Podcast appearances and mentions of matt more

Ask David, Rhonda and Matt More on Insomnia; Porn Addiction Guilt; Rage Questions for today James asks for help with insomnia. Arjun Asks: How can I stop blaming myself for my porn addiction as a teen? Stephan asks: How do you treat feelings of rage? And what if you are simply very angry, but you don't have any thoughts?   James asks for help with insomnia, Hi Dr. Burns, I enjoy your newsletter and have experienced moments of clarity with your book. However, my current struggle is that I have developed terrible sleep anxiety. I feel nervous tension in my stomach and trembling limbs as nighttime approaches. Some nights I can put these feelings aside and dose off and others I just cannot stop dwelling on the negative body sensations and it does not allow me to sleep. I wonder if you can offer some advice on how to get over this fear and accompanying sensations. Best, James David's reply Thanks, James. Sorry you're struggling with trouble sleeping. Yes, a Daily Mood Log can help, to find out what you are telling yourself that makes you so anxious about not sleeping. Also, the Hidden Emotion Technique may be important to find out if there's a problem in your life that's bugging you. There are also the typical sleep hygiene tips that can be useful for some folks, too! You can find these with an internet search. Can I use this as an Ask David question for a podcast, with your first name or a fake name? Best, david   Arjun Asks: How can I stop blaming myself for my porn addiction as a teen? Hi Rhonda, I Really appreciate the work that you guys do and I listen to most of the feeling good podcasts. I'm 27 and have struggled with depression and anxiety since my teens. I'm currently in therapy with a TEAM certified professional from India, but I'm still grappling with feelings of being stuck in my past. During my pre-teen years, I battled a porn addiction for about a year, which has left me with ongoing feelings of anxiety, guilt, and depression. Despite trying various therapies, I haven't found relief. I keep fixating on the thought: "I shouldn't have indulged in porn addiction in the past. It's led me to develop anxiety and depression." How do I debunk this thought, reduce its hold on me, and cope with the regret it brings? It feels like I'm trapped in my past. and constantly blaming myself for that one mistake. because that indulgence in porn really did change my life. I wasn't the same as before. and never could go back to being who I was. How do I put the lie to this thought? Any methods you'd recommend putting in the recovery circle? Your insights would be invaluable in helping me move forward. Thank you, Arjun David's reply: The key concept is that the problem is perfectionism, plus the beating up on yourself in the here and now, and not the behavior or misbehavior in your past. In the live podcast, we can discuss the importance of T = Testing (with DML), E = Empathy and A = Assessment of Resistance, and M = Methods, like explain the distortions, Perfectionism / Self-Blame CBA, D. Standard, EOR, EOV, etc. etc. The issue, as I see it, is that you are looking for a technique to help you accept yourself, but in reality, it is a decision for you to make. The choice is to accept yourself with compassion or continue to beat up on yourself. There are many really GOOD reasons to beat up on yourself, and we can perhaps outline some on the podcast. You would then have to explain why you'd really want to accept yourself, given all the good reasons to keep beating up on yourself, and given all the positive things your self-criticisms show about you. Also, I will try to remember to tell one of my favorite Buddhist stories that relates to this problem.   Stephan asks: How do treat feelings of rage? And what if you are simply very angry, but you don't have any thoughts? Hello Mr. Burns, I hope this email finds you in good spirits. I've just begun your book “Feeling Good” and I have just reached the point where you begin to speak about cognitive distortions and how to get over your thinking. I've been doing your exercise on the days that my thoughts are heavily saturated in my mind and I've realized something within doing this exercise. A lot of my thoughts do focus on the cognitive distortions that you've outlined in your book, but the other 75% of my thoughts focus on pure trauma of past situations and experiences that channels pure hate, anger and rage that pours out of my thoughts about the past situations. For example, one situation was someone purely scamming and taking advantage of me for years. And while doing your exercise, my hate and rage for that situation really comes out to where I wrote down “F*** that stupid a** b***** I hope she continues through her life being scammed as the fraud she is”. A lot of my thoughts surround things like this with situation that I've been in. Or another example “This stupid a** girl gonna be married and divorced five times before I get married once And I went the wrong path. Ha.” Most of my thoughts are like this surrounded past relationships, friendships, and coworkers. And honestly, I don't think it has anything to do with the list of cognitive distortions that you've provided. Not saying that I don't have those thoughts, but the majority of my thoughts surround different topics. I would love your input in your thoughts on what is going on in my head, and possibly even the name to the type of cognitive distortion, that these thoughts could fall under, if any. In the meantime, I will continue reading your book. Hopefully the answer is in there, but if not, I graciously await your response and I also thank you for your time. Best regards, Stephan   David's reply Hi Stephan, Anger always results from thoughts, and those thoughts are often extremely distorted. This thought, for example, contains Labeling, and many other distortions: “F*** that stupid a** b***** Sorry you've been taken advantage of by someone acting fraudulently and scamming you, as I understand from your note. Anger is totally understandable. The first treatment tool would be a paradoxical Cost-Benefit Analysis, which we could illustrate on a podcast, if you are interested. Your questions touch on many important topics! Best, david Matt's Reply Thanks for the question, Stephan, like David is saying, getting out of rage and into peace and harmony, which is part of ‘enlightenment', requires identifying the motivational elements that are pushing you away from, as well as pulling you into, that emotion. For example, David has identified, over 30 Good Reasons to Blame Others and has a handout on this. Here's an example of a reason to keep rage: You'll be protected, from being taken advantage of, again, if that person is labeled as ‘bad'. This keeps them, and others like them, at a distance. Another motivator for rage is that revenge fantasies can be pleasant, feel powerful, just, and gives us a sense of moral superiority. Also, sometimes we're not quite ready to just ‘let go' and ‘move on.' There might be things we really liked about the relationship that we don't want to lose and we might not want to grieve the loss of that person, or the loss of our own time. We want our time back and for them to change! Lots of other good reasons, again there's a list of 30 Good Reasons to Blame, created by David. Please bear in mind that rage can get you into lots of trouble, so if you're at risk of acting out your anger, it's a good idea to get professional help, not something we can provide, here. Thanks for listening today! Rhonda, Matt, and David

Allen Welcome passive traders to another episode. Today, I have a big announcement. And I have a first for the podcast, which is really interesting. I'm going to tell you the first before we get into the announcement. The first is that for the first time we are having a husband and wife, team, actually, we're going to find out if they're a team or not. But they're both traders. And they're both doing well. And they've been doing it for a while. So I wanted to get their opinion on how trading works in a family how trading works in a relationship, how to not get on each other's toes. So I have today, Mr. And Mrs. Matt and Margaret Ambrosi. Welcome, guys, thank you for doing this. Matt Thanks. Thanks. Thanks for having us. Allen Now, the big announcement, we probably should have done it better and differently. But Matt is now full time as an option genius coach. So we are very happy to have Matt on board. And he's already made a big difference in several people's lives. He's getting more, more happy comments, or, you know, people coming together to have a wonderful he's doing he's getting more than I am. So I think I got the right person for the job. And if you if you see Matt, or you hear the voice, and it's kind of familiar, we did do an interview with Matt back in episode 110. So 110, and that he actually gave us a story of how he got started what he was doing. And at that point, his job, his role, or his, his goal of trading was mainly to replace his current income through trading options. So I think he's, he's come a long way since then, as a trader, and just emotionally and as a person. So, guys, welcome. And Matt, thank you again, for coming on board the team, it's been really awesome to work with you and to see you take the reins, and you know, it's only made the company stronger and better, and our customers are loving it. So they're really excited. Matt I really appreciate that Alan, you know, I couldn't be more excited. I mean, I have a real passion for this. And it's a real dream to, to do a job and and really fulfill that passion. So thank you. Allen Yep, yeah, I mean, you know, one of my mentors had told me he's like, you know, in your programs, you should have a lot more interaction with the, with the students. And I'm like, I don't have time for that. He goes, well, then you need to get a coach, we need to get some other coaches on board. And I'm like, Okay, where do I find these people? They're like, don't you have students? I'm like, yeah. You know, but they're all trying to retire. Like, they'll try to quit their jobs. He goes, No, I bet you there's some that are really good at teaching. They're really love people. And they would be happy to do this on a full time basis, or even like a part time basis, and just help other people. And I was like, huh, and I thought about that about and Matt was like almost one of the first people I thought of and I'm like, Hey, let me give him a call. And I'm sure he came out of the blue for you. And you were shocked. Matt So I mean, I really enjoy, I really enjoy helping people at the core of my being. And, you know, I just love seeing the light go off in people's minds when they see a trade and they see it work out and they see that everything's a possibility, just like it was for me. So I'm really excited to be part of it. Cool. And then Margaret a this question is for you. So he comes, he comes to you and says, Hey, you know, I've been working at Costco for I don't know, what, 1415 years or something. Yeah. And he's like, he's like, I just got this other job offer. I'm gonna What do you think? Yeah. Margaret There's a whole story. There's a whole nother story. When he got that call, because I mean, we were definitely both shocked. But I think what you just said reminded me of what a good coach Matt was before he even worked at Option Genius. Because when we we started at let's say, when we got married seven years ago, we we were both on the same page about being financially free. And what what does that look like? Matt was definitely more of a researcher in terms of he would read a book, he would, he would give it to me. And so I think we were on, we've been on board on the same page, what to do. And then when we found you, and started learning your methods, we both latched on to it. So when you caught him, I think I was just excited because I knew it was something he really wanted to do. I had already seen him in a coaching role with me and his mom and his sister of trying to like the backend stuff, right? The things that are the charts, the systems, getting your platform set up. Those are things that are challenging and takes a lot of time. And so I was like, I think I was super excited. I knew he could do it. I knew it'd be great at it. And so I just thank you for giving him the opportunity because it's really been wonderful for him to do this thing that he loves anyway. I mean, he was already before he worked for you, in the mornings before he would go to work. Its full time job was studying and learning. And so, yeah, it just was really exciting. Thank you for that. I guess we had the trust, right. The trust was already there. So. Allen Okay. Yeah, now he's doing wonderful. And, you know, he's gonna be trading at the hedge fund as well when that happened. So that's going to be exciting. So a whole new level. So awesome. Cool. All right. So let's get into you guys. All right, so the trading couple and it's not just I know for Matt, you know, he's not just a trading couple. He's got the whole trading family going on there. He told me that he and his wife and his mom and his sister all get together and have trade night. What is that? Matt So it just kind of started, you know, my, my parents live in South Carolina, we're in Georgia, and my sister is up in Massachusetts. And it was a good way. They were always interested in what I was doing. And they always wanted to learn what I was doing. So it just became natural that I would say, hey, let's just have a call. And we'll talk about it. And then I showed them how to, you know, do the platform, and you know, they had all their feelings about whether they're going to do it correctly. And all the all the fears, just like I had when I started, and I was like, Okay, well, we just started going through it. And we started meeting kind of regularly on Fridays. And it was usually Friday, like, nine 930 in the morning. And we'd meet for about an hour and we talk about it. And then it just kind of progressed and was like okay, let's do this next Friday, okay, let's do the next Friday, let's do the next Friday, next Friday, and then just became we'd call it trade top Fridays. And you know, and then started being like, if we miss one, you know, let's say my sister couldn't make it. She'd be upset, like, Oh, I gotta I gotta make it or my mother missed it, she would be upset. So we, we were there every day, you know, and then Margaret would come in here and there and it just kind of evolved. So it was really a really great experience. And then it kept us really connected. I mean, in ways that I wouldn't think you know.. Margaret And you get to learn other parts of your family members and their personalities that you didn't know before. Allen Mm hmm. I can imagine. Yeah. I mean, people's personality comes out when they're like, frustrated, or when they're Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You were saying that a little bit earlier that your mom kind of surprised you, you know, going all aggressive on you. Matt She still does. I mean, there's like, I'm just like, you know, she'll tell us like, Oh, she did something. And then she'll like, say to my sister, oh, I got out of this trade. She's like you did? What? How do you get out of that trade? You didn't tell me about it? And it's like, yeah, they're like, they go back and forth. But it's all in solid, good. You know? Margaret Yeah, once she has the parameters, then she, she'll get a little bit more risky that she said, a differentiated, she told us it's like she's at a different age where she feels like she can take a little different risk than we can. Yeah. So it makes it makes a difference. Matt That's interesting. It also goes back and forth. I mean, my sister, she put on a trade, she was getting into a new trade that we're doing. And then my mother was like, kind of hesitant about getting into it. And my sister just went ahead and did it. And then my mother's like, Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, like hours later, she she's like, I'm like, what happened? She's like, Oh, I put a trade on. Like, because my sister went ahead and did it. So they kind of play off each other. So Allen that's cool. Because normally, it's the opposite. You know, it's like, the older you get, the more conservative is like, oh, no, I don't want to lose that or lose. The younger people take more risk, but over here are flipped. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. But that I love it, how you're using something to bond, you know. And it's so rare nowadays, especially everybody's spread out across the country. It's like, oh, yeah, we get together on Thanksgiving. Yeah. Okay. Great. You guys get together every week. That's I love it. That's, that's wonderful. Yeah. I think more families need to find something in common like that. And like trading? Yeah. I mean, because the way we do it, everybody can find their own little niche, you know, yeah. Everybody can be conservative or aggressive or whatever. And yeah, I love it. Cool. So, um, how did you guys get into trading? Matt Oh, well, I mean, it was always long term for me. So I was learning about long term investing through reading and then while we actually, Margaret yeah, since you were 29, he started investing. And then we went to one seminar together. And there was a man who was sitting next to us, and he said, uh, you could self manage your portfolio. And we looked at each other and we're like, never worry, That's too scary. It's too risky. We gotta leave that to the professionals. There's reason that people get paid money to do that. And he made it seem like it was no big deal at all. And I think he was he, yeah, that was a pivotal point. And then after that, We went to a couple other seminars together. And then I think the the really the one that we learned about options was three years ago. And at that one, we I had never even heard the term option. I didn't know what an option was. We went to go find out about long term investing and how to value stocks in order to know if it's a good purchase or not. And then at that seminar, we just sat back and because they showed us how to do an option, and and then after that we met found you and he because he was looking for people who did a similar strategy. And then it after we Yeah, so that's how we got into it. Matt Right. And they, they basically started this seminar off with an option. And we're like, Oh, I thought we were coming here to long term invest. And I didn't, you know, we didn't know anything, how options work. We're trying to figure out how it did right there. And then this guy's like, Oh, I just made $7,000. And you're like, show me how you're just like, whatever you just did, like you have my attention. How did you do that? And I was like, on a, I was possessed to figure it out. I mean, Margaret, she's smarter than I am. In some ways, yes, definitely. She was like, this is a funnel, like, marketing, marketing funnel and Margaret figure it all out. And thanks for just calm down. Matt It's just she sat back, I'll relax. And I was like, I'm trying to figure it out. And but we progressed. And, you know, it really opened the whole a whole new world, really. And then, you know, we met you. Margaret And it's just a progression to back up to because that's where we started trading with our family with his mom and sister. So after we learned that strategy, and we were all trading together, that's where the, the trade top Fridays came from. So that was kind of a cool thing that came from that. Allen Okay, so from the beginning, you guys were like, Okay, we're doing this together. It's not like, you know, because Margaret, you have your own company. And if anybody wants to know, she does great videography, and photos for real estate agents, and you guys are located where? Margaret Just north of Atlanta. Allen Just north of Atlanta. So if any realtors are out there. Margaret And I'm glad you mentioned that, because honestly, the reason I want to trade is because I am getting older. I've been a creative for 20 years, and the old body isn't getting any younger. So at some point, I will not be able to schlep video gear and photography gear around, and I want to have some home, what gives me the security and knowing that I can bring in my paycheck that I'm accustomed to it on my own. But we definitely talk about our strategies together. Allen Right, exactly. So, okay, so But you said like, okay, so he's working full time you have your business, but you guys still decided, hey, we're gonna go this road together, we're gonna learn together, we're gonna go the seminars together, we're gonna talk about it. And then do you guys trade in the same account together? Or is it separate? How does that work? Matt We kind of did in the beginning. And then we realized that it was best to have separate accounts, we do everything we talk about everything together. It's just I think that's really smart. Everyone's different. But I think for us, it works that we have separate accounts, because it kind of gives you the flexibility for the trading the fit your personality, and everyone's personalitie's different, you know, even though we're married, we're different personalities. So that reflects in that account, I think. Margaret And the cool part is, we both fund each other's accounts. So when there's money that we have to put into the account to get it started, we weren't going at an equal pace, if that makes sense. Matt Right. So like, for example, I would get a bonus from Costco, I'd split that bonus, put it into our account separately, she would get a bonus, she would put that money into our accounts, and then we're trading the strategies under those two accounts. Allen Okay, so do you have any joint money like a joint account? Margaret Not for not in a brokerage account? No. I mean, we're, we're each other's beneficiaries. But yeah, right. And I think part of that, too, Alan comes from me at I was not married for 36 years, and I am very customed to taking care of myself and producing my own income, and having my own money, you know, just to be quite frank about it. I want to make sure that I can take care of myself if anything ever happened to Matt, but we definitely we know what each other's logins are. We know what the money's in there. So that part's very open. It's not like they don't share the information. But I think that's a good point about having a different trading style because I am a little more aggressive than Matt is, and we learned that we didn't know that going in, but I will jump into things a little quicker than he does and he wants to be Yeah, wants to have all the information. Matt Those are things we learned about it To think that I was not as conservative as I am. But I realized that I'm a very conservative trader. I like to know everything about everything before I jump in, and sometimes that can hinder you, Margaret, she's like, let's get to it. Let's figure it out. And she jumps in. And I'm really admire that part of her. I really do. Margaret And as long as it works out, Matt she's I say she's measured, you know, she doesn't just jump into things. She's measured about it. Allen Yeah. But like, Margaret, what you said about the, you know, having, I guess, I don't know, for for a lot of women, it's a it's a fear. But it's also about a sense of security. And a lot of our customers are, you know, are the customers that come to us, and they come in, they're like, you know, my spouse doesn't want me trading, or when my spouse would rather have me working, because that paycheck comes in regular. I remember when I first started, even, even though I was, in the beginning, I was horrible. I lost a lot of my wife's money. But after I got good at it, she still was not comfortable with the trading, because she would be like, Okay, I don't know, if you're going to make money every month, you know? Because that's just the way it is. And so she's like, Can you do something pleased to have something regular come in? And that's probably the biggest motivation behind the company option genius. Was that, hey, even if I have a little bit, you know, obviously, I'm supposed to be a small little one person company. And is like, even if I have a little bit like, like a, you know, like, five $6,000 coming in a month. Okay, cool. She'll know that, you know, because she still wanted to work. So she knows something's coming in. But that's, that's just, I think it's ingrained in a lot of spouses that are not generating an income on their own that, hey, I need some consistency. So that's been a big for a lot of people. That's a big, you know, switch. Like to go from Yeah, my wife my husband makes or my wife makes x dollars per month to Yeah, I don't know, if he's gonna make any money. Margaret Yeah, I can see how that would be difficult. Because I mean, we're still both bringing in incomes and trading at the same time. Yeah. Matt Yeah, it's a big shift, a mindset shift. But I think the thing about trading is that, you know, when you're working a static job, you have that income, like you said, it's coming in monthly, you can rely on it. But the real benefit of trading, I think, is that you don't see used to see money as you exchange your paycheck for time. And in trading. You can just, you can just make money, and you don't have to sit there for that time. No, it's, you look as money is finite, in your mind, okay? When you look at trading, you work with trading, it's like, it just opens up to you. Margaret It's more of an energy like it goes out comes and goes out. Exactly. Yeah. Matt So I'm trying to say, Allen interesting. That's a good way to look at it. Yeah. So then have this written down? Okay, I'm gonna ask it or I don't know if which one of you is a better trader? Margaret So how do you define better? Allen I guess, who makes the most money? Matt I will say that I wrote this in a lot of books. And I believe that to be true as a women's are much better emotionally, as traders, I believe that I really do because guys are gonna over are like our macho, we just gotta just get in there and do it. And, you know, but in general, I think women are much, much better emotional trading style. Margaret I will just say last year, Matt made more money than I did. But this year, I've made more money than Matt did. So there you go.. Matt But I'm built for the long. Nothing short term with me. We actually nickname each other Margaret's short term, and I'm on long term, Margaret Yeah, I like short term, you know, I'm an entrepreneur. So I like to see things happen in a timely fashion. I live and breathe it, you know. And so I had do struggle with the long term stuff. One day, I would be curious to see what it would like be like to do long term put that. We'll see about that, you know, I like I like the shorter term gains. Matt But yeah, I mean, that's all part of your personality. So we I think we play off each other very well, you know? Yeah. Allen Yeah. It seems like you guys have a good balance. So then, like, if there's a disagreement, then how do you guys handle that? Or is it just, you know, you do whatever you want your account? I'll do whatever I want to my account. Margaret Yeah, well, we talk about what strike prices we're going to be at, and where, you know, kind of idea of what we both want to do. And then we may be a couple points different from each other. Matt Yeah, but we stay within the rules. And I think you know, the great thing about the strategies that you teach and that we've learned is that there's some flexibility in that, okay, as you get better as a trader, it's just not the rules, right? You know, it's just not like, Oh, get out here. And that's it, there's a little bit of flexibility, I think as you get better as a trader, you get more experienced behind you, you're able to kind of fudge the lines a little bit, if you will, not in a bad way, but be like, okay, you know, I know this, I have a little more experience, I can become a better trader. So it's like, that's the whole flexibility part. Margaret Right. And I think, too, just just thinking about how sometimes Matt will stay in a trade longer than me, and I'll get out quicker. Here's a good example. So this month, in our oil trading, I have tripled up, I've gotten in and gotten out three times, and he stayed in the whole time. You know, and I know, during the classes, there's a couple of other people in our class, when we're on the queue that do the same thing. And then some people will sit and so I think it just depends, and I don't know that it would work as well. For us, if we had one account, I just love having our separate accounts, where we get to talk about what we're gonna do and then have the freedom to.. Matt I think the key is that we talk about it. Yeah, I mean, if you don't talk about things between each other, it's just not gonna work. Yeah. So you're like, Okay, you're gonna go that at least I know about it, right. And then you can see how it works out, right. And then at least you know, what, what's going on, you know, it's different, if you just have a count, and you're just doing your own thing, and you're not talking about it. Margaret The, the emotions part is very real. And I don't think you can really understand that until you start to become a trader, and you see where the trade is. And you get to know yourself better, where in the beginning, we were a lot quicker to get out of a trade if it went a certain way. And now we've learned a little bit more of the rhythms, we know each other's rhythms. And so we don't we don't freak out either way, quite as much. Matt: But you got to look at it. Like in totality. I mean, nothing's the end of the world. Right? And with trading, you may lose money, and you probably will, okay, everybody's lost money. And experience is not cheap. Right? With that happening. It's, it's okay, you know, if nothing is, you treat money as, okay, you can be lost, and it can be one. And the whole idea of trading is getting consistent as a whole thing. And it's like, as you get better and better as a trader, I really believe in my core, you try everyone's trying to build that consistency. Okay, and you have to match your personality to that consistency Margaret: Do you also mean make money? Because that's my goal. Matt: Yes, consistently, or us to make money. But you need to be consistent to do that. Allen: So yeah. Well, like I say, In the beginning, it's not about making money. In the beginning, it's just about not losing money. So knowing what you do properly. And like, even if you don't make any money, that's okay. But you don't lose it month after month after month. Okay, I know, it's annoying, but that's a good thing. And then, you know, we could just do a little tweak here and there, and then then the the profits start taking off. So I totally agree with that. And see, because a lot of people that sell options, they'll tell you, Oh, yeah, you know, I have great months, and then I have a big loss. And then I have good months and have nobody wants to be on that roller coaster. Because eventually you're like, man, what am I doing? Matt: I mean, do you want to go make money in the beginning of the year, at the end of the year, you've lost money or just break even? It's, that's frustrating, you know? So the whole goal is to, you know, especially what you said in the beginning, it's very true. Yeah. Allen: So now you guys said that communication was key. So do you have any rules around that? Do you have like, do you like get together and say, okay, besides the trade trade talk, you know, when you have that, do you actually sit down and be like, alright, half an hour debrief, what do we do this week? How are we going to improve? Or is it just, Matt: I think I know what you're gonna go to. I think, I think, for us, and this is just for us, but a big part. And a lot of people think it's a dirty word. But a budget, we always had a budget always kept us in line, you know, and it's like, whenever we've kind of rapidly spending, you know, and aren't talking about trading, we're just talking about life and your budget, it always get us back on the road, so to speak. So that was a big piece of our communication. So it's just knowing that we're kind of on the road. So I think that flows into your trading and it flows into your communication. So I think that's a really big piece. Margaret: Yeah. And I would say like specific rules about communicating around trading, we've never said anything. It's just kind of happened organically. And we will, you know, there's