Podcasts about matt there

An episode that takes on the heavy lifting.Here's what's packed into this episode: * In this episode, we tackle the autistic hell that is moving — diving into all the intricate details, overwhelming processes, and sharing strategies for coping through it all.* Our hosts discuss Matt's recent move and explore the time-consuming yet worthwhile systems autistic individuals often need to implement to stay comfortable and regulated in their own homes.* Matt and Angela dive into the art of emotional regulation and why it's such a foundational task for autistic folks. They also discuss how to incorporate emotional regulation strategies into the moving process as much as possible.* We discuss the importance of having our own Autistic Survival Packs in each room of the house and how crucial they are for regulation. Angela shares some of her essential items, including eye drops, nail files, phone chargers, and blankets for temperature regulation—a common issue for many autistic individuals.* In this episode, we also dive into how autistic folks often have a predisposition toward hoarding and emotional attachments to their belongings, and explore ways to break this generational curse.“As you know, we [autistic people] process 42% more information at rest than neurotypical people. Because of that, our brains are always churning through the data and always looking at the variables. Our brains are much more variable-focused. We're much more detail-oriented than neurotypical people. Neurotypical people are big-picture people. We are the minutiae. And when it comes to moving, it's all about the minutiae. ” - Matt“There's a lot of stuff that we [autistic folks] don't have opinions on - but when we do have opinions, we have f*****g strong opinions. And when we find something that just clicks with us, we need it. You need your mattress.” - Matt“Emotional regulation is our biggest job as autistic people. It's a full-time job, it's our number one job. There are going to be times you're dysregulated. You're gonna have to go to court, you're gonna have to go to the DMV, a cop is going to pull you over. You are going to be dysregulated some of the time. And so every single second you can possibly control being emotionally regulated, that's your job to put first in order.” - Angela“Well, so this is the thing about the ‘tism, right? Because again, the neurotypicals only know us by our deficits, but we only have the deficits when we're dysregulated. We only have the deficits when we are out of our element, when we are desperately trying to accommodate everyone else and everything else. We have to do that for us first. And in order to be a functional human being, you need to have that regulation.” - Matt“Is one of your techniques [for phone calls] is as soon as the phone picks up, I just start screaming ‘agent, agent, agent, f**k you, agent, let me talk to a person, f**k you. Do you do that? Is that your technique? It doesn't work, but it is my approach.” - Angela Did you catch the whirlwind of emotions that come with moving? In today's episode, we're diving deep into Matt's recent move and all the unexpected hurdles along the way! Thanks for tuning in! Share your thoughts in the comments, and use #AutisticCultureCatch to connect with fellow listeners on social media. Which moments or insights from Matt's story resonate with your own moving experiences?Resources:*The* Viral Tiktok Shower Head - Ziffit - Sell Your Books Matt's Favorite Disney Coffee Related Episodes:Questlove Is AutisticReady for a paradigm shift that empowers Autistics? Help spread the news!Follow us on InstagramFind us on Apple Podcasts and SpotifyLearn more about Matt at Matt Lowry, LPPJoin Matt's Autistic Connections Facebook GroupLearn more about Angela at AngelaKingdon.com Angela's social media: Twitter and TikTokOur Autism-affirming merch shop This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.autisticculturepodcast.com/subscribe

Welcome to the newest episode of The Cloud Pod podcast! Justin, Ryan and Matthew are your hosts this week as we discuss all the latest news and announcements in the world of the cloud and AI - including what's new with Google Deepmind, as well as goings on over at the Finops X Conference. Join us!  Titles we almost went with this week:

Let's talk about rest. R e s t. We're always going, going, going! Doesn't the world to you seem like everything is speeding up faster and faster, and that time is going by incredibly fast, like a rollercoaster fast?Today's episode is on the value of rest and all the different types of rest we need to look at.There are 7 different ways of rest that our bodies need. And when we rest, we are better friends. We have a free gift for you. Go to https://www.ourfriendlyworldpodcast.com/ and pick up a free copy of Fawn's “Ikigai of Friendship” companion book And to gift us, tell others about our podcast and leave a kind review. Seven Ways of Rest - TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Fawn: Woo wee guys, how are you? Hello. Welcome back. [00:00:06] Matt: I feel like, uh, deer Cotton headlights. I don't know what you wanna talk about. . [00:00:11] Fawn: I wanna talk about rest. R e s t. We're always going, going, going, doesn't the world to you seem like everything is speeding up faster and faster, and that time is going by. incredibly fast, like a rollercoaster, fast. [00:00:32] Matt: There's a dichotomy for me because if I'm doing a lot of stuff, my individual days go by really fast. But then when I look back what I did a week ago, it seems like a long time ago, it's like a Twilight Zone. So it's a weird thing. [00:00:49] Matt: So yes, it has sped up and yet has slowed down at the same time. [00:00:54] Fawn: I feel like most of us are really working. What's the term? Is it a car term? Working on all cylinders? Is that the term? [00:01:05] Matt: Firing on all cylinders. [00:01:06] Fawn: Firing on all cylinders, constantly nonstop. [00:01:12] Matt: Yes. [00:01:14]

About MattMatt is the head of community at Lawtrades, a legal tech startup that connects busy in-house legal departments with flexible on-demand legal talent. Prior to this role, Matt was the director of legal and risk management at a private equity group down in Miami, Florida. Links Referenced: Lawtrades: https://www.lawtrades.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsmattslaw/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@itsmattslaw Twitter: https://twitter.com/ItsMattsLaw LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/flattorney/ duckbillgroup.com: https://duckbillgroup.com TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: If you asked me to rank which cloud provider has the best developer experience, I'd be hard-pressed to choose a platform that isn't Google Cloud. Their developer experience is unparalleled and, in the early stages of building something great, that translates directly into velocity. Try it yourself with the Google for Startups Cloud Program over at cloud.google.com/startup. It'll give you up to $100k a year for each of the first two years in Google Cloud credits for companies that range from bootstrapped all the way on up to Series A. Go build something, and then tell me about it. My thanks to Google Cloud for sponsoring this ridiculous podcast.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Logicworks. Getting to the cloud is challenging enough for many places, especially maintaining security, resiliency, cost control, agility, etc, etc, etc. Things break, configurations drift, technology advances, and organizations, frankly, need to evolve. How can you get to the cloud faster and ensure you have the right team in place to maintain success over time? Day 2 matters. Work with a partner who gets it - Logicworks combines the cloud expertise and platform automation to customize solutions to meet your unique requirements. Get started by chatting with a cloud specialist today at snark.cloud/logicworks. That's snark.cloud/logicworksCorey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. Something that I've learned in my career as a borderline full-time shitposter is that as the audience grows, people tend to lose sight of the fact that no, no, the reason that I have a career is because I'm actually good at one or two specific things, and that empowers the rest of the shitposting, gives me a basis from which to stand. Today's guest is Matt Margolis, Head of Community at Lawtrades. And I would say he is also a superior shitposter, but instead of working in the cloud space, he works in the legal field. Matt, thank you for joining me.Matt: That was the nicest intro I've ever received in my entire career.Corey: Well, yes, usually because people realize it's you and slam the door in your face, I assume, just based upon some of your TikToks. My God. Which is—I should point out—where I first encountered you.Matt: You found me on TikTok?Corey: I believe so. It sends me down these really weird rabbit holes, and at first, I was highly suspicious of the entire experience. Like, it's showing ADHD videos all the time, and as far as advertisements go, and it's, “Oh, my God, they're doing this really weird tracking,” and like, no, no, they just realize I'm on TikTok. It's that dopamine hit that works out super well. For a while, it drifted me into lesbian TikTok—which is great—because apparently, I follow a lot of creators who are not men, but I also don't go for the whole thirst trap things. Like, who does that? That's right. Must be lesbians. Which, great, I'm in good company. And it really doesn't know what to make of me. But you show up on my feed with fairly consistent frequency. Good work.Matt: That is fac—I appreciate that. I don't know if that's a compliment, though. But I [laugh]—no, I appreciate it. You know, for me, I get… not to plug a friend but I get—Alex Su's TikToks are probably like, one in two and then the other person is—maybe I'm also on lesbian TikTok as well. I think maybe we have earned the similar vote here.Corey: In fact, there's cohorts that they slot people into and I feel like we're right there together. Though Ales Su, who has been on the show as well, talk about source of frustration. I mentioned in passing that I was going to be chatting with him to my wife, who's an attorney. And she lit up. Like, “Oh, my God, you know him? My girlfriends and I talk about him all the time.”And I was sitting there going, well, there better damn well be a subculture out there that talks about me and those glowing terms because he's funny, yes, but he's not that funny. My God. And don't tell him that. It'll go to his head.Matt: I say the same thing. I got a good one for you. I was once in the sales call, and I remember speaking with—I was like, “You know, I'm like, pretty decent on Twitter. I'm pretty decent on LinkedIn”—which I don't think anyone brags about that, but I do—“And I'm okay on, like, Instagram and TikTok.” And he goes, “That's cool. That's really cool. So, are you kind of like Alex? Like, Alex Su?” And I go? “Uh, yeah,” he goes, “Yeah, because he's really funny. He's probably the best lawyer out there that, you know, shitposts and post funny things on the internet.” And I just sat there—and I love Alex; he's a good friend—I just sat there, and I'm like, “All right. All right. This is a conversation about Alex. This isn't a conversation about Matt.” And I took him to stride. I called Alex immediately after. I'm like, “Hey, you want to hear something funny.” And he got a kick out of it. He certainly got a kick out of it.Corey: It's always odd to me, just watching my own reputation come back to me filtered through other people's perceptions whenever I wind up encountering people in the wild, and they say, oh, you're Corey Quinn at—which is usually my clue to look at them very carefully with my full attention because if their next words are, “I work at Amazon,” that's my cue to duck before I get punched in the face. Whereas in other cases, they're like, “Oh, yeah, you're hilarious on the Twitters.” Or, “I saw you give a conference talk years ago,” or whatever it is. But no one ever says the stuff that's actually intellectually rigorous. No one ever says, “Yeah, I read some of your work on AWS contract negotiation,” or, “In-depth bill analysis as mapped to architecture.” Yeah, yeah. That is not the stuff that sticks in people's head. It's, “No, no, the funny guy with his mouth wide open on the internet.” It's, “Yep, that's me. The human flytrap.”Matt: Yeah, I feel that. I've been described, I think, is a party clown. That comes up from time to time. And to your point, Corey, like, I get that all the time where someone will say, “Matt I really enjoyed that meme you posted, the TikTok, the funny humor.” And then every so often, I'll post, gosh, like, an article about something we're doing, maybe a white paper on commercial contracting, or some sort of topic that really fits into my wheelhouse, and people were like, “That's… I guess that's cool. I just thought you were a party clown.” And you know, I make the balloon animals but… not all the time.Corey: That's the weirdest part to me of all of this is just this weird experience where we become the party clowns and that is what people view us as, but peeling away the humor and the jokes and the things we do for engagement, as we're like, we're sitting here each trying to figure out the best way to light ourselves on fire and survive the experience because the views would be enormous, you do have a legal background. You are an attorney yourself—still are, if I understand the process properly. Personally have an eighth-grade education, so basically, what I know of bars is a little bit of a different context.Matt: I also know those bars. I'm definitely a fan of those bars as well. I am still an attorney. I was in private practice, I worked in the government. I then went in-house in private equity down in Miami, Florida. And now, though I am shitposter, you are right, I am still a licensed attorney in the state of Florida. Could not take a bar exam anywhere else because I probably would light myself on fire. But yeah, I am. I am still an attorney.Corey: It's wild to me just to see how much of this world winds up continuing to, I guess, just evolve in strange and different ways. Because you take a look at the legal profession, it's—what is it, the world's second oldest profession? Because they say that the oldest profession was prostitution and then immediately someone, of course, had a problem with this, so they needed to have someone to defend them and hence, lawyers; the second oldest profession. And it seems like it's a field steeped in traditionalism, and with the bar, yes, a bit of gatekeeping. And now it's trying to deal with a highly dynamic, extraordinarily irreverent society.And it feels like an awful lot of, shall we say, more buttoned-down attorney types tend to not be reacting to any of that super well. I mean, most of my interaction with lawyers in a professional context when it comes to content takes a lot more of the form of a cease and desist than it does conversations like this. Thanks for not sending one of those, by the way, so far. It's appreciated.Matt: [laugh]. No worries, no worries. The day is not over yet. First off, Corey, I'm going to do a thing that attorneys love doing is I'm going to steal what you just said and I'm going to use it later because that was stellar.Corey: They're going to license it, remember?Matt: License it.Corey: That's how this works.Matt: Copy and paste it. I'm going to re—its precedent now. I agree with you wholeheartedly. I see it online, I see it on Link—LinkedIn is probably the best example of it; I sometimes see it on Twitter—older attorneys, attorneys that are part of that old guard, see what we're doing, what we're saying, the jokes we're making—because behind every joke is a real issue a real thing, right? The reason why we laugh, at least for some of these jokes, is we commiserate over it. We're like, “That's funny because it hurts.”And a lot of these old-guard attorneys hate it. Do not want to talk about it. They've been living good for years. They've been living under this regime for years and they don't want to deal with it. And attorneys like myself who are making these jokes, who are shitposting, who are bringing light to these kinds of things are really, I would say dis—I hate to call myself a disrupter, but are disrupting the traditional buttoned-up attorney lifestyle and world.Corey: It's wild to me, just to see how much of this winds up echoing my own experiences in dealing with, shall we say, some of the more I don't use legacy, which is a condescending engineering term for ‘it makes money,' but some of the older enterprise companies that had the temerity to found themselves before five years ago in somewhere that wasn't San Francisco and build things on computers that weren't rented by the gigabyte-month from various folks in Seattle. It's odd talking to some of those folks, and I've heard from a number of people, incidentally, that they considered working with my company, but decided not to because I seem a little too lighthearted and that's not how they tend to approach things. One of the nice things about being a boutique consultant is that you get to build things like this to let the clients that are not likely to be a good fit self-select out of working with you.Matt: It's identical to law.Corey: Yeah. “Aren't you worried you're losing business?” Like, “Oh, don't worry. It's not business I would want.”Matt: I'm okay with it. I'll survive. Yeah, like, the clients that are great clients, you're right, will be attracted to it. The clients that you never wanted to approach, they probably were never going to approach you anyways, are not [laugh] going to approach you. So, I agree wholeheartedly. I was always told lawyers are not funny. I've been told that jobs, conferences, events—Corey: Who are you hanging out with doctors?Matt: [laugh]. Dentists. The funniest of doctors. And I've been told that just lawyers aren't funny, right? So, lawyers shouldn't be funny; that's not how they should present themselves.You're never going to attract clients. You're ever going to engage in business development. And then I did. And then I did because people are attracted by funny. People like the personality. Just like you Corey, people enjoy you, enjoy your company, enjoy what you have to do because they enjoy being around you and they want to continue via, you know, like, business relationship.Corey: That's part of the weird thing from where I sit, where it's this—no matter what you do or where you sit, people remain people. And one of the big eye-openers for me that happened, fortunately early in my career, was discovering that a number of execs at name brand, publicly traded companies—not all of them, but a good number; the ones you'd want to spend time with—are in fact, human beings. I know, it sounds wild to admit that, but it's true. And they laugh, they tell stories themselves, they enjoy ridiculous levels of nonsense that tends to come out every second time I opened my mouth. But there's so much that I think people lose sight of. “Oh, they're executives. They only do boring and their love language is PowerPoint.” Mmm, not really. Not all of them.Matt: It's true. Their love language sometimes is Excel. So, I agree [laugh].Corey: That's my business partner.Matt: I'm not good at Excel, I'll tell you that. But I hear that as well. I hear that in my own business. So, I'm currently at a place called Lawtrades, and for the listeners out there, if you don't know who Lawtrades is, this is the—I'm not a salesperson, but this is my sales spiel.Corey: It's a dating site for lawyers, as best I can tell.Matt: [laugh]. It is. Well, I guess close. I mean, we are a marketplace. If you're a company and you need an attorney on a fractional basis, right—five hours, ten hours, 15 hours, 20 hours, 40 hours—I don't care, you connect.And what we're doing is we're empowering these freelance attorneys and legal professionals to kind of live their life, right, away from the old guard, having to work at these big firms to work at big clients. So, that's what we do. And when I'm in these conversations with general counsels, deputy general counsels, heads of legal at these companies, they don't want to talk like you're describing, this boring, nonsense conversation. We commiserate, we talk about the practice, we talk about stories, war stories, funny things about the practice that we enjoy. It's not a conversation about business; it's a conversation about being a human being in the legal space. It's always a good time, and it always results in a long-lasting relationship that I personally appreciate more than—probably more than they do. But [laugh].Corey: It really comes down to finding the watering holes where your humor works. I mean, I made the interesting choice one year to go and attend a conference for CFOs and the big selling point of this conference was that it counts as continuing professional education, which as you're well aware, in regulated professions, you need to attend a certain number of those every so often, or you lose your registration slash license slash whatever it is. My jokes did not work there. Let's put it that way.Matt: [laugh]. That's unfortunate because I'm having trouble keeping a straight face as we do this podcast.Corey: It was definitely odd. I'm like, “Oh, so what do you do?” Like, “Oh, I'm an accountant.” “Well, that's good. I mean, assume you don't bring your work home with you and vice versa. I mean, it's never a good idea to hook up where you VLOOKUP.”And instead of laughing—because I thought as Excel jokes go, that one's not half bad—instead, they just stared at me and then walked away. All right. Sorry, buddy, I didn't mean to accidentally tell a joke in your presence.Matt: [laugh]. You're setting up all of my content for Twitter. I like that one, too. That was really good.Corey: No, no, it comes down to just being a human being. And one of the nice things about doing what I've done—I'm curious to get your take on this, is that for the first time in my career doing what I do now, I feel like I get to bring my whole self to work. That is not what it means that a lot of ways it's commonly used. It doesn't mean I get to be problematic and make people feel bad as individuals. That's just being an asshole; that's not bringing your whole self to work.But it also means I feel like I don't have to hide, I can bring my personality with me, front and center. And people are always amazed by how much like my Twitter personality I am in real life. And yeah because I can't do a bit for this long. I don't have that kind of attention span for one. But the other side of that, too, is does exaggerate certain elements and it's always my highs, never my lows.I'm curious to know how you wind up viewing how you present online with who you are as a person.Matt: That is a really good question. Similar. Very similar. I do some sort of exaggeration. The character I like to play is ‘Bad Associate.' It's, like, one of my favorite characters to play where it's like, if I was the worst version of myself, in practice, what would I look like?And those jokes to me always make me laugh because I always—you know, you have a lot of anxiety when you practice. That's just an aspect of the law. So, for me, I get to make jokes about things that I thought I was going to do or sound like or be like, so it honestly makes me feel a little better. But for the humor itself and how I present online, especially on Twitter, my boss, one of my co-founders, put it perfectly. And we had met for a conference, and—first time in person—and he goes, “You're no different than Twitter, are you?” I go, “Nope.” And he goes, “That's great.”And he really appreciated that. And you're right. I felt like I presented my whole personality, my whole self, where in the legal profession, in private practice, it was not the case. Definitely not the case.Corey: Yeah, and sometimes I talk in sentences that are more than 280 characters, which is, you know, a bad habit.Matt: Sometimes. I have a habit from private practice that I can't get rid of, and I ask very aggressive depo questions like I'm deposing somebody. If you're listening in, can you write me on Twitter and tell me if you're a litigator and you do the same thing? Because, like, I will talk to folks, and they're like, “This isn't an interview or like a deposition.” I'm like, “Why? Why isn't it?” And it [laugh] gets really awkward really quickly. But I'm trying to break that habit.Corey: I married a litigator. That pattern tracks, let's be clear. Not that she doesn't so much, but her litigator friends, if litigators could be said to have friends, yeah, absolutely.Matt: My wife is a former litigator. Transactional attorney.Corey: Yes. Much the same. She's grown out of the habit, thankfully.Matt: Oh, yeah. But when we were in the thick of litigation, we were actually at competing law firms. It was very much so, you come home, and it's hard to take—right, it's hard to not take your work home, so there was definitely occasions where we would talk to each other and I thought the judge had to weigh in, right, because there were some objections thrown, some of the questions were leading, a little bit of compound questions. So, all right, that's my lawyer joke of the day. I'm sorry, Corey. I won't continue on the schtick.Corey: It works, though. It's badgering the witness, witnessing the badger, et cetera. Like, all kinds of ridiculous nonsense and getting it wrong, just to be, I guess, intentionally obtuse, works out well. Something you said a minute ago does tie into what you do professionally, where you mentioned that your wife was a litigator and now is a transactional attorney. One thing they never tell you when you start a business is how many lawyers you're going to be working with.And that's assuming everything goes well. I mean, we haven't been involved in litigation, so that's a whole subset of lawyer we haven't had to deal with yet. But we've worked with approximately six—if memory serves—so far, not because we're doing anything egregious, just because—rather because so many different aspects of the business require different areas of specialty. We also, to my understanding—and I'm sure my business partner will correct me slash slit my throat if I'm wrong—I've not had to deal with criminal attorneys in any interesting ways. Sorry, criminal defense attorneys, criminal attorneys is a separate setup for a separate story.But once I understood that, realizing, oh, yeah, Lawtrades. You can find specialist attorneys to augment your existing staff. That is basically how I view that. Is that directionally accurate?Matt: Yeah. So like, common issue I run into, right is, like, a general counsel, is a corporate attorney, right? That's their background. And they're very aware that they're not an employment attorney. They're not a privacy attorney. Maybe they're not an IP attorney or a patent attorney.And because they realize that, because they're not like that old school attorney that thinks they can do everything and solve everyone's problems, they come to Lawtrades and they say, “Look, I don't need an employment attorney for 40 hours a week. I just need ten hours. That's all I need, right? That's the amount of work that I have.” Or, “I don't have the budget for an attorney for 40 hours, but I need somebody. I need somebody here because that's not my specialty.”And that happens all the time where all of a sudden, a solo general counsel becomes a five or six-attorney legal department, right, because you're right, attorneys add up very quickly. We're like rabbits. So, that's where Lawtrades comes in to help out these folks, and help out freelance attorneys, right, that also are like, “Hey, listen, I know employment law. I can help.”Corey: Do you find that the vast slash entire constituency of your customers pretend to be attorneys themselves, or is this one of those areas where, “I'm a business owner. I don't know how these law things work. I had a firm handshake and now they're not paying as agreed. What do I do?” Do you wind up providing, effectively, introduction services—since I do view you as, you know, match.com for dating with slightly fewer STDs—do you wind up then effectively acting as an—[unintelligible 00:18:47] go to talk to find a lawyer in general? Or does it presuppose that I know which end of a brief is up?Matt: There's so many parts of what you just said I want to take as well. I also liked that you didn't just say no STDs. That was very lawyerly of you. It's always, like, likely, right?Corey: Oh, yes. So, the answer to any particular level of seniority and every aspect of being an attorney is, “It depends.”Matt: That's right. That's right. It triggers me for you to say it. Ugh. So, our client base, generally speaking, our companies ranging from, like, an A round company that has a solo GC all the way up to a publicly traded company that has super robust legal department that maybe needs a bunch of paralegals, bunch of legal operations professionals, contract managers, attorneys for very niche topics, niche issues, that they're just, that is not what they want to do.So, generally speaking, that's who we service. We used to be in the SMB space. There was a very public story—my founders are really cool because they built in public and we almost went broke, actually in that space. Which, Corey, I'm happy to share that article with you. I think you'll get a kick out of it.Corey: I would absolutely look forward to seeing that article. In fact, if you send me the link, we will definitely make it a point to throw it into the [show notes 00:19:58].Matt: Awesome. Happy to do it. Happy to do it. But it's cool. The clients, I tell you what, when I was in private practice when I was in-house, I would always deal with an adverse attorney. That was always what I was dealing with.No one was ever—or a business person internally that maybe wasn't thrilled to be on the phone. I tell you what, now, when I get to talk to some of these folks, they're happy to talk to me; it's a good conversation. It really has changed my mentality from being a very adverse litigator attorney to—I mean it kind of lends itself to a shitposter, to a mean guy, to a party clown. It's a lot of fun.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Uptycs, because they believe that many of you are looking to bolster your security posture with CNAPP and XDR solutions. They offer both cloud and endpoint security in a single UI and data model. Listeners can get Uptycs for up to 1,000 assets through the end of 2023 (that is next year) for $1. But this offer is only available for a limited time on UptycsSecretMenu.com. That's U-P-T-Y-C-S Secret Menu dot com.Corey: One area that I think is going to be a point of commonality between us is in what the in-and-out of our day jobs look like. Because looking at it from a very naive perspective, why on earth does what is effectively an attorney referral service—yes, which may or may not run afoul of how you describe yourselves; I know, lawyers are very particular about wording—Matt: Staffing [laugh].Corey: Exactly. Legal staffing. There we are. It doesn't seem to lend itself to having a, “Head of Community,” quote-unquote, which really translates into, “I shitpost on the internet.” The same story could be said to apply to someone who fixes AWS bills because in my part of the industry, obviously, there is a significant problem with people who have large surprise bills from their cloud provider, but they generally don't talk about them in public as soon as they become an even slightly serious company.You don't find someone at a Fortune 500 complaining on Twitter about how big their AWS bill is because that does horrifying things to their stock price as well as them personally, once the SEC gets involved. So, for me, it was always I'm going to be loud and noisy and have fun in the space so that people hear about me, and then when they have this problem, in the come. Is that your approach to this, or is it more or less the retconning story that I just told, and it really had its origins in, “I'm just going to shitpost. I feel like good things will happen.”Matt: Funnily enough, it's both. That's how it started. So, when I was in private practice, I was posting like crazy on—I'm going to say LinkedIn for the third time—and again, I hope somebody sends a nasty message to me about how bad LinkedIn is, which I don't think it's that bad. I think it's okay—so I was shitposting on LinkedIn before probably many folks were shitposting on LinkedIn, again like Alex, and I was doing it just because I was tired of attorneys being what we described, this old guard, buttoned up, just obnoxiously perfect version of themselves. And it eventually led itself into this career. The whole journey was wild, how I got here. Best way to describe it was a crazy trip.Corey: It really is. You also have a very different audience in some ways. I mean, for example, when you work in the legal field, to my understanding from the—or being near to it, but not within it, where you go to school is absolutely one of those things that people still bring up as a credential decades later; it's the first thing people scroll to on LinkedIn. And in tech, we have nothing like that at all. I mean, just ask anyone of the random engineers who talk about where they used to work in their Twitter bio: ex-Google, ex-Uber, et cetera.Not quite as bad as the VC space where it's, “Oh, early investor in,” like, they list their companies, which of course to my mind, just translates directly into, the most interesting thing about you is that once upon a time, you wrote a check. Which yeah, and with some VCs that definitely tracks.Matt: That's right. That's a hundred percent right. It's still like that. I actually saw a Twitter post, not necessarily about education, but about big law, about working in big law where folks were saying, “Hey, I've heard a rumor that you cannot go in-house at a company unless you worked in big law.” And I immediately—I have such a chip on my shoulder because I am not a big law attorney—I immediately jumped to it to say, “Listen, I talk to in-house attorneys all the time. I'm a former in-house attorney. You don't have to work with big law. You don't have to go to a T-14 law school.” I didn't. I went to Florida State University in Tallahassee.But I hear that to this day. And you're right, it drives me nuts because that is a hallmark of the legal industry, bragging about credentials, bragging about where I came from. Because it also goes back to that old guard of, “Oh, I came from Harvard, and I did this, and I did that,” because we love to show how great and special we are not by our actual merits, but where we came from.Corey: When someone introduces themselves to me at a party—which has happened to me before—and in their introduction, they mention where they went to law school, I make it a point to ask them about it and screw it up as many times in the rest of the evening as I can work in to. It's like they went to Harvard. Like so, “Tell me about your time at Yale.” “Oh, sorry. I must have forgotten about that.” Or, “What was the worst part about living in DC when you went to law school?” “Oh, I'm sorry. I missed that. You went to Harvard. How silly of me.”Matt: There's a law school at Dartmouth [laugh]?Corey: I know. I'm as surprised as anyone to discover these things. Yeah. I mean, again, on the one hand, it does make people feel a little off and that's not really what I like doing. But on the other, ideally, it's a little bit of a judgment nudge as far as this may not sound the way that you think it sounds when you introduce yourself to people that way.Matt: All the time. I hear that all the time. Every so often, I'll have someone—and I think a lot of the industry, maybe just the industry where I'm in, it's not brought up anymore. I usually will ask, right? “Hey, where do you come from?” Just as a conversation starter, “What firm did you practice at? Did you practice in big law? Small law?”Someone once called it insignificant law to me, which hurts because I'm part of insignificant law. I get those and it's just to start a conversation, but when it's presented to me initially, “Hey, yeah, I was at Harvard,” unprompted. Or, “I went to Yale,” or went to whatever in the T-14, you're right, it's very off-putting. At least it's off-putting to me. Maybe if someone wants to tell me otherwise, online if you went to Harvard, and someone said, “Hey, I went to Harvard,” and that's how they started the conversation, and you enjoy it, then… so be it. But I'll tell you, it's a bit off-putting to me, Corey.Corey: It definitely seems it. I guess, on some level, I think it's probably rooted in some form of insecurity. Hmm, it's easy to think, “Oh, they're just completely full of themselves,” but that stuff doesn't spring fully formed from nowhere, like the forehead of some God. That stuff gets built into people. Like, the constant pressure of you are not good enough.Or if you've managed to go to one of those schools and graduate from it, great. The constant, like, “Not everyone can go here. You should feel honored.” It becomes, like, a cornerstone of their personality. For better or worse. Like, it made me more interesting adult if it made my 20s challenging. I don't have any big-name companies on my resume. Well, I do now because I make fun of one, but that's a separate problem entirely. It just isn't something I ever got to leverage, so I didn't.Matt: I feel that completely. I come from—again, someone once told me I worked in insignificant law. And if I ever write a book, that's what I'm going to call it is Insignificant Law. But I worked the small law firms, regional law firms, and these in Tallahassee and I worked in South Florida and nothing that anyone would probably recognize in conversation, right? So, it never became something I bring up.I just say, “I'm an attorney. I do these things,” if you ask me what I do. So, I think honestly, my personality, and probably the shitposting sprung out of that as well, where I just had a different thing to talk about. I didn't talk about the prestige. I talked about the practice, I talked about what I didn't like about the practice, I didn't talk about being on Wall Street doing these crazy deals, I talked about getting my ass kicked in Ponce, Florida, up in the panhandle. For me, I've got a chip on my shoulder, but a different kind of chip.Corey: It's amazing to me how many—well, let's calls this what we are: shitposters—I talk to where their brand and the way that they talk about their space is, I don't want to say rooted in trauma, but definitely built from a place of having some very specific chips on their shoulder. I mean, when I was running DevOps teams and as an engineer myself, I wound up continually tripping over the AWS bill of, “Ha, ha. Now, you get to pay your tax for not reading this voluminous documentation, and the fine print, and with all of the appendices, and the bibliography, and tracked down those references. Doesn't it suck to be you? Da da.” And finally, it was all right, I snapped. Okay. You want to play? Let's play.Matt: That's exactly right. There's, like, a meme going around. I think it actually saw from the accounting meme account, TB4—which is stellar—and it was like, “Ha, I'm laughing because it hurts.” And it's true. That's why we all laugh at the jokes, right?I'll make jokes about origination credit, which is always an issue in the legal industry. I make jokes about the toxic work environment, the partner saying, “Please fix,” at three o'clock in the morning. And we make fun of it because everyone's had to deal with it. Everyone's had to deal with it. And I will say that making fun of it brings light to it and hopefully changes the industry because we all can see how ridiculous it is. But at least at the very beginning, we all look at it and we say, “That's funny because it hurts.”Corey: There's an esprit de corps of shared suffering that I think emerges from folks who are in the trenches, and I think that the rise of—I mean some places called the micro-influencers, but that makes me want to just spit a rat when I hear it; I hate the term—but the rise of these niche personalities are because there are a bunch of in-jokes that you don't have to be very far in to appreciate and enjoy, but if you aren't in the space at all, they just make zero sense. Like when I go to family reunions and start ranting about EC2 instance pricing, I don't get to talk to too many people anymore because oh my God, I've become the drunk uncle I always wanted to be. Goal achieved.Matt: [laugh].Corey: You have to find the right audience.Matt: That's right. There is a term, I think coin—I think it was coined by Taylor Lorenz at Washington Post and it's called a nimcel, which is, like, a niche micro-influencer. It's the worst term I've ever heard in my entire life. The nimcel [laugh]. Sorry, Taylor, it's terrible.But so I don't want to call myself a nimcel. I guess I have a group of people that enjoy the content, but you are so right that the group of people, once you get it, you get it. And if you don't get it, you may think some parts of it—like, you can kind of piece things together, but it's not as funny. But there's plenty of litigation jokes I'll make—like, where I'm talking to the judge. It's always these hypothetical scenarios—and you can maybe find it funny.But if you're a litigator who's gotten their ass kicked by a judge in a state court that just does not like you, you are not a local, they don't like the way you're presenting yourself, they don't like your argument, and they just dig you into the ground, you laugh. You laugh because you're, like, I've been there. I've had—or on the flip, you're the attorney that watched your opposing counsel go through it, you're like, “I remember that.” And you're right, it really you get such a great reaction from these folks, such great feedback, and they love it. They absolutely love it. But you're right, if you're outside, you're like, “Eh, it's kind of funny, but I don't really get all of it.”Corey: My mother approaches it this way whenever she talks to me like I have no idea what you're talking about, but you seem to really know what you're talking about, so I'm proud of you. It's like, “No, Mom, that is, like, the worst combination of everything.” It's like, “Well, are you any good at this thing?” “No. But I'm a white man, so I'm going to assume yes and the world will agree with me until proven otherwise.” So yeah, maybe nuclear physics ain't for you in that scenario.But yeah, the idea of finding your people, finding your audience, before the rise of the internet, none of this stuff would have worked just because you live in a town; how many attorneys are really going to be within the sound of your voice, hearing these stories? Not to mention the fact that everyone knows everyone's business in some of those places, and oh, you can't really subtweet the one person because they're also in the room. The world changes.Matt: The world changes. I've never had this happen. So, when I really started to get aggressive on, like, Twitter, I had already left private practice; I was in-house at that point. And I've always envisioned, I've always, I always want to, like, go back to private practice for one case: to go into a courtroom in, like, Miami, Florida, and sit there and commiserate and tell the stories of people again like I used to do—just like what you're saying—and see what everyone says. Say, “Hey, I saw you on Twitter. Hey, I saw this story on Twitter.”But in the same breath, like, you can't talk like you talk online in person, to some degree, right? Like, I can't make fun of opposing counsel because the judge is right there and opposing counsel was right there, and I'm honestly, knowing my luck, I'm about to get my ass kicked by opposing counsel. So, I probably should watch myself in that courtroom.Corey: But I'm going to revise the shit out of this history when it comes time to do my tweet after the fact. “And then everybody clapped.”Matt: [laugh]. I found five dollars outside the courtroom.Corey: Exactly. I really want to thank you for spending so much time chatting with me. If people want to learn more and follow your amazing shitpost antics on the internet, where's the best place for them to do it?Matt: Corey it's been an absolute pleasure. Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn. For everything but LinkedIn: @ItsMattsLaw. LinkedIn, just find me by my name: Matt Margolis.Corey: And we will put links to all of it in the [show notes 00:33:04]. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. It's appreciated.Matt: I have not laughed as hard in a very, very long time. Corey, thank you so much.Corey: Matt Margolis, Head of Community at Lawtrades. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry, insulting comment that you've drafted the first time realized, oh wait, you're not literate, and then hired someone off of Lawtrades to help you write in an articulate fashion.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

“The purpose of marketing is to find that intersection between what's important to people, what they're looking to do and solve for in their lives, and how your company can uniquely help them achieve that,” says Matt Kerbel, Director of Strategic Brand Planning at Turo. According to Matt, the three main things to avoid are what he refers to as the three Ps: perfectionism, pandering, and plagiarism.  Essentially, you're marketing to people, not just businesses, and influencing a small group of passionate people who will help spread your message is more effective than trying to please everyone (and as a result, pleasing no one). Matt and Brendan discuss the importance of early discovery as well as the way that the unprecedented events of the last few years have affected the relationship between marketer and consumer. At the heart of Matt's success in marketing is a desire to do good in the world. He says that the upcoming generation is more interested in affecting change than any generation before, and that they are the most tuned in to sincere messages. Therefore, brands should go beyond storytelling and engage in what he calls story living, in which actions speak louder than words.  Quotes: “Marketing is really trying to uncover those human truths, and determining whether your company is uniquely qualified to help them either solve their problems or achieve a quality of life that they may not have been able to if your company didn't exist.” (6:20-6:40 | Matt) “One thing we did well was we really wanted to ensure is we did the opposite of what I think is crappy marketing, which are the three Ps: perfectionism, pandering, and plagiarism.” (14:23-14:37 | Matt)  “There's a lot to be said for progress over perfection.” (26:18-26:21 | Matt) “To avoid plagiarism, to avoid pandering, to avoid perfectionism, you need to have that upfront strategy tight and aligned. And if you do that, you can move fast, you can point and shoot, you can ship it, and you just know that you can continue to share story after story, initiative after initiative, product after product, that is going to be something that your audience absolutely loves, eats up, shares, evangelizes.” (31:23-31:55 | Matt) “If you target a small group that can have influence and be extremely passionate and evangelize, that's actually much more important than trying to be everything to everyone.” (39:33-39:46 | Matt) Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandellTikTok: @brendandell39 Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926  Connect with Matt:LinkedIn: @Matt KerbelCheck out Matt recommended books:   Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't by Jim Collins https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780066620992   Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781250103505   Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781451686586   Please don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe to Billion Dollar Tech on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Use code Brendan30 for 30% off your annual membership with RiverSide.fm  Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

This is the last crossover episode between OMG and Sound-Up Governance, a new podcast on the Ground-Up Governance platform (www.groundupgovernance.com). In this one, Matt Fullbrook speaks with Lisa Oldridge, a Performance Strategist in Calgary with expertise in governance, ESG, and investment in startups. Lisa helps us to explore the differences between what makes a good company good and what makes a good business good, and shows us that the people are what matter most.   Matt Welcome back to Sound-Up Governance. Today's episode is the companion to the third edition of the Ground-Up Governance newsletter, which provides definitions for business, company and customer. I know I frequently use the words business and company as if they're interchangeable, even though they're often pretty different. That's fine. Of course, if I say business when I mean company, it doesn't hurt anybody or even confuse anyone too much. But still, I thought it'd be fun to talk to someone who could really help me to understand what makes a good business good, and how that's different from what makes a good company good. And of course, all of this is tied up with the needs, wants, hopes and fears of the customer. So I called my friend Lisa Oldridge, who describes herself as a performance strategist. She works with companies and boards of directors on governance, strategy, ESG performance, and more. Oh, and ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance and refers in general to stuff that's not directly related to money. Not only that, but she's the investment director at The 51 Ventures, which invests money in disruptive female-founded enterprises. Plus, in addition to being a corporate director, and a bonafide a governance nerd, she has also spent a big chunk of her life in institutional equity sales, portfolio management and research. So in other words, Lisa's spent a lot of time and energy being curious about what a good company or a good business looks like, and whether those companies or businesses are worth putting money into. And that's exactly where we'll start. When Lisa is on the outside, looking in, what gets her excited about a business, or maybe a small company that only sells a single product or service. Lisa  So there's tons of problems out there. Whether or not it needs to be solved is another question. And often you see with founders, if you're talking about really teeny companies, you know, you've seen the typical entrepreneur, they're like, "Oh, my God, we got to solve this problem!" But it's really actually not a problem for that for many people, you want to see that there's a problem that exists, and they've come up with something that will solve this problem. It doesn't have to be like the optimized version of it. You've probably also heard about MVP, Matt  MVP, or minimum viable product, or, as Lisa puts it, Lisa  We also call it the shitty first draft of whatever it is, but you probably have a bit of traction there. IP is a big one IP or thought capital or moat Matt  “Moat",” you know, just like a moat around the castle. It's something special about a business that makes it tricky for someone else to intrude on your territory by making it expensive or difficult to copy your technology, for example. Lisa  And then competition, and actually it's a bad sign when you see that there's no competition, because it's usually especially if you come in and you see a founder or group that are pitching and they're like, "oh, yeah, no, we kind of, we've come up with the thing, but nobody else has!" A, it's probably not true. And B it just gives you a sense of their capacity for understanding future pivots and the market etc. Anyway, so that's more maybe a commentary on their character or their abilities or behaviors. Matt  There's so much interesting stuff in what Lisa just said that it might be worth rewinding, 10 or 15 seconds just to hear it again. It made a huge lightbulb go off for me. To Lisa, an entrepreneur's understanding of their business can provide an important glimpse inside their character. We'll get back to that in a sec. I wanted a better understanding about this idea that creating something new with no competition might not be all it's cracked up to be. I mean, we've all heard the term first mover's advantage. Isn't that a thing? Shouldn't it be a good thing to be the first one to come up with an idea? I even said to her, "Lisa, I'm trying to do something new and fresh in governance. Am I messing up somehow?" Lisa  Let me ask you this. Why is first mover advantage? The answer to everything? It's not! I think there's a presumption sometimes "Oh, I've seen somebody else with that. Therefore, it's not going to work. Right?" I think value proposition is the thing that you're selling or bending or creating or innovating on, it's as much where and how it lands as what it is. I had a mentor that that told me, a guy that I worked with, he was awesome. He was like, "Oldridge, the difference between being early and wrong is nothing!" Right? Even ideas that are completely original, still do have competition. And so I guess it's not a red flag to me if someone hasn't figured out who the person who's also doing... I don't know. lavender striped pogo sticks, but who's doing pogo sticks and who's painting toys, lavender. And so what does that look like? Because it also tells you about the customer! One thing that we one thing that I do see is novelty, almost taking precedence over will this actually be used by more than a few people, right? I would rather see a concept or like somebody innovating on a proven thing or direction or widget, but doing it in such a way that's original in the sense that it's adding more value to the end customer. Matt  So even for someone like Lisa, who studies companies at their earliest stages, looking for the coolest new ideas, the biggest opportunities for innovation and investment, there might not be a difference between being first and being wrong? It made me think of the songs or books or art that I love the most. Sure, there's something fresh and original about them, but they also, you know, give a sense of familiarity. Building on what came before them. Sorry, I'm getting a bit abstract here. But the insight for new businesses is pretty profound. Before we go too much further, Lisa use the term "value proposition." It's one of those terms most of us have heard before, but what does it mean exactly? Lisa  And value proposition it's business canvas, it's like the middle of it, like the jelly in the donut! It's what your product or service or widget or thing does for your customers to make things better, or to make them feel like things are better. Matt  And this is how the customer ties into all this. A good business doesn't have to be completely new, it just needs to make the customer feel like things are better than they were without whatever product or service the business offers them. But let's get back to what Lisa said earlier about the character of the leaders involved. We know she looks at the competitive landscape, the value proposition and so on. But what else is she looking for Lisa  The leadership and the team attributes. You know, are they dedicated? Do they have the horsepower and the grit and all that good stuff? And then I would probably single out the CEO or the founder, like the person who's in charge, as almost like a separate thing, because the earlier the stage of the company, the less actual crunchy information you have. And you're looking for leadership attributes, but then also just you know, the whole humility and brains. Matt  All of this started to make so much sense. Sometimes from the outside, we can't really see the nuts and bolts that show us the potential of the business itself. So we need to rely on what we really can judge: character, humility, brains. So I wondered if the potential of a person matters so much, could a great leader maybe offset concerns about a bad business or a bad company? In other words, to someone like Lisa, what matters more the person or the business? Lisa  Could you have, you know, like a superstar person with a not so great company? And what's better that or the inverse? And definitely the former. And that works all the way up with a you know, with with large organizations, I think probably even moreso. A great business with someone at the helm, that's not great, will eventually run out of momentum. You could still make money. In the meantime, though. Matt  Whoa! We'll take on A founder with a B business over the inverse. In fact, a great business with bad leadership is at best a way for an investor to make a quick buck before the business dies. And you know, what's extra cool? In some cases, emphasizing the people side can create special superpowers for the company and the business. Lisa  If you're talking about a business inside that company, or a vertical inside a company, or product line, or some kind of an offering. More often than not these days, you're talking about a bunch of people in a company that do a thing. And it's maybe different to the rest of the things that the company does, right? One of the organizations that I sit on the board of has had the situation where, you know, they did a raise, and then they acquired this business unit. And it's really cool hearing about the first couple of days about where it was like, "Okay, you're here because we want you not the thing, but we want YOU!" And over and above that being a good acquisition on paper, can you imagine what that did to the sense of, you know, engagement, and therefore performance, of the company, etc, etc. So it's like, and it doesn't require a lot of investment. It's not like somebody had to write a big check after the fact sort of have these people come on and be super excited about coming into work the next day. Matt  And there you have it, right from someone who's in the middle of it, studying, assessing, developing and buying businesses and companies and thinking about customers and value proposition, competition and all the other things that can influence whether an idea will succeed or fail. What excites Lisa the most? Character, humility, brains, the people who run these businesses and companies. And emphasizing the importance of those people can further supercharge the organization's performance. In the next episode of Sound-Up Governance, I'll speak with Nick Chambers about communities and stakeholders. He's an executive search professional and governance expert who specializes in purpose-driven organizations. Thanks for listening.

Today's episode is the second of three crossover episodes with Sound-Up Governance, a new podcast that's part of the Ground-Up Governance platform (www.groundupgovernance.com). In this one, Matt Fullbrook speaks with Lieutenant Colonel Jamahl Evans of the United States Marine Corps about what duty and accountability mean in his world.    TRANSCRIPT: Matt  Welcome back to Sound-Up Governance. One of the most common conversations I have with boards of directors and senior executives is about to whom they owe a duty. On the surface, it seems like a simple question, but most of the time, everyone in the room has a different idea of what "duty" even means. So the question of where your duty lies takes a lot more work to explore than most people expect. And when you add in the difference between duty and accountability, plus when and to whom you can delegate duties and accountability. Let's just say it gets tricky, fast. This week's guest is Lieutenant Colonel Jamahl Evans of the United States Marine Corps. In addition to his extraordinary military career, Jamahl is also a corporate governance enthusiast. As you might imagine, duty and accountability are baked pretty deep into everything that goes on in the Marines. But before we dive into that, I'll let Jamahl explain exactly what his job is because it's pretty neat. Jamahl  I am currently a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Marine Corps. And what I do in the Marine Corps is financial management. I'm a financial management officer. That's what we call a Military Occupational Specialty, or MOS for short. In that capacity, I'm responsible for the planning and execution and oversight of my command's budget. Now, that's just the MOS piece. As I like to tell my Marines, your MOS is your job. Marine is your profession. So for me, my profession, and my first duty is being a Marine. And that means ensuring that my Marines and I are deployment ready and combat capable at all times. The section that I manage - my full title would be Assistant Chief of Staff, G-8 Comptroller - so that's a section and we've got about 14 Marines in there. So those are the Marines who are directly responsible and accountable to me to make sure that we're doing our financial management functions properly. Outside of that, external to us, are adjacent staff sections, and subordinate commands within the organization with whom we have to work to manage resources: make sure that we're that we've got enough resources and that we're using the resources we have properly. Matt  Now, I'm going to assume that many of you listening are as ignorant about the hierarchy of the Marines as I am, where exactly does the rank of Lieutenant Colonel fit in the organizational chart? Jamahl  So as a Lieutenant Colonel, I'm what's called a field grade officer, and there are three levels to that. So it's Major, which is what I was before, Lieutenant Colonel, what I am now, and Colonel, what I aspire to be promoted to in future. Beyond the field grade ranks, are the General or the flag officer ranks, so Brigadier General, Major General, Lieutenant General and Four Star General. So right now I am, what you would consider - although I'm senior to several other ranks - I'm still right smack in the middle of the of the officer and organizational hierarchy. So every promotion, you're getting greater responsibility. And they are also greater opportunities to which you can be assigned. So as what's called a company grade officer - those are junior officers: lieutenants, and captains - you're going to have significant responsibility already. When you become a field grade officer. What's interesting is, now you are a little further away from the junior Marines, and a little more responsible for organizational management. Beyond just making sure your Marines are trained, making sure they're taken care of making sure they're showing up on time and doing their job, now you are responsible for really understanding organizational policies, regulations, understanding what the what the mission of the organization is, and how your unit relates to that and ensuring that happens in the best way. Matt  Before our interview, Jamahl already knew that we were going to talk about duty and accountability. You'll notice that so far, he's being pretty careful not to use those words, instead referring to "responsibility." I nudged him a bit on that and asked him to tell me to whom he's accountable in his job and whether that's different from his duty. This is where things start getting really interesting. Jamahl  So to whom I am accountable in the immediate, that would be my commanding general. That is the senior officer who runs the organization. It's a Major General who runs Second Marine Division. So that is the first officer to whom I immediately accountable because it really is his budget that I'm managing. It's not me making solo decisions. It's not Lieutenant Colonel Evans going "I feel like buying this!" No, it is based on the mission of the organization and the intent of my senior leader, which would be my commanding General. So that's the immediate accountability portion of it. Broader, or writ large, when I think about to whom I'm accountable, personally, there is, first of all, the Constitution of the United States. We actually take an oath as officers, and our enlisted Marines take an oath as well. But we take an oath and in our oath is the Constitution of the United States. To support and defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic. So that wraps up the nation, and accountability towards the nation. My authority and my mission come directly from the President of the United States, so I'm accountable to the President of the United States, as well. Then you have United States citizens: the American people are truly the shareholders because it's their tax dollars I'm managing. It's their tax dollars, for whom my senior officers, President, Congress, we're responsible for that. So we do have to take into account and I've done it on several occasions where there were decisions that I had to make when working with partner nations. And I had to make tough determinations because I am managing taxpayer dollars. Matt  Okay, whoa. We're still only talking about accountability here and already for what's essentially a middle manager in a huge organization, Jamahl is accountable to his boss, and the President of the United States, and every taxpayer? Seriously? And if you thought the complexity would stop there, you were wrong. Let's add duty into the mix. Jamahl  You would think 20 years in the Marine Corps, I've got a good solid understanding of duty. And I did I had a good personal understanding. Then I got curious about well, what is the actual definition of duty? And the definition I came across was "a legal or a moral obligation." And I didn't, while that's true, I didn't feel that was the full story. And think when when it comes to duty, there is an intangible step of building a sense of duty. We can understand what duty is, but there is a step of building that within an individual. Some individuals just come to the organization with it. Some individuals don't. And I would say that the short answer to your question: Duty is having the knowledge, feeling, belief that you should do what you're supposed to do to the best of your ability, because that's the requirement. Accountability is a bit more on the reactive side. It's how do you explain what you've done? How do you take responsibility for what you've done? Who else shares in that responsibility? So that's where I would see the difference. I would see duty as being a bit more on the front end of actions and accountability on the back end. Matt  Okay, wait, pause. This is amazing stuff. If you're anything like me, you think of the Marines as being the definition of tangible structure, discipline, order. I mean, if you ask me for the first word that comes to my mind, when you say the word "Marines," it would probably be "duty." But now I'm hearing that duty is something almost soft and squishy, something that comes from the inside, rather than being imposed on you from the outside. Am I hearing that right? Jamahl  And that was the second thought that I had, after I considered how I would define duty. The second thought being, well, how do you instill it? How do you ensure it? How do you develop it? How does it come about? Like you said, there's some external factor that plays upon you to help build a sense of duty. And the thing I thought about was, okay, well, if I were in an organization, what would help drive my own sense of duty? Because I came to the Marine Corps with a sense of duty. And I thought of one thing or a multitude of things, but I keyed in on one thing that I think helps build that. I think the principles of an organization can drive a sense of duty, and that's your external thing that comes into play. And how it works is when when people see your principles, and I don't care if it's in a slogan or motto anything, there's got to be a connection. And the connection that has to be established is: I either possess the characteristics of those principles already, or those are principles that I want to possess, I want to display those. Matt  So cool! It's like duty, this thing that the dictionary defines as a legal or moral obligation, might actually be more of a special sauce, where the ingredients are a person's internal drive character and beliefs, plus the purpose and values of their organization. So I wondered: if accountability is basically a set of responsibilities imposed on a person by an external or organizational structure. And duty is something that comes more from inside you, there must be lots of ways that duty and accountability could come into conflict. Like if your moral duty and beliefs make it hard to carry out an order from your boss, for example. In a case like that, what is Jamahl hope his Marines will do to address the conflict? Jamahl  In my office, I have established with my Marines, we do not use the word "hope". And they find it interesting they find it, you know, they find it funny. But we all know that it's a common theme in the Marine Corps, that hope is not a course of action. So when you talk about anybody who's having kind of a dilemma, or a conundrum, I don't have a hope for them. What I do is engage to see what kind of actions we can take to improve the situation. So to answer your direct question, the first thing is, there historically can be dilemmas between what the organization needs to do and how they need to do it, and what the individual thinks about it. So the first thing, which is one of the foundations, is that a Marine does not have to follow an unlawful order. So if you, as a Marine or as any service person, believe that an order you've received is unlawful or illegal, you do not have to do it. However, if an order is lawful, you might not agree with it, you might have a personal feeling, but you're still going to do it, you have a job to do. And if you've been given given a lawful order, then you execute! Now here's where the development comes into play, to minimize the dilemma that you hypothesized. As we grow within our organizations, it's on the mid-level and senior leaders to ensure that there's quality understanding, quality training, quality conversation, quality voice, making that time for your junior personnel to ask you those tough questions. And I tried to get my Marines to ask tough questions early on. That way they can experience and understand a glimpse that what your perspective is, at your level doesn't encompass the entire picture. And you have to understand that there are threads between what you functionally do and what we organizationally decide. Matt  Like most important things in life, this is a complex problem. When duty and accountability collide, or when your personal beliefs are in conflict with what your organization asks of you, sometimes you have to, you know, just trust your boss and do the work. But Jamahl is also telling us that it's important for organizational leaders to give their team a voice, a platform, and an opportunity to better understand how they fit into the bigger picture. But again, we're hearing something that kind of doesn't match my own perception of a military organization where everything is super structured, and everyone has to do the same things at the same time. You know, predictable and repeatable. How can you have both that and an environment where everyone has a voice and some influence and problem solving? Jamahl  Senior leaders have to create space for that to happen. If you're running a completely robotic organization where people just do a thing, and there's no room to either question, consult, understand, develop, grow, then you're going to have people doing robotic things. No military can be at its best when it's just "do the exact thing that I tell you and that's it," because you will have a group of people who will do one thing and will stop. So just like any other organization, we do need to increase the bandwidth for creative thinking, innovative thinking, especially when it comes to problem solving. So those types of behaviors that we want everybody doing the same way in the Marine Corps, we want everyone to be in shape. We don't even want it, we need it. That's a requirement. You're required to be in shape. Two months ago, I ran three miles. I don't like distance running, though I do it as well as I can...I do pretty good. But we want our Marines staying in shape. We want our people healthy, and not just physically healthy, mentally, and emotionally healthy. So it's on again, senior leadership to engage and be aware that that's happening. Shifting over to the behaviors where we want to expand and have that bandwidth to learn and to grow. That's where your innovation piece comes in. Where we want Marines thinking about developed solutions to problems, branch scenarios. "What would you do?" is a great question. "What would you do?" It's a very easy thing to sit down with your personnel and go over a scenario, something that happened in your career, "Hey, this, this happened. What do you think you would do in this situation?" You have that conversation. The next step, in that is the daily activities, daily tasks, daily operations, giving your people that space to make decisions at their level. Matt  It surprised me a bit to hear Jamahl talk about the importance of not just physical health, but also mental well-being in the Marines. But now that I think about it, it really shouldn't have surprised me at all. It can be an extraordinary, stressful and dangerous job. And it made an impact on me to hear him talk about it as part of the duty of being a Marine. The duty to care for your own physical and mental well being, but also that of the people around you. How does that actually play out in the real world of the Marine Corps? Jamahl  When you place a focus on engagement, treatment, development, recovery, and then success, you establish a continuum that's understandable by your junior leaders. One of the things I think the Department of Defense is great at is messaging the need to be aware. Messaging the need to be aware and see signs. And we've had a lot of messaging over the years. But it's something that is important, because we're talking about the health of the organization. So what gets a message down to mid-level and junior leaders is "here are different signs, things that you should be looking for. If you've never had to deal with this before. Here's something that could trigger in your mind a something might be wrong." I have had the experience of walking past a Marine and getting a greeting, they say "Good morning, sir." I'll say "Good morning." And sometimes I'll say "how are you?" A lot of people don't like that greeting because you really just say it and you pass the person and you go. But about three times in my career I've said good morning to a Marine and I've looked and I said "how are you?" And they will respond with "fine" or "okay". And it's just something in the eyes. And three times I've had to pull the Marine aside and say, "seriously, I know I'm not your commanding officer, you don't even know me. But are you good?"And then those three instances I've hadn't read, say "no." So then I would stop what I was doing, call whomever I was going to meet whatever meeting I was going to say, "Look, I can't make it, I have a situation." And I'll take that Marine into the office. Now sometimes that results in one hour, two hour conversations. But so long as that Marine leaves with something functional to get them to the next step. I'm not going to cure everything. I'm not trained to cure everything. And I don't have the time to cure everything. But what I can do is show you where the door is, and open it and say, "Look, you can step through that door. If you can do nothing else, you can step through that door, because we may be side by side, fighting against an enemy. And I gotta know that you're good." And it's not just for junior members either. It goes for our senior members, and I'll share one more story when I've worked... I was a Major and I worked with a Lieutenant Colonel. He was he was my Commanding Officer and I was his Executive Officer. And I noticed the level of stress that he was fighting. He wasn't losing it or anything like that - he was completely capable. But you can see fatigue in people. One day I heard him come on deck. And he was walking his office was after my office. That way I catch all the people that want to try to go and see him. So I hear him walk into his office, and about three or four different Marines approached him with a with an issue, something they had, "Sir, this or that." So they walked by my office. I said, "Sir, do you have a moment?" And the way he normally did it he would just say "yes." But you could see the fatigue in his eyes. So he came in, I said "Sir, do you mind if I close the hatch?" And he said, "not at all". So you close the hatch - for your listeners a hatch is a door. Naval terminology -  and he sat down on the couch in my office, and he said, "What do you have?" And I said "nothing, sir, you just looked like you needed to have a time when nobody's asking you to do something." And he smiled and looked at me, he goes, "You up for tacos?" I said, "Yes, sir." So we went and had lunch. So sometimes we have to look out for senior leaders in the same way to look out for junior people. So it just, it just takes compassion, awareness and engagement. Matt  There it is! Even in an organization as structured, complex and disciplined as the United States Marine Corps., Sometimes it's important to just go and have tacos with your boss. I learned so much from my conversation with Lieutenant Colonel Jamahl Evans and we covered a lot more ground than what you heard in this episode, so you'll hear more from him in the future. If you have a question, story, or insight you'd like to share, please send a note or a voice memo to soundup@groundupgovernance.com, and we may feature you in a future episode. On the next episode of Sound-Up Governance. I talk with performance strategist, investment guru and corporate governance enthusiast Lisa Oldridge about businesses, companies, customers, and how they all fit together. Until next time.

