPress 5.8. Beta release 2 is available for testing now. This release expands WordPress' site building capabilities, along with improvements to features users have enjoyed since the launch of the block editor. The release will also include WebP support which 95% of the web browers worldwide use. Check out the WordCamp Europe 2021 Gutenberg demo narrated by Beatriz Fialho. WordPress Taverns’ Sarah Gooding recaps a discussion with Matt Mullenweg and Matias Ventura “The Block Editor Gets Ready to Become a Site Builder” A quote from Matt: For me, 2020 was the year that really felt like people started to see the vision of Gutenberg from four or five years ago, when it was very abstract and they saw it as kind of like the old WYSIWYG editor with some extra lines on it or something,” Mullenweg said. “The first 17 or 18 years of WordPress democratized people putting text into a box. Now we're democratizing design, allowing people to control the boxes.” This has been another huge project for the WordPress contributors and developers. Josepha Hayden Chomphosy is very transparent on the WP Briefing podcast about how difficult it is to run a large open source project and offers suggestions on how to get a big group of people to come to consensus. Eric Karkovick Editor, Writer & WordPress Expert at Speckyboy covers what WordPress acquisitions says about the future and states that the WordPress ecosystem is maturing and consolidating. “Frankly, it's becoming a lot harder for solo entrepreneurs or small development shops to manage a popular plugin. Supporting a large userbase while also focusing on the future could become overwhelming.Thus, it's not surprising to see that some of these products are being sold off to larger firms. We saw something similar happen with internet providers back in the early 2000s. The more mature the market, the harder it became for a small company to carry out its mission. Pretty soon, they were just about all bought up by corporate interests”. Alex Denning along with Iain Poulson tweeted last week that they have created FlipWP and For $300/year the duo will help connect WordPress product companies for sale, with would-be buyers. If all this talk about acquisitions every day has your brain tangled up, Chris Lema posted a straight forward Twitter thread to bring some clarity to this fast-paced space. There are a lot of discussions about companies (and hosts) acquiring folks in the #WordPress space. Now, new marketplaces are getting created to help you sell your company. All of this is great. But not all buyers are the same, and it's not always about the $$$.

My guest today is Matthew Quale, president of Bask Bank (the only bank to offer American Airlines Loyalty Points in lieu of interest). This is Part 1 of the interview where we dive into Matt's career and path to CMO. Tomorrow we will explore how he grew the Bask business.As a subscriber-only podcast you will need to subscribe to the a private feed to get it in your podcast player. You only need to do this once. Simple instructions here.Transcript:Edward: My guest today is Matt Quale. Today we cover Matt's career and path to CMO. Princeton, General Mills, McKinsey, American Express, MetLife, and Brighthouse. Matt is now the president of Bask Bank and we're lucky to have him here today. Matt, many of my guests had a roundabout path to CMO but yours is more traditional than most. You started your career as a marketing assistant at General Mills. You took on progressive responsibility, but let's talk a little bit about the last two steps. First, you moved from a sales enablement role at American Express to running all the marketing functions at MetLife, how did you do that?Matt: What's interesting is you really do need to think about your career progression and plot out what are the pieces that you need. To your point at a very traditional marketing career, I've done a lot of stuff, print advertising, TV advertising, et cetera. As I was talking to my mentors, one of the things they talk about is you really haven't done enough technology. An opportunity came up with American Express to run sales enablement for the merchant business that included managing the Salesforce instance and gave me access to a tech team. When I think about what really drives the market today, I think about a three-legged stool. I think about data and analytics, I think about core creative, but then, I think about delivery through technology.For me, I felt good about my data and analytics from my time in consulting, I had the core creative. What I didn't have was technology and so much of marketing, particularly during the time on financial services, is that interaction between marketing and sales. For myself, one thing I always talk about is that marketing is a multiplier on sales activities. Having access to the CRM and having access to that tech team was really important for me in terms of actually building that tech muscle because digital is just going to be bigger and bigger going forward.Edward: Did you have the marketing skills to run all of the marketing prior to AmEx? I'm getting to the fact of why did MetLife take a person who is doing sales enablement and put him in charge of everything?Matt: Yeah, and also somebody who is in a different industry, who was an insurance person. Much of this also gets back to relationships and making sure that you are building a legacy, performance, and credibility. I had a boss at American Express who left for MetLife. He called me up and said hey, there's this great opportunity here at Met. He was really the one who introduced me to the opportunity and vouched for not only my market credentials but more of the fact that I was a strategic thinker and a transformation agent. As I went and interviewed with MetLife, who was really coming across was, they weren't looking for a traditional marketer. They've done that. They saw plenty of candidates who are in the industry. They're looking for somebody to really transform the marketing organization, in a lot of ways making more digital. For myself, the heavy technology and the heavy sales enablement played a really big role for them and something that they're very excited about.Edward: How did you develop those other skills? Because you're in charge of more than just moving them digitally and doing sales enablement. Things like branding and performance marketing and all the other things you weren't doing before, how did you pick up those skills?Matt: I guess when you actually take a look at a lot of my career, a lot of branding in places like General Mills. When you're working on brands like Cheerios and Kix, I've done a lot of repositioning work. Obviously, when I was with McKinsey, part of the marketing practice, doing a lot of marketing projects across a wide swath, but at the same time, oftentimes you are doing new things. I'd say no matter who you are, getting that next job, oftentimes your skills you don't have. That's really around building a team. I'll be the first person to say that I don't know every single piece of marketing, I don't have every single skill set, but what I can do is assemble a good team. That team really includes both your agencies as well as your internal folks.Oftentimes, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to hire people who are better at things than I am. For example, even some of the core creative, I ended up hiring some great folks out of P&G and really my other brand came from P&G. I said, look I want to be my creative eyes. I think you're better at this than I am. One of the things I always try and do is trying to figure out where my weaknesses are and how do I build from there.Edward: For MetLife, you became the CMO of Brighthouse. At MetLife, you still reported to a CMO who controlled Snoopy and the blimps, but in Brighthouse, you ran the whole show.Matt: Yeah, I was dot and line at the world of CMO organization for Met. At Brighthouse, we were spin-offs. We talk about one of the largest spin-offs in history. We had $240 billion of assets under management. You're right. I mean, I'm sure there are definitely some moments where the president who became the CEO of Brighthouse said, “Do you need to go out and hire a CMO from someplace else, or do I have the talent internally?”Much about this—I think for your listeners of the podcast—is that a lot of this is about performance over time and making sure you're somebody who's seen as a good team player, somebody who's reliable, and somebody who's delivered. When you do that, people are willing to give you the opportunity for the next step up.Edward: Okay, I want to go back a little bit on your path to getting there. As regular listeners know, I have a theory that things that happen to people when they're 12–14 affect them their entire lives. What were you passionate about at that age?Matt: I think what's interesting is for me, it probably goes back even further. My mother owned an advertising agency and my father was a financial adviser. The odds I'd be doing marketing for financial service firms are probably pretty high. But I think about the things I think about at 12 or 14. This is what came to me in my mind was both doing a lot of strategy games—Risk, Axis and Allies, Roman Conquest—but also a lot of fantasy baseball. These are back in the days where my friends and I would get the box score and every week somebody had to hand calculate everybody's scores. We rotated around who had to calculate across the box scores and give the scores.It was really just this idea of looking at baseball in a different way and thinking about performance in a different way. Often, you had these traditional stats that probably didn't really measure the impact of the players. For myself, I think as I've continued to move into marketing, I've certainly been the kind of person who said, how can we actually make sure this is having an impact? How can we make sure this is having a measurable impact on revenue? I think that's really been something.And then obviously the strategy. All these strategy games are very much about how do you allocate your resources in the most efficient way possible, where do you want to enter or exit that's going to be effective. Much of what you're doing in marketing is really making choices. You're making choices all the time and you need to be able to measure the impact of those choices.Edward: You went to the University of Princeton. How did you come out different than the way you went in?Matt: Well, I met my wife. Certainly, if I hadn't gone to Princeton, I wouldn't have met her. I think what's interesting about Princeton is you're surrounded by a really bright set of students who work incredibly hard. I think for myself, I really had to dig in. Going from high school to college (I think) was quite a shock in terms of both the workload and intensity. For myself, I really had to figure out a way to elevate and raise my game, and I felt good about that. I felt good about the fact that I was able to achieve and do well there. I think in a lot of ways, it taught me a little bit more about how to work even harder.Edward: What would happen if you hadn't gone to Princeton? Say you'd gone to a local regional school instead. How do you think your life and career would have been different?Matt: It is really, really so hard to know how it would have been different. I think I probably would have gone to some of the same places. But obviously, I talked about my wife, and I saw some of my best friends from university times. I think in a lot of ways it's about the relationships. I think I probably still would have pursued the same career in marketing, but certainly having companies like General Mills come to Princeton and recruit gives you a really good opportunity and knock that first job.Edward: Your first job was at General Mills in marketing. Were you looking for any sort of corporate job, or was marketing something you were looking for when you started your job search?Matt: That's funny because I did investment banking in the summer before senior year. The thing I felt about investing in banking was the kind of thing that anybody who sat in that seat was going to come up with the same set of answers. What I really liked about marketing was the choices you made. The choices you made for that brand were very distinct and unique. I think my path, in a long-range, has always been moving to that leadership position, moving to that P&L ownership position. Really, the question was what's the best way for me to go get there? You always want to play to your strengths and figure out where you're differentiated.For myself, even though CFO is probably the more traditional path to getting to CEO, my financial skills are mediocre at best. It was interesting being at business school, where I was pretty average in terms of finance, but things like marketing and strategy were really where I excelled and was able to differentiate myself. I always knew marketing was quite a better place for me to play because you want to play with your strengths.Edward: You left line roles after business school to join McKinsey. McKinsey is known for, among other things, doing a lot of PowerPoint presentations. How did that experience affect your later marketing career?Matt: I think what's interesting is, I really enjoyed wanting these different brands, but at the same time, it oftentimes is very micro. I wanted to take a position where you're taking a look at the company holistically and thinking about resource allocation, cross-functionally, not just within the confines of a single brand, and you're making a different set of strategic decisions. I think what was great about the McKinsey experience was it really teaches you how to think strategically, teaches you how to problem solve, and a lot of ways teaches you how to communicate.We talk about PowerPoint. PowerPoint is just a vehicle. When I work with my team, I'm a big fan of written documents. I don't care if it's Word. I don't care if it's PowerPoint. I don't care about email, but what I've always found is that anything written down ends up getting shared more broadly and also really makes people think. They have to think about what they're going to write down and you end up getting a better response. I've spent time at companies where the written word wasn't as big. It was more just about talking and people walked out of a meeting with a completely different view of what was accomplished versus everybody's lined up around a piece of paper, saying I agree with these words. You've got a lot more alignments.Edward: Amazon argues that you should do that on a Word document rather than a PowerPoint document. Do you have a strong opinion on that?Matt: I definitely use both. I think it depends on the kind of presentation you're doing. I had started moving probably more to a Word document for a pre-read than on the PowerPoint. What I find with PowerPoint is if you're making a bigger presentation, where you're projecting, I think PowerPoint is a lot more effective. The thing that I honestly also really like with PowerPoint is, I was always a big exec sum guy, and you can almost do the entire presentation off of the executive summary. But really, the executive summary is almost just a Word document.Most people don't want to go through all these pieces. When I was a consultant when I moved in and now I had consultants present to me, I'm like everybody else. Who wants to go through a 50-page PowerPoint presentation? You want to go through just a few key pages that are really critical and you want to have a conversation drive some decisions.Edward: After McKinsey, you focused on sales enablement at American Express. I often see a tension between marketing and sales organizations. Was that your experience?Matt: Absolutely. It's been interesting, some of the organizations I've come into where marketing and sales are just completely apart. The word I'd often use is there's contempt between the two organizations. Marketing is off in their silo working on brands, and sales up doing their thing thinking marketing's not helping them at all. I do think as a marketer, you need to take a step back, swallow your ego a little bit, and understand that you need to be customer-backed. Now, this depends very much on the category. I know we're going to talk about the last thing which is really direct-to-consumer, but when you're an organization that's more B2B, your salespeople are really your best channel, really your most effective channel. Instead of thinking about sales as a separate organization, think about sales as one more channel that you need to work with. Really getting the sales team running and working closely with marketing, you get a huge multiplier effect across those enterprises.Edward: How do you do that? How do you get sales and marketing working so well together that they feel like they're on the same team?Matt: What's interesting at Brighthouse is the sales guys are really, really started getting along marketing. What's interesting is when they're recruiting, salespeople say, marketing's our secret weapon. They would actually talk about marketing to go higher. I think the big thing for marketing is your job is to drive sales productivity. When they understand that all you're trying to do is candidly help them make more money, they are on board.  