there certain parameters that you teach in your class and we get in at a certain time and when we do that, we will talk to each other that day, and then we check it both together, generally in the morning, and we'll just kind of go Oh, or Yeah, and commit Write together or celebrate together. And then that I think, I guess that's the organic piece. We just check in with each other in the morning. Matt: Be like, Fine, quick text during the day, you know? Yeah. Margaret: Yeah. Because Matt is watching it for his day job. And he'll text me if something, you know, hey, keep your as open. This is happening or, but yeah, so I guess that's it like we wake up in the morning. We look at it, we chat about it, and then throughout the day, he'll text me. Or maybe if I'm doing something, I'll text him and say, Hey, have you seen? And he always says yes. But yeah, that's it. Okay, Allen: Cool. So what happens when one of you wins and the other loses? Matt: That's a good question. Well, yeah, I've lost before I've lost my I lost. I lost before. And oh, yeah. Oh. Yeah Margaret: Jog my memory. Okay. So I'm going to just tell myself here in the beginning, before we found your class, and I'm not just saying this, because this is true. So it's just true. We cannot say how much of course we lost $5,000. So $5,000 is, is a lot of work for me. And I, I am the one who had funded it that month, to the account, and Matt lost it. And we we realized then, that that was really tough. That was tough on me, it was tougher on me than it was him. And actually, our trade talk Fridays, were really good, because they had also lost the money. And I had lost a little bit, but not as much. We were all just really disheartened and frustrated. And I think I think I was a little mean was a little mean, Matt: Slightly slightly. Are you sure you can do this? Well, yeah, feel the weight of that. Right. Yeah. I mean, if you're not, your wife's out there, she's, she's busting her butt to bring in money, and then you just lose it. It's a lot of you feel the way that, you know, you gotta really dig deep and be like, okay, emotionally and you know, everything about to have the confidence to keep going, right? And you got to search and really believe in yourself that you can, you know, like I said, it's not the end of the world, but you have to get through there gonna be times like that. That happened. Margaret: It made me quit trading for a couple months. Yeah, I got really nervous. And then I said, okay, and then actually, that's is that that's about the time we found oil, wasn't it? Like we found oil sometime after that? It seemed to be a little exactly what you're talking about earlier, it wasn't as much of a roller coaster. And that has changed it for me. Allen: Okay, so was there anything else besides finding that strategy that was able to get you through it? Because like, I mean, emotionally, that's a it's a big hit. Right? And did anything change between the way you guys communicated the way you guys traded? Matt: No, I think Margaret took a little hiatus. I'm the type that I never, I never give up on thanks, I will just take it to the death, you know. I'm like, I just keep going no matter what, just get out of my way. No matter how many hits I take, I just keep going. And I leave it all on the table. So I just I knew I was going to keep going. But again, the key and I don't be, Margaret: but you. You did try it a little more conservatively? Didn't you? Matt: Sure. Yeah. I mean, you learn your lessons, you get burned out a little bit, you start to kind of, you know, you remember and you're like, Okay, I don't want to have those same feelings. But let me cautiously kind of figure it, learn from your mistakes, if you will, you know, and treat a little bit more conservative pay a little more attention. What can I learn from that experience? And I think that changes everything. Of course, you know, the strategies that we do, are a lot better, like I'm able to manage our trades so much better. I think that's important. Margaret: I think that's key. And I think that's key for me, knowing interesting that we have better management strategy now makes me feel a lot more secure, and a lot less emotional, and more. What's the word? I'm looking for sure. That Matt and I can both do the trades and not lose that $1,000 chunks anymore. Matt: More confident? Yeah. And I think I've read this before, and I really believe it is that you are your first really job is to become your risk assessor. And then you're a trader. Yeah. So it's like it's really important that you this all we do is assess risk all the time. So I think it's really important to, to focus on that. And once you get better at assessing risk and managing, just become a better trader, but you just kind of have to go through those things. I mean, when I first started trading, they're like, Okay, your first loss is your best loss. And I was like, what does that mean? They don't want to lose you. And like, they said it all the time, like, Oh, your first last year about like, Who is this person? Like, why did he say that to me? I don't want to lose. But it is true. Like, it teaches you things that you just, you think, you know, you like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna get out of that trade, I know what I'm doing. And then you get burned. Everyone's got to touch the stove, apparently, at some point, you know, it's like, Oh, don't touch the stove. It's hot. But of course, we gotta go touch it. But that's just life. I mean, and it's how you react to those situations, I think. And you don't you don't tell yourself that you're not? How are you going to respond to that? Is very important. You know, in all aspects of life as a trader anything. Allen: I mean, a lot of people, you could say that, but it's not as easy when you're going through it. You know, the first time Oh, first time you do it, it's like, ah, people behave in all crazy different ways. Matt: Yeah. Yeah, it's just, you're gonna have to, I guess this, the best way is to do the best you can to bring people through that experience. All right, you can tell them that it's it probably will happen. But how you react to that situation? It's good to kind of tell your future. Margaret: We're model citizens is that? Allen: Well, I mean, they say that, you know, most divorces are caused because of money issues and problems. Yeah. You know, and a lot of people do not see eye to eye on money. And they don't talk about it before they get married. They don't talk about their goals, visions, whatever, or even how to balance it, you know, like, oh, yeah, one is a budget person. One is a non budget, I'm going to spend whatever I can, but it's like, a lot of people have these issues. And it's, it's great to see that you guys are same page, you know, same goal, same like, okay, hey, you guys talked about it ahead of time. Yeah, like, this is our vision. This is the goal. How do we get there, we'll change you know, like, we'll go on a different path. And we'll try and we'll try this. And like, you guys first started with the passive trading course. Right? It puts in the calls and, and then you say, Okay, let's graduate to something else. So then you guys added the oil program. And then you guys have been doing that. So you just added to something. Now you guys have even you know, got you got your own Airbnb now. So congratulations on that. Margaret: Thank you. Allen: So you're diversifying? So yeah, you're trying different things. And nobody says that you can't right. So you should you should work and in us every strategy available to get to whatever your your dream is. So in that sense, you guys have done a bunch of different things. How do you handle it when you disagree? Margaret: Like disagree on? Allen: On the path, disagree on maybe a tray disagree on let's say, you guys did the Airbnb? Maybe Matt would be like, yeah, no, I don't want to do that. And I want to put more money into trading account. Because we already know we're doing well here. Matt: I hate to disappoint. But I don't think we disagree on too much. If we do, it's like, you know, we do. I'm not saying it's easy enough. I mean, marriage is not easy. But we have their situations, I think it's important to you just you take a pause. You kind of realize how you're dealing with it personally, how you're, what you're thinking, what you're you're feeling, and then you come back to that person and you talk about it. Margaret: I think to just thinking about our investments so far, we do things that we are confident in our knowledge base around so I've had a real estate license for five years. And I shoot real estate and I understand real estate. So when I said Hey, Matt, let's buy this, Airbnb. He was like, Okay, sounds like a good investment. You've done the numbers. I trust you. Matt: Yeah, I do. I trust that she's, I've seen it, she's she's in that field, she does the work. She's always trying to figure it out. And I, their word really is trust. I trust her that she's going to do the best she can with it. Margaret: And I think it's about Yeah, I think it's likewise to you, because I trust that he's, he's read. If you could say our library of books, it's literally every book I've ever heard of on finance and investing. And multiple copies probably down. And so I think, I think it all comes back down to we, we because we both feel like we have studied different things. You know, and now Matt learns more about real estate and I, I give him all the credit because I always was interested in retirement and investing but I didn't know where to get started. And so because he had a knowledge base, he kind of brought me up a little bit faster than if I had then what I was able to do on my own right. So that's powerful. And then because I already trusted him so much and then we got to go to all the seminars together. It just build that built that foundation and so now we really don't disagree on Matt: I think part of also is like, I never wanted to push that on Margaret. Yeah, like my interest, right? I have interest in finance. I never wanted to push that it's an interest of mine. Real estates and interests of her. She doesn't push that on me. I don't push that on her. So it was, it becomes organic when you are you, you're interested in yourself, right? You're like, okay, you know, Matt's doing something. I'm interested in that I want to see a little bit more, but it comes from her. It doesn't come from me telling her Oh, you got to check this out. You should check this out. Yeah, that's important. But ultimately, it's gonna be her decision. Right? Yeah, Margaret: You start to for me, I started doing the numbers. Whoa, you can make this on a trade in two minutes. And I make this on how many? How many hours? Does it take me? Yeah, that's a no brainer. Allen: Cool. Okay, so now, so a lot of our customers they've been through. And unfortunately, like, they've gone on a path similar to yours. But I would say that you guys, you know, if you've, if you only started trading, like three years ago, you guys have taken a shorter route than a lot of our customers. Really? Yeah. So they've been trading for multiple years, still trying to figure out like, Hey, how can I make this work? How can I become consistent, profitable, I've tried, you know, XYZ strategy, and this and this, and this, and they've bought cores, and they've been videos and seminars, and, and they still are looking for that something, to get them over the hump, to get them to be like, Oh, finally, I'm actually making some money. Finally, like you said, they're confident that they can, you know, the month is going to start, I have a strategy that works. I'm confident I'll probably make money this month. But they're still not there yet. And because of that, because of them, you know, trying and investing in course, investing in Seminar investing in another doohickey. You know, they have all the things you can buy, like, Oh, hey, you know, that you can buy this indicator, and the indicator will tell you exactly when to buy and when to sell is only $3,000. You know, they're like, Okay, I'm gonna get that, you know, they get it and then they don't doesn't work. And then the wife or the other or the husband, either way, the spouse is like, I can't believe you're wasting all this time, all this energy, all this money on this trading stuff when he doesn't frickin work. You know, you've been trying for years, and it's just not working. It's all a big scam. Right? And that's the big girl. Yeah, it's a big scam that nobody can do this. So what advice or tips or anything? Would you suggest for a trader in that position where their spouse is maybe not very receptive to them continuing to trade? Where the spouse is like, you know, can you just give this up? You know, just spend time with me? Just, you know, Matt: Yeah. I'm gonna let you go first. And I'll go after. Margaret: Okay? Because we, we were not in that specific scenario, I just keep going back to it has to be the trust. So how are you going to build trust with your partner, not when they don't know what you're going through? And then I would say you would have to have some sort of mentor, and to be honest, that is you that that is you for us. Right? So we I remember, when I got the calculator that you sent out of this is where if you this is what you need in order to make the monthly income that you want on the percentage of money, and this is how much money you need in your account. And you've done it, like you've gone before us, we know it can be possible. So we're trusting that what you say is true. And we've seen it and especially now that that works for you. So I think finding somebody that you can put that trust into and having if your partner is not going to be in that with you, at least show them who that is that you're learning from or what they've done. And if if it's if it's not Alan Sama, then make sure that they've got a good record of what they've done. So that, that your partner can have trust in that you're learning from somebody that is credible. You know, the first thing we learned from had learned down the road from somebody who had learned from Warren Buffett, and so, you know, I don't really care about names of people, that doesn't impress me, but when you actually know something that impresses me, and that gives me the assurance to bet on myself. And that's what I would say, would be my advice. Matt: Yeah, I mean, I always went into investing, especially as I, you know, started to learn about options. I was like, I don't want to hear about oh, you can make all this money. You can do all this and everything's going great. I wanted to go and be like, show me how to do it. Right. And then once you show me how to do it, I believe you. And that's just who I am. And I think most people maybe are like that they want proof and they but more importantly they want to be be able to do it themselves, some people don't. But if you're into this and you want to learn, and you have to go into mindset be like, show me how to do it. And then you get the confidence that you can do it yourself, and then you can be able to teach other people. Allen: Okay, nice. Next question I have here is that you guys have been doing this for a little bit together? Are there anything thinking back that you would do differently? So basically, the question is, like, you know, are there any tips that you would give to a couple starting out? Or lesson or something that you felt? You know what, we didn't do that? Right? Maybe we should have done it differently? Margaret: I would. I know that $10,000 was a lot for us, when we bought into your class. It was 100% worth it. And I wish that we would have done that first. Matt: Yes, I think in this world, you know, you don't want to believe it, but you really pay for what you get. You know, it's a hard truth. Lots of people want to be like, oh, I want this for, you know, low money, or I want this, but you got to really look at is it? What's the worth of it? Right? Is it going to be? Margaret: And are you willing to do the work? Matt: Are you willing to do the work? That's a lot of people like, I think the advice I give people is like the least tell yourself before you think something is not worthy, or it doesn't go up to your expectations, at least go