Matt Danna is the Co-Founder and CEO of Boulevard, which powers next-gen salons and spas. Its mission is to modernize the technology while improving the daily lives of professionals and the clients they serve. Chad talks with Matt about discovering a problem and then making the jump to working on it, overcoming hurdles in terms of continued growth, and deciding to invest in building their own hardware by creating Boulevard Duo: a point of sale credit card reader. Boulevard (https://www.joinblvd.com/) Boulevard Duo (https://shop.joinblvd.com/products/duo) Follow Boulevard on Twitter (https://twitter.com/joinblvd), Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/joinblvd/), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/joinblvd/), LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/boulevard/), or YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo9FyMtvqrDGHFl797iOhww). Follow Matt on Twitter (https://twitter.com/mattdanna) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattdanna/). Follow thoughtbot on Twitter (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Matt Danna, the Co-Founder and CEO of Boulevard, which powers next-gen salons and spas. Matt, thank you so much for joining me. MATT: Thanks so much for having me, Chad. Great to be here. CHAD: One of the things that I was interested in learning about Boulevard is it's a large product that does a lot for salons and spas. And so, I'm interested in talking with you about the process of getting to where you are today. But why don't we get started by giving folks an overview of everything that Boulevard does for salons and spas? MATT: Yeah, absolutely. So Boulevard offers what we think is the first and really only business management platform that's really focused around the client experience. We work with businesses that help all of us look and feel our best. And it's a really special industry to be powering where there's a really close sense of that human touch and that human element. We try to use technology to help automate and relieve the day-to-day operations as much as we can for these businesses so that they can focus on providing that world-class client experience and deepening relationships with their clients. CHAD: And tactically, that's online booking, scheduling, payments, schedule management, all that kind of stuff that goes into running. MATT: Yeah, absolutely. So it goes all the way from, like you said, scheduling to we are a fully integrated payments solution to even have time clock kind of commission reporting. And so it really goes from managing everything front of house all the way through back of house. And happy to share more about how we ended up building such a wide and deep product because it's definitely an interesting story. CHAD: So you were not in the salon industry prior to Boulevard, is that right? MATT: That's correct. CHAD: So, how did you end up getting brought into this industry? MATT: So the founding story...so my background is in software engineering, but I ended up turning much more into a designer over time. So I've been naturally drawn to building technology for creative individuals. And so, at my last startup, which was called Fullscreen, it was a startup here in LA. We were helping YouTube creators make better content online, helping them monetize on YouTube, understand their audience. And this was in the days where YouTubers couldn't monetize directly. They needed to go through a network. And so, we created this proprietary technology offering that really helped them understand how to build their audience and further monetize. So the original founding story was that I met my co-founder of Boulevard at Fullscreen. His name is Sean Stavropoulos. And I was the VP of Product. He was the VP of Engineering. And the kind of inception moment was that there was this week where Sean's hair was a complete disaster. CHAD: [chuckles] MATT: And as a great colleague, I was making fun of him [laughs] and telling him like, "Dude, you need to go get a haircut." And he said to me that he kept forgetting to call his salon during the day to make an appointment, and at night when he remembered to do those types of things, the salon is obviously closed. And we were just thinking how much friction there was as a client of these businesses in the booking process and that we didn't understand why you had to do basically so much work in order to be a client. It just was incongruent with what was going on in other industries and kind of restaurants and everything going through this digital transformation. Our hypothesis was that they must still be on pen and paper; they haven't adopted technology yet, and that's why you need to call to make an appointment. And we started thinking a lot about this problem and started obsessing over it. [laughs] And there was a weekend that we were hanging out, and we ended up walking into a few different salons and spas in a neighborhood that we were hanging out. And we did a bunch of research and asked them a lot of questions. We said we were UCLA students working on a research project. CHAD: [laughs] MATT: Which was a pretty smart move because everyone loves talking to students, and we weren't trying to sell them anything. We were trying to learn more. And so, a good research tip is just to state you're always a student. And we ended up learning. And we were super surprised that they were all using technology. All the technology that these businesses were using were also capable of online booking. And so we were like, "Okay, none of this makes sense. Like, you're making your customers call you, but you have these capabilities." We were like, "Do you need help embedding it into your website? Like, why don't you use online booking" And their answer would be, "We absolutely cannot use online booking, no way," which made us even more curious. And so what we ended up learning was that self-care businesses, you know, salons, spas, nail salons, you name it, they're generally running on pretty thin profit margins like in the 5% to 10% neighborhood because their labor costs are so high relative to their sales. And the other important piece that we learned was that the front desk has outsized control over the revenue that the business makes simply by how they place appointments on the calendar. And so when you call to make an appointment, they're looking up to see if you have a client file, to see if you've been there before, what services did you get? Who were they with? How long exactly did they take? They're also looking to see when they could fit you in. And they're doing double booking, triple booking whenever possible so that staff can be with multiple clients at once and double up. And then they're also making sure there are no gaps between appointments. And so they're doing basically this yield optimization, schedule optimization on the fly. And none of that was taken into account if customers self-booked using any of the solutions available on the market. And so we thought that seems like a straight-up technology problem to solve that these businesses needed an online booking solution so customers can have that convenience and self-booking whenever they want. But it also needs to take into account some of that business logic that the front desk follows so that they don't get gaps in the day and have a really sub-optimal and inefficient calendar. And so that's where we thought we could provide some particular value that would be unique in the industry. And that was what we focused our MVP on, was that very thing, having an intelligent scheduling solution. CHAD: It seems like it's a pretty big leap for the director of product and director of engineering at a startup to discover a problem like this and then actually make the jump to working on it [laughs] and making it real. Was there something in particular that happened? Why did you do that? [laughs] MATT: Yeah, I mean, we had a, you know, being executives at the startup and really loving the team, loving what we were doing, our mission. But I think one of the motivators and catalysts was when we were doing this field research. And we ended up going out to a couple of hundred businesses over the course of several weekends to learn even more about this problem area. But one of the things that was so evident and clear was that all of the technology in the market that these customers, these businesses were using, they were negative NPS scores. They were like, "Oh, we use, you know, X, Y, or Z solution, and we really don't like it. It's so hard to use." You would see the red in their eyes when they would talk about this technology." And we're like, "There's something very powerful here." And we weren't exactly sure at the time was it legacy technology not keeping up with modern needs of these businesses and the growing expectations from end consumers, or was it user error problems? And we had come to the conclusion that it was really a lack of innovation in the market from existing vendors. And that got us particularly excited, and we formed a lot of conviction, so much conviction that we made the leap to start working on this. So we transitioned out of our full-time executive day jobs, and we ended up doing a little bit of consulting work while we were doing a lot of product discovery. So for about six months, we were doing three days a week on Boulevard and a couple of days a week on consulting. So it was a nice little part-time way to keep paying the bills but also then be able to spend a significant amount of our brain space thinking about this opportunity and what problems we wanted to solve. CHAD: So maybe I'm just off base here. And I'm not trying to get you to say that something was wrong at Fullscreen. But it strikes me there needed to be something going on, in my mind, maybe I'm off base, for you to even before deciding to make that leap, though, to spend your weekends going to salons and doing interviews. MATT: Yeah, I think this is how most companies are started is by founders who are trying to solve a problem that they're exposed to. So everyone is always trying to build companies that are solutions for problems that they have. And we just, I think, got excited by this problem. And my background being in building technology for the creative individuals, like, I got really, really excited. And Sean took some convincing that this was worth it and that this could be a thing. CHAD: Was it an aspiration for you to find something that you could use to found your own company? MATT: No, no. CHAD: And then why were you doing it? [laughs] MATT: I think it felt like the right thing to do. I never considered myself an entrepreneur, and I really still don't. I think of myself as a builder, and I love building things. And this was in a way for us to think about, like, oh, let's build a company and turn this into a massive business. We saw that there was a particular pain point that was experienced from both consumers and businesses and that we could provide something special. It felt like it was something that only we saw, which I think made it feel even more compelling to work on. And so we didn't know if we were crazy at first. We always had this question of like, why hasn't anyone figured this out? This seems so obvious. I still don't know why we're the only ones that have any type of kind of logic on top of the schedule in that sense. But we saw it as a unique opportunity to build something really special and provide a lot of value to consumers and businesses. CHAD: Well, that's super interesting. So once you decided and you started working on Boulevard, how did you decide what to focus on first? And how did you set your market for what the first version was going to be or a target for what the first version was going to be? MATT: So, we focused on the businesses that had a front desk. So those are generally the ones that really struggled with getting the most out of every minute possible in the day. And so we focused on what were typically mid to upper market single locations to start, and we got introduced to a salon owner through a mutual friend. They were based in New York, and it was just a two-person salon. And so, we built our MVP to be able to support their day-to-day functions. And they were using some other system, so we kind of had to get to a place where there was general feature parity to support them. So we built up the features that we needed, and then we launched them, transitioned them off their previous solution. And then we did all this in person and then hung out with them for about a week or two after to babysit the system, make sure there weren't problems. We were iterating in real-time. Sean and I were releasing code. And from there, we got an intro to our second customer through another mutual friend. CHAD: How long did it take you from when you started to when it was live in that first salon? MATT: It took about nine months. CHAD: And were you self-funding that based on the consulting that you mentioned? MATT: Yeah, self-funding. And then, after we launched with the first business, Sean and I actually both liquidated our 401Ks. And we didn't have the time to continue to consult. So we bootstrapped the company and put our life savings into it once we had traction from our first couple of customers. And that's when we started to hire our first employees to help us continue to accelerate development and that kind of thing. CHAD: So again, liquidating your 401k is a pretty big step. MATT: Yep. CHAD: Did you try to do external fundraising before doing that? MATT: No. At that point, not yet. We wanted to really validate the concept on our own dime. And then, when we had paying customers and a decent customer base, we did a friends and family round. And then, once we achieved a certain milestone, we joined an accelerator, which is based in Los Angeles called Luma Launch. And we were part of that accelerator for about six months. And then we raised our series seed following that. We went from liquidating our savings, living like college students, ramen noodle budget-type to once we felt good about the value we were providing, had the case studies and the customer feedback, and had a pretty awesome MVP to show to investors; that's when we decided to fundraise. CHAD: How nervous were the two of you? MATT: Very nervous. [laughter] I mean, it's one of those both of us come from really, really humble families, and there was no safety net. And so we were all in. And I think often from when there's a lot of constraints; you have to find creativity. We were all in. We were working all the time on this, really gave it everything we had. And in hindsight, it was a good decision. But it could have easily been a terrible decision. [laughs] CHAD: I mean, this is one of the things with founding stories is we talk to the people who are successful. [laughs] So, would you recommend this path to other people? MATT: I think if it's something where you could see providing unique value to the world and that you have lots of validation from real people, not just your friends but from prospective customers...it was when we were talking to real businesses where they would say, "This is something we would use and pay for." And so, after hearing that dozens and dozens of times, that matched with the negative NPS scores with their current solutions. That's where we were like, "This can be something pretty special." So I wouldn't recommend building in isolation and making that leap of faith without really doing your diligence on the opportunity. But yeah, I think everyone, at some point, if they have an idea or a problem they want to solve, should give it a go. Mid-Roll Ad: I wanted to tell you all about something I've been working on quietly for the past year or so, and that's AgencyU. AgencyU is a membership-based program where I work one-on-one with a small group of agency founders and leaders toward their business goals. We do one-on-one coaching sessions and also monthly group meetings. We start with goal setting, advice, and problem-solving based on my experiences over the last 18 years of running thoughtbot. As we progress as a group, we all get to know each other more. And many of the AgencyU members are now working on client projects together and even referring work to each other. Whether you're struggling to grow an agency, taking it to the next level and having growing pains, or a solo founder who just needs someone to talk to, in my 18 years of leading and growing thoughtbot, I've seen and learned from a lot of different situations, and I'd be happy to work with you. Learn more and sign up today at thoughtbot/agencyu. That's A-G-E-N-C-Y, the letter U. CHAD: That first customer that you were building the replacement for, were you charging them? MATT: No, we were not. CHAD: Are they paying now? MATT: They are, they are, very little. CHAD: Okay. [chuckles] MATT: They're a small business and have been staying super successful. And so, in the earliest days, the learnings and feedback matter a lot more than revenue, and so you optimize for that as opposed to the economics. And so for us going and working on location at these businesses and they're paying us essentially in the learnings and teachings of helping us understand and absorb ourselves in this industry, and working as front desk and doing the jobs that all these professionals have to do. And so that's where we were able to build and get to a place where our product is really, really authentic. And it was from that first direct observation. CHAD: I've worked on products before where they're currently being done by people. They might have technology solutions in place, and they feel like there's no technology that will do this; we need to have a person being the one to do it. Because like you said, there's something special about a person doing it. And so sometimes those businesses, when they have a solution, even if they've properly solved it, there's a lot of resistance from customers who are very skeptical that the technology is going to be able to do it the right way. Have you encountered that? MATT: Absolutely. CHAD: How do you combat that? MATT: We iterated on, essentially, the objections. So the first objection was that "People can't book online because it's going to mess up my day." And so we created this what we call precision scheduling, where it does the optimization on the calendar. And then the next issue was that we started seeing some no-shows coming because I think there's this mental analog of if you miss an OpenTable reservation not as big of a deal. But in our industry that we're serving, if you miss a two-hour appointment, that professional is out a significant amount of their income for the week. And so that's where we actually started dipping our toes in payments, and we started requiring a credit card at the time of booking just to authorize the card and to hold the appointment. And so that objection of no shows we solved there. There was a lot of concern of like, "Hey, our customers are not going to know the right thing to book." And we have learned that customers actually are very savvy and that the clients deserve more credit than the professionals are giving them that if a woman gets a balayage, she knows it's a balayage. And so, usually, the way that we overcame that objection was we'd work with them and have best practices on menu design. But that they also then, when they're giving a service that they discuss what they actually did in that service so that the customer knows what to book next time if they want the same thing. And so that was kind of the pattern is like, build something, learn, iterate, and do it on location with these businesses so that we could see it firsthand in an unbiased way. And so that's really how we were able to build such a product with this amount of scale and overcome some of those initial objections. CHAD: Is it easier now that you have 2000-plus customers, some social capital out there? They can ask other people, "Is this working for you?" Is that easier now? MATT: Absolutely. Absolutely. One of the ways...we didn't have a sales team for a long time in our company, and we were actually under the radar. We were stealth, didn't announce anything about ourselves for the first three or four years. And so we were just very much focused on product development and building something that was incredible. And then we were really fed off of referrals and that word of mouth. So it's I think when you get a product that people love, they're going to tell their friends about it. And for us, that really helped accelerate our growth. CHAD: So yeah, so this was all taking place in what year? MATT: So we transitioned out of our last company and started doing part-time work in summer of 2015. And then, we officially launched our first customer in spring of 2016. CHAD: Cool. And I think that that is, you know, you didn't get to 2,000 customers overnight, right? You've been at this for a while. MATT: Yeah, the barrier to entry is very high in the market, and VCs called our type of opportunity a brownfield opportunity where there are a lot of legacy solutions in the market. And we compete with some companies that were actually started before I was born. CHAD: [chuckles] MATT: And so they've had many decades to build functionality into their platform that we need to get to some level of feature parity with in order to seamlessly transition them off of their previous solution to our platform. And it did take a significant upfront investment with product in order to get to be able to pay the price of admission and to be able to actually compete in the market. CHAD: So one of the things I'm curious about is, do you have a sense of what does the overall market looks like? I feel like there are probably lots of salons, spas, haircutting places. There are a lot of them all over the world. MATT: There are, yeah. So we believe that there are about 500,000 self-care businesses in the United States. CHAD: Just in the United States. MATT: Yeah, just in the United States. And the employee base in the labor market is about two to two and a half million professionals across all those businesses. CHAD: So, where do you think the hurdles in terms of continued growth are for you? MATT: So one of the areas that we focus on is...so all of these self-care businesses are about 90% similar in how they operate. And so we started in the hair salon vertical and then have expanded into many adjacent verticals over the course of the past few years. We really tried to make sure that we had really, really strong product-market fit in the hair salons, which is the biggest self-care market, and before we expanded into, say, nail salons. When expanding into adjacent verticals, there's some functionality that is unique to those verticals. And so, for example, one of our recent verticals that we expanded into is med spas. And the way that med spas charge for their services is generally based on the products that are used, and so if you buy 100 units of Botox, they charge a per-unit fee. And so that was something that was pretty unique to the medspa market that doesn't exist in other self-care markets. And so vertical expansion is a vector of growth for us and then segment expansion. So we started with the single location, very small businesses. And then we have worked our way up to enterprise where we're powering chains and franchises of hundreds of locations. And then the other aspects kind of the third vector of growth is the different product sets and functionality that we are releasing to our customers. So continuing to develop the platform but also look at different opportunities where we can provide outsized value by developing it ourselves. CHAD: So we could literally talk all day, and I could talk to you about scaling and product and everything. But one thing I'm interested in before we wrap up is I think it's really special to found a company with a designer, a product person, and an engineer. And I can tell even just by looking at the site and the product that you very highly value design and creating a product that people love to use. MATT: Absolutely. CHAD: How does that lead you to creating Duo, which is a point of sale card reader? MATT: One of the things that we saw in the market was this real importance in service design so what information is showing when to the users of our technology. So there's that aspect of what's the overall experience? Then there's the product design; how easy is it to use? And how quickly can new employees, new front desk staff, how quickly can they get ramped up and start using the system? Do they need two weeks of training? And for us, we try to make it as intuitive and as familiar as possible. And then we look to see how else can we extend design? And one of the complaints that we always received from customers was that hardware options were always pretty ugly, that all of them look dated like the kind of hardware that you use at a supermarket. And they wanted something that was more sleek and that they weren't ashamed to have on their countertop for checkout. And so that's where we decided to invest in building our own hardware. And that was particularly exciting for us. So it's been really, really well-received from our customers. And it was a really fun project to work on. Getting into the hardware space is always challenging. But as a designer, it was super cool to build something that became physical for the first time in my life. CHAD: Does the logic that led to you creating Duo eventually lead you to creating an entire hardware point of sale system? MATT: We're assessing all opportunities. There's this interesting moment happening in the payments space where like Apple, you know, announced that I think they're piloting now that you won't need hardware in order to accept credit card payments on the iPhone. CHAD: You'll just be able to do it right against an iPad. MATT: Exactly. So I think there's a real question as to what is the...and I'm sure this is something that folks like Square are thinking about, that have really best in class hardware is like what does the future of hardware look for fintech companies? And is it just going to fold into the actual devices, or will you continue to need standalone readers? That's something that we're constantly thinking about and keeping smart on the latest developments in that. But our expertise and what we love is building incredible software. Hardware was that area that we saw that we could provide unique value, but our goal is to always be a software company. You generally don't make much money off of the hardware piece in this business. CHAD: Now, how personally involved were you in the hardware project? MATT: I was very involved, potentially too involved. [laughs] CHAD: As a founder, when new projects come up like this that maybe you're interested in, how do you either hold yourself back or not hold yourself back from being involved in them? MATT: I think when the company is venturing into new territory, entirely new like uncharted waters, that's when it's valuable for me or any founder to get really, really smart on what's the opportunity, what's the risks, all that kind of stuff. In this case, my experience working at our initial customers for the first couple of years of our business was really, really impactful. And so our Duo captures...and the reason why it's called Duo is because it's a countertop, but also you can take the top off, and you can do an in chair checkout. So you could bring it over to the customer, and they can check out right while they're in the chair as an express checkout. And so those types of things I learned while being on location working at these businesses. And so I was providing a lot of the guidance and conceptualizing how we could think about what the hardware offering would be that would be unique to us, and collaborated with our head of design and then an industrial designer to get the proof of concept there. CHAD: And you said, "Potentially too involved," so why did you say that? [laughs] MATT: I think as a founder, you are always trying to figure out what altitude are you flying at. And there are some things that you will need to dive in and be very hands-on. And then there are other times just to guide and support and coach. And I think for this because it was a new project, I was particularly excited to be able to get into hardware because that was a first for me that I was involved in all aspects of it. But it was a lot of fun. CHAD: Awesome. Well, Matt, thank you so much for stopping by and sharing with us. I really appreciate it. I'm sure the listeners do too. If folks want to find out more about Boulevard, about joining the team, about becoming a customer, or just to get in touch with you, where are all the different places that they can do that? MATT: Yeah, absolutely. I think the best place is just on our website. We are hiring across all levels and all functions, especially on the product design and engineering side. And so our website is joinblvd.com, J-O-I-N-B-L-V-D.com. There's the about page, and it links out to my LinkedIn. So if anyone wants to connect and get acquainted, that's probably the easiest way to do it. CHAD: Awesome. Well, thanks again for joining me. I really appreciate it. MATT: Yeah, thanks so much. This was a pleasure. CHAD: You can subscribe to the show and find notes along with links for everything that Matt just mentioned and including a complete transcript of the episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. And you can find me on Twitter at @cpytel. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success. Special Guest: Matt Danna.

Today on The Bear Necessities of Entrepreneurship, Matt Hooper is back with Rob Napoli in another chapter of their exciting talk. Matt continues to share his experiences on how he ended up changing his career, which meant letting go of his business, getting connected to new ventures, and eventually working on helping everyone think more about dreams than problems. HIGHLIGHTSThe new experience in Tsai CITYMatt on changing his careerEntrepreneurship and InnovationThink more about the dream not the problemWhat's next for Matt HooperQUOTESRob: “The daunting task of is it going to be me to do it, well think about what can you do in your spirit of influence today to create small incremental changes and continue to build and create your progress.”Matt: “The real gift that I have been given in terms of my own career, is having been able to meet so many smart people, passionate people driven people.”Matt: “I think entrepreneurship is a calling, I think entrepreneurship is a skill, I think entrepreneurship is an identity, but I think innovation is a practice, and I am proud to be an innovation practitioner.”Matt: “There's a major distinction between being led and being managed. It taught me how to unleash human potential.”Matt: “the goal in a very chaotic digital world is to build from abundance, not scarcity. We see that we don't internalize that, and I think so much the problem we have is we don't actually know how to do it yet.”Connect with Matt through the links belowLinkedIn:Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-hooper-35196829/Company: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idoneaconsulting/Website:Personal: Matthooper.meIdonea: http://www.ideona.us/Idonea: https://dreamsanddetails.com/Pod: https://www.livefromtomorrow.fm/Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review.Connect with Rob:www.beacons.page/robnapoliwww.linkedin.com/in/robnapIG: @robnapoli.riseupSpecial offer for #BearNation listeners who are interested in trying Brilliantly Warm, use this 10% off discount code WELCOME10.We have teamed up with Phin, a social impact marketing firm, to give back for each episode. To learn more, visit: https://app.phinforgood.com.

Matt Faircloth is the co-founder and president of the DeRosa Group, a real estate investment company that specializes in buying and renovating residential and commercial properties. Matt and his wife, Liz, started investing in real estate in 2004 with a $30,000 loan. They founded DeRosa Group in 2005 and have since grown the company to managing more than 370 units throughout the east coast. DeRosa has completed more than $30M in real estate transactions involving private capital—including fix-and-flips, single-family home rentals, mixed-use buildings, apartment buildings, office buildings, and tax lien investments. He is the author of Raising Private Capital, has been featured on the BiggerPockets Podcast, and regularly contributes to BiggerPockets' educational webinars. In this episode, Matt shares his background in real estate investing, and a roadmap for investors looking to raise more private capital to close more deals. Additionally, he talks about the reality of running a real estate business.   Episode Links: https://derosagroup.com/ https://www.instagram.com/themattfaircloth/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/mdfaircloth/ https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/contributors/mattfaircloth --- Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: What's going on everyone? Welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today with me I have Matt Faircloth, author, podcast speaker, co-founder, president, investor, syndicator. He does a lot and we're gonna hear a ton from Matt about what he's been doing in the real estate space, and what he's currently putting together and actually closing on today. So let's get into it.   Matt Faircloth, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Really appreciate you taking the time to hang out with me.   Matt: Michael, I appreciate your time and having me on your show, man. Thank you.   Michael: Absolutely, absolutely. So I know a little bit about you but I would love if you could share with our listeners who maybe have never heard of you. They've been living under a rock for the last couple of years, who you are, where you come from, and what you're doing in real estate?   Matt: Where did you come from…   Um, it's cool that my company's called the DeRosa group and I just love saying this, that we're a company dedicated to transforming lads real estate through real estate transforming lives to real estate. We can get into that in the show if you like. I… where I came from, let's see, I grew up Baltimore, bopped around the East Coast for a minute. Before I landed in Philly, met the woman of my dreams because she put Rich Dad Poor Dad in my hand, and we were still dating, that got me to read that. And that that gave got me to drink the entrepreneur Kool Aid, which I guzzled and quit my job in 2005 to start a real estate company, bumped into a lot of walls, you know, did a lot of it, made a lot of mistakes, made some money and then and then just built it and grew over time and just learned how to run an effective real estate company through the school of hard knocks. And now I've been doing it for 16 years and just apply what I've learned over the years, you know, attracted more and more the right people who work with me and build what I think to be a phenomenal brand now.   Michael: Oh, that's awesome, man. That's awesome. You said that once or twice before I can tell it just rolled off your tongue there so nicely.     Matt: You know, this is not my first podcast. Sometimes people ask me, let's just get real, screw it, man. Let's get real right now…   Michael: Let's do it.   Matt: What I get I go on a lot of podcasts and when you go on a lot of podcasts, people tend to ask the same questions, Michael, right and so when they do, it's almost like I'm that guy, I'm the DJ sing in a DJ booth and then in the in the DJ booth of Matt's brain. And then people ask like, Hey, Matt, tell me about your first deal and I'm like, okay, let's get the first deal track pull the first track.   Michael: Go, pull the file.   Matt: You know, yeah, go pull the file, first deal, right. Tell us about the first time that you raise money, tell us about a mistake you made. Okay, let's go ahead skip, let's go pull up mistake file eight. Okay, let's write that file out, right. So it's more fun to go curveball. You know, like…   Michael: Totally   Matt: Yeah, that was a good curveball in the first five seconds of the show that you and I went down right and you into it, you can't help it you end up just going to a script a lot of times you know talking about things on podcast over and over and over again and I was it that a want to be plastic like that, but you end up like, if I've told that story six times the seventh time it starts to come off the same way over and over again, right.   Michael: I totally get it, and I hope that today is not one of those repetitive podcasts.   Matt: You're getting not to be that show already man, you are curve balling, I love it. Keep it up!   Michael: Well as a follow up Matt, what's your favorite mammal, man?   Matt: It's good one, I am, okay, growing up, I have an eight year old, right, so my eight year old is always: Daddy who would win… I wish he was here because you and me, we would have a ball right now… Daddy who would win when a colossal squid or a great white shark? And I'm like Simon, first of all like, but he'll even be like a gorilla or a colossal squid and like girl is gonna drown buddy battle…   Give me more data, that would depth are we talking about the ocean? Are we talking about like 3000 gorillas... To you question, I probably go a gorilla, if I had to pick or, or maybe I don't know why, but growing up I loved Black Panthers.   Michael: Mm hmm. Okay, pretty majestic animals.   Matt: Yeah, I don't know, I don't know, the majestic, they are majestic animals. Yeah, so that would be my favorite, those are my two favorite man…   Michael: I love it, well so real real quick change because we're already on this rabbit hole. You know that there was a show put on by I think NatGeo or discovery that answered your son's questions they would pit these two animals together in a simulation… like that exists…   Matt: You can google and they would show cuz he would be like, daddy who would win a saltwater… It's just you can google saltwater crocodile versus great white shark…   Michael: Great white shark, I saw that episode…   Matt: It's good, it's good, right. Good job displaying well you see the saltwater croc would try and take the deathroll on this or do that...   Oh, he was my son's itch was scratched with that, you know. I don't know, why he is up to the Komodo dragons. Komodo dragon versus anything you can name, that's what you want to talk about…   Michael: That's a battle royale this century… Oh my god. I love it.   Matt: Well, dragons are badasses man, these are like, there they are… Would you know that?   Michael: Yeah, that's the kiss of death, yeah… Matt: It is! Not only the monstrous lizards like little dinosaurs, but they also the venomous bite, you know…   Michael: It's such a ridiculous concept like, oh, let's take two of like humans worst fears, like, long tailed long tongue lizards, and then give it venom, sounds awesome.   Matt: Right! Give it nasty teeth. Yeah, like a really weird awful roar and give them venom, too…   Michael: Oh my god, so good.   Matt: They're nasty creatures, man. Good thing that'll make them in North America.   Michael: I know, I'm stoked, I'm stoked. All right, well, if we bring it slightly back towards the real estate, you know.   Do you want me to do a whole podcast on mammals like komodo dragons… So you started a company, your real estate company in 2005 and when people hear that, I think it might be ominous to some people, you know, what is a real estate company mean? And so what was the transition, like, I mean, like, what is the DeRosa group do first and foremost and then what was that transition, like going from just owning stuff on your own to now I have a business focusing on it?   Matt: That's interesting, you know, that man, um, interesting concept, because a lot of people out there are running real estate investing, like it's a gig, you know, like, or it's like driving Uber, you know, you could just decide to not do it at some point, you know, I mean, it's not a gig, it's a real estate investing is a business because it's a marathon, unless you're wholesaling or just doing a deal here and there something like that. Not for nothing. This business… the business of real estate investing is a business and you should treat it as such. And we didn't always do that the first couple years, I treated it like a hobby and I bumped into walls and did a bunch of different things but like once I really got my legs underneath me, as a real estate investor and really found the calling found the purpose and got and got and got focused on real estate investing. I got clear that it's a business that is like a living animal it's a it's a living thing…   Michael: It's a living Komodo dragon?...   Matt: Real estate investing is like a Komodo dragon, right, it needs food, you know… It can have a venom's bite and can be nasty and shit and can get the fuck out of you. And a lot of people are scared of it, you know, right… Yeah. People read articles about it only exists in certain places we can keep going. But it is something that needs, you know, if you want to grow real estate investing business and sustain yourself in this, in this industry, and not just make it a hobby, you have to have a company that's got you know, clean books and has a purpose and has a mission and has roles and responsibilities and job descriptions and stuff like that, because there's sucky things in real estate you have to do and it's like, well, you know, and you could look on Instagram. And if you look on Instagram for real estate investing, people think that it either means you close deals every day, because it's the people every time people close stuff, they put it on Instagram, or they go to it's like, Instagram thinks that for real estate investors, all you do is close deals, go to conferences and go on vacation That's what you see people doing on Instagram, the real estate investing, right? But there's actually like, this sucky part of real estate investing, which is sitting on your desk and answering emails and you know, just corresponding and looking for deals and swinging and missing and dealing with knucklehead tenants and stuff like that that want to, you know, recently Michael, we had a tenant, had his girlfriend come in and he must have done something bad because she went, put all his clothes on his bed, dumped gasoline on the bed, lit it on fire, walked out.   Michael: Mike dropped…   Matt: This is what happens, that's real stuff, you know… That did not make on Instagram unfortunately, you know…   Michael: No, that wasn't the highlight reel.   Matt: Living my best life, look it's amazing…   Michael: Well, so you bring up a really great point that and that it should be treated like a business and I, I wholeheartedly agree. But so what about all the people out there that are just getting started that could never see themselves as a business owner as an entrepreneur but hear about real estate investing as a great side gig like you mentioned that what about what about all those folks? Where are they left?   Matt: Okay, they need to decide if they want to do it full time or not, right…And there are people out there that have a day job that they love and it's, it's probably something that's very fulfilling to them, or maybe they went to school for a long time, like a doctor or an MD or whatever. I mean, Jesus, those folks go to school, God bless them for like another 12 years after they get out of college, right? So why would they change careers, right? They want, there are people that really in their heart of hearts probably ought to go passive for real estate investing, as a side gig and as a way to build wealth. And there are people that that are doing it because they want to build up the passive income and become a business owner out of it. So you got to choose if you want to be an investor or be, let's remember Robert Kiyosaki Cashflow Quadrant book, right. Yes, ESBI, remember that thing?   Michael: Mm hmm.   Matt: Do you want to be a B or an I, B= business owner, I= investor. And if you're willing to put in your time and and you know, quit your day job eventually become a business owner and that's what you need to do. But unfortunately, people, a lot of people misunderstood Kiyosaki, to think that to be a real estate investor, you have to be an active operator, you have to do it full time. You can make the passive income all you want as an I-quadrate investor and just passively invest in things. And I think that that's, I think it's probably the most misunderstood function in a lot of his books, people that quit their job that really should have never done that they should have just passively invested their way to financial freedom.   Michael: Yeah, okay. And let's talk about that for a minute because you wrote a book about raising capital and I think capital is so often the biggest obstacle for people, the biggest hurdle people overcome. So do you see the kind of this roadmap for people? Where if passivity, is it really time is the goal, right? That's what everybody is after and we get there by either usually being a B or an I, by being at B that sounds terrible, don't be a B. So if people are capital is their obstacle, using real estate as a active vehicle to then take a backseat and invest passively?   Matt: Yeah, well, that's I mean, my book talks about that and then it goes back to like, let's just keep walking to the B and I road, right. So if you're a B quadrant business owner, we're rising D quadrant business owner for real estate, and you either want to do it full time, you already are doing it full time, then at some point, unless you win the lottery, or unless, like, you know, you just got a silver spoon in your mouth, and you got billions of dollars waiting on the sidelines, from your friends from your family or something like that. You're going to need capital, right? You're gonna run out man you are. And so on the other side of it, you've got I quadrate investors, and they have either retirement accounts, real estate equity, cash, any of those things that they want to put to work and not have to put in the time to make that money, you make that money, do what it's supposed to do, you know, then they can those two can marry up the B quadrant business owner of real estate versus the quadrate investor that wants to make a return on their money without trading money for time. Those two can have a really happy partnership. My book talks about all those things, how those two things can get structured together and how the why in my book are called the cash provider, as SI quadrant investor.   Robert Kiyosaki is a good guy, but he probably sue the hell out of me if I use his terms of my books. I didn't use that, I did, I did the the deal provider and the cache provider. The deal provider is the D Quadra business owner, the cache provider is the I quadric investor.   Michael: Okay, awesome and what is your book called?   Matt: Raising private capital. So funny Michael you asked that it happens to be right here behind… They can get it on Amazon or they can get it on biggerpockets.com.   Michael: I was just gonna ask. Alright, so it's called raising private capital and without giving the book away. What can people expect to find in it?   Matt: Along with a lot of my personal story on on you know how I got from guy that quit his job in oh five to you know, running a company that runs that owns, you know, multi 1000 doors of multifamily real estate. It's got that journey in there. And and that but also it's it's got a lot of tools and lessons, it's a how to really on how do you look in your own personal network as an investor, I'm sorry, as a B quadrant designer, it's how to look in your personal network to find the money, you need to do deals because you don't have to go to private lender, or you don't have to go to hard money lenders, you know, if you go and go more corporate level, or sell your soul to get the money you need for the deal that you're trying to do. You can look in your own network to find that money and raising private capital talks about how to find the money you need for deals in your own personal network.   Michael: Okay, all right, Matt can we do something kind of a silly exercise?   Matt: Please.   Michael: Can you because, I think a lot of people are really nervous to have that conversation and I think they feel slimy or gross. Can you pitch me on a deal that you're putting together as someone that would be in your your kind of sphere of influence? Let's let's see. Let's see what that sounds like and feels like.   Matt: Well, it depends if you're accredited, or not, Michael, because if you're not accredited, we have substantial relationship. But if you're accredited, I can talk to you, I can do a Facebook ad that you notice, right? All joking aside, let's pretend you and I are friends. We already know each other you already like and trust me, because I'm me, right and my book recommends that those are your first targets. You know, and that so hey, Michael, how you doing today?   Michael: I'm doing pretty good, what about you, man?   Matt: I'm awesome, man. Hey, listen, I happen to remember you saying that you were working over a company XYZ. You did a great job, didn't you. It's good. But you better get an opportunity to come up with ABC Company. And I'm really grateful for that you were able to move over to that did take on that new job. How's it going?   Michael: It's going really well. XYZ was terrible, ABC is infinitely better. Thank you so much for man, remembering you've got a killer memory.   Matt: No, it's great, I swear to you… I also barely remember going further, Michael, is that XYZ day as much as you hated what they did, and you know, and I'm so grateful you got out of there. But XYZ had a great comp package they did as I remember, you told me they paid you a really great 401k program.   Michael: Yes, yeah, it was pretty.   Matt: Those markets been taken off lately, right. So no, it's maybe maybe hit a top here and is starting to get a little squirrely and everything like that. So I want to tell you that we did you happen to know, Michael, you can take your retirement account and invested in things not Wall Street, you know, in that retirement account you have with XYZ company because you don't work there anymore that retirement account could be put to work in real estate. Did you know that?   Michael: I had heard that. But I didn't really know that I could do anything about it…   Matt: Well, you can now that you've left XYZ company, right, you can take that retirement account that they have, and they probably were paying you and lots of company stock, take the chips, man, take the chips off the table cash in, sell that company stock and roll that and roll that retirement account, which is now by the way was a 401k. Now it was an IRA. And you can roll that IRA over to a third party IRA custodian and you can do all kinds of cool stuff you can buy, you know, shares of companies, you can buy your own your own real estate investments, you can lend that money out and you can also invest it in deals like we have, I, we are right now Michael buying 670 units in two states, five apartment buildings in two states. That's the deal, we're in the middle of right now, produces phenomenal returns, produces, we're going to fix these buildings up and we're going to refinance them over time and as we refinance them, we're going to give some of that money back to you to your retirement account. So you can then take it and parlayed invest in another stuff. It's a great return.   I know a lot of people that we work with are really happy with work that we've done as a company. So you and I should talk further as a matter of fact, I have some Ira custodians that can handle this whole thing for you, if you'd like, I'd like to introduce you to a few of them that I love. You know, and then they we do a lot of work with them. So they give us white glove treatment. Can I introduce you to them for you?   Michael: Yeah, that'd be great, man, thanks so much for doing that. I appreciate it.   Matt: Yeah, and I'm going to mail you the offering. And if you don't, if you're not happy with my, if you don't like the returns, and you're you're nervous, whatever, it's okay, I get other things I can send you over to, I really want to help you build your wealth while I build my business. Because we're building a great real estate company and we're, our mission is to transform lives through real estate, I want you to help me do that. By me helping you earn money with your retirement account. Well, we do the work. So we can do that for you. And if it doesn't work out, that's okay. I have plenty of other friends for this awesome network called biggerpockets.com, you should check out and you can look on BiggerPockets to and find other things to invest in, like private loans and other cool things that can show you that are not real, like that real estate that I mentioned, even though that's a great deal. There's other things you can do to and I'll hold your hand the whole way. What do you think?   Michael: Oh, sign me up, man, I'll be looking for your email.   Matt: Cool, no problem.   Michael: Man, that was awesome. That was so so so good.   Matt: Thank you, thank you…   Michael: So firstly, for first and first and foremost, you've now got to send me that email because I'm sold. But secondly, what I love about what you did is the conversation felt very much, let me help you, let me put provide value for you educate me around what I could do with my retirement funds, which I might have not even been aware of, and then to tell me how you're able to help me, before even the you being helped in the process, being able to your own deals be my financing was even mentioned.   Matt: Yeah, well, so is a few facts, right, um, of the $10 trillion, that's currently in IRAs, right now, not 401k, it's just IRAs of the $10 trillion, it's out there. 4% of us invested in anything else outside of Wall Street and so if you're looking to get your capital game going, the easiest low hanging fruit, and the thing that everybody has is a retirement account that has if they've got a job, and they used to work at one company, and they now work at another company, their retirement account, they had the first company is now eligible to get rolled over to an IRA. And with the big run up the stock markets had it that's what you should be talking to people about, is like, hey, you used to work over here. Now you work here, don't you are you got laid off, you quit whatever it is, they don't have you there them a job. Now they just have to use to have a job. It's such an easy, low hanging fruit conversation and it speaks to their needs too. Because everybody's get a little squirrely and where Wall Street's going, it's just been a great run. You know, it's had a great run over the last 12 years. But now it might be time to pull a few chips back. So I think that that's something that's probably the most underutilized conversation out there. For those looking to raise money, is to talk to anybody that's got a job about investing their retirement account with them with their real estate company.   Michael: That's so good. I think so many people when when thinking about having that conversation, think, well, I don't know anyone who has money, because they might not be in cash assets or liquid assets on the you know, in a taxable account, but the retirement side of things brings into focus a whole another option.   Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you can and there's other ways you can go about it, too. You can kind of sniff out, my book talks about like how to sniff out people that are in your network that likely have a lot of cash. What does what are the signs that a lot of cash leaves, you know, my book talks about that, my book talks about, there's another vehicle that they can they can invest with you and as those are people with free and clear real estate.   Last time I looked, Michael 30% of America owns their home, their primary residence free clear 30%. You know, but they don't. It's not it's not to get paid to ask a different color when it's paid off. It's hard to tell. Like all the purple houses in America are free and clear. Yeah, no, I don't know. So, but my book talks about the signs to look for free and clear real estate. And I also can tell you, here's the free clear real estate conversation. Here's the those with cash conversation and here's the retirement account conversation to have. I just pulled that into my playbook because it seemed like the most obvious one to go for is retirement account is probably the most, it's the most underutilized one. But I think it's the one that's most unnecessary right now, in today's world.   Michael: That makes so much sense, that makes so much sense. Matt, you mentioned before we hit record here that you are actually in the midst of closing the biggest deal that you've ever done to date today. Can you talk to us a little bit about what that looks like?   Matt: That was a by the way, Michael that was it bullshit. That was a real deal. I was pitching you on for your retirement account when you were working for XYZ comm your XYZ IRA could be invested in the deal that we're closing part of right now. Yeah, it's 670 units. It's in it's in two states. It is a five apartment buildings and we're closing two of those today. The other three close in a couple of weeks.   Michael: Amazing, okay, and what attracted you to this deal?   Matt: Um, that okay, so two of the buildings are in Winston Salem, North Carolina, and that is a company that is city we're already heavily invested in and it's a city that's showing phenomenal growth, 14% rent growth last year, RD on pace to do at least 12 this year percent rent growth and this owner hasn't increases rents in the last two. So he hasn't seen any of the rental upside that's been happening, the rent growth has been happening in that market has not been realized on those properties. So great opportunity, we already have property management in that town lined up and Lexington we own six other apartment buildings. So we are a niche down company. We're not going to just invest anywhere that is a good deal. We invest in super specific markets, so those are there were three markets Lexington, Kentucky, the Piedmont triad in North Carolina, and in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, of all places. Those are the three markets that we're in. That's it   Michael: If it works, it works…   Matt: So…I like about it. I also like that it's diverse meaning like it's it's different geographies, different management strategies, even different property conditions. I like all those things about it that it brings a lot of things to the table, that make it more of a stable asset.   Michael: Okay, okay..   Matt: But it's stable investment, like stable here, but poised to go up.   Michael: Okay and we've had a lot of folks on the show recently talking about passive investments. And you know how you're really evaluating the operator more so than the deal itself. But can you give folks listening some tips about how to evaluate maybe the deal? I mean, what, what details of the deal itself should people be looking at to feel comfortable?   Matt: Yeah, um, you should look at…, I'll tell you why I'll tell you, what people will do to make their deal look better than earlier is, you have to look at what their exit criteria is. That meaning like, they might be saying, okay, we're going to buy the property for this number, and then we're going to invest this and then we're going to sell it for this, like that nine times you paid for it, then you investors aren't going to make any money till we sell it, or you're not going to make very much money until we sell it, if the majority of investor returns are projected to come through the sale and the end, the syndicator is assuming that the markets gonna stay very stagnant, that cap rates are gonna stay down and streets gonna stay down, yada, yada, then they're kind of making a lot of assumptions that may or may not come true. So that's one thing to be concerned over. So make sure that they're conservative that their crystal ball is is, you know, that they're looking into has some conservatism's as it in it, because that's one thing. That's one thing, as indeed a syndicator can do is they can predict that the markets going to be super favorable at some point in the future when they go to sell and that makes the deal look really good right now.   Michael: Right, right…   Matt: Yeah, make sure there's a lot of there's some experience on the team that have been it's okay to have new new and to work with new people, because we're all new at some point. But make sure somewhere on their team, there's some deep, there's a deep bench of experience.   Michael: That's great, that's great. Yeah, no, I love those points, I love those points. I think I've seen that too and a bunch of syndication deals like oh yeah, we're gonna buy it at a six cap and we're gonna exit at a three cap and it's like, really look.   Matt: Phenomenal… 22% IRR man, what's the cash flow? Oh, it's only gonna pay like 3% cash on cash. But you know, magic fairy dust, get sprinkled on the deal, and it's gonna get sold and you're gonna make you're gonna triple your money. You know, three right now when I sell it, and that's how it's gonna go, right… When the crypto rises, you know…   Michael: No, that's a great point, those are great points, Matt. And I'm curious to know what do you you know, in your book, I'm sure talks about this but for anyone listening, that's thinking about starting to raise money but doesn't really have experience. They've you know, they've got the hustle, but they don't have the experience and they don't have the capital. You know, what should those people be doing right now?   Matt: Okay, I'm getting smudge get as much exposure as you can. Some folks do that through investing some some people that I know, that are very successful, syndicators now got started investing in other people's deals to learn the ropes, right. And that's it, do that get some exposure, we know why you can to other people's deals, you know, network, do what I did. But to start small, like we're on our 50 we're closing, this is our 15th syndication that we've done. But our first syndication was a guy my wife went to college with put in 50k into it into one into a deal that we did, we bought two single family homes with his 50k, right, that was our first syndication. So you can start small, find the one person that has some capital to work with in your in your network, and do a deal and then expand it out, do another deal, expand it out, do another deal, expand that out, do another deal. So for those that are looking to get started, it's okay to start small. It's not sexy to start small, but it's also okay and there's a lot further there's there's a lot smaller distance to fall and a lot easier to course correct on a small deal than it would be to correct on a behemoth issue first. Michael: Yep, I think that's such a good point, I think that's such a good point. I know I've spoken to people and I thought, well, my first deal would be a 10 year multifamily, because multifamily is the best everyone's talking about it. It's like yeah, okay, well, have you done a single family deal? Well, no…   Matt: I'm telling you, I hear people like, oh, I'm gonna do 100 unit multifamily deal. You know, like, that's my first deal I want to do, I've never done a deal before my life. But I want to close 100 units is my first deal. I get it and I want that, too for you, you know. But you might have to bang your head against the wall a lot. Where you could just go and syndicate a duplex right or syndicate like get your Mama to go give you a couple give me a couple of dollars and you and your Mama would go buy a duplex right, you know…   Michael: But then I can't post it on Instagram. No one wants to see me my mom and me doing deals…   Matt: I can't fake it till I make it that right, you know, or pose next to the Lamborghini that I just bought because I've been, I've been investing in real estate for the last few months.   Michael: So good. The last question I have for you before I let you out of here is, you were talking at the beginning of the show about how you did all these things and kind of rally different directions and then you really niche down and you got really focused. How did you do that? I mean, how did you, what did it take for you to get hyper focused? Because I think so many of us as they get started real estate like, oh, I could do long term buy and hold or I could do flipping or I could do wholesaling or I could do burr investing. And there's so many different ways to go. How do you know when you found the right one?   Matt: Well, first of all, Michael, I just got I just get tired to get my ass kicked, you know…   I'd like to wholesale deals going on at for fix and flips going, I was buying a bunch of rentals and everything like that, and it wasn't sleeping awake, you know and I was doing everything media doing a mediocre level, any of those three things that I was doing, I was involved in some other stuff, too. Any of those three things that I was doing could have gotten to me to my financial goals. But the mistake that I made with all this tribe was doing a bunch of things, mediocre lee versus doing one thing really well, right. And so I found that I was, you know, good at being a landlord, because with the landlord properties that we had raised very well. And it's also good at raising money and explaining what I do land lording in a very simple fashion to people and so I was like, okay, well, I'm awesome at those two things. Let me just focus on those. And the more I focused on those, guess what, Michael, the more money I made, like, money's good. I like making money. I do enjoy my family. You know, that's good. So how about anymore, though? Yeah, I'm not good at managing contractors, some too nice that I believe them when they tell me that their car broke down. And that's why they couldn't show up on the job site, but they still need me to give them 10 grand, you know, and I believe them. Okay, here you go. And that, so I just knew I didn't have people in my network to outsource that to at the time and so it made sense. I had tried partners to run that fix and flip division, my company didn't work out. So I needed to abandon the things that weren't working, and focus on the things that were and for those that are looking to niche down and focus. It doesn't have to it doesn't have to be apartment buildings, believe me, don't listen to Instagram does not have to be apartment buildings. It can be other things, I promise.   But figure out what you were calling your core genius, right? Your God given talents, what are you gonna call it, figure that find out those and how you can best bring those to the real estate table and even better, how they are benefiting your business today. And then just easy, Michael, do more of that. How about that, there's two more of those things, if it's working, you do more of it, and less of the things that aren't, you know, it could be that simple and that's kind of how we grow in and I found people that were able to sit in the seats that I needed for me to focus more on raising money and more on the land lording , and I'd filled in those seats and I got it, you know, tight and I expand that up and I was like okay, land lording is amazing, but I could probably scale faster if I outsource that and hire third party management companies. So we did that I could focus on raising money and I could focus on building the team and enrolling and inspiring and being the leader of my team. Now that's really all I do is I lead my team and I raise money and I talk to you…   Michael: I love it, I love it. That, this has been so much fun Matt, if people have questions for you want to reach out to you are interested in investing in some of your deals, what's the best way for people to get in touch with you?   Matt: There's a ton of stuff on my LinkedIn bio. My LinkedIn is the Matt Faircloth, I'm sure there's plenty of other Matt Faircloth in the world but my Instagram handle…   Michael: You stake your claim…   Matt: I've claimed it, there also the Instagram I'm the only Matt Faircloth, @themattfaircloth and there's a there's a link in my bio on Instagram and there's a ton of stuff there you can go and invest in my and you can hear about investing in deals with us if you're an accredited investor you can join our mailing list because you do a non-accredited deal sometimes for those that are that we have a preexisting relationship with so you can join that list or you know hear more about that. You can buy a copy of my book there you can you know join all kinds of different cool things we have going on and Masterminds webinars, all that jazz is on the link in my bio on Instagram.       Michael: Sweet, well Matt thank you again, man, from Komodo dragons to passive investing, this has been a blast. I'm sure we'll be chatting soon.   Matt: My family and I play a game at dinner called: True two truths and a lie and I'm going to slay it right in two true and a lie there that I was on an interview and me and this guy talked about Komodo dragons. Nobody's gonna believe that. But I totally got my family, totally gonna crush them at true two truths and a lie tonight…   Michael: I love it, I love it. Well, I am glad I could be a part of it.   Matt: Thank you.   Michael: Awesome, take care man.   Alright everyone, that was our episode. A big thank you to Matt for coming on. It was super fun from Komodo dragons to real estate syndication. I didn't think we'd be able to get there but we kept it on the rails. As always, if you liked the episode, please feel free to leave us a rating or review wherever it is you get your podcasts and we look forward to seeing you on the next one. Happy investing!