Where we're very successful was launching pilots with sales and then putting it up in front. I always give an example and oftentimes, it's small tactics that work. Trigger-based emails. I talked a bit about how important the CRM is but one of the things that we did was build trigger-based email campaigns. I've never met the kind of guy who's going to say, you have to do this. Instead, I'm going to find a portion of the sales organization that is going to embrace what we're trying to do. We found a group of salespeople who are open. What we found when we did the test and measure was that those people using trigger-based campaigns were selling a lot more than those who didn't. Whenever we have the national sales meeting, I would get up and say, here are three different tactics. We actually put the sales organization in quartiles, those who used this the most versus those who used it the least. You can see those using the most made more money than those who didn't. You find pretty quickly that the sales organization starts embracing what you're doing. You really need to build, test, learn, create that case for a change, and then you go sell it through.Edward: Matt, what were your biggest failure points in your career? Where did things not go as expected?Matt: Much of those moments came oftentimes from external activity, where something happens to you that you're not expecting. When I was at American Express, I was in a strategy role. My leader left. They left the company. When that happened, they decided to shut down our organization. They said you know what? We've built this around the leader. The leader is gone. You guys are all going to be displaced. We got to go find new jobs in American Express. It's one of the things you're not expecting. I think my wife was pregnant at the time. You feel like you're doing good work. Really, what it made me reflect on was the importance of both your network, but also managing your career. A phrase my father-in-law would use was managing your career is as easy as PIE. PIE stands for performance, image, and exposure.Your performance can be great but if you don't have broad exposure across the rest of the organization, you leave yourself in a situation where one person leads, or some situation happens where you're not going to be in a good role. The team that AmEx had done good enough work that we had three offers that day going to a new role. Now, as part of the way we ended up in the sales enablement team. Part of the reason I talk about the team is that some people at AmEx are still working with me 10 years later. Really, what you want to do is you want to build a really good team of folk you work with.Edward: Matt, what are your productivity tricks? What do you do to be productive that most people don't do?Matt: For me, I spend less time thinking about my own productivity and more time thinking about the team's productivity. I think as you get more senior in your career, [...] start getting these organizations that are 100 plus, your productivity is pretty small compared to all those people you have working for you. I really think about three things and it's interesting, but it's very much from prioritization, consistency, and culture. What I've used to great success is OKRs. You're probably familiar with OKRs but laying out the OKRs, the objectives, and key results for people, it really helps people understand what you're prioritizing and what they should prioritize, so they're not wasting motion someplace else.Then, I use the word ‘consistency' a lot, and that is both strategic consistency and emotional consistency. What's interesting is, you can really whipsaw your team even inadvertently, like coming up with different ideas, and you need to let people finish things through. The worst thing for anybody is when they start-stop-start-stop. I remember a lot of times when I was a junior in my career somebody walking into my cube saying hey, we need to do the analysis on what happened in Florida with the hurricane. Your whole day is burned and shot. It's hard to get to those basic strategic objectives.The other thing is just emotional consistency. What's interesting is you hear from people, we didn't want to talk to so and so because we're worried they weren't in a good mood. When people feel safe and secure, and they're not worried about whether or not the boss is in a good mood, it really allows them to go thrive. That last piece then starts playing into culture as well.Edward: This has been fantastic. Thank you so much for your time. We're going to continue this tomorrow with a dive into your experience at Bask Bank. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com

In this inaugural podcast, Regie Routman, author of Literacy Essentials: Engagement, Excellence, and Equity for All Learners, shares her thoughts on what we need to focus on right now during these difficult times. We talk about poetry, about addressing the unique needs of everyone, and how we can embrace “Good is good enough.” Important Links (available on original site only):TranscriptPurchase Regie’s latest bookRegie’s poetry videos: Nurturing Writers in Uncertain TimesRegie’s writing project: A Notebook for YouTranscriptMatt: Thanks Regie for joining me today and this conversation about what's essential right now in education.Regie: Thank you for inviting me, I’m delighted to be here.Matt: This is Regie Routman, author of many texts on literacy and leadership most notably, most recently Literacy Essentials: Engagement, Excellence, and Equity for All Learners. This was a book that we did on the blog as a book study two years ago, and this is the inaugural podcast episode and I couldn't think of a better person to have here then Regie. Regie: Very kind, thank you.Matt: Just a little bit of background: I came into the elementary principal position in 2011. That school was a high poverty school that had already embraced Regie's work. The teachers had said, “You really need to come to the Literacy and Leadership Institute in Madison”. I resisted at first, saying that I have the schedule to get ready and I've got to get the budget square away first and I didn't buy in right away. Once I saw it in action and the teachers were the leaders in the professional development, I just said, “Wow”, this is real, kids are going to be engaged by this, it just makes sense. I went the next year and that's when I met you. So we've been colleagues, friends...I consider you a mentor and I'm very grateful to be able to talk to you today.Regie: Thank you Matt. I think we are equals, we’re educators, we're learning from each other. It has been a joy to watch you change, to watch your beliefs shift over the years in what you find essential now (and this is true for all of us) is not necessarily what we saw as essential years ago.Matt: That's very true. Now, what’s essential now is the big question related to your book Literacy Essentials and we want to take time for that: what you would tell someone in education what we need to focus on right now with everything going on with the pandemic. You have a cool project out now with Gail Boushey on poetry and nurturing writers in uncertain times. When I first saw this come out, Nurturing Writers in Uncertain Times, I thought, “Regie is going to choose poetry,” and you did! Why did you choose poetry?Regie: (laughter) It’s such a good question and really an easy question for me. These times are so different and full of so much fear and trauma for so many people. I was plagued, it kept me up at night, “What can I do to make things easier for families and students and teachers?” The equity issue pulled at my heart as it always does. I’m in Seattle and the public schools are giving out food and books for the neediest schools. I was concerned about kids that didn’t have computers, access to the same literacy advantages as other kids, so I came up with the idea of donating notebooks to these same sites. You can find that at regieroutman.org along with my writing project with Gail Boushey. The idea was to get students pencil and paper, it’s still good technology and to get kids writing about things that matter to them during this time. In all the years that I’ve been teaching, I have found poetry to be the great equalizer. For kids that are struggling, that are having great difficulty with following the rules, they take to poetry like a duck to water. I am talking about starting in kindergarten. The other thing I love about it is, one of the biggest shifts and hardest shifts for people to make in education and the kind of work kids are being asked to do, this is not a time to worry about following the rules, to worry about, “Is their spelling correct? Are they using capital letters?” This is a time to celebrate, and I say that word meaningfully, to celebrate what kids can do and have them soar. Poetry does that. They don't have to write a lot, they don’t have to follow the rules, and it’s very enjoyable. What we’ve done in this video series is to take you through how you might do that at home, as a parent, a teacher, a family member, and everyone is successful, it’s comforting. It’s joyful. It’s freeing.Matt: I found myself engaged while watching, especially when you were writing the poem, “Dandelions”. You said “lowly weed in the world,” and I wrote that down. I wanted to tell you that it was such a cool line that you said, and then you incorporated those ideas with weed and flowers. You mention nurturing and not following the rules, and I think that can cause anxiety for any writer when trying to following the rules when you just want to get words down on paper. Poetry seems to allow for that, gives them an entry point into writing.Regie: And also because poems tend to be shorter, instead of, say, an essay. It can be just a few words. In the video series, I demonstrate my writing process. You can see me do it on the screen, the thinking and the revising, and what’s going on. Writing is hard, and the satisfaction you feel from writing is great. Kids get that. I also love it because you start with the whole. I see that shift that all teachers and leaders have to make for teaching and learning to become joyful and meaningful for all students. You start with a whole poem, a whole idea, I tell the story first, and everyone is successful, even kindergarten kids who may only know a couple of letters and sounds. So I love that. It’s so critical right now.Matt: You base that on something your noticing - dandelions - which gives every kid, that everyone can notice something. You picked out something as simple as dandelions, but you make it into this rich text. Regie: I was very careful. I wanted it to be a neutral topic. “What are you noticing today, or now, that you didn’t notice before?” and to model something positive. I’m noticing the natural world a lot more. We are inside, looking outside, and I am really looking at something as I take a short walk. This is what I call choice within structure. I’m modeling a poem about dandelions (which I’ve never noticed until now), and the message to kids and parents is, “What are you noticing?” They can take that same process and they choose the topic. What’s very important right now is something Larry Ferlazzo says on a wonderful video he’s done through Education Week, to just throw out the regular curriculum and to ask your kids what they are interested in. What do they want to learn and start there. Don’t worry about the skills in isolation. I think some of the things we need to be concerned about now are kindness, being kind to ourselves, to our kids and families we are working with, and making whatever we are doing with them relevant. Easy - this is not the time for complex projects. I think putting people first. In Literacy Essentials, in the engagement section, that is where we need to start. I have four parts there: developing trusting relationships, accelerating learners, creating a thriving learning environment, and teaching with purpose and authenticity. This is where we can start, with this home-school connection and what parents are doing with their kids at home. You’ve got to set up a culture in your home, in our virtual classrooms now that allow for that kind of trust and celebration and purpose. A lot of that is offering choices and being a really good listener. What is it that they need? Keeping close relationships with the kids and their families. It’s hard.  Matt: You mentioned the home-school connection. I am meeting with staff in weekly meetings; we’re making them optional. They are noticing that kids are not as engaged as much right now and I think people are feeling some sense of, getting worn out and not noticing what's going well. So I think that's just really an important point of involving the families and how to create that structure together and noticing what's going well. Regie: That’s really hard to do. I was noticing in a New York Times article recently on the front page that parents are having a very hard time teaching their kids at home. They didn’t know that teaching was so hard.Matt: For any family that has thought about homeschooling, they are getting a real experience right now. Although I feel for the families trying to juggle jobs and homes, or parents who are unemployed. They are dealing with unique stressors right now.Regie: This is a hard time for parents. I don't know if your teachers are doing this, or for that matter even for you to do, it would be great to just start each day or each lesson with a read-aloud. Even if you're teaching high school, to pick a book that allows you to talk about it and to jump off and write something about it to just start off with something relaxing. Kind of a beginning to the learning day. One of the books that I like is Be Kind. It is a picture book by Pat Zietlow Miller about kindness. It would take less than 5 minutes to read it and then I might ask the kids to reflect on what's a kind act that someone did for you or that you did for someone else. Let’s talk about that. Let’s write about that. If there's a way for you to do some demonstration writing in front of the kids, do that because that's really helpful too, the kind of modeling that you're expecting. Matt: What you did in the videos is such a cool example, I shared that with my staff yesterday, where you pulled up your whiteboard and you had a picture in picture. You were talking as you were writing, at the same time, and they can see the process of writing. You could see poetry kind of in action, the development of it. I think that's a simple shift that I think teachers could do in keeping things manageable enough for kids and for themselves. Regie: I think what's really important there is that there wasn't a lot of planning for me. I talked about the fact that writing is a recursive process that it's not linear. So when I was done with that, I was really done because I was revising it as I went along. I was re-reading it, I was rethinking, I was talking out loud, and I think it's important for kids to see our thinking. That thinking aloud and seeing our struggle that we go through, that it's not perfect, and that that's okay. Matt; Yeah, listening to kids, like you were saying, and having a conversation about what they're noticing and with kindness and even doing some shared demonstration. My wife, she teaches special education, and she was dictating a letter to a friend they haven’t seen in awhile since we've gone to remote learning. Doing it in front of him and putting up the whiteboard, there’s a lot of options that I think your video, as well as the conferring conversation with Gail, it was just a cool example that anyone can do tomorrow, today. Regie: I think so and that's really why I love poetry and I think it’s really a great way to start a lesson. In fact, I thought it was quite interesting that, in the New York Times which I read every day because I am from New York, the national desk now, when all the reporters get together and talk about what they are going to write about, they start by reading aloud a poem every day. And so I thought that’s just wonderful to read that poem, to get people in the mood, and relaxation, and the beauty of words, settling down, to soothe your soul before you have to do this hard work. I think that's such a great way to start a lesson. So the read aloud could be a poem and it could be a poem that you’ve written together, perhaps as a class. That’s easier in some places than others. I also like poetry writing because if you just have paper and pencil at home, you can do that, you can put together a poetry anthology by stapling papers together. It could be a writing record, it doesn’t have to be poems, a writing record of what you did during these uncertain and difficult times. I think the hardest thing is to keep the celebration and joy part of whatever it is you’re doing - as a principal, as leaders, as teachers, as kids, and how do you do that and bridge that digital divide. That is why I like poetry. The other thing I would say is I think this is hard to do but I would include in my lessons every once in a while, “Let's talk about gratitude, we’re all struggling, we’re tired of being indoors, but what are we grateful for?” Maybe writing a letter to somebody telling them how much you care about them. Or even, if you can do this, especially where not all the kids have computers or a hotspot, actually writing a letter to each of your students. At