through and do the work of what has been laid before you. Okay, so you have all these lessons, and you have all everything, but you have to can you really tell yourself that you put on all the work, when you haven't gone through the class, when you haven't gone through all the, you know, really dug deep to get everything out of it, then you can say whether you want to continue or not, whether it was a failure, whether it was not at least do that. And I think it's important for people that start out, set aside a small amount of money, right? And maybe agree that, okay, if you lose this small amount of money, it's a good idea. Fine, it didn't work out. But at least you agreed on that. And then give it a shot. Yeah. Right. And then maybe if it didn't work out, and you want to go further, we examined it at that point. That way, you know, it's not like a, I lost everything. And it's the end of the world type scenario. At least I gave it a try. You know, I followed my dreams to figure out this on my own. And if you at least put in the effort, you can tell yourself, Margaret: I would like to give your wife major kudos. Since you said you lost a lot of money in the beginning. That's a good woman to keep if she kept supporting you to go forward. Allen: Yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm very blessed. I am amazingly blessed. So I just give you a short version of the story. I had just been laid off. And so the question was, and we had just been married recently. And so the idea was, Okay, do I go and get another job? Or do I try something else? And, you know, I had been dabbling with trading. But I was like, maybe I could do this full time. So she's like, Okay, if you think you can do it, go for it. And, of course, I did not have any money. She had money from that she had saved up from working for several years before we got married. So she's like, you know, I have all this in savings. You know, try it. And so then she got a second job to support us. So because I wasn't making anything, so she got the second job. And she's working. She was a nurse. So she was working like three days a week at the at the hospitals, 12 hour shifts. And then on the other day, she would be, they have this thing called home health, where the nurse actually shows up to your house. So she would be driving around town, going from place to place to place, you know, giving injections and IVs and medicines and all that stuff. So very draining, especially with all the traffic and everything. And yeah, and I proceeded to try everything like day trading and futures and forex and commodity options and everything is like nothing was working. And I was down over 40 grand. When I finally actually, I think what turned it around was that she found out because I was hiding it from her. Like I wasn't telling ya that she came on to check the mail. She checked the statement. She's like, where's all the money? Oh, like, oh, yeah, about that. So it was either Yeah, you know, it's like, okay, either go to go get a job right away. Turn this around. Or, you know, if you don't do one of those things, we're probably getting split, right. So I was planning like, I was getting my resume ordered together. And then I found selling options. Like I discovered that Hey, there, there was a trade I did that was actually it worked. And I'm like, Well, what is this? Let me follow up more and then I got into it and I showed her how to do it. She was like, Okay, you have something here. So you'd like you said I did Didn't I put like all the money aside? You know, I stopped playing with all the money. And I took a small amount. And I'm like, Okay, let me see if I could just do something with this, instead of the big amount. And that gave her pause, like, okay, fine, you know, he's not gonna lose all the money. And if I lost that money, then yeah, go get another job. And that's it, end of story. But luckily, I showed her she understood it, it started working. And then you know, then the rest is history from there. Margaret: I can imagine there's some pretty real feelings going on around that. That's Allen: Very stressful. Yeah, very, very stressful. Because she wanted to know what I was doing. But she didn't have any background in finance. You know, her family never talked about investing or anything. So she didn't really know anything about it. Slowly, slowly, I started telling her. And then the funny part is, she would come home, like, and she'd be like, Oh, hey, she got interested, right? And she would come home and she goes, Hey, I checked the news and the markets up today. And I'm like, Yeah, but I'm, you know, I'm in. I'm in calls today. Oh, there she goes, Oh, no, oh, that's too bad. You know? And then two days later, she'd be like, Oh, look, I checked in the markets down today. I'm like, No. I mean, Puts today. She would like she did, she wouldn't know if I'm gonna be happy or sad. But she was nuts. But yeah, so and then after a while, then it got good. And like I said, you know, she wanted that stability. She didn't want that up and down. She's like, I need something stable income, so I can quit the second job, take okay. And then she was able to quit the first job. And then so it worked out. But yeah, it was a long, hard road. And I did not have the mentor that you mentioned, you know, so that was one of the probably the biggest things that if I could have found somebody that could have just pulled my hand be like, here, this works, just follow this plan. Margaret: You know, that's why we got to shortcut it. Yeah. Allen: But.. Matt: I think that is a hard thing. Because you're always trying to search for, you know, they're always there numerous or many mentors out in the world, it's like, is trying to find who's true, right? That's it's very difficult. And you you have a guard up, everyone's got their guard up. And they're always kind of like, is this person trying to take me or, you know, I don't feel right about this person, I maybe feel right about this person. I mean, just look at FTX. I mean, that guy that was like darling, and crypto. And then they find out he's, he's, you know, a Bernie Madoff. So it's like, it happens over and over again. So that's kind of how I got into trading. I was like, show me how to do it, and see if it worked, right. And you're not only a mentor, but you show people how to do it. And then you can build trust in yourself, rather than, you know, of course, a mentor is wonderful. And it will shortcut that process. But you can learn about this stuff. And then you, you make yourself your own mentor in a way, you know, it's like you just kind of be like, Okay, I have the confidence now. And then you can go on. Allen: Yeah, I think it all comes down to confidence too. Because like, if I look at it, you know, we have several students that in any strategy that you pick one strategy, and then there's somebody there that's been like, Oh, hey, I did you know this much percent? And I'm like, wow, that's better than me. And there's another strategy. Oh, I did this much. And I'm like that better than me. And I know that, like, what everybody's doing better than me what's going on? You know, but I think that's part of it is the confidence. There's like, and this will tell you something about me, like, you know, I came up with the rules, right? So I came up with the test and testing it and failing, and I forgot what they call it. But it's like, you know, you, you try something and then you fail, and you try and you're failing, you chaired it. So in my mind, you know, all these rules are made by me. Right? So I was like, I don't know how much I can, you know, like, really? I'm gonna trust myself. I don't know. It's scary. But then somebody else comes and goes, Oh, Allen, you know, he's the man. He knows what he's doing. I'm just gonna go 100%. And they do. They do better than me. And I'm like, I don't get it. Matt: redo my rules. Allen: I just need to, I just, like, forget it. I just give you guys my money's like here. Matt: But I mean, in all seriousness, as well, I mean, people, they come in these programs, and everyone has so much to add. I mean, that's how you get better. I mean, there's people that are just like, oh, yeah, I did this way. And you're like, Oh, I didn't think about that. And it's like, if you're open to that, and you receive that, then it makes everything better for everybody. And I've seen that over and over again, where somebody will just say, Oh, I found this way to do this easier. It's like it's constant learning. All of us are constantly learning constantly getting better constantly trying to achieve and go go better. And that's a wonderful thing. Allen: Yep. Yeah, we had an hour. Just recently, we in our passive trading group, somebody had put like, Hey, I don't know how to do this. And I'm pretty sure it's in it's in the core somewhere. But then another student was like, oh, here, let me make you a video. And he just made a video. Yeah, this is how I did it. It's like, Oh, wow. And they asked another Oh, how about this, he made another video. It's just, you know, everybody's helping each other because we all have the same goal. And it's like, Let's just all work together. And, you know, we're all on the same path. Matt: Yeah, it's like, it's always true, you surround yourself with the right people, and good things will happen. I mean, it's just just got to be able to do that, Allen: you know, it's like, amazing, we had some really cool students, helpful, you know, just to go out of the way for each other. It's really, really nice. So then, okay, so my last question for you guys. And I don't know, maybe you guys like, maybe this is a problem that we've seen people have, but I don't know if you guys are gonna be able to answer it. But how can a trader have their spouse support them in their trading? So like, you know, if, you know, one of you is the trader, or you want to do something, how can you get your spouse to have that confidence in you? That you can do it? Does that make sense? Yeah. Because like, I know, with my wife, in the beginning, she didn't have any confidence. And then later on, you know, the numbers kind of spoke for themselves. But one of the things I did was when the back testing software came out that we that we use a lot, I showed it to her. And she was like, Oh, cool. I want to learn this, too. So we would sit there, and I gave her the rules. I think we were talking about credit spreads at the time. It's like, okay, so this is kind of how we find a trade. And I didn't have like, first set out rules yet. It was just, you know, ideas. I try, sometimes they do this way, that way. And so then I had her and I told her what it was. And we would look at a chart and be like, okay, hey, what do you what's the trade? And so she would pick her trade? And then, you know, we would we would go through it. And then I had already done it my way, you know, and it would always come out where she was actually more profitable than me. Same trade, same stock, same timeframe, if we had done it her way, we would have made more money. That's the thing about the confidence. He knows, like, when you see your wife who doesn't know anything, she just numbers, you know, she doesn't matter. It's like, I don't know, maybe I'm not cut out for this. But then, but then later on, there was a time where I got into like, a, like a rut, you know, so I wasn't I wasn't following the rules, the discipline became a problem. Because our trading doesn't take a lot of time. And so when you're just, you know, stuck, you don't have anything else to do, you kind of start over trading, and you're messing around with stuff. And so I had her, and she came, she's the one that came up with this. She's like, you know what, every single trade, you're going to write it down. And you're going to tell me, and I'm going to come upstairs at one o'clock every day, I'm going to ask you questions about every single trade, you know, and I forget exactly what they were. But it's in one of our products. It's like, you know, what's the goal? What's the plan? You're going to adjust it or you're going to get out when you're going to do it? Where's it now? And why haven't you done what you're supposed to do? You know, and so because of that, because I knew she was going to come? Right? I would have everything ready before she came in. So if I had to get out of a trade because it was down or I needed to do an adjustment, it will already be done by the time she got in. And so that degree of holding me accountable. It really I mean the results just went skyrocketing higher. That's really smart. So that was.. Margaret: something that you said yesterday on our call on our oil call really has stuck with me about every day that you wake up you have a decision to stay in that trade or get out so that's the day that you're making a decision. And it's not Yeah, so that it just hit me this morning because we had the the market was down a little bit this morning. And we talked about it like what what are we going to do so I like that idea of having an accountable Matt: Well, it's important because you're you yourself are going to be emotionally different each day for whatever reason, just as you as an individual that but now you have your wife or someone who was account recording accountable is going to come in and keep you straight. I think what every what everybody needs Allen: Yep. Either either spouse or buddy or accountability partner or something like that, that you can trade with. Trading buddy, I like that. Cool. Okay. Is there anything else that you guys wanted to share with our audience? Margaret: Hmm, you can do it. You can absolutely do it. I think if I could have told myself which I had zero knowledge background in how what what was a brokerage? Let's just start with the simple step. I did not even know the difference between brokerages I did not understand what a brokerage account was. So if I could Tell Margaret, even just five years ago, what I will be doing today, I would not have believed it. And that once you start looking at your money, you know, everybody always says nobody cares about your money more than you do. I think our age group needs this knowledge. Because with the advent of you having to figure out your own retirement and not having pensions, it is extremely important for us to know that and we didn't have any knowledge that is out there. You know, we didn't we weren't 20 and Tiktok. And Instagram rails were out there where you could learn some of this stuff. You know, we're where we're younger people already know so much more than I knew when I'm in my 20s. I think there's a group of us that needs the hope that comes from knowing that you can manage your own money, and you can make money and you can help your retirement, it doesn't matter if you're in your 40s. Matt: No matter really what age you are, I mean, my mother's 80, right. And if she was, you know, I used to stay at Costco all the time. And I said this many times where they're, they're older people that give out samples or they're in the job. And there, you can see that they're in pain. They're standing all day long, and they're like 70, and 80 years old. And if they just knew if they knew how to do a simple strategy, or trade or just learn it, in which they totally can, yeah, or be shown that and, you know, they can believe in it, that would change their life. And they change their comfort, not later on and be right now. Yeah. Which is so powerful. So it's really it goes to, that's what I love about trading, it can help all age groups. Yeah. Right. And you're right. No one cares about your money more than you do. And I look at like, life's risky. Everything's at risk. So you owe it to yourself. You think trading is risky. Give it a shot. Everything's risky. Yeah. Right. So you got to overcome your fears. See how things work? Believe in yourself. And just go for it. Yeah, because we're only on here one turn, you know, Margaret: Why not? Give it a shot? Allen: Well said Well said, you guys, I really thank you for this. This has been a pleasure. And I really appreciate your time and spending some time and sharing intimate details about your lives and your relationship with us. It's it's been a blessing. Thank you so much. Margaret: Thank you for asking us. Yeah.