If you're like me, you know Josepha Haden Chomposy is the Director for WordPress the open source project in title, but you probably don't know what she does on a day to day basis. Or that she's part of the Open Source Group Division inside of Automattic. Something I always knew, but once framed that way in discussion, was more interesting to hear. I was lucky enough to chat with Josepha for nearly an hour, so I'm breaking up the conversation in two parts. Today, part 1, we'll cover the logistics of her role, bringing WordCamps back, and the challenges with Gutenberg. Thanks to folks over at Malcare for supporting this episode of the Matt Report. If you want to support me, you can buy me a digital coffee or join the super-not-so-secret Discord group for $79/year at buymeacoffee.com/mattreport Episode transcription [00:00:00] Josepha: You say that's the easiest question, but like anyone who has spent any time with me knows that I also spend a lot of time, like, considering, like what, what, what are my, what am I doing? What, what purpose do I bring to the world? Who am I when I'm not trying to accomplish things? Like, yeah, it's easy, but it's not easy. [00:00:17] So yeah. I show stuff. I Hayden jumbo, C a WordPress projects, executive director since 2019. So I'm starting my what third year of it is that right? Yeah. Starting my third year of it, time flies.  [00:00:29] Matt: That's 30 years in COVID years, by the way.  [00:00:32] Josepha: ain't that true? Isn't that true? And before I did this, I actually was as my Twitter bio suggests very much into. [00:00:43] Digital literacy and making sure that that communities were safe and sound, because I think that communities are the foundation of everything that we try to do in the world. And so, yeah, that's me. [00:00:53] Matt: There's a lot of folks who think of community as well. It's a big marketing buzzword for sure. Right. Everyone who has a product company wants a community. But they are looking at community in probably a very lesser form definition in a silo and something to just kind of prop up either their brand or product. [00:01:12] Maybe get some feedback and get really interested. Customers. Community is a whole different ball game and scale at your level. Give us a sense of just like the daily routine. One has to go through to manage what you have to manage.  [00:01:29] Josepha: Gosh, from a community aspect or just from like me as a  [00:01:33] Matt: you wake up and you're and you look at your wall-to-wall meetings. Cause I, I imagine largely that's what you're doing is meeting talking to people, fusing ideas, together, shaking hands, dealing with folks, maybe crying and laughing and arguing. How do you do it?  [00:01:50] Josepha: I'll tell you, number one, that only about a quarter of my time, these. Is spent in meetings, which is really different from, from how it used to be. I used to spend about 60% of my time in meetings. And that was really hard just cause when you're in a meeting, you really have to stay present to, to really support the people that you're there with. [00:02:09] And, and also to really get that work done and be as fruitful as you can with it. And so about, about a quarter of my time now is in meetings. And actually like I've got, I've got a number of hats obviously, cause I'm the executive director of the WordPress project, but I also lead the source practice at automatic. [00:02:29] And so there's a lot going on there. And the best way that I have to manage it at the moment is to just kind of set focus intentions for my day. Like I used to have a day where I just worked on automatic things or when I just worked on community things. And like that's still documented out in the world, like the, the themes that I have for each day, so that like, if people had had to work with a deadline, they knew what. [00:02:55] Going to probably get to on various days so that they could time their information. To [00:03:00] me, it was super useful when I didn't have quite as big a job as I have now. But now I kind of have a day where I focus on meetings. I have a day where I focus on the strategy. I try to make sure that if I have any community things that I'm blocking, I try to get those accomplished, like before the big meetings, which generally is like Wednesdays and Thursdays. [00:03:19] So try to get and get everybody the information that they need to keep moving on time. But I actually start basically every day with about 30 minutes of mindfulness. Just no meetings, no slack open, no anything else. And just making sure that I understand what my goals are for the day, what my tasks tend to beat for the day. [00:03:41] And then I end every day with about 30 minutes of what I like to call my ta-da list instead of a to-do list, things that I got done and that I need to get done tomorrow. [00:03:51] Matt: Little positive affirmation to end the and the day you say that the open source practice is sort of a different approach. Maybe something that you wrangle are managed differently. Can you give us give the listener a sense of what that might be  [00:04:04] Josepha: At automatic or just generally do I approach open-source differently?  [00:04:07] Matt: You mentioned that you, that you either manage or work on the open source practice of WordPress is that something different than the, than the day-to-day role of the executive director?  [00:04:17] Josepha: Huh. Yes and no. So on the one hand I do, we technically are referred to as a division inside automatic. It's the open source group division. And I just, I don't know, saying division seems very clinical and. Very divisive, like splitting things into when maybe we, we need to do a bit less of that right now. [00:04:38] And so when I refer to it as open-source practice, it's a little bit, because I'm trying to make it clear that it's like an ongoing thing that we work on an ongoing thing that we do, but also to identify that it is that yeah, we do. We kind of approach it differently. So open source as a practice rather than open source as just a general methodology, I think has a wider application than just software or adjust your product. [00:05:04] I think that open source, many of those 19 lessons of open source that exists out there could be seen as just like core intentions for how to accomplish things. And when you move it away from just like, this is a core directive for how to build software and instead think of it as this open source methodology that you can use to coordinate an. [00:05:30] I think it makes a big difference to how you accomplish things in open-source projects. And so, yes, that's, I wouldn't say it's different from my work as the executive director, but I do know that people don't necessarily identify that work.  [00:05:44] Matt: Right. How big is that division?  [00:05:46] Josepha: that particular division is just over a hundred people at this point. [00:05:50] And then we also have we, the WordPress project also have the five for the future contributors who work with me and that's a little lighter [00:06:00] touch. They get about a ping or two a week from me just asking what I can help them work through. And just checking in with them generally. And there's probably like 20, 25, maybe 50, if we're generous outside of automatic that are doing that. [00:06:16] So yeah. [00:06:16] Matt: And do the core contributors that contribute to WordPress open source, open source wars, WordPress from automatic. Do they fall under that division or can folks be from any division in, at automatic to contribute?  [00:06:28] Josepha: Yeah. Most of them do a lineup in this division, but there are also because so many of automatics products are, are part of the WordPress ecosystem. There are also plenty of people that are just in automatic as a whole that are contributing to core. So, [00:06:43] Matt: And if I could just illustrate that from a non not automatic company, this could be something like a GoDaddy might have a open source division  [00:06:53] Josepha: Right. [00:06:54] Matt: and their objectives or mission would be to give back to open source. And they would say, Hey, let's give back a little bit to WordPress. Let's give a little bit to whatever Joomla or PHP or something else. [00:07:06] That's open source. You'd have this collective that, that their mission is to, Hey, we're part of this bigger company, the bigger company, isn't all about open source and we're missioned to go out and contribute to open source.  [00:07:18] Josepha: Exactly. Right. So blue host has a group like that. Goat GoDaddy does have a group like that. Google also Yoast all those, all those folks in there, others as well. I'm not, I'm not intentionally leaving other people out. It's just that there are probably like a hundred different companies and I will not be able to just rattle them all off that way,  [00:07:38] Matt: Eh speaking of GoDaddy, looking at con core contributors I don't have the pie chart in front of me. In fact, it wasn't even a pie chart, but there were lots of circles. with automatic representing the largest piece. If you were to give advice to other companies to, I don't know, spin up divisions, give more spin up open-source divisions, give back more to whether it be WordPress or another division. [00:08:00] Are there one or two, like key things. If I want to form an open-source division or to contribute more, what's the best step forward for an organization? To either measure it or approach it to rally people around it. Do you have like one or two things that you look to as a north star?  [00:08:20] Josepha: Yeah. So, firstly, if you're, if you are thinking about creating an open source team, who's either planning to give back to WordPress or just planning to give back to open source in general. There is actually a five for the future white paper that exists to just like essentially take to your, your corporate entity that says, like, this is what it means to give back to this product that has given to us. [00:08:45] And it's, I think on wordpress.org/five, I think there's a link to it right there. But if not, We'll get it done.  [00:08:53] Matt: sure.  [00:08:53] Josepha: And, and that in the end does direct you kind of, to me to make sure that you have all of the information about [00:09:00] the open source philosophies that we're working with in the WordPress project. [00:09:03] And also make sure that that, that we all kind of understand what the goals of the WordPress project are at the moment. And so there is kind of just like a kickoff call with me to see if everyone agrees, it's like any, any relationship that you're entering into, everyone should understand what we're working with first and then make that choice together. [00:09:20] So that's one thing that anyone can take a look at also if. As an employer or just as yourself, want to contribute from like a five for the future pledging perspective, but don't necessarily have the time or resources to commit like a whole team's worth. There is actually a contributor training series that you can go through that gives you the basics of like how WordPress does open source, how open source functions in software, and also covers things like how we make decisions in WordPress, all of that stuff. [00:09:54] I believe that's on wordpress.org/contributor, hyphen training or something like that. We can find the link for your show notes, but yeah, those are both excellent ways to just like take stock of what that kind of contribution tends to look like. And see if it's a good fit. [00:10:11] Matt: I I'd imagine that part of your role or part of your efforts are to knock on the doors of, of big businesses that might be leveraging WordPress and saying, Hey, I think you can donate another person or two or 20 to the cause. Do what, what, what is that like? Are those efforts fruitful for you or are there certain strategies you try to put in place before you knock on the door of, I don't know. [00:10:35] I use GoDaddy just because it's the top of mind Right. now, but I'll go daddy or Bluehost or whomever [00:10:39] Josepha: Right. Yes.  [00:10:40] Matt: government.  [00:10:42] Josepha: the government,  [00:10:43] Matt: Right.  [00:10:43] Josepha: I have never knocked on the door of the government to ask them to contribute  [00:10:46] Matt: me know when you find that door, which door is it? I don't know. Neo find another one. [00:10:51] Josepha: find another door. Yeah, no. So, yes, there is general. I don't, I call it fundraising just because I understand that like, there are. Four-ish different economies in the WordPress ecosystem and not all of them are about money. A lot of them are about time and, and other things. But so yeah, I do that outreach every year for the most part. [00:11:14] And actually met does that as well. So Matt often we'll start with like the highest decision-making levels. Cause you, you do kind of have to get some buy-in on that. Not, not this Matt, dear readers other Matt, Matt Mullenweg what was I saying? Yeah, he frequently will start at like the CEO levels of having those conversations and then they move to me to kind of have a better understanding of what it looks like, what it could look like, what we want it to look like, all of that stuff. [00:11:42] As far as like, do we, do we, do I do anything to like prepare companies for that? Not really. The fight for the future program has been an excellent experiment and has been growing for years. And, and I don't know that I have ever [00:12:00] felt the need to like prime prime, anyone for the ask of like, do you have anyone who can help us with these security patches? [00:12:09] Do you have anyone who can help us with these design issues that we have? Like, I've never felt the need to do it necessarily. But that doesn't mean it's not happening. As I mentioned, like Matt does that also, he does that outreach as well. And so if there's priming for that call from that, that outreach from me, it's probably happening there. [00:12:27] Matt: Forgive my not understanding fully of how the inner workings of automatic works, but from executive directors that I've worked with in my local community, a lot of them are for nonprofits and a lot of them are, are raising money and that's a whole large part of their job. [00:12:44] Do you do that at all for any degree of the work for the WordPress foundation or is that completely separate? Not even in your purview.  [00:12:52] Josepha: I used to do that. Yeah. is not in my purview anymore. We actually have some community folks that really have done excellent work to keep that program moving all of this, the global sponsorship programs. They do that work these days. I did use to, but, but not now.  [00:13:09] Matt: Okay. Fantastic. And speaking of the, of the foundation word camps coming back. Question, mark. We just had word camp us last year. And now I think Birmingham is next. If I, if I have that correct. Is there other others coming? Is that something that you're looking forward to proceeding cautiously with? [00:13:32] Again, I know there was something on the Tavern about no or little to no masks at the last camp. A lot of folks worried about it. What's your prediction or what's your outlook on local meetups or local camps? Sorry,  [00:13:45] Josepha: So word camp, U S actually was, was a virtual this year where it can't one state of the word  [00:13:50] Matt: state of the word, sorry. Yep. It felt like a word camp because everyone Was. celebrating it.  [00:13:55] Josepha: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was it was an excellent experiment and it actually was not our first in-person event. There was a word camp in severe. I want to say that that weekend right before state of the word, that was our first one back. [00:14:09] And then yes, we've got Birmingham on the calendar. We have WordCamp Europe on the calendar as an in-person event. And we have word camp us 20, 22 on the calendar as, as an in-person event. Cautiously with cautious optimism. Is that a thing I can say? We're proceeding forward with cautious optimism about it. [00:14:27] Matt: in San Diego was cautious. Optimism.  [00:14:31] Josepha: Excellent. I'll let them know. Yeah, like. I have been, I've been talking to people about this a lot this week. So much of the information that we get from, from everyday users of WordPress, about what they love and what they don't love, what they need and what they want with the software comes from those events and not having them has certainly been very difficult for the community as a whole, to, to keep on [00:15:00] top of their own resilience. [00:15:01] But, but the community of contributors, as it relates to the support of the community of users, like it really, it's very clear to me that all of our contributors feel a little bit, I don't want to say hamstrung, but like they don't have the same touch points that they used to have to make the decisions that we all have to make. [00:15:22] And so. That's the optimistic side. Like I'm optimistic that we can get back to in-person events so that we can have that, that high value information from our users of the CMS more and, and faster and better. And the cautious side is of course, that everything is changing with this from week to week. [00:15:42] At this point, like for a while, it was month to month, things were changing and now it's week to week, things are changing and, and I never want to put people at undue risk and so am prepared to make the best call that we can make in the moment. And as things move as quickly as they are. It has made it more difficult when things were just kind of progressing on a month to month scale, you had time to, to cancel things or to move them or, or whatever you had to do. [00:16:15] But in the case of Omicron that moved so quickly that, that there was a little bit of blind sightedness happening on it. So  [00:16:24] Matt: is  [00:16:24] Josepha: I don't know if I've answered your question. [00:16:26] Matt: no that you have, or you've let us to at least maybe the next question. or the maybe just helping me define a better question. Is is there more stress on the local volunteers to raise more? Because one, there might not be enough ticket sales for enough people to maybe businesses have retracted from sponsoring camps in three. [00:16:50] I think that there's less money at hand, right? To, to Dole out to word camps in the fund, for lack of a better phrase.  [00:16:57] Josepha: in the fund. Yeah. So, That's such a complicated question. We, the, so the, the WordPress community support entity has been providing still a good portion of, of the infrastructure that people need in order to organize a WordPress event. And as far as like getting fiscal sponsorship, getting financial sponsorship from local entities, I am sure that it is more stressful, but I don't know that, that we, as like the stewards of this community have said, like, you have to find more local sponsorship because we cannot commit to as much global sponsorship. [00:17:40] I don't, I don't recall that happening with any of the events that we've seen lately.  [00:17:46] Matt: got it. Got it. Let's let's shift gears back to to WordPress to Gutenberg we think back well, we have WordPress 5.9 in 19 ish, 19 [00:18:00] ish days. Right?  [00:18:00] Josepha: no one be scared. That's great. [00:18:02] Matt: Thinking back three and a half years ago, whenever Gutenberg was announced, there was mass chaos, massive stereo. My God, we've got this Gutenberg thing. [00:18:10] What is it? Don't want it everyone up in arms about it. I, for one while maybe I didn't enjoy the way it rolled out and the way it was communicated as a non-developer. Yeah. [00:18:22] And when people started using it, I was like, this is, this is, this is just software. It's going to get better. I think here we are three and a half years later, it's a much different product. [00:18:32] It's much more refined from obviously when it started. Cause it's been three and a half years. Although  [00:18:37] Josepha: you've been working on it in the background. [00:18:39] Matt: Yeah. if you were, if you were, if you were in the early beta access, you were, you were playing with it. If you knew how to download it from GitHub [00:18:46] Josepha: Those fancy people.  [00:18:48] Matt: Those fancy people. [00:18:49] I don't even know above my pay grade. [00:18:50] Although I still struggled to drag some blocks in between columns. Sometimes that's a little bit frustrating, but do you think the the time that you think it'll take the same amount of time basically is what I'm getting at for full site editing to mature and to be adopted? Or do you think this is going to be fast paced because now we've kind of experienced Gutenberg.  [00:19:08] Josepha: My short answer is I do not think it's going to take as long and I'm going to give you a long answer now. So on the one hand, I think it's true that people are now a bit more bought in. Like our users are quite a bit more bought in on on this. Change than they were in 5.0, there's, there's a reason for them to trust that it's the right direction. [00:19:29] We have consistently been showing that ever since 5.0, came out and so like, yeah, I think that on the one hand, there's a lot more willingness in public sentiment and public grace that we have at the moment. And so from that aspect, I think that that we're in a much better position than we were when we were merging things in 5.0, but also between 5.0. [00:19:50] And now we have actually heard and by we I'll just be super clear. I have heard so much that it's not necessarily the change that upset people. It was how we made the change. And I totally understand that people felt left out. They felt like it was forging ahead without them, like, there was no way they could keep up with it. [00:20:10] And I, and I understand that it like it's the Gutenberg project was and is moving along a lot faster. Then WordPress core moves along from the, from the standpoint of like how frequently they have releases. So releases every two weeks is very different from releases every four months. And so having heard from so many people in so many different areas of the project, that, that it was the way that we did it. [00:20:37] That was so upsetting. Between 5.0, and now we actually have done together a lot of work to change the way that we talk about it. And so there are a lot more consistent updates from the folks who are working consistently within the core Gutenberg spaces of things, including stuff like our performance metrics that we are [00:21:00] gauging all of the features that we're planning, the features that did get in there. [00:21:03] And the last two weeks, like we're just communicating more in that space, but also we have really re-invigorated the testing area and the triage practice, both of those practices across the WordPress EcoSys. And created a number of different places for anyone to get this kind of information and sponsored a number of different spaces, where users and developers and agency owners and, and decision makers, technical, or not have been able to get better information about what they need to know about the software. [00:21:37] And so when was 5.0 at the end of 2018? Yeah. So. Yeah. Since 2018, I would say that there are probably four or five really big projects that have helped us to move past that whole, like it's the way you did it. Like we figured out the ways that we did it, that made people mad and we've made changes to fix them. [00:21:59] They're four or five large scale things that you can see, but also a lot of just small individual things that each team or any contributor does to make that whole process a little less scary, a little more tidy, little easier to see everything that we're doing on learn right now with trying to get more and more workshops and courses and lessons out for people like, yeah, we've done a lot of work based on the feedback that I got. [00:22:24] I did a six month listening tour after 5.0, to hear how mad  [00:22:29] Matt: That was. said with a big site.  [00:22:31] Josepha: Yeah, it was, it was hard. I it's like a listening tour is hard anyway, but I spent six months going to the events with people who were the maddest at WordPress and at me and at Matt and, and did nothing, but like tell me how much you hate this. [00:22:50] And that's all I wanted to hear it. I didn't have reasons or explanations or excuses for anything like their feelings of anger were because they felt like we hadn't heard them. And so I was showing up to hear them and, and in that six months time, that is when I identified, these are the things we need to fix in the future. [00:23:10] And we have spent years fixing them and I'm very proud of that work, so.  [00:23:13] Matt: It's a perfect segue to a couple other questions. Let's get the pitchforks and the torches out folks. No, I'm just kidding. Surprise. You're on a game show. Have you seen running, man? No, I'm just kidding.  [00:23:20] Josepha: No. [00:23:21] Matt: On the listening tour I'm sure you heard things like, Oh, what we're doing here is we're just competing against Squarespace and Wix. [00:23:28] Why do we want to, this is, I'm sure you've heard that. Right. We're Prestos wants to compete against Squarespace and Wix. My response is duh  [00:23:36] Josepha: of  [00:23:36] Matt: duh. Yes, I do. Like, I want to compete against Squarespace and Wix so that we can, because I want WordPress to survive. Do you think that did one, did you hear that sentiment two, do. [00:23:48] you think that's kind of going away and feeling like, Yeah. [00:23:50] actually we do want to compete against them to, to win.  [00:23:53] Josepha: I definitely heard it a lot and I hear it a lot even now. There are, there are two sides to that [00:24:00] conversation. Cause sometimes people are like, you're competing against these things that are so tiny, why bother. And sometimes it's, you're competing against something that is not the group of, that's not catering to the group of people that WordPress wants to cater to. [00:24:14] And so like, there are two different takes on that particular argument and I see both sides of it. But also like, technology always, you have to stay relevant and you have to move fast enough to be if, if not a competitor to a tiny thing that exists now. Cause like, sure, it's not a threat if it's 1% of usage across the web. [00:24:36] But, but there is something to be said for self disruption in that way, like I like this is my favorite example to use. So like when the iPad came out and there were just. Tablets everywhere. And the iPad mini came out and everyone was like, there's no point in having an iPad mini, we do not know why apple is doing this. [00:24:56] This is the most useless thing. Like people were like, why are you even bothering? No one wants this one. Plenty of people wanted it. And to taking the opportunity to, to, to disrupt what's happening in your own ecosystem before other people can show up and, and do that disruption to you, like that's smart. [00:25:18] That's a good idea. And so I do know that Gutenberg has been a really disruptive change and that for a lot of people, it also has been a breaking change. Even if it's not like breaking websites or breaking the code or breaking your dashboard, a broken workflow is still a breaking change for you. [00:25:35] And like, that is why Gutenberg is, is as a project being done over so many years. Right. If, if you feel like asking me about, about the reason that that was the right call, I would tell you, but most people don't care. But yeah, like moving fast enough to stay relevant, slow enough to bring people with you where you can is so smart and not only for the project, but for the people who rely on the project to have better lives. [00:26:05] So, [00:26:06] Matt: True or false. This is this is not about open source WordPress, but this is about automatic. And I would say that about true or false, the challenge true or false in your opinion  [00:26:14] Josepha: We're building some caveats in here. I like it. [00:26:17] Matt: I don't wanna, I don't wanna like put you too much on the spot, but you have walls. Your opinion. [00:26:22] The challenge for automatic is on innovation and pushing the software forward and fricking everything. Woo commerce, Gutenberg, wordpress.org, jet pack. The challenges still not enough people I'd imagine to, to help produce push code to, to improve everything across the board.  [00:26:42] Josepha: you threw so many pieces in there that I cannot give a true false cause that's probably true for some and less true for others would be my guests right now.  [00:26:50] Matt: let's talk about, let's say Gutenberg true or false, not enough people to, to really refine the whole thing. Fast enough,  [00:26:59] Josepha: I don't know if you [00:27:00] can hear my stomach growling. Cause like my microphone is right down by my stomach. I apologize if you can, like, I don't have a monster in the room. It's  [00:27:06] Matt: your, your stomach. cannot answer the question.  [00:27:10] Josepha: It tried real hard. It had so many things to say. Yeah. So for gluten, so you're asking true false for gluten. Is the limiting factor that we don't have enough people. [00:27:18] Matt: Let me frame some context around it. When I interviewed Matt when I interviewed Matt back in January, 2021 [00:27:24] There's just, there's so much on the plate for automatic in terms of.com jet pack, VU, commerce, which is just a sleeping sleeping giant we don't have anything close to a WooCommerce Shopify yet. And I look at automatic and I say the biggest problem for Matt right now is just, there's just not, he can't hire fast enough to, to iterate and develop these products. There's just. It's just impossible for somebody to hire this many folks and get them up to speed to push these products. [00:27:53] I feel the same for Gutenberg. And I guess the open source answer is yeah. [00:27:58] more, maybe more people should step up or more brands and organizations that have the money hosting companies should step up to to contribute to this right. To refine the product. Like I wanna be able to drag my block in between three columns without me losing my mind.  [00:28:14] Josepha: Oh man, I have a very complicated false for you. I know. So, okay. So there are a lot of people contributing to Gutenberg and, and while we can always use more people contributing that we can not contest there is actually a different limiting factor. That's not necessarily about developers. And so. [00:28:37] I'll just get real clear. So I don't, I don't know that other people agree with me about this and, and that's their prerogative. But as someone who is looking across our entire ecosystem across our entire project from a substance, a pretty high level, with a huge number of, of data points that are coming to me from, from the community, I can say with pretty high confidence that some of the more pressing limiting factors are things like we don't have enough. [00:29:11] Essentially mid-level deciders who can say confidently, these are the black and white questions that have already been answered. This is the answer and move everybody forward. Like we have a lot of bottlenecks that are still built into that, into that product. There is also an incredibly limiting factor of our user outreach, like are unactivated community members, as I like to call them in my notes to myself are the, the community members that represent our community of users. [00:29:42] So people who don't necessarily know that the project exists, they don't necessarily know that they can like provide feedback about what is working. What's not working, what's broken. What is what could be made better? Like the lack of feedback from them. Frequently is something that is more of a [00:30:00] limiting factor than not having enough developers. [00:30:02] Now, if the entire WordPress user base showed up and was like, here's all of our feedback, like for sure, we would suddenly discover that we don't have enough developers to get those things done can confirm.  [00:30:13] Matt: Yeah.  [00:30:13] Josepha: But, but yeah, I think that our more pressing issue is around the people who can help us, like confidently say, this is the most likely decision based on what we know from Mathias, who is our primary kind of Gutenberg architect or Riyadh or whoever it is. [00:30:31] We just have such a small group of people who can do that. And that's true to an extent in the WordPress project as well. There are various things that we could blame that on COVID is a great example of a thing that might cause people to be less. Less engaged in that level of, of contribution. [00:30:52] But yeah, I think that in the hierarchy of things where I would say, yes, we definitely have a dearth of those. Those two would come up prior to developers on the open-source side.  ★ Support this podcast ★

Matthew's father says, “His mission for this company was to create a place where brilliantly talented people could come together and do what they love to do—and he was the orchestra leader.”That theme of cultural harmony permeates the entirety of Thomas Riley today. Matt speaks on the collaborative environment he, Tom, and Ben continue to foster within the company demonstrated, for instance, by their team's 7 A.M. huddle that they have stuck to every single Monday and Friday, year after year.The Rileys are also committed to being the example for their team in both good times and bad. Matt recalls Ben and himself putting their paychecks on hold in 2009 amid the challenges brought about by the Great Recession, and then having their own staff volunteering to cut their own pay in order to help keep the company afloat.Finally, Matt discusses his excitement for the future of the company and his eagerness to continually raise the bar by being unafraid to embrace risks when doing business. In Matt's own words: “Nothing great happens without taking some risks.”Topics Discussed: [02:33] The story behind Thomas Riley Artisans' Guild[12:42] What Matt has learned from working with their clients[17:00] What Matt learned from his time as an ironworker in Jacksonville[23:57] Dealing with fluctuating capture rates[27:47] Why Tom named Matt CEO and his brother Ben as COO[36:13] The future of Thomas Riley Artisans' Guild[38:13] Being responsible for 70 families[40:42] What Matt is most proud of[43:52] Matt's ten-year plan for the business[47:48] What Matt loves about NaplesConnect with Guest:WebsiteInstagramFacebookConnect with Build Magazine:Website Instagram Facebook Key Quotes by Matt:There's an apostrophe in Artisans', and it's after the “s”, because it wasn't [my father's] place. Maybe he was the namesake of it, but it was about the team. Nothing's changed. The mission he wrote on the napkin hasn't changed in 30 years.It's easy to run your business in the tough times because you know the decisions you have to make. When times are good, it's very easy to slack off.Ultimately, I make the final decisions; but, we've intentionally built an environment where people are empowered to help us make decisions together. So, it's a team effort the whole way. That helps me sleep at night.If there's no risk involved, it's probably not something we should do, because nothing great happens without taking some risks.

In our latest episode, Nasir and Matt are covering the legal issues on Social Media. The average person spends most of their day on social media, whether they are scrolling for hours or publishing their own content. However, just because you publish your own content on Instagram does not equate to you owning that image. The law is a little complicated and the solutions aren't always clear. Brands that work with influencers gain a lot of attention, but all too frequently, influencers break the law by not adhering to them. Full Podcast TranscriptNASIR: All right. Welcome! We are covering social media and the law. MATT: This is not even something you would have to think about. NASIR: Do you have the right to do whatever you want? MATT: There's potential biases. NASIR: You have influencers' endorsements. Who owns what? MATT: Kickstarter, GoFundMe, and stuff like that. This is Legally Sound Smart Business where your hosts, Nasir Pasha and Matt Staub, cover business in the news and add their awesome legal twist. Legally Sound Smart Business is a podcast brought to you by Pasha Law PC – a law firm representing your business in California, Illinois, New York, and Texas. Here are your hosts, Nasir Pasha and Matt Staub. NASIR: All right. Welcome. We are pretty much an A to Z – or Facebook to Twitter as I like to call it – of law and social media. How are you doing, Matt? MATT: Yeah, doing well. You know, the interesting thing about this topic is I guess it's still relatively new, but if you had a business a few decades ago, this is not even something you would have to think about – at least in this sort of context. It's always evolving because social media is always evolving but, yeah, there are a lot of considerations for business owners with this. NASIR: And it keeps changing, so much so that we actually did an episode similar – not quite the same – on social media and the law about 2017. If you take 2021 and minus 2017, that's how many years ago it was. MATT: Yeah, it'd be interesting. Like you said, I mean, even four years ago, I'm sure some of the things we talked about are vastly different than what we are going to talk about today – new laws, new rules. It's something that people have to stay on top on pretty heavily. NASIR: Right. I mean, even four years ago, social media from a legal perspective, I'm not sure how much it changed, but the way we use it keeps adapting. I'm trying to think in social media what's been really different here. I don't think TikTok existed four years ago. Or it barely existed, right? What other mediums? There are also mediums that are no longer existing. Wasn't there that one where you can have those 7-second videos? What was that? MATT: Vine. NASIR: Vine, yeah, that's gone. I think it was Vine, yeah. Did Twitter buy them out or something? MATT: I'm not sure. I thought they closed down, but maybe. NASIR: Yeah, it goes back and forth. MATT: I think it was probably, if I can remember correctly, I think Facebook was more popular. Things like Instagram were probably less popular. I'm sure there are still a lot of Facebook users, but my guess is the popularity of those two flipped a little bit. It depends on the demographic too, but that's kind of the general observation I've had. NASIR: Right. We also went through the Trump administration which, of course, when it came to social media, there's been quite a bit of activity with our president tweeting almost every single day multiple times. And so, that obviously was a big kind of cultural shift, I think – the mainstreaming of social media. When I have my parents getting on Facebook and Twitter and things like that, then you know we've gotten to a new level. MATT: I didn't even think about it from that context. Obviously, that was a big thing at the time. Since then, he was kicked off for a period of time. Is he back on? I haven't paid attention. NASIR: I think he's still off. I mean, I don't know about every platform,

We begin with Socrates and the history and meaning of "APOLOGIA". How we should defend what we believe is true. We use Socrates as an example of the result of what happens when we go against the status quo. How can we stay safe and sane?And when mistakes happen, how do we apologize? How should we apologize? When is it ok not to apologize? We discuss the reasons why we fight and how we can reach a loving point. TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Fawn: Here we go, here we go. Do you even know, do you even understand when you come up behind me and you scare the heck out of me when I'm in the kitchen and I'm deep in thought and I jump, am holding my heart and I feel traumatized because all of a sudden you're like you just come up from out of nowhere. It seems from my perspective, And it scares the hell out of me. And then you get mad. Then we get into a fight because really all I need is an apology. Like, oh my God, I'm so sorry. [00:00:37] Matt: Oh, timeout, timeout, timeout. I'm just walking up to you. I'm not trying to scare you. I'm [00:00:43] Fawn: just walking up. Here we go again, link. You know what? I don't even remember all of our fights. Like we have so many fights that miraculously, I don't even remember the fights. I just remember the general sense of annoyance and, [00:01:00] and like rage, but honey, all you have to say once you realize I have calmed down is I'm sorry. Oh my God. Are you all right? Oh, no. Look at you. You, I totally startled you... like admit it, but you don't, you immediately go into a state of you're on trial and you're fighting for your, your, your perspective, your proving that you're right. Even though [00:01:31] Matt: I didn't do anything. See, [00:01:33] Fawn: that's the that's you did. Do... you scared me!!!!. Okay. [00:01:39] Matt: There's intent. Oh my God, your honor. [00:01:42] Fawn: All right, so good morning, everybody. Good evening. Good afternoon. Can I just say thank you, France. France is awesome. France has been such a loyal listener country like outside of the United States and you know what? [00:02:00] And so, so many other countries around the world. Thank you all for listening, please, please. If you could leave us a kind review on one of the platforms. When you go on our website, our friendly world.com, please. It helps out our show, which already you have helped so much. Thank you for listening everyone. Anyway, back to our fight. You ready? Oh dear. So we are always fighting. We love each other, but we're always fighting, but really the fight happens because It's to me, from my perspective, it's about all the making of excuses instead of just apologizing. And so when was it a, was it a few weeks ago or a few months ago at time is very weird for me. [00:02:50] Matt: Time is fairly fluid. Yeah. [00:02:51] Fawn: But I would say somewhat recently. You know, our whole basis somew

Bonsai trees are intended to bring the core aspects of nature: balance harmony, and simplicity. It's said that when we consider the natural flow of the environment, these three characteristics, should anything occur to disrupt it (nature) will always restore itself. There is always a natural harmonic balance to things. In looking at the trees and their scale, on so many levels we can realized how much bigger the trees are than manmade structures. And if you look at it, a tree (nature), is way, way, more massive than anything that we make. The act of caring for bonsai trees is nurturing in it's profound sense. And when giving from the heart, the giver benefits as much as the receiver. By bonding through nature, the Bonzai plant's meaning is enriched and it becomes our teacher. I thought that was beautiful. And it calls to friendship too; all relationships, by bonding, by bonds, things are enriched and it's a teaching moment. We teach each other. The more we provide and nurture for one, the other also reciprocates, not always in the sense that we expect, but it is going back to that circle. When you care, you are cared for. What you seek is seeking you. TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Fawn: Hello, we are here. So are the birds. Can you hear him? [00:00:05] Matt: That's like a Yodel bird. [00:00:06] Fawn: I know there are all kinds of wildlife outside [00:00:12] Matt: and, but we actually have our windows open because it's actually not [00:00:14] Fawn: boiling hot out. Right. I want to say there has been a moving a migration , if you will, of all kinds of wildlife coming to the tree right outside our window, because. The food, the bird seeds, we have chosen. It's a whole new community out there. It's wild. [00:00:34] Matt: And it's waking you up first thing in the morning, isn't it? [00:00:37] Fawn: Well, yeah, I've been having insomnia again, so like right when I go to sleep, then it feels like the birds are like, hello, all kinds. And I don't know what they're saying. They're shouting all kinds of stuff. Speaking of nature, are you ready for today's episode? I'm never ready. Hello friends. Hello everybody. Today, we are talking about how we [00:01:00] grow and the bonsai tree. Are you ready? All right, here we go. So bonsai trees are intended to bring the core aspects of nature and there's three. We have balance harmony. And simplicity. It's said that when we consider the natural flow of the environment, these three characteristics; balance, harmony and simplicity are always present. And if anything occurs to disrupt nature, it will always restore itself. You can take that however way. You know, we talk about how we're messing up the environment or big, so filthy, dirty, irresponsible, best believe nature will take care of itself. The earth will still be here, but it doesn't mean whoever's polluting it will, right. I mean, it can be really, it can really smack you, but it will, [00:02:00] but isn't that the law. Everything that everything will restore itself. [00:02:08] Matt: There is I think a natural harmonic balance to things, but that doesn't mean that that harmonic balance won't completely get flipped on its, butt supposedly and God knows it hasn't happened certainly in our lifetimes. And it probably won't in subsequent lifetimes, but magnetic north sometimes flips to the south pole. Yes. What the heck? Well, that seems very out of bounds. [00:02:32] Fawn: But things move right? You need to flip and move, but then there's no harmony, but isn't that the whole cycle of the circle, we talk about it with Aikido it's a circle, right? So the north turning into the south of south turning into the north

With any new product, building brand awareness is key. But when your new product is something the world has never seen before, well, you need to do more than just make people aware, you have to educate them, too. As a DTC company, you might have a direct line to your consumers, but you still need to be able to show and teach them as much as possible, and then be there around the clock to answer their questions and hold their hand through the process. It sounds like a lot of work, but when the product is changing the game completely, you have to be ready to get your hands dirty. And that's just what Matt Wall and I chat about today, who is the co-founder of Principle Faucets. Principle Faucets is a DTC brand that has created the first fully-integrated foot pedal system which not only saves water, but is more hygienic and improves faucet functionality. Matt dove into how he and his co-founders brought their foot-pedal faucet to the market, the amount of time it took to test and tweak to make it fit consumers needs, and then he goes into the process of what's it's been like to actually get it in front of people — a task made much harder when the pandemic caused them to shut down their mobile display unit. Here's a sneak peak on what Wall had to say: it takes finding the right niche within the industry and then hyper-targeting your search and marketing terms toward that audience to be successful. Plus, Matt tells us how to market the environmental benefits of something like the Principle Faucet across all different geographies,who are experiencing various degrees of climate change. Enjoy this episode and use the code UPNEXT20 for 20% off on your order at Principle Faucets!Main Takeaways:What's Your Niche?: It's easy to get lost in the deep sea of products that come up when they search a random keyword. You might see people finding your product or website, but the conversions won't be what you want. By dialing in on keywords and long-tail search phrases, you can more easily target the people who are actually looking to buy your product and then get them to convert.Never Before Seen: When you think you have built a better mousetrap, you still need to do market research to see if consumers want what you have to offer. Bringing a brand new company into the world with a brand new product no one has ever seen before is a risk, and you have to do your research before you take the bet to go into a market with a product no one actually wants or needs.Ease Them In: If your product requires consumer education or a change in behavior, it's wise to build in some tie back to what they are already familiar with. Asking a customer to do something completely new is scary, and will turn people off. It's better to give them a way to do a gradual implementation into their daily lives. For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we're ready for what's next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Hello, and welcome back to Up Next in Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles CEO at Mission.org. Stay on the show. We have Matthew Wall, who currently serves as a co-founder at Principle Faucets. Matt, welcome.Matt:Thank you. My pleasure to be here.Stephanie:I'm excited. So for anyone who is not going to see video of this, Matt is sitting on top of a mountain at Lake Tahoe and it was teasing us with the view so we can all be very jealous and just let that sink in for a second. That's a first on this interview by the way.Stephanie:So before we dive into Principle Faucets and what it is, I want to hear a bit about your backstory and what even led you to where you are today.Matt:Sure, absolutely. So water conservation was always a big thing for me growing up something that my parents instilled in us myself and my sister living in California, dealing with droughts. And that was a very common thread with both my wife and my co-founder John Porteous. And we just wanted to do something that had impact and was meaningful. And in about 2015, we decided to really change gears and do something different with our lives for a few different reasons. And we bounced around a few different ideas and what stuck was finding a way to use water better in the home. It was something that we were familiar with at that point. My wife Lauren is an avid cook. Again, the water conservation stuff on our side, we just really wanted to do something that was meaningful with our lives.Matt:And we kicked around some ideas and came up with trying to add a foot pedal to a faucet. And at that point the idea just took off and we deviced prototypes and testing them a little bit, our homes and one thing led to another, we got a good response from some of the people that we shared it with. And gosh, we're now 2021 and we just launched the business in October of last year. So it's been a whirlwind, but we've really enjoyed it.Stephanie:Wow. So tell me a bit about, I'm just imagining you and your wife and your other co-founder all brainstorming. What were you guys doing before you even had this idea? Where were you working at?Matt:Sure. I worked for a small startup in the Watsonville area of California. And it's not your typical tech startup, but it was a small company that was started up. I was the first employee outside of the CEO and owner. So that experience in itself was really cool to see a business start and grow from basically zero revenue to there were about 20, $30 million by the time I left. So the exposure to that business was, I've carried a lot of my learnings there through to this business itself. And my wife Lauren actually was diagnosed with colon cancer about the time that we started talking about doing stuff different. So that was a very interesting awakening and really just lit a fire under us. And the fact that the reality of how short life is and all that stuff.Matt:So for her, she really wanted to kickstart her life and do something that's a bit more meaningful at the time. She was a stay at home mom and taking care of our lovely children. And my co-founder John, he has a law background. He was working at the DA's office. And I think in Modesto, California, but none of us were really just loving what we were doing. And we all just wanted to do something that we could just wake up and smile about in the morning and know that what we were doing, had a meaningful impact on the stuff that we really cared about most in life.Stephanie:That's awesome. That's such a good mix of people with different backgrounds and having urgency around it. And anytime, oftentimes you hear it, like the big ideas there are you're right there. There's always something that's there to stop you. I don't know if you've heard that when talking to other entrepreneurs, but there always comes something where it's like, are you willing to go pass this? Are you going to let this set you back? So I love that.Matt:Absolutely.Stephanie:So tell me a bit more about Principal Faucets. So I know it's a foot pedal. Are you constantly peddling? What does it look like as a user?Matt:Sure. The concept that we designed is an integrated system for a kitchen faucet. We have two product families and the integrated full kitchen faucet system is a standalone system. And it comes with our signature kitchen faucet, a little control box, and then our foot pedal that goes in the [Tokic] area of the cabinet. And we also have a adapter system that you can combine with an existing faucet that you already have in your home, in the kitchen or bathroom. So if you're not doing a remodel or needing to replace a faucet, this isn't a great option for you. Excuse me, to get all the benefits of a foot pedal. And the way it works is it can start and stop the flow of water. And it can also regulate the flow of water, like a gas pedal. So when you're working at the sink and you just need a little bit of water, you have all of that flexibility to get full stream and little stream and everywhere in between.Matt:And we really designed these systems to not necessarily replace the existing traditional hand operated way of operating a faucet. We just wanted to give you another option to accomplish those tasks. And I'm sure we'll get into it, but through a lot of the testing we've done and the water savings trials, it's really been interesting to see how people gravitate to using the foot pedal like 60 to 80% of the time, because it just makes a lot of sense. It really frees you up to do all the things you do at the sink a little bit quicker and faster. And then with the foot pedal shutting off the water automatically, as soon as you take your foot off of it, it captures all of those little bits of wasted water in between the stuff you do at the sink. So it's a really interesting win-win interaction with people who use the water and just interact at the sink. So those two products are where we focused right now, and we have plans to expand and move into some different stuff in the future, but that's still to come.Stephanie:I'm just imagining that all my sinks, everything having that, because I mean, like, have you ever measured the amount of germs on a handle? That's the first thing that comes to my mind of like, why are we touching these things in the bathroom? And there was a great skit when COVID first started around hand washing and this guy goes to the bathroom sink, washes it, and then looks around and realizes he touched the faucet afterwards, starts watching it again. Then he realized he touched the soap handles. Then washes his hands again. It's like everywhere and touching things. I'm like, why didn't we do this before? It was just always touching things, of course we're not clean.Matt:Yeah. It's been a really interesting and unfortunately with everything that's unfolded around the pandemic and over the last year. And so the hygiene aspects of our system have been front and center for us in our marketing, as well as just in the overall importance of having something like that in your house, it really does, and is a great solution for exactly that problem. Having to touch the faucet. You can walk right into your house, step on the pedal, wash your hands. You never have to touch anything. And it's great for adults and kids. And it's been good.Stephanie:[inaudible] not holding. I always take my twins. They're 16 months. I'm trying to hold them into the sink to wash them off while messing with the handle. And I'm like, there has to be a better way, there is. That's awesome.Matt:There is, yeah.Stephanie:Tell me about the early days of starting out. I mean, you just launched last year. What has that looked like?Matt:Oh, it's been a lot of work. For us at this point, it's all about driving brand awareness and getting our message out and getting in front of as many customers as possible. So we've been putting almost all of our efforts into just finding very crafty and unique ways with the pandemic to get out and show people the product one of the last January. So January of 2020, just right before everything hit. John and I, we built these beautiful mobile display units. So it has our two products on it, beautiful cabinets, it's modular, so you can wheel it in and out of places. And we had this grand idea, this traveling road show that we wanted to do, we rode down farmer's markets and go to offices and take it to everywhere, any place we could stick this thing and just show it to people, get them to come up and test it.Matt:It's fully functional. So it has a pump inside, self-sustaining electricity, all that kind of stuff. So you could really come up and use it, see it firsthand. And we were so stumped and then everything came crashing down. So...Stephanie:Man, that's a bummer, but it's ready for you now. The market is ready now.Matt:It is, it's beautiful. Yeah. So we really, we love the idea in our kind of direct to consumer model. We want to do that roadshow, we want to be the traveling salesmen again, that connection to our customers. There's no better person to be able to convey the importance, the value and the benefits of the product better than we can. So it's been really cool. We've, had a couple shows this year now where we've been able to take it out and actually gets up and it's been great. It's been a lot of fun. People get such a kick out of the whole concept of being it's a little show. I mean, you do the whole dog and pony thing. So it's been really cool. We're looking forward to doing a lot more of that.Stephanie:That's awesome. So what are your, how many units are you selling today? Was there an inflection point where you changed something in your marketing or you did something a bit different when all of a sudden it's like, boom, now we got to catch up?Matt:Yeah. We were pretty lucky that we pulled in a pretty good amount of product before the pandemic hit. So we've been pretty good on our inventory, but we've seen some pretty steady sales increase throughout the last year with the booms in remodeling and construction. So that's been a really great sustainer for us. I mean our product on our next round of production, we're going to be expanding into two other faucet lines. So we're really excited about that. And that's actually going to be, we should be placing those orders in just a few weeks, which should be here for the basically fall and winter time of this year.Matt:Iteration and changing of the products themselves. We have some stuff that will be changed in this next round, but we've been really happy with the way that product has performed at this point. We have had just great reactions for people who have purchased the product and installed it. And yeah, we're really happy with it at this point.Stephanie:Okay, cool. So when it comes to the product iterations, are you hearing feedback from the customers around different things that they need or was it more internally driven?Matt:No, it's been both. We try and keep in pretty close contact with our customers. We do follow up calls so often as long as they're receptive to them. Using the system, it takes a little bit of kind of, there's like a bit of a breaking in period. So it takes about a week to get used to it, using the pedal. And then once you do that some of the feedback we hear from our customers about it, they hate going to other people's houses because they walk up to the sink in the foot pedal, and they're just trying to tap on the ground to try and get the water to start. But product itself, some of the changes and iterations we want to make are about how the foot pedal itself installs or the toe kick. That was one of the sensitive areas for us in designing the product.Matt:There could be a lot of variation in cabinetry. There's no standard toe kick size. And you look at a modern kitchen versus a traditional kitchen and the cabinetry all different. So we built in an adjustable system so that you can get the foot pedal to the right height and position it optimally for comfort and use. But there's still some work to be done there. I think in getting that more universal for all applications in the cabinets and so forth. The outside of that, we really haven't run into a whole lot of requests for additional features or actual iterations on that the physical product itself, we have had asks for other finishes and designs and that kind of stuff. And it's really painful at this point because there's so much that we want to do with different designs. And I mean, sky's the limit with decorative plumbing stuff. But we got to start somewhere and grow the business and get there.Stephanie:So why did you guys choose to stay strictly D to C or now you starting to think about exploring retail or other spots to sell as well?Matt:When we originally came up with the concept, we knocked around a lot of different ideas and we looked at big box stores, distribution and so forth, but it just never felt right to us. Again, it went back to like, we just didn't want to be another faucet company that wasn't who we were. It, wasn't why we were doing what we're doing. We really wanted to feel like we're a company that really cares about what we're doing. And the way that we felt that was best was to be the first thing people saw when they came to our website and who they talk to and who they dealt with and who was able to handle their customer service questions or warranty issues or product questions. One of the things that's been really fun working with customers, we offer basically free live video demonstration, so you can schedule it to us and we'll set up a camera and use that mobile display unit that we have and walk through.Matt:And it's just so great to see, and the magic between having an intimate conversation with somebody who is interested in and really gets the concept and the importance of it. It's just been very rewarding and fulfilling for all of us. But I think as a business, long-term it's really hard to say. We would like to stay direct to consumer for as long as we can. It just makes sense for us right now. It's and yeah, it's been great.Stephanie:Yeah. So if you're going to stay in that area, I'm thinking like SEO has to be huge, even trying to get up to compete with people like best faucets. If someone sees a foot pedal, maybe they're like, "Ah, that's the wrong thing." So how do you go about reaching new customers and educating them quickly of like, "You could do this instead." It seems like a lot of things you have to think about, and it's not just competing with a traditional faucet. It's like, you have to do both things at once.Matt:Yeah. It's been tough. The faucet industry itself is very consolidated and there's a lot of Moen and Delta, Kohler. They control about 70% of the all sales within the decorative plumbing industry and they pour tons and tons of money into their ad placements and keyword placements and so forth. So we've been doing a lot of work in just trying to optimize our products in that area. So when people are searching for us, we don't want them to search for faucet and have our product come up every single time, we've have really had to narrow in, on our keywords and the short keywords and multi phrase keywords and long tail keywords to get people really want to search for a foot pedal faucet, or are looking for water conservation foot pedal faucets, or those different iterations so that we are able to show up.Matt:We end up spending a lot of money when we first started doing some online marketing, and ad placement stuff where we would get just tons and tons of clicks, but no conversions because they just, people would type in foot pedal and faucet or they'd type in foot pedal control. And things for pianos would come up or pumps for yeah. All kinds of stuff. And so we ended up... That was one of the first areas where we figured we had to dial in and really focus in on that. But outside of that, we're trying to get as much content out there as possible to not only on our website, but just with others. So on social media, Facebook and so forth just to help build some of that the organic growth for us, which has been good, but it's a tough game. There's a lot to do.Stephanie:Yeah. I mean, you're innovating in a new market and trying to prove and show people why they need something. We've had a lot of brands on who have the same struggle around like having to educate a consumer. I mean, we had bidet company on here and they talked about most Americans don't think that's even something they would ever need. What channels or pieces of content are you finding are performing best they're going to help with that.Matt:Yeah, a lot of it's just around comparing water usage, which was one of the easiest ways for us to show the savings for the product. It's just showing somebody using a traditional faucet and somebody using our faucet system and the visuals of seeing how much, just no data, no nothing, it's so night and day between the two different systems and just the ease of flow of use. So that's actually been really effective for us. And just capturing and showing what the true nature and difference of that system is versus a traditional faucet. So that's been very impactful. And then in addition to that, delicately using hygiene as some of the ways of showing additional value of what you can bring to the home.Stephanie:Because I was thinking I would lean so hard into the hygiene piece because I had this one image in my head of, it was a piece of bread and it was a teacher who did this at school and they put their hand on it unwashed. And then the other one was maybe wiped down with water. The other one may be used, I don't know, what is it called? The one without water, Purex or whatever. And if there was hand washing with soap and she put them in a bag and left him for seven days, and then it was just the picture showing the seven pieces of bread and what the hand print looked like, very disturbing, maybe realize how gross my hands were, if they're unwashed and even how most ways don't even work that well. And it's interesting to see how just one piece of content was literally ingrained in my brain. And it's been like seven months. You can't get it out.Matt:Yeah. It's on the hygiene side of what we've been doing. It's been, kind of a balancing act because we don't want to scare people into thinking like you have to have our faucet. That's not why we're doing what we're doing, but it is an absolute benefit of having the system in the home. The one really weird twist to this all is when you're marketing things that claim to be hygienic or improve hygiene or kill germs, there's a lot of regulation and requirements. You can be considered a pesticide product. And when we first started marketing our product, there were some issues where we came across where we weren't allowed to show the product online in certain areas because we were being flagged as a pesticide products and it blew our minds that a faucet system would even be considered as a pesticide product, but in the verbiage and the way that we were talking about germs and helping to not spread germs in the home, washing your hands before, so that's been an interesting road to navigate.Matt:We've really kind of had to just do some very kind of common sense type of marketing with the hygiene stuff. You come home, you don't have to touch your faucet. It helps reduce the spread of germs in your home because it's pretty self-explanatory when you really boil it down.Stephanie:Yeah. Oh, interesting. I never even knew that was a thing that you can get around. Yeah. Promoting hygiene. Okay. Have you all explored Amazon or have you not really even thought about that yet?Matt:We have, we're actually selling on Amazon now. And it's been pretty good. It's been an interesting set up process. From the merchant standpoint, Amazon's designed for multiple people to sell off single product pages as a conglomeration of a bunch of people selling the same products so that you get the best price, but we're the only one out there selling our product on Amazon. So we had to go through and do a lot more of the setup process and go through. And the whole pesticide thing that I mentioned was actually as part of what Amazon had us do and go through and acquire. So that took a lot of thinking and figuring out as to why that was happening. But yeah, we got it. Amazon's a great tool for small companies. We plan to stick around there as long as it works for us. And sky's the limit, it's just a matter again, of paying for contents and getting your product placed out in the right spot.Stephanie:Yeah. It seems like there could be so many moments you could create for your customers too, after they buy, just like things like a little card maybe that has a note on the sink, that's like, look down your pedals below for your water, for any of their guests or something. How have you guys thought about shaping the experience, the unboxing experience and then creating joy even afterwards.Matt:Yeah. We focused a lot on the product itself to make a product that was worthy of what we were doing. Quality-wise, construction-wise, materials so that when somebody does get it home and they open it, it looks and feels like something different, something that's a little special. So if we have done some investment in that, the packaging and unveiling of the stuff, we have some really nice dark foam and some nice packaging on the boxes and stuff, which has been a really cool thing to see and fun thing to develop. Long-term, we have tried to build in some features actually to the faucet system itself that allows either new users or existing users to use both the inside of the hand operated valves on the faucet or the foot pedal.Matt:We designed the system. So you never really have to choose one or the other for the Principle Faucets system, the kitchen faucet, the faucet has all of the existing capabilities of the hand operate valve, that's all there, doesn't change. There's nothing you have to do to switch back and forth between the foot pedal and the hand operated valve. So if somebody comes over your house who is not familiar with it, they can walk right up to it, use a hand operated valve, do everything they're used to doing. And if they want to explore a little bit, they can go down and start to use the foot pedal too. One of the features we built into the pedal well to help with the user experience was this, we call it our tapta flow feature, and essentially you just tap the pedal quickly and it'll actually allow the faucet to run continuously without having to keep your foot pedal on it.Matt:So if you're filling a pot of water, you want to feel the same to do dishes. You have that ability. So you're not tied to the sink. If you want to use the foot pedal on that way. With our adapter system, that can be connected to any existing faucet in the kitchen or bathroom. We also built in a feature for that system that allows you to default back to the existing hand operated valves indefinitely, if you choose to, and it's basically, you just tap it twice. And that way, if you have people coming over, using the bathroom or in the kitchen, and you don't want to deal with it you just tap it twice. And all of the function goes back to the faucet as well. So we really tried to bridge that gap so that, new users and existing users don't have any issues with trying to do what they need to do.Stephanie:I could see eventually customers being like, "I don't even want the hand operated piece. Everyone needs to use it this way and just take that off."Matt:I mean, it's been fascinating to see how people gravitate to use the foot pedal. I mean, it's blown our wildest dreams. And the beauty of that is that you get all of the water savings by using the pedal. We'd done some water savings tests when we were initially going through some of the product developments. We did eight homes here in Central California, and some of the homes were multi-generational, they had grandchildren, parents, or grandparents, and some were single individuals. I mean the whole gamut apartments, condos, houses, and we found that the water savings compared to an existing faucet was up to 44%. And when we dove into the data a little deeper, we found that the homes with the highest water savings were the ones that with the biggest water wasters prior. So it really helps the people that ended up using more water save the most which is really a great sign for the impact that the product might have in the future as we get into more and more homes.Stephanie:Yep. Oh, that's really cool. Do you ever have issues with the messaging for consumers outside of California? Because I'm thinking when I'm from Maryland, we really didn't think about water conservation. We didn't have droughts. And I remember moving to California in the Bay Area. I was like, whoa, this is a thing we actually might not have water, what? I mean, I heard about people in Mill Valley area saving their shower water, and doing other things with it. And I was like, this is a new thing for me. So how do you guys go about crafting the message so it connects with people all throughout the U.S.?Matt:Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the droughts here in the West are horrible, some of the worst on record. And then you have severe storms and flooding on the other side of the U.S. So the way we've crafted and are working on that message to really join them together is that they're both the products of the same thing. So the droughts here are the product of carbon emissions and global warming and climate change. That's affecting the West in this way, on the East Coast where there's too much water and too much rains, it's all the product are the same, they're all symptoms of the same thing. And for us saving water whether you have too much of it, or you have too little of it, it's all benefiting and helping out the same problem.Matt:It's cutting carbon emissions, it's reducing amount of chemicals that go into the environment by reducing the amount pumped water that needs to be actually treated, transported to your faucet and then goes down your drain without even being used. And then the chemicals that need to be used to treat the water when it goes into the waste facilities. So it's interesting when you think about the two polar opposites of it, but they're all from the same problem. So that's how we've had to craft it. We all need to do what we can do, every little bit counts. And if you can save water at your faucet, it's only gonna help the problem.Stephanie:Yeah. That's such a good explanation. And one that I've never even really thought about, okay, what happens when the water goes down the faucet and all the things that go into it to make it come back again. And yeah, that's a really good way to message it.Matt:Yeah. There's a lot that that goes into treating water, a lot of chemicals and stuff. So, using every bit in a way that counts really helps cut down on all that stuff.Stephanie:Yeah. Very cool. Were there any big bets that you've made over the past year that you weren't really sure if they were going to pay off other than the mobile unit that you guys are wheeling around because that one paid off now, but anything else that comes to mind?Matt:So big bets that we've placed around the business. Being a smaller business as we started and grown, capital's king and trying to figure out how we want to best use some of that money towards marketing and where we wanted to put it into either PR or working with influencers and doing paid content type of stuff. Putting the, I mean, every dollar that we've put into those areas has paid off massively and we didn't go in blindly. We took our time and really tried to find people that got the product and were in similar head space around conservation, water savings, cooking because those are the people who really get it and find the most value in it. So when we've been able to reach out to those people and have them share that message with their base of followers that has actually putting them out of money that we put into that area, it was a good bet. And I'm glad that we did it.Stephanie:Yeah. It sounds like a lot of the themes around your business have been around niching down, niche down with the right people over PR and content is down on the keywords and really getting down to the perfect audience and consumer who's ready to hear that message and ready to buy before going big to everyone.Matt:Yeah. We're a brand that nobody's ever heard of before and we're selling a product that no one's ever seen before. And we found out really in early development when we sat down and just pitched the idea to people, to see if there was going to be a market for this thing. And if somebody had done it beforehand, where did they fail? Where did they succeed? It was really interesting to see how people connected with concepts. And we talk to professional chefs who do a lot of cooking in the home, and they're like, "I've been waiting for this thing forever. How come nobody's done this?" And we talked to people who are doctors and dentists and like, "Oh yeah, I have those at the shop, we use those all the time." Of course, that makes sense to have that home. It just hygiene and efficiency.Matt:And we talked to mothers with kids, fathers with kids, and it all came down to the fact that they would just be like, "Well, why has nobody done this before?" It just makes a lot of sense. And that really helped instill in us the fact that there could be a need for this out in the market. And we ended up going to some trade shows early on just to snoop around because we had getting no experience in the industry at all. We knew nobody, no manufacturers. And again, just pitched the concept to a bunch of the people were there. We were super scared somebody was going to steal the idea out from under us. So we were very coy about it, which is probably silly. But it was interesting to get their feedback and hear what some of the biggest manufacturers in the industry said about it.Matt:And we approached them and early on say, "Hey, we have this concept, is there anything, do you guys want to partner with us or is there any interest in looking at this, we'd love to come talk to you about it." And it's funny. They just never got back to us. Never wanted to hear about it, but-Stephanie:They will. Now.Matt:Yeah, they will now, but even the retail showroom, we stopped in and talked to a bunch of people all over California just about how they show products and discuss it with their customers in the stores. And another one of the reasons why we wanted to go direct to consumer was because of some of the limitations around actually explaining our product to customers in those environments. And in the big box stores, you're just another box on a shelf.Stephanie:Yeah. I was imagining [inaudible] Home Depot, just like a little foot pedal being next to all these faucets and being like, I think this is another mile.Matt:Yeah. And even in retail showrooms... to show people and have them really understand the value of it. You got to use it, or you got to see somebody using it. And that was definitely one of the driving factors for us to want to just be like, we got to put videos everywhere of this thing. We got to build this traveling road show. We just got to show as many people as possible how it actually works, have them come and use it because that's how you connect with it.Stephanie:Yeah, how long was that time period of researching the market and asking questions and having people look at it?Matt:It was a long time. We started first developing this product in 2015 and it was just tinkering around in the garage. I've always loved goofing around and stuff and tinkering and whatnot. So we just decided to do it ourselves. And we build a proof of concept in the garage. Brought it into our kitchen, hooked it up, look terrible, total Frankenstein, hoses and stuff going all over the place. But it probably had about 60% of the functionality that we have in our product now. So it was a pretty good gauge on using it and understanding it. And at that point, that was basically the limitations of our capabilities. So we hired some engineers, excuse me, we hired some engineers to help us of take it to the next step, develop a true prototype that worked like, functioned like what we wanted to come to market with.Matt:And those were the prototypes that we use for the water savings trial here in California. So we had several of those made up. That was probably about a year long process at least. And once we had those prototypes built and got all this feedback from people using them in homes all over, we took a pause at that point. We could have gone and just try to find somebody to manufacture it really fast, but we didn't have the confidence we really thought we needed in order to go forward. So we ended up going to a trade show ourselves and exhibiting with these prototypes. And we built a display unit very similar to the one that we have that we're using for the road show. And we doctored up the display unit with some other prototype boxes and stuff.Matt:So it really looked nice and clean, like a finished product, but it was all frankensteined in the back and using our prototypes. And we basically told people that we were ready to manufacture and gave somewhat of a misleading understanding of where we were in the whole process. But we wanted to see what industry folks, people who were in showrooms in the Home Depos and big box stores of the world, they all came by and they took a look at it. And the response again was just so far above and beyond what we expected that people were like, "Can we get on a waiting list? Where do we sign up? When are these gonna be developed? Can we place an order now?" I mean-Stephanie:Wow.Matt:... we were so unready for all of that, but it was great. And it really gave us the resolve we needed to go forward and find someplace to manufacture this and get it to market. So at that point, after that showing to the industry, we found some folks that well kind of to back up a little bit, we wanted to originally manufacture the product in the U.S. and unfortunately, we talked to large manufacturers here in the U.S., we talked to some OEM manufacturers here in the U.S., and they were either so busy or they just didn't want to deal with a new person or a company that was going to have small volumes to start off. It's a new product, we never developed anything like that before. So we ended up meeting some people at the trade show who put us in contact with some people in China. And we went over there and met with a bunch of different factories and found some just amazing folks to help us manufacture it over there.Matt:And that whole process was a whole story in itself because both faucet manufacturers over there, they're great at building faucets. I mean, there's good and bad factories all over the world. Thankfully we found one that was just a great, great group of people and really focused on quality materials. They were great at faucets, but didn't have a lot of experience in electronics and our systems, kind of a little bit of both. So we had to go in and to go find another manufacturer for just electronic components. But of course the manufacturer is doing electronic components, doesn't want to do any water testing because that's not what they do.Matt:The faucet manufacturer doesn't want to do electronics assembly. It's not what they do. So we had to put together this group of not only components, but manufacturers over there, get them to work together which wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be, but it's been a learning process for sure, because the assembly process for electronic components assembly, the little control box that we have, it needs to be tested for watertight, seals and function, but we had to come up with a way to do that with air testing at the electronics facility, and then come up with a way for our faucet manufacturer to then combine to a final testing of the product to make sure everything worked still watertight and all that, but do it in a way that the water wouldn't interfere with some of the electronic components.Matt:So we ended up doing some iterations kind of, as we were manufacturing with electronic components in particular dialing in adding some actual hardware to the control box itself to allow the manufacturers to speed up the process, make it more reliable. And it was great. I mean, the factories, they have everything you could possibly need to help prototype and do stuff, add components, test components. So it was really cool to see, and we really enjoyed a lot and still do it working with those folks.Stephanie:That's great. I mean, I love that story because so many people right now hear of these DTC companies, just rocket chips, just easy. It looks easy from the outside. And I like actually hearing a real life story of like, "Nope, took a few years, took a lot of testing, had a little hesitancy," and yeah, I mean, that highlights what building a company actually looks like most of the time.Matt:Yeah. It's the most enjoyable thing I've ever done, but it's also the scariest thing I've ever done hands down.Stephanie:I feel that, I feel that. Outside of porter bodies, how they have those little pump sinks, did you ever get one of those and be like, "How do you work?" To figure out maybe like how they function and then have any good takeaways from that one?Matt:Absolutely. We bought and test tested all kinds of stuff. We, I mean, you name it valves, Mike Raj was just an absolute disaster. We had pumps like that physically applying pressure to the pump to get the water to flow. There was pneumatic valve that we were testing, hydraulic valves that we were testing. And it was really interesting. They all pointed us to one direction and we ended up going with an electronic system instead of something that was more mechanical. The issue that we found out with doing something more mechanical, like those pump valves or other industrial metal valves that you can buy for kitchens and so forth. They're very simple themselves they don't require any electricity, but the issue we found with those is if you're going to make a product that is going to be successful in a residential setting for people in homes who have expensive cabinetry, expensive flooring, those other methods were very invasive and destructive to the cabinetry themselves.Matt:If you tried to install them even in new construction, but specifically in existing cabinetry, you had to cut holes, you had to plumb water lines underneath the cabinets where these could happen. You'd never see them until it was a disaster. So we wanted to keep all of that water connections and areas that could leak. We kept them up out from underneath the cabinet, inside the cabinet, where you can see everything, you can know where everything's connected. And we just run a very simple communication line down to the foot pedal itself. So not only do you not have to cut holes in your cabinets, but the foot pedal itself just installs with a couple of screws, you retain all of the existing cabinet space that you have, because Lord knows, we put a ton of stuff under our kitchen cabinets, whether we choose it all or not, is still there.Stephanie:Only one that look under there right now, it's been there for a long time. It's not coming out.Matt:Yeah. In that whole process of really coming up with the way in which we wanted to use what technology you wanted to use, to make it all function correct. We wanted to go something electronic for those specific reasons. It just allows you to install the whole system in a much easier way as well. And we set out initially to design the product so that it a DIY enthusiast, your average we can wire could go and install it in their home. They're capable of into going to Home Depot or Lowe's or something like that to buy a faucet, install it. This is going to be absolutely no brainer for them. But of course not everybody is going to do that. I know plenty of people who just don't wanna install faucet. So we also-Stephanie:[inaudible].Matt:Sure. I mean, it's just the reality of it all and it's all of the connections and fittings that we use to connect to your existing water lines and faucets and so forth and house they're all standardized. So it's all very easy for a plumber to come in and hook it up and know what to do.Stephanie:Yeah, that's awesome. That's the route I would choose unless there was a very easy YouTube video. Maybe I would attempt it. I don't know.Matt:Yeah.Stephanie:Depends how I'm feeling that day.Matt:Yeah, exactly.Stephanie:Where do you all want to be in the next year? What are you most excited about?Matt:Oh man. I'm actually most excited about getting some of our new designs in production. We've had a lot of requests for additional finishes and additional designs and even expanding some of our additional hardware that comes with the faucet systems themselves because people have been asking for it and it's been frustrating for us because we're like, "We know, we know we wanted to," but as you grow a business, you got to kind of do it incrementally make sure you're at the right point and then pull the trigger on it. So I'm very excited to see this next wave of products come to the market and then see how they do, it's going to be great.Stephanie:That's great. All right. Well, let's move over to the lightning round when you're on, is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I ask you a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready?Matt:I'm ready.Stephanie:All right. What one thing do you think will have the biggest impact on ecommerce in the next year?Matt:I think the biggest thing that'll have an impact on ecommerce in the next year is going to be finding ways in which we can reduce shipping costs. That's been a big barrier for us. It's expensive for everybody. So I'm looking forward to innovations that will be coming to lowering and speeding up product delivery.Stephanie:Yeah, that's great. I've heard that a lot throughout all the interviews, so you're all thinking on-Matt:Somebody is going to... Who's working on that.Stephanie:I know. Come on, come on the show, tell us about it. What is the best advice you've gotten since starting this business?Matt:Wow. It's to go with your gut. Collectively between Lauren, myself and John, we've hired a few consultants here and there to help us, and they've been very good at helping guide us in certain areas where we're just deficient in that training or information. But it's really interesting when you look at it and you're like, yeah, that's what we wanted to do the first place. But it, yeah, that's...Stephanie:That's a good one. Even if it takes a few consultants to tell you and you're like, "Oh, okay, I'm just going to go."Matt:You just got to go, you go with your gut.Stephanie:Yeah, what's up next on your reading list or podcast?Matt:Ooh. Up next on my reading list is a book called Conscious Medicine and it's about microdosing different types of psilocybin and a few other things to, how to incorporate that in and use it. I've experimented that stuff over the last year actually, and had some great experiences.Stephanie:Cool. I'll have to check that one out. Sounds good. All right. And then the last one, what's the nicest thing anyone's ever done for you in your whole life?Matt:Ooh, man. Probably marry me. I would have to thank my wife for that one. That is by far and away the nice thing. Yeah. I owe a lot to her. She's the woman behind the man for sure. Where I'm off and they are, we work really well together and I'm blessed to have her as a partner in business and in life. So I got a lots of thanks for her.Stephanie:Yeah, that's amazing. All right, Matt. Well, this has been such an amazing interview. Thank you for joining on the top of a mountain. It's been fun just watching what's behind you. Where can people find out more about you and Principal Faucets.Matt:Yeah. You can check us out at principlefaucets.com, got a bunch of good information there. You can explore around and as well as on Instagram just @principlefaucets.Stephanie:Amazing. Thanks so much.Matt:Thank you. Really enjoyed it. 