the elementary level, I think that's doable and enclosing a stamp and having them right back to you. I think that whole connection, we need to keep our kids and family socially and emotionally whole, which is so difficult to do and to put that before any mandated curriculum. Matt: I couldn’t agree more. That leads to what’s essential right now for educators. You’ve mentioned celebration and stopping and being grateful. I’ve tried to do that with team meetings, starting with what’s going well, or checking in. One teacher yesterday shared that a fox family had taken up residence on their property. She was sharing pictures and it brings in those positive experiences and what’s going well right now. You mentioned parent involvement. What else is essential right now for us in education? Regie: I think that those are the most essential things, that we do right now. Our social and emotional well-being, the strong connections with families and listening to where people are kind of at. Making sure that the curriculum allows some choice, asking kids what do you want to learn about right now and being adaptable. Not worrying so much about tests. I just read recently, which I thought was great, a professor at Stanford University who was, up until the last minute, was going to give a final to his students, decided it was just too much. Everybody was in an emotional state including him. So instead of a final, he had each of his students submit a photo of something from the natural world and that was the final. They were gorgeous, of sunsets and a bird or maybe just the way the light hit a tree, and they posted all of those photos for all students in the class to see and that was, I thought, just terrific. Anything we can do to help people feel successful. Sometimes it feels like the world is ending. We are going to come out of this eventually, but we want to help families and kids come out of this as whole as possible. And then finally Matt, and this might be a good place to end: Years ago when I was teaching and I would go into a school and the teachers were always, you know how we are, we have high expectations, that's great, but I never heard a teacher say “You don't have to do anymore. It’s fine as it is.” But it’s always, “Improve, improve, improve”. When I left one of the residencies, I had a teacher give me (I have it on my wall) this huge necklace that was handmade with paper. It says on it, “Good is good enough.” That was the message they took away which I was thrilled about. We are all trying to do the best we can. We need to slow down, breathe, find moments of joy, do the best we can, and accept that our families and student are doing the best they can. Good is good enough. So, I wish everybody peaceful days during these very hard times. Thank you Matt for this opportunity to talk with you. I appreciate our friendship and collegiality so much.Matt: “Good is good enough.” I am going to write that on the cover of my journal.Regie: I am going to send you a photo of that. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit readbyexample.substack.com

Connect with ClearDATA on the Azure Marketplace: https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/apps/cleardatanetworksinc-4386736.cleardata_comply_self_service?tab=Overview Matt Ferrari is the CTO of ClearDATA, a company that serves the mission-critical system needs and regulatory requirements of healthcare organizations. As part of this discussion, we shared how their partnership with Microsoft, their use of Azure, and the Azure Marketplace has empowered them to scale and grow their business. Connect with Matt: Web: https://www.cleardata.com/ Twitter: @cleardatacloud LinkedIn: ClearDATA Networks Microsoft partnership opportunities for healthcare partners: HealthcareIndExp@microsoft.com Contact Avrohom: Web: https://asktheceo.biz Facebook: AvrohomGottheil Twitter: @avrohomg Instagram: @avrohomg INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS: [00:36] When it comes to digital transformation, healthcare has typically been slow to adopt Cloud-based technology, due to the many industry regulations around data privacy. What are some of the challenges that healthcare companies encounter when trying to innovate on the Cloud? [01:42] Three key changes that happen inside the public cloud in a healthcare environment are: (1) Regulatory Changes (2) Application Changes (3) New features & capabilities inside the cloud [02:44] The biggest challenge for healthcare organizations when migrating to the cloud is how do we embrace all these public cloud technologies without having these capabilities in-house? [03:17] A lot of the capabilities that the public cloud brings now, will accelerate the way healthcare organizations leverage their own in-house talents. [03:53] ClearDATA recently launched a new offering called ClearDATA Comply. What is it, and how does it support healthcare innovation? [06:42] How would a healthcare provider use your solution with Azure? [08:31] How can customers find out more about the ClearDATA Comply solution, and procure it through the Azure Marketplace? Matt: You can access it via this link: https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/apps/cleardatanetworksinc-4386736.cleardata_comply_self_service?tab=Overview. [09:01] How has partnering with Microsoft helped ClearDATA scale and grow your business? [10:58] How can people find out more about Microsoft partnership opportunities for healthcare partners? Matt: For more information, you can send an email to HealthcareIndExp@microsoft.com. [11:21] How do people connect with you? Matt: You can visit our website at https://www.cleardata.com/. You can also follow us on Twitter at @cleardatacloud. [11:37] Do you have any parting words of wisdom that you’d like to share with the audience? [11:37] The public cloud plays a key role in healthcare. #AskTheCEO with Matt Ferrari

Mike: Hey, welcome back to another episode of Liberty Revealed. I'm Mike Mahony, your host, and today I have a guest with me. His name is Matt Plautz. He's the 17-year-old host of Unfazed with Matt Plautz. His podcast focuses on current events comedy, philosophy and various subjects that guests bring in. So please welcome to the show, Matt. Hey Matt Matt: Yeah thanks so much for having me, Mike. Mike: How are you doing today? Matt: I'm doing great. Just excited to get going and talk a little bit about what we were talking about with Howard Schultz and everything like that. Talk about some independent candidates in just 2020 in general. Mike: Sure well before we jump into that, you know since it is Super Bowl Sunday when we're recording…Patriots or Rams? Matt: I'm Patriots. I got a patriots jersey in my closet right now. I am a Bears fan, but they never make the Super Bowl so I usually root for the Pats and I've got Pats by seven. Mike: Alright, awesome. Yeah, I think it's gonna be a good game, that's for sure. So, we'll see. So, so yeah, you mentioned Howard Schultz and I mean, that's been the the big uproar in the media. You know, everyone's afraid that Howard Schultz is going to run as an independent and taking votes away from the democrats, that he will help re-elect Donald Trump. So what are your thoughts about that? Matt: Well, first of all, I mean, I think it's a little ridiculous that everyone's attacking him for running as an independent when he is an independent. Like, what else would he be running as? He was a former Democrat, obviously, but he no longer aligns with the Democratic Party in terms of, you know, free college for all he doesn't agree with, as far as I'm aware, free health care just doesn't think it's affordable. So when your party has shifted, people leave the party. It's just like, you know, you wouldn't expect someone to continue to vote for the Democratic Party if their opinion has changed on it. So I mean on that side of things, I just think it's a little unfair for everyone to be so accusatory towards him when really, it's just, he's still very against Trump. Whether you like Trump or hate Trump, you can't say that Howard Schultz is trying to help out Trump in any way. And I don't think there's any guarantee that it really would help Trump because personally, I've worked on the Republican side for a couple years now, and I know a lot of Republicans who are agitated with Trump and I know a lot of Democrats that love him. So there really is no way and that just as you saw with 2016, deep diving and analytics doesn't really work anymore because people are extremely unpredictable with how divided our nation is right now. So I don't know I think they're being a little bit unfair. What about you? Mike: Yeah I completely agree with you. I think that third party candidates in general get bagged on and you hear how if you're voting for a third party candidate, and you tell somebody if they're Republican, they claim you're going to help get the democrats elected. And if you're if you're a Democrat, they claim you're going to help get the republican elected. And like in the last election in 2016, I personally voted for Gary Johnson and I was told by both sides, you know, you're going to help the other side get elected, you're going to take votes away. And I asked them well, you know, you like a Democrat, you're assuming I would have voted for Hillary Clinton. I'm gonna tell you something. If I was forced to vote for either I wouldn't have voted. So you know, there's no you can't use this, oh, you'd hurt my side, because both sides think that and there and they're both wrong. I mean, the most third party candidates, and that's what I find really interesting about Schultz is he saying he's not just saying he's going to run as an independent he's going to run as a centrist independent, which is, if you're, you're too young to remember this guy. But you probably heard the name Ross Perot Matt: Did it didn't he didn't Ross end up getting about like 15% in some states? Matt:Yeah Mike: He definitely affected that election. But it was because he ran more on as a conservative independent and so he, you know he made that, he created, you know, a situation that they're claiming Schultz is going to create. I don't think he will. I think if he runs with a position in the center he's going to have a good chance of getting a lot of votes but he's going to pull them from both parties. That's the key thing that I think they miss. Matt: Yeah. Did it didn't he, didn't Ross end up getting about like 15% in some states? Mike: Yes, yes I mean, he did quite well but of course, Matt: Yeah. Mike: You know, a similar situation to Schultz, he was a CEO of a major tech company. He had a lot of money to burn and I mean, that's, you know, money and politics is another topic for another day. And maybe you can come on another time and we can talk about that, but for now, I mean, I think. Matt: For sure. Mike: It's known that one of the weird things about our country is, you know, I think it was Thomas Jefferson that said, you know, we should avoid political parties and you know, I think he was right. I think political parties…what it does is you get some people who are automatically against Donald Trump because they're democrat and then you get some people who support anything he says, because they’re republican rather than, you know, I've gone through the last two years as a libertarian. I've gone through the last two years going well, okay, I like that idea. Oh, I hate that idea. I can't believe you said that. I'm all over the place with it, because he's all over the place. And that's how it should be. But then you get the people that are like, in lockstep and I know they're intelligent people because I know some of them personally and you just say how is it that you miss like, like, how do you feel about this wall that he wants to build? Matt: The wall well, yeah, just before I talked about that a little bit, I 100% agree.What I always say is that you get entrenched with a two-party system you're forced to check a box that you stand slightly closer to and then everyone gets mad at you if you check that box was oh you agree with this that he said. No, I don't! I was forced to choose one of them because there isn't a viable third party and, so yeah, that I totally agree that it's a broken system I don't know that parties are unnecessarily the problem, maybe they are, maybe they aren't, but I think the lack of choices it's just not representative to the population, you know? You have people that couldn't check republican or democrat and that's why there should be four to five parties maybe even more maybe less. But and with the wall, it is it's a hot button issue and I can go either way on it. I understand both sides because you on the Democrat side of things, their reasoning for not wanting the wall is mostly financial saying that it's not worth the dollars spent..And then there are also those further to the left that just think that it's inhumane. Um, I think there's definitely an argument to be made if it's worth the money or not if it would actually be effective and depending on what side you are, they're going to say one thing or say the other, but I think it's a little ridiculous, the inhumane part, because in my opinion, it just…it's not inhumane to keep people out of your country when they can come here legally whether or not the system's broken,you know I don't actually know too much about that because everything every information you're getting they're trying to nudge you one way or the other so it's really hard to truly know how broken the system is, but to say that it's inhumane to try and keep border security, you know, talk to the people that are that are being raped, and being murdered and stuff by people that we didn't get a chance to vette and I don't think that all illegal immigrants by any means. I don't even think the majority of them I think most of them are coming here because they want abrighter future, but you know, they can come here legally. And the argument I've always had is because I'm actually I leaned away and the wall that's one of the things I do like about Trump, because he's so adamant about border security. I always say, you know, regarding illegal immigration, it's just like, for me, you know, it's, it's way easier for me to just hop on the highway and never take driver's education never have to go get my license at the DMV, because God knows no one wants to go to the DMV, you know, it'd be way easier to do that. But in a society, there are laws that may inconvenience you just for the sake of the general population safety and if we need to vet people, we need to vet people if you have a problem with that, you know, I think that maybe you should look at going somewhere else. That's just my personal opinion. What about you? Mike; Well I mean I kind of have a kind of a hybrid libertarian view on this issue i think that you know first of all, let me tell you, my wife is from Canada and we've been going through the immigration process herself. And the first thing I'll tell you is it's extremely inefficient Matt: Yeah Mike: .We've been in the process for quite a while now. And we still don't have it. We we've been told there's an interview date been picked and that it's being sent to us. But you're talking over two weeks ago, why does it take two weeks to process a letter that goes, you know, from maybe I think it's coming from Chicago to Orange County. Matt: sounds like getting approved by iTunes Mike: right? It's exactly like why Why does it take so long and And not only that, I mean, we spent over $5,000 on the process. And I mean, imagine if, you know, I'm lucky enough to I'm running multiple businesses and making good money. Imagine if I was making $10 an hour How do I afford the 1400 dollar filing fee to get her here? And so I think that what we need to do is we need to be Matt: Yeah Mike: Give people a pathway that if they want to come here and work that they can do that with a work visa, where we vet them, like you said, and we also make sure then that they're paying their income taxes because you know what, they don't pay their income taxes, we can revoke their visa and have them sent out of here. But I also think that it comes down to this there if there's going to be an immigration system at the federal level. And I don't think we're ever going to see that go away. And if that's where it's going to be, then they need to have it so that the pathway to being a legal immigrant is affordable and something you can have helped doing if you don't if you know, that's one of the things that's lacking. Like if you don't have you don't understand something you call the immigration people and they'll mostly tell you, well, you're supposed to check this box and you're supposed to make sure that this is filled out, but they can't really give you advice should you fill out this form or this form and there needs to be someplace ever I mean, I don't know how it is in every state, but I know in a few states I've been in the court systems have helped centers that people are there volunteering their time to help you so that you are able to avail yourself of your rights and of course as a libertarian personal freedom and liberty it's huge for me. So I think if they could they could fix that. Then we get to the point where and this is where I think I part ways with libertarians because I feel Remember I said if they don't