Konstantin & Becky bring to you the latest Nikon news and photography related announcements. Rebecca Danese: https://www.instagram.com/rebecca_danese Konstantin Kochkin: https://www.instagram.com/konstantinkochkin Production: Konstantin Kochkin Send us your news / rumours or contact us at media@graysofwestminster.co.uk Nikon Report 43 Nikon launched Christmas Promotions in the UK, Europe & USA https://shop.graysofwestminster.co.uk/ https://bit.ly/3qnaA88 Nikon X Grays: Rob McNiece on Tuesday 9/11/2021 Ricci Cerra on Grays Livestream Friday 12/11/2021 14:15 UK time Nikon Z 9 Launches: On Assignment in the Desert by Joe McNally YT https://bit.ly/3H6yWsR Z9 First Impressions With Seth, Ricci and Matt + MORE ! at Matt Irwin YT Channel https://bit.ly/3F5eXsx Thom Hogan and Mark Comon discuss NIKON Z9 at Paul's Photo YT https://bit.ly/3Ha3IAZ Nikon Z9 Buffer - Here's PROOF by Matt Granger https://bit.ly/3kmILZW Ricci's Z9 buffer test video https://bit.ly/3kKKZm7 DPREVIEW: The Nikon Z9 is the most DSLR-like mirrorless we've ever seen https://bit.ly/3bWoQfL Nikon Z9 dynamic range test by Dre de Man at Nikon Rumours (very basic test) https://bit.ly/31Pfbps The Nikon Z9's new sensor could be the start of a big shift in photography by Antonio Di Benedetto at VERGE https://bit.ly/3F3HMWd Pre-Orders & Production: https://bit.ly/3C1ZxmP Pre-orders: PRE-ORDERS FOR NIKON Z9 “INSANE” SAYS NIKON DEALER at Amateur Photographer https://bit.ly/3qrkshk Nikon interview: 'Z9 will exceed expectations for every genre of photography and video' at DPReview https://bit.ly/3HcKRFx Internal ProRes and RAW on a mirrorless camera finally arrives with Nikon Z9 https://bit.ly/3n5mrpu Kirk will be making the L-Plate for Z9 https://bit.ly/2YD88Ps Nikon Z 100-400mm S. First look by Ricci https://bit.ly/3n3eyRl A video explaining the 100-400 Inner Balance technology by BH Vendor Videos https://bit.ly/3quDF1o Nikon is building a new headquarter in Tokyo https://bit.ly/30bla6Y Nikon Japan suspends orders for EN-El19 battery till further notice https://bit.ly/3C29UqL Fotodiox PRONTO LM-NKZ-PRN autofocus lens adapter now available (Leica M lens → Nikon Z mount camera) https://bit.ly/3F4vbSN ADOBE MAX https://adobe.ly/2Yy6o9Z, https://adobe.ly/3wzchAk Reviews: Nikon Z fc Review - Old School or Old Fashioned? By Hyun Ralph Jeong https://bit.ly/30aUOmh Nikon Z6 II Time-lapse review by London Viewpoints https://bit.ly/3H7XSQx Thanks for listening! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/grays-of-westminster/message

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Matt and Tyler talk about new graphics cards, xmonad troubles, Ubuntu on mobile, Risc-V, and Mint vs Ubuntu. Which is better for new users? All that and our Apps of the week! Twitter: @thelinuxcast @mtwb @OfficialZaney on LBRY , https://bit.ly/3dbqbjX on YouTube Subscribe at http://thelinuxcast.org Contact us thelinuxcast@gmail.com Patreon https://patreon.com/thelinuxcast https://facebook.com/thelinuxcast Subscribe on YouTube https://youtube.com/thelinuxcast **What have we been up to Linux related this Week?** Tyler – Seeing what a Quadro can do on Linux. Matt – More fun with xmonad, but I think I'm done. Looking more at AwesomeWM. **Links (One each)** Matt -  http://linuxgizmos.com/risc-v-to-hand-out-1000-free-risc-v-dev-boards/ Tyler - https://9to5linux.com/ubuntu-touch-ota-17-arrives-may-12-with-nfc-support-available-for-testing-now --- **Main Topic -** Mint or Ubuntu: Which is Best for Noobs? --- **Apps of the Week** Matt - Splash-CLI https://github.com/splash-cli/splash-cli Tyler - LSD - https://github.com/Peltoche/lsd Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:12 Our Week in Linux 8:49 Contact Info 10:34 News Links 23:12 Linux Mint vs Ubuntu 52:45 Apps of the Week 1:01:14 Conclusion

In 2007, after nearly a decade of experience in numbers-focused direct-response marketing, Matt Weber used a business broker to buy a small jack-of-all trades agency that provided sales training, traditional media marketing, and a small bit of web development. Over time, that agency became ROAR! Internet Marketing, where Matt is now President. The agency's forte today? Measurable actions. In this interview, Matt explains what a buyer can expect from a business broker, how to select one, broker limitations, and a broker's role in facilitating business acquisitions. He warns that it will be challenging to evaluate transactional opportunities in the next few months. But, he also expects to see a lot of merger and acquisition activity as companies adjust to the COVID-impacted business environment. Matt's general tips? Agencies will need to be more aware of costs now, “throttle back” on anticipatory hiring, , and eliminate “tool bloat” (buying multiple tools with the same functionality).  Matt is no stranger to change. In 2007, websites were little more than glorified brochures. Matt shed virtually everything of the original business, rebranded it, and focused heavily on digital marketing conversions and direct response. Early on, 85-90% of the agency's revenues came from web development. Today, 80% of his agency's revenues come from recurring digital marketing services, primarily for three verticals: elective medical (almost recession-proof), recurring-business home services (need-based), and manufacturing (which has a completely different cycle than consumer-based marketing). Matt says, when you focus your efforts on a limited number of verticals, you “leverage your success more effectively,” and follows that with the comment: “Diluted focus yields diluted results.”  Matt has created a free tool, Smylelytics.com, which he compares to a car's “check engine” light. (It won't tell you what is wrong, but it will tell you when to take a look.) Twice a month, Smylelytics evaluates a company's Google Analytics, translates the information into memorable, themed photographs, and emails the company with the (good/neutral/bad) “news.” Matt serves as a national trainer for the Grow with Google program, where he presents small- to medium-sized businesses with a one-day class that covers Google My Business, Google Analytics, and Google Data Studio tools. He also speaks at conferences, frequently on the topic of, “5 Things Your Website Is Trying to Tell You but You're Afraid to Ask.” Here, he provides a brief overview of those 5 things: Does your website, as a salesperson, feel confident in selling your business? Is it effective in turning leads into sales? Where should you focus your limited time and budget?What do the analytics show you about which efforts are paying off and which are not?  Is your landing page making a good first impression? What does your landing report say about what your first-time visitors do on their first visit? Who likes you best? Focus your efforts on communicating with those who like you the most. Are certain pages repelling your customers? Stop serving the bad pages. Mayt is available on his agency's website at: RoarontheWeb.com or on Twitter @BestWebDesignFL. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I'm joined today by Matt Weber, President at ROAR! Internet Marketing based in Altamonte Springs, Florida just outside of Orlando. Welcome to the podcast, Matt. MATT: Thank you. Great to be here. Been looking forward to this for some time. ROB: Excellent to have you here. I've been looking forward to this as well, especially with some of the interesting nuances of your own history and background. Why don't you kick us off, though, by telling us about ROAR! Internet Marketing and what the company specializes in?  MATT: Our real specialty is conversions. We've been around since 2007, and back then we started lead tracking, lead recording, and a focus on measurable results. That came from my background in direct marketing. I did direct mail. I did nearly a decade of direct response marketing where if you couldn't measure it, you didn't do it. Back in 2007, that's not what websites were. In 2007, websites were kind of glorified brochures, and nobody was really talking about conversions and goals and tracking things. That was our entrée into the marketplace, and we were really one of the pioneers in that area. We've continued to evolve that – to the point, though, where we've gotten a little bit less into web design and more into digital marketing. When we started the agency, 85-90% of our revenue was web development, and now 80% of our revenue is recurring digital marketing services. So our forte is measurable actions. ROB: Who were some of the first sorts of clients that were really open to thinking about their website as less of a brochure and more of a destination and opportunity to actually get action? I think some people were willing to spend more money on expensive brochures for a while, but who started turning that corner to thinking more progressively about their websites? MATT: Elective medical. Cosmetic surgeons, LASIK, cosmetic dermatologists. They came into 2007 with a fairly refined understanding of how much a new patient is worth, and they had some sensitivity to cost per lead. So that's where we get our start, and that was the segment that was most receptive to our messaging, followed by home services. They were also receptive to that because they were prolific direct mailers. So, they did receive that message well, and we're still in those two verticals today. ROB: That makes sense. Certainly, a lot of elective medical can potentially be fairly large tickets, fairly decent margins, and probably also so on the home services side. Was it larger project stuff, or were you also finding things even down to emergency plumbers? MATT: More things that had a recurring value – your pest control company where it was an average lifetime value rather than a transaction value. They got it pretty quickly. Let's say you engage with a pest control company; you're going to typically stay with them for 2+ years at $70 a month or $80 a month. Those companies understand lifetime value as opposed to transaction value, so this worked well for them. ROB: That's a great line of thinking, especially to find your way into some of those good long-term customer lifetime value – not so much restaurants and that sort of thing. You started in 2007. You started at perhaps an inopportune time, much as anyone who started a business last year may feel right now amidst this coronavirus crisis/shift/recession, whatever we wish to call it. How did those next couple of years going through that financial crisis with the business change your thinking, and how is it shaping how you think about the virus era and post-virus era that we are in and heading into? MATT: I want to answer the second part of that question first because we have always run our business imagining that we were always in the worst of times – because we were, in 2007-2008 and early 2009. We were in times where we were watching this deposit so that we could make this payment. We were running checks to the bank and then saying, “Okay, now we can make this payment.” Everything was almost on a minute by minute basis. We never forgot that. I think it's a lot like people listening who might have grandparents or great-grandparents from the Depression era and how that affected their spending all the way up until their late life. That happened to us and a lot of businesses, so we always managed the company as if times weren't great. That's helped now. We're in a stronger financial position, we're a financially strong company, and a lot of that is the attitudes that 2007 and 2008 brought with us. ROB: How much of that comes naturally for you? I think any entrepreneur, and especially in the marketing and agency world, one of the first questions you're asked when you meet anybody is “How many people do you have?” It's this tempting ego number to hire a little bit ahead of need. Probably throttling back on that along the way, was that a natural thing for you? Or was it an acquired discipline? MATT: It's an acquired discipline. You brought up a great one: labor. I think a lot of agencies do hire before the need. Another one is tools. I run into a lot of agency owners that have six or seven or eight different tools that duplicate functionality. These tools reshape themselves, they come out with something new, so the agency buys a subscription to this one without canceling the subscription to that one, and all of a sudden they've got what I call “tool bloat.” They've got subscriptions to a bunch of different things they didn't even know they were subscribing to. That happens as well. Being mindful of that I think is a result of the 2007, 2008, and 2009 experience, where we track everything we spend on a recurring basis, what we've committed to, and we're very cautious about our labor expenses. ROB: How do you manage those labor expenses when you do start to get close to the margin? I think we've all had that experience where we have a little bit more work than we can do or maybe a lot more work than we have capacity to do. How do you think through some of those inflection points? MATT: We've got quite a few spreadsheets and calculations that we do behind the scenes, and there's a premise behind it, and that is: we don't want to be that agency that hires up, loses an account, and lays off. We mathematically figure out not only what the point is when we need to hire somebody, but what's above that so that if we lost anything, we don't want to lay off. I'm happy to say that since 2007, we have never laid off a single employee because we've lost an account. We've eliminated a position because the scope of work changed, but we've never eliminated a position because we've lost a client. Now, when we go to hire people, yes, people are looking for money, absolutely. But at some level, they're looking for stability. A little bit lesser so today than maybe 6 years ago, but we get to tell those people, “This is our philosophy. We don't want to hire up and lay down. That's not who we are. We want to build a team, a coherent team, and we want to build for retention.” We've been very fortunate in that. We've got folks that have been with us for 10 years, 8 years, 7 years, and it's because of that philosophy. They know underneath it all, we're trying to build something progressively stable. ROB: That's insightful. One thing that goes along with that dynamic you discuss of losing an account and laying people off is also revenue concentration. Some agencies can be anywhere between let's say 30% and 70% all-in with one client. How do you think about revenue concentration? Is it something you try and manage, or is it something you just deal with and manage around? MATT: We definitely try to manage to it. In fact, we not only manage revenue concentration