The roundtable interview with Matt and Caleb Maddix and a small group of people who are trying to change the world. Enjoy part three of this special 4 part episode series. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to The Marketing Secrets podcast. I hope you've been enjoying this series so far. This is The Roundtable of World Changers, a conversation I had with Matt and Caleb Maddix, and a whole bunch of young entrepreneurs, who are literally out there trying to change the world. This is part three of a four part episode, because the conversation went for three or four hours. And so, this episode's also going to be about 40 minutes long, and it's the next set of questions they asked me. And if you've listened to the last two, you know that these guys ask a lot of questions, in a lot of different directions, and angles, and went all over the place. And I think this time is probably 01:00 or 02:00 in the morning. And so, the questions started going from everywhere, from business, to relationships, to families, and a whole bunch more. So I hope you enjoy this next episode. Here's some of the bullet points of things you're going to learn about. We talked about the 10 commandments of marketing. I talked about my very first mentor, and a thing he taught me, not just to make money in the short term, but how to build a business that now has lasted me for almost two decades. I talk about one of my friends and mentors, Daegen Smith and something that he taught me. It was so simple, yet it's been the key to help me get thousands of people a day to join my email list. We talked about leadership, delegation, scheduling. We talk about, as you're building a team, understanding people's unique abilities. Talked about how much time you spend thinking about the future. Talked about proximity with billionaires. We also talked about how to balance your business and married life, so you can be a good husband and a good father, which is something that I stress about all the time. We talked about a principle that I learned from Stacey and Paul Martino, that has been one of the most powerful things I've learned, which is called demand-relationship. I talk about that. We talk about some relationship tricks, for those who are either married or getting married. Some of the newlyweds, and the engaged couples, were asking some questions about that. Hopefully I don't get in trouble for sharing some of my tricks. We talked about knowing what your values are, and your priorities. Talked about being vulnerable, and being honest, versus staying positive through challenges. We talked about some of the biggest principles and things I learned from Tony Robbins, including how to change your state whenever you need to. And we talked about my 12 year relationship with Tony Robbins, and all the things behind that. We talked about... I don't want to spoil any more. You guys, this is a fun interview. And hopefully, you've been enjoying these so far. So with that said, we're going to cut to the theme song. When we come back, we're going to take you guys immediately back into this conversation. This is, again, The Roundtable of World Changers, part three of four. Matt Maddix: Let's say there was a Russell Brunson 10 commandments. You know how God had one. Russell: Thou shall build a list. Matt: Yeah. How high is this in the 10 commandments? Russell: My first mentor, Mark… Matt: And what would be some of the Russell Brunson... Let's come up with some of them. Like, "Thou shalt..." Russell: We need some stone tablets. Matt: "To all the funnel hackers, thou shalt and thou shall not." I want to hear- Russell: That would be a fun presentation, actually. Matt: Yeah, that would be, actually. Caleb Maddix: That would be. Russell: That would be cool. Matt: Dude, you need to do that. Russell: Come back from the mountain, we have 10 things. Matt: Yeah, seriously. Caleb: Wow. That'd be awesome. Matt: No, the five 'thou shalts', and like, "Thou shall..." and then- Russell: "Thou shall..." Matt: ..."Thou shall not, no matter what..." What would some of those be? Russell: That could be a really cool presentation, actually. Well, so I would say, in my first venture was Mark Joyner, and he was the one... So in context, in history, 18 years when I started, Mark Joyner... I don't think it's probably known. He's brilliant. But he built a company, and sold it off. And at the very end of his career as a coach person, I got to meet him and get to know him a little bit. But I remember, at that time, Google AdSense was this thing that came. And so, if any of you guys are old enough, just try and remember the Google AdSense days. It was insane. They were software. You click a button on software, it would pop out of site, pop out another site. And these sites would make anywhere from 100 to $1000 a day. And you just keep clicking this button, it would pop out another site. And so, people were making $1 million a month. They had teams in the Philippines, that these guys just clicking the button to build the software. It was just... But it was all fake. But it was tons of money. Insane amounts of money. I had friends making so much money. And shiny object, very shiny object, the most sexy shiny object of all time. You click a button, you can make $1 million. That was it, that was the pitch. And it was true. Matt: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Russell: For so... Everyone I knew. Can you imagine that? Matt: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Russell: If I go back in time, 18 years ago, I would move to the Philippines, I would hire everybody, and we would just click buttons. And I would've been- Caleb: Wow. Russell: ...a billionaire. It was- Caleb: Wow. Russell: It was insane. That's how Google got people adopting the AdSense program. So people would put ads on every single site, every single everything. And so, I'm getting in this game, I'm seeing this, and I'm morons making insane amounts of money. And I was like, "Ah!" And Mark had just become my mentor, the very first time, and he's like, "That's going to go away. Focus on building a list." I'm like, "But this guy's a moron. He made $1 million last month clicking a button. No strategy, no brains, no nothing." He's like, "I know, but it's going to go away. Focus on building a list." I'm like- Matt: Wow. Russell: But- Matt: Seriously? Russell: "He's clicking a button. Building lists is hard." He's like, "Build a list." I'm like... And I remember fighting him and fighting him, he's just like, "Dude, trust me. I've been on cycle. It's going to go away. Just focus and focus." And I was so upset, but I listened because I do that. One thing I pride myself on, I'm very coachable. Coach tells me something, I do it. I obey all giants with helicopters and stage presence. Matt: I love it. Russell: They tell me to do it, I do it, right? So I was like, "Ah, but there's free money in piles-" Matt: Even when it's hard- Russell: "All right." Matt: ...you do it. Russell: So I did it. And sure enough, I was doing that, and doing that, within six months, this things collapsed, disappeared, destroyed people's lives. Because you're making $1 million a month clicking buttons, what do you do? Especially as a young kid. Matt: Spending that much money. Russell: You're buying Lambos, and Ferraris, and helicopters, and pilots, and girls, and insane amounts of money. And then it disappears overnight. Devastating, ruined these guys, ruined them, so many people. Matt: There's no skill behind that at all. Russell: Yeah. And I had a list, and I just coasted through it. Right? And I've looked at the SEOs, every single up and down, up and down, through the years, and I just listened to Mark and just focused on building my list, focused on building it, and- Matt: So you still feel that as strong today, as when you heard it? Russell: 100%. Matt: Even then. Russell: 100%. That's one of our KPIs. How many people doing lists today? Every single day. Matt: Really? Everyday? Russell: Everyday. Because I did it for a long time- Matt: Even now, you're saying? Russell: 100%, everyday. John Parkes everyday sends me a number. “How many people joined our list yesterday?” That's all I want to know. Caleb: What's your guys' email open rates? Russell: It fluctuates. 20 ish percent. Caleb: Okay. Russell: Around there. But it was funny because I remember, I had forgotten that lesson after a while. And if you guys know Daegen Smith, Daegen, he's getting back in the game now. He's brilliant. But I remember I had a list, and I was my money off of it. I wasn't focusing on it. And I remember he asked me a question, he said, "How many..." It wasn't, "How many people are on your list?" Because that's what most people ask, "How big's your list?" But he asked me a different question, which input output, right? Matt: Yeah. Russell: The question was, "How many people joined your list today?" And I was like, "I don't know." He's like, "Go look right now." I'm like, "Okay." So I log in, and look at the thing, it was like 12. And I was like, "12?" And I was like, "Is that good or bad? I don't know." And he's like, "Let me show you mine." And he showed me his, and it was like 1400. And I was like, "You had 1400 people join today?" He's like, "Yeah." "Wait, how'd you do that?" He's like, "I just look at it everyday. And when I look at it everyday, somehow it grows." And I was like- Matt: Wow. Russell: "Okay." So then, everyday, after I log in and look at my thing, it was like 12, I'm like, "Ah." In my head, I'm like, "Fricken Daegen had 1400. I only 12." Caleb: Yeah. Matt: Wow. Russell: And also, I was like, "What do I do to get people to join the list?" Matt: Yeah, start optimizing. Russell: And then, your mind starts thinking differently, and all of a sudden you start focusing on it. And it's crazy. I can't tell you how many entrepreneurs, that have been in my world, who have gone up and then come down. And what happens, mostly, is they do something, they build a big list, they stop adding fuel to the fire, they have this list, they sell things to the list, the list atrophies, and eventually starts shrinking and dying. And then, they don't know how to build lists, the business crashes and dies. Matt: I hope you guys are really listening. Really. I mean, he's- Caleb: That's powerful. Matt: ...saving your life right now. Russell: The question, the goal, every single day, is that, because it's a fuel to your fire. And what happens was you stop putting fuel on the fire, and it doesn't die immediately. So you're like, "Oh, I've turned off Ads, so I'm good. But I'm just going to focus on emails, let's focus that." But just every email you send out, your list atrophies, shrinks, dies. And then, eventually, it'll just die. And so, yeah, if you're not consistently, constantly feeding the list, every single day- Matt: And once you have the list, what's the biggest mistake people make with their list? Russell: They don't email it. Matt: Yeah. Russell: They're scared to... You think it's too much emails. It's not, it's the opposite. It's that they don't email. Caleb: Okay. Russell: Minimum of three times a week. Closer to everyday. Matt: Wow. Russell: If you talk to Daegen, it's twice a day, everyday. Matt: Really? Caleb: What other KPIs do you have sent to you every single day? Russell: I want to know how much we made yesterday, striped. Because first off, it's cool to know. Caleb: Yeah. Russell: But second off, also it's like, I want that number to be bigger everyday. So it's like, actual money in the thing, how many people joined the list today, and how many books are sold, how many ClickFunnels members. Those are the ones for me. Our teams have other KPIs they focus on. But those are the ones I care about. Matt: So out of 30 days, when you hear the numbers, how often are you pissed and how often are you like, "Yeah."? Russell: Nowadays, it's always pretty good. Matt: Nowadays, it's like, "Woo." Russell: Because it might go up or down a little bit, but the numbers are big enough, that it's just like, "That's so crazy." I remember... Anyway. I remember just the growth of ClickFunnels, because you know Stripe dings every day with your numbers. I remember when we started going, it got to the point where it's like $10,000 a day, I was like, "$10,000 a day is insane. That's just so cool." And then, it got to a point where it's like $20,000 a day, and then 30, and then $50,000 a day, and then $100,000 a day, and then 150, then 200, 250, 300. I'm just like, "This is insane to me, that this is a daily thing that come..." it was just... Anyway, that's when it got just weird. And it makes me mad because Todd made a commitment to me, that as soon as we passed $500,000 a month in sales, he'd move to Boise. Matt: And he didn't yet? Russell: No. So... Matt: You were out of there already. Russell: And then, I was like, "Well, we have $500,000 a day." And then, he still hasn't come. So I don't know. Some day. Do you think Todd will ever move to Boise? Speaker 4: Plus I'm curious if I could pop in to ask a question. Russell: Yeah, feel free. Speaker 4: I've always wanted to ask someone of your stature, that's done as much as you have, impacted as much people as you have, and really built the business that you have. So I'm curious on your take on leadership, building a team, delegating, and your schedule and how you go about scheduling your day, and prioritizing what's important for you, as a business owner, and what you delegate to your employees and their responsibilities as well. So leadership, delegating, and scheduling. Russell: Good question. It's interesting because I would say I'm not the best leader on my team, by any stretch. And so, it was interesting because I spent the first four or five years with ClickFunnels as the CEO, trying to do my best with it. But it wasn't my unique ability, is leadership. I feel like I'm good at leading a community, but I struggle a lot more with employees and teams, internally. And so, about a year ago or so, I handed the reins to Dave Woodward, to be the CEO of ClickFunnels. And he's been amazing. Man, what he's done inside the company has been awesome. And I think a big part of it is understanding, at least for me personally, I was trying to be a leader, and trying to develop that, but I wasn't the best at it. And I think sometimes we think it's always got to be us. Like, "It's my company, I got to be the CEO. I got to be the leader. I got to do these things." It's understanding that a lot of times there's people who are really good. Who's the best you could find to be that? Or any part of our business. You know what I mean? It's a big part of it. The second thing is, if you've studied Dan Sullivan at all, one of his biggest things is unique ability. That's the thing. What's your unique ability? What's everybody's unique ability? And I think when you start a company, it's tough because it's like everyone's in charge of everything, right? I'm the CEO, but I'm also taking out the garbage, I'm also doing... everyone's Speaker 4: Yeah. Russell: ...doing a little bit of everything, which is cool. When you're scrappy in the beginning, that's important, and everyone's doing that. But as you grow, that starts hindering you more and more and more, where we had people who are insanely talented, who if I could just get them doing this thing, 100% of the time... And that's when it got to the point with ClickFunnels, is that my unique abilities are writing, are being in videos, are building funnels, doing the... Those things are my unique abilities. Caleb: Engineering. Russell: Yeah. And I was spending maybe 10% of my time on that, and 90% of the time in meetings, and trying- Matt: Wow. Russell: ...coordinate people, and leadership. And it was stressful and it was hard. Matt: And you were draining. You were probably drained doing that. Russell: Yeah. And I was miserable, that was just... I wasn't good at it. Not feeling good, like, "Ah, I'm not getting through to people. I can't figure this out." But I felt like I had to own, I had to be the guy, I had to do the thing because this is my baby, this is my business. And the last 12 months has been crazy, because I handed it to someone who actually is good at that, that is his unique ability. And I'm watching company structure, and meetings, and KPIs, things that I was never super good at doing, and consistently having it all happening now. And now, I'm in the marketing department again, and I'm building funnels. People are like, "What do you do all day?" I'm literally in ClickFunnels, building funnels. "No, but you have funnel builder..." No, I'm literally in ClickFunnels, building funnels. I didn't start this business because I wanted to be a CEO of a big huge company. I did it because I love building funnels. I'm an artist, when it comes down to it, this is my art. Matt: Wow. Russell: And that's what I get to do now. And it's amazing. So Dan's got Fridays we book out, and we spend videos, he's got a whole bunch of YouTube videos, we film five or six YouTube vlogs last week, on Friday. So we have that times blocked out to do that, right? I'm writing my next book right now, so I've got my mornings blocked out to write books, because that's when my mind's got not a million things so I can do that. And then, after morning comes in, after I do my wrestling practice, I come in. And that's my teams there, and that's when we're building funnels. I got my designer and my copywriter, the people, and I get to facilitate that. And I feel like the... What's the guy in the orchestra, the maestro? Caleb: Conductor? Russell: Yeah, like I'm the conductor, I'm conducting all these talented people. And everyone's bringing... And I'm alive, and it's exciting. And at night, I can't sleep, because I'm excited again. And so, I think that's the biggest thing, is taking the pressure off yourself if you're not the best leader. That's okay. What are you the actual best at? And success, in business, I think, at least for me, I always thought I had to be the best at everything. And it's the opposite, where it's like, "How do you focus on the thing you're best at? And get the rest of the people around you." Speaker 4: Yeah. And it gets- Matt: And it's... You had to have been willing to let go of your ego, man. Or you wouldn't have been able to grow so much. If you try to do it all yourself... Caleb: So I have a question. How much time do you spend actually thinking about the future? Because it seems like, from what you've told us, you're very dialed in and obsessed on the process, and that's how you've gotten to where you are, up to this point, because you're in love with the game. How much of your time do you spend thinking about the future, and what's on the horizon next year, five years, 10 years? Does that cross your mind? Or what does that look like? Russell: It's interesting, I can't remember who was talking to about this... The further out you look, the fuzzier it gets. You know what I mean? And so, I think for me, it's like we have... I know where I want to go, but the in between is really, really fuzzy, right? It's hard to know. And so, it's like I know... For me, the last big boat was $100 million, the next one's a billion. So we know there's the thing. But it's so far from... I don't know the steps to get there. You know what I mean? And so, for me, it's more like, "Well, here's where we're at." In fact, that was my... We had a chance, last month, to go spend a day with Tony Robbins, and we each had a chance to ask him one question. So that was literally my question, just like... Matt: What was your question? Russell: My question... It'll be a blog soon. Not yet though. No, but it was basically like, "We've gotten to this point, and I know to get to the next goal, the things we've been doing are great and they got us to this point, but I have to think differently to here. I don't know how to think differently. How do you think... It's not another book I'm... Is it a book? How do I think differently?" And what Tony said, that was... it's a very... He said a lot of things, but one of the big things was like, "Proximity is power," like, "You have to be in proximity with people who have already accomplished the thing that you're trying to do." And it was interesting because I look at the path of how I grew ClickFunnels, I did that 100%. I was like, "All right, who are the..." and we found the people, got proximity, and then grew it to this point. So eventually, we kind of coded out of the people who I was aware of. So I asked Tony, I'm like, "Well, where would you go to?" And he's like, "Well, if it was me," he's like, "Who's built the billion dollar company?" He's like, "Marc Benioff." And he started naming all these different billionaires. And this and that, all these things. And I was just like, "I never even assumed those people could... I could be..." it seems so far away. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's..." Having a proximity to those people, and start thinking differently, because I don't know the journey but they've done it. Because someone in our world, and like, "How do [inaudible 00:16:13]?" I'm like, "This is literally a 13 minute project. There you go. [inaudible 00:16:16]." It's like I've done it so many times, it's not hard, right? But for them, it's like this is the rocket science to figure it out. And then the same way with these guys who have built billion dollar companies. So now it's trying to proximity to those people, and trying to get around them, and trying to figure out the journey. So the first thing we did, literally, I got out with Tony, Tony gave the answer to the question, and I knew the first guy I needed to get into proximity with. So I texted Dave, Dave called him up, we brought him on retainer. And now, we've got him an hour a week, to get on the phone with him and just ask him all of our questions. And have him introduce us all the different players at that next level. So a lot of it's that. Dave, who's the CEO, was very focused on all the... He's very much like, "Okay, first, to get to this goal, we have to have everyone here, here, here. These are the percentages, the numbers, all the..." Those things stress me out, I hate spreadsheets. He's always got spreadsheets. But he comes back with all the spreadsheets, I was like, "All I need to know from you is... Because I'm going to be building a funnel. What's the goal? What do you need from me to be able to do that?" He's like, "We need more ClickFunnels trials." Like, "Done. I can... Okay. That's where I'm going to focus my energy." And then, it's like, now I can creative on that piece, because I know this is the metric that I can do, with my skillset, to drive it. And everybody's got a metric, right? The traffic team, everybody's got a metric. But for me personally, it's like the only thing I actually affect in a short term, micro, and then I can focus all the creativity and effort on that, while trying to figure out how to shift my mind set to be bigger, to... Caleb: If Marc Benioff offered you $1 billion for ClickFunnels, what would you say? Speaker 4: Good question. Russell: I'd ask him for five. Matt: Good response! Rob: Can I ask you a question, outside of business? Matt: You asking a question? Oh. Rob: Yeah. Matt: Oh, go ahead. Rob: So I remember you were talking about your wife earlier, with how you wanted to get her the couch. Me and my fiance actually met at ClickFunnels, at your event. Matt: Yeah. Rob: So- Matt: ClickFunnels wedding. Russell: No way. Rob: So what I'm curious about is- Russell: Am I going to be the best man at the wedding? Caleb: I told you, you've got to come, I'm like, "You've got to invite Russell." Rob: So what I wanted to ask you is, obviously you run a nine figure company, and there's a lot that goes into that, how do you balance with, let's say, number one, your wife and then your kids as well? And then, what is your secret to a really successful marriage, that's worked for you? Matt: Dude, what- Rob: I think that's something that many entrepreneurs have good marriages that don't really get asked about. So I was just curious about that. Matt: Yeah. Russell: So I hear three questions in there, right? So balance, happy wife... What was... There was a third one? Caleb: Kids. Rob: Yeah, just balancing it, running a company. I mean, you do all these things, you also have a wife, you have kids. Russell: Yeah. So I would say a couple things. So number one is balance is this thing that we all, for some reason, in our mind, we all seek after. But everything great in my life has come from times of radical imbalance. When I wanted to become a wrestler, I wasn't a great wrestler because I was balanced, it was because I became radically imbalanced in that thing. Matt: Dang. Russell: It became the most important thing in my life, and everything else suffered. But I had to do it to be considered successful. When I met my wife, we didn't create a great relationship because we were balanced, I became radically imbalanced. And all my time and effort and focus was on her. And that's why it became great. ClickFunnels, same way. We built ClickFunnels, I was not balanced. We had to become radically imbalanced for a season, to focus actually to get... So that's the thing to understand. In anything great in life, you can't do it in a point of balance. It's radical imbalance that causes greatness. Matt: And that's golf. Russell: And so, you got to be okay with that. But it can't be for forever. It's got to be something that goes, and it comes and goes. Because people who get radically imbalanced for a long time, they can lose their family, they can lose their kids. Rob: Was there a point where you had to tell your wife, "Hey, this is what I really want to do."? Russell: A lot. She had to- Rob: And she had to just- Russell: ...be on board with- Rob: ...get on board. Russell: She had to get on board, yeah. And if she wasn't, I had to say, "Okay, what's more important?" If it was her, then I had to say no to that. And there's been many opportunities in my life I've had to say no to. Rob: What's that dynamic like, being that guys are together, just as far as working out just normal little things? Russell: So I- Rob: Just decisions, those kind of things. Russell: Yeah, well, marriage, you're going to find out, it's hard. Just so fully aware. No one told me that, going into it. I was like- Matt: Yeah. Russell: I was like, "This is going to be amazing. This is going to be the greatest thing in the world." And it is, it's awesome. But man, it is way harder than I thought. Rob: Just to be a person. Russell: Yeah, someone's... I, actually, I would highly recommend Stacey and Paul Martino have a course that my wife and I have gone through the last year, and it's amazing. There's a principle they teach about demand-relationship. If you just go through their... They have a 14 day quick start, it's like $100. But if you just learn the principles of demand-relationship, what they teach. The biggest game changer in a relationship I ever... Of all the things I've studied... Rob: Why? Russell: It is amazing. Rob: What was your take-away? Russell: The principle of demand-relationship is that, throughout history and society, the way that most of us get things done is that... So in a relationship, there's a power player, and there's someone less, right? And if I want my wife to do something, I'm going to demand, like, "I need you to do these things." Right? And that works, until the other person has the ability to leave. So prior to divorce being a thing, men, throughout history, have had a dominant relationship over women. They used to manage and get what they want, and women couldn't leave. And so, it was a horrible thing, right? But they couldn't leave. As soon as divorce happened, boom, it started happening. Right? When parents come over to their kids and give demand-relationship, as soon as the kids are able to leave, it breaks. And then, breaks his relationships. And so, that's the problem, is that for the last 5000 years, that's been our DNA, that men force women to do these different things. And that's what the demand-relationship is. Their whole training, their whole course, everything they teach is the opposite of demand-relationship. How do you create a relationship, where transformation happens through inspiration, not through demanding, and chasing. And it's tough because, for all of us, especially men, it's been so ingrained in our DNA that if we want something, we... That's how we do business, how we do things. But in a relation, especially an intimate relationship, it's the worst thing that could possibly happen. And that's what we all do. So it'd be worth... I'm hoping she writes a book some day, because it's... In my new book, I have a whole chapter, actually, teaching her framework on in demand-relationship. What's that? Rob: Were you high school sweethearts? Russell: College, we met in college. Rob: So she was with you before you started... Russell: Yeah. Rob: ...and had the huge success- Russell: Yeah. Rob: ...basically. Russell: Yeah. Rob: What was that transition like, from you guys, I guess, being... struggling, and you guys stay together- Matt: Good questions, Rob. Rob: ...to now- Russell: His mindset's on this. Rob: Yeah. Russell: Going into it. Rob: What is that like? I'm just curious, because I mean people don't really talk about this, I guess, a lot. Caleb: Relationship genius. Russell: Yeah. And it's different, because some relationships, both the people are in the business, some aren't. My wife's not involved in the business at all. She... Rob: Oh, okay. Russell: ...doesn't understand it, and she doesn't want to be part of it. And that's okay. It's like sometimes that's been the biggest blessing for me, sometimes it's been hard. Caleb: Yeah. Russell: Right? Sometimes I see the power couples, who are both in the business, and it's really, really cool. But I ask them, and they're like, "Sometimes it's a great blessing, sometimes it's really hard." So there's pro's and con's both ways. But I think the biggest part is just, this has been good for our relationship, and at first we didn't always have this, but it was like... Just figuring out how to get... You both have to have that same end goal, otherwise you're fighting against each other, right? And so, when we were building ClickFunnels and stuff, it was hard at first, because she didn't really... She's like, "What are you guys doing? You spend all this time and..." didn't understand it. And it was tough because I was trying to explain it. And luckily, for me, is that Todd was part of this too, and his wife was kind of struggling. So they had each other to kind of talk through it. But it wasn't until the very first Funnel Hacking Live, where... Because my wife had never been to one of my events before, anything we'd really... She knew what kind of we did, but not really. And she came to Funnel Hacking Live, the very first one. And she didn't come down at first, because she didn't realize what was happening. And she was doing some stuff, and then, she came down with one of her friends and walked in the back of the room, and saw all the stuff. And she started just crying. She was like, "Oh, this is what you're... I had no idea this is what was happening, and what was..." And then, it became real for her. And that was such a huge blessing for me, because now, the next time, it was like, "We have to work hard for this." Or, "We're planning for..." whatever, she was able to see this is the fruits, and like, "Oh, that's why you're doing it." Now, if you notice, my wife's, every Funnel Hacking Live, front row. She doesn't understand a word we're saying, but she's there, she's paying attention, because she's like, "Look at all the people, and their lives are changing, and impacting." And now, it's different, where when I got to do work, work late nights, or whatever, she sees the vision, and she's on board with it. So it makes so much easier. The other secret I learned is if I tell her, if it's like 05:00 at night, I'm like, "Crap, I got to stay late tonight." And I call her at 05:00 at night, nothing good can come from that. It's better if you just go home, right? If I know Wednesday night, I'm going to be working late, I tell her Monday. Like, "Hey, Wednesday night, there's a good chance I'm going to be late." And then, if I tell her that, she's totally cool with it, right? But you don't tell them the day of. It'll destroy your marriage more than anything. Matt: That's good wisdom. Russell: The other secret, this secret don't put on camera, I don't want my wife to... Matt: Is that right? Russell: Yeah, if I have any inclination that people are coming to town, or something's happening, I always like, "Just so you know, next week, Matt and Caleb are coming to town. There's a good shot we might go to dinner at night, just so you're fully aware." And she's like, "Cool." And then, it's fine. The other secret, this is the real one. So don't share this outside this room. Speaker 4: This is the off camera one. Russell: Yeah. So especially after... For my wife and I... So we started having kids, the same time I started this business, right? And so, I'm traveling, I'm going to events. And she's at home with the kids. And so, we never traveled before, so I'm going on these vacations, I'm meeting these cool people, I'm in hotel rooms. So every night, I'm getting back, and I'm like, "Oh my gosh." And I'm like, "Okay, I met so and so, and then..." all these things I'm so excited, so pumped about these things. And I'm telling her about stuff, and she's at home with twin babies, miserable, tired, horrible, feet hurt, body hurt. And I'm out having the time of my life. Matt: Yeah. Russell: And I'm thinking she's going to be pumped for me, right? Matt: Right. Russell: No. And for probably a year or so, I was just like... And then, one day, I remember I'm at some event, and I get cornered by people. And then, introverted Russell's like... anxiety, and it was horrible. And somebody cornered me in the bathroom, and asking me questions while I'm peeing. And it wasn't even... At least, sometimes, most of the time, they fake pee next to you, so at least it's not awkward. He was sitting next to me, watching me pee. I'm like, "Can you at least fake pee?" And so, anyway... It was so bad. And I got home that night, and I call her on the phone, and I was just like, "It was horrible." I went off about how horrible it was, and I was miserable. And she's like, "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry." But then, she was cool. It was awesome. And I was like, "I didn't get in trouble." And so, the next time I went out, I got home that night, call her, I was like, "Oh, it was horrible. My feet hurt, my back hurts." Anyway, and I've told so many people this, entrepreneurs and friends, who do that, and they shift... Because they don't want to hear you're having this... Anyway, is this truly good or not? I don't know. It saved my marriage. Matt: Is it true? Russell: Literally saved my marriage, and it saved so many of my friends, who… so many of friends, who had the same thing. They want to hear the stories, but not in the moment. When you come back home later, you tell the stories, they love it. But in the moment, when they're miserable, and you're having fun, it is not... First time with Tony Robbins, when I walked on fire, I call her that night, I'm like, "I just walked on fire. Waaa!" And I hear the kids screaming in the background, and she was angry. And I was like, "Huh." And I'm like, "Cool, I'm sending you to walk on fire next month." I sent her to walk on fire, and then she was on fire. But it was like... Caleb: She's like, "No." Russell: Later, she wants to hear, but not in the moment, because it's just like... Anyway, so- Rob: Yeah. Russell: ...that was- Rob: Makes sense. Russell: ...life changing for... Anyway, so... And then, the other thing is just you have to understand what your values are. I learned this from Tom Bilyeu at a level that was fascinating, recently. But- Caleb: Who was that? Russell: Tom Bilyeu, he runs Impact Theory. Caleb: Oh, okay. Rob: Impact Theory. Caleb: Gotcha. Russell: But he writes out his values, but he prioritizes them. So his number one value is his wife, number two... And he has the values written out. And so, when a conflict comes in place, or he gets asked to speak at a huge event, speak for the Queen of England, or whatever, but it's the same weekend as his wife wants something. He's like, "My wife trumps the value... 100%, she trumps it. So the answer's no, and it's not hard for me to say no." Caleb: Wow. Russell: And so, it's figuring it out for yourself. What are your values? Personally, with your family, the wife, everything like that. And you define them, and then it's like there's no question. That's what hard, is when you value something here, and your spouse values something differently, and the conflict of that is what causes the fights, right? But if you get on the same page, like, "Look, this is number one, two..." You have these things, then it makes it easier to navigate those things, because it's like, "No, I understand this is one of the values we have together, as a couple, you should go do that thing." Or whatever the thing might be. So anyway... Caleb: That's awesome. Russell: But marriage is one of the hardest things, but one of the most rewarding things, at the same time. So it's worth it, but it's a ride. Go through demand-relationship, man. That's- Rob: That's a great point. Russell: ...so good. Speaker 4: I got a question. Rob: Yeah, go ahead. Speaker 4: So two big things that I heard from you, amongst your story, you were talking this positivity. When you were doing great at something, or you learned something, you're so excited about it, you're so positive, but then there's this other part of you that's very vulnerable. Russell: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Speaker 4: And so, you experience anxiety, or you have challenging days, or you're discouraged. How do you find the balance between those, of being vulnerable and being honest with how you're feeling, versus, "Hey, this is a challenge. I'm an entrepreneur, I can overcome this."? Matt: Right. Speaker 4: What's the balance? Russell: Yeah. That's good. One of the... Everyone who's met Tony has a story about how Tony's changed their life. But one of the biggest things that I... There's three or four things that I got from Tony, the very first time I went to his event and I heard him speak, that had a huge impact on me. One of the biggest ones was state control, understanding that. Have you ever heard him talk about the triad and things like that? Speaker 4: Yeah. Russell: I'd never heard that before, and I remember watching him do these things on people in the audience. And it was fascinating. He took a lady, who was... He picked somebody in the audience who was suicidal, and he's like... It was the weirdest thing. And he talked about the triad, right? There's three things that change your state, right? There's your language, there's your focus, and there's your physiology, right? So he takes someone, he's like, "I need someone who's suicidal." He takes this beautiful girl. I remember, we were up in Toronto, so then he takes this girl, and he's like, "I need you to get depressed. Not a little bit depressed, clinically suicidal." She's like, "What?" He's like, "Just get there in your mind. Whatever it takes, get dark." And you see her state change, right? And he keeps pushing her, and keep pushing her, and he gets her to this point. And anyway, it's crazy I'm watching this. And I'm kind of freaking out, because I'm watching him do this to this girl, getting her to a point... And soon, she's bawling her eyes out and everything. And he's like, "You got to get deeper. Get darker. More miserable." All this stuff. And you see him change this girl's state. And all of a sudden it stopped. And finally, it seemed like forever, finally he stops and he's like, "Everyone look at her. Watch her. Look at this." He's like, "What do you notice? What's her physiology?" You see her body, you see tears, and all this stuff. And you see her just broken. And then, he's like, "What do you say?" And he goes through the whole triad with her. And he shows that. And he's like, "Now I'm going to show you how quickly you can shift this." To the point where it's like... Anyway, it was crazy. And then, he shifts it, and he starts taking her back through, shifting the physiology, shifting her shoulders, shifting everything, shifting her meanings, shifting focus, shifting what she's saying. And he gets this girl, within three or four minutes, to literal ecstasy, it was crazy watching this. And you see her, where she's laughing... the opposite side of it. And I'd never seen somebody like that, the flip of emotions, how easy it was, by just shifting these three things in her. And it had such a profound impact on me. Caleb: Is there video of that? Russell: Not maybe the one I saw, but he does it at every UPW, he does it... I'm sure there's YouTube videos of it, as well. But if you type the triad, I think he calls it the triad or state control, things like that, you see it happen. But I saw that, and I was just like, "Oh my gosh, I never realized that we had control over that. I thought my feelings were my feelings." Like, "Here's your feeling." Like, "Okay, crap, this is the feeling I have today." And after experiencing that, I was like, "I could actually change this." I didn't know that. And it's interesting because I think sometimes when we're depressed, or we're sad, or we have these things, I think some of us like it. I've had times before, I don't want to be happy. I'm enjoying feeling miserable. And sometimes, I sit in there because I enjoy, because we do, it's weird. It's messed up. But I felt that. I'm like, "I could change this but I don't want to." But other times, I'm like, "I have to change it." Now that I've learned that. It's crazy you can shift your state, and you can do that and show up the way you need to be. And one practical example of how I use it a lot is, when I get home at the end of the night... And this kind of comes back to your question, I think, earlier, too. How do you do all the things? And I told you this yesterday. One of the things that I got the biggest, from being around Tony Robbins, the most impressive thing about him is when... Tony's got... As busy as any of us are, take that times 10, and that's Tony, right? He's the most busy person ever. But if you have a chance, a brief moment with Tony, where he's going to say a million things, and you have a second with him, he is the most present person I've ever met. The world dissolves around it, and it's just him and you, and there's nothing else. You can tell. And he's just zoned in on you, and it's this magical experience. And as soon as it's done, he's just gone, he's on the next thing. But that moment, he's hyper-present. And so, for me, when I'm doing things, it's like... Like, when I get home at night, at the end of the day, park my car, I walk in, and there's the door before I come into the house. And sometimes, I'm anxious, I'm thinking about work, and thinking about stuff, I'm stressed out, the FBI sent me a letter today, Taylor Swift suing me, whatever the thing is. And I'm like, "Ah." And then, I'm like, "I'm going to walk through that door, and I can't do anything about it now. My kids are there, my wife's there." And it's just like, "Okay, I got to change my state." And right there, before I walk through the door, I change my state. Get in the spot, and then like, "Okay, here we go." And I walk through the door, and it's like then I'm dad. And it's different, right? And so, I think it's learning those things. Because it's not... Your feelings are weird, they're going to show up in one way or the other, but the fact that you can control them, which I didn't understand or know how. But as soon as I realized that, it's just like, "I don't have to be sad, or miserable, or anxious, or whatever. I can actually change those things in a moment, if I understand how." And that was one of the greatest gifts Tony gave me, was just understanding how to do that, and seeing it in practical application with somebody. And now, it's like I can do it myself, any time I need to, if I need to. Matt: How do you act around Tony Robbins? Especially from the beginning to now, because you guys are close now. He probably looks at you like I look at a lot of these guys, that are Caleb's friends. I look at them like nephews, these are like... I'd do anything for them. And I know that... I can see that's how Tony starting to look at you. But take us from the very first time, because he didn't he have you come to an event, ask you a bunch of questions, take notes, and then just leave you hanging, or something like that. Tell the story, real quick. Russell: Oh, man. Tony's so intense. I still get scared to... It's still like, "Ah." Anyway, every time I see him, it's just like... I don't know, it's weird. His presence is- Matt: He still makes you nervous. Russell: Oh, yeah, for sure. But the very first time... So yeah, it was... I don't know, it was probably 04:00 in the morning. I don't even know. The shorter version of the long story is they asked me to come meet him in Toronto, at UPW, same event as this whole experience happened. So I went up there, and supposed to meet him one day, and it shifts to the next day. And if you ever work with Tony, just know if he tells you he's meeting you at 10:00, it could be like four days later you actually meet. You're on Tony time. Yeah, it's- Matt: That's just how it is. Russell: It's crazy, yeah. Just waiting. But it's always worth it, so you just wait and be grateful when it happens. But anyway, so we finally get to the point where we meet, and I have to drive 45 minutes. This is pre-Uber, so I'm in a taxi to some weird hotel. And we get there, and then me and his assistant stand outside for another hour, waiting in the lobby. He kept looking at his phone, nervously, like, "Ah." He's like, "Okay, Mr. Robbins' ready to meet you. Let's go." So we run up the stairs, we go to this thing, we walk in this room, and there's- Matt: And this is the first time you ever- Russell: ...body guards everywhere. First time I ever met him, yeah. Yeah, he's like a giant, comes and gives me a huge hug. And we sit down, and he's like, "You hungry?" I'm like, "Yeah." And he was vegetarian at the time, so he's like, "Get Russell some food." And brought me out this amazing plate of... I don't even know what it was. But it was... I was like, "If I could eat like this is every night, I'd be vegetarian." Because it was amazing. It was- Caleb: It was? Russell: ...insane. And then, got his tape recorder out, he's like, "You okay if we record this?" I'm like, "Yeah." So he clicks record, picks out a big journal, he's like, "You're Mormon, right?" I'm like, "Yeah." He's like, "I love the Mormon people. When I was eight years old, I went to a Mormon church and they told me to keep a journal. I've kept a journal ever since. Do you mind if I take notes while we talk?" Matt: Wow. Russell: I'm like, "Eh, okay." So he's recording, taking notes, and then he drilled me for an hour. Just like do, do, do. Just like- Speaker 4: And how long ago was this? Russell: This is 13, 14 years ago. Speaker 4: Okay. Russell: Anyway, it was intense. And I can't remember what I was saying, I was so scared, I'm second-guessing everything I've said. And then, he's asking me numbers and stats, because we were trying to do this deal with him. And it was so scary. Matt: So he was just drilling you with questions, and just trying to- Russell: Oh, like crazy, yeah. I'm trying to just... Yeah, dude. Anyway, it was crazy. And then, he had to go back to UPW to speak again, so he's like, "You want to drive with me?" So I'm like, "Yeah." So go down, and jump in his Escalade together, we're in the back seat, and we're driving. And it's just crazy. And I remember he asked me a question about this one... I won't say the person's name because the story isn't positive for the person. But he asked, he's like, "What do you think about so and so?" I'm like, "Oh, that person's really cool and really talented." He's like, "He's a very significant..." and he just talked about six human needs, earlier that day, so I was very aware of here's what the needs are, right? And he's like, "Yeah, I don't think I'd ever work with him, because he's very significance driven." And I was like, "Oh, that make sense." And all of a sudden, I was like, "Ah, Tony is reading my soul, right now." I was like, "What drives me? I don't even know what drives me. Does he know what drives me?" Like, "Oh my gosh, am I significance driven?" I'm freaking out, like, "Ah." And all I remember is panicking, thinking, "He knows more about me than I know about me, at this point." And all these things, I'm freaking out, we're driving in his Escalade. And we get to the thing, and he's like, "I got to go inside. Thank you so much, brother. I love you." Jumps out the car, shuts the door. I'm sitting in the Escalade, like, "What just happened?" Matt: It was that fast. Russell: It was insane, yeah. Matt: It was just like- Russell: And then, the driver's like, "Do you want to get out here? Do you want me to drive you somewhere?" Like, "I don't even know where we are." We're in Toronto somewhere, that's all I know. And so, it was just the craziest experience. And then, I don't hear from him for four or five months, nothing. And I'm like- Matt: What were you thinking? Did you think- Russell: I was like, "He must've hated me. Maybe I failed the test. Am I significance driven?" I'm freaking out about all the things. And then, one day, I get this random... It was actually my wife and I, we were celebrating our anniversary, so we were at... It was a StomperNet event, but we took her, it was this cool thing. And she'd just gone to UPW. I sent her like three months later. So she walked on fire, and she was like... And Tony talks about Fiji there, so she was like, "Someday we should go to Fiji." And then, we get this call from Tony, and it was like, "Hey..." Or it was Tony's assistant. Like, "Hey, Tony wants to know if you want to speak at Business Mastery in Fiji, in two weeks." I was like, "Tony Robbins..." I started saying it out loud so Collette could hear me. "Tony Robbins wants me to speak in Fiji, in two weeks?" And Collette, my cute little wife, starts jumping on the bed, like, "Say yes! Say yes!" Caleb: Aw! Russell: And I was like, "Yes, yes, yes. Of course, we will." And then, we're like, we've got three kids that are all toddlers at this time, and like, "Can we bring kids?" They're like, "There's no kids allowed on the resort." I'm like, "We've got three little kids." He's like, "Ah, all right. We'll figure it out." So I hang up, and we're like, "We don't have passports for the kids, we don't have anything." So anyway, it was chaos, we're freaking out. We ended up getting them there, they literally built a fence around our... The Bula house, where's Dan at? The Bula house we were in. They built a whole fence around, so our kids wouldn't die because- Caleb: Did they really? Russell: ...there's cliffs off the back. Yeah, it was crazy. And then, I'm speaking to this room, and there's less than 100 people. I'm speaking, and Tony's sitting in the back of this room, I'm like- Matt: While you're speaking. Russell: ..."I thought he was not going to be here. This is really scary." Yeah. And he's paying attention the whole time. Matt: Does it make you more nervous? Russell: He introduced me, he brought me on stage, which was like... I still have the footage of that, it's really cool. He brought me on stage, which was crazy. And then, I remember, because in the thing we're talking about lead generation, I was talking about squeeze pages. And afterwards, he got on. He comes up afterwards, he's like, "Yeah, I heard squeeze pages don't work anymore. Is that true, Russell?" He's like, "People say they're kind of dead, they don't work anymore." And this is, again, 12 years ago. And I was like, "Who told you that? They totally still work." Which is funny, because we still use them today. But he was just like, "Somebody had told me they don't work anymore." And I was like, "They..." anyway, "They work, I promise." But anyway, and then I don't hear from him for five years, and then something else happens. It's just weird, these long extended periods of time. But then, every time, every moment, I tried... Five years later, it was a call, it was like, "Hey, Tony's doing this thing. He wants your opinion on it." So I spent like two or three hours with his team, consulting, giving feedback, as much ideas as I could. And like, "Cool, thanks." And then, nothing for two years, and then something else, and then... Little things keep happening, and happening, and can do more and more together. And then- Matt: What did you learn from that? You think that's just- Russell: A couple things I've learned. Number one, I'm sure you guys get this a lot, people who want to work with you, they show up and the first thing they show up with is, "All right, I got an idea how we can make a bunch of money together." Right? They always come, and want to figure out how they can take from you. And I was so scared, and grateful, I didn't ever ask Tony for anything. The first time I asked Tony for anything ever was 12 into our relationship, after Expert Secrets book was done. I had just paid him $250,000 to speak on our stage, and just finished the interview promoting his book. And I was like, "Hey, I wrote a new book. Do you want one?" Matt: Wow. Russell: And he's like, "Oh." And he took it. I'm like, "Cool." And then, a week later, I'm like, "Ah, will you interview me on Facebook with this?" He's like, "Sure." And then, he did, and that video got three and a half million views on it. It was crazy, coolest thing ever. But it was 12 years before I asked him for anything. And I had- Matt: Wow. Russell: ...served him at as many different points as I can. I think the biggest lesson from that is that... And I get it all the time, people come to me and it's like they're trying to ask and take. It's just like... I get it, and it makes sense. But it's just like, "This game's not a short game. If you do it right, it's your life. This is your life mission." Right? Matt: Yeah, that's good. Russell: And so it's just understanding you're planting seeds, and you're serving, and if you do that, eventually good things will happen. And something may never happen with Tony, and that's cool. I do stuff for a lot of people, and nothing ever good ever comes from it. But hopefully something does. Sometimes it's indirect, sometimes it's not, sometimes it's just karma, or whatever you believe in. But if you just always go with the intent to serve, not to like, "What's in it for me?" It just changes everything. And then, if you do that, if you lead with how to serve, stuff comes back to you. But if you lead with trying to get stuff, it just doesn't work. The energy's different in the whole encounter. You know what I mean? Matt: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Russell: So I'm sure you guys have felt that with people, when they first come to you, and it's just like, "Ah." Matt: So is there a point where you... You went to his house. Russell: That was cool. The thing I can say is it was really cool, because most times when I'm with Tony, you're around people. In Fiji, it was fun seeing him, because he's more personal and stuff like that. But it was really special in his home, because it was him and his wife, and it was cool. It was fun just seeing him as him, like as a kid. And even my wife, like, "He seems like a kid here." He was so excited, and showing us his stuff, and all the things. Matt: Ah, well, guys, listen. Russell: Anyway- Matt: A few more questions, because I mean, man, you've been at it for almost two hours, dude. I can go all night, and I know he could. But Brea Morrison, give it up for her for letting us be here. Thank you so much.