pay their taxes we can revoke their reason and get them out of the country. I think we need if once we've had an affordable system that makes sense the people can understand and actually have a legal path to work here. Then we need to be like Australia where you don't you overstay your visa they send somebody out to find you and support you and attach a penalty to it you're banned for three years you can apply again for three years I think what would fast happen is we would be would make a lot more revenue in the immigration system because you know, it's it's a volume thing more people going to going to apply legally and you're going to you're going to make that that money but also you're going to have higher tax revenues because you're you're getting people in this country who really want to work and they want to take these jobs and I don't know they it seems like we should allow them to do that that's just the where I where I go with it and i think you know as far as I my stance on the wall is i think it's it's it's extremely expensive and I think they need to use a system like we have on the Canadian border on the Canadian border we have technology there's electronics that if you walk across the border it goes off and they and it'll trigger infrared cameras that'll turn on I mean they can find you if you're you know trying to tempt into the country illegally the wall I mean they're going to go around it they're going to go under it. They're going to go I mean right away. The joke was if it's a 50-foot wall, someone's gonna make a 51-foot tall ladder. I don't necessarily think they'll climb the ladder to go over it but you know they're gonna they're gonna find their ways yeah you know they're gonna they're gonna find their ways and I think we it may just be too much money especially since there are areas of the border where the terrain it won't allow someone to cross so don't have a wall there..Yeah, you only have two choices. Matt: Yeah. And so. So when I say that I'm I'm pro wall. I think it's just because I'm forced to. Like I said, that's the problem with the two party system, you have two choices. And the Democrats, they want to say that they have no word for border security. They're not really doing a whole lot about border security and they don't want to and that's very clear for risk because because they receive a primary amount of the votes that come from that, but that's a discussion for another day, but it's um, it's a little unfortunate that you're forced to check one of the two boxes, which is almost no border security or border security that I don't think is the most effective and I've always agreed with the argument that well, the wall isn't the most cost-effective option on the wall isn't X, Y, or Z, that those are legitimate arguments. What I have a problem with is when people come in, and you know, they, they try and instead of doing a logical appeal, they use an emotional appeal. And that's my problem is because I've never really been a recipient of emotional appeal because, you know, it's not the best way to do things. You know, if you make a decision based on an emotional reaction, it's usually not the best result. And so I think the discussion that should be had is not and I understand Trump's angle Trump wants to build a wall because it's it'd be very hard for the Democrats to undo that to justify undoing it because once the money is spent, that's what we have, you know, taking the wall down wouldn't make sense it'd be very hard to justify so I get that angle of it. But at the same time, it's you really have to think about is technology a better solution? You know we have drones we have all kinds of technology we could be using to our advantage we just need to figure out how to make that a permanent solution and also how to fix the system it's similar to taxes you know you should tax people when we tax the rich far too much they just load all their money the Bahamas you have to find the right percentage where people will actually be willing to get taxed. So we need to fix the immigration system like we try to fix the tax system is where people it's easy enough for people to come. But we also can at least attempt to filter out the bad ones, you know that we have to find some type of a sweet sweet spot where it's effective. But also like you said, I didn't know that type of angle from the Canadian perspective. And I'm similar. I'm sure it's similar to Mexico because one of my friends had an immigration problem as well. They had to move back to Mexico for like a year to resolve it. So it is it is a broken system.we do need to figure out how do we fix it as opposed to just not doing anything so like like I said it's that's what's important about a third fourth fifth and party is so that we can have other ideas then just build a wall or do nothing it's a two extremities is what it is MIke: Yeah I agree with you and I think like how do you think someone like let's say Schultz were to run and by some miracle he were to win. So now you have, you know, probably a democrat-controlled house or a Republican-controlled Senate, and you have an independent president in the middle. How much do you think that would affect the outcome of issues like this? Matt: I think the the opinion that Schultz is a true centrist is I think it's a little bit skewed because if you look, you know, he's a lifelong Democrat I think it would be similar to like having a 2000 democrat or 2004 Democrat in presidency..He would probably lean towards democratic issues but the the more radical progressive you know Alexandria, Kazuo Cortez Bernie Sanders type of thing I don't think those would be I don't think he would fight for those but the more moderate type of you know Nancy Pelosi would do very well I think if that makes any sense in a Schultz presidency she tries to be progressive but we all know that she was a moderate and she's just switching with the times to keep on staying relevant I think it would lean democratic to be completely honest and then everyone's know on maybe tax issues he'd lean a little more conservative from what I've been able to understand he he's not a huge fan of taxes but he thinks Trump's tax cuts were a little extreme you know top heavy whereas they should have been towards the middle class which I honestly agree with you know if I could have chosen one or the other I as a libertarian with some conservative beliefs as well not a big fan of taxes i live in Illinois one of the most tax states in the nation and I can tell you people are fleeing out of here so we have to find like I said a sweet spot with taxes as well where people are not you know loading out there money to the Cayman Islands to the Bahamas. We need to find something that people are actually willing to pay and it's it's a truly fair and balanced tax, but that's difficult. Mike: But ok so like one of the things I read is the you know, they actually think was Fortune magazine said well you know maybe he can maybe he could help fix this country because you know he's a corporate he's been a corporate executive he's run a large corporation Starbucks of course but then isn't that what they said about Trump? Matt: yes and no, um, I think the fact that Schultz wouldn't carry in very many. You know, opinions. He's not the most he's more of an open minded whereas Trump it's kind of my way or the highway. And some people love that. Some people hate it. I'm not trying to reprimand or trying to praise him for that. But I think that's pretty obvious that people love Trump because he's so close minded and the people hate him for that reason so but I think Schultz is that the type of person that will listen to both sides I almost think that he would be easily influenced for bad and for good just because he he is so open minded but he is a smart guy at the end of the day obviously you can't be where he is today but I think it's kind of interesting that the the democrats primarily are attacking him so much for his success when he came from almost nothing he's he's quite honestly living the democrat you know, the dream of coming from nothing and becoming something but it's a he's being attached..That and I think that's why the democrats are almost losing their mold if that makes any sense. Mike: Well, I think like I was you were saying that I was thinking about how if you are a third party candidate so you know, of course of the major third parties that makes sense and have a big, big enough numbers to make a dent in a run for president, you're talking about either green party or Libertarian Party and the problems that they have getting elected is people say, Well, okay, if I had voted Gary Johnson and is the president he goes into office with no allies on either side. I disagree with that, by the way, he goes in there with no allies. I think that's too simplistic of a concept. Matt: Yeah. Mike: I think that he would definitely have allies because I think what it would do is it would force Congress and Senate to start thinking long term and start thinking about the best interests of the people they represent. Rather than their party line because they're going to have a president who's going to say, Well, okay, the Republicans, you're thinking about the solution this way yours is a democrats your solution is be but like my solution is see kind of a hybrid of a and b. So now what are you going to do? And I think what will happen is for the first time in a long time, you would see kind of that bill clinton cooperation where, you know, Clinton I you know, despite his moral issues, I think he was a pretty darn good president and he he managed to speak to both sides of the aisle and convince one there was an important issue and he needed some support on the on the left, he would go after it when he needed support on the right he would go after and I think that's what you would get with more of a third party slash independent president is someone who would pull support from both sides so that what passes would be something that the majority of our country would buy into. Matt: Do you think people want that though? Like, I mean, I want something similar to that, that I feel if you go on Facebook or Twitter, which obviously isn't necessarily representative to the the small towns and all that. But if you go on Facebook and Twitter that doesn't seem like something that people actually want, they like to pretend like that's what they truly want. But is America in a situation where we truly want cooperation or or do we just want my way or the highway and let's switch for years of being selfish and crying when we don't get what we want. Mike: Well, yeah, you make a great point because I'm very active in the California Libertarian Party. And as a side note of that there's a person that I've met here locally who runs a… well he calls it a Liberty club but it's essentially a chapter of the libertarian party at a city level and he there's a city here in Huntington Beach California you know the Beach Boys made it favorite famous and it's his club meets there and we just had a meeting this past week and they're sitting there talking about how a lot of them were saying hey you know what, you know I wasn't really I'm not a big fan of Trump's tax cuts but it was a step in the right direction and they say that but what I've said and even have an episode out of liberty revealed I think that the libertarians and I do think pretty much every party is like this they're more of a political cult than anything else they they have an ideology and that's what they want and I always tell them like okay guys I understand what you're looking for you're looking for the utopian libertarian society but the reality is you're never going to get that ever it's not going to happen so you need to do is you need to get yourself elected using reasonable ideas. And then once you're elected, show people how you can govern. Like, for instance, I ran for Orange County Supervisor this past election cycle. And one of the things that I told they kept saying, Well, how are you as a libertarian going to make a difference in the county? I said, Well, the first thing I would do, I've reviewed the staff numbers, and they have like, 25 staff members, and they're spending $4 million a year each office that's $20 million on five districts offices a year that, hey, I could probably cut that down to five people per office. So I would reduce the size of my staff and they said, Well, what does that show it? What if it works? Well, if it works, it means we can also reduce the size of government because we just proven that we can do the same job just as efficiently with less people, which thereby saves a lot of money which means that money is available for either cutting taxes or using the money for something like homeless people.It's think that you have to be more pragmatic in your approach and that's the problem you know if you're a republican your your problem I mean, of course we're speaking in absolutes here and absolutes are never you know realistic in society but you're right i think if you were to do a poll I would say more than 80% of Republicans fall in line with the Republican platform and more than 80% of the democrats fall in line with a democrat platform and even I'm going to say 80% of libertarians 80% of Green Party members I think the majority fall in line with the platform and the don't bother to think about the real world implications of the decisions they're trying to force on society and with libertarians it's kind of ironic because I'm not sure if you're aware of this but like when you become a a dues paying member of the Libertarian Party. One of the things that you initial says you will not use us or support any idea that imposes its will by force on anyone So you know you have a non aggression principle and it's great it really is but at the same time they're trying to force their ideology on everybody by saying we're there's one guy I met at convention last year who's running for president and his he says that he'll be the shortest term president ever because he's going to get into the office and then he's going to eliminate the federal government ask yourself you really think the republicans and democrats and house and senate are going to say oh yeah sure let's just eliminate the government we don't need the government anymore and and and that's where it comes down to being more like a cult because they're they're only thinking about their ways the best way I mean if you've ever I don't know if you're religious at all but like religious cults they all say the same thing our way is the way and and so that's what it is you know political party Our way is tthe way and I think really That way is a mixture of all of the ideologies Matt: Yeah, it's actually really interesting how the Foundation of America was, you know, the, the popular phrase is a melting pot. But the thing about a melting pot and I said this on my podcast, too, I'm in a melting pot. Nothing can just remain solid. You can't, you can't entirely remain solid and everything else melts. No, I'm gonna keep my beliefs everyone else you all be open. I mean, you'll be open minded to me. But I'm not going to be open minded to you. I'm not going to understand your opinions you know we all have to mount and I don't think that was necessarily talking about race. I think that was talking a lot about ideology, and in the the foreshadow of this type of thing, I think they knew that something like this will eventually happen and… Mike: So I've really enjoyed this conversation. I think. I think we're in agreement actually more than I thought we would be. So why don't you tell people where, where and how they can find you. Matt: Yes. So I'm on almost every platform, iTunes, Stitcher. Google podcast will be on YouTube next episode and you'll just look up, Unfazed with Matt Plautz. I've got an Instagram at unfazed.podcasts and I'll talk a little bit about politics current events, I'm going to be having guests such as you know as well.Mike said I'm going to be having I'm going to be doing the cardinal sin of having a pastor on that I also want to have a lot of other religions on and just talk a little bit about philosophy and how they look at other religions I think would be interesting and also might be able to get some state representatives possibly even a congressman on so it's gonna be a lot of a lot of everything almost I don't have a set theme you know I'll talk about politics one episode then maybe comedy one episode it's just really whatever is going on and yeah Mike thanks so much for having me Mike: Do you have a website? Matt: we don't have a website yet I host on PodBean right now Mike: I'll put that in the show. I'll put that in the show notes and I encourage my listeners to go listen to and subscribe to your podcast. unfazed and definitely follow you on social media and I I've got your social media links I'll put those in the show notes as well and again it's been a pleasure having you on and I'm sure we'll follow up and have you on again in the near future Matt: Yeah thank you so much Mike: Alright well this has been another episode of liberty revealed If you or a friend or family member wants to find out a little bit more about liberty just go to https://YogisPodcastNetwork.com/libertyrevealed it's all there for you and we appreciate you listening.