within a client, but we try to manage revenue concentration within a vertical. Our three verticals are elective medical, home services, and manufacturing. Those were chosen because elective medical is almost recession-proof. In fact, a couple of our cosmetic surgeon clients had some of their best years in 2007 and 2008, surprisingly. Home services are need-based, so it's hard for a consumer to give up let's say their pest control company, as an example. Then manufacturing has a completely different cycle than some of the consumer-based marketing that we do. So, we not only look at revenue concentration per client, we look at it per vertical. We don't want to be heavily invested into any one of those three verticals. ROB: Really interesting, and makes a ton of sense. Matt, how did you get into this business in the first place? What led you to move from whatever you were doing before to starting ROAR? MATT: I was working for the broadcast industry. That's where I grew up. I spent 15+ years in the broadcast industry. Then I worked for an exciting and fast-paced direct response marketing company, and I was in a job that was very challenging. A lot of travel, a lot of 65+-hour weeks. My wife at the time also was in a very challenging position, and our daughter was about two years from graduating high school. We looked around and said, “What does life look like after our daughter leaves the house?” We came to the conclusion that if you are going to kill yourself for somebody, why not kill yourself for yourself? So, we went on this process of buying a business. Interestingly enough, we ran into a business that at the time – and this is early 2007 – was a high-end luxury home theater business. I was going through the financials and going through the business, and it was owned by a gentleman who was an extremely smart engineer, and he had a great business from a technology standpoint, from an execution standpoint – but he was a horrible marketer. I thought, “Ah, this is for me because that's my strength. I'm a great marketer.” I was just about to put pen on a contract to buy that business, and our business broker called and said, “Hey, there's another thing out there. Why don't you take a look at it? It's an advertising business.” Of course, business brokers call everything an advertising business. So we went and looked at it, and it was a guy who had started this small shop that did a little bit of everything – it did sales training, did traditional media, and it did, back in 2007, a little bit of web development. We looked at 2007 and we said the future is digital, the future is web, the future is not traditional, and the future certainly wasn't sales training to us. So, we bought that company in early 2007 and began to morph it. We got rid of its traditional market offerings, got rid of the sales training, rebranded it, and got heavily invested into conversions and the direct response portion of digital marketing. And that's how we got into it. ROB: I think a lot of people may not be familiar with working with a business broker. Is that something you had done before? Is that something you would do again? Maybe in this season there's other businesses that would be worth acquiring? MATT: I think so. You're right, I think we're about to enter an interesting time for merger activity and acquisition activity. I do think a business broker is a time saver. It doesn't give you a pass on doing your own homework because business brokers can never be an expert in your line of work. In the acquisition opportunities that we've evaluated since then, that is very apparent. They don't know the metrics to ask and they don't know how to peel back the onions of the financials to look for what really is a healthy agency. But they do save time. In fact, a lot of agencies that might be for sale – how do you find out about them? It's not like you can drive by and they're going to put a “for sale” sign on the outside of the building. The only way you might be able to find out about them is if they're represented by a business broker. So, I do think if you're looking to acquire something in the coming months and years, definitely find a business broker that you can trust and build a rapport with. I think it's a little bit like buying and selling a home. You have to have a rapport with your real estate agent, and that real estate agent needs to have some level of expertise. You wouldn't engage with a real estate agent who doesn't really know the neighborhood that you're buying in, and you might not do the same thing with the business broker. Don't engage somebody who doesn't have at least some high level awareness of the type of business that you're looking at. But they are not going to be the expert, and you're going to need to bring a fair amount of analytical power to the evaluation of any potential transaction. ROB: That's a very timely insight, I think. For someone who hasn't worked with a business broker before, I think a lot of times when you generally talk about acquiring or selling an agency, quite often they're revenue and retention financed. How does that dynamic work with a business broker? Is it similar, where there's an earn-out and payback period? Or is it a little bit more of a buyout and transaction since there is a middleman in there who isn't involved at all in retaining clients the way you might be doing if you were acquiring an agency more directly? MATT: Yeah, brokers aren't really keen on the whole earn-out scenario. [laughs] But they're going to attach a value to the transaction regardless of how that transaction is funded, ultimately. So, the broker is going to seek its commission based on what that topline value is, and it's going to be paid at the beginning portion of that transaction. If the transaction takes years to complete, the broker will get his money upfront. ROB: So, the rest of the transaction, are you then able to still revenue finance it and set those terms directly with the owner? MATT: Yeah, and that's part of the negotiation. I think we're going to see changes in that upcoming. I think that we're going to see some vulnerabilities for shops that are heavily invested in these segments that we just talked about. If you're running a digital agency and 80% of your revenue is coming from restaurants right now, I sympathize with you. You're in a tough spot. If 80% of your revenue is coming from travel and tourism, I empathize with you. You're in a tough spot. So, what is that owner going to do? Maybe that's an agency where that owner says, “You know what? Maybe it's time for me to look at other things.” You have to then bring in the power of where that revenue came from, what it could be, and could you potentially help diversify that revenue? It's going to be a challenging time in the next few months to evaluate transactional opportunities. ROB: Going back to the start of the business for you – you talked about how you've navigated a previous financial crisis, but I think another thing you've navigated is in 2007, as you mentioned, websites were essentially glorified brochures, and social media was in an infancy if at all. LinkedIn I think was around, and Facebook I think was around for college kids. As additional marketing channels have come online and become viable, how have you navigated the process of when this is relevant to someone in manufacturing, when it's relevant to someone in elective medical, or when it's time to sit on it and tell them to take a back burner and maybe it's not time to put their business on TikTok? MATT: Great question, and this is where analytics comes in. This is why it's such an exciting time to be a small or medium sized business owner. If you think about where it was to be a business owner in the early 2000s – and way before that – the data was in the hands of agencies, and the data was in the hands of media outlets. You really couldn't answer that question that you just asked with clarity. But now the data is in the business owner's hands. The paradigm has changed. It's not a matter of speculating whether TikTok is of value or whether Facebook is of value. It's a matter of making sure you have the measurements setup in place and answering that question objectively. We have this conversation a lot. You've got a lot of companies that are way too heavily invested into social media because they thought it was cool, because it was the thing to do and everybody was writing a blog article on how you have to use Facebook 5 years ago. But then when you got into the numbers and you broke down the facts, a lot of folks weren't getting the ROI off of that investment they made into social media, and they were overly prioritizing it. So, the answer to your question is you've got to have the analytics and you've got to get the data set up, which has grown so much since 2007. Now everybody has the key to unlock the answer to that question with clarity. ROB: Very, very interesting. It makes sense, too. Data-driven decisions help here, especially when you have these transaction/conversion focused clients who know what a lead is. It's always easier to have an objective discussion around that. Now, if you rewind and if you were going to do this whole ROAR! Internet Marketing thing over again from scratch, what are some of the things you would consider doing differently if you were starting over? MATT: The biggest thing I would do differently is we were way too late to get into the game of specializing in the three verticals that we've chosen now. We at one time were proud of the fact that our portfolio contained everything from A to Z, and we would look at the world and go, “The world's our oyster! Everybody's a great prospect!” Ultimately that turned out to frustrate our salespeople. It sounded good, but it really wasn't a smart thing to do. When you focus your efforts on a limited number of verticals, all of a sudden you prospect better, and the biggest thing that you do differently is leverage your success more effectively. When you look at any particular business that knocks on your door as a prospect, you typically may not have a great story to tell them of what you've done in the past. When you narrow your focus and somebody knocks on your door in one of those verticals, you're very confident that you have a success story to share with them, and that becomes compelling. So that's absolutely the one thing that I would do differently faster. I would focus faster. ROB: There's so many interesting levels of discipline in here, because I think some people get into the entrepreneurial world and they think about the excitement, they think about the risk-taking, and I think they think about that correlating highly with running a successful business. It sounds to me, if we peel back the DNA here a little bit, it sounds like you have built in habits that lead to running a healthy and successful business that is good for your team, that gives margin to invest in them, and candidly – at least, a lot of people I know who have this sort of habit – it's actually better for their personal bottom line than having a bunch of employees and an infinite number of lines of business. How have you thought about the difference between a healthy business and the ego around it? MATT: I think running a business sometimes is kind of like the Olympics. For most folks, you have to specialize in a particular event and do well in it, but there are those rare individuals that can participate in the decathlon and be good at 10 events. I found out that I'm not one of those people. I need to focus on a particular specialty. So that's what we've tried to do. We've tried to focus on being a fantastic digital agency that produces results and tried to attract employees that share that singular vision. We're not thinking about this exciting app that we could do next week, and then we've got this idea for this other app that we could build the month after that. Not that we haven't tried to expand beyond our range; we have. But it's been cautious and it's been measured. I had a former boss tell me one time, and it sticks with me for a long time, that diluted focus yields diluted results, and that is something that I continue to live by. I'm very conscious of where our mental time and attention goes. If our mental time and attention gets diluted, we see it. We see it show up in the numbers that we track. Sometimes it's my role as the president to bring us back and make sure that we're focusing. ROB: Matt, outside of ROAR, you have a couple of other interesting things that you shared, and probably some other interesting new hobbies amidst this pandemic. Among some of the professional things that you do, interestingly, when people are traveling, you go on the road and speak with Google, actually. What do you share about, and how did that come to pass in the first place? MATT: Yes, I'm a national trainer for the Grow with Google program. About 10 years ago, a call came into the office and our office manager answered it and she said, “Hey Matt, Google is on the phone for you.” I said, “Sure they are.” There's all these people masquerading as Google. But I pick up the phone, and indeed, it's Google. On our website at the time, we had some videos that were called “60 Seconds to a Better Business Website.” We did this series about helping small and medium sized business owners get better results from their website, and they somehow found it. They saw I'm in the video, and they said, “Hey, we'd like you to come to Atlanta and audition for this program to be a trainer.” At the time, the program was called Get Your Business Online (GYBO). So I went to Atlanta, I auditioned, and I got the job. For the next 3 years, I traveled all over the country for them, teaching Google content. They disbanded the program, and then about 2 years ago they brought it back under a different name, GWG (Grow with Google). A little bit different content. So, they host these events all throughout the country. They're typically a day long, and in that day of presentation where they invite small and medium sized businesses, they'll do a class on Google My Business, they'll do a class on Google Analytics, they'll do a class on the Google Data Studio tools. I'm one of the people – there's 13 of us – that teaches those classes. All totaled, I've gone to 37 different states teaching for Google and teaching those classes, and it's been a blast. It's been a real blast. ROB: That's a really good credential. It's a good tip of the hat to what you know and the business you've built. Specifically, you've presented on “5 Things Your Website Is Trying to Tell You,” I believe you said that you're afraid to ask. What is our website trying to tell us that we're scared of? MATT: this is a program that I do outside the Google confines for a lot of conferences and trade events. It's called “5 Things Your Website Is Trying to Tell You but You're Afraid to Ask.” Real quickly, the five things: Number one, it's trying to tell you whether it feels confident selling your business. Ultimately, your website is just a salesperson. That's all it is. Just like you would measure the effectiveness of a salesperson – how many leads did they turn into sales? – you really need to be doing the same thing for your website. It's going to tell you whether it feels like it's doing a good job at that. The second thing it's going to do is it'll tell you how to prioritize your time if you let it. We're all investing in these different marketing activities, and if you look at your analytics, they're going to tell you which ones are paying off and which ones are not. We really need to focus. Unless you've got an unlimited budget and unlimited time, you've got to stop doing maybe your organic efforts because your paid is so much more profitable, or vice versa, stop doing your social because your organic is – but if you've got limited time and budget, you've got to focus. Your website will tell you how. The third thing that your website will tell you if you let it is, are you making a good first impression? One thing that's never changed is that you never get a second chance to make a good first impression, and that's true everywhere, and it's true with websites. If you look at your landing page report, it'll tell you what first-time visitors due when they come to your website for the first time. It may not be making a great first impression, and that could be costing you money. The fourth thing your website is trying to tell you is who likes you best. It's 2020. We don't market to everybody anymore. That's ridiculous. Let's shave that down and we'll find that women are more receptive to our message than men, or 35 to 54s are more receptive to our message than 18 to 24s, or we'll find out that people in the city are more receptive to our message than outside of the city. Whatever that pattern is – there's always a pattern – somebody likes you best. Let's spend our time and energy talking to them rather than trying to convince the whole world that they should buy our product or service. The last thing that your website is trying to tell you is some of your food is not very good. It's trying to tell you that some of your pages are just flat-out repelling people. If you imagine being a restaurant owner for a second, and every single time you put down a particular dish on a table – every time – people looked at the dish and they got up from the table and walked out of the restaurant – imagine that happened to you. Ultimately, what would you do pretty quickly? Stop serving the dish, right? If you think about websites, you know what we're all doing? We're still serving the dish. Because we do have a page that you can look at the statistics and go, oh, people look at that page and go, “Ugh!” and they get up and leave. If you look at your exit page report, you'll see what pages that's happening, and you've got to cure that because if you don't, then you're just like that restaurant owner who's continually serving that dish that's forcing people to walk out the door. So those are five things that your website is trying to tell you, but you're afraid to ask. ROB: I can definitely see why a lot of us would stick our head in the sand on that and try to do the thing we do every day rather than looking in the mirror and actually thinking about the data on our website and the page that everybody bounces from. It's straightforward, but I think we all certainly need that reminder. One other thing in your background I can't pass up and I have to ask about is Smylelytics. That's just a fun, catchy name, but what is Smylelytics that you have created? MATT: I've met a lot of small and medium sized business owners, and I talk to them about data like you and I are talking about right now, and they nod their head politely – and yet even my own clients, who I try to make data a little bit more accessible and enticing to them, they've got busier things to do, frankly. A lot of my clients are owner/operators. They're running the business, they own the business. So, I thought, how do I get this treasure trove of data that can be fundamentally business-changing to them in a way that they want to look at it? What Smylelytics does is takes your Google Analytics data and translates it into memorable photographs. So you can go to Smylelytics and you can pick a photo set – maybe you like sailing; there's a sailing set. Maybe you like dogs; there's a dog set. Maybe you're into cute babies; there's a cute baby set. You pick that, and then Smylelytics is going to send you an email twice a month, and it's basically going to turn your analytics data into red, yellow, green. Super simple. If things are going well for your amount of visitors, then you're going to get a happy baby face if you selected the baby. If things aren't going well, then you're going to get a sad baby. You don't have to think about it, you're not worried about charts, you're not worried about graphs, you're not worried about formulas, you don't have to dig your way through the weeds of Google Analytics. In a nanosecond, you can get the Smylelytics email, which comes out twice a month, and you can instantly know, “Hey, things are going well / things are going not so well.” It's kind of designed to be like the check engine light on the car. The check engine light doesn't tell you anything. It just tells you that you should go talk to somebody. That's what Smylelytics is designed to do: give you the confidence that everything's going okay, fantastic. If it's not, you know it, and whoever that trusted resource is in your life, then you ought to tell them, “Hey, we should look into this.” Maybe it's nothing. Just like that check engine light, sometimes it's something significant, sometimes it's not. But you should pay attention to the check engine light, and that's what Smylelytics does.  ROB: The way you describe it – we can't tell because we're on a podcast, but it does make me simple. Is that a paid tool? Is that a free tool? MATT: It's absolutely free. ROB: Great. We'll get that in the show notes as well. It's Smylelytics.com, is that right? MATT: Right. ROB: Excellent. Matt, when people want to track you down and want to find out more about you and ROAR! Internet Marketing, where should they go to find you? MATT: We are RoarontheWeb.com. That's where you can find ROAR! Internet Marketing. And on Twitter, I am @BestWebDesignFL. ROB: Legit. You can tell you started up in an SEO environment. That's so important to this day, amongst all the other things you've learned along the way. Thank you so much for joining us, Matt. I think you've had a lot to share that's really helpful, and we can all bring a smile to our faces and websites in this time. MATT: Great. Enjoyed talking to you. ROB: Thanks so much, Matt. MATT: Bye bye. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Kat: You know I was reading the other day that maybe video games might not be so bad for children. What do you think about that?Matt: I think it depends on what you're talking about is so bad for children, I think if you're talking about supposedly educational video games such as Sesame Street video games, etc, I don't think that those help children in any way whatsoever. Sports games, I don't think that those are going to help kids learn how to play sports either. Violent video games, I think that's kind of a fine line, is it going to make children more violent or less violent?Kat: What the article was actually about was that video games, especially violent video games, actually decrease crime instead of increasing it.Matt: How come? That doesn't seem to make much sense?Kat: At first I thought it didn't make a lot of sense either but it was saying that children that play a lot of video games stay inside and they get some of their aggression out actually playing these games.Matt: Do you think that the reason the crime goes down is because they get their aggression out or do you think it's because they're just staying indoors more often? Or did the article say either way or another?Kat: Actually the actual article was saying that kids stay inside more, so they don't really have time to commit crimes.Matt: In that sense then it doesn't matter if it's educational, it doesn't actually matter if they are playing violent video games or not I would think. It would just be any type of video game keeps them inside.Kat: That's true.Matt: I don't know. I think that I was always growing up playing video games and my mom would always try to kick me out of the house to go outside and play and sure it's good that video games keep kids from doing violent things on the streets but I don't think that video games should be the center of their life and keep them indoors all the time.Kat: What do you think should be the maximum amount of hours that kids should be allowed to play?Matt: More than an hour or two a day, I think the part the study doesn't look at is the long term effects that make kids stay indoors all day and they become less social, so because they're less social they're going to end up having more pent up[被压抑的，被抑制的] frustration in the long term when they become thirty and forty and they are not able to connect with other people.Kat: I think that's a good point. Children should definitely not play more than one or two hours a day and they should not neglect their friends for it.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Kat: You know I was reading the other day that maybe video games might not be so bad for children. What do you think about that?Matt: I think it depends on what you're talking about is so bad for children, I think if you're talking about supposedly educational video games such as Sesame Street video games, etc, I don't think that those help children in any way whatsoever. Sports games, I don't think that those are going to help kids learn how to play sports either. Violent video games, I think that's kind of a fine line, is it going to make children more violent or less violent?Kat: What the article was actually about was that video games, especially violent video games, actually decrease crime instead of increasing it.Matt: How come? That doesn't seem to make much sense?Kat: At first I thought it didn't make a lot of sense either but it was saying that children that play a lot of video games stay inside and they get some of their aggression out actually playing these games.Matt: Do you think that the reason the crime goes down is because they get their aggression out or do you think it's because they're just staying indoors more often? Or did the article say either way or another?Kat: Actually the actual article was saying that kids stay inside more, so they don't really have time to commit crimes.Matt: In that sense then it doesn't matter if it's educational, it doesn't actually matter if they are playing violent video games or not I would think. It would just be any type of video game keeps them inside.Kat: That's true.Matt: I don't know. I think that I was always growing up playing video games and my mom would always try to kick me out of the house to go outside and play and sure it's good that video games keep kids from doing violent things on the streets but I don't think that video games should be the center of their life and keep them indoors all the time.Kat: What do you think should be the maximum amount of hours that kids should be allowed to play?Matt: More than an hour or two a day, I think the part the study doesn't look at is the long term effects that make kids stay indoors all day and they become less social, so because they're less social they're going to end up having more pent up[被压抑的，被抑制的] frustration in the long term when they become thirty and forty and they are not able to connect with other people.Kat: I think that's a good point. Children should definitely not play more than one or two hours a day and they should not neglect their friends for it.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Kat: You know I was reading the other day that maybe video games might not be so bad for children. What do you think about that?Matt: I think it depends on what you're talking about is so bad for children, I think if you're talking about supposedly educational video games such as Sesame Street video games, etc, I don't think that those help children in any way whatsoever. Sports games, I don't think that those are going to help kids learn how to play sports either. Violent video games, I think that's kind of a fine line, is it going to make children more violent or less violent?Kat: What the article was actually about was that video games, especially violent video games, actually decrease crime instead of increasing it.Matt: How come? That doesn't seem to make much sense?Kat: At first I thought it didn't make a lot of sense either but it was saying that children that play a lot of video games stay inside and they get some of their aggression out actually playing these games.Matt: Do you think that the reason the crime goes down is because they get their aggression out or do you think it's because they're just staying indoors more often? Or did the article say either way or another?Kat: Actually the actual article was saying that kids stay inside more, so they don't really have time to commit crimes.Matt: In that sense then it doesn't matter if it's educational, it doesn't actually matter if they are playing violent video games or not I would think. It would just be any type of video game keeps them inside.Kat: That's true.Matt: I don't know. I think that I was always growing up playing video games and my mom would always try to kick me out of the house to go outside and play and sure it's good that video games keep kids from doing violent things on the streets but I don't think that video games should be the center of their life and keep them indoors all the time.Kat: What do you think should be the maximum amount of hours that kids should be allowed to play?Matt: More than an hour or two a day, I think the part the study doesn't look at is the long term effects that make kids stay indoors all day and they become less social, so because they're less social they're going to end up having more pent up[被压抑的，被抑制的] frustration in the long term when they become thirty and forty and they are not able to connect with other people.Kat: I think that's a good point. Children should definitely not play more than one or two hours a day and they should not neglect their friends for it.