Inside Online Language Teaching: Conversations About the Future That Became the PresentGet 10% off online teacher development courses at NILE. Use this link and the discount code: tefltraininginstitute10Support the podcast by buying us a coffeeFor more podcasts, videos and blogs, visit our website: www.TEFLtraininginstitute.comSign up for our mailing listWatch as well as listen on our YouTube channel Develop yourself! Find more about our teacher training courses How to Get Your Students Talking to Each Other (with Matt Courtois) Ross Thorburn: Matt Cuortois, welcome back.Matt Cuortois: It's always a pleasure, Ross.Ross: Great. Today we're talking about student interactions, getting students to talk to each other, basically. Why is this important?Matt: Back when you and I started teaching, the way that my boss or trainer addressed this issue was to talk about teacher talk time. They set up this target where I, as the teacher, would only be able to talk 20 percent of the time. 80 percent of the time would then be left for students to talk to each other.That whole thing isn't a great paradigm because it is flawed in its logic. I've seen classes where when the teachers didn't talk, that didn't mean students were talking. It was just awkward silence a lot of the time.Ross: Right. The flip side of the teacher talk is the student talking time. Of course, it's the same thing. Just because the students are talking doesn't mean they're actually learning.You're going to think about the quality of student interactions. We're talking about students actually saying meaningful things to each other and, really crucially, the other student having reason to listen to what the other person's saying.Matt: I do think still though that goal of having students talking 80 percent of the time is a good goal.Ross: Yeah, absolutely. Once you get beyond being a complete beginner, where you can't really say anything, then that makes sense.Let's talk about some of these really simple ways of getting students talking to each other. One of the simplest things is an information gap. This is something you hear a lot about with adults.With kids, one of my favorite ways to do this is you get half the students facing the front of the room, half of them facing the back of the room, put some information on a screen at the front. The students who can see the whiteboard have to describe that information to the other students.Again, the most simple way I can think of doing this is, you have a coloring in sheet with some really, really simple vocabulary, like animals. The teacher version on the board, everything's already colored in. Hopefully the colors are weird.Let's say we've got a pink dog, and a green cat, and an orange zebra. The student facing the board has to describe that to the other student. That other student has this blank coloring sheet. They just need to listen to that other student and color it in.I think this works for a few ways. Obviously, you have this gap there, but one of the other key things is that the student doing the coloring in has a reason to listen to the first student. Also, really, really importantly, the first student can see if the second student has understood them or not.If you've colored one of those animals the wrong color, I can see and then I can say, "No, no, no. [laughs] Not this color. Color it in something different". That's when a lot of learning tends to happen is when those bits of communication break down because students have to focus on grammar, or form, or pronunciation to try and make that meaning clear, to resolve the misunderstanding.Matt: There's also a really important point you made there about the students need a reason to listen. Whenever we talk about a communicative lesson, we think of students talking, talking, talking. Communication is not just talking. That's half of it. The other half needs to be filled with somebody who's listening.Ross: This also makes me think of something else. In any activity like that...Let's say this is a coloring activity, very common with kids. You're also rarely likely to have enough pens or pencils or crayons for every kid in the class, to be able to have all the colors that they need.It's also a great opportunity for kids to use English to ask each other for these pens and pencils. You could say to the kids, "What do you say if you need to borrow this pain from someone? Blue, please. Yellow, please." That's another great way of building communication into classes is by not having enough resources for every individual student.Matt: Now you're getting into students really being able to learn a lot of important values for their life. They need to learn, at this age, how to share. They need to learn how to listen to each other. Without that communication in class, without these kinds of activities where students need each other, they aren't going to learn that in your lessons.Ross: Now we can get into things about teaching students the language, of, for example, when you don't understand what someone else had said in one of these activities. You can say, "I'm sorry. Can you say it again, please? I don't understand." Those are also things that you really need in real life a lot of the time.Matt: That language that they're learning, by going through this process, is a lot more useful than, in your example, a pink elephant or a pink...What was it? A pink dog. They're learning those words. They're also learning these really useful phrases that they'll need throughout their English classes, throughout other classes, and then in their real life. You need to learn how to repair a conversation.Ross: I know with a lot of language like this, teachers find it very difficult to present. There's no flash card for, "I'm sorry," or "I don't understand," or "Say that again, please." These things can be quite difficult for teachers to teach.If you do these activities regularly with your students, you can find, by monitoring, times when communication hasn't worked. Afterwards, you can say to the class, "What happened when you didn't understand?" You could do this in the student's first language, for example. "What did you say?"You might say, "I heard Johnny say to Mary, ' [non‑English speech] ,'" or whatever in their first language. You say, "How could we say that in English?" Then, get those things on the board. "All right. Fantastic. Now, swap roles. Do the activity again. This time when you don't understand, use these phrases on the board."Matt: What's great about that is that you're teaching them words that they needed. They needed to know how to say that in English, but they didn't know how. You're not just teaching them words that the coursebook writer and Cambridge decided they needed.Ross: A very typical thing in a coursebook is you might have a dialogue that's on the first couple of pages of one unit. The idea is that by the end of the lesson, the students will be able to use that dialogue. What you just said there, you're really getting away from that.Matt: I've seen so many lessons where, basically, there's person A and person B. They're not necessarily directly reading off of the script from the book, but they have it memorized. That's not really a roleplay. It's not even really communication. They're not actually saying anything that the other person needs.Ross: A quick tip for role‑plays is you can give students a little role card to say, "you're angry" or "you're happy" or "you just won the lottery." Then maybe afterwards, we say, "Can you guess how was the other person feeling?"Matt: Yeah. You're listening to a lot of the...not just the words also. You're listening to how the person is saying the words.Ross: I can't remember where I heard this. I remember an example of this for adults was some sort of boring shopping role‑play. They said, The shopper, you are the ex‑wife of the shop owner, and you didn't know this was his shop. Now, go and do the role‑play." That just makes it so much more interesting.Matt: After they do that role‑play, it gives people a lot to think about. How did that affect the way the person spoke?Ross: After doing any one of these things, it's always a jumping off point for summarizing the task. Let's say, to go back to the coloring in one earlier, you could just say to the students, "What color was the dog? What color was the elephant?" Then, you're getting a little bit of production from the students and checking.You can say, "I heard that you say...What color did you say this was? You said it was light blue? OK. What's the difference between light blue and blue?" Start to use that to teach a bit more language. The thing you said there with after our role‑play, "How do you think the other person was feeling? What things did they say that was different from the original role‑play?"Matt: Not only can you do them, you need to do these things after a task. Ultimately, it's about communication, and it's about practicing language. What language did they use? How could they use that language better? Was there any language that they should have used that they didn't use?Ross: A couple of tips for that. Maybe one is, let's say that we've just told the students a bunch of ways to give suggestions. After getting students to give each other suggestions, you could say, "Well, which of these phrases did you use? Which of them did you not use? Tell us why."Another tip for getting students would be to focus on some of these things or have more information to talk about afterwards. You can have a third role in any of these activities we've talked about, which is an observer. Write down what you hear the people saying.You could either say, "Write down any mistakes you hear afterwards. Write down any examples of the first language that you hear. How could we say those things in English?"All these are ways of doing what you said earlier, Matt, which is finding gaps in the students own knowledge and filling those in a very personalized way.Matt: The way a lot of teachers naturally teach is that they want their students to be producing error‑free sentences. If you're teaching this way, where you're throwing students in and having them do this, they're going to make a lot of mistakes.You really need to put a lot of effort into creating an environment where students feel comfortable to make mistakes. Don't have them memorizing the entire script before they say it. You push them along that process of getting them to that point of being comfortable with actually communicating in a second language.Ross: If you do that, and the students make those mistakes, that's good. That's when you can actually teach them these bits of language that are going to help them better next time.Matt: You've identified whenever they make a mistake, language that they need. You've identified a teachable moment.Ross: [laughs] Absolutely. Let's talk about actually doing some of these things in reality. For an information gap activity, like the one we mentioned earlier, where one student talks, and the other student listens and does something. A good way of introducing that is just for the teacher, the first time, to be the person giving the information.Matt: If you're teaching in an environment where you have the same students every week, that doesn't need to happen in one lesson. In the first lesson, you, as the teacher can be describing these animals, and the students are coloring it in. They're receiving. They're working on their listening.A week later, in their next lesson, maybe you can have a couple students try it out. The next week you can have the other students trying it out.Ross: I feel another loophole with some of these activities is that students can often use gestures to get a random or pointing. Just to go back to my example again earlier, you could just point to something and say, "Blue."Really important with these, just to say to, for example, the student whose describing you have to sit on your hands while you're describing. A tiny little difference, but all of a sudden, it means that you can't use gestures, or you have to try to do all of this in English.Again, how do you know students will do it? If you've got a big class, you might want to pick one or two students who were a little bit more outspoken. You ask them to be police and walk around, and then remind everyone to speak English, and catch them up if they're ever speaking any L1.Matt: I've seen it a million times. Whenever teachers introduce that activity and they say, "No looking at the picture." Inevitably, the students find ways, especially if you're teaching young learners, they're going to find a way to cheat.Ross: Let's talk about some other ways that you can hide that information. One way is simply yet people have got their backs to the board. The most foolproof way is you actually put the information outside the classroom. One student has to run outside the door, look at the thing, and then come back in and describe it.Matt: Depending on what kind of information it is, you can just put it really far away. One student is mobile and can walk straight up to it and come back and give them that information.Ross: Another one I've seen is if you have the students turn round in their chairs, but they don't turn the chair around. If you can imagine that the back of your chair is to your chest, you could stick the hidden information on that back of the chair. The person would really have to lean forward so far [laughs] they would topple over to be able to see the information.Matt: I saw a cool one. This took a little bit of preparation from the teacher.She made these headbands out of paper. They go around and then I got a piece of paper sticking up in front and then she could just tack on different images to that piece of paper sticking up off of their head. Everyone else in the classroom could see what was on their head band, but that student couldn't see what was on his own head band.Ross: I've done this before, as well, where maybe you get a word or something, and you stick it on the students' backs. Then, I have to ask you to give me clues about what one word is, and I have to try and get it.Matt: You can also set up the classroom. You can have your students sitting back‑to‑back. One side can see it. You can keep an eye on the other students on the far side. Make sure they're not turning around and looking back at the information that you're showing to half of the class.Ross: I feel the way it is easiest for students to cheat is if we are just holding two bits of paper. I feel they are right that the temptation is very, very high just to hold a bit of paper at an angle where the other person can see it. There's varying degrees there of how well you want to hide your information depending on the self‑control of the students.   Transcription by CastingWords   

Todd: OK. Matt, we're back. We're gonna talk about music. What is your favorite kind of music?Matt: My favorite kind of music is alternative music. Generally, I like all types of music apart from country music.Todd: I'm the same way. I hate country except for Johny Cash.Matt: Yeah. The older country is good but the newer, I don't like the newer stuff.Todd: Yeah. How expensive are CDs in your country?Matt: Well, a brand new CD is probably between about 15 and 20 dollars. Yeah, but you can find used CDs from anything to a dollar to.. you know, 20 dollars I guess, depending on the CD. So you can find cheap CDs.Todd: Wow, that's pretty cheap. Do you play a musical instrument?Matt: No, I don't. Although, when I was a kid I played the piano and a little bit of the guitar but I've long since forgotten all of that.Todd: Usually, you pick up the guitar and you don'tstop playing it.Matt: There was no talent.Todd: Do you go to concerts?Matt: I go. I really enjoy going to concerts but I like to go to small venues. Small shows. I don't like those big stadium shows where you need binoculars just to see the stage.Todd: Yeah, I agree. And the last question, most importantly, do you sing in the shower?Matt: Of course I do. Yeah, every chance I get.Todd: Wow, what kind of songs do you sing?Matt: Oh, wow! I guess anything that's in my head, the last thing I heard I guess.Todd: Can you sing something right now?Matt: I don't think so. This isn't a shower.

Todd: OK. Matt, we're back. We're gonna talk about music. What is your favorite kind of music?Matt: My favorite kind of music is alternative music. Generally, I like all types of music apart from country music.Todd: I'm the same way. I hate country except for Johny Cash.Matt: Yeah. The older country is good but the newer, I don't like the newer stuff.Todd: Yeah. How expensive are CDs in your country?Matt: Well, a brand new CD is probably between about 15 and 20 dollars. Yeah, but you can find used CDs from anything to a dollar to.. you know, 20 dollars I guess, depending on the CD. So you can find cheap CDs.Todd: Wow, that's pretty cheap. Do you play a musical instrument?Matt: No, I don't. Although, when I was a kid I played the piano and a little bit of the guitar but I've long since forgotten all of that.Todd: Usually, you pick up the guitar and you don'tstop playing it.Matt: There was no talent.Todd: Do you go to concerts?Matt: I go. I really enjoy going to concerts but I like to go to small venues. Small shows. I don't like those big stadium shows where you need binoculars just to see the stage.Todd: Yeah, I agree. And the last question, most importantly, do you sing in the shower?Matt: Of course I do. Yeah, every chance I get.Todd: Wow, what kind of songs do you sing?Matt: Oh, wow! I guess anything that's in my head, the last thing I heard I guess.Todd: Can you sing something right now?Matt: I don't think so. This isn't a shower.

Todd: OK. Matt, we're back. We're gonna talk about music. What is your favorite kind of music?Matt: My favorite kind of music is alternative music. Generally, I like all types of music apart from country music.Todd: I'm the same way. I hate country except for Johny Cash.Matt: Yeah. The older country is good but the newer, I don't like the newer stuff.Todd: Yeah. How expensive are CDs in your country?Matt: Well, a brand new CD is probably between about 15 and 20 dollars. Yeah, but you can find used CDs from anything to a dollar to.. you know, 20 dollars I guess, depending on the CD. So you can find cheap CDs.Todd: Wow, that's pretty cheap. Do you play a musical instrument?Matt: No, I don't. Although, when I was a kid I played the piano and a little bit of the guitar but I've long since forgotten all of that.Todd: Usually, you pick up the guitar and you don'tstop playing it.Matt: There was no talent.Todd: Do you go to concerts?Matt: I go. I really enjoy going to concerts but I like to go to small venues. Small shows. I don't like those big stadium shows where you need binoculars just to see the stage.Todd: Yeah, I agree. And the last question, most importantly, do you sing in the shower?Matt: Of course I do. Yeah, every chance I get.Todd: Wow, what kind of songs do you sing?Matt: Oh, wow! I guess anything that's in my head, the last thing I heard I guess.Todd: Can you sing something right now?Matt: I don't think so. This isn't a shower.

[Guests Dr. David Martin & Matt Belair] (original interview May 2020 - reposted with permission) Recently I came across a beautiful and thought-provoking documentary called “Future Dreaming” featuring a pioneer, inventor, entrepreneur, and thought leader named Dr. David Martin. Our friend Matt Belair interviewed him on his podcast “Master Mind Body and Spirit" in May 2020, and it was a deeply clarifying and educational conversation. I'm grateful to them for the permission to re-share that conversation with you. #TeamEarth #Integrity #PathtoPeace Topics explored: * When there's a ripple in the pond, a “perturbation”, who threw the stone? * Linguistic Genomics technology for studying this perturbation. * The courage to question the mainstream narrative * Learning from the fascinating story of Anthrax outbreak * Story of prince of Lichtenstein's attempt to patent basmati rice * The cover story vs. the true underlying story * C19 - unprecedented designation by WHO to name a set of symptoms as a disease. * Why did they break their normal protocol? * David Martin's ted talk - on solving the unsolvable problems. * The power of Gratitude. * The issue of "reflexive processing" - We have not been trained to deeply think. * “We are all responsible for our own reflexive ignorance.” * We are unaware of the level of questions we can ask. * We have convinced ourselves that authority figures 1) have our best interest, or 2) too big to question. * “There is no one and no topic too big to question.” * Stories of fighting white collar crime. * “If your defense is - shoot the messenger - then you know the message is right. That is the hallmark of every scandal.” That's when you know it's worth pursuing. * The issue of focusing on prosecuting the one bad guy vs. overlooking system-level issues. The individual is representative of a system-level problem. * Importance of doing the ALL-IN Consequence Analysis. * Matt - “There's a danger to the savior story. Spiritual bypass.” * David - “The illusion of hoarded wealth - It's an illusion.” * We've been trapped in this story. It's up to us to take off the shackles. * David - “You can accomplish more with integrity than you can with money... because Integrity is in short supply.” * What is the awakening? As a collective, we've had our butts kicked. * We've been caught asleep. Let's stay awake. * Matt - “Fear limits your pattern recognition.” * Opportunity to work together as one humanity - vs - the old story of “dominion.” * Nature does not do things in separate parts. It does things entangled. * The whole process of “can we get to peace” - we can only do that when we stop telling a dominion story. How things distract us from reality. * Building a web of connections. Be a neighbor. * We are stewards of what we have. We're not owners and hoarders of what we have. ~~~~ David Martin's website - https://www.davidmartin.world/ Matt Belair's website - http://www.mattbelair.com

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

Former online teacher training manager Matt Courtois and I meet to talk about online teacher development and evaluation. What opportunities does online teaching create for teacher development?Opportunities in Online Teacher Development (with Matt Courtois)Ross Thorburn: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to "TEFL Training Institute Podcast." I'm Ross Thorburn. This week, once again, we have Matt Courtois.Matt Courtois: Hey, long time no see.Ross: Last time, Matt, you and I talked about the effects of coronavirus and teaching online to serve things that teachers can do in class with students.Today, I thought it'd be interesting for us to talk about the effect that teaching online, and teachers just not being in the same physical space as either their managers, or their trainers, or their peers is having on teacher development.Matt: I think this whole teaching online thing, it's so lonely. Before all this happened, you're in here, your teacher's office, with 10 colleagues who are bouncing ideas. Here, you're sitting in possibly in an empty apartment, lonely experience.Ross: Absolutely. Before, when I at least worked in a school, sometimes you have a thing of a teacher would come in on a break and just be like, "Oh my God, that was a disaster," and you would have the chance to go like, "What's up? Can I help? What was the issue here?"As soon as you're online, those interactions in the staff room or by the water cooler, those don't happen anymore. It made the importance of formal teacher education stuff even more important than it was before.Matt: A lot of the feedback you get from your peers doesn't necessarily happen in a formal avenue, but a lot of times you're just sitting here talking about your lesson.Ross: It's like what we were talking about last time with teaching, that online is not necessarily better or worse. It's just different. There's some advantages to doing teacher education online, but taking the offline stuff and putting it online, it's not going to work.You have to think of some other potential advantages of online that maybe don't exist offline, and try to take advantage of those.Matt: There some things that you can do that are completely different from face‑to‑face feedback or coaching or training that online can be a lot more effective.Ross: One obvious place is that if you are teaching online, it's highly likely that every lesson you teach is going to be recorded. There are huge opportunities for doing self‑observation and peer observation, that in face‑to‑face settings are really difficult to set up.Matt: In a previous company that we worked at together that had face‑to‑face lessons, it's something we encourage lots of teachers to do. Video your lesson, then afterwards, you can watch it. I really think, over the two or three years that I was advocating this idea, I don't think a single teacher actually did it.Ross: Even doing the thing of peer observation. I might want to observe you teaching such and such a class, but when you're teaching that class, I also have a class. It's really difficult to ever actually make that work.Obviously, all of these problems just disappear immediately since we started talking about online teaching, where everything's recorded.Matt: One of the best things you can do is watch yourself teaching. I know the way I am. If I have that video there, and it's already done, I'm going to watch myself teaching.I know if somebody is giving feedback, you do want to be specific because it is helpful. If you, as the observer, think something didn't go well, you can refer them back to minute 5, 12 seconds, and say, watch this and watch how you interact with the student or that student.Ross: Or, let's watch it together. There's no more of this, "Oh, I didn't think this went very well. Well, actually, I thought it went fine."I think it's powerful to be able to say like, "Which part of the lesson do you want to talk about?" "This part." "OK, let's move the video forward to that part and we can watch it together. We can we can talk about it."The videos could be used in at least one of three ways that immediately spring to mind. One is that, as a teacher, you could proactively go watch this yourself and reflect on it or transcribe bits of it or whatever.Another potential use is that you could make a video available to your peers to watch, for example. Or, another bit is that your supervisor or trainer or whatever could come and watch you teach.Having things online, there's a real issue around privacy and access that is going to be really interesting.For example, at the moment, if we were in a school together, and you were the manager and I'm the teacher, and you want to come and observe me teach, you could just barge into the classroom and watch me, if you really wanted to.I might be upset about it, but I would know you were there. As soon as it's online, there's all of a sudden this thing of like, well, maybe everything's probably being recorded by the school or at least by someone.Potentially, you can observe anything that I've taught without me knowing about it. There's a flip side to this, though, of course, which does mean that when you're observing people, they're automatically going to be more nervous than they would be if there was no one in the room, the whole observer's paradox thing.Often, you'd find that a lot of the feedback I'd end up giving trainee teachers would be about teacher talk and talking too much. I sometimes wonder, are these people just talking too much because they're nervous because I'm in the room? If I wasn't here, they wouldn't be nervous.Therefore, I'm giving them feedback on this aspect of the teaching that really is not an issue for 99 percent of the time. It's only an issue when they're being observed.This is another advantage to this covert observation that, as a teacher, you can be observed, and as a manager, you can observe teachers. There's no longer this problem of people being nervous and changing their behavior because there's an observer in the room.Matt: Ideally, it's going to be a much less intimidating and less distracting experience for the teachers and the students. By having this avenue for observations online, your presence isn't going to be known at all by students and the teacher. Maybe it's less intimidating.Ross: At the moment, in terms of teacher observations, there's also different ways of doing it. You could have the manager just walks in completely unannounced, so the teacher has no control over when they're observed.You could have the manager tells the teacher in advance, I'm going to observe this class, and you spent all this time preparing. You could have the manager gives the teacher some options, so the teacher has a bit more ownership over when they're observed.Or, the teacher even could say to the manager, "I would like you to come and observe this class before I teach it." Of course, with online, it moves, it almost adds an extra part on that graph, on that continuum.You're the manager, I could say, "Not that I would like you to observe this class that I will be teaching next Tuesday." I can say, "I want you to observe this class yesterday that I had this problem with and tell me, what should I had done in the situation or what tips you could give." It could give teachers more autonomy.Matt: I know a lot of teachers who would want to impress their observer. Most teachers are going to choose one of their stronger lessons, which I actually think is a good thing. As an observer, I would like to see you at your best.You were talking about teacher talk earlier. I don't want to see some mistakes and coach you about something that doesn't really occur to you very often.I want to see you at your best and see if we can find some areas of that that we can move forward a little bit, and the teacher coming to that decision about, "This is my best lesson," and they're showing that to you.Hopefully, through that process, they watched that lesson. They're thinking about a lot of really good reflection that's going to happen automatically by trying to show their manager their best lesson.Ross: The potential there is for the teacher to choose something that they actually want the manager or the supervisor or trainer to see.Matt: Odds are, at this point, if teachers are choosing their best lessons, there's probably a lot of things that we can find in their online teaching to help push them forward a little bit.Who was your guest a couple of weeks ago? I don't remember, but he was saying most of the online lessons.Ross: This was Russell Stannard. He was saying there were a lot of terrible online lessons, which is true. The opposite of that could also be true. The other advantage of having everything filmed is to take us to peer observations for a moment.If we all, you and me and we've got five other people, who work in the same school, we could make our professional development with something. Like, you can choose one of your classes this week or an activity that you did in the last week that you thought was particularly good and show it to everyone.Normally, if you do that, it's going to be you standing up in front of everyone describing what you did. It's you actually showing everyone, "Here's a video of this activity I did. It worked really, really well." I think that's a lot more useful. A lot more potential benefits for everyone else in the school.Matt: Especially now, I talk about Bloom's taxonomy a little bit. A lot of teachers with online teaching are at the very first stage. When they see something that works, they're going to try to replicate it.They're not higher up on this taxonomy where they're trying to invent their own things. They're just trying to see what works and copy it. Showing these video examples is so useful for where they're at right now.Ross: Another interesting thing about this is that if you make a video of an offline lesson, you must’ve had this before, you video the class and afterwards, you put the headphones on and you watch it.It's like, "I can't really hear what the students are saying." I wish the board work was clearer. I feel like offline, the video is not as good as actually being in the room.Online, of course, watching the video after the class is just as good as watching the class live or even better, because you have 100 percent accurate representation of what actually happened there.Matt: You're seeing exactly what the student sees from their perspective when you're looking at a recording of an online lesson.Whereas offline, I don't know, whenever you have a mingle activity with 20 people talking at the same time, you don't feel the excitement of those people talking. You don't get to hear what they're saying. You just hear a bunch of noise. [laughs]I feel the very nature of these online lessons, that you can observe the whole thing, what's happening with every single student at every single point, and exactly what the teacher is doing, and how they're using their board exactly, how it ties into everything together to get an overall picture of this experience that students are having.Ross: That's a lot about the actual process of the observation. Observing or having classes online, observing and giving feedback or having a discussion afterwards, also opens the door to different ways of giving feedback or at least discussing lessons that wouldn't really be possible offline.Those conversations, when they do happen face‑to‑face, can often be very emotionally‑charged because the observer might be defensive. It's called hot cognition, when you're still affected by the emotion of event itself.There's also this potential by doing an observation on line of an online class. You then open up all these possibilities for it to be a much more cold cognition and for people to be more objective about the whole process.Matt: I think online, with email as well, a lot of your tone gets lost.Ross: You've observed my class. Emailing me about it afterwards is probably not ideal. What are some of the ways of trainers and trainees or supervisors and teachers actually talking about a lesson after it's happened?Matt: I can go on Skype, or Microsoft Teams, or whatever messaging device. A lot of these, there's a function to leave a video message. With video messages, you don't miss out on some of the body language and stuff that you would in an email.Your tone and maybe supportive nature as an observer can show up whenever you're sending a video message rather than an email. The observee doesn't misconstrue what you're saying. That's the benefit of writing an email.The benefit I find over face‑to‑face feedback. When you're giving face‑to‑face feedback, it's almost a confrontation. If you, as the observer, are maybe talking about an area for improvement, it's almost like an argument, or it can be, if it gets out of hand.Whereas, by giving video messages, you can, first of all, use the observer. You can try to record it a couple times. You can make sure that you're saying it in a way that the teacher can accept it.As the observer, you can say like, "Before you respond, can you look up this article? Here's a link to an article that you can read, then I want you to compare that to what we're talking about in your lesson."Also, the teacher has the chance to watch this video, with your body language and all the benefits of video. They can sit back and think about that message for a while. They don't have to respond immediately like they would in a face‑to‑face conversation.Once they've come up with what they want to say back to you, they can send the video message back to you. You'll find that the level of conversation is actually much higher.That way, it's not such a hot debate. It's a little bit cooler. You can take more time. You can actually prepare people to come up with a better response to what it is that you're saying.Ross: Matt, thanks for joining us.Matt: My pleasure, as always.Ross: All right. We'll see you again next time, everyone. Goodbye.Matt: See you.

We hear from Matt: "There is support out there, but sometimes it's hard to know how to get it" A How Production. Music: Kai Engel.

As PGA Professionals, we’re in the business of “Growing the Game”. It’s a phrase we hear ad nauseam in our business. Grow the game at our facilities, in our Sections, and in our communities. So in order to do our job of growing the game, we develop programs for our members and customers that consist of clinics, lesson packages, golf schools, junior programs, beginner programs, the list goes on and on. However, we rarely ask the critical question. In our efforts to “Grow the Game”, are we making a lasting impact on the game by actually creating golfers? What does it even mean to create a golfer? Ryan Dailey and Matt Reagan have been asking this question, and they’ve come up with an answer. Who are Ryan and Matt? There aren’t many of you out there that don’t know, but just in case you’ve missed it, they’re two regular Golf Pros that are revolutionizing how we introduce new players to the game. Through the development and evolution of Operation 36, they’ve impacted thousands of golfers and helped Golf Professionals all over the world develop successful programs and businesses, all with an idea seemingly so simple you say “why didn’t I think of that?!”.Start from 25 yards and shoot 36 for nine holes and them move back to 50 yards. Rinse and repeat.But beyond creating a long term development model for junior golfers, they’ve set out on a mission to create one million new golfers by 2025. As audacious as that goal seems, they have a plan to reach it. And it begins with a question we should all be asking at our facilities…”How do I create a golfer?”When we ask that question first and then work backward from there, the way we structure and create our player development programs fall into place.If you’re in the planning stages for 2020, this is a fantastic conversation to help you get on the right track and truly make an impact on your facilities this year and beyond.

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

GUEST BIO: My guest on today’s show is Matt Harrison.  Matt is an instructor on Python and Data Science material.  He has been co-chair of the Utah Python user group and has presented at conferences including PyCon, OSCon and OpenWest.  Matt is also an author of a number of books about Python, including the Treading on Python Series.   EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Matt Harrison is Phil’s guest on today’s show. He is a Python and Data Science Consultant who offers customized training to corporations and startups as well as consulting services through his company MetaSnake. Over the years, he has worked with a range of languages and platforms, including Pandas, Pylons, Django, CherryPy, Postgres, AWS, SQLAlchemy, SciKit Learn, and Matplotlib. Matt was the co-chair of the Utah Python user group as well as an author and public speaker. In 2012, he published his first Python book Treading on Python Volume 1: Foundations of Python. Since then, he has published several other books and is currently busy writing more. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.02) – So Matt, can I ask you to expand on that brief intro and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Matt explains that he runs a small consulting and training company called MetaSnake. He works with businesses big and small and spends half his time speaking to very technical people teaching them Python and data science. Right now, he is working on three more books. (2.09) – Python is quite a theme, in your career, what made you choose that, in particular? The first language Matt learned was Perl. He used it for his first summer job, so became very comfortable with it.   Matt was lucky enough to work with a really smart guy. At the time, he was building on a model to pull out relevant terms for their corpus of text. The guy he was working with wanted to use Tcl to get the task done and Matt thought Perl would do a better job. So, they agreed to meet in the middle and use Python instead. At that time, it was a relatively new language. Within 3 days they had the proof of concept working. Python just gelled with him, unlike, Perl, C and Java, which he had mostly been using up to that point. (3.42) – Phil asks Matt to tell the audience more about his books, which Phil understands are mainly about Python. Matt explains that his book “Illustrated guide to Python 3” is for beginners. He has also written an intermediate book, one that covers the Pandas library and a few others. All of which are available on Amazon. (4.14) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Matt says his advice is to – get comfortable with being uncomfortable. When he was just starting out, his local Python meetup took place a couple of miles away from where he lived. But, he didn’t attend partly because it would take him outside of his comfort zone. A decision he regrets to this day. At the time, it was a very tight-knit group. Not attending meant that he ended up missing out on a lot of important interactions. Plus, he eventually ended up meeting everyone anyway. At the time he did not understand the power of interacting with others. If you want to further your career, you need to get away from your computer sometimes and mix with other people. (6.00) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. For Matt that was when he started his small vertical niche software company. A lot of firms let them liked the software. But very few of them decided to buy. In a surprising number of cases, this was because using the software would mean they would have to fire someone. A lot of the firms were small and employed family members, so they really did not want a piece of software to replace them. When Matt heard this he just said OK and moved on instead of trying another sales tactic. He knew he had a good product, but his lack of sales skills meant he could not close the deal. (8.20) – What was your best career moment? For Matt, that was when he wrote his first book in 2010. He wanted to reach more people with his training and realized he could do that as an author. His self-published book was a great success and opened a lot of doors for him. (10.00) – Phil asks if the process of writing books gets easier. Matt says yes, to a certain extent it does. Things do move faster once you have created a process that works for you. He now finds it easier to start typing and get in the flow. (10.59) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? The fact that a lot of companies are now waking up to the power of their data is exciting. There is a lot of low hanging fruit. As a result, you can make a huge difference and do so very quickly. (12.14) – What first attracted you to a career in IT? Matt always enjoyed creating things. When he was younger, he attended a lot of art classes and thought he might end up being an artist. But, a family member encouraged him to take a programming course. Once he did, he realized that there is a lot of creativity involved in most areas of technology, including in the data science field. (13.23) – What is the best career advice you have ever received? Matt says that he actually ignored the best piece of career advice he got. In 2004, he was advised to get a job at Google, but he didn’t. Fortunately, he did follow another great piece of advice, when he was told you need to network, he started doing exactly that. It is hard for a lot of programmers to network, because, by nature, many of them are introverts. In the IT world, you usually get good jobs, not because you interviewed well, but, because someone in the company knows you. So, learning to network is something everyone has to do. (14.33) – Phil points out that effective networking does not always have to happen face to face. There are plenty of online tools you can also use. Matt says that personally, he prefers face to face networking. However, he has seen people using Twitter and LinkedIn for job hunting. In fact, he tried it once and was contacted by about 40 people, so it can work. (15.43) – If you were to begin your IT career again, right now, what would you do? Matt is intrigued by the idea of taking the full-time, online immersive Computer Science courses offered by the Lambda School. They do not charge for their courses, at least not at first. Instead, you pay for your tuition once you get a job. Although, he goes on to say that he enjoyed his college experience. So, if he were to start again, he would probably still opt to attend Stanford and get a degree. His advice to someone who is just starting out would be to go and get a job at Google or somewhere similar. Work for a big company for a few years. Build up your connections and involve yourself in the community. Having a firm like Google on your resume is still something of a golden ticket. (18.40) – What are you currently focusing on in your career? For this year, Matt’s focus is growing MetaSnake. He really enjoys spending three or four days with a group of people who are motivated and excited to learn, so wants more clients. (19.53) – What is the number one non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career? Matt likes to think of himself as creative. Fortunately, when it comes to machine learning and data exploration creativity is a great skill to have. (20.31) – Phil asks Matt to share a final piece of career advice with the I.T. Career Energizer audience. Matt’s advice is to look at where you are now. Then think about where you want to be a year and five years down the line. Ask yourself what you want to achieve. It could be publishing a book, speaking at conferences, or something else. Matt has found that desire and motivation have helped him to move his career forward. BEST MOMENTS: (4.30) MATT – "Get comfortable with being uncomfortable." (5.16) MATT – "The more I network and connect with people the more value I can bring to them and the more value they can bring to me." (11.46) MATT – "There is a lot of low hanging fruit that companies can take advantage of.” (13.51) MATT – "The best career advice I have seen is to network" (20.42) MATT – "Look hard at where you are and know where you want to be." CONTACT MATT: Twitter: https://twitter.com/__mharrison__ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/panela/ Website: https://www.metasnake.com/