Matt Medeiros continues Season 8 with the roundtable format asking the question is there change in the WordPress ecosystem?  John Turner and Phil Derksen are the special guests that share what significant changes they have made in their careers and what they see in the  WordPress ecosystem. Listen to this episode: Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners Why exiting solopreneurship is the right move Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 00:47:53 Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:47:53 John Turner joined Awesome Motive through their customer accelerator portal to help his company grow. Syed Balkhi, Awesome Motive's owner,  suggested that John join the company as a partner since his product and strategy aligned with Awesome Motive. (3:10) Phil Derksen recently joined Sandhills Development LLC after running a one-man shop company called WP Simple Pay, which is a stripe payment and subscription program.  Sandhills Development, LLC  has a whole suite of products that was founded by Pippin Williamson. (4:20) What you will learn in this Episode: Startups in the WordPress economy were easy to start as a fully bootstrapped business. It can be a roller coaster ride of going solo and joining a company, then trying to go solo again. (6:48) John – Worked for 6 or 7 years and did not feel like he was continually growing. When the opportunity became available with Syed and Awesome Motive John decided to give it a try and take the growth to the next level. It was difficult where the uncertainty and change is concerned, but he is excited to be a part of the company.  (7:48) Phil – Phil had many happy customers with his product and support. Although he had a level of comfort with his company, he did not feel like he could release the features that customers were requesting. For example, EDD could offer many things that his product couldn't do. Phil had one product to focus on, but it was distracting to jump from being a developer, then marketing and support. It is exciting to work with a team and see the growth of the products. (11:11) Product Growth – Marketing or the Product Alone? Phil – Product features and planning for the future is critical. Then the focus needs to change to marketing to get the word out to the customers. (11:59) John– Marketing is the most important focus and the lesson to learn. You can have an awesome product, but you need to have the time and focus on marketing. (12:23) Matt – For people to scale their business they need to market their product successfully and make more money. It takes a lot of time and money to do marketing correctly.  (13:41) Marketing John – There is no magic bullet when it comes to marketing. When you find out what is working you need to concentrate on it. When your business is small, you don't have a lot of money to spend on marketing. You need to focus on one or two channels (like Facebook and Content Marketing) and focus on what is working for you. It could take awhile. (15:19) Phil – Phil has recently spent money and time on content marketing. Finding what works and knowing that changes over time are important. It is tough to get noticed with new plugins or themes on WordPress.org. Sandhills Development has a marketing team that reaches out and promotes products. (17:19) Matt – Some businesses try a blanket approach with marketing and cover too much. The person in the WordPress Community that is doing marketing well seems to be Brad Touesnard from Delicious Brains. His company does a great job with their brand and content marketing. Pagely is another company that does a great job with their quality and material. Phil: Chris Badgett at LifterLMS does a great job with content marketing and his podcast concentrating around learning systems. John: LifterLMS has very focused content with their brand and audience. The material has intent. Content Marketing Focus: Matt – Content Marketing is very expensive and very hard to do as a business owner. If you are preparing webinars and podcasts, it takes a lot of time when launching a podcast. It can be hard to produce quality content consistently. (19:54) John – To test the market in the WordPress space getting on WordPress.org is the best place to start and get some eyes on your product. It is essential to focus on the product name and reviews. You need to start somewhere and then figure out how to rank it. (21:03) Phil  – Some people go to the content route first without a free version of their product. Phil likes the podcast/YouTube style. Joe Howard has started the WPMRR Podcast and focuses on monthly revenue. When you find something that is working, you can double down on it.  While you are adjusting your approach, you should be concentrating on your email list. (22:09) John – Many niches are very competitive in the WordPress space. You need to build up the business and take baby steps slowly. It is not easy. (22:53) Matt – There are two sides to this. You can try to rank in WordPress. org. But as competition starts to grow, some new business owners find they start too late with the ideas for marketing. One great idea is to leverage customer stories with a podcast and repurpose the content.  (24:21) Forecasting the Future of WordPress: Matt – WordPress is becoming more competitive, and pricing in the marketing is still a challenge.  How is pricing changing in the WordPress space? (26:07) John – Many themes and plugins have gone to automatic subscription. Many customers are renewing without a discount in subsequent years (especially with hosting or SaaS products) (26:46) Phil – Larger companies can adapt to charge more because they have a reputation and support behind the product. The customer can count on them with staying power. (28:04) Matt – Prices in the space are tiered for support for products. Customers seem to value the product and as an end user, they see the value. (28:50) John  – Customers are buying the products and making money. There was a positive response from his customers with his joining a larger company. Phil – There were no complaints coming from customers when features were released and annual subscriptions were occurring. SaaS products seem to do this annually. Phil got a great response from his customers when he joined Sandhills Development. They were excited with the partnership and the solutions that can be offered. (30:32) Balancing User Requests and Feedback: John:  He would produce a yearly survey to stay on pace with his customers including the feedback that he received over the year. Every feature that you include will be a support burden down the line. (33:16) Phil – Sent out a survey as well as tracking support requests that looked like new features. Phil collected responses all year and weighed those requests with what it would take to develop and support. Phil was very cautious about adding features while trying to not take any feature away. (33:59) Monetization with Gutenberg and WordPress 5.0 John – Waiting to see what happens after the release. There seems to be a lot of opinions about what will happen with the newest release. (35:47) Phil – Is expecting support to be overwhelmed after the release. Documents and videos will help people with the release. WP Simple Pay will not be that impacted. The page builder and themes could be impacted but uncertain by how much and in what way. (36:36) Matt – There are a lot of folks jumping into the opportunity around Gutenberg with an opportunity to sell to customers. The release seems to be a way to create a SaaS around WordPress.org. With Jetpack enabled you will be able to remind the customer about what is coming and create upsells. (38:45) To Keep in Touch: John Turner: Hooked on Products Podcast Twitter – @johnturner seedprod.com Phil Derksen: Twitter – @philderksen Phil Derksen   Episode Resources: Awesome Motive MemberPress Formidable Forms Syed Balkhi Sandhills Development, LLC EDD Affiliate WP Restrict Content Pro Sugar Calendar Delicious Brains Pagely LifterLMS LMSCast WPMRR Jetpack To Stay in Touch: Watch the panel discussion on Matt's YouTube channel. To stay connected with the Matt Report, head on over to mattreport.com/subscribe. If you like the show, please leave a 5 Star review over on the Matt Report on iTunes. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this second episode of a two part series, CEO and Founder of StartEdUp, Don Wettrick continues on how innovation in the classroom creates disruption in the business world. He's also a Noblesville High School teacher and host of The StartEdUp Podcast. ---- Do you have a question? Looking to get help on a business decision? Know a great guest for our show? Email roipod@iupui.edu so we can help your organization make better business decisions. ---- Ready to take your next step? Check out if a Kelley MBA is right for you: https://bit.ly/35aeAfZ ---- Show Notes: MATT: Welcome to another episode of the ROI Podcast presented by the Indiana University Kelley School of Business, I'm your host Matt Martella joined by, as always, Associate Dean of Academic Programs, Phil Powell. Before we dive into this episode, I just want to say, thank you to everyone who has shared our podcast on social media and with friends. We work hard to help organizations make better decisions through our weekly content. And if this is your first time joining us, we just want to say welcome. If you enjoy our podcast, we would really appreciate it if you left us a review on iTunes. ||ROI PODCAST MUSIC|| On this episode, we're continuing with part two of this two part series with CEO of StartedUp, Don Wettrick who is working to change education by leading and inspiring teachers and students with innovation and entrepreneurship. PHIL: Last week Don took us inside his classroom where he carefully teaches students to think for themselves. It's not about receiving a grade in his class to graduate, it's about creating innovation among his students. He also shared some incredible success stories from his students. If you missed the first part, I highly recommend you go back and take a listen because Don sets the foundation for today's topic. Today, Don's helping us apply what he teaches his students – innovation as the breeding grounds for success. It all starts with educating ourselves well past graduation. Don Wettrick: Refocus on what your education even is; even if you're 46, I'm 46, right? That's the one thing I love about being in this class, on most days, I'm the dumbest person in this room. My students, collectively, know way more than I ever will. So I'm constantly... we use this term way too much, but I'm a life-long learner. And I also spot trends. And I want to be a part of that. Therefore, and I'm not bashing people, like, I'm mortified that people will brag about the fact that they've binged watched a season of, fill in your favorite show over a weekend. I'm like, why? Why? So I'm looking to improve or get left behind. Watching Game of Thrones, season one through five is just stupid, in my humble opinion. If you're filling your brain with positive things and things that are going to move you forward, you're going to be ahead. And that's not compliance based, that's just me wanting to be better. But the whole.. my thing I can't stand when you hear this around graduation, "I'm outta here!" That's signalling that you are done learning. There is nothing more toxic in our society than you being done learning. Right? So if you are 46, if you are 56, you can constantly upgrade, you can constantly re-invent yourself, and by the way you should. Because there are a lot of things that are scarily going to go away. And if you are than, you are going to be ahead of the game. MATT: Yet, innovation and education cannot thrive without failure. Don Wettrick: This is my favorite thing to talk about. I'm going to give a metaphor. Asking a kid, if they had to buy a video game, a video game now costs $75 bucks unless it's Fortnite, which is free, which it's not free but... If they spent $75 bucks, and they beat the game on the first try, they would hate the game. Because there's no failure! People like failure. Like, when we ask a girl to dance, and every time we got a yes, that's just straight up boring. There's no challenge in that. We like failure - we just don't like it in school. And this is my whole point of the whole compliance thing, are we here to learn? Or are we here to comply? I remember when I was in college, there were two types of professors. There was one professor that, he was a little bit free-spirited, let's say and that everybody got an "A" and you were there to learn. Or there was the guy that said, "hey, this class is going to be tough but it's going to be worth it." The drop/add period, no one wanted the professor that challenged you! Because you weren't there you learn, you were there to get a grade and just get a degree. That's scary! Now again, I got away with that in 1995. That's different. So the whole approach failure I then, again that culture build? Hey, what are you here for? By the way, my grading is based on their reflections. They tell me what they deserve. And they usually don't B-S me. By the third or fourth week, they know you're not going to B-S me out of it. So if you're like, I deserve an "A," why? And then you tell me why. But that failure has got to be a part of it. No one ever first released a product on their first iteration. Actually it wouldn't be an iteration if it's their first try, but you get my point. It's got to be a part of it. And once you get that off the table, like okay, let's all breath, it's ok if this first line of code doesn't work or if your first event didn't get 100 people to show up to it, that is version number one, it's cool. MATT: For some, we wrestle with, “well, I was not born an entrepreneur, therefore I cannot start…” fill in the blank. But Don disagrees. Don Wettrick: There are some born entrepreneurs, I'm sure. And there are risk takers. But I'm going to quote Adam Grant. I really liked Adam Grant's book, Originals. Opening chapter is the kids, the college students that started Warby Parker. They all had backups. They were all going to take really cool jobs if this Warby Parker thing didn't work out. And I think that there's this misnomer that the total "Maverick," the total screw it all, I'm going all in, putting all the chips in the middle of the table as an entrepreneur. The measured, careful, "I'm going to be prudent about this" is also an entrepreneur. So it can always be trained. I shudder when people think, "I was a born entrepreneur." They're made as well. There's a difference between imagination and creativity, but then there's a difference between creativity and innovation. Imagination you think it, creativity you start doing it, right? If it's really creative and totally new or at least totally new to you, now it's innovative. That is our priority one. Starting them to see opportunities and starting to see things in a different light, that is needed in today's workforce. Workforce, as in you're working for somebody else. I'm cool with that. However, in that innovation process, if they're like, "Wettrick, I'm onto something." That is when the pressure's off. I don't force them to be entrepreneurial, but that's when we have some time to say, "okay, now let's go through lean start up, let's go through a canvas method, let's go through Gantt charts," you know, pick your poison. Once they have that entrepreneurial mindset and some skills, then they I gently encourage them to pursue it. And then that's kind of what our foundation does, I can get into that later, but you know I started looking into, alright, let's look into seed funding or see if you can boots strap this or etc. But again, I don't force them to be entrepreneurial, I just encourage it if they get to that level. The fun part is that sometimes they're in the later stages of life and they have some capital and they can hire my students. One of the things we have coming up here we will run an analytics and several other things. We're going to go out and help small businesses. I'm actually getting small businesses approaching us, which is a great thing to have. But I'm like, "okay, be on standby. I would rather my students go and find you." I don't want to like, "you get this company, and you get that company." I'm telling them, go out and find it. Just the other day, I went to a restaurant in Indianapolis, which I won't say who they were. It was a fantastic experience and no one was in there. I'm like, what the literal hell. And they're like, "we hope more people will talk about it." I'm like, "what's your Facebook page? What are you branding? How are you marketing? Do you incentive anybody that checks in on Snapchat?" - "What's Snapchat?" - Oh my God, come on! $5 in ads will increase your traffic. My kids can go and help that business right now. So I'll get in these strike-up conversations and I'm like, "Here's my number, call my students." But I'm trying to train them to do that. So they can start reaching out to the place that makes the wonderful cupcakes but they're in their 70s or the new business that just opened down the street and they sell whatever. I want my students to go, "Hey, I've been working on this stuff in class. Can I put it to use?" And that's a great thing. Again, I don't expect them all to be in business or be entrepreneurial, but just helping them just gives them and insight and awareness on how to make things better.    MATT: And it's up to us, organizational leaders, to identify innovators, then come alongside them in mentorship. Don says we also need to knock down the walls that hinder innovation. Especially in the education world. Don Wettrick: My first instinct would just say, get them out into the real world while they're in class. I think that there's a lot to be learned in theory. There are certain things you have to learn, but there's also a lot of the experiential that isn't going to be in the classroom, ever. So the more you can find mentorships, the more you can collaborate, the more you can help other, smaller businesses in Marion County, Monroe County, wherever would be beneficial in my opinion. And then also, and I don't know what your guys's policy is, take away the I-P thing. That is one of the things that have changed here in my 2nd year of this class. And for full disclosure, this wasn't at Noblesville. But the high school where I was at, our students wrote a book and put it out on Amazon. And it wasn't going to be a best seller, but it was starting to sell some books. And they were like, "hey, where's our royalty check?" I'm like, "what do you mean?" And they're like, "well, the students wrote it on the school's computers, right?" - "Yeah" - "On school time, right?" - "Yeah" - "By interviewing other students, right?" - "Yeah" - "That's our check." Legally they're right. So Noblesville, man I'm living the dream here, anything the students come up with here, it's their I-P. So that's my beef, I don't know the policies of Kelley, but that is my beef with a lot of colleges. If you come up with something on university time, the university owns it. That's gotta end. And by the way, a lot of times when your students go on to be really successful, they'll write a nice check anyway.   MATT: Innovation is not simply inventing the next best product. Innovation happens within our branding – both organizationally and personally. Don Wettrick: And lastly, everybody, and this is my Gary V. moment, every company is a media company. Every person is their own media brand. I think if you are 56 you can re-invent yourself. You can stand for something. Whether that's through your church, whether that's through your works, your hobbies, your passions. If you're really into smurfs comic books, you could be one of the most authoritarians on smurf comic books, seasons one through eight, if all of a sudden you wanted to grow and brand that. You can stand for something and there's never been an easier time than now. So if you're 56, 66, 76, 26, you can still start learning and pursuing those passions. PHIL: (CLOSING REMARKS) ||ROI PODCAST MUSIC|| MATT: So let's recap. As leaders, Don says we need to refocus our education – we need to stay hungry to learn and looking to re-invent ourselves because we will either improve or get left behind in this world. Next, people enjoy failure – not all the time, but in doses. We want the challenge of learning how to succeed. Videogames are dull if they don't have moments of failure. Just like success is not sweet if we don't have that hero's journey of overcoming obstacles. Don then explains that entrepreneurs and innovators are not simply, “let's go all in” minded. Some very successful innovators have amazing back up plans in case their ideas fall through. And great news, one is not simply born an entrepreneur, we all have the ability to learn how to innovate. Finally, our organizations and individual likeness are brands. No matter our age, no matter our organization, we possess the tools to re-invent ourselves and stand for a deep held belief. As always, we want to thank you for listening. Our goal with each episode is to help organizations make better decisions. This has been another episode of the ROI Podcast presented by the Indiana University Kelley School of Business. I'm your host, Matt Martella alongside Phil Powell. We'll see you next week.