[DE] In der zweiunddreißigsten (englischsprachigen) Folge des Podcasts geht’s in die Antarktis. Richtig gehört! Der britische Polarführer Matt Allen nimmt uns mit auf seine Expeditionen und erzählt wie er es vom Backpacker in Australien zum Naturforscher am Südpol geschafft hat. Er erzählt von einigen unvergesslichen Momenten seiner Reise und berichtet aus erster Hand, wie sich der Klimawandel schon jetzt am südlichsten Punkt der Erde bemerkbar macht. Viel Spaß und take it easy! [ENG] The thirty-second episode of the podcast goes to Antarctica. You heard right! British polar guide Matt Allen takes us on his expeditions and explains how he made it from a backpacker in Australia to a naturalist at the South Pole. He shares some memorable moments of his journey and reports firsthand how climate change is already noticeable at the southernmost point on earth. Have fun and take it easy! Hier mehr von Matt/ More from Matt here: Podcast: Polar Tales Podcast Instagram: @polartalespodcast Website: https://discover.oneoceanexpeditions.com/polar-tales-podcast-series/ Hier der Luc & Nic Reisen Trailer: https://bit.ly/2AHAs3J Hier die letzte Folge: (031) INTERVIEW w/ Moritz Kaufmann (Fotografie): https://bit.ly/30E8sd5 Hier ein paar Highlights aus Staffel 2: (021) REISEZIELE Russland: https://bit.ly/2v9nrQP (023) INTERVIEW w/ Paul Hacker (Nepal): https://bit.ly/2G5CRHW (025) REISEZIELE Portugal: https://bit.ly/30IBpVA (030) INTERVIEW w/ Patrizia Schlosser (Vanlife): https://bit.ly/30K31th Falls du sehen willst was wir außer dem Podcast noch so machen, folge uns auf… Instagram: @lucundnicreisen Facebook: @lucundnicreisen YouTube: Luc & Nic Reisen Für Fragen, Anregungen oder Wünsche, schreib uns eine Mail an… lucundnicpodcast@gmail.com Danke fürs Zuhören, eure Weltenbummler Luc & Nic.

EPISODE #157 Retail shop Matt More 13 years pdr SBA loan 701A Sponsors: https://www.CBDdirectoils.com http://www.ansonpdr.com/orange-hawg-pdr-glue-daniel-gromm.html https://www.mobiletechrx.com https://edgytools.com https://www.magnatekmat.com https://www.facebook.com/groups/1506625212978887/

Doctor Aphra's feeling conflicted and Hera Syndulla finds herself in a dangerous situation as Comics With Kenobi celebrates its 50th episode by doing exactly what we've done since we began back in 2015!Jeff McGee and Matt More breakdown the events of Marvel's Star Wars: Doctor Aphra #17 and discuss the edifying interview that Newsarama's Chris Arrant did with Marvel Star Wars comics editor Jordan D. White.The new Star Wars comics out this week include:Star Wars: Darth Vader (Vol. 2) #12Star Wars: Jedi of the Republic -- Mace Windu trade collecting the five-issue mini series, Stay in touch and up to date by following us on Twitter and Facebook.If you want a cheap-as-free Comics With Kenobi button, send us a note and tell us what you thought of the show, the latest comics or just to ask a question.Like what you hear? Go to iTunes and leave us a rating and review. Subscribe to all of the Coffee With Kenobi network podcasts, including Rebels Reactions, Lattes With Leia, Legends Library and Coffee With Kenobi.

Nasir and Matt talk about the changes at Starbucks that have led to many disgruntled employees and customers. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. NASIR: And we are talking about our second favorite food item, I would say, right? After pizza. Would you say? Coffee. MATT: Is that a food? NASIR: No, uh… that’s true. MATT: I guess you could freeze it and then eat it, but it seems more like a beverage. NASIR: Well, you know what I mean – at least we talk about it. I know you and I tend to talk about coffee a lot for some reason, too. It seems like it comes up. I don’t know if it’s on the podcast or otherwise. Or we’re just happy to be drinking coffee at a coffee shop. MATT: Well, it’s possible. I mean, I don’t like Starbucks – which is what we’re going to talk about today – and I think I’ve mentioned that many times how it’s more of a convenience. Basically, if I need coffee and it’s the only option available, that’s the only time I go there. Even when people want to meet at Starbucks, I’m always reluctant and try to go somewhere else. NASIR: Try to go somewhere else. MATT: I don’t really necessarily try. I mean, now, I oftentimes just suggest where we should go. NASIR: It’s not that I don’t like Starbucks nor do I like it. it’s just that I have had great coffee and there’s a difference but I’m also very tolerable to different degrees of quality. MATT: Yeah, that’s the thing. I will say, I mean, I only drink iced coffee. NASIR: That makes a big difference. MATT: Their cold brew that they’ve had this last year – maybe more than that – is actually not bad. I’ll give them that. NASIR: Okay, we’ll give them that. MATT: Yeah, I can drink that. I don’t drink hot drinks so maybe that’s the problem. NASIR: Maybe they’ll be a successful company now that they have some good iced beverages. MATT: Yeah, I was looking up the numbers for how many stores they have. We can get to that in a bit. NASIR: How many stores do they have? MATT: More than 23,000 in 2015. NASIR: Wow. MATT: Looks like about half of that… NASIR: Half of them are right next to each other. MATT: They’re on the same block, basically. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: About half of that looks like to be US locations but that number is a year older. I don’t know. It’s somewhere in there. But it’s quite a bit, obviously. Let’s get into this. First, it all kind of stems from this – I assume it’s a barista who started this post – basically saying the morale at Starbucks amongst the people working there is at a low – maybe an all-time low – or at least it’s sinking because a slew of issues, the first of which being the hours that the baristas are working there. I think it’s well-documented that Starbucks offers benefits to its employees which I think has been a huge selling point for a long time now. It’s something they’ve gotten a lot of praise for. But, if you work there for the requirement to get those benefits or you have to work at least 20 hours a week so obviously the workers want to do that, but I would guess that most of the people working there probably see this as a full-time job just because, if you’re working a minimum 20 hours a week during the day, I mean, it’s tough to work two part-time jobs – just from a logistics standpoint – to make it all sort out. The problem that it looks like a lot of these workers are having are it’s very difficult to work more than 25 hours a week there based on the scheduling that’s been done in recent months or I don’t know how long it’s been going on but that seems to be the case. NASIR: I think for a little bit now. And so, one of the reasons we’re talking about this is because this barista – like you were saying – Jaime Prater, he started this campaign on this website. I’ve never heard of it. it’s called coworker.org and it’s basically an open letter to Starbucks where you can get multiple signat...

Nasir and Matt discuss the legal fallout froma company scamming consumers with work from home opportunities. They then answer, "We sent some of our employees to a conference and one of them lost their laptop. Are we responsible for buying them a new one?" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. By the way, last week, I don’t know if you knew, I forgot to say “dotcom” and so I’m sure, like, all these people sent these emails to “ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness” and it didn’t go anywhere so I apologize. MATT: Well, that’s the most likely result of what happened – people just couldn’t figure it out. I know, when I don’t hear dotcom after something, it sends me in a tailspin. NASIR: I agree, and don’t forget to add “wwwdot” too to that email address. I always forget to say that. MATT: Is that…? NASIR: Actually, don’t do that. I wonder if that would work. I don’t think so. MATT: I don’t know. NASIR: If you send it to ask@www.legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. I don’t know. Let’s try it We won’t be able to know if it worked. MATT: This is what people want to listen to on a Monday morning. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: Hopefully they’re listening to this later in the day. NASIR: Even though this comes out on Monday morning, I don’t think most people are listening to it on Monday morning. MATT: Yeah, that’s true. NASIR: Maybe, like, 10 percent, I suppose. MATT: Probably even lower than that. NASIR: Yeah. Well, if I’m watching it, I’m at least 10 percent of the 10 people that are listening. No, I’m just joking. MATT: We never said who we were. Should we just leave it this way? NASIR: Oh, I don’t know. MATT: Keep it a mystery. We get introduced during the song so I think we’re okay. Let’s just keep it this way. I like it so people don’t know who’s who. NASIR: Yeah, I feel like the listeners went crazy there. They’re not sure who we are and – I don’t know – I guess we should go forward. MATT: Okay. NASIR: Actually, no, my name’s Nasir Pasha. MATT: I guess I’ll also introduce myself as Matt Staub. The cat’s out of the bag now. Okay. Well, we have a pretty cool story to talk about today, I think. I’m sure people are familiar with this. This is a Michael Scott special right here. I think he definitely would have been pulled into this at some point. NASIR: Definitely. MATT: We’re talking about this company. This is one company in particular but I know there‘s a bunch of different companies out there that have or are still doing this. It’s one of those scam companies where, basically, it cons people into paying money. I kind of view it as just like a pyramid scheme almost, right? If you get people to pay money and then, you know, well, I guess I don’t know. I don’t know how those people then make money. Anyways, this company cons people into paying X amount of dollars to get this package to start off whatever they’re going to end up doing and then it has all these upsells, blah blah blah. Basically, there was just a lawsuit or an order that was decided and this company has to pay $25M to consumers who made no money through whatever this service is, and just to get to the specifics, I guess they had about 110,000 people who signed up for this. NASIR: Wow. MATT: More than 99.8 percent of them didn’t make a single penny. So, not good numbers overall. I was trying to figure out actually how they ended up making money. So, they get people to pay to get the startup package, the quick sell program, and then there’s all these upsells on how to, if you really want to make money, we’re going to sell you this $2,300 extra add-on. But I don’t even know how they… I mean, some people obviously made money off of this. NASIR: I don’t know what the software actually did. It seems this quick sell program. However,

Nasir and Matt kick off the next 100 episodes by discussing the religious discrimination lawsuit involving Abercrombie. They also answer, "The retailer argues in its brief that job applicants should not be allowed “to remain silent and to assume that the employer recognizes the religious motivations behind their fashion decisions.” Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our 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. This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: Returning to our Episode 101 after our big 100. That was fun. I miss San Diego already. I already left. MATT: Yeah, you should. It’s nice here today. It’s probably not as nice where you’re at. NASIR: It’s terrible here. It’s like I’m in a swamp. MATT: It is much hotter here than normal. So… NASIR: Wow. That sucks. MATT: It’s probably still hotter where you’re at, but that’s fine. NASIR: So, what do we have today to launch our next hundred episodes? More football? MATT: More football? No. I mean, we talked about this earlier in the week – you and I, off podcast – how we basically could do a football story – an NFL story – every single episode, just the way things have shaped up. We haven’t even gotten to – I think I mentioned this before – there’s always something in college football that pops up at some point during the season so you know there’s going to be something big that we’re going to be able to discuss then as well. So, I don’t think we have any football lined up for this whole week. We’ll see. But what do we have? Abercrombie. So, this is a clothing store, apparel store, though I know of that because I long, long ago shopped there but I haven’t shopped there in at least three weeks. NASIR: What’s funny is I never shop there and I felt like I was missing something because all the cool kids were wearing that and I never… I don’t think I have one shirt or anything from them. I feel missed out. MATT: Well, maybe I’ll get you one. I didn’t even know they were even still around. If you go to the mall, you can tell who they are because it's the store that’s pumping out very loud music and it's like just dumped bottles of cologne on the ground because it’s very strong. NASIR: Exactly, yeah. MATT: It’s pretty weird. NASIR: I was going to say pumped out cologne outside. Yeah, you walk by and you smell really nice afterwards. MATT: Like most of the stories we deal with businesses, it’s usually some sort of employment issue and that's exactly the case here. This is dealing in Oklahoma and someone who had applied to a job at a kids’ store of Abercrombie, and I don’t know if that really makes a difference but it's a little bit tricky because she basically is claiming that she wasn’t given this position for religious reason s and Abercrombie's stance is that, well, you have to specifically ask for the special – I don’t want to say special treatment. NASIR: Accommodation. MATT: Accommodation, yes, that's the word. NASIR: I've been paying attention to this story quite a bit and here's what I believe are undisputed facts – or if they’re not undisputed, at least what’s alleged – is that, okay, Abercrombie & Fitch, they have a specific dress code policy. It doesn’t really matter what it is thoroughly but one specific thing that they have is you're not supposed to wear any kind of head gear or hats or anything like that. And so, this particular woman who's interviewing wears a head scarf over her hair and she wore it at the interview and, even previously, she had asked her friends who work there. It’s like, "Yeah, I know somebody that used to wear a Yarmulke who work there so I’m sure yours is fine, too." And so, she went there and one thing it has to be is she can’t wear any black. None of the employees can wear any black. They have to wear white or other colors. And so, she happened to be wearing a black one that day an...