Join the Marriage After God movement and grab a copy of our new book today. https://marriageaftergod.com In this episode, we interview Matt & Lisa Jacobson From http://FaithfulMan.com and http://Club31Women.com & Faithful Family podcast. Here is a quote from our book Marriage After God “Your marriage is the message you are preaching to others. The way you and your spouse interact with each other reveals the gospel you believe.” Dear Lord, Thank you for creating marriage with such a significant purpose of revealing to the world your divine love. Please help us to make choices that reflect your love in the way we love one another. May we choose to walk in obedience. Thank you for your word which instructs us and shows us how we should walk in obedience. Please continue to give us wisdom and strength as we choose to walk in the Spirit and not our flesh. We pray we would make our marriage a priority. We pray we would gain a deeper understanding of how our marriage is our first ministry and the impact we have in each other’s lives and in this world, just by remaining faithful to your word. If our priorities are ever out of order or if we are not unified please help us to change course. Constantly direct our hearts to align with yours. May our marriage always be in a place where you can use us as a symbol to point others to you and may you be glorified. In Jesus’ name, amen! READ: [Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith of Marriage after God. [Lisa] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. [Aaron] And today we're in part five of the Marriage after God series, and we're gonna be talking with Matt and Lisa Jacobsen about marriage being your first ministry. [Aaron] Welcome to the Marriage after God podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife. [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution. [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. [Aaron] And so far, we have four young children. [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day. [Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life, [Aaron] Love. [Jennifer] And power [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. [Jennifer] Together. [Aaron] Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. [Jennifer] This is marriage after God. [Aaron] Hey, thanks for joining us on week five of this series that we're doing. I hope you're enjoying it. You're definitely going to enjoy today's guests. But before we move on, as always, we want to invite you to leave a review. Those reviews help the podcast get seen by new audiences. So, if you've been enjoying the content, we'd love a star rating, which is the easiest way to do it, all you gotta do is tap a star in the app. And if you really, really want to and have time, leaving us a text review would be awesome. We read every single one of 'em, and we love them, so thank you for that. [Jennifer] Another way you can support this podcast-- [Aaron] So today on this episode, we're gonna be talking about content from chapter five of our book, Marriage after God. And the chapter's titled, "Your First Ministry." and we thought, what better way to talk about this chapter than to talk with our pastors and ask them who inspired us and showed us what it looked like to recognize our marriage as ministry. And now we actually reference them and talk about them in this chapter, and so today we have Matt and Lisa Jacobson with us, welcome. [Lisa] Hey, nice to be here. [Matt] Awesome to be here, you bet. [Aaron] Yeah, and we're in our garage, sitting on our couches. And today we're gonna be talking about this topic. But before we talk about that, why don't you introduce to the audience, just in case they don't know you guys, who you are, children, marriage, all that. [Matt] Okay, well, Matt Jacobsen, and this is my lovely woman. [Lisa] Hey, hello. [Matt] Lisa, and so we've been married for 26 years. We have eight kids between the ages of 12 and about 25. [Lisa] Yup. [Matt] Right, and there are four of them are out of the house and moved on. And so, what keeps us busy when we're not just hanging out and kissing in a dark corner somewhere. [Lisa] That's right. We also, we do homeschool and we do a lot of work with our kids. Our kids help us out with what we do at home and also in our ministry. [Matt] And so, speaking of ministries. So, my website is Faithfulman.com. [Lisa] And I'm Lisa with Club31women.com. [Matt] And so that is a writing ministry that speaks to marriage, parenting, church, and culture. Biblical perspective on those things. And so, that comprises a lot of what takes up our time in a given week. And then, of course, we're the pastors of a small local fellowship as well. [Aaron] Yeah, it's our fellowship. [Matt] That's right. [Aaron] You're our pastors. And we love you guys. And by the way, if everyone listening didn't hear what those were, that's faithfulman.com and club31women.com. You guys should definitely check them out. And why don't you tell them about your newest podcast that you guys just launched? [Matt] Awesome, okay. Well, the name of that podcast is Faithful Life. And it's essentially a podcast that is pursuing the and exploring the topic of what does it mean to live as a biblical Christian. There are a lot of people in the world, lot of Christians, people who identify as Christians, who are living a life that is really separate or tangential to the Bible. And really, if you're going to be a biblical Christian, you've gotta know what the Bible says about these various aspects of life: marriage, parenting, how we're to live within church community and then how we're to interact with the culture. And so, that's the focus of the podcast, faithful-- [Lisa] With a lot of emphasis on practical ways to do that, sometimes we kinda know in our heads what the right thing to do is, or what we believe the Bible says, but then how does that look in our day-to-day life, and that's something that matt and I really have a passion for is just connecting those two things. [Matt] And a little bit of experience. It's only been, what, 26 years you've been married and walking with the Lord and learning through all of the eight children. [Aaron] So we just want everyone to check out their podcast; it's called Faithful Life. And you're gonna love it. Just search for it wherever you listen to podcasts. So, let's get into the icebreaker question. And this is how we start all the episodes. It's just a fun question. How does your spouse like their coffee and what does that say about them? [Lisa] Okay, I get to go first on this one. Because everybody that knows Matt Jacobson well knows that he likes his coffee black, but, even more importantly, he likes it burning hot so that it burns a hole in your tongue, so he, if-- [Matt] And you better not put it in a cold cup. [Lisa] Right, the best way to show love to Matt Jacobson is to heat up the cup first and then pour his coffee into it. [Matt] Wow, that's one of the ways over the years you've shown love to me. But right, so anyway-- [Lisa] In the coffee-- [Matt] No, that's right in the coffee, in the realm of coffee. And Lisa takes her coffee with a teaspoon of sugar and cream and-- [Lisa] That's right, I like it a little sweet. [Matt] She likes it a little sweet, that's right. [Aaron] And it's just like her character too. Little sweet. [Matt] And I love making coffee for her; I do. In the morning, I love making coffee. I love bringing her a cup of coffee in the morning. [Jennifer] And you guys do coffee as a family a lot, so can you just share a little bit about that 'cause I just love that. [Matt] Okay, so, why don't you tell how we've corrupted our young children? [Lisa] Well, we started off in our marriage. We started each day with having coffee. Matt would make a coffee tray for him and I, and we would sit and have coffee together. And then as each child came along, we then slowly incorporated them into this special time until it became something our whole family just loves and so even our older kids when they come home for the holidays or different vacations, they'll come and that's the thing they look forward to most is having our time together over a pot of coffee. And we just talk about what we're thinking about, what's going on in our world, and it's just a really close family time. [Matt] And you know, oh, sorry. That whole process of incorporating the kids into it. It's kind of funny because it's really a metaphor, or an example, if you will, of what happens in your family. Over time, we're very strict with the older kids. I don't even remember when we began allowing them to have coffee. Including them. I don't even remember, do you remember how old they were? [Lisa] No. [Matt] But, as time went on, the younger kids just get to start earlier and earlier. And I think we started, did Hawkin have his first? [Lisa] He was about seven or eight maybe-- [Aaron] It was a bottle right? [Lisa] When he had his first cup of coffee. [Matt] That's right. [Lisa] A very, very tiny cup of coffee, mostly milk. [Jennifer] Mostly milk, yeah. [Matt] Yeah, right, and so now we're going, okay, so. [Lisa] Almost because their dad's kind of soft on the issue. [Matt] I am; I am. [Jennifer] I was just gonna say, I follow Lisa on Instagram, and I love watching your stories because you'll post about it every once in a while of just your guys' family time around that, and it's beautiful and you can just tell, just from that short glimpse that you give the rest of us that it's a really beautiful time that you're cultivating in your family. [Matt] And in some senses, like you see the snapshot, and it is awesome, it really is. But, it's just so normal, a part of life, and a wonderful life is built on a lot of normal moments that you just string together over time. [Jennifer] Mm-hmm, it's true, yeah, it's good. [Matt] And so, yeah. [Aaron] Yeah, there's the big one-offs that are memorable, but then there's the, it's the everyday things that shape who we are, it's all those habits that we have and those routines. I love that. Why don't you share the quote from the chapter? And then we'll just start asking questions. [Jennifer] Okay, so this is from chapter five of Marriage after God. "Your marriage is the message you are preaching to other, "the way you and your spouse interact with each other "reveals the gospel you believe." [Aaron] Matt and Lisa, how would you that that is true in what you guys have experienced, because it's something that you've definitely not only shown us through your own marriage, but also directly have shown us in ours in saying hey, you can't expect to have this ministry over here if your home doesn't match. So could you give me some insight on how this quote plays out in real life? [Matt] Well, one of the things that you just naturally see in life is you see people in ministry and what's the big joke in America, at least it used to be, I don't know if it still is, who are the worst kids in church? The PKs, the preacher's kids, right? And so, that is so antithetical to how we're called to live in the word of God because we are called ambassadors. That means that we are representatives of the kingdom of God on earth. We bear the name of Christ, and we're his representatives. And how is it possible that you have this ministry or you have this public presence, and then it's not true in your own personal life. You wanna tell somebody about the wonderful truths of Scripture. And you wanna tell somebody the gospel and explain to them how they can have a wonderful relationship with the Lord. And then you don't have, you're not living those wonderful relationships in your family. I know that we had seen a lot of this early on. And we were even involved in a particular church, years and years ago, they were lovely people but focused just on evangelism and kinda lost the relationships with their kids over time. We just saw-- [Lisa] And in their marriage. [Matt] This family's disintegrating. And the marriage is. Then we though, you know what, the life that we're called to as believers is much more holistic than that. And the truths of the gospel are supposed to be manifest in our lives. And if I could just say one more thing. I know you've got a lot to say, too. You see in the instructions for church leadership in the book of 1 Timothy, one of the principal requirements of anybody in ministry and this is serving as an elder or a deacon within the church. [Aaron] Yes, specific position. [Matt] One of the principal requirements is that you've demonstrated that your children have yielded hearts to you. You're governing your family well. You're leading your family well. There's a sense of order and peace in your home. So God wants it to be true at home before we go out to represent him to the world. [Aaron] And what does Paul tell Timothy, he says how can you presume to manage the household of God if you can't manage your own home, which is how he, after all that teaching, he says that it doesn't make sense. [Matt] Yeah. [Lisa] And I think that Matt's kind of big picture guy. And I'm more of what does that look like in my day kind of person. And one thing I had noticed that in Scripture, when it talks about how we are to be towards one another, how we're to be, to be loving, patient, kind. And we apply all of those things to out there. So, just an example: I go to the grocery store, and the cashier's taking forever to get me through the line. And she apologizes, but I've read the Bible, so I'm going to be, oh it's fine, I'll wait. I understand you're trying your hardest, and we'll get through here because I'm being patient, and I'm being kind. And then I go home, and I have a different response when it takes Matt forever to come out and help me bring in the groceries in the house. Or, because I'll be snippin' at him-- [Matt] Has that ever happened, like even one time in our marriage? [Lisa] Like I wait for you? Do you really wanna bring that up? [Aaron] Everyone listening was like that was just today. [Lisa] So, but it really struck home to me that all those things that we think apply to out there to strangers or maybe to friends. It somehow, or maybe there's a disconnect, to actually sometimes the hardest person, sometimes, is actually the person your married to. [Jennifer] I was just gonna say, thinking about our own marriage. I used to do this thing where I would always be upbeat and positive and smiley with everyone. And then I'd come home and immediately my countenance would change, and Aaron-- [Aaron] I finally called you out on it, I was like-- [Jennifer] Yeah, 'cause Aaron would be like-- [Aaron] Why do they get the smiles and then I get this? [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] What is this? [Jennifer] And then I remember specifically him saying, I want your best. And I had to figure it out. I had to figure out why I was doing that and check my flesh on it really. [Aaron] Well, I think there's a default position of, well, I have you, therefore you should deal with who I actually wanna be today, and everyone else has to, I want them to see the best part of me. It's almost like it's just totally backwards. And it's actually lying. [Matt] Well, the harsh reality of the circumstance is who you actually are in terms of your personal character is who you are when the doors are shut and you're letting your hair down, so to speak, and you're just being your natural self with the people where the consequences might not be as immediate or severe as they might be if you do this in public. And so, that's the reality of who we are. And so, it's important to take stock on those things. How am I with the people that I'm closest to because those are the people that we tend to take for granted and those are the circumstances that we tend to be a little less guarded. [Aaron] Now that you're saying that, I'm thinking, it's actually probably infinitely less damaging to be that kind of person in public, when people they may be offended for the moment, but they're gonna forget your face in like eight seconds 'cause they don't live with you than the person that we literally spend hours and hours a day and our lifetime with: our children, our spouse. We sacrifice the main thing for the non-main thing. [Matt] Totally, and that's of course humanly speaking, in terms of the cost, over the long-term. [Aaron] Yeah, publicly. [Matt] But relative to the Lord's perspective on these relations, he wants it to be the same everywhere. [Aaron] Yeah. [Matt] He wants us to be loving and in the spirit everywhere with the people, especially close to us, but also with everybody else that we're interacting with. [Aaron] Or repentant if we're not. [Jennifer] Yeah, yeah, there is grace Right? [Aaron] Which changes us. [Matt] Well, you know what, you brought up the R word: repentance. And that is such an important word and such an abused word in our Christian religious world because repentance has a specific meaning. It's a word that has a definition. And we cut ourselves so much slack and we dip back into the same sins over and, how about this, just this sin we're talking about here where we're not being kind to our spouse, but we've got it for everybody else. And, oh, I'm sorry I shouldn't have done that. Please forgive me. And Lord, I was unkind to my wife, please forgive me. I should have been more kind. And then we go on our day, and then I do it again. And then I do it again. Have I repented if I just keep walking in that same sin? [Aaron] No, you've apologized. [Matt] I've apologized, right? [Aaron] You're sorry for being-- [Matt] Because to repent means I used to do that, and now I'm doing this. It means to turn from, that's the definition of the word. And it's such a good word for Christians, all of us, to really wrestle with, and say, you know what, have I really repented and forsaken that sin? Because that's what it means to walk as God would have us as a couple and not to just keep going back, over and over and over again. [Aaron] I think of this quote. I'm not gonna say who said it, but someone in our family used to say, "If you were sorry, you wouldn't have done it." That's kind of the idea; we say sorry over and over and over again. But in reality, our heart hasn't changed. We're just allowing something, whether we're intentionally doing something. We're not intentionally walking in the spirit, so therefore, we're defaulting to walking in the flesh, and we haven't repented of anything. This is something that I had to recognize in my life with certain sin in my life was I was sorry, but usually I was sorry for the shame or the regret or being caught or the remorse I see in your face or the pain I've caused you, Jennifer, but I'd never had been sorry for my sin which is what leads to repentance, and then I change and walk in that. So thanks for bringing that clarity. [Matt] Yeah, absolutely. And so to come full circle on your question, what does it mean to have a marriage that is reflecting the gospel? Well, if you have a marriage that is the kind of marriage that someone else is interested in, then you're not creating this incredible disconnect in the mind of the person that you're sharing the gospel with because what are you inviting them to? If the gospel hasn't affected and hasn't made your marriage beautiful, what are you inviting them to? Here we are married, and we have a bad, bickering, difficult, challenging marriage, and I'm out there telling somebody that Jesus loves them and died for them. It's so critical 'cause as we, and I know you guys have talked about on your podcast and certainly in your book, that your marriage is the gospel you're preaching, that is the gospel you're preaching. And the power of your message will not be one iota stronger or more influential than is the meaning and the love and the strength of your marriage relationship. [Jennifer] That's so good. I hope everyone hits rewind and just listens to that a few times. [Aaron] Yeah, and let's take marriage out of the picture, just in the Christian individual's life. If the gospel's not true in our life, so for me, when I was walking in my addiction to pornography, and I wasn't repentant of it, I thought I was, I was sorry for it; I was sorry for what it did to me, but I wasn't truly repentant of it. I could never tell someone that Christ came to bring freedom, which is what the Bible teaches us, that's the fruit of the gospel. [Matt] There you go. [Aaron] Because I couldn't walk in freedom. Like you said, I'm literally showing them, like, hey, here's God, he's awesome-- [Jennifer] He's powerless. [Aaron] He's powerless. [Jennifer] In my life. [Matt]right. [Aaron] He can't, and this isn't about just all of the sudden everything being healed and perfect and great, but this is definitely the truth of freedom from sin and death, which is what the Bible teaches, which is what Christ came to destroy. He took the power away from it. [Matt] Absolutely. [Aaron] But he doesn't have that in my life. Therefore, you should love God and believe in Jesus, but he can't actually do anything for the core of who you are. He can't change your physical situation or your spiritual situation, but, you know what, he's the thing you should believe in. It just doesn't make any sense. [Matt] No, it doesn't. We just need to remember that even if we're not saying anything, even if we're not on the street corner, preaching the gospel. We're preaching a sermon every time we walk out the door together. We're preaching a sermon. We're literally saying, this is what it means to be a Christian man and a Christian woman. Whether you mean to or not, you're preaching a sermon. The question is, what's the message that you're giving other people? [Jennifer] And how, can you explain, just for those people listening, how are they giving that message to other people? [Matt] It tends to be if you're living in a town and you've got your immediate circle and then you've got your circle of influence, the people you interact with, the people at the bank, the people at the gas station, the people at the grocery store, they know, over the course of time, they know whether you're a Christian or not. It just becomes evident that that is who you are. People probably don't realize it, but as somebody who identifies as a Christian, people watch you a little closer. They tend to want to just scrutinize you a little bit, or when we're at a restaurant. [Lisa] I was gonna say, what I was thinking about was how many times we've been in an airplane, traveling together, in a restaurant together, we have been stopped so many times by people we didn't even realize were watching us, someone who's serving us or the flight attendant, and said, you know, you two are just such a loving couple. And they could just see the way we were just interacting. And so people do notice that. And often times, especially at a restaurant, they'll see that we've prayed, so they also know that we're believers. And we've had a lot of opportunities to share the gospel with those people just even based on their observation of us. [Aaron] Well, it's uncommon. It's uncommon; it's normal to have cold relationships and being on the phones. It's uncommon to see engagement and true infatuation and adoration or-- [Lisa] Yeah, like the last time we were on a flight, we had a flight attendant come to us at the end of the flight, it was a long flight. And she said, "You know, the other flight attendants and I "were all talking about you two." Really? We're not that interesting. [Matt] Well, we were kissing, I mean. We were getting along kissing. [Lisa] That's right; that's right. And they were just observing how we were with each other, and how cute it was and thought we were maybe somewhat newly married. And I'm like, "Oh, no, we've been married 26 years, "and we have eight kids." Like, no way, yeah, really. [Aaron] And you're still in love? [Lisa] Yeah, yeah, it was really astonishing. [Matt] And you mentioned something about praying in a restaurant. And I know a lot of people listening probably do. It's probably less common these days than it has been in the past, but a lot of people still bow their heads and pray in a restaurant. Personally, I love doing that. I love just the witness: I'm a Christian, and I'm gonna give God thanks for this food. So I like doing that. But if you're somebody out there who does that, can I just encourage you to leave a fat, hog tip? Okay, because-- [Lisa] It's like a bonus. [Aaron] It is a bonus. [Matt] Because you've literally hoisted your flag at the table, I'm a Christian, and so, leave a great taste in your waiter's or server's mouth. [Aaron] It's a little sacrifice. [Matt] It's so small, yeah, so small. So small, but it's a good testimony, too. Just to say, you know what, love the Lord, and oh, by the way, God bless you. [Aaron] Going back to the, I think that's a great little bit of advice of how to spread the love of God. Like, hey, we love God and we just wanted to bless you, thank you-- [Matt] And certainly if it's a place that you go back more than once. [Jennifer] Yeah, that's true. [Aaron] Oh yeah! [Matt] You have struck up, well you've created an opportunity to strike up a conversation with the person because they're, well, first of all, they're business people, right? They wanna make money. So they wanna serve you well, and it's just an opportunity, that's all. Just an opportunity, if you're going to pray, then by all means, please don't complain about the food. [Aaron] I was gonna say that actually. There's certain Christiany things that we do, maybe we were raised that way, and we just pray. We're Christians, we love God, we pray. But then, let's say we're bickering at the table, or we are being super rude to the waiters, or our kids are throwing food on the floor and silverware. That is a part of our witness. [Lisa] It is. [Aaron] How we are. And they're like, you did the thing that I thought you were gonna do. They're looking for us to fail. [Jennifer] To fail, right. [Aaron] Doesn't mean we're not gonna fail, but the majority of the time, our hearts should be aware of how we're being, which goes back to that marriage being your ministry. You guys had this awesome, oh, people noticed us, and they stopped us and said thank you. We've had the other side of it. And no one's actually confronted us and saw us fighting, but we've had people message us after the fact. We've mentioned this a few times. And like, "Hey, we saw you in the store. "I didn't stop and say hi, but just wanted to say hi." And they'd message us on Instagram. And then we were like, "Oh my gosh, I think we were, were we fighting?" [Jennifer] This was a long time ago; we've gotten better since then. This was a long time ago. [Aaron] It made us aware, man, like, well, A, we have a social media presence, but it doesn't matter if you do. Like if you're a Christian, there's people that know you. You have friends, you have neighbors, you have, and people that may not know you personally, they're gonna see you regularly in your small town, or big town, I guess, because you frequent the same places. What kind of fragrance as a couple and as Christians do we give in this world where we say one thing and act a different way? That's literally what hypocrisy is. We talk about this, actually, in this chapter. We talk about, we're gonna ask you a question in a second, another question, but it doesn't make any sense if we're trying to minister in other ways, and then in the home, there is no real ministry happening. And so, question for you guys is are marriages being a ministry, and being our first ministry, because it's our first one another, our closest neighbor, we always like to say is our spouse and then our kids and everyone else. Are there marriages that are exempt from this? Well, this husband, he's a minister, and he doesn't actually have time to be focused on his family. Or a wife that's doing this thing over here for God, and she doesn't have time to serve her home and children. Are there marriages that are exempt from this? Why or why not? [Lisa] I don't know that there are exemptions in that sense although Matt might want to address that, but what that's come to mind, I do have many women write me who are in a marriage situation where the spouse is not a believer or at least not walking with God. And I know that that's a greater challenge, and I wouldn't want to put undue burden on that couple, especially the one that's trying to be faithful, and the other is not walking that way. There has to be grace for that, and the one person has to, you know, scripture tells us to keep quiet and just keep shining the light of Christ in their home. But I also wouldn't want to feel like, oh, I can't minister to others now because my spouse is not walking in truth right now. [Matt] And the way I would look at that is the Bible teaches us what is normal and how we are to walk as normal Christians in this world. And when it comes to marriage, what's normal is the way Jesus loves the church, his bride. That's how we're supposed to love our bride. That's normal. And that instruction, love your wife as Christ loved the church, that's not a special instruction for somebody who happens to be in the public eye. That is an instruction for absolutely every Christian man, every man who stands up and says, I follow Lord; I have committed my life to Christ. I have repented of my sin, and I'm a Christian. Every man who has said that should have a wife who says, I'm the most cherished woman I know. And no man is exempt from that. And so, here's the thing, if a church lays claim to being full of godly men, then there's one thing you know for sure, it's full of cherished wives. You cannot have one without the other. You cannot be a godly man and not cherish your wife. And so in that sense, I would say nobody's exempt from this, but, of course, we live in a broken world with lots of relationships and circumstances, and people have struggled. And God has grace for those things. But in those circumstances, the person, whatever they are, wherever they fall on the spectrum, difficult and virtually sad and very challenging to not that bad, wherever they are in the spectrum, their job is to draw near to God and walk as closely to God as he wants them, as he desires them to, and to seek them in those circumstances. But I appreciate you bringing that up because there are lot of people, lots of wives, lots of husbands, a husband called us recently. His wife left, he's got, I think they've got five kids. One of the kids has Down's Syndrome, and the wife's just like, "I'm done." And she left, and he didn't want her to leave, he tried to love her right up through, for several years, up to point where she left. He himself has remained faithful and has a ministry even though she's left, so it's true, it's not that you don't have a ministry. It's just that God provides his standards and principles and requirements for Christian men, for Christian wives, and for marriage. And then sin comes in and everything else is an exception to the rule, but the rule is every man is to cherish his wife in the way Jesus Christ loves the church. [Aaron] So, I do appreciate Lisa that you brought that up, too, because I'm sure that we have people that listen, and one of the spouses is not walking, is not a believer, and we get, praise God, he gives provision for this in his word, in 1 Peter, he shows, it's funny because it's to the wife, it's almost like he knew that men were gonna be more prone to this, not being faithful, which is sad, but it's true. But even then I think, you're right, that it doesn't mean they can't have ministry outside of the home because their marriage isn't in order correctly faith wise, but that doesn't mean that their first ministry still isn't their spouse. Like you said, they still have a call, the wife or the husband, to serve and love their spouse the way the Bible has called them to, faithfully, whether they receive it or not, of course. And that's also, I don't wanna say qualifies, I don't know if that's the right word, but, it still prepares them to do ministry outside their home because it's in order. Instead of, I'm not going to love my husband or my wife like this because they're treating me this way, but I am gonna go love over here, that's not gonna produce the kind of fruit that God's looking for. But I did appreciate that. I think it's totally relevant to recognize that there are these non-ideal marriages. [Matt] You know, and one of the things that might be important to mention here is wherever you are on the spectrum: you have a spectacular marriage all the way to it's terrible. We tend to fall into this wrong thought process that goes something like this: you're walking in sin; therefore, I can't help being the way I am. [Lisa] Oh, now, that's a good point. [Matt] And the fact of the matter is is the way you act has nothing to do with my capacity as a believer to walk in holiness. [Lisa] Right, no that's-- [Matt] And we kinda cut ourselves a little slack there, don't we? 'Cause if you're a certain way, well then that gives me license to be another way in response-- [Aaron] Yeah, if you only respected me, I would treat you or love you as Christ loves the church. [Matt] That's right, and every one of us has the capacity according to the word of God to walk in holiness, irrespective of how our spouse is walking. Now we certainly make it easier, right? If we're walking in holiness for the other person. But, we can't blame our distance from God on how someone else has chosen to act. [Aaron] Amen. [Jennifer] Taking a look into your guys' marriage. You know, you've been married quite a while. So go back to the beginning. Was there a learning curve in your guys' relationship on how to love and respect each other and cherish each other in that? [Matt] OH, absolutely. I was the most loving husband in the world. The only problem-- [Aaron] That's a real laugh, by the way. [Matt] The only-- [Lisa] Revisionist history, I think that's what it's-- [Matt] The only problem with it is I was loving Lisa in the way that said love to me. [Lisa] Oh, that's true. [Matt] We'd like to tell the story, in fact, we tell it on our own podcast. We just have this crazy story where I literally am superman husband, okay? I am helping out with everything. [Lisa] It's our first year of marriage. [Matt] First year of marriage. I am helping out with everything. I am helping with, not the laundry, you wouldn't let me touch the laundry 'cause she said, nope, that's mine; I will do the laundry. Everything else, the vacuuming, folding the laundry. [Lisa] Cleaning the bathrooms. [Matt] Cleaning the bathrooms, everything else, the dishes, everything, I'm helping, I'm helping. I'm doing it all, and I'm thinking-- [Lisa] And I'm getting madder and madder and-- [Matt] And she's over in the kitchen. And there's the flames, you know, the ones coming out of her eyes, are visible from across the room, and I-- [Aaron] Although I have never seen Lisa angry before, so I couldn't-- [Lisa] Oh, I'm capable. [Matt] And I thought, what is wrong with this woman? You can't find five guys in the entire state of Oregon that do the things that I do with a willing heart, and I'm trying to bless you, you're just, there's nothing that will make you happy. You can't be blessed; I don't know what your problem is. And so, she just takes the towel, and she almost busts a dish on me as she sets the plate down on the counter. And then she takes the towel and throws it on the counter. [Lisa] Thank you. [Matt] And I'm going, what in the world. She turns to me, and she goes, "I just don't know why you don't love me." [Lisa] True story. [Aaron] What's happening? [Matt] And I'm going, okay, am I losing my mind here? And I'm going, you've gotta be kid, you've literally got to be kidding me. [Lisa] So my thinking is I can vacuum, I can clean the bathrooms, anybody can do that. But there's only one guy in my life that can take me out and spend some time with me and listen to my thoughts. [Aaron] Look in my eyes-- [Lisa] Yes! [Aaron] And talk to me. [Lisa] And so he could just feel my frustration over time. So, the more frustrated he would feel-- [Matt] I would try harder. [Lisa] The more he'd vacuum. [Matt] I'd do more! [Lisa] And I'm just like, put the stupid vacuum down. I just want to spend time with yo. [Matt] So I'm going, wow, that's easy. [Lisa] Yeah. [Matt] Who knew love was that easy? So in our case, it was just me taking the initiative to say, okay, we're gonna go out at such-and-such a day, and it didn't matter what it was. We'd go for a walk; we could go have a cup of coffee. And I mean, at any time you as a husband tell your wife, "Hey, I just wanna spend some time with you." You can turn one cup of coffee into an awesome date. You really can. [Lisa] It doesn't take much. [Matt] It doesn't take much. You talk about learning curve, absolutely we had to learn each other and what was important to you and what was important to me and this is so true in absolutely every area of marriage. For instance, we've given you the for instance in terms of the learning curve, but in terms of discovering what it is your spouse is interested in, what they like, what's important to them. There's a very, very interesting way of finding out. [Aaron] You ask. [Matt] You ask a question! Yeah, yeah, and it's such a great thing to do because you know what happens when I turn to you and I ask you a question about you. [Lisa] Yeah. [Matt] Who doesn't like talking about themselves? Who doesn't like being known and explored and discovered. Who doesn't like someone being interested in them. So that's what we do when we turn to our spouse and say, okay, I wanna ask you a question. I wanna ask you what are three things that I can do that would make you feel loved? So that's just the normal stuff of marriage. But you know what? And you can even take it right into the subject of sex. And you can say, what are things that you enjoy when we come together physically? What are some of those things? Because, you know what, we tend to love the other person with the things that we want. [Lisa] I think that sometimes people boil this down to love languages, which is interesting and helpful. But what we're talking about is so much more than a love language, for one thing, those things change over time. It depends when the season when we had four kids, five and under, the vacuum really helped a lot, and I had a, not that I still didn't want to go out, [Aaron] Right, in that season, that was much more loving. [Lisa] Yeah, it was loving; it did mean a lot. [Matt] And physical touch when we had five kids. What would the age's spread have been with our five kids? [Lisa] Yeah, six and under. [Matt] Five kids six and under. Physical touch was less important to her in those years. [Lisa] Imagine that. [Matt] You know? She's got kids. You got enough of that. [Jennifer] Her tank is full. [Matt] Yeah, I'm touching 24/7, exactly. Right, so it does change over time. [Lisa] So instead of thinking of it as big subjects of love language, think of it as who you are as a person and where are you at today, where are you at in this season, where are you at in your life right now. And that involves that continual seeking and pursuing and asking. [Jennifer] So continual even after 26 years. Like you guys are still asking? [Matt] Absolutely. [Aaron] You have gotten there yet? [Matt] Absolutely. [Aaron] You haven't gotten to the-- [Matt] No, we're seeking each other all the time. And you know what? [Jennifer] And it's fun, right? [Lisa] It is. [Matt] It is fun, absolutely fun. And the thing is, if you love the other person, it's not a burden to do it. You actually want to know where they're at. You wanna know where their heart is at. [Lisa] And I think it can even be in somewhat negative things like say, I notice something triggers Matt into a bad mood or just like a dark, you know. And it used to be, when we were younger, that would just like, oh, fine, if you're gonna be in a bad mood, then I'll just stay away from you. I'm not saying those things, but that was my basic attitude. And I feel like over the years, now, let's say something like that happens, which it does, then I can say, I noticed, like something happened, you know, we had a good start today, and then something kind of went sideways. You wanna tell me about that? Did something happen or did I say something? Not in a defensive way, but just really, we've had some really good conversations about that. He'd go, "You know, I wasn't aware of that." Sometimes even going back to your childhood. As a child, my mom treated me a certain way, so now whenever I hear this phrase, it takes me back to a time when I didn't feel cared for. [Aaron] Yeah. [Lisa] And you're thinking, oh, well, I didn't mean to [Aaron] I know how it feels. [Lisa] communicate that I didn't care for you. But I can see that that would translate to that. And now I know, and I can be more mindful of that. [Aaron] And lovingly. Just the loving hey, is everything okay? Not because you're bothered by it. [Lisa] Yes. [Aaron] But because you're concerned for it. [Lisa] Yes. [Aaron] Which then, I'm sure, Matt, you would experience. There's been times that I don't even know why I'm brooding. It just takes a moment to be checked on it. And then I'm like, oh, I actually don't know why I'm brooding right now; I actually do feel irritated. I don't know why. Which it totally could be a hormonal thing, it could be a something I ate, and maybe there's something spiritual going on that we need to be praying through, but that approach of not taking it personally because we do that. Why are you doing this around me? I was in a great mood, now you just brought me down. But rather, helper, but for each, an actual concern. Hey, is everything alright? That was a really good bit of advice. I think everyone listening is gonna be loving these tips because this is 26 years of you guys learning this. We're only 12 in, what is that? We're not even half. [Matt] It'll go quick; it'll go quick. [Aaron] We are halfway to the kids, though. [Matt] Oh, that's right. [Lisa] Yeah. [Matt] And you got started earlier than we did. [Aaron] We got started earlier, so we might bypass you So you guys'll [Matt] Outpace us, yeah, that's right. But then there's adoption, we can stay ahead of 'em. [Aaron] It's true, that's true. So I'm loving these tips. And it all plays back into this. Right now, you're talking about how you guys minister to each other. Loving each other, cultivating intimacy, the communication, the strong bond which allows us, then, it frees us to be more able to minister outside the home. Not that it can't happen, but when you guys are so connected, so close, there's more freedom, and less internal turmoil. [Matt] I might even say it a little differently. I would say what it does is it authenticates the message. [Aaron] That's perfect. [Matt] And you know, we see this principle, well not just principle, we see this exact teaching in the high priestly prayer that Jesus prays in John 17 where he's saying, their unity, let them be one as we are one, Jesus is praying. Let them, his followers, those who come to Christ, who come to a repentance and become the children of God. Let them be one as we are one that the world might believe that you have sent me. The unity that we have, the oneness that we have is the authentication of the message of Christ that he came from the Father. And so, that's so true in the church as a whole, and it's absolutely true in marriage. When we're walking in love, when we're walking in unity, when we're exuding that, where we go through life, it authenticates the message when we do speak the truth of the gospel to someone. [Lisa] And not just out there, but in our own homes, to our kids. [Matt] Oh, that's just so true. [Lisa] When your kids are little, you can kinda get away with it, or at least you think you are. [Aaron] We think we think we are. [Lisa] Believe me, as they get older, they'll tell the world what it's really like at home. They'll tell their friends. [Matt] They do. [Lisa] I'm just saying because it's reality. And the opposite is true, too, that if you are loving each other, it's a witness to them, it's an encouragement to them. Our kids all want to get married. They want to have that kind of marriage. And that's a huge blessing. One of the things that we recently asked one of our older daughters, who's in her twenties. I think it was a Father's Day thing. What do you like most about your dad? She said that, "He loves Mom so well." And it was such a beautiful testimony that yeah, they're watching, they know whether you have loved each other in those quiet moments. [Aaron] Well, when you think about it, almost everyone probably listening, when they look back and they think about their home and how they were raised, I'm sure a lot of them, being raised in Christian homes or not, maybe heard the Bible, but did they see it? Did they see the Bible; did they see the gospel? They don't remember what they ate. They don't remember all the places they've been. But they definitely remember how Mom and Dad were together. They definitely remember how Mom and Dad treated them. And that's where the ministry in our home comes in. 'Cause I've told Jennifer this. I said, Jennifer, all of these things that we have, Unveiled Wife, Husband Revolution, our podcast. I said all of that means absolutely nothing if my kids don't know the Lord. And so, not just our ministry to each other that we have a healthy marriage and that we're godly, and that we love each other and respect each other and honor each other and cherish each other and serve each other, but that my kids see it. And that they recognize what we're doing and why we're doing it, and that at the end of the day, they look back and they say thank you to us, not because of us alone, but because we were obedient. I want my kids to say that. I want my kids to say, "Mom and Dad loved each other. "I just know it; they loved me, and they showed me "who God was and they lived it every day. "They didn't just use their words." As James says, don't just be hearers only, but doers of the word. Are we just listening and not doing? Are we just telling and doing the opposite? The do what I say, not what I do? [Lisa] Right, right. [Matt] Do what I say, not what I do. It works every time, just not the way the parent thought it was going to work. [Aaron] Exactly and so I just, going back to that, that's what I want everyone listening to understand. The main purpose of this chapter in the book, is, and it's early on in the book, it's chapter five, and it's setting this idea of we could want to do lots of things for God, but God wants us to do what he's told us to do. And if we can't be faithful with the little thing, and the little thing is our children, our spouse, our home, this is a little picture of the world. If I can't minister to my wife and love her as Christ loves the church, I have no right going and loving a stranger like that. I could. [Matt] I think what we do is we tend to think like, I know what you're saying, as this is the little thing, so to do the big thing. I actually think that reality is kind of on its head. [Aaron] Okay. [Matt] I think the big thing we're doing is we're being faithful with our spouses, we're being faithful in discipling our children. And it's a great, big deal, and see-- [Aaron] Man, I heard that, yeah. [Matt] If the church had been teaching and focusing on that these past, what, I dunno, however many years. [Aaron] 60 or 70 years. [Matt] Would the church be in the state that it's in today with disintegrating families and churches filled with unfulfilled marriages and disappointments and divorce and all of those things. It's a great big deal. And if we're faithful here, God can entrust with ministry elsewhere. [Jennifer] In chapter 14 of the book, we talk about how what God sees as extraordinary is so different than what the world deems extraordinary. When we look at our own lives, it is that day-to-day, all those little choices of discipling our children, being faithful to one another, that is extraordinary because that is where God is working. [Aaron] Especially today, it's normal, you brought up the word normal, it's common, that's what it is, it's common in the world for there to be divorce and unfaithfulness and children who are rebellious and hate their parents. It is extraordinary and remarkable now even though it should be normal for a marriage to have love in it. [Matt] Well, that's just it. [Aaron] The gospel. [Matt] It is normal, biblical marriage to have a loving, close, wonderful, fulfilling, enjoyable, beautiful oneness in marriage. That is normal Christianity; that's normal marriage. The problem is, is we see what's common around us in the world, and we get used to what's common, and start thinking that that's normal, but it's not. If you have a biblical perspective, if you walk God's way, and your marriage reflects God's priorities and principles, then you're gonna have an awesome, wonderful, beautiful, loving, enjoyable marriage because that's what a normal Christian marriage really is. [Jennifer] And the power of God's testimony in your life is actually powerful. [Matt] Absolutely, right, exactly. [Aaron] Well, people can't argue with it. I mean, they can argue with anything. We were just talking about this. When you're around people that are walking a certain way, makes it easier to believe that you can too. That goes both ways. So when you see someone, and you're like man they're, like the stewardesses looking at you. They don't your whole story, but they know the story they just saw. You're not faking it when you're sitting in the aisle, whatever row you're in and like, oh we want everyone to see that we're perfect. We have this smile on because you can't fake it. [Matt] Yeah. [Aaron] Everyone fakes it, and no one falls for it. Like, oh-- [Jennifer] Maybe for a short flight, but not long one like you said. [Aaron] Yeah, the short flight's, but yeah. [Matt] That's right. [Aaron] And again, we keep going back to this. God's not interested in just us having a happy marriage and a healthy marriage. [Matt] No. [Aaron] For the sake of happy and healthy marriage. That's not an end game. [Matt] That's exactly right. [Aaron] It's the means to the end, like you said. It's what, what was the word you used? It verifies, no-- [Matt] Authenticates. [Aaron] It authenticates. [Matt] Yeah. [Aaron] What's sad and still is very powerful to realize is when we're not it doesn't make God the liar. It makes us the liar. [Matt] It reminds me or brings to mind that phrase. Having a form of godliness, but denying the power. 'Cause you look at it from a galloping horse at 100 yards, and it looks like Christianity. It looks like something that's related to God and related to the Bible. But then you get close and you see, well, no, actually. It's not real; it's not true, and that's when we see the disintegration in the next generation when the kids are like, I don't want any part of that. Again, you just can't hide that. And especially, you mentioned, Lisa, you said, yeah, you can't hide it, your kids will absolutely tell the story and we know of a family. The snapshot looks amazing, and nobody would know this, but their kids told us recently, oh yeah, our parents yell all the time. And you'd never know it, but the kids know it. And the kids are now talking; they're all older now. And now they're saying, oh, no, no, no, no. Parents yell all the time. So that's why it's gotta be true there because if you're out witnessing, if you're that parents, and it could be yelling or bickering or fighting or cheating on your taxes or any number of things, but if you're that parent, and in the gas stations, you're telling a guy, oh, hey, the Lord Jesus Christ died for you, and God loves you, and he wants you to have a relationship. The kid is sitting there going, "Are you kidding me?" it's so important that for the things that we say to be true about how we live. It's called not being a hypocrite, and your kids can figure it out at a very early age. [Aaron] All of this was so good. I'm encouraged; it makes me think about my marriage even though we're constantly working on it, I just think, man, I wanna-- Makes me think [Jennifer] Of the kids. [Aaron] Yeah, I wanna pursue you more. I want to constantly be doing that for the sake of our outward ministry and for the sake of our home, so thank you for these stories, the openness with us. We're gonna ask you our question that we're asking everyone. What is your definition of a marriage after God? [Lisa] I think that it's that ever growing a deeper love for each other. And it doesn't have to be perfect. I think sometimes we just go, well, it's perfect, so we throw our hands, or it's not perfect, so we throw our hands up. Instead of thinking, no, I'm gonna move forward in this. And I'm gonna grow in these areas. I can even think of things I have struggled with. Believe it or not, I do have a temper. And Matt has the ability, somehow, to press that button better than anybody else I know. [Matt] Well, I mean, just on a boring Saturday. I mean if there's nothing else to do. [Lisa] Press my buttons. So I'll find myself reacting to him, and I will stop myself literally mid-sentence and go, wait, it's like, yep, like okay. [Aaron] That's a good-- [Lisa] What I wanted say was. I didn't quite the first two seconds or minutes, however the situation was, wasn't right. But checking myself and going, okay, but that's not who I wanna be. That's how I was, but that's not who I wanna be anymore, so I wanna try again. And giving each other that grace to grow, but being determined to change and not say, this is not who I wanna be; I do want us to be loving close. [Matt] And for me, I think I would boil it down. I mean, that's a huge subject, right? And there's so many facets to it. But I would boil it down to this. The fundamental understanding that my marriage is what God is doing in the world. It's not what I'm doing in the world. It's not the thing that I have; I have a marriage. My marriage is what God is doing in the world. The Bible says what God has put together let no man put asunder. This is something God is doing, and so if you have that basic, fundamental faith about this relationship, it's a foundation and a starting point for moving forward. [Jennifer] Thank you guys so much for joining us today. This has just been, like Aaron said, incredible and inspiring. If people were inspired today and they want to follow you more, can you just remind them where they can find you? [Lisa] We have a podcast, Faithful Life. And we'd love to have you join us over there. And we also, both of us have a website. Matt has faithfulman.com, and I have club31women.com. [Matt] And then you're also on Instagram, club31women and faithfulman, on Instagram, so you can find us there as well. [Aaron] Everyone listening, definitely go follow them, they are golden. [Jennifer] If you like Marriage after God, and you like what we share, you're definitely gonna like them. [Aaron] We actually just steal all of our content from them and repurpose them. They have been integral in the growth and maturity in our life. And so, we appreciate you guys. [Jennifer] Thank you. [Aaron] And we thank you for not only sharing with our audience now, but for sharing with us over the last five years. [Lisa And Matt] We love you guys. [Aaron] That we've known you guys. So, we're gonna close out with a prayer. Jennifer's gonna pray and then, yeah. [Jennifer] Dear Lord, thank you for creating marriage with such a significant purpose of revealing to the world your divine love. Please help us to make choices that reflect your love in the way we love one another. May we choose to walk in obedience. Thank you for your word which instructs us and shows us how we should walk in obedience. Please continue to give us wisdom and strength as we choose to walk in the spirit and not our flesh. We pray we would make our marriage a priority. We pray we would gain deeper understanding of how our marriage is our first ministry, and the impact we have in each other's lives and in this world just by remaining faithful to your word. If our priorities are ever out of order, or if we are not unified, please help us to change our course. Constantly direct our hearts to align with yours. May our marriage always be in a place where you can use us as a symbol to point other to you, and may you be glorified. In Jesus' name, amen. [Aaron] Amen. [Matt] Amen. [Aaron] So, thank you all for listening today. I hope this blessed you guys. And as always, we want you guys to have a conversation about this. Go on a date, and discuss the things that we talked about today. We have, what is it, 11 more episodes in this series. 11 more interviews to come. They're gonna be awesome; please stay tuned. We look forward to having you next week. Did you enjoy today's show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave a review on iTunes. Also, if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageafterGod.com, and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

Guest:  Matt Smith Title: Crypto Prediction Markets: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly Record Date: 1/9/2019 Air Date: 1/31/2019 Topic: Crypto Predictions Markets Matt Smith joins us today to talk about how crypto prediction markets work, how blockchain technology is being used to modernize online gambling, which essentially allows people to speculate on the outcome of all kinds of future events. We discuss some of the common applications of these prediction markets and their pros and cons. And we dive into some of the deep implications of the more controversial betting markets on these platforms, such as assassination markets and mass casualties in future unknown terrorist attacks. It’s a fascinating discussion. Join us!   Topics Covered in this Episode:   – Sports gambling is very much in the news – Brief history of sports gambling laws in the United States – 2018 Supreme Court decision giving power to states on sports gambling – Will online sports gambling be next step of legalizing gambling? – How traditional prediction markets work – Prediction markets and how they utilize the “wisdom of crowds” – Different formulations of prediction markets – Crypto prediction market as a new twist on an age-old idea – Benefits of decentralized prediction markets – better security and censorship resistance, global pool of liquidity – Could shape future of online sports gambling – Core innovation – gambling good way to bootstrap new crypto networks, uncover information otherwise hidden, inject data verifiably into the blockchain ecosystem – NJ Refund of bets example – How these platforms actually work? How do you place bets and create markets? – How censorship resistant decentralized betting platforms such as Augur work, interacting directly with the markets, using the blockchain – On killing the kill switch of this network and what that means – On assassination markets and the potential implications of that – On political bad actors and how they could manipulate assassination markets – Where all this is heading, maybe to the courts – How dispute resolution works on these platforms – Some recent disputes such as the recent US midterm elections and baseball and how they are being resolved – Closing thoughts Links and Resources: Betting on the national anthem: An American tradition Biggest Super Bowl LIII bets 2019 Super Bowl Betting Odds: Spread, Total & Prop Betting Action Update Supreme Court Ruling Favors Sports Betting MURPHY, GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY, ET AL. v.NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSN. ET AL. US Betting Sites Sports Betting May Soon Be Legal in New York, but Only 4 Casinos Upstate Would Offer It Will Sports Betting Transform How Games Are Watched, and Even Played? Prediction Markets Four Prediction Market Platforms Compared The Weirdest Prediction Markets on Augur Right Now Crypto Prediction Market Augur Is Gearing Up for Its First Major Upgrade The First Augur Assassination Markets Have Arrived The Weirdest Prediction Markets on Augur Right Now - Yahoo Finance What are Blockchain Prediction Markets? Decentralized Prediction Markets: the Opportunities, the Threats, and Prediction markets are hot AF right now. – Hacker As Crypto Meets Prediction Markets, Regulators Take Notice Decentralized Prediction Markets: How Blockchain Crypto Betting Works? Why You Should Try Decentralized Prediction Markets Right Now If the "Which party will control the House after 2018 U.S. Midterm Election?" resolves to anything but 'Democrats' I'm never using Augur again Augur Betting, Over 2 Million for the US Election N.J. sports book refunds bets from Saints game after blown call Questions and Comments? podcast@gem.co Transcript Chitra: Welcome to the show, Matt. It's great to have you.   Matt: Thanks, Chitra. It's always good to be at Gem.   Chitra: Wonderful. Before we go into what crypto-based prediction markets are, let's talk a little bit about what are prediction markets and how do they work?   Matt: Yeah sure. So a prediction market is a market like any other. It's a place where commerce happens, where things are bought and sold. The name can be a little misleading because you're not buying predictions. What you're buying are stake, you're buying a stake, like a position, in the outcome of some event. The thing that's unique about a prediction market is that you can bet on the outcome of any event. So say I care a lot about sports and I want to put money on my position that the Yankees are absolutely gonna beat the Red Sox, obviously, and maybe that's illegal where I do it, but I'll go to my bookie and I'll say hey I think the Red Sox are gonna win, I've looked at the stats, they're gonna win so I'm gonna put this much money on it, give me some odds. Then whenever that event resolves, I get money back if I'm right and then I lose my money if I'm wrong.   Chitra: Okay. So there's a lot of science and math behind this because it essentially goes to the notion of the wisdom of crowds. That an individual's intelligence gathering is a lot less powerful than that of a number of people. So it's essentially aggregating of information.   Matt: Yeah. It's not necessarily just that like you get 100 people in a room and those people are gonna make a better decision than one person in isolation. What these markets really do, if they are liquid and highly available, if you have access to a large number of people, there's gonna be people in that crowd that have some insight. That maybe have inside information or have studied the mechanics of whatever is gonna drive the outcome of the result. A prediction market can enable those people to monetize that knowledge, that insight. So people that don't know really any information about the Red Sox or the Yankees, they're not gonna bet on it because they don't know who's gonna win, it would be a very risky proposition for them, but someone that has inside information like their best hitter got injured but they haven't announced it yet, he's got a real strong incentive to go and make a big bet on the Yankees.   Chitra: Right. So there's a lot of value to this.   Matt: Yeah. So you can absolutely uncover information that would otherwise remain hidden. That's why we call it a prediction market because the market as a whole for the outcome of some event predicts what the outcome will be.   Chitra: These are binary decision making right on sort of discrete events?   Matt: There are actually a bunch of different formulations, different constructions you can do for models. Binary is probably the most common, easiest to understand. Like this is gonna happen or this is gonna happen. One of these two things is gonna happen. That's available on most of the prediction markets we're gonna talk about today. You can also do categories, like multiple choice A, B, C or D. Or you can do like a scale or range, a numerical range. Like it's gonna be somewhere between this value... You can have a curve where the payout is proportional to where it falls on this graph. Those are a little bit more complicated so maybe it's easier to talk about the binary option. Binary options are fairly interesting because binary option is an existing financial instrument, and prediction markets as a class sort of mimic their pay where there's a threshold, and one thing happens or the other thing happens and then you pay out accordingly.   Chitra: So now let's talk about crypto-based prediction markets. Now, prediction markets are very old. They go back to like 1884 or something like that. So are crypto prediction markets basically a new twist on a very old idea?   Matt: That feels like a leading question, Chitra. Totally - they are. We've seen political election markets way, way back, people do things like buy votes because there's a financial incentive to make their party win because they had bet a lot of money on this one candidate winning. So, yeah, people definitely do this and that's why we see regulations emerge around what you can bet on, what you can't bet on. Crypto prediction markets are interesting because we get a lot of the, after what you see in blockchain and decentralized applications that are well suited to the form, which means that they eliminate counterparty risk.   Chitra: What does that mean?   Matt: So when I go to bet on the Red Sox or the Yankees and say it's illegal. I think there are regulatory changes in the US where maybe sports betting is okay now, but until very recently at least it was illegal to bet on sports in most jurisdictions. So if I'm gonna go and place that bet, I'm gonna be going to a bookie who's breaking the law. Because this is like a shady area, there's a chance that when I give him my money and tell him to give me more money back if I'm right, there's a chance that he just doesn't do that. I'm still right, but he just goes away. My risk is that my counterparty, the person I'm interacting with, this guy, is going to abscond.   This risk exists in most centralized systems, not just in these fringe ones or these illegal markets where it's definitely much more risky because there isn't regulatory oversight, but even if you're trading on a normal financial exchange, foreign exchange or something. There's still a risk that your counterparty person that you're trading directly with through this intermediary won't be able to satisfy the order and you'll be left out in the cold.   Matt: So there's a counterparty risk, and we can eliminate this, we do this in decentralized exchange protocols, like the 0x protocol and Ether Delta and these other applications. The other thing that we get by using a blockchain is we get this censorship resistance. So like I said, it's illegal on these jurisdictions to gamble on a lot of things like political elections, it's illegal almost everywhere to gamble on them because it sort of undermines the integrity of the election. So you can't really do that. But in a decentralized prediction market, it's really hard to enforce those rules. You can't really say no you can do you can do this but not this. You sort of do whatever you want. Maybe that's a good thing because there are some jurisdictions where your access to financial markets in general is restricted.   This is a mechanism that maybe some corrupt governments might use to keep certain segments of the population from accessing the broader financial markets. Like we can look at the currency controls in China. They have limited access to international markets. Prediction markets are cool because you can use them to emulate almost any financial instrument. I can make a prediction market for what will the price of the British pound versus the US dollar be on such and such a date? Then I can basically create this synthetic forex market out of this decentralized platform. So they're very versatile. And because they're censorship resistant, they're also international. I can reach across borders. I've got this huge global pool of liquidity. Everyone in the world that wants to bet on the Red Sox versus the Yankees can do it in this one place.   Chitra: So someone in China could make a prediction on who's gonna win the World Cup or something like that.   Matt: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. That's a cool thing because normally these sort of markets, especially when they're illegal, are localized. They're focused on a small local area. Or they're run by a centralized online exchange, and those we saw with the dark web Silk Road markets and those kind of things, those are very vulnerable to people absconding with money because that's what you've ascended to. So the conflicts of those three factors are what make these really uniquely valuable in terms of a betting market or trading exchange kind of thing.   Chitra: So what's the core innovation here? What's the true value of these decentralized platforms do you think? If you were to sum it up.   Matt: Gambling is a good way to get network, bootstrap network. Because everyone likes to gamble. We've been doing this forever. Dice is a really old kind of game people bet on. It's something people want to do and it's something that governments tend to restrict people's access to. So we can get a lot of people on this platform to start using it. But the results of using these markets is we get two really cool things out of these prediction markets.   The first thing is that we can uncover information the world has at large but isn't able to voice about what's going to happen to the world. We were talking about earlier, maybe it's something trivial like the Red Sox versus the Yankees, or maybe it's something much more meaningful, and I struggle to find a good example because I didn't prepare well enough, but we can sort of see, maybe we're talking about an election or something, and maybe there was some key insight about what's gonna happen in this local election that a few people have. So we might be able to give them a financial incentive to reveal that information monetarily, and potentially anonymously if you're very careful, so they get rewarded for telling the world that they feel very strong, they feel this many dollars strongly that this is gonna happen. So we get this information service.   The other thing that we get out of these platforms is specifically in the blockchain space is that we get this information from the outside world, like Yankees versus Red Sox or who won the election, and we are able to inject it in a trusted verifiable way into a blockchain ecosystem. This maybe will get a little technical, but the way smart contracts on most blockchain platforms work is that they're what's called deterministic. There's no opportunity for them to have any sort of randomness. They just sort of are a pure result of whatever the inputs to the function of this smart contract program is. That's cool, but what it restricts you to is that you can't get any non-deterministic sources. So you can't reach out to the normal Internet. You can't go to like Weather.com and then figure out what is the weather today?   So there's no really great way for you to write programs that run in a decentralized application that act on these external real-world events. You can do it with what's called an oracle. There are a few sites and services that will do this, where you say like take the information that's published on this webpage and then insert it into the blockchain. That is one way to address a problem. The problem with it is that you have to trust the service that's doing that. One person is publishing a transaction that says the weather is 95 degrees today. The cool thing about these prediction markets when they run on this blockchain is that there are financial incentives to make sure that everyone that's participating agrees this is actually what happens. It was actually 95 degrees that day. Trump actually won the election.   Chitra: So basically you're putting money behind it so it makes a difference.   Matt: Right. You're putting an incentive for everyone that knows that this thing happened to say this is the thing that happened and they will lose that money if they lie. This is really powerful because other smart contracts can leverage these platforms. They can point at these prediction market contracts and say okay I'm interested in the outcome of this result, I want to know what happens. I want my contract to do something in case Trump wins, in case Hillary wins or whatever. Which is something you couldn't really very verifiably or trustlessly do before these sort of decentralized oracles existed. That I think is really powerful and it amps up what we can do with these decentralized applications.   Chitra: Let's talk about how these markets actually work. There are a handful of these crypto prediction markets, Augur being one of them. How do they actually work? How do you make a bet? If I were a betting person.   Matt: Yeah if you were a betting person, Chitra. It's not too dissimilar from how you would log into a normal betting website I guess. It's not very much like a casino where you go play online poker. I have not used that many actual gambling applications, so I don't know what the UI looks like. But basically what you're gonna do is you're gonna go to some website that is gonna be running a server with a connection to the blockchain. Or you're gonna download an application that connects to the blockchain. Maybe there's some sync time. People are familiar when you download the Bitcoin wallet, the main bitcoin log, it takes ages to sync and stuff. You might run into that depending on how you access it, but there are ways around that.   So you get to basically just a web page. It's gonna have a list of all these markets that exist, maybe they'll be categorized. They'll say like these are the sports betting markets, these are the political markets, these are financial markets and stuff. You can go and you can see which markets have been created. Anyone can go and create a market. Anyone can be like I want to create a market for this thing that I want to know about, and that I think I have insight on and I'm gonna bet on myself. So you look at all these and you say okay Yankees, Red Sox, I'm interested in this. So you click on the thing and then you can see that there's a price. So Yankees v. Red Sox, Yankees, Red Sox. There are gonna be two outcomes and you'll see shares for each of these outcomes. So there are yes shares, there are Red Sox shares and there are Yankees shares.   So you can buy either of those and each of those will have a price in Ether. Eventually when we have more stable coin support, you'll be able to buy it in a USD token. But it'll be a cryptocurrency. It will also run on that same blockchain network. So you'll have a blockchain wallet, Metamask, or the Edge Wallet, something like that. Then you're going to say I want to buy such and such Boston shares, Red Sox shares. They'll have some price in Ether and then you go and you buy it.   Another thing that you can do is you can take one Ether and then you can deposit it into the market in some models, and then you'll get equal, you'll get one of both shares, and then you can sell the share that you think's not gonna happen. So there are a couple different mechanisms for that. Basically you're buying shares in the outcome of this market.   Chitra: And using crypto to do that.   Matt: And you're using crypto to do that.   Chitra: Okay.   Matt: So then what's gonna happen is there's gonna be a time when it's set to resolve, like whoever created the market is gonna say this is happening on such and such date. And when that time comes, he or somebody is gonna put in an initial report on what the outcome was, and there's a dispute phase where we sort of... The blockchain comes to an agreement, we come to a consensus on what the outcome of the market was. Once it's decided, everyone with the Boston shares, those Boston shares are now worth 100 percent of the total Ether put into the market, and all the Yankee shares are worth nothing. So if you are stuck holding a bunch of Yankee shares you're like oh that's great. This is blockchain evidence that I made a bad bet. Then the other people get their money.   Chitra: If you didn't already know that you made a bad bet, you have…   Matt: Yeah now you have verifiable evidence.   Chitra: Your empty wallet being an example of having made a bad bet.   Matt: Exactly. But the winners will get that money back into the wallet they used to interact with the protocol. It's pretty straight forward as a trader. The ones that are live, Augur is maybe the biggest one that people talk about right now because it's live and you can actually use it. So their UI is fairly straightforward to use if you're just betting on things. You just see graphs, you see yes no, you see percentages, how many of these token exists and how many you can buy in the network and stuff. So it looks a lot like if you go to a normal exchange where there are a bunch of little mini exchanges.   Chitra: Okay. So we've talked about some of the more straightforward applications, sports, politics, weather. But some of these prediction markets have also some pretty weird and controversial use cases. You've heard about these assassination markets on Augur where people are prediction on celebrity killings, of politicians and other famous people. You've got, what are some of these examples and how did that come about? You've got terrorist attacks, predicting how many mass casualties will happen as a result of an attack.   Matt: Yeah. So like we said, it's a censorship-resistant platform, like Augur we'll take as an example. The software is built by a company called the Forecast Foundation, and they just deployed these smart contracts on the network. They created this token REP, which stands for reputation. There's a fixed supply of those. Those are the people that get to report on outcomes of events. So that's all they really... They put the contracts out there and they created software where you can use this platform to create your own prediction markets. But they didn't create any, they don't control, they don't run like a centralized server where you can go and interact. It's like you download the app and you interact directly with the blockchain protocol.   So they're sort of hands off. You can do whatever. They did for a short period of time have a killswitch when they were first pulling the network to make sure everything went okay. But they burned that killswitch. It's done now. Nobody can turn this off. It's just there. Unless somebody hacks it, and that happens. But so what that means is nobody really has any control over which markets can be created. Anyone can create whatever market they want. There's a small fee to create a market or whatever and if you're willing to stake that, create a market for it. Then anybody that sees that market can go and bet on it. So that's cool because it gives a lot of people access to instruments they wouldn't otherwise be able to get exposure to, and it lets us bet on things that maybe we should be allowed to but for whatever regulatory reasons we can't.   But it also means that we can bet on things that for good reasons we aren't really supposed to. So the assassination markets are a really good example. Basically people create a market that says will such and such political figure die by the end of such and such time frame? The problem with that is it's not just an event that's out of everyone's hands that will sort of occur, this is true with sports betting too which is one of the reasons sports betting is illegal in a lot of jurisdictions. Having a market where you can go bet on one of those outcomes, political figure A will die, creates an incentive for anyone to go and affect that outcome. So I would go and bet yes, I would not, a person might go and bet yes and then go actually commit that murder. Then he would have a big financial incentive.   So that's why we call them assassination markets rather than just a normal prediction market on what's gonna happen. Will he die of natural causes or whatever? It creates this incentive to do this. This is actually really kinda scary. These existed on Augur, but it's not really a big deal because no one's betting on them. So no one's gonna interact with a market if the liquidity is really low because the potential reward is very low, correspondingly low. Most of these markets on the Augur platform which is the only one that I think that is live, are below a thousand dollars total stake opened in these markets. That's a fact because there are a bunch of them. Anyone can create one so you have a bunch so there's this big overload of all these markets you can bet on.   So it hasn't been a problem yet. But if I say I'm a very well funded political actor. Like I'm a state actor or I'm a political opponent, and I have access to a lot of funds, what I can do is I can create that market and then put a lot of money on the opposite side. So will my opponent die? And then I bet no. I put millions of dollars on no. That is effectively a million dollars bounty on that head that anyone can go and fill. All they need to do is buy a bunch of yes shares and then go pull the trigger.   So this is really bad if you think about cyber warfare. You think about well-funded nation states. We've seen a lot of news being reported of questionable veracity about North Korean and Russian hackers using cryptocurrency in some of their schemes. So they maybe have access, they have a deep understanding of how these networks well. They have the ability to do this kind of thing, and it allows you to basically put an open bounty, a public open bounty, on someone's head from overseas and anonymously. It's really scary that you can do that.   Chitra: Isn't someone gonna do something about this? Do you foresee any kind of legal or regulatory issues, liability issues?   Matt: Yeah definitely. It's really hard to say how it's gonna happen because you can't shut it down. The network runs the way it does, the smart contracts are deployed. There's no killswitch on this, so you can't shut it down. It's just there so you can use it. What you can do is go after the people that interact with it. We might see governments outlawing Augur specifically and that's kind of hard to regulate because it's just transactions on a blockchain platform. But again, blockchain records are immutable so I have a disincentive to do anything if I think it can be associated with my identity. There's a very high bar to interacting with most of these public blockchain networks, truly and honestly.   So it's dangerous and there's a disincentive there. But the other thing that we can see regulators do is go after the people that create these systems, which in Augur's case wouldn't really help the problem. Augur's still gonna be there even if you go after the founders or the Forecast Foundation or whatever. But we did see something like that happen with a centralized exchange called Ether Delta. We saw the SEC, I believe the SEC sued the creator of Ether Delta, this decentralized exchange, just because he created the software and was responsible for running a web UI, a server that just served the UI for interacting with these smart contracts, which you didn't have to use but you could. He settled out of court. But this kind of weird pseudo precedent where regulatory bodies can go after developers even that just create this software, create the facility for people to go and create markets that create this opportunity for malfeasance and for dangerous actions.   I think we will definitely see this getting negotiated in court and in the court of public opinion.   Chitra: Yeah. A lot of legal funds will be spent even though the underlying problem can't go away because you can't get rid of the system.   Matt: Yeah. Lawyers will make money for sure. It's really a big question mark and that's one of the things that's probably depressing engagement with Augur. Like Augur does get used but it's not, and I think maybe right now there's maybe a couple million dollars of open stake across all the markets. So that's one of the big question marks.   Chitra: And it's just one of the platforms. There are other platforms.   Matt: Other platforms.   Chitra: You're gonna see a lot of these similar problems and challenges confronting…   Matt: Yeah. And if we see regulators move quickly then that can stifle those other creators. The other platforms that are coming out, there's one called Gnosis which I'm actually a big fan of that team. They've produced a lot of really high quality software. But Augur was the first in the market. It might be more difficult for new competitors to enter the space if they're afraid that they're gonna be liable just by the fact of creating a software that could be used for good things, but could also be used for bad things.   Chitra: Let's talk a little bit about dispute resolution because the immutability of a decentralized platform like this is its strength. But when it comes to dispute resolution it also raises questions of how do you resolve disputes when there's a bet? And how does it affect the core value proposition of a blockchain based platform.   Matt: Yeah. So that's a great question because what we really are trying to do with these platforms is inject truth into the immutable blockchain record. We want to figure out what actually happened for all these things people cared enough to bet on. We can't just say that whoever creates the market imports the outcome because he probably has an incentive, one way or the other. We have to know what actually happened. So the way that most of these systems work is that there is a dispute resolution process. That's why we need this REP token in Augur's case. We need this token that represents financial investment in the network as a whole at its market perception. If people consider Augur to be good and useful and valuable, then that token will go up in value.   So they acquire these tokens and then if you hold some amount of REP and you see a market get resolved with an incorrect decision, a decision you believe to be not what actually happened, you can open a dispute by staking, you take your 100 REP and you say no the Red Sox didn't win, it was the Yankees that won. If you get to a certain threshold, this will kick off this dispute resolution process. Basically it's this incrementing scale, in Augur's case specifically. The amount of REP that has to be staked to dispute even a dispute... We have the initial report, someone disputes it and says no it's Red Sox, Yankees, I say no, Red Sox. Then if somebody else is like no it was the Yankees, this guy is messing with us. He just put up 100 REP, he's just messing with the system, he has to get 200 REP from him and all the other people that are watching the network to say no it was the Yankees. This can go back and forth for a long time.   Chitra: There's some real examples of this, one with the recent elections and one with the Yankees, I guess.   Matt: Yeah. This came up because one of the most high profile markets last year on Augur, it launched last year, the US midterm elections. There was a market created for who will control the House of Representatives after the 2018 midterm election. This got at least a million, maybe two million dollars, of open bets placed on this outcome, which right now it's worth maybe a little bit under a hundred million dollars after depreciation. But a lot of people bet on this. I was watching the election, I was watching the platform. I didn't interact with it but I knew a guy that was like yeah it looks like the Democrats are gonna take the house. Democrats are gonna take the house.   So everybody's betting on this. Democrats have a strong advantage because we knew fairly early in the polls it was likely they were gonna take a bunch of House seats. Everyone's watching 538.com and the other CNN.com, and as each state goes in, right up until the end, people are still trading on this market. It was set to resolve on December 10th, so the resolution date was... This is enough time for all the House races to get resolved because some of them would drag on for weeks. So we finally get, Republican shares were worth like one percent of the value and 99 percent of the value is Democrat shares. By the end of the night, Democrats had taken the House.   So everybody's getting chill. It sort of settles down. Everybody's just waiting for December 10th so they can get their money. Then like December 7th or something, a couple days before the resolution date, the guy who created this market, he's the creator, and the creator gets a small fee of whatever share of the market, he posts on Reddit and the tagline is I think it just says ‘I am sorry.’ He explains that the goal of this market was always to reflect who will control the House of Representatives immediately after the midterm elections, not who will control the House on January 1st when the newly elected House of Representatives takes office. So it was the only option, according to the way it's worded, I have to report Republicans because they still currently as of today, as of December 10th, still control the House of Representatives. I think the top comment was something like you just want to watch the world burn don't you? Because that's ludicrous. It was very misleadingly worded market question. So this has a lot of implications.   This of course got disputed but you have to think about it for a second. What actually did happen? If you look at the exact wording, yeah the Republicans controlled the House on December 10th. But that was obviously not the intent of the market, not what everyone understood it to be. So what is the right result? So this guy reports Republicans. And then we go into dispute. Somebody puts up a dispute bond for it was the Democrats. I think we're in the fourth dispute, this still isn't resolved. We're in the fourth dispute round, maybe like I think 700 or 1,000 REP has been staked on aggregate outcomes, and we could see this drag on for a long time.   Chitra: So timing I guess is everything when it comes to some of these things. It's how you word the language, what time zone these things are in, how people interpret it and then you dispute it I guess if you don't agree.   Matt: Yeah but it's also, it's not clear what the right answer is. It's sort of like you're dealing with this adversarial malicious genie that will grant your wish but in a way that kills you. You have to, I'm very concerned about this when I saw this happen. It was kind of morbidly funny, but at the same time it was concerning because this is gonna make a lot of people very, very afraid to interact with this platform if they don't trust that somebody's trying to trip them up with careful wording. So this is a dangerous platform to interact with. So that's sort of a gray area. But what we're gonna likely see based on the chit chat and stuff that we're seeing online is that a lot of people are committed to making sure that the Democratic outcome wins because that's what people understood it to be.   There's also another option. There's an option that can be marked invalid. People can say this is an invalid market because the wording was vague or there was no chance, one of the options was never gonna happen. That is built into the platform, and different prediction market protocols have different ways of dealing with this. But we'll probably see a fair resolution out of this. But if we don't, if we see the Republican outcome win because of this literal wording, then the market creator probably bought a lot of those Republican shares real cheap and is gonna make a bunch of money. So good for him, but bad for the entire network because it's gonna really affect the perspective on Augur.   Chitra: Well, lots to talk about. Fascinating conversation. Do you have any closing thoughts? Where can people learn more about you and the work that you're doing?   Matt: Sure. In closing I would encourage everyone to check out the Augur.net and just see what kind of markets are being discussed there. Because there's another thing that you can do. You can just report. You don't have to bet. You can just report on what happens and there's an opportunity while liquidity is low to make money that way. You just make money from reports saying yeah this is what happened, this is what happened, this is what happened. It's a really easy way to interact with the crypto ecosystem and add value to a network and make sure that we have this really robust powerful accurate way of figuring out what happens, which we know is important in this age of questionable facts and false truths. So this maybe is a way to address that, which we probably should talk about more but... I work at Spring Labs, SpringLabs.com. We're not really consumer facing, but if people want to see stuff about identity verification and credit reporting with blockchain stuff, that's what I do.   Chitra: Great. And how can people reach you if they want to talk to you more?   Matt: My name's Matt Smith. I used to not like that name but now I do because it makes it a little bit harder to Google me.   Chitra: Thanks so much. Great having you.   Matt: I appreciate it, Chitra.  