We speak with TEFL teacher trainer, manager and serial observer Matt Courtois about what you (as a teacher) can do to survive (and possibly even learn from) your next observationTracy Yu: Welcome to the "TEFL Training Institute podcast," the bite‑sized TEFL podcast for teachers, trainers, and managers.Ross Thorburn: Hi, everyone.Tracy: Today we've got our special guest, Matt Courtois.Ross: Hi, Matt.Matt Courtois: Hey, how's it going?Ross: Good to have you on.Matt: Yeah, thank you.Tracy: Finally, we've got Matt on the show.Ross: Matt, do you want to say something very quickly about who you are and what you do?Matt: Yeah, so I work for a large online education company. I manage the training team there.Ross: Great. I wanted to tell you guys about something that happened to me a couple weeks ago. For my job, I had to film a lesson. It was the first class I taught in a little while, and before, I was so nervous.I was having trouble sleeping the night before because I was worried so much about what I was going to do in my lesson. It really got me empathizing with how teachers feel when they get observed when they teach. All of us got blasé about observing people.When I was just filming myself, there was no one else even in the room. I was really, really, really nervous about it. I thought what we could do today was talk about, if you're a teacher, how can you survive your next observed class?What are some things that you might do differently when you're being observed to what you would do normally?Matt: Cool.Tracy: We've got three parts. The first part is what can teachers do before the observation, and the second?Ross: What can you do in the observation, and finally, Matt?Matt: What can you do after the observation?What can teachers do to prepare for an observed lesson?Ross: Before the lesson, I don't think we need to talk so much about planning. We have done a whole podcast on that. What are some other things maybe out with the plan that you think teachers need to do to prepare for an observed class?Matt: I was thinking about classroom things that you can do before the lesson. There's such easy things you can do. Getting the seating out of that lecture‑style seating, and just put it into a horseshoe, like know how many students you're going to have. Have your board work planned, have a nice layout prepared.Ross: Section off the board before you come in?Tracy: Yeah, or something really basic. Check the marker, is it working, and the lights, air conditioner, computer.Ross: Computer, projector because in a regular class, if those things break down, it's no big deal. If they break down in an observed class, it can be a disaster. You've got an hour to show your stuff, and you spend five minutes of it looking for a new marker, then that can be quite disastrous.For me, one of the most important things a teacher can do before the class is know what's expected of them. Pretty much every time I've observed has been slightly different standards or a slightly different form.If you're being observed, you need to make sure you know exactly what you're being assessed on. Some places I've worked, it was like at the beginning of the class you have to write the aim on the board.If you don't do that, you get marks off, or at the beginning of the class, you have to go over the homework with the students, and you have to set homework at the end. There has to be interactions between the students in the class.Tracy: Yeah.Matt: In my company now, I spent a long time creating the rubric to observe teachers on. It's true of every company. Your observer is there to make sure you're meeting those standards.Ross: In an ideal world, they should have sent that to you beforehand, but if they haven't, then you should probably ask for that, and find out what exactly is expected of you.Matt: That's a fair question. Most observers would probably [laughs] give it to you, it's not a surprise. It shouldn't be.Ross: For a lot of courses, and even when I was a manager as well, a standard procedure was before the class, the observer meets with the teacher. They say, "OK. Can you tell me what you've got planned today? Can you tell me about what's in the plan?"Do you guys have any tips for things for teachers in that pre‑observation meeting? What you would tell them to do or not to do?Matt: In the lesson itself, as an observer, I like to see teachers responding to the students who are in the classroom and not sticking to the lesson plan exactly as they prepared for it.You're teaching the students in the room, you're not just going through the lesson plan. In that pre‑lesson discussion, it's great if the teacher can show they have spent time thinking about those individuals who they'll be teaching, if possible.I'm thinking about those questions. When I'm asking questions of the observees before the lesson, a lot of times people view it as accusations, like I'm trying to steer them away from doing this, and I'm really not. I don't think any observer does that.Ross: I remember getting that advice as a new manager, "When you have that chat, don't freak the person out and question them." I would guess that's quite a common thing.Matt: You're saying it was my fault?[laughter]Ross: In that situation, you don't want to start second‑guessing yourself in the 11th hour, right before you go in. Probably best to stick with what you've spent time preparing.What should teachers do during an observed lesson?Ross: For during a lesson, it's easy to just talk about all the things you should do in any regular lesson. One of the biggest differences for being observed is you're likely to be nervous.One of the problems of being nervous is you end up talking faster, you end up talking more. What are some ways around that do you think?Tracy: Standing in front of the mirror, and see how their body language is. It's definitely going to affect how the student is going to ‑‑ or the observer ‑‑ perceive you as a teacher. If you feel nervous, maybe you can just take deep breath.Make sure that you break the long sentences into small sentences. Always remember you pause between different [inaudible 6:40] . Give yourself a few seconds to think about what you are going to talk about, what you are going to say to your students.Ross: For me, I try and do, in those situations where I know I'm going to be nervous, I do the power poses in the bathroom. Did you guys do that?Everyone's seen the TED talk of that, where you stand in the Superman pose or Superwoman pose, or whatever it is. You try and get more testosterone through doing that.Matt: I've tried it out. It might work for you, Ross. It's not my thing. [laughs]Ross: You're sitting like that now, so...[laughter]Ross: I always find, for me, that helps with the nerves. One of the main problems that teachers have in classes is, we always say, "Teach the students, don't teach the plan."You want to be responsive to the learners. That's so much harder if you're being observed and you've spent a lot of time on a plan. You can feel really invested whereas, normally, you plan something and it's like your shopping list on a bit of paper.Matt: The lesson you observed me on, Tracy, in the dip, I remember. I planned all the stuff, I got pictures of my students and stuff like that. A lot of them were absent from the lesson, and I just went with the lesson. I was frustrated, because I'd spent so many hours working on this lesson plan because the way I reacted to this change was not good.I don't mind if students don't get everything or if an activity doesn't work, but if the teacher reacts to that poorly in the lesson ‑‑ if they're visibly upset about it ‑‑ that's not good. [laughs]Ross: I find that often happens with stuff breaking. I can remember doing it myself as a trainee, showing this video, and the video stuttered and didn't play, then it threw me off. Remember afterwards it was like, "How did the lesson go?" I was like, "Oh, the video!"I find so often when you ask teachers afterwards, "How did the lesson go?" and they're like, whatever it is, "Oh, my PowerPoint didn't work!" You're like, "As the observer, I hardly noticed that."Those seem to be the things that teachers often fixate on. The tip is to not worry about those things. They're probably not as big of a deal as you think they are and just move on.Like you say, if you let it get to you, and you show your frustration, that's probably likely to have a much bigger and a much worse effect than the actual thing not working in the first place.Matt: The worst thing you can do is [laughs] say anything remotely aggressive in ESL classroom...Ross: Again, that's probably something you might not normally do, but because you're under bit more stressed and pressured, then you're probably more likely to do that than normal maybe, right?What can teachers do after an observed lesson?Ross: Let's talk a bit about after the lesson. The standard thing you're expected to do after a class is, usually, they'll give you some feedback, but often they'll ask you some questions first about how the class went, what you might do differently. Any things that you guys would advise teachers to say or not to say?Matt: Again, from the perspective of the observer, having asked reflective questions to trainees before, my thought going in to that as the observer is that I'm trying to train the teacher to think about their lessons and reflect on their lessons a little bit.I'm not trying to get the teachers to say, "This was the best lesson ever, the worst lesson ever." I'm trying to get them to think about it, and teach them how to do that after every lesson. The teacher is responsive to that, and is trying to do this reflective practice stuff, that's what I'm looking for.Tracy: I would say care about the quantity less than the quality of the things that you felt did really well or didn't work very well. For example, you might have, I don't know, 10, or 20, or even 30, 40 different points on the observation form or anything.You really don't have to cover all of them, it's impossible. You always can find something to work on. Just look at a couple things that you want to talk about in depth.Like Matt just mentioned, being reflective, not just go, "Oh, I didn't do really well, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, until 10." We want to hear. Point one, why it didn't work, how students reacted to it, what would you change?Ross: The key point there is prioritizing what were the most important things. You can always find things that went wrong.Another point leads into that is if you have ‑‑ and pretty much usually you do have ‑‑ some time between the end of the lesson and the chat afterwards. It's so important to use that time to take notes, and to decide what the things you are going to speak about.I see a lot of teachers who just, after a class, just sit and hang out with the students or something, or if the lesson's running over, they'll just keep teaching. You're like, "That's such an important time to spend and take some notes and get ready."One other thing I wanted to talk about was the cycle coming right round, which is usually after you've been observed and you reflect, and you might write your journal. You probably get some feedback from the tutor.At some point, you get observed again, maybe by the same tutor or the same manager. My final point on this ‑‑ with the squaring the circle ‑‑ is that when you come to teach the next class, that you look back to the notes from the previous class on what you got told that you can improve.Matt: In a perfect world, you're looking back at those notes periodically before the next observation [inaudible 12:26] . These are skills that you're actually developing in your everyday teaching rather than just for observations.Ross: Did you have a system for that after you did get that feedback?Matt: I don't have a system. Have you ever heard of this, there's a psychological term called rumination. They associate it with depression. This is not a cry for help.[laughter]Matt: It actually refers to a cow having multiple stomachs, and that it digests food several times. I find that I have this habit whenever I receive feedback ‑‑ especially critical feedback ‑‑ I go through that again, and again, and again. It's good for improving yourself. It's bad, maybe, for depressive people or whatever.[laughter]Matt: For a teacher, you should be critical of yourself sometimes. You should be thinking about ways you can improve, having that second opinion of that observer and what they had said, if you can ruminate on that, it's really helpful.Top Tips for Surviving Your Next Observed LessonRoss: Quick wrap‑up. What's your top tip for a teacher that's about to get observed tomorrow?Matt: It infuriated me when I had a manager who gave me this tip after an observation, but I actually like the tip. Be yourself. Be comfortable. If you're funny, be funny. However it is that you need to relax and be yourself, do that.Tracy: Just relax if it didn't go really well and just look into it. See what you can do and what you need to improve. How about you, Ross?Ross: We didn't really touch on this earlier, but it would just be know the one thing that you want the students to get out of the class.Tracy: Matt, thank you very much for coming to our podcast today.Matt: It was my pleasure, Tracy.Tracy: Thanks, everybody. Thanks for listening.Ross: Bye, everyone.Tracy: Bye.Matt: See you.

Nasir and Matt discuss whyAmazon seller accounts are getting suspended and banned without notice and how business owners can rectify this situation through a Corrective Action Plan. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. We’re attorneys here with Pasha Law PC, practicing in California, Illinois, New York, and Texas. Welcome to the podcast! NASIR: Yeah, and this is where we discuss business in the news and add our legal twist. Today, we are talking about Amazon.com. MATT: Never heard of it. NASIR: And how they’re… No, no, no, it’s a website that sells stuff. MATT: Okay, eBay. NASIR: Apparently, all these guys go on there and they sell stuff but Amazon is apparently terminating or suspending some of those sellers’ accounts somewhat arbitrarily – hundreds by the day, apparently. MATT: Let me just do a quick rundown here of kind of what’s going on. NASIR: Please do. MATT: I was just joking, for people maybe listening for the first time. NASIR: I think they know that you knew what Amazon was but sorry to interrupt you. Literally, yesterday, I was thinking about it because I knew we were going to cover this today. I think it was around 25 different packages from Amazon – no exaggeration – and the reason is because – I think I’ve talked about this last time – we were expecting so we had a whole list of things that we’re buying and we’ve been waiting for a while just to figure out because we’re also moving and we’re like, “Let’s just go ahead and buy it now,” so they all came within 24 hours so I picked it all yesterday. A couple of packages are arriving today still. MATT: Was that Amazon Prime? NASIR: Yeah, it was Amazon Prime, two-day shipping. MATT: Yeah, contemplating getting that myself. We’ll have to talk after this to see. NASIR: We’ll discuss it afterwards. MATT: For those who aren’t as familiar with Amazon… NASIR: Those of you who don’t live on Planet Earth. MATT: Amazon has thousands of third-party sellers who utilize their marketplace as a storefront – something which I imagine probably have actual storefronts as well but, for the most part, this is mostly eCommerce. And so, some of these small businesses as you alluded to are saying that their accounts are being suspended with little notice and very few options of recourse and what some are calling arbitrary suspensions. A recent conference for online entrepreneurs and sellers in Seattle pitted the sellers against Amazon with hundreds of vendors and merchants expressing their concern over these suspensions, nothing that they live in fear of being unable to sell on their site, and we’ll get into why that’s an issue here, because you might think, “Well, it’s just one site, why not sell somewhere else – like their own site, for example?” But Amazon, it’s a very impactful site for these businesses. A recent Wall Street Journal interview, a vice president of Amazon said, “Sellers reporting an average of 50 percent increase in sales from when they joined Amazon’s marketplace and used its storage and shipping services.” Pretty substantial. NASIR: Yeah, and they’ve made it so easy for sellers to enter into this because, if you think about it, if you have something to sell, not only will they take care of the merchant processing but also the inventory cracking, the shipping, even the storage. In fact, Amazon prefers you to ship your supplies to their fulfillment center so that, as soon as someone purchases it, they can easily ship it. Not only do they make it easy for you, you also get that marketing available that you wouldn’t get if you just had your own website. So, it makes sense. MATT: Yeah, I think that’s kind of the default spot – one of the default sites – people go to buy something. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: These business owners that are affected by this are saying they’re losing hundreds of thousands in sales – which could definitely be the case for some of them – due to ...

Nasir and Matt discuss the allegations of American Apparel intimidating and silencing employees from complaining about the company and talk about guidelines for employers in making social media policies. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our business 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: The Staub and Pasha Brothers are here. Why is that so funny? MATT: You’ve never mentioned that ever. That’s kind of funny. NASIR: I don’t know. I was just trying to think, like, what are we? The duo? The Staub-Pasha duo? MATT: The duo, yeah, I guess. NASIR: Yeah, I guess that makes more sense. MATT: Not to get too far off track but you know what I’ve always found was really weird, and you might not have ever even seen this, the commercial for State Farm – I think it’s State Farm – one of the insurance companies. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: Do you know who Chris Paul is? He’s a basketball player? No? Okay. NASIR: I have no idea. MATT: It wasn’t a question to the listeners; it was a question to you. He’s a player in the NBA and the whole thing is Chris Paul and Cliff Paul were separate. They’re twins and they’re separated at birth. It’s Chris Paul wearing glasses, you know. NASIR: Oh, okay, yeah. MATT: It’s this whole thing, it’s like, oh, they were separated at birth and they were adopted by different families and they’ve lived different lifestyles and then they meet each other or something. I don’t understand why they have the same last name if they were both adopted through different families. NASIR: But, wait, are they really twin brothers? MATT: No, it’s fake. It’s him and then him wearing glasses, basically. NASIR: So, even their fake story doesn’t make sense because why would they have the same last name? MATT: Exactly. NASIR: Sometimes, you know, it’s not abnormal for the adoptive child to keep their own name, too. Perhaps that’s what it is, Matt, since you think you’re so clever. MATT: For both of them? NASIR: Yeah, both. MATT: The odds of that happening. NASIR: Maybe that was the condition of the adoption. MATT: I guess, but they were… NASIR: I actually did take a course in Columbus Ohio on adoption law, very interesting. MATT: Oh, I bet. NASIR: If anyone needs an adoption, don’t contact me just because I’ve taken a course. It doesn’t mean anything. MATT: Well, I don’t have a good lead-in for this. NASIR: Yeah, what’s your transition here? MATT: Maybe we’ll adopt this story or something. I don’t know. We’re dealing with American Apparel which, I believe, is a nationwide store. NASIR: I’ve heard of it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. MATT: I went there once and I bought a shirt but it’s very slim-fitting – not my thing. NASIR: Maybe you should lose weight? MATT: Yeah, that’s true. Well, maybe that’s why these employees that work for them are upset with all their slim-fitting close, that’s probably not even all slim-fitting either but whatever. Anyway, basically, what American Apparel is in the news for is that employees are upset with the company and that happens all the time but American Apparel is taking it a step further and there’s been two complaints filed in the last, as of today, when we’re recording it’s been the last couple of days, but it’ll be a week by the time this comes out. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: But it’s saying that American Apparel is allegedly intimidating the employees and trying silencing tactics, preventing these employees from discussing their transgressions, I guess. You know, some of these employees have met off-site after work hours and have just been, you know, kind of complaining about things there, and American Apparel actually sent, one of the people said, they were accosted and interrogated. But the company sent security to this off-site meeting of people gathering and, according to the complainants, intimidating them and telling them to be quiet about voicing their complai...

Nasir and Matt end the week by discussing the accountant who got fired from his job after a dispute he had with Comcast. They then answer the question, "We just brought on our first set of employees. How should we structure their pay to make them happy now and not have it backfire long-term?" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our business legal podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. We welcome your questions and we will give you the answers and this is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: Now that we’ve got that intro out of the way, let’s start our episode. MATT: The hardest part of every episode is the intro, I think. NASIR: For who? For you or for me? MATT: For me, it’s easy because all I do is say my name but that’s… NASIR: Ah. Then we’ll try it again with you one of these times. I know last time we tried it, you messed up horribly. MATT: I don’t know if I’d say “horribly.” NASIR: I know you wouldn’t say that. MATT: Let’s see. So, we have an interesting story for today, for this Friday episode. There’s actually a lot of detail so I don’t think we’ll be able to go through all the details, all the facts, but it’s pretty interesting kind of what happened. I’ll try to give as brief a summary as possible. So, this guy signed up with Comcast, as most relationships like this begin, some sort of promotional deal. So, he went with that. This was back in the beginning of 2013. Of course, we wouldn’t be talking about this story unless there was a lot of issues involved. So, like I said, this guy signs up with Comcast. There’s all these issues. They think they’ve misspelled his name so that was one thing so he was not getting bills. You know, all these different surcharges that are mystery charges that are coming up, blah blah blah, you know. Eventually, he tried to back out and, you know, a dispute back and forth between the two of them, it goes on and on. One way or the other, they found out, I guess, it looks like they might have searched online to find this out but they found out where this guy worked for and he worked for an accounting firm. And so, like I said, there’s a dispute back and forth between Comcast and this customer. At some point, Comcast actually reaches out at calls the partner of his accounting firm that he works for and kind of just informs the firm on the situation. One thing leads to another and the accounting firm actually ends up firing this guy soon thereafter Comcast calls them to inform them that he’s got some issue. I think they tried to bring ethics into it. So, that’s basically where we’re at. I mean, there’s been a couple of updates. I think Comcast has since kind of apologized – no, no, I take that back – they apologized for their bad billing services and all that, but they didn’t apologize for eventually him actually getting fired. So, from the accounting firm’s perspective, this is a bad decision, right? NASIR: From the accounting firm’s perspective? MATT: Yeah, from the accounting firm’s perspective. NASIR: Well, their reasoning of termination was because somehow they were under the impression – which, of course, the employee denies – that the employee used his firm’s name as basically saying – look, I’m challenging this in behalf of them in the sense that they have their employer’s backing them. Somehow, he used his employer’s name in a way that was improper from the employer’s perspective and it’s unclear exactly how he could have done that and why. He probably mentioned, “Hey, I’m an accountant at this firm and I went through this accounting process to go through all these charges that you mishandled,” and that’s probably what really happened. But it’s unclear the exact reason why the employer did this. I don’t know if you mentioned it – I don’t think you did – that Comcast is actually a client of this accounting firm. MATT: Oh,

Nasir and Matt talk about what to do when someone outside of your business takes control of your social media. They also answer the question, "Who can sign off on an agreement for a specific type of entity?" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is… Matt Staub. MATT: Oh. NASIR: And Nasir Pasha. MATT: I would like to be introduced first one time, I guess. We’re only 89 episodes in, it’s still yet to happen, but… NASIR: One day. MATT: You never know. Actually, no, the one time you weren’t there, I introduced myself first. NASIR: Oh, that’s right. MATT: I forgot about that. NASIR: Oh, because it was a best of episode. You like to talk about that time that you did it by yourself. That’s interesting. MATT: It was only, like, a minute long at most. NASIR: All right. Well, welcome to the business law podcast. This is 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. MATT: Or you can send direct tweets or direct messages through Twitter @askbizlaw. NASIR: @askbizlaw. MATT: I wonder how we got that name. It seems like that would have been taken. NASIR: I was going to put ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com or @smartbusiness but it was so long and I didn’t want to put the acronym because that didn’t really look right, and “Legally Sound” was too long too or something, I don’t remember. MATT: Yeah, we left out. NASIR: Yeah, it was a good one. MATT: So, what do we have on the docket today? We’re talking about Facebook. NASIR: On the docket, I like that. MATT: Yeah, and we’re talking about Facebook likes specifically. I know our Legally Sound Facebook page has hundreds of thousands of likes because we’ve paid lots of money for that. NASIR: About a dollar. MATT: No, just joking. NASIR: All international. MATT: Let’s talk about in the story $500 for 10,000 likes, it seems like a good deal, I guess. NASIR: I think that’s for US likes, though, right? MATT: For $500, you get 10,000 likes in the US. There’s a cheaper rate for international. NASIR: What does it matter where it comes from if you’re just paying for likes? It’s still just a number. No one can see – or maybe they can, I don’t know. MATT: Anyways, well, I guess we’re not getting off-topic because that’s kind of the story here. NASIR: Let’s not talk about Facebook likes anymore, that’s off-topic. MATT: Who owns these Facebook likes? That’s really the question that it comes down to and this all came about because I guess there was a show that was on BET which I’m not really familiar with the show. NASIR: Called “The Game.” I’ve never heard of it myself. MATT: The Game, yeah. They started a show, it went off-air, but their Facebook page lived on and they ended up getting two million likes on this Facebook page for this show. So, BET was trying to say, “Hey, you need to give us these likes,” I guess. I’m not even sure how this works. Because they have the likes, do they have the information for all those people? Is that what it’s boiling down to? NASIR: I’m trying to think about it. I don’t think you have very much information. But this case comes with a story, just like any court case. I think it’s semi-interesting that, even though this fan page came out when the show came out, the person who ran it was not an employee or even associated with the show. So, it wasn’t an actual official page. But, after the show went off-air, it continued to just get more likes and I think people missed it or whatever – who knows? And then, when it came back, instead of the game, the show BET creating their own new page, they were like, “Okay, well, this page is still out there, let’s just use hers. This is just some fan.” And so, they entered into some kind of contract agreement where she’d post for her and she’d be paid like, $3,000 or $4,000 per month, and there are some different terms in there. But then,