Matt Medeiros starts 2019 and the second part of Season 8 with his interview with Dan Maby. Dan is a self-described wearer of many hats and is the director of Blue 37, a digital agency based in London. He recently founded a new community called WP&UP that supports and promotes positive mental health within the WordPress community. Through Dan's agency Blue 37, he helps WordPress users move forward with their business. In addition to ALL of that, Dan is the Lead Organizer of WordCamp London and four meetups across the UK. Listen to the episodes Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners Mental Health with Dan Maby of WP&UP Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 00:42:15 Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:42:15 What you will learn in this Episode: WP&UP Matt – Why WP&UP? What started the initiative for this organization? Dan – Realized that there was a real need for WordPress users working in isolation. There can be a lot of issues working alone either as a Freelancer or an employee of a company. After working in the WordPress Community for 8 or 9 years, Dan decided to start a charity that could address some of these issues. He brought the non-profit charity, WP&UP to the WordPress Community to help with all types of mental health issues. The organization started with friends and trustees who wanted to help. Matt – Discusses how difficult this is to set up for the WordPress community because many remote workers work in different countries and in different cultures. It would be great for the WordCamps to participate and announce this help at their conferences to raise awareness. Dan – The charity was difficult to set up for a global community. Because of the physical locations of many remote workers, you often don't know the struggle of the person who may be afraid of the stigma towards mental health in their country or culture. Social media does not really help entrepreneurs who work alone. WP&UP operated unfunded for 12 months. The organization recently passed as a charity in 2018 and a video was created and posted to the community. This opened the floodgates to the WordPress community. WPMUDev started the monetary support with the initial contribution. Many other companies have opted in with support. Now programs are in place to keep the charity funded over the long haul. (10:38) Matt – There are many areas to address with working in isolation.  How do you approach connecting and mentoring people virtually? Dan– The challenge is to find the “right” level of support.  You can offer a mentor or buddy, but it is such a sensitive subject. Support can range from professional help with your business to psychological services that a person may be struggling with.  Mental health struggles may impact a person at any time with no outward signs of a struggle. There is an additional impact on the broader community when they have no idea that somebody is struggling and would also offer help. (19:08) Change in WordPress and the Blue Collar Digital Worker Matt – The market has changed a little which is impacting the lower end of the WordPress market. People are finding it easier to build websites. (26:44) Dan – Because of the changes with WordPress the digital agency is now challenged on how to market to clients. The clients are changing and the tools available to them have broadened. The freelancer and agency need to concentrate on providing great services. (27:11) Matt – The release of the Gutenberg editor is creating a level of reeducation with the change of the editor to blocks. A user needs to understand how the front end and back end work together. There is a learning curve with Javascript development. (29:03) Dan – Education is always a good thing and evolving. Education is not new and the new projects coming in are very interesting. It may be rocky for a while and some people may leave WordPress and dive into something new. It is important to not go after the shiny new toy when diving into something new. (31:37) Marketing: Matt  – There are challenges around marketing. Dan– WP&UP really wants to work with individuals in the community.  The organization is set up around 4 Health Hubs: (33:00) Code Health – improve the quality of your products through training courses. Business Health – develop your business further with a mentor, Mental Health – receive support through those dark times, Physical health – build emotionally and physically. There are individuals in the WP&UP organization with specific skill sets. There are four legal trustees.  There will be additional individuals added as the need of the community continues to grow. The challenge for 2019 will be continued monetary support and the growth of the WP&UP program. It is a great program for the WordPress community who may find themselves struggling. Episode Resources: Blue37 WordCamp London WP&UP Cory Miller Dan Maby WordCamp US WPMU Dev GiveWP Gatsby Expression Engine Press Forward Campaign To Keep in Touch: To give: WP&UP WP&UP Slack Channel Dan on Twitter Dan Maby To Stay in Touch with Matt: Watch the panel discussion on Matt's YouTube channel. To stay connected with the Matt Report, head on over to mattreport.com/subscribe. If you like the show, please leave a 5 Star review over on the Matt Report on iTunes. ★ Support this podcast ★

023: Success with Systems to Alleviate Stress with Matt Malouf Matt Malouf is a passionate business coach, entrepreneur, speaker, author, and podcast host on a mission to help entrepreneurs around the world break the shackles of mediocrity and reach new levels of personal and business success. On the podcast today we focus on the mindsets that keep us stuck and unable to delegate and work in our zone of genius. Matt has lots to share on this topic and it is so important for us to consider as we are business building. Topics Mentioned: Mindset Business Development Clarity Delegation   Thoughts from Matt: There are four negative mindsets that decrease productivity. Negative mindset 1: Others can’t do it as well as I can. Negative mindset 2: I don’t want to give up control. Negative mindset 3: I can’t afford it. Negative mindset 4: I don’t have time to implement. We should be working 60-70% in our genius zone. If you do a task more than twice, create a system for it. Create a system to create systems. Ask yourself what you really want - and why. Books: The Stop Doing List by Matt Malouf   Socials: Website: www.wisdomcg.com.au Facebook: Leap Business Accelerator, Wisdom Coaching LinkedIn: maloufmatt Podcast: Virtual Success Show  

Matt Medeiros finishes Season 8 with this interview of Robby Mccullough, who is a co-founder of the Beaver Builder page builder and is from the Bay area. Matt and Robby discuss how the Gutenberg release in WordPress 5.0  may impact Beaver Builder,  whether Automattic could have looked at purchasing Beaver Builder, and how a small business owner deals with the ups and downs of running and growing a  remote business. Listen to the end of the episode to find out the original name consideration of the Beaver Builder theme. Listen to this episode: Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners Beaver Builder in a Gutenberg world Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 00:56:05 Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:56:05 What you will learn in this Episode: Future of WordPress with Gutenberg changes: Robby – Realizes that it is impossible to predict the future of WordPress. He supports the Gutenberg editor with the block approach to the editing experience. The Beaver Builder page builder was created because of the demand in the WordPress space where the need for faster and easier website building was not being met. There was a real concern of what would happen to Beaver Builder once Gutenberg launched. (1:46) Matt – Asks the question of whether Beaver Builder could have been bought by Automattic. (3:22) Robby – Explains that the discussion of the purchase of Beaver Builder by Automattic never came up. (3:40) The vision of the Gutenberg editor in the latest update of WordPress did not line up with how Robby sees Beaver Builder growing with the community. (6:00) Matt – The innovators of WordPress (people who have created and supported page builders) have come from third-party developers. (6:47) Robby – Beaver Builder has been in the problem-solving space. Big companies can absorb smaller companies but this was not to be with Automattic and a page builder. (9:15) Software creators with SaaS and WordPress: Matt – created a query builder called Conductor years ago. The direction will not be putting that product into a Gutenberg block to monetize it (as Jetpack). The Conductor widget solves a tiny problem for the client and can be considered a niche product. How will Beaver Builder continue to monetize the product? (10:56) Robby  – Beaver Builder started as a web development agency and built Beaver Builder as a product offering. As the growth took off, the web agency was closed. All the focus has been on the page builder but now we are looking into other products that can be viable outside of the Gutenberg audience. The Gutenberg editor does not seem like it will serve clients who need customized solutions or large customers that need an advanced feature set. (13:00) Forecasting the Future of Beaver Builder: Matt – Third party markets have expanded the Beaver Builder experience. These vendors drive a lot of traffic to Beaver Builder but it does not seem that these offerings have been incorporated into the core product. (16:35) Robby – Beaver Builder uses the WordPress model to build and support it like a platform. Beaver Builder supports third-party developers that have been building on Beaver Builder by allowing them to build and extend using the brand. The Beaver Builder community has been the judge of whether or not they want to use those third-party products. Beaver Builder is a bootstrapped team and still has the flexibility to make adjustments to monetize products they see as successful. (17:00) Matt – The concern with open source is that there are many opinionated ideas that may impact theme creators and plugin developers. Open source does not always adjust to everyone's request or concern. Matt Mullenweg with Automattic is in a unique position by remaining approachable and adjusting to requests from WordPress supporters.  This is the first experience for everyone with the Gutenberg editor coming into core. (19:54) Robby – Matt Mullenweg has been on many podcasts and YouTube channels speaking about the WordPress 5.0 release with Gutenberg in the core. He has been participating in groups such as WPTavern to address concerns and is making the attempt to communicate the changes and strategy of WordPress moving forward. (24:00) Marketing and Messaging of a Product: Robby  – Marketing and communications are difficult to continually do. Robby has done this in his role with Beaver Builder and sometimes go through waves of participating and communicating in social channels. It is important to keep getting information out there when you are feeling burned out. (25:11) Matt – There are ups and downs in every project. The ups and downs always occur so know they are coming. Create a contingency plan for the dips. Not everything will be a “hit”. Just do not stop working on it. (27:13) Beaver Builder as a SaaS or Standalone CMS: Robby – The idea of a SaaS actually came up during the early development space of Beaver Builder. The architecture and expertise to support it was the issue. There was not a partner that was really strong in the server and network side. (30:28) Hiring and expanding a team: Robby – You finally reach a point where you want to empower people to take over different or new roles as the business is growing. (33:50) Matt – As you are expanding the business how do you find talent to fill the positions you want to hand off? Is it an outreach through a service or do you start with a social media platform?  You need to address whether you can hire and afford a candidate. (34:12) Robby – It is difficult when growing and building a product. When creating a position, it is important to hire with a culture fit and diversity in mind. You want somebody who can broaden the Beaver Builder message and grow the community. (36:44) Matt – Small companies are able to offer a good product and people will buy it when they know what is being offered. It can be very difficult to hire a person who can perform in many areas. It is important to give new employees enough time to deliver in the WordPress space. A 90-day review may not be long enough to determine if a person is a good fit because the return of investment may take a while to measure. (37:26) Robby – When creating the Marketing job posting for his company, it was important to consider the changes that are needed for a small growing business. A person hired for content marketing must have some sales experience or perform in many areas. (40:21) The Beaver Builder Theme Matt – talks about the outlook for the Beaver Builder theme. It looks like the latest release of the Beaver Builder theme will be addressing design aesthetics. (44:11) Robby – discusses how the Beaver Builder Theme is intentionally not marketed as the shiny object. The Theme is offered as a solid framework that is consistent and is easy to use. Once you learn the theme, it can save you so much time on additional projects. Beaver Builder considered naming the theme Chameleon where the theme could change and adapt with a design aesthetic. (46:26) As Gutenberg grows it is interesting to see how WordPress supported themes will change. It looks like there are many changes coming into the front-end space with styles and design. (47:15) Resources: Morten Rand-Hendrikson WordCamp 2018  Beaver Builder Conductor plugin Gutenberg Jetpack WooCommerce Grado Silicon Valley Gilfoyle Gary Vaynerchuck Beaver Builder Theme Flexbox Pagely To Keep in Touch: Beaver Builder Robby on Twitter Beaver Builder Facebook group To Stay in Touch with Matt: Watch the panel discussion on Matt's YouTube channel. To stay connected with the Matt Report, head on over to mattreport.com/subscribe. We are looking to reach 200 reviews on iTunes, so please help us out. If you like the show, please leave a 5 Star review over on the Matt Report on iTunes. ★ Support this podcast ★

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

Nasir and Matt return to discuss the different options available to companies looking to raise funds through general solicitation and crowdfunding. They discuss the rules associated with the various offerings under SEC regulations and state laws, as well as more informal arrangements. The two also discuss the intriguing story about a couple who raised over $400,000 for a homeless man only to allegedly keep the funds for themselves. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Hi, and welcome to our podcast.My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.We’re two attorneys here with Pasha Law, practicing in California, Texas, New York, and Illinois. NASIR: And this is where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that news.Legally Sound Smart Business – we’ve been doing this podcast for now, I don’t know, I feel like it’s been like five, ten thousand years, something like that. MATT: Well, I don’t know if those numbers are accurate, but there’s a recent story how the podcast industry is oversaturated which I would probably agree with because now everyone and their pets have a podcast.When we started doing it, I mean, we weren’t— NASIR: It was novel at the time, but now it’s like everyone has a podcast.You know, we still get a lot of listeners, so why not? MATT: Yeah, sure.That’s the thing. The market’s over-saturated, but there’s not a lot of podcasts – not in our category, I guess you could say. You know, not everyone is as charismatic as you and I are. NASIR: Ah, yeah.Unlike other attorneys, we actually have lives and want to do something else other than write contracts and review contracts all day. Maybe that’s what it is. But we enjoy our work, so that’s why, I think. MATT: Yeah, no complaints. NASIR: Well, anyway, today is a tough topic because it’s a little kind of technical, so I don’t want to make it too dry. But, at the same time, it’s pretty relevant to so many of our clients in the sense that this is a pretty prominent issue, and that is raising capital for your company – whether you’re an early startup or really well into your road – what are your options out there and talking about what’s going on with crowdfunding and kind of give it a quick update in that regard as well. MATT: Sure.Like you said, it can get pretty complex, pretty technical, so what we’re going to do – and I’ll start off with a recent story. NASIR: Should we just start out by reading the statute? Regulation 506(b) says… MATT: Now, I’m pretty sure, I’m going to say wit pretty strong confidence, there’s no podcast that does that, but I guess I could be wrong. NASIR: We could be the first. MATT: There’s a story – by the time this comes out, there might be an update, they’re just kind of waiting – there hasn’t been anything recent in at least about a month or so since we’re recording right now, but the story I’m talking about – and maybe the listeners saw it – I’ll try to summarize it here.It was a fairly young woman that was driving at night in Philadelphia. Car ran out of gas. She didn’t have any way to get gas, and no Triple A or anything like that. A homeless man happened to be around. He had only $20.00 to his name. He offered to give it to her. She was able to buy gas and get home. Really nice gesture.What ensues from there is what gets interesting.This woman Kate McClure and her boyfriend Mark D’Amico started a GoFundMe page to try to raise – at the time - $10,000 for this good Samaritan that gave his last dollars to this woman that was stranded on the highway. They started the page. The goal was $10,000. It got all the way up to over $400,000. They stopped it at that point just because it was just getting out of control.For those of you that are not familiar with how GoFundMe works, anyone can donate money and it goes into this pool. Correct me if I’m wrong, as long as you hit your goal, you get the funds, right? NASIR: Right – minus their fees, of course. MATT: They definitely hit their mark – 40 times over.So,

Katrina Ruth: Well, we're going to have to celebrate my hair 'cause now everybody's seen my hair for the first time as well. Ooh, it says I missed a call from Billy Jean. Okay. Hang on. Is anyone jumping on? The cape definitely looks better with the purple outward not the gold, right? 'Cause if I have the gold out, it looks kinda like a weird fish skin. Don't you think? Matt: Yeah. Katrina Ruth: Yeah. It's been decided. Matt: You do the best, I think. Katrina Ruth: All right, everybody can take screenshots of me now. Ready? Screenshot. So that I can use it later for a blog post. Hello, people. Actually, I was ... Oh, Alicia has a cape just like that. Of course, why would you not? Katrina Ruth: Well, I was having an important dilemma, it was a serious dilemma. I'm here to film very professional and important sales videos. We're here to film a sales video for Empress and so I'm supposed to be in proper filming mode, not livestreaming, and then I just thought, "Well, I gotta livestream it as well, 'cause it would be inappropriate not to." Katrina Ruth: But then the problem was ... here's the problem, you understand my dilemma. I wanted to put my cape on because I'm doing a sales video for Empress. Okay? So, if you're going to do a sales video for Empress, you're gonna wear a cape. But then, then, here's the big problem, I just had my hair done. Katrina Ruth: Ah, celebrate. Actually, it doesn't even look as pink as it is on this livestream, the whole thing is pink, only the top looks pink, but the top is extra pink and the lower bit is somewhat pink. Katrina Ruth: Billy Jean! We're gonna be partying it up next week at your house. There he is. Or wherever it is. Okay, so that's the problem. The problem is: how do I solve this problem? I wanna show my pink hair off and I wanna wear my cape as well because I'm filming a serious video for my programme, for Empress. So I don't know what to do about that. I can try leave it like that but then I have to not breathe and not move. How do I look over on this camera? Good? Matt: Good. Katrina Ruth: Where am I showing from? From here? Matt: There. Katrina Ruth: Yeah, that's fine then. Matt: A little bit higher up. Katrina Ruth: Okay, well, that's under control. It's all under control. And then the other problem is, I don't know what's up with these curly curls. Matt: I'm gonna try fix that mic as well, just the cord. Katrina Ruth: Fix it. Fix it all. Hello. It's gonna be happening in San Diego town next week. Matt: Coming through there. Katrina Ruth: What's going on? You know you have to say hello to the camera if you're just gonna appear with your arm in there. Of course the chair is pink, it's a throne. Actually, that's a good system, isn't it? With one arm out. Katrina Ruth: Curls look great. I didn't want curls, I wanted messy-messy. Then I said to my ... well, it's going messy it's 'cause I only just had it done, we'll let it go, we'll let it do its thing, we'll let it get messy. We got plenty of filming to get to. We're creating much content. It's 1:11 pm, everyone have a moment of silence, it's currently 1:11. Katrina Ruth: Have you seen Empress? Can someone on my team drop a comment about Empress? Drop me the Empress [inaudible 00:03:06]. I didn't tell them I'm going live. Empress C-T-A-A-S-A-P on live. Oh my God, I just wrote Empess C-T-S-A-S-A-P on live. Empress. So, I said to my ... and I was being serious though, I'd already titled this livestream and I titled it ... See, do you know why I did that? Why I said to you you had to say hello to the camera? I was like, "Let me see how many seconds it takes before somebody says 'Matt's cute.'" That's already come up. Sorry Meagan, I was just using you as a guinea pig. It's fun for me. Matt: How old is Meagan? Katrina Ruth: How old are you? He wants to know. Where are you? Are you on the Gold Coast? Can you come over today? That's basically what he was asking. So, anyway, where did I get the cape? I don't know. The ninjas got it for me. I could ask my sister, ask Jessa. Katrina Ruth: So, I had titled this livestream about Empress, 'cause it's supposed to be a sales video, and then I had actually said to Matt, "You know, at a certain point in business, your primary problem is ..." She's in Perth, she can get here in six hours, she says. How old are you? You didn't answer the question. Katrina Ruth: For real though. Okay, enough about that, enough about that. At a certain point in business, your primary problem really is which way should I wear my cape? Should I wear it down, off my shoulders? But then I look just like ... I don't know, what do I look like? Snow White? Snow White. Or should I wear it gold or purple or this way, half of it?. I think it's this way. Katrina Ruth: And then I thought, "What a great title for a livestream: How do you get to a place in your business where your number one dilemma is: which way do I wear my cape?" Well, how you get there is you step into your Empress energy and power. Hi [Mim 00:04:52], sorry, I forgot to tell you I was going live. It was spontaneous. It was an impulse buy, just like the Mercedes convertible. Impulse movements. Katrina Ruth: We're gonna talk about Empress. We're now gonna do an important sales video. Mim has conveniently just dropped the comment in there. I want to let you know something that I ... why does somebody send me an angry face? Who is that? I'm going to track them down. I can sing. I can sing. What do you want me to sing? Cliff wants me to sing. I don't know if I wanna sing on the sales video. I'm gonna go block this dude. I'll do that later. Katrina Ruth: I was saying to the camera before I got onto this camera, I was saying to the other camera, when you're gonna do a sales video ... 'Cause in theory I was just gonna do like a three to five minute little thing for Matt to make into a pop up real video as opposed to this live video that's happening here. That's not a filter, that's me. Look at me. Thanks, Karen. Katrina Ruth: And I said to him, "We wanna make sure that we don't just cut out the serious professional bit from this livestream, assuming that there is one that happens at some point. We wanna include the rambles and the silliness and the shenanigans." Why? Why? Say it with me. Cause people don't buy your products, they buy you. No way. People don't buy you, they buy your energy. That is a real thing. Give me a love heart shower if you know that's a real thing. People do not buy your products, they buy you. Nope, they don't even buy you. That's not true. Because which you are you being? Maybe. Maybe they'll want to buy the sad sack who only shows like your surface based version of yourself to the internet. Who's like, "Well, I hope that people like me and I hope that I'm gonna be interesting, and I hope that my content is unique and powerful and glamorous." Katrina Ruth: Oh no, that is not a pink hair filter. That's actual pink hair. Pink hair filter? That'd be the lazy version, wouldn't it? Katrina Ruth: People don't want that surface version of you. Maybe your loved ones do but honestly, I think if you go around delivering your careful safe version of yourself, even your loved ones, after a little bit of time are gonna be like, "This bitch is getting boring." Right? So, it's not technically true that people buy you, even though, yeah, we're all lovable and worthy in all our different energy states, but people buy your energy. They do. They wanna be around those who are magnetic, lit up, I'm gonna say, alive. I'm deliberately looking at this camera over here so if you see me ignoring you, that's what's happening. Katrina Ruth: They wanna tap into the energy of somebody who feels alive. Am I right? Am I right? I'm right. So, for example, for example, if you go to a party or you go to the gym or you go to any place, I was going to say the airport but you don't tend to see that many charismatic people there, they're probably hiding in the lounge. No, they're not even in the lounge. Somewhere where you go. And there's that one person who's just magnetic in their energy. And maybe they have amazing posture as well because I feel like that's definitely a thing with charismatic people. They just compel you to them. You're drawn into their space. You might be a little bit intimidated, you might feel like, "Who is that person? Can I get close enough?" It's kind of like how close can I go to the sun? I probably shouldn't go too close, it might be scary or it might burn me but at the same time I just can't look away. It's fucking amazing and I'm compelled and I'm drawn in. Yes? Yes. Katrina Ruth: Okay, we're back over here again. All right, so the point of that is: if you're on the internet, it's a place where you can sell things if you've not heard of it. If you're on the internet and you're like, "Here's my thing, buy my thing. Let me tell you the fabulous [dot 00:08:27] points of my thing and why you should buy my thing." And then maybe you're following the rules as well. You've definitely read the rules, right? You've read the rules? Cool. Katrina Ruth: So the rules are ... actually, I don't know 'cause I never paid attention. But the rules are something like: follow some dots and join some dots and dots some I's and cross some t's and do it like the other people and be a good little zombiepreneur. Those are the rules and then you think to yourself, "I gotta make sure it looks right, it's gotta be polished, it's gotta be presented, it's gotta be exactly just so." Katrina Ruth: And if I manage to master this fabulous strategy, people are gonna buy my shit because everybody knows that the way to make millions of dollars is to follow the rules properly and do it right and essentially guide people like they're horses on a equestrian adventure, race track, that's definitely a thing ... a pony club, right? It is a thing. So they're going through the hurdles, like kids at school or horses at pony club. And if you get them to jump over the right hurdles and then go through a hoop and then do a little backward roll and a forward roll and a spin, then they're gonna pay you money and you're gonna make millions of dollars. Katrina Ruth: That's roughly what people seem to think its about on the internet. Its quite hilarious, actually, when you think about it that people actually believe that that's how you're gonna make money if you do it correctly. No. They're going to buy from you for the same reason that when we go to an event and there's a charismatic, amazing, magnetic as fuck interesting person there, we can't look away and we're drawn in and we're curious and we wanna know about that person, who is that person, how can I get closer to that person or that person's attractive in their energy which makes them obviously attractive in all other ways as well. Katrina Ruth: My point being, isn't it time to claim your rightful place? Isn't it time to step up and be the version of you who you know you are meant to be being? Isn't it time to drop the Coach cloak? This is not a Coach cloak, this is an Empress cloak. Isn't it time to drop the Coach cloak? The "Let me do it right doing dots and make money on the internet" approach to marketing is not working for you, it's never gonna work for you, it never does work for anyone is the truth of the matter. But somebody's fucking good at selling that dream because everybody's keeps jumping into it or it's clearly just a shit pool situation. Katrina Ruth: It's a lemming situation. Everyone's like, "Oh, I can see that everybody's on the internet like that. I'm gonna go do it like that." Even though they're all fucking falling off the cliff and dying. So, all of which is to say, Empress is open for registration. We begin very soon. Very, very soon. Places are already selling. I'm about to start bringing my Empress energy to compel and call in your Empress energy. Katrina Ruth: At the end of the day, the details of this don't matter. You don't need to read the details. You could read the details. I'll give you the details through and I'll attach it to this video or if you're listening to this live, it's in the pinned comment over here. Obviously the details don't matter. You know if my soul is speaking to yours. You know if the thing that is missing as to why you've not been making money online yet is that you haven't been in the energy state. You're trying to sell a product or a fucking opt-in or a landing page or a sales page or some bullshit dream based on nothing and you're not fully giving people your soul. Katrina Ruth: People will buy from you when they connect with what's going on in here. And when that happens, they won't even care what the details are. They are literally going to pay to be in your presence and that statement, as ridiculous or diva-esque as what it sounds, is the reality of how I make my money, how my clients make their money and how you know you were born to make money. Now, that doesn't mean you're not doing anything. Actually, what you're doing, though, is being you. Why would it be of value for somebody to pay to be in your presence? Because it actually automatically elevates somebody from being in your presence. Katrina Ruth: And because of the way that you've lived your life to the point where when you open your mouth, that shit impacts people. You can be at the hairdresser, you can be leaving somebody an audio in the car, you can be in the grocery store, you can be coaching a client, whatever's coming out of you is gold. And you're either willing and audacious enough to claim that about who you are as a person or maybe you do gotta go and do the [inaudible 00:12:34] preneur, zombiepreneur, join the dot, internet marketing thing. But you can't have it both ways. Katrina Ruth: You're either, "This is who I am. I'm a fucking Emperess, I'm a queen." Whatever you wanna say, wear a cape, don't wear a cape, it doesn't matter. But you're either claiming that this is who I am and people wanna be around me for my energy or you should go all in on that plan over there. All in. All in on, "I'll do landing pages and I'll do sales pages and I'll join dots and I'll make a perfect little step-by-step system like a pony club racecourse or hoop course or whatever it is where when people go through it probably they're gonna magically buy my shit because I took them through a process and everyone knows that if you take people through a process that's why they give you money." Good luck with that. Katrina Ruth: How's it working for you so far? So my point is, Empress is open. As I already said, I could have told you a whole bunch of things about what we cover, about the energy that we create and step into and activate from inside of you. About creating the Empress environment right through every aspect of your business life. About stepping into the next, next, next level version of you, who you know you're meant to be. Where it's already done, that have caused people to frickin' be around you in any way or space or place that they can be just because of who you are, could have given you all those details, I'll give them to you in written format. Katrina Ruth: But what you really need to do is ask yourself a simple question: Am I here to build a business on the internet by putting one block on top of the other and hoping that it doesn't fucking come crashing down and praying on the fact that even if it doesn't come crashing down that just 'cause I built something, people are gonna pay me? Or am I ready to step into being who I was born to be and to unleash the full magnetic power of that in all its messy, random, chaotic, crazy, hilarious glory. Katrina Ruth: And if it's the latter and if you're ready to throw off all of the chains that have bound you and kept you distracted by the idea that your success is based on doing shit right on Facebook, message me at my Katrina Ruth business or personal inbox here on Facebook or wherever you find it, and I'll get you all the details. We're beginning in just over a week, your soul already knows if this is for you. Four weeks, one on one with me, unlimited access, over $6,000 worth of bonuses, whole bunch of other shit, I'll give you the details, message me now. Have an amazing rest of the day and do not forget life is now, press play. Katrina Ruth: All right, alter ego Boss Bitch. She still didn't tell us her age though but she said her alter ego is Boss Bitch. Okay, that was a sales video being made. Mixing it up. Mixing it up. Do I have anything else to say? I never said that last night, Jacqueline, that was totally Philippa who was making those rude comments yesterday. Now, I've just made a sales video, obviously as you can see, so you just watched it, though, so you don't hae to wait for the sales video to come out. Katrina Ruth: But the main thing is, isn't my hair amazing? I mean that's really the main issue at hand here. New boobs, new hair, new Mercedes convertible, new house as well. It's all happening. But meanwhile, I'm gonna wait for the current house 'cause I'm gonna go to America on Tuesday. 25 but taken. Well, then, that was a fun conversation. We're gonna go. We have many things to film and to do. Do message me about Empress if it's speaking to you. I'm starting to really ramp it up because I deliberately didn't say the date there on that video because maybe I would reuse that video next time if I run it again. Katrina Ruth: However, somebody asked me this morning, am I running Empress again and that they're thinking about for the next round or something. I'm gonna tell you straight up, please don't message me that shit because I live in the now. Right? I might be conscious of stuff like that from time to time if I'm making a video mainly 'cause I'm too fucking lazy to create content again if I already did it once. And it's a nice habit there but I don't make plans to run shit again. I don't have any fucking clue what I'm gonna be doing tomorrow, let alone in summer or whenever the next season is. Katrina Ruth: I don't believe that business should be built on a marketing calendar or an editing calendar or rolling things out or knowing things in advance. And I also think that, for you, if something is speaking to you in your life, whether it's Empress, working with me one on one, and the details are here in the pinned comment on this livestream or whether its anything. Right? Like anything that's going on in your life. Maybe you wanna ask that person out or maybe you wanna go and try a different style of workout or maybe you wanna move to a different place or maybe you can't fucking decide whether you wanna go to the movies tonight or not. Whatever it is, why not get into the habit of saying yes to your soul right away? Huh? Katrina Ruth: Are you feeling this? I feel like I'm gonna get my preacher mode on. Let's film this and we can incorporate it into that beach video that we're gonna do down there. You gotta leverage your content all the time. Ideally, you want somebody that follows you with a camera all the time, except when I experimented with that idea I just got really shitty about the idea of having somebody with me all the time so it didn't really work but once a week, it's good. Katrina Ruth: So whatever it is that your soul is desiring, whatever it is that you're thinking about or you're like, "Maybe I'm gonna do this one day, maybe I'm gonna work with that amazing mentor one day or maybe I'm gonna get that dream car or that dream house or ask that person on a date or fucking go and learn how to dance or," I'm gonna do gymnastics, whatever it is. Why not get into the habit of saying yes to your soul right away? When you say yes to your soul, life says yes to you. That is the reality, right? Katrina Ruth: And every time you hesitate, every time something comes through you and then you think to yourself, "This is for me, I know that I'm meant to have this or I know that this is part of what I'm meant to do, I know I'm meant to do this [card 00:18:03], I know I'm meant to step into that or claim it, it's mine, it's done, I'm manifesting it," and then you don't take action, you have seriously misunderstood the game of manifestation and probably of life. Katrina Ruth: How it works is you say yes to your soul and you take immediate action. Or just fucking don't talk about it and find the shit that you wanna take action on right now. All right. [inaudible 00:18:28], we'll do something on the beach and incorporate it into it. I'm gonna get off this livestream. I can feel that the power is coming through me and I could totally livestream for another hour right now. But I won't 'cause we're gonna go film some stuff like I said. But my point is, don't message me about Empress and be like, "I'm waiting to see, I wanna know how much it is so that I can prepare for the next round," or some shit like that. Just say yes to what you wanna say yes to right now. Katrina Ruth: How do I even know if there is a next round? Like I said, I don't even know what I'll be marketing tomorrow. Well, tomorrow, I'll probably still be Empress [inaudible 00:18:59] but next week, I'm not planning that shit in advance and it's a big part of what I'm teaching in Empress as well is for you to just let what's coming up come up and have the fucking trust and faith that that will work. Faith is a motherfucking choice, by the way. Katrina Ruth: And true faith, true faith, oh my God, I'm getting the gold coming through now, true faith, as I was saying to a client this morning is if you fully trusted someone, like let's say maybe it's your partner or maybe a mentor or maybe a close friend or whoever it is. But if there's someone in your life and you fully trust and believe that that person has your back and then you also fully trust and believe that they know what the fuck they're on about, well, then, when they say something or suggest something, you just be like, "Okay," because you have that level of trust. And what if you had that level of trust in your own soul? That's something to think about. Katrina Ruth: Then you wouldn't need to waste all this bullshit time dealing and [inaudible 00:19:56] and weighing up the pros and cons and asking 25,000 people for their fucking opinion. And you could get into the habit of just taking immediate action fast which is a critical part of success. If you can't take immediate action fast, you're gonna find it a very difficult thing altogether to make money on the internet or to really achieve anything of any note or credibility in your life. And when I say credibility, by the way, I mean according to your own values and standards. Katrina Ruth: So, Empress, claim your rightful place now. Read about it in the pinned comment. If you're solely saying yes, message me, I'll get you a right old written overview, it's like an overview, it's like a description, it says things, there might even be some bullet points in there, I'm not sure. Tell you about the entire bonus programme you get which is an entire previously private client only, still private client only but it was sold for $6,000, you get that whole programme as well. You get unlimited access to me, we do start on Monday 25th, places are strictly limited and it is currently selling. Katrina Ruth: Message me right here on my personal page for that. Have an amazing epic day. Why don't you go and unleash something on the fucking internet? Get your head out of your stupid funnels and your opt-in pages and you're worrying about what every other motherfucker is up to and go say something. That's how you're gonna build [inaudible 00:21:10], don't forget, life is now, press play.