Nasir and Matt talk about the effects of Seattle raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and discuss whether cities like San Diego will follow suit. They then answer, "In late November 2013 I bought some things for a local business and was given a check for the exact amount a few days later. I had forgotten about the check for 2 months and when I went to the bank to cash the check, it bounced due to a closed account. I called the business owner and they said someone had stolen their checkbook awhile back and they had to close the account, and not to worry as they would write another. It's been 4 months now of me texting them each week asking about the check she was supposed to leave at the business and they always just come up with some excuse." Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: This is Legally Sound Smart Business. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. NASIR: Welcome to our business podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, submits to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. MATT: For our loyal listeners, they heard a slightly different intro. This is our alternative intro. As you said, “this is” instead of “welcome” and that’s all right. NASIR: I thought I usually say “this is” but do I say “welcome” first? I don’t remember. MATT: Well, I think it’s still fine. It doesn’t have to be the same every time. NASIR: Well, big news in the northwest, huh? MATT: Yes, we talked about this at the beginning of the year. I didn’t really want to talk about it again – a repeat – but this is just too big of a story to pass up. For those of you that don’t know, Seattle just approved what’s going to be the highest minimum wage in the country. It’s eventually going to crawl up to $15.00 an hour. I think the state minimum wage is the highest right now at $9.32 so this is a pretty significant increase. Also, San Francisco had the highest minimum wage and that was $10.74 an hour. This is just a huge jump up from what it’s been. Obviously, we can look at the numbers and see, if you have minimum wage employees, you’re going to be paying them X amount of dollars more. It gets into non-exempt employee issues as well but this is just huge. I think this is going to have a rippling effect – not just for Seattle but for other cities in the country as a whole. NASIR: Yeah, it’s definitely huge news. I think that $15.00 mark, even though that’s going to be years from now, it’s still just so apparent that that’s going to be a big deal for businesses for all. I read an article of Forbes, I thought it was great. They basically say it’s not difficult to outline the effect of the new $15.00 an hour minimum wage. They claim that basically, if the minimum wage is of a certain percentage away from the median average income, then it has little to no effect. But, once it goes beyond a certain percentage, then that’s when you get some significant employment effects. I think we get around 45 to 50 percent of the median wage, that’s when you really start to see those effects. That’s from a kind of financial economic point of view. I’m sure there are going to be people that disagree with that but it’s definitely interesting to note. MATT: Yeah, and I think it’s going to stick, too. There’s obviously going to be and there already are groups – and I think franchise owners are the ones the ones that are kind of leading it – planning to sue and stop this. I mean, this still is a significant jump. It is gradual; it’s not like it’s going to go up to $15.00 tomorrow. It is slowly going to climb. I’m in San Diego and there’s been talks about it jumping up in San Diego as well. I think there’s kind of a push to get it up to roughly $13.00 an hour, slowly throughout time. But I can see other cities doing this as well, especially some of those bigger cities where the cost of living is kind of high. NASIR: Yeah, we already have San Francisco is classically already at $10.74 and, of course,

Nasir and Matt talk about fast food restaurants replacing employees with robots and answer the question, "I'm trying to raise some capital from investors. When they ask how I am going to use their investment, what should I say?" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: Welcome to our business legal podcast where we cover business news and add our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, sends in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. We really appreciate those questions. Those of you who have not sent any questions, you guys can stop listening because we don’t care about you guys. MATT: The people that don’t send in questions don’t have problems so maybe that’s a consideration as well. NASIR: I guess that’s true. Well, you can still listen. MATT: We don’t want to alienate people that don’t have questions that need to be answered – or at least I don’t; maybe you do. NASIR: I guess that’s fine. MATT: All right. Well, let’s get to what we have for this Monday episode. NASIR: Actually, this episode is coming on Tuesday, I think, because of the Memorial Day. Just a procedural clarification, for those listening. MATT: For people that have hacked into my computer and listened to the audio a day in advance. But, for those that haven’t, happy Tuesday! We kind of talked about this before, I think, with fast food workers and the protesting but I didn’t even know this was still going on but more fast food workers are protesting, want higher wages, blah blah blah. But this is getting to robots that are supposedly going to replace fast food workers. I thought this was pretty interesting. I don’t think there can ever be a situation where it’s going to be 100 percent replaced. I don’t even know if you can get to 25 percent. But it gets to an interesting point of efficiency in the workplace. If these robots can do things more efficiently than actual people, great for none of the problems. But it also gets to what jobs should people be doing for a fast food restaurant – task allocation. If someone can do these three things, can they do that? Great. If not, maybe we should have some sort of robot in place. NASIR: Yeah, it’s not a new issue because we’ve talked about how, in GM, when they started automating everything – or everything from the assembly line to now robots are building cars that are building self-driving cars which is robots building robots – and so, this is stuff that’s been going on for a while, but I think it’s different now that it’s in the fast food industry. But I’m just wondering if the argument to start replacing these guys with robots, are they going to have faces? Am I going to Panera Bread – by the way, Panera Bread is going to start doing this very soon with some kind of automated service – am I going to walk in and some robot with eyes and a mouth is going to talk to me and ask for my order? That’s going to be kind of weird. MATT: Well, you’re thinking of it from the perspective of actual robot people. NASIR: Yeah, it’s as if it’s Back to the Future made another movie and they would do this. It would look like that – some robot with someone asking for your order like they did in Back to the Future Part II. MATT: Well, keep in mind that a lot of tasks – well, not a lot but there’s a good amount of tasks – that still go on at restaurants today or a lot of different industries that are done by robots but more so like machines and equipment so I don’t think you’re necessarily going to walk in and have a robot person there. “Can I take your order?” NASIR: Taken from the employer’s perspective, it’s kind of hard to do it because you kind of have to take your heart out of the whole concept because these are actually real people that they’re replacing. But I suppose, if a robot can do the exact same thing, it’s cheaper. It’s just like before,

The guys discuss the effect of the Heartbleed virus on small businesses and then provide guidance on exempt employees. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: And this is where we cover business in the news with our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener and business owner, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness – did we get the dot-com for that? MATT: Yeah, I think we got everyone – dot-com, dot-net, dot-org, dot-pizza. NASIR: Have those come out yet? I don’t know if those subdomains or those domains have come out yet but we’re definitely getting legallysoundsmartbusiness.pizza when it comes out – unless one of our listeners takes it from us and extorts us. MATT: It’s most likely already taken because that would be really popular name that people want to have. NASIR: Especially for a pizza joint, it’d be perfect for them. MATT: When the internet was kind of up and coming, everyone was on the internet at this point but people still didn’t understand, there was a very old – not very old but like ten to fifteen years maybe, ten to fifteen years, somewhere in that range – SNL commercial. I’m not going to say what the website they say on the show. You can go look it up because it’s probably not appropriate but it’s pretty funny. It’s basically making fun of the fact that every URL is taken already and this was at least ten years ago so it’s pretty interesting. NASIR: It’s true. Pretty much every dictionary word is done for dot-coms. Pretty much every dictionary word with another dictionary word seems to be taken. It’s slim pickings now. But that’s why they came up with these other domains. I mean, we have clients that have alternative domain names and we have a lot of startup companies that use alternative domain names – whether it’s dot-co or dot-whatever, you know. And so, it’s becoming more popular and understandable. MATT: Yeah. Well, enough of that, let’s get into the story we have for today. I assume that everyone had heard of this but I was just talking with people yesterday and not everyone was aware. NASIR: How could they not? I’ve gotten five or six emails about this Heartbleed vulnerability and I’m surprised people haven’t heard about it yet. MATT: For those that, I guess, haven’t, there’s this new security flaw that came out. When was this? Last week? At least that’s when we got the emails, I think. NASIR: Yeah, what’s weird is that I think the internet community found out about it one day and then it just started populating after that and then we also found out that the US government knew about it before it was published or released and so forth. This security flaw is huge. It’s basically that encrypted connection that you have with these websites, yeah, all that information that’s passing by, in theory, I guess, some of these people can get that information – including passwords, credit card information, whatever – and with that goes onto the next level. MATT: We’re going to kind of approach it from the small business perspective but, essentially, it did infiltrate all these big websites and a lot of private information so it’s all the personal data that might have been stored by these – they mentioned some of the ones that were effected like Dropbox, for example, that’s a pretty big company. I think there was a lot of precautionary things that people were taking. I’m trying to remember which sites sent me emails. Google, they keep saying change your Google password. NASIR: I didn’t get anything from Google but I got two types of emails – one email was saying change your password and then another email saying, “You don’t have to do anything. We’re not affected.” Because I think everyone was kind of scared about all this so they were just being precautionary. MATT: Yeah, it sounds like it is more precautionary stuff but we want to talk about how this does...

Nasir and Matt talk about the lawsuit over items of flair from Office Space and answer a question on options in purchasing a business. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Episode 26 of Legally Sound Smart Business! This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: And we’re ready to go. We’re going to talk about Office Space today – the movie. We tried to get it – at least The Office or Office Space or an episode of what else? Seinfeld and pizza. MATT: Yeah. Well, I was trying to think. I don’t know if we’ve discussed… Office Space is a pretty classic office-themed TV show or movie. I don’t think we’ve discussed it before, have we? Do you recall discussing it? NASIR: I think, tangentially, we have. I mean, I think the show, The Office, is based upon a lot of the happenings in the Office Space. MATT: I guess, for me, I’ve never really worked in an office environment like that. I did a little bit in college when I worked in this one place but, yeah, I guess I did for one summer. I had a cubicle-type setup, but it was a much different situation. I was much younger than everyone else that was working there and my boss was not like any of the bosses in this movie. NASIR: I think you and I have been pretty lucky in our past job experience, but I know very well – through family members and so forth – that these kinds of places do exist, unfortunately – or fortunately, depending upon your sense of humor. MATT: Let me get to the actual substance of this lawsuit here and it was a lawsuit and it’s Todd Duffee. Maybe some of you might remember him as the flair guy at Chotchkie’s – I think that’s it is, right? Yeah, Chotchkie’s. NASIR: Yeah, Chotchkie’s. MATT: So, there is a lawsuit. He’s suing 20th Century Fox or he did sue 20th Century Fox because I guess they came out with this game or something you could buy – some sort of product that had all these, basically, if you’d seen the movie – and, if you haven’t, go watch it because it is a good movie – he’s working at Chotchkie’s and they have all these items of flair so it’s all these buttons that they have to wear on their uniform. I guess 20th Century Fox has put out all these similar buttons. Basically, the buttons like they wear in the movie that you can wear. It’s your own personal items of flair. Now, I don’t know why it took them fifteen years for them to put this out because the movie was in 1999. Were they just circling back around and it just dawned on them to do this? But, anyway, the actor who played the waiter at Chotchkie’s was suing 20th Century Fox because, you know, he was basically saying that they were improperly using his image for this product that they’re now selling. NASIR: Well, I think it’s funny that he’s even suing at all – as if this product is making billions of dollars or something. I think it’s cool. I think it’s funny. But who actually buys this stuff? And what are you going to do – wear it maybe for Halloween or for a day and then that’s it pretty much? One-time use? MATT: For an update, he did lose and I’m not sure at what stage he lost but he did lose. I don’t even know what grounds he really had to stand on in terms of why he even brought this lawsuit in the first place. NASIR: Well, the assumption is use of likeness. But I think what Matt is saying is that, well, look, you sign up for a movie and they’re promoting the movie through these products. So, why wouldn’t they be allowed to? They had his provision in the contract agreement to be able to use his image for commercial purpose. When we ran film contracts through our firm, we basically have it so that the producers can use the likeness of the actors – pretty much any way they want – in connection to the actual project. And so, this would also apply – even though it’s some kind of board game – not a board game. It’s basically a box of buttons with his picture on it, you know? MATT: Yeah. NASIR: And it says “Office Space” on it and it says “A Box of Flair” and that’s pretty much ...