An interview with Alison Gianotto / Snipe, creator of Snipe IT Snipe.net Snipe-IT @snipeyhead Editing sponsored by Larajobs Transcription sponsored by GoTranscript.com [music] Matt: All right, cool. All right. Welcome back to the latest episode of Laravel Podcast. It's been a little bit of a break for those of you who tune in to every new episode, but I've got another great interview here. As with every single one, I'm interested and excited to introduce someone to you. Some of you have heard of before, a lot of you might not know that she actually works in Laravel. Either way, it's going to be great. This is Snipe. Although in my head, you have been Snipeyhead because I feel that's been your Twitter name for a while. Real name, Alison Gianotto, but I'm probably just going to end up calling you Snipe for rest of this call. Before I go in asking you questions, the first thing I want to do is just I always ask somebody, if you meet somebody in the grocery store who you know isn't technical at all, and they ask you, "What do you do?" What's the first way you answer that question? Snipe: I say I work with computers. Matt: Right, and then if they say, "My cousin works with computers and whatever." Where do you go from there? Snipe: Well, it depends on their answer. If they say, "Do you fix computers?" I'm like, "Not exactly." If they say, "Really? What type of computer work do you do?" I say, "Well, I'm a programmer." They're like, "So you make games?" "Well, not exactly." If they say something like, "Mobile apps or web? What languages?" Then I'm like, "Okay, now I can actually have a conversation." I don't do it to be disrespectful to the person asking. It's just confusing to them, and so I like to keep it bite-sized enough that no one gets confused. Matt: If you talk to a grandma in a store who doesn't have much exposure with computers, and you say, "Well, I work in InfoSec with blah-blah-blah." Then she's going to go, "Huh?" I totally hear you. If somebody does ask and they say, "You know what? I actually work in Rails," or, "I know what a framework is." How do you answer someone when they are more technical? Let's say, somebody-- You understand that this person is going to get all the names that you drop. Where do you go from there? How do you tell someone about what you do? Snipe: I actually usually say that I run a software company. I say, "I run a small software company that basically works on open source software." Usually, they look at me like, "How do you--" Matt: How do you make money? Snipe: Literally makes no sense. [laughter] Matt: Which is where we're going to go. Let's actually go there. Snipe-IT, it's a company that has an open source product. I'm guessing that you make your money by paid support plans and hosting plans. Right? Then you also have the whole thing available for free in open source? Snipe: That's correct. Yes. Matt: Could you give us a little pitch for anybody who doesn't know what Snipe-IT is, and what it does, and who it's for? Snipe: I'm so bad at this. I'm the worst salesperson ever. Matt: Well, I'm helping you grow. [laughter] Matt: Thirty seconds or less. Snipe: If you have any kind of a company and you buy assets like laptops, or desktops, or monitors, you need to keep track of them and you know who has what, what software is installed on what. Then usually I'm like, "I've got this nailed. I've got this nailed." Then I end up saying, "It's not a very sexy project, but people need it." [chuckles] Matt: Right, right, right. You have to justify yourself in your sales. Snipe: I know it. I really do. I'm really the worst at it. People get really excited. We're going to DEF CON this year like we usually do. I'm actually bringing my whole crew. Matt: Cool. Snipe: Because I really want them to be able to experience the way people react when they realize that we are Snipe-IT because they just get so excited. I've had people run across the conference floor to give me a hug that I've never met. Matt: Wow. Snipe: It's really cool. There was another time I was talking to, I think, YTCracker on the conference floor. He introduces me to one of his friends. He's like, "Yes, she's got a IT asset management software." He's like, "Really? I just heard about one of those. That was really great." I know exactly where this is going. I'm watching him look at his phone. He's like, "Yes, I just heard about it. It's really amazing. I think through your competition." I'm just sitting there smirking and I'm like, "Okay." Totally, I know exactly where this is going, but I let him spend five minutes looking it up on his phone. He's like, "It's called Snipe It?" I just look at him like, "Hi, I'm Snipe." [laughter] Snipe: It was actually wonderful. Matt: It's one of the benefits not just of having the company, but actually naming it after yourself. You're like, "No. I'm actually the Snipe. That's me." Snipe: I'm excited to bring my crew out to DEF CON this year so they can really get to experience that first hand. Because like anything else in open source and in company support in general, a lot of times, you only hear the negative stuff. You hear about when something is broken or when something doesn't work exactly the way they want it to work. To actually get just random people coming up-- I'm getting us swag. I'm getting us t-shirts printed out. I'm super excited. Matt: I love it. There's nothing like having the opportunity to see the people who love what you're doing to really motivate you to go back and do it again. I hear that, for sure. Snipe: Definitely. Open source can be really tough with that because for the most part, the only thing that you're hearing is, "It doesn't work," or, "Why doesn't it do it do this thing?" Or people telling you how they think your software should work. To just get basically unbridled love, it really recharges me. It makes me want to work on a project even harder. Matt: Plus, the phrase unbridled love is just fantastic. [laughter] Matt: It should be in our lexicon more often. Snipe: I agree. Matt: It's asset management software. I'm imagining I've got a 500-person company, and every single person gets issued a laptop within certain specs. After it's a certain amount of time old, then it gets replaced. We're going to make sure they have the latest build of whatever, Windows and the latest security patches, and that kind of stuff. It's at the point where you don't have-- My company has, I think, 17 people right now. There is just a spreadsheet somewhere. This is when you get to the point where a spreadsheet is really missing people. People aren't getting their upgrades. People don't have security updates. My guess was the reason there was InfoSec involved in this at DEF CON is because security updates is a big piece of why that's the case. Did I assume right? Could you tell us a little bit more about how InfoSec and security are related to what you're doing here? Snipe: You're kind of right. We don't currently have a network agent, so we don't have anything that listens on the wire. We do have a JSON REST API, though. Basically, we're now working with folks like Jira, Atlassian, and we're going to be working with a JaMP API to try and basically make that stuff easier. I feel like its out of scope for us to try and build another networking agent, but we have an API. If we can just build those bridges, then it just makes it a little bit easier. Ultimately, in terms of security, the real reason why I think people in InfoSec appreciate this tool, especially given the fact that we don't have-- And some people in InfoSec actually like the fact that we don't have a monitoring agent because that actually becomes a separate problem in and of itself. Let me give you a backstory on why I created this in the first place. Matt: Please do. Snipe: Maybe that'll help explain a little bit more. I was the CTO of an ad agency in New York City. We had grown from-- I think I was employee number 12, and we were now at 60 something people. We were using a Google Sheet shared between three IT people, some of which were not necessarily the most diligent- [laughter] Matt: Sure. Snipe: -about keeping things up to date. Basically, when you've got a single point of truth that is no longer a single point of truth, it becomes a bit of a hellish nightmare. Additionally, if you're repurposing-- Because it's an ad agency, so you have a lot of turnover. You don't have any history on any particular asset if this asset is actually bad. If the hard drive on this is actually just bad and should be replaced. If this is bad hardware, then we should consider just unsetting it, and getting a brand new box, whatever. We had to move offices. We were moving our main office and also our data center. Of course, when you're trying to move a 60-person company, and servers, and everything else, the very first thing that you have to do is to know what you have. That was an enlightening experience. It basically turned out that we had about $10,000 worth of hardware that we just didn't know where it was anymore. Matt: Wow. Snipe: People got fired. This is basically before I was a CTO and before I had set up the exiting process. People had been fired or had quit and just taken their laptops with them. That's got company data on it. That was a huge, huge issue for us. I was like, "Okay, we need something that we can integrate into our exit strategy or exit process to make sure that we're reclaiming back all of the data that--" Because some of those stuff is client data. It's actually really sensitive from a corporate perspective. Also, sometimes it's customer data. It was really important to have a way to handle that a bit better. That's it. The asset part is the most important part of that software. We do have support for licenses where the cloud offering portion of that is not as fully developed. We're going to be building in a services section soon. That will describe, for example, if you had Snipe-IT as a vendor, where would we fit in this ecosystem for our customers? We don't actually have a good answer for that. We're going to be building out a services section that lets you know how much money you're paying every month, how many seats you have. Matt: That's great. That would cover not just global stuff, but also individual subscriptions like Adobe and PHP-- Snipe: Sure, sure. Matt: Cool. That's awesome. Snipe: Licenses are really hard. They're hard because you can have-- One of our customers actually has a hundred thousand licenses. Matt: Oh, my Lord. Snipe: Because you've got this notion of a software license and then a bunch of different seats. There are some licenses that have one seat, and only one seat they only ever will. Then there are ones that have tens of thousands. For example, Microsoft Suite. If you have a large company, you're going to have a lot of those licenses. One of the things I care really deeply about in Snipe-IT, and I think one of the reasons why we've been successful in this really saturated marketplace, because it is a really saturated marketplace, is that I care a lot about the users' experience. I know, for example, that our licenses section, the UI on that, the UX on that is not as optimized as it could be. That will be the next thing that we're really tackling is because it is a popular section. It's one that because of the nature of the variability of licenses, makes that a really tricky UX problem to solve. That's one of the things that I love about this work is getting to solve those kinds of problems. Matt: You're just starting to make me interested in this which means you're doing your job of the sales pitch. You said you got something you're super comfortable with. Snipe: [laughs] Matt: I always struggle-- Somebody made a joke and they said something like, "It's a drinking game for how many times Matt says 'I could talk about this for hours' during a podcast." Snipe: I did see that, yes. Matt: We're there already. [laughter] Matt: I want to step back from Snipe-IT just a little bit. Snipe It, I want to call it Snipe It now that you said that. Snipe: Please don't call it that. [laughs] Matt: I won't, I promise. Think a little bit about what got you to here, and what got you to the point where you're a name and an online persona. I saw you had some interactions with @SwiftOnSecurity the other day. Everyone got all excited seeing the two of you interacting. What was the story? I want to eventually go back to when you got into computers in the first place. First, what was the story of the process of you going from just any other person on the Internet, on Twitter, on GitHub, or whatever to being a persona that is relatively well-known across multiple communities? Snipe: I can't really answer that for you because I don't really understand it myself. Other than lots of poop jokes-- Matt: It's the best. Snipe: Yes. [chuckles] I think, probably, I've been on Twitter for a while. Also, I was on IRC for a long time. I think I'm still an op in the ##php channel on Freenode, although I don't visit there as often as I used to. I was really involved in that as I was learning PHP, and as I was helping other people learn PHP. I don't know. I've always been a mouthy broad, and I think that's probably worked because whether you like me or not, you remember me. [laughs] Matt: Yes, for sure. Snipe: I'm doing my very best to not swear on your podcast, by the way. I've caught myself at least five times that I'm like, "No, no, no." [laughs] Matt: If it happens, it happens but I appreciate it. Snipe: I'm doing my very best. I'm at a conference-- Matt: Broad was a good one, yes. All right, exactly. Snipe: Yes, I know. Yes, exactly. I was like, "B-b-b-broad." Matt: [laughs] Snipe: Which is an offensive term in and of itself, but it's still- Matt: We toned it down a little. Snipe: -better than the alternative, I think. [laughter] Matt: I love it. Snipe: I'm trying my best here, Matt. Matt: I appreciate it very much. Was it in the world of PHP? First of all, I heard longevity. I've been here for a while. That's always a big win. Poop jokes, that's also obviously big win. Give the people what they want. Snipe: I don't know if I can say dick jokes on your podcast. Matt: Well, you did. There we are. Snipe: Dick jokes are definitely big part of my repertoire. [laughs] Matt: Yes, I know. Being an interesting person, having been around for a while, but was it in PHP, and teaching PHP, and being around in the PHP world for a while, was that the main space where you came to prominence versus InfoSec, versus being open source business owner? Was it primarily in being a PHP personality where you came to at least your original knownness? Snipe: I think probably. Probably, yes. When I grab onto something, I don't let go of it. I've been doing some Perl work. I've probably started with Perl, but that was back in the days when I ran Linux as a desktop on purpose. [laughs] Matt: Oh, my goodness. Snipe: I was writing some Perl stuff. Heard about this this crazy thing called PHP which looked way easier and was way more readable, and ended up writing some-- Now, terribly insecure. I know this now, because it's like 2000, 2001, something like that. Which is for going back a ways. I had just started to put out stupid scripts like e-card scripts and things like that, because they served the need that I needed to have filled. This is a well-known secret, but I worked Renaissance Fairs for a very long time. I was guild member number four of the International Wenches Guild. Matt: What? Snipe: Yes. That's not even the most interesting thing I can tell you. Anyway, I was running their website Wench.org which now looks terrible because Facebook took over that community. I used to have interactive like sending roses to each other. Because in the Renaissance Fair community, different rose colors have different meaning. It's basically like an online greeting card thing with these built-in rose color meanings. You could pick different colors of roses and send them to people that you liked, or people you didn't like, or whatever. Having this playground of a huge community of people who-- Basically, I would post to the forums. I'd say, "I'm thinking about building this. What do you guys think?" By the time they actually answered me, I had already built it anyway. I was just like, "This looks really interesting. I want to see if I can do this." Matt: To do it, yes. Snipe: Yes, exactly. It was really, really cool to have access to, basically, a beta-testing community that was super excited about anything that I put out. It definitely stoked the fires for me, stretching and doing things that I may not have done if I didn't have a reason to do it before. Matt: Well, I love how much passion plays a part there. Not this ill-defined like, "I'm passionate about programming. That means I spend all my free time doing it," but more like-- I've noticed that a lot of people who are a little bit older had PHP-- Actually, just developers in general which is quite a few people I've had on the show. Snipe: Are you calling me old? Matt: Me too. I'm in the group too. Snipe: Are you calling me old? Oh my God. That's it. This interview is over. [laughter] Matt: You're going to burn the place down. I think those of us who started back when becoming a programmer wasn't necessarily going to make you big and rich. There's a little bit of that idea today. Go do a six-month boot camp, and then you're going to be rich or something. I think when a lot of us started-- I'm putting myself in that bucket, in the '90s and the '80s. When we started, it was because it was something that allowed us to do things we couldn't do otherwise. I don't know your whole back story, so I want to hear it, but a lot of the people I've noticed, "I was in the dancing community. I was in the video game community. I was in the Renaissance whatever Fair community." Snipe: I used to work on Wall Street. That was what I was doing before I got into computers. [laughs] Matt: Okay. Well, before I talk anymore, we need to talk about this. Tell me the story. Tell me about Wall Street, and then tell me when did you actually first get into computers? Snipe: I left high school. I was living with my sister in a tent in Montana for about nine months. Then it got too cold, our toothpaste started to freeze during the day. We were like, "F this business." We went down to Colorado because we'd met some friends at Colorado School of Mines. Stayed there for a little bit. Came back to New Jersey, and was like, "Well, I don't want to go to college. I also don't have any money for college." [laughs] There's that. I ended up waitressing for a little bit. Was waitressing, wearing my indoor soccer shoes, because I was a soccer player for 13 years. The coach from Caine College came in to eat at my restaurant. He looks at me with disdain and he goes, "You actually play soccer with those, or are they just for fashion?" Matt: Oh, my goodness. Snipe: I'm like, "Bitch, I was All-State. What are you talking about?" [laughter] Snipe: He's like, "Do you want to go to college?" I'm like, "I guess." He invited me to go to Caine College where I studied education of the hearing impaired for exactly one semester. [laughter] Snipe: I was like, "Holy crap. This is so boring. I can't do this." Not the education of the hearing impaired part. Matt: Just college. Snipe: Yes, it just wasn't my jam. I was like, "I want to move to New York." I moved to New York City. I pick up a paper, and I'm like, "Okay, I'm super not qualified to do any of these things." Basically, I was a leatherworker at a Renaissance Fair. I'd done makeup work for the adult film industry. I'm like, "Um." Of course, the easiest way to Wall Street is sales. I had the most grueling interview I've ever had in my life, because I didn't know anything about real sales compared to retail. I remember sweating so hard. I'd just dyed my hair back to a normal color. You could still see a little bit of green in it, and I'm wearing my sister's fancy, fancy suit. I have no idea what I'm actually going to be doing there. It is literally out of Glengarry Glen Ross, high-pressure sales that they're expecting from me. I'm like, "I'm 17, 18 years old. I have no idea what I'm doing." I managed to pull it out. At the very last minute, I got the job. Matt: Nice. Snipe: Was working at a place that did forex futures. Then they went out of business because the principals moved back to Argentina with all of our clients' money. That spent a little bit of time in the attorney general's office, making it really clear that we had nothing to do with it. Matt: At least it was there and not jail. Snipe: That's absolutely true. It's not that uncommon that the main traders are the ones that actually have the access to the real money. Then we started working at a stock shop. I realized I was working until six, seven o'clock at night, busting my ass all for lines in a ledger. I was actually pretty good at that job, but I also caught myself using those creepy, sleazy sales techniques on my friends and my family. When you catch yourself saying, "Well, let me ask you this." You're like, "Ah, ah." Matt: "I hate myself. Oh, my God, what am I doing?" Snipe: I know. I just realized that I hated myself, and that I didn't want to do it anymore. I quit my job. I had a boyfriend at that time that had a computer. That's pretty much it. I had done some basic programming, literally BASIC programming in high school. Matt: Like QBasic? Snipe: Yes. BASIC in high school. In fact, funny story, when I wrote my first book-- I almost didn't graduate high school because my parents were getting divorced, and I just checked out. I was good in all my classes, I just checked out. I had to pass a computer programming class in order to graduate. My teacher, who was the track coach as well, Coach Terrell, he knew me from soccer. He calls me into his office. He's like, "Alison, I've got to tell you. You just weren't here, and you know that if you don't show up, I penalize you for that. Did really well on all your tests, but attendance is not optional in this class. I just don't think I can pass you." I'm like, "I'm not going to graduate then." He's like, "All right. Well, the thing is that when you're here, you do really good work. I'm going to let you go this time, but you've really got to get your shit together." Matt: Wow. Snipe: When I published my first programming book, I sent him a copy. [laughter] Matt: That's awesome. Snipe: I wrote on the inside, "Dear Coach Terrell, thanks for having faith in me." [laughs] Matt: That's amazing, and you know he has that sitting on the shelf where everyone can see it. Snipe: Yes, yes, yes. Matt: That's really cool. Snipe: That was really nice of him. [laughs] My life would have had a slightly different outcome if I'd had to take some more time, and get a GED, and everything else just because I didn't show up to my programming class. Matt: Wow. Snipe: Anyway, I left Wall Street because I had a soul, apparently. Matt: Turns out. Snipe: It turns out, "Surprise." I totally still have one. [laughter] Matt: It's funny because you're telling me this whole story, and what I'm seeing in front of my face in Skype is your avatar. For anyone who's never seen this avatar, it's got a star around one eye, smirky, slanty eyes, looking down where you're like, "I'm going to get you." It's funny hearing you tell this story, and just the dissonance is so strong of seeing that, hearing your voice, and then hearing you talk about being on Wall Street. Obviously, I'm looking back. Hindsight is 20/20, but seeing this story turned out the way it has so far does not surprise me, looking at the picture of you that I'm looking at right now. Snipe: Mohawk people have souls too. Matt: It turns out, yes. Snipe: I got that mohawk as a fundraiser for EFF. Matt: Really? Snipe: I raised like $1,500 for EFF a bunch of years ago. Matt: You just liked it and kept it? Snipe: Yes. Once I had it, I was like, "Wait a minute. This completely fits me. Why did I not have this my entire life?" Matt: That's awesome. Snipe: Yes, there was a good reason behind it. Matt: Honestly, what I meant is actually the inverse which is that I associate having the soul-- When you imagine a soulless, crushing New York City job where you hate what you're doing, you don't usually associate it with the sense of owning who I am and myself that is associated with the picture I'm looking at right in front of me. Your boyfriend at that time had a computer, you actually had a little bit of history because you'd studied at least some coding. You said primarily and BASIC in high school. Where did you go from there? Was that when you were doing the Renaissance Fairs, and you started building that? Or was there a step before that? Snipe: No. Remember, this is back when the Web-- I'm 42. Matt: I wasn't making any assumptions about what the Web was like at that point. Snipe: I think there might have been one HTML book that was about to come out. That's where we were. If you wanted to do anything on the Web, you basically figured out how to right-click- Matt: View source them. Snipe: -and view source, and you just poked at things until they did what you wanted. There was no other way around that. I realized that I really liked it because it let me say what I wanted to say, it let me make things look-- For what we had back then, we didn't have JavaScript, or CSS, or any of that stuff. Matt: Right. Use that cover tag. Snipe: Yes, exactly. It was enormously powerful to be able to have things to say, and put them out there, and other people could see it. Then I just started to freelance doing that. I was also doing some graphic design for one of those-- It's like the real estate magazines, like Autotrader type of things but for cars. I used to do photo correction for them using CorelDraw, I think it was. Matt: Oh, my gosh, that's a throwback. Snipe: Yes. I'm an old, old woman. [laughter] Matt: I've used CorelDraw in my day, but it's been a long time. Snipe: Our hard drives would fill up every single day, and so we'd have to figure out what had already gone to press that we can delete it off. Basically, Photoshopping, to use Photoshop as a verb inappropriately, garbage cans and other stuff out of people's black and white, crappy photos. Because he was nice enough to give me a job. I offered and I said, "You know, I can make you a website." He's like, "Yes, the Internet's a fad." I was like, "I'm just trying to build up my portfolio, dude, for you for free." He's like, "Yes, yes, yes, it's not going to stick." I'm like, "Okay." [laughs] Matt: All right, buddy. Snipe: That's where it started. Then I think I moved to Virginia for a short amount of time, and then Georgia. Got a job at a computer telephony company where I was running their website, and also designing trade show materials like booths and stuff, which, by the way, I had no idea how to do. No one was more surprised than I was when they took pictures of the trade show and the booth actually looked amazing. Matt: That should look good. Snipe: I was like, "Look, yes." Matt: "Hey, look at that." [laughter] Snipe: That's very, very lucky. There was definitely a lot of fake it until you make it. Also, I've never designed a trade show booth, but trade show booths do get designed by someone, and at least a handful of those people have never done it before. Matt: Right. I'm relatively intelligent person, I understand the general shape of things. Snipe: Yes. Get me some dimensions, I'm sure I could make this work. Matt: What is the DPI thing again? [chuckles] Snipe: Yes, exactly. That was exciting and fun. Then I moved back to New York to teach web design and graphic design at an extension of Long Island University. Matt: Cool. Snipe: Yes, it was actually very, very cool. The school was owned by these two teeny-tiny Israeli ladies. They were absolutely fabulous. It was kind of a crash course in Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish culture. It was in Flatbush, so basically, 90% of my students were Hasidic or Orthodox. I think I broke every rule ever. The two owners of the school would just look at me and laugh. They wouldn't offer me any guidance. They just liked watching. Matt: Well, it would be awkward. Yes. Snipe: Exactly. I'm like, "Why would you do that to me?" [laughter] Snipe: They're just laughing. I could hear them laughing from upstairs- Matt: That's hilarious. Snipe: -when they knew I was putting my foot in another cultural mess. That was really, really fun. I learned a lot from that. I learned a lot about teaching. I even got to have a deaf student one time, which was great, except I didn't know-- I used to know or still know American sign language, but when I learned, there weren't any computer-related signs. It was actually a weird barrier that I hadn't thought about. We're like, "Okay, I can sign as I'm talking," but then I'm like, "Wait, do I have to spell all this stuff out every single time? I have no idea." That was cool. Then I started just doing HTML for a company called Cybergirl, which is not a porn site. I always have to clarify that. Not that there's anything wrong with porn, but it was not, in fact, a porn site. It was an online women's community. Matt: Cool. Snipe: They weren't really super profitable in the community itself, so they had a separate part that did websites for clients. I was put on to work mostly with their clients. They had stuff written in ASP, ColdFusion. Because the people who had designed it weren't there anymore, I basically had to learn all of these languages. Also, we only had a part time sysadmin, so when we'd hire someone new, I'm like, "I guess I'm creating email accounts for people now." I became a stand-in for a lot of different roles. Got to play with a lot of different languages, some of which I liked vastly better than others. ColdFusion? Really? [laughs] Matt: ASP wasn't that bad. There was worse things than classic ASP. Snipe: Yes, there are. That is a thing that could be said. That is an opinion one might have. [laughter] Matt: Trying to keep a positive spin on it. Snipe: I would say that all of these languages, the ones that are still around, have come a very long way since then, including PHP. Matt: Yes, yes. .NET is not a classic ASP. PHP 5, whatever. PHP 7 is no PHP 3, for sure. Snipe: Certainly. Matt: Were you using PHP at that point already, then? Was that one your-- Snipe: Yes. That was one I was-- Because I'd already done some Perl stuff, and it just wasn't that hard. One of our clients had a website, I think it was The Bone Marrow Foundation, had their website in PHP. That forced me to do a bit more legwork on it. That was the beginnings, the very beginnings. Matt: At that point, we're probably talking about single-page PHP files for each page. At the top, you've got a common.inc that you're doing your database connections. Then below that, it's just a template, right? Okay. Snipe: Functions.inc and usually some sort of PHTML. [laughs] Matt: God, PHTML, yes. Okay, all right. Snipe: I told you, I am an old, old lady. Matt: Honestly, we worked on a site that still used PHTML and things like four or five years ago. I was like, "I didn't even know that PHP parser is still allowed for this." Apparently, some of these things still stick around. Snipe: Whatever you set as your acceptable file formats, it'll parse. Matt: Yes, you can make it happen. Snipe: I can have a .dot site file extension if I wanted to. Matt: I like that idea now. Jeez. When was the transition? What were the steps between there and ending up where you are now? Are we still many steps behind, or did you get out on your own pretty quickly after that? Snipe: I was doing some contract work. Thanks to a friend that I'd met through IRC. I was doing some contract work for a company out in San Diego. They were an ad agency. This is the beginning of the days when marketing companies were trying to own digital, and they were trying to build up their digital departments. They moved me out there because they're like, "You're amazing, so come on out here and build up our team." I did. I built up their team. We had some really cool clients. We had San Diego Zoo, San Diego Padres, California Avocado Commission. At that time, I didn't like avocados. I was giving away free avocados that I did not like. Matt: [chuckles] Oh, no. That's so good. Snipe: I hate myself now for knowing how many avocados I could have had. [laughs] I got to build lots of custom web apps, all the database-y stuff. That was really fun. I left there, started my own web design company for lack of a better term, where I was basically using PHP, but also pretending like I knew how to design anything at all. Sorry, hang on. Incoming call. Building my own custom applications for people. None of it is really that fancy, but whatever. That was fun. Then I broke my foot. This is before the ACA, and so I had no insurance. Thousands of dollars and a spiral fracture later, I'm like, "Maybe I should get a real job." [laughter] Snipe: I started to work for the San Diego Blood Bank, which was a great gig. It's probably my favorite job. The pay wasn't that great, but my coworkers were great. Your hours were your hours. There was no overtime. If you had to work overtime, you got paid double time and a half, something like that. It was insane. Matt: Especially compared to the ad agency world, which is basically the exact opposite. Snipe: Yes. Yes. There's no amount of blood you can show to prove that you're loyal to that particular market. I ended up moving back to New York and ended up working for the Village Voice for a little while. Matt: Really? That's cool. Snipe: Yes, that was cool. Unfortunately, they had already been bought out by Newtimes, and so they were not the Village Voice that I grew up with, the one that warmed the liberal cockles of my heart. It was actually a crap place to work, to be honest. People were getting fired all the time. There was this one guy, he used to hang out in the archives room with an X-Acto blade and a piece of paper and would just cut at the piece of paper. He was actually scary. Everyone was afraid of him, because that's office shooter kind of crazy. Matt: Exactly, exactly. Snipe: I left there, finally, and worked for another ad agency. That's the one that I was working at when I finally started to work with Snipe-IT. Finally started to make Snipe-IT. For a while, while I was in California, the nice thing about running your own gig back then, because it was like a one-man shop, so I didn't have people that I had to worry about. I got a chance to work with tigers for about a year. It was just exhausting. That was around the time when I was writing my book, too. Working with tigers, commuting four hours a day, coming home stinking like raw chicken and tiger pee. Then working on my book, and then whatever I can possibly eke out for customers. It was pretty chaotic and definitely exhausting, but they were good times. Matt: I don't want to preach too far on this, but I feel like the more of our story that takes us around different aspects of life and different experiences, the more we bring to the thing we're in right now. That's one of the reasons I keep pushing on people having histories before they came to tech or diverse histories in tech. It's not to say that someone who just graduated from college and instantly got a job as a developer is therefore now incomplete, but I think that a lot of what makes a lot of people interesting is what they bring outside. That's true for anybody, right? What makes you different from the people around you makes you different, and makes you interesting, and it makes you have a perspective to be able to bring that the people around you don't. It sounds like you have quite a few of those, at least as you enter into the communities that I'm asking you from the perspective of whether PHP, or Laravel, or anything like that. I don't know where I'm going with that, but anyway. Snipe: [laughs] Matt: That's very interesting to hear. Snipe: I always say I sound really interesting on paper. I'm not really that interesting to talk to, but when you actually look at all the crap I've done, it's like, "Wow. That's kind of a lot." Matt: Right. That is a lot going on. Snipe: It's all weird. Weird stuff. Matt: If I remember right, the book that you wrote was a Wrox PHP book, right? Snipe: Yes, yes. You can still get it on Amazon, but it costs more to ship. Matt: Really? I got to-- Snipe: Actually, I'm not sure. It may just be eBay. The last time I checked, it was selling for $2.95 and costs like $80 to ship. [laughs] Matt: Professional PHP4 Web Development Solutions. Snipe: Yes. Matt: I don't see a Mohawk. I don't know which one's you. Snipe: No, no. Matt: [laughs] Snipe: Yes, I know. Gosh, it's a mystery of the ages, isn't it? [laughs] Matt: All right. Yes. $22.99. Wow. What was your experience like writing a book? Would you do it again? Snipe: Possibly, but I would need a bit more written assurances up front about how-- This is a co-authored book. Basically, we were not given communication information with each other. We were writing these chapters completely independently and it sucked. I offered to set up a bulletin board just so we could-- For some reason, they didn't want us talking to each other or something. I don't know, but I was like, "Because I don't know where this chapter is going to fall, I want to make sure that I'm not rehashing a thing that's already been discussed, or touching on something that needs more information." They never facilitated that. They actually pushed back against it. It was really frustrating. You're literally writing chapters in a vacuum that then have to be cohesive when you string them all together. I would need to know if it was going to be a co-authorship. I would need to know that this will truly be collaborative. Because the way it looks on the cover, it looks like we're all hanging out. No, I don't think I've ever spoken to those people ever. [laughs] Matt: Wow. Jeez. Snipe: It's really weird. It's really weird. I did not like that. I thought that was really just not a way to give the best experience to the reader. If I was going to collaborate, I would have to make sure that there was something like that. I've toyed with writing a couple of books over the last few years. It is also a bit of a time suck. Matt: Yes, it is. My perception, what I've told people in the past is that people often ask me, "Should I write a book with a traditional publisher like you did?" Because mine was with O'Reilly. "Or should I self-publish like a lot of the people in our community have?" My general perception has been, if you want to make money, self-publish. Snipe: Definitely. Matt: If you want reach that's outside of your current ability, then consider a traditional publisher. You've got quite a bit of reach and I wonder whether it's-- Snipe: This is like 2003, though. Matt: I don't mean for them, but I mean now. If you're going at it now. It seems like there'll probably be less of a reason for you to do a traditional publisher at this point. Snipe: I don't know, though. I still kind of O'Reilly. Matt: You still like it? Snipe: Being a published O'Reilly author, I still toy with that, honestly. Matt: I tell people I got a degree in secondary English education, basically. This O'Reilly book is my proof that I'm actually a real programmer. Snipe: [laughs] You know what? Honestly, that was really important to me back then. Snipe: Me too, really. Matt: I don't know where things would have gone, I don't know if I would have-- I probably would have stuck with it because I really, really liked it. I think that gave me a bit of confidence that I really needed. Proof, again, because I didn't graduate college. I nearly didn't graduate high school because of the programming class. [laughs] It was a way for me to say not just to the rest of the world, but to myself, like, "Hey, I actually know what I'm talking about." Matt: You can't underappreciate just how significant that is. I love that you said it. It's not just to everybody else, it's to you, too. Snipe: More than anyone else, to myself, honestly. I don't care what you guys think. [laughs] Matt: I spent several thousand hours writing a book with a major publisher so that I can overcome impostor syndrome. It's totally worth it. [laughter] Snipe: I still have it. That's a thing, I have it. Matt: I still have it, but maybe a little less. Snipe: At least if someone actually pushes the impostor syndrome too far, I'll be like, "I wrote a book. What have you done?" Matt: Exactly. Snipe: Meanwhile, I go off and rock in the corner as if, "Oh, my God. I don't deserve to be here. I don't deserve to be here." Matt: Exactly. It certainly doesn't make it go away, but maybe it's a tool in our arsenal to battle it. Snipe: That's a very good way to describe it. Matt: I like it. Snipe: I would need that to be a bit more of a tighter process. Matt: Well, if you decide to write with O'Reilly, I know some people. Just give me a call. Snipe: [laughs] I also know some people in O'Reilly. Matt: I was just going to say I'm pretty sure you don't need me for any of that kind of stuff. I just had to say it to try and seem like I actually matter, so this works. Snipe: Of course, you matter. Matt: I matter. Snipe: I got up early for you, Matt. I got up early for you. Matt: That's true. Snipe: You don't have any idea. Matt: That's true, this is quite early your time. I appreciate it. Snipe: [laughs] Matt: I'm trying to not talk forever. I'm trying to move us on even though I'm just my usual caveats, everyone take a drink. You eventually started Snipe-IT. I think we skipped a couple of things. We were talking about you becoming the CTO of the ad agency and being in a place where you needed to manage that kind of stuff. You started Snipe-IT. You now have a remote team. Could you tell me a little about the makeup of your team, and what it's like running a remote team, and the pros and cons you've experienced, and anything else that you would want to share about what that experience is like for you? Snipe: Well, I'm really lucky, first of all, because although our team is remote, we're all also local. We can actually see each other, we'll go out and have beers when we hit a major milestone. We'll go out and have some champagne and celebrate that we do get to see each other's faces. Also, we were friends first, so that helps. It's totally, totally different. If you're looking for advice on how to run a real remote team, that I can't help you with. I can't tell you how to manage your friends through Slack, though. [laughs] Matt: Basically, you and a bunch of friends live like an hour driving distance to each other or whatever and choose to work from home? Snipe: More like seven minutes. [laughs] Matt: Jeez. Snipe: Yes, yes. Matt: Okay, so this is really just like, "We just don't feel like going to an office," kind of vibe. Snipe: It's pants, it's pants. I'm not putting on pants. I've worked too hard in my career to have to put on pants anymore. There is a reason this isn't a video call, Matt. Seriously. [laughter] Matt: I wish that this was one of the podcasts-- Snipe: I think I just made Matt blush, by the way. Matt: I wish this was one of the podcasts where they name each episode, because that would have been the name right there for this episode. I might have to, just for this one, just give it a name just for that. Okay. I hear you. I get it. Snipe: The thing is I hadn't actually planned on hiring when I did. The reality is I should have, because I was really buckling under the helpdesk. That customer support load was a lot. It was causing me a great deal of anxiety. Looking back at it now, it was really untenable. Of course, I think that I'm 10 feet tall and bulletproof, so I'm like, "I got this. I got this." Meanwhile, it's four o'clock in the morning and I can't even see straight anymore. I ended up having to hire someone for a personal reason. She's actually worked out great. She's an absolute rock star on the helpdesk. She's never worked a helpdesk before, and she owns it. It's actually really, really great. Once I'd hired her, I think-- The onboarding takes a little bit. Especially, literally never worked a helpdesk before, so it's not just onboarding with my company, it's like onboarding the entire concept. As soon as she got her footing, she just completely handled it. It was really great. The next hire was a developer/sysadmin that I've known for a while. He is just fantastic. He's actually the harder one because he, I think, requires a little bit more structure, and a little bit more face time. I need to be better. I do. I need to be better about working with that because in my head, I'm still managing this the way that I want to be managed. I forget that that's actually not my job anymore. Matt: People are different. Snipe: Yes, people are different. Also, not everybody wants what I want. Frankly, it doesn't matter what I want. Ultimately, that's no longer a luxury that I have, caring more about how I want things to go for myself. That priority has shifted, and so I'm having to painfully learn [chuckles] that lesson. Not painfully. I love my entire team. They're absolutely amazing. I'm super, super grateful for them every day that goes by. Every time one of them takes vacation, we all hold on to our desks. We're like, "Okay, we can get through this, we can get through this." It's a learning curve, certainly. I've run my own small business, I've run dev teams. This is a different thing though, because the reason why I wanted to make this a company instead of just running this as a side project is because I've worked for tons of shitty companies. I want to build the company that I wish I'd worked for. Matt: I'm so sorry for doing this, but I was doing that thing where you're hearing somebody talking and waiting for your chance to talk. I literally was about to say Dan and I, when we started Tighten, the first thing we said was, "We want to build the company we want to work for." You just said and I'm like, "Exactly." That introduces the problem you're talking about, which is you just assume everybody wants the same things you want. It also means nobody else gets to force you to put people through things that you wouldn't want to be put through. It's an incredible freedom if you can make it profitable. Snipe: Yes. Absolutely. Getting to institute stuff that I think is really worker-friendly. We all make our own hours. We have office hours so that when Victoria's handling the helpdesk, she's got access to the text that she needs during a certain amount of time. In general, she's got a kid. We have to have that flexibility, so that she-- Honestly, she just lets us know that she's going to pick up her kid. It's like, "Okay, cool. See you back in half an hour or whatever." Vacation, she had not had a real vacation in probably 10 or 15 years. Last year, we were like, "You are taking vacation." She kept checking into Slack. I'm like, "Girl, I will actually revoke your credentials." Matt: [laughs] Exactly. Snipe: Do not play with me. Matt: I love it. Snipe: This year, I've decided that there's two weeks basically mandatory vacation, and we're going to put $3,000 towards each person's vacation funds- Matt: That's cool. Snipe: -so that they can actually go and do something awesome, and relaxing, and not stress about money while they're there, and just get to go and actually enjoy things, and come back refreshed and ready to work. It's pretty cool being able to come up with stuff like this and really like, "What would I have needed?" Because when I was working at the ad agencies especially, I would accrue my PTO. Honestly, that's why Snipe-IT existed. It was because I had two and a half weeks, three weeks of PTO that was not going to roll over. They made me take vacation in November. They wouldn't let me do it in December. They made me do it in November, and I was like, "Yes, three weeks of just relaxing, playing video games." That didn't work. I accidentally the product. [laughs] Now, I accidentally the business. Matt: That's awesome. One of the things I often talk about as an entrepreneur, as a business owner is something that I think people are scared of talking about, which is power. Because being a business owner means you get to hire, you get to figure out how money is spent, you get to figure out what pressures are and are not put in the people you work with. I call that power, but I think power doesn't have to be a scary word because, really, what matters is what you do with the power. When we hear power as a negative thing, it is usually because the people on power are benefiting themselves. I think that something is really beautiful, and wonderful, and we need more of in the world is when we can see power as a positive thing, because people get power and then use it for the benefit of other people. I just want to applaud and affirm what you're doing, because you just described that. It's like, "I got power, and the first thing I did was work to make other people's lives better understanding what the situation that they were in was." I love hearing that. I'm really glad that we got to talk about this today. Snipe: Well, thank you. I'm looking forward to coming up with more stuff like that. Matt: I love it. Snipe: It's super important to me. Our customers are incredibly important to us, obviously, but my staff is as important. You can't have one without the other either direction. Matt: In the end, they're just both people who you work with. The hope is that you're able to make both groups of people really have lives that are better because they had a chance to interact with you. Snipe: Yes, absolutely. Matt: Okay. We are almost out of time. I asked people at Tighten if they had any questions for you. They gave me a million, and I haven't gotten any of them. They're all going to be mad at me, so I'm trying to look at the one that I could pull up that won't turn into a 30-minute long conversation. Snipe: I'm Italian. There is literally nothing you can talk to me about that won't turn into a 30-minute conversation. [laughs] Matt: All right. I'll literally go with the question that has the least words in it and see if that gets us anywhere. Coffee or tea? Snipe: Red Bull. Matt: There you go. See how short that was? All right. Snipe: This podcast is sponsored by Red Bull. [laughter] Matt: It's so funny that it's been the thing at Tighten for the longest time, where those of us who started the company and the first hires were primarily coffee people. There's one tea holdout, but over time, the tea contingent has grown. Just within the last nine months, we hired two people who are Red Bull addicts. All of a sudden, we're shopping for the company on-site and they're like, "Orange Red Bull, no sugar, energy, blah, blah, blah." I'm like, I have a course in Red Bull flavors. Anyway, I still think it's pretty gross, but I did try some of them. Snipe: It's disgusting. No, it is utterly vile. It is really, really gross. [laughter] Matt: I don't get it. Please pitch me on why I would drink red Bull instead of coffee then. Snipe: No. If you don't drink Red Bull, then there will be more for me. First of all, I'm not going to pitch that. Matt: World's dwindling storage of Red Bull. Snipe: Obviously, we buy our stores out of local Red Bull, it's ridiculous. We have a main store, and then we have a failover store. Listen, you don't drink it because it tastes good. It tastes like dog ass, but it wakes you up. It keeps you awake. It feels the same role that coffee does, and frankly, I don't think that coffee tastes that good. Matt: Okay. Fair enough. Snipe: I can ask the same question to you. Matt: Right. For you, it's a combination. You don't like the flavor of either, but one of them you can buy in bulk and throw in the fridge? Snipe: Yes, yes. Matt: Got it. I get that. I love the flavor of coffee, but I'm like a geek. I have all the equipment, and all that kind of stuff. Snipe: Of course, you do. [laughter] Matt: Am I predictable? I am predictable. Okay. Snipe: I will neither confirm nor deny. My lawyer has advised me. [laughs] Matt: Not to make a statement on this particular-- I have one more and I'm praying that I can make it short, but I probably won't. You are a member of the Laravel community. You use Laravel. You share things every once in a while, but for someone who is such a big name, who's a member of the Laravel community, much of your popularity is not within the Laravel community. You're not popular because you're speaking at Laracon, you're not creating Laravel packages that all the people are consuming. It's this interesting thing where you're a very well-known person who uses Laravel and is a member of the Laravel community but is not necessarily gaining all that fame within Laravel space. It's an interesting overlap. As someone who does have exposure to lots of the tech communities, you're in the InfoSec world, you've been in PHP for a while, but you're also solidly Laravel. Do you have any perspectives on either, maybe the differences between InfoSec and PHP, differences between InfoSec and Laravel, and/or is there anything that you would say to the Laravel community, or things you'd either applaud or hope to see grow? Is there anything you just want to say about the way Laravel compares, or connects, or overlaps, or whatever with the rest of the world that you're in? Snipe It's always an ongoing joke in the InfoSec community. PHP developers are pretty much the easiest punching bag in the InfoSec community. Matt: And everywhere else. Snipe: In fact, I think just yesterday, I submitted an eye-rolling gift in relation to someone at InfoSec, bagging on PHP developers. I get it. When the language first came out, it was really easy to learn. You didn't need to have any knowledge of programming, or discipline, or best practices. There were no best practices for quite some time in PHP. I totally get that. The thing is that that's not really the world that we live in anymore. It's actually hard to write a PHP application without using a framework these days. Because the frameworks are so much better and it's so much faster, that for me, I'm pretty sure I could still write a PHP application without a framework, but why the hell would? If I ever have to write another gddmn login auth routine, I'll kill myself. I will actually kill myself. Comparing InfoSec to PHP or Laravel is like comparing apples to orangutans. They're entirely different animals and there is a little bit of overlap, but typically not. In general, PHP has a bad reputation in InfoSec. In fact, I will tell you a very brief story about how I got into InfoSec. This one's always a fun one. I used to run a nonprofit organization when I moved to California the first time. It was basically like Megan's Law for animal abusers. Criminal animal abuse. I would pull in data, break it down statistically based on a couple of different pointers like domestic violence connection, blah blah blah blah blah, and basically run statistics on that stuff. This was going back a very, very long time when nobody really knew or gave a crap at all about AppSec. At one point, my website got hacked. The organization's website got hacked. I am literally on my way to speak at a conference in Florida, an animal welfare conference. I'm checking in. I'm like, "Hi, I'm Alison Gionatto. I'm a speaker." She goes, "You're petabuse.com. That's great. I'm so sorry to hear about what happened." I'm like, "I've been on a plane for a couple of hours." I'm like, "Wait, what?" [chuckles] I run to my hotel room, and somebody has defaced the website with an animated GIF, and a song playing in the background which was basically a clip from Meetspin, and they linked to Meatspin. If any of your listeners don't know what Meatspin is- Matt: I don't. Snipe: -please do not Google that. You can google it, but have safe search on. Matt: Is it like Goatse kind of stuff? Snipe: Yes. "You spin me right round, baby, right round" playing in the background on autoloop. To this day, when I hear that song, I shiver a little bit. Matt: Trigger, yes. Snipe: Exactly. I ended up actually talking to this guy who thought that we were a much bigger organization than we were. He was trying to extort money, of course. I was like, "Dude, you have you have no idea. We get like $800 in donations every month. You are barking up the wrong tree." He's like, "I thought you were bigger. I'm sorry, but it is what it is." I toyed with him long enough to figure out what he had done. The thing is, this is on a Cobalt RaQ server. First of all, we're going back. Second of all, those are not exactly going for their security, but it was what I could afford. Honestly, it's what I could afford. I figured it out, I locked him out. I did leave him one final kind of F you text. [laughter] Snipe: Just so that he knew. That was how I got into this in the first place was basically a horrific, horrific internet meme and the defacement of my organization's website. Again, this is 2004, 2005. Application security became really important to me, and that's why I'm here. [chuckles] That's why I go to DEF CON. That's why I speak about application security and security in general. To get back to your original question, there isn't really an overlap. There is this disdainful relationship, for the most part, coming from both directions because InfoSec people don't typically treat programmers in general very well, but especially not PHP developers. PHP developers are tired of getting shit on, and so they don't necessarily treat-- It becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling-- Matt: Impostor, yes. Exactly. Snipe: Honestly, it's all just a bunch of dumbass egos and it's stupid. If we would just talk to each other a little bit more, we'd probably be a little better off. Matt: Come on, somebody. You'll be surprised to hear that I could talk about InfoSec and PHP for an hour, but we're out of time. I don't know if I'm going to have you back sometime or I don't know what, but this's been amazing. I really appreciate you spending some time with me. Before we cut off for the day and I cry because of all the topics I'm not going to cover, is there anything you wanted to talk about? Anything you want to plug, anything you want to cover, anything you want to say to the people that we haven't got to cover today? Snipe: Nothing that really comes to mind. I am still really passionate about AppSec. If you're using a framework and you're not utilizing all of the security stuff that's built in already, specifically Laravel is really good with that. I've had write some Middleware to add some additional CSP headers and things like that. If you're already paying the price, the overhead of using a framework, then freaking use it. Actually use all of the bits that are good, not just the bits that you don't feel like writing. Laravel makes it really hard to avoid the CSRF tokens. You'll actually have to go out of your way to disable those. I like that about Laravel. I like that it's opinionated. I like that it doesn't want you to screw this up. That said, any developer left to their own devices sufficiently motivated will still screw it up. Matt: Will screw something up, yes. Snipe: Yes, Exactly. Frameworks like Laravel, I think once that are headed in the right direction, so your default login already uses bcrypt to hash the password. You would, again, have to go out of your way to write something that would store something in cleartext or MD5. I think it's a step in the right direction. Use your frameworks, learn what their built-in security functionality is, and use them. Matt: Use it. [laughs] Snipe: One of the packages I'm actually writing for Laravel right now is an XSS package which will basically walk through your schema, and will try and inject rows of XSS stuff in there so that when you reload the app and if you got to any kind of functional testing or acceptance testing setup, you'll be able to see very quickly what you've forgotten to escape. Matt: I love it. Snipe: For a normal Laravel app, that's actually hard to do because the double braces will escape everything. For example, if you're using data from an API, maybe you're not cleaning it as well or whatever. That's one of the packages that I actually am working on. Matt: That's great. Also, if you're using JavaScript, it's really common for people to not escape it, and so that all of a sudden, they forget to clean it. Snipe: Exactly. I wanted one quick way to basically just check and see how boned I was. That'll be fun. Matt: Yes. Does it have a name yet that we can watch for or would you just link it once you have it? Snipe: Well, the only name-- You know how the mocking data packages called Faker? You can imagine what I'm considering calling this that I probably won't call it? [laughs] Matt: Probably won't, but now we can all remember it that way? Yes. Snipe: No promises. Absolutely no promises is all I'm saying. [laughs] Matt: Assuming it's safe for work, I will link the name in the show notes later. If not, you could just go-- [crosstalk] [laughter] Snipe: Again, no promises. Matt: I like it. Okay. You all have taken enough drinks, so I won't say my usual ending for you to drink too. Snipe, Alison, thank you so much. Thank you for the ways you have spoken up for a lot of things that really matter both in this call and our community as a whole. Thank you for hopefully helping me but also our entire community get better going forward, but also the things you brought to us in the past in terms of application security. I don't know why I didn't say this earlier, but Mr. Rogers is maybe one of my top heroes of all time. That was what was going through my mind when you were talking about running your company. Thank you for being that force both for running companies that way and taking care of people, and then, of course, by proxy for just the people who you're working with. The more people that are out there doing that, I think the better it is for all of us. This has been ridiculously fun. If anyone wants to follow you on Twitter, what's your Twitter handle and what are other things they should check out? That URL for Snipe-IT? I will put all of these in the show notes, but I just wanted you to get a chance to say them all at the end. Snipe: My Twitter handle is @snipeyhead, because @snipe was taken. I'm still pissed at that guy. [laughter] Snipe: The URL for Snipe-IT is snipeitapp.com. Not very creative. All of our issues are on GitHub. Your pool of requests are welcome. [laughter] Snipe: As always. Matt: Nice. Snipe: It is free. If it helps you solve some of your problems at your organization, we would love for you to try it out. If you'd like to give us money, that's awesome too. Ultimately, the more people who are using it, the better. Matt: Nice. Okay. Well, thank you so much for your time. Everyone, check out the show notes as always. We'll see you again in a couple of weeks with a special episode. I'll tell you more what it is when that one happens. See you. Snipe: [chuckles] Thank you so much, Matt.

There are two types of businesses - those that have been hacked and those that don't know they've been hacked. This may sound like hyperbole, but it's fairly accurate and many of those businesses are law firms. So you may ask yourself, how do I protect my law firm from a hack? Mark sits down with ALPS Director of Client Services, Matt Lubaroff, to discuss how ALPS has improved ALPS Cyber Response, our first-to-market cyber policy available exclusively to our legal malpractice insurance policyholders and designed to stay ahead of emerging cyber threats. ALPS In Brief, The ALPS Risk Management Podcast, is hosted by ALPS Risk Manager, Mark Bassingthwaighte. Transcript: MARK: Welcome to another episode of ALPS In Brief. I'm Mark Bassingthwaighte, the Risk Manager at ALPS, and we're recording here at the historic Florence Building in Missoula, Montana. I'm very pleased to have as our guest today Matt Lubaroff, the Director of Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service here, and today we're going to talk a little bit about cyber insurance. Matt, in terms of over the years of my experiences consulting with lawyers, conducting risk visits and these kinds of things, it's somewhat common for lawyers to have this belief that we're not big enough in terms of our firm, in terms of size. We're not going to be on the radar of hackers and these kinds of things. I guess, would you agree or do they face a problem that they really need to be concerned about? Do you have some thoughts on that? MATT:  Yeah. Thanks, Mark. I would not agree. Maybe 10 or 15 years ago, it was probably the case because hacking was new. We didn't know what ransomware was. We didn't know what clicking on click links were and how that impacted us. But it's evolved into probably one of the most sophisticated industries out there, where some of the best technological minds unfortunately are using their skills for evil and not for good. So it really becomes a matter of when any business, but specifically law firms, will get hacked. Not a matter of if. MARK:  Yeah. I love ... there's a ... the FBI has put all kinds of information out there, but for law firms and businesses in general, and there's a great quote from one of the FBI guys. It's been maybe a year or so, but he basically said there's two types of corporations in the world. Those that have been hacked and those that don't know they've been hacked. MATT:  Yeah. It's accurate. We all click on things, and go, oh, I didn't mean to do that. But it's a little too late at that point. MARK: Well, and I absolutely agree with you, in terms of regardless of size, that law firms have a significant risk. Can we talk a little bit about solutions. What kind of solutions can we bring to the table and help with here? MATT:  Well, there's really two types of solutions that I suggest. One, of course, is insurance. Lawyers are trained in ways to manage their own risk. They go to law school not just to learn the substance of law and how to provide services to the community, but they also spend a lot of time in risk management techniques. They build practices that are successful. They build practices that help in our community, and the majority of lawyers out there are purchasing malpractice insurance in case a client sues them. But not enough lawyers and not enough law firms are buying cyber insurance. One way to prevent something is to purchase a product that will protect you should something happen. Because accidents do happen. The other one that's probably just as important is training. Employee training. Some of that comes from understanding, is how to prevent a hack. What are systems, both technical and people-wise, that you can put in place to make sure that you are up to speed with techniques that will prevent that hack from happening in the first place. MARK:  Right. A lot of what I do ... I try to talk, whether it's again consulting or lecturing, I try to talk about the necessity of, if you will, securing the human. Now that certainly is frontline defense. But this other piece of the insurance is absolutely essential and necessary, because again, it just ... a naïve, innocent misstep, clicking on the wrong link, opening the wrong file or attachment or these kinds of things can lead to just devastating consequences. Now for some time, ALPS has brought to the table, if you will, for our insureds, a basis cyber insurance policy, but we are just launching now a new product. Can you explain and share where we're going with this type of coverage? MATT:  Yeah, Mark. Happy to do so. We've tried to also adapt with the times. We've had the cyber policy available to our law firms for low per lawyer cost and lower limits for several years now. As our hackers have become more and more sophisticated ... we're all familiar with malware and ransomware that have become more and more popular, both on TV shows or in just the unfortunate press of everyday life. We've increased that coverage to provide more of that protection. Also expanded the liability coverage to handle really three different ways of providing the coverage. MARK:  Interesting. MATT:  There's one set of limits is available for that indemnity or kind of make yourself whole. So if you get hacked and there's a cost to you as a law firm, there's one aspect of the policy that provides that coverage. But there's two other towers or layers of coverage that we've included in the new policy that are just as important, if not more important. One is that prevention. The response to the hack or to the privacy breach. We need to figure how it happened, where it is within your computer systems and how to prevent it from happening again. MARK:  This is dealing with some of the forensic teams that come in and the costs associated with that. MATT:  Yes. MARK:  Right, okay. MATT:  The third one is ... I think you were telling me in an earlier conversation that 47 of the 50 states have- MARK:  Breach notification. MATT:  ... breach notification laws and requirements. MARK:  Right, right, right. MATT:  And so there's an available limit of liability should there be some notification requirements within that breach. MARK:  Yes, which can be very, very costly. A lot of people don't understand what did these regulations mean? For example, it's not in terms of the breach notification regulations that you're subject to. It's not where the breach occurred. It's where anybody impacted by the breach resides. When you think about law firms that have clients and all kinds of other people in their databases that cross these borders, this can get costly quickly. It sounds like we've got a wonderful product here at- MATT:  Yeah. The thing is, is these are very complicated situations. MARK:  Yes. MATT:  Let's just take the situation where a firm has ransomware. Ransomware is defined as your data is now encrypted, and the only way for you to get back your data realistically is to pay the ransom. If you think of how a typical cyber policy might respond is you have a payment of ransom. That's cyber extortion. You have the forensic investigation which is that breach response, that second tower, so to speak. Then there's the expense to restore the data from the backup that hopefully you have. That's data protection. Then you've got a loss of business. There are hospitals, stories of businesses that have had to shut down completely because what they need they can't get to. So that's network business interruption. Then you have the response, to your point, to the regulatory inquiries. You need an expert to navigate through that. You don't want to do it poorly. You don't want to do it too quickly, but you have to make sure that you follow the letter of the regulatory laws. And then you have these individual third party claims where it wasn't your data. It was somebody else's data that maybe you're in care or control of, and that third party, that other group, has been impacted by that data being stolen or lost, and there's susceptibility for claims there. MARK:  Okay, wow! You convinced me when I started to think through all of these different exposures and you think at times initially, oh, I get hacked and you just bring ... this is pretty complex stuff and spins out in all kinds of directions. I love it. You convinced me, and I hope many of the folks listening to us, of the value and need for a product like this. Can you share a little bit about okay, I'm an ALPS insured. How do I get this? What are my options? How do I go through this process? MATT:  Well, one of the things that we've aimed to do is make it as easy as possible for you. When you have your quote, when you're accepting your ALPS policy- MARK:  We're talking about the quote for the legal malpractice coverage. MATT:  Yes. MARK: Okay. MATT:  When you're being quoted or accepting your lawyer's malpractice insurance, you automatically have the ability, with no application, to accept our low limit, low cost charge per the attorney, right around $50. You don't need an application. Just accept it, sign, pay- MARK:  That makes it pretty easy. Yeah, wow!. MATT:  ... done. We have some different limits- MARK:  Nice. MATT:  ... based on the firm size, but there's no extra effort required. We also are very, very happy to offer limits up to a million dollars, which if you think of the susceptibility of data and how quickly things can happen and spiral out of control, the ability to secure your data and have response services available to you for up to a million dollars of limits is also important. There's no application required. However, we do have some risk management suggestions that we can help you put in place to make sure that there's no ... we can continue to proceed, get you those limits, protect your law firm. They're a little bit more expensive. We have some minimum premiums and higher per attorney costs, but what I can say without any concern is that it's the easiest process, the lowest cost, and I'd argue, probably the best policy out there in the marketplace. MARK:  Yeah, yeah. And it's my understanding this policy's the first out there to be designed, written intentionally, or directed at law firms. Am I correct about that? MATT:  You are correct. We've partnered with Beazley, United States and Beazley London, who's probably the leader in this space as it is anyway. MARK:  Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. MATT:  And they worked with us to provide a custom form, custom policy and custom process specifically for the ALPS lawyers book. MARK:  Yeah, yeah. Well, I appreciate your sharing all this, Matt. From my perspective as a risk guy, and just an individual living in this crazy world, this is a screaming deal, as I see it. Personally, I'm not trying to tell everybody to go out and buy these policies in the sense ... but how can you afford not to do this? When you look at the frequency of the attacks, the severity of these kinds of attacks, and it seems like you guys have really done a great job of putting a fantastic policy together that covers all these things. We've made it as easy possible. Just wow! Well done. Job well done. Do you have any final thoughts before we wrap this up, Matt? Anything else you'd like to share? MATT:  Yeah, I would just encourage folks to talk to their account manager if they're an insured, if they're in the process of applying with any type of insurance, specifically lawyer's insurance. Make sure they're asking about this. It's really a shame. It's unfair when businesses or law firms get hacked. It's scary because there's people out there smarter than us that are coming up with ways more devious than we could ever imagine to get access to that data, and we all deserve to have our data protected. We all deserve to have experts by our side who are helping us prevent it and walk alongside that path to recover, should a hack happen. MARK:  And a closing thought that I would have, just as, again, coming at it from the risk perspective, is we are charged with protecting the confidences of our clients. I just think even as a consumer ... you and I suspect, in terms of just statistically, are victims of the Equifax breach. I have some feelings about Equifax that are not the most positive things right now. I just encourage all of you listening out there to appreciate, too. If you ever are breached and don't have this type of insurance out there and can deal with this in a responsible way, how do you think your clients are going to respond? I just invite you to look at it from that perspective, too. It's another way to come back and say I just don't understand how you can afford not to do this. How you get to that point. Well listen, Matt, as always it's been a pleasure. Thank you-

Scott, Ash, and Matt: There's the Super Nintendo Classic, and trouble with the Han Solo movie... but we decide to talk about early '90s TV instead! Also, reviews of Glow (Netflix) and Resident Evil: Vendetta (Film). Support Rated NA! Try Audible and get a free audio book download And join us on Twitch and Mixer!

Click here to read HubSpot's response on this topic. Nasir and Matt discuss the trend in startups to compensate programmers and other early employees with stock options and how the company culture at HubSpot isn't what it seems. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that business news. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. NASIR: Why are you laughing? Is it too formal or what? MATT: No, it wasn’t too formal. It was just, uh, interesting breaks and peaks in your… NASIR: Oh, because, well, the reason is because I was starting to think about what the name of our podcast is because, you know, since I never say it in our intro anymore, I almost forgot what it was. MATT: There’s somebody else that does the intro, says the name, says our names, and then we immediately just repeat it. NASIR: Well, we don’t say the name of the podcast which, for the life of me, I can’t remember what the name is, but that’s okay. MATT: I say it at the end, I guess – in a way, I do. NASIR: Uh, keep it sound and keep it smart? MATT: Yeah, close enough. I hope you went to that game on… NASIR: I did watch it. The final? MATT: Great game, yeah. NASIR: You know me. It’s surprising that I sat through a game that I have no idea who the teams are or players are but, yeah, it was a great game. I think I just watched the last half. MATT: Yeah, the whole game was good but the last half was good. Yeah, my wife did the same thing. If she’s able to watch a whole half of basketball, you know it was a good game. NASIR: Yeah, exactly, and we’re talking about the… uh, what are we talking about exactly? I just want to make sure we’re talking about the same thing. MATT: College basketball. NASIR: Oh, yeah, yeah, college. MATT: Because it was in Houston, that’s why I bring it up. NASIR: Yeah, we’re talking about the same thing. Anyway, what have we got today? MATT: You know, this is a topic that – I’m assuming you do as well – I seem to talk about it all the time with people – mostly with startup companies. We’re going to go through an actual company and kind of the tribulations that they’ve had. So, you have a startup company. Oftentimes, you have multiple people that are involved. Unless you get some sort of investment right away or unless one of the founders has some money from some other source or some money to pump through, they’re pretty handcuffed in terms of money they can pay out to people that are performing services for them which – you know, this is just a complete estimate I should say – over 90 percent of startups – and I use “startups” loosely – probably have this issue. NASIR: The so-called “tech startups” or kind of dotcom startup. MATT: Well, I think tech is a classic example because all businesses can probably use some sort of programming or tech person, but the tech ones in particular obviously have this huge need. And so, oftentimes, what happens for these startups, it’ll have the means to pay people. You know, we’re just talking minimum wage. We didn’t even talk about that yet but, in California, it was going to be quite the increase here in the next few years. NASIR: $15.00 – and New York. MATT: New York as well, that’s right, but we’ll talk about that at a later time. NASIR: I think we have a story about it. MATT: Yeah. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: So, in lieu of paying these people at least minimum wage, they pay them nothing but they pay them in equity meaning that – well, only if you stock in this company or membership interest if it’s an LLC – in exchange for your services, the one thing that they often do though is they tie it into some sort of vesting schedule. So, in order for this person to receive this, you know, think about it this way – we’re going to give you five percent of the company which is probably pretty high but we’re going to give you five percent for doing the work you’re going to do as a programmer.

Nasir and Matt discuss new laws that will go into effect for 2016 and how employers should adjust their practices accordingly. 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. Welcoming my co-host who happens to be an expert on time travel of what’s going to happen in the future. MATT: Yeah, Matt Staub. I guess it kind of makes sense. NASIR: Kinda? MATT: Well, I’m looking forward to this episode because you were just going to tell me all the new laws for 2016 and I was going to comment on them I believe was the plan. NASIR: Let me just open this big book of new law. I mean, we’re focusing on some of the labor laws for California only. Granted, California is crazy but, if you have employees in multiple states but just if you have one employee in California, then there’s a lot of new issues you have to deal with. MATT: Actually, that’s a question a lot of clients ask. “Are there any new labor laws that I need to be aware of for the new year?” Just a common time that new things get implemented. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: Obviously, there’s a whole slew of laws that get passed and are new every year but the labor laws in particular are the ones that we usually talk about and we’re going to talk about a little bit of that and then there’s some other laws – ah, I guess it relates to labor, too. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: Which actually is way more interesting than some of these California ones and compared to previous, you know, at least the last couple of years, because I think we’ve done this, for the couple of years we’ve done the podcast I think this’ll be the third end of the year we’ve been doing this and I think this is the third end-of-the-year we’ve done new laws for the next year. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: I’d say, at least from the California side on the labor law, this is definitely the tamest. NASIR: That’s true, but there’s a lot of little things and, if someone asks what laws they need to know, there’s not a lot of laws that are passing that are really crucial to an employer but there are a lot of little things that have been passed that kind of adds a headache for us, I suppose. MATT: Yeah, this isn’t like last year or I guess the beginning of 2015 when the paid sick leave was obviously really big in California. NASIR: And I think minimum wage was around that time, too. MATT: Yeah. So, there’s a couple of big things. I mean, to me, from the employer’s side, the biggest law to me is one we’ve already discussed previously this year – at least we touched on it from what I remember. I don’t know if there’s a bill – Bill 258, I don’t think that’s very helpful, whatever this is called. NASIR: That’s how I reference it. MATT: There’s a lot to it. One of the things is this equality in pay regardless of gender and we touched on this before and, thinking about it a little bit since then, the way it’s kind of laid out is employers are I think still are going to be able to get by on this – at least when I say “this,” I mean paying men and women different amounts despite the fact that they can’t. At least initially, just reading through some of these criteria, the idea is men and women, if they’re performing substantially similar work have to get paid the say. You know, they can’t have a difference in pay. But employers can base things on seniority – okay, that’s fine; merit system – that’s kind of vague; a system that measures earning by quantity or quality of production – quantity is much more concrete than quality of production, that’s pretty subjective; and then a bona fide factor other than sex such as education, training, experience. My point is there’s a lot there. It’s not a loophole I would say but there’s a lot of wiggle room for employers. I think it’ll help a little bit but I still can see employers can find ways around this. NASIR: Oh, absolutely. Frankly though, I don’t think the law is going to fix that problem, right?

Nasir and Matt discuss Small Business Saturday,the involvement of American Express, andhow to participate if you are a small business. 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 and, today, we are here with our expert on small businesses and the law – which is actually true. MATT: Yeah, Matt Staub. Yeah, it’s probably the closes one we’ve had so far. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: We usually talk about this every year – or at least the years we’ve been doing the podcast. Actually, no, every year – it just wasn’t recorded in previous years. NASIR: That’s true; we always talk about it but we don’t always record our conversation. MATT: Yeah, it started in 2010 so this would be the fifth year. Wait. NASIR: Well, yeah, no… MATT: Sixth year. NASIR: Yeah, you’re right, sixth year. Dang it! I can’t do my math. MATT: Yeah, Small Business Saturday which falls on the Saturday after Thanksgiving – two days after Thanksgiving. Small Business Saturday and Thanksgiving create the sandwich around Black Friday and then the thousand other days we’ve talked about – Cyber Monday. There’s a Tuesday now, right? Didn’t we just talk about this last week? NASIR: A Tuesday? Yeah, for something else, right? MATT: Yeah, it’s ridiculous. NASIR: Giving Tuesday I think it is? MATT: Okay. Well, that’s not ridiculous but… NASIR: Yeah, I know you’re against that, and I think there’s also Buy Nothing Day. What day is that? Is that the Sunday? MATT: You’re a big advocate of Opt Outside on Friday. NASIR: Oh, I’m definitely doing that. MATT: So much so that you went to REI last weekend after we recorded the podcast. NASIR: I know, it was just happenstance that I was, you know, by one so I was like, “I might as well head on in,” and I’m like, “Hey!” I asked everyone if they heard my podcast episode and they said… I just actually got kicked out but, anyway, Small Business Saturday… actually, most people don’t know, well, I don’t know, I think most people don’t know this was actually started by American Express. In fact, so much so that Small Business Saturday is actually a registered trademark of American Express which is very ironic because American Express is very far from any kind of small business. They are definitely trying to show their so-called support for small businesses. MATT: Well, that was my first thought. How many small businesses even accept American Express? It can’t be many. NASIR: No, you’re right, because American Express is classically more expensive for businesses to accept compared to others. But, at the same time, in the past, and this is why I’m wondering how much they actually support small businesses this year because, in the past, they used to give basically customers – I think it was customers, right? They gave a $10.00 statement credit for businesses that were participating in the program and that was a big incentive for us consumers to actually go out that Saturday and use our Amex cards to actually purchase. MATT: There’s a couple of things at play here. You know, what you just mentioned (1) American Express just made up this day and now it’s the sixth year it’s been around, and I think it’s had some pretty good success at the numbers. An estimated $14.3 billion spent at small independent businesses last year – good chunk of money that, you know, five years in. But, you’re right, they did use to give; it was up to three $10.00 credits to the cardholders of American Express at these qualified small businesses. But I guess it wasn’t worth it for American Express anymore and they’ve scrapped this offer but now they’re saying instead, “We’re going to increase support and resources to small businesses” – whatever that means, I’m not really sure. I guess we’ll just have to see. NASIR: Well, from what I’m looking at, they do have, once you register and if you have certain qualifications as a business,

Nasir and Matt discuss the new legislation thatallows for healthcare workers in California to waive a meal period on longer shifts. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business, 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: Hello! MATT: Hi. NASIR: So… MATT: So, you jinxed the Houston Astros. NASIR: I know. MATT: Actually, the whole state of Texas because both Texas teams just full-on collapsed the last couple of days – Houston in Game 4 and then the Rangers in Game 5, the deciding game. NASIR: Oh, the Rangers, yeah. MATT: Yeah, both of them just full-on collapsed, pretty much your fault, I’m assuming. NASIR: I actually, yeah, I definitely caused that. I’ll take credit for that. MATT: There was a period of time it was looking like an all-Texas ALCS and then, like I said, both teams just blew it. NASIR: Yeah. Sorry to hear. MATT: Did you see the thing with… I think it was the governor? I don’t know. He posted something. NASIR: Abbott? MATT: Yeah, that’s who it was. He posted something. I know you didn’t watch or I’m assuming you didn’t. NASIR: No. MATT: Game 4, the Astros had a big lead at home, like, four runs with a couple of innings left so they had a very good chance of winning. And so, the governor posted something about like, “Congrats on advancing to the next round!” and then they ended up losing. So, it was a big thing. NASIR: I’m reading it now, yeah. “Hoping for an all-Texas ALCS. Looking at you, Rangers.” Why would he do that? I mean, especially in baseball, you never know. MATT: Someone else probably wrote that for him but I don’t know. NASIR: Yeah, most likely, and I guess he deleted it, of course. MATT: I think he should have just doubled down on it and owned up to it and posted it again at the beginning of Game 5 but a pretty rough one for Houston. NASIR: Yeah, I’m seeing if he apologized or something. What was the explanation? Is Sam Brownback someone significant? Is he the governor? MATT: Maybe. NASIR: Kansas governor Sam Brownback, he was like, “Congrats to the Royals. Not so fast, my friend, Gov. Abbott. See you Wednesday. #takethecrown” which I assume is some kind of code word for an assassination attempt on our Queen in England. MATT: I think you pieced it together. Well, just like baseball is a very number-intensive game, this is going to be a number-intensive podcast. There’s lots of numbers that are going to be thrown out so get your calculators out – well, probably not calculators but get something out – pen and paper, only if you’re in California, though. NASIR: Actually, you just need to have the numbers 30, 8, 12, and maybe 6 memorized and you’ll be good. Basically, there was recent legislation about two weeks ago that was signed by Governor Jerry Brown. He signed a bunch of bills that day but this is one of them. It basically made clear this very kind of confusing period for healthcare workers – or I should say “healthcare employers” – in California because, basically, there’s this laws in California that require meal periods and we can kind of talk about how that works but there was also a wage order created by an administrative body that basically said, “Okay, for healthcare workers, if an employee works for more than twelve hours, you can actually waive that second meal period or one of the two so long as it’s a written agreement signed and voluntarily waived by the employee.” And so, this case back in I think early this year or late last year, some healthcare worker sued basically saying, “Hey, the law states in statute that you can only waive it if it’s less than twelve hours – not more than twelve hours – so this is in conflict. I don’t care what this other administrative body of California says, that’s not proper.” The court ended up agreeing and it was appealed and they actually won. Now, it basically created this very strange circumstance for these heal...

Nasir and Matt discuss the scandal involving an employee of DraftKings winning a contest for competitor FanDuel and why this has sparked a discussion on gambling and insider trading. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to the business news. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. NASIR: And we have a huge problem because I have a list of articles that we’re covering but no title so I’ve no idea what we’re doing. Who was responsible for putting the title in? Matt, was that you? MATT: Possibly. You know, I almost wrote something up there and then I didn’t. I usually just copy and paste from an article. So, this is big for you because you’re probably oblivious to… NASIR: Oblivious? MATT: Right now, what do you think is going on where you’re located? Are there any sports happening today? NASIR: You know, what’s funny is – if he’s listening, it’s going to be funny – I was in the elevator with somebody today. He’s like, “Hey, are you going to watch the games tonight?” and I’m like, “What games?” Yeah, as a pure accident, I am aware that the Astros and the Texans are playing – not each other. MATT: No, it’d be interesting. NASIR: It would be interesting, and I saw a bunch of people wearing Texas jerseys out and I’m like, “Man, it’s kind of odd.” It’s like, not Sunday, and I realized it was a Thursday night game. MATT: There’s a Thursday night game every week so the Texans are playing. That’s not that big of a deal but the Astros are in the playoffs. They won the other night in this weird one game wildcard. They’re actually playing right now as we record. I guess both of those games will be going on while we record but I’m guessing you probably can’t name one player on the Astros. NASIR: Of course, I can name one player on the Astros. MATT: I hope you Google and say someone who’s retired. NASIR: Yeah. I mean, isn’t Scott Kazmir going to pitch Game 2 tonight? MATT: Well, it’s Game 1 tonight. NASIR: I mean, that’s what I mean. Oh, no, I meant he’s going to actually pitch Game 2. MATT: It’s possible, yeah. It’s only funny because he’s been on the team for probably a couple of months because he got traded in the middle of the season. NASIR: Oh, yeah, of course, I know. Actually, you know, I know we’re covering fantasy sports but, you know, fantasy football, I get, but fantasy baseball, with so many games per year, that’s too much. MATT: That’s why I led into this sports-related question and I don’t know, I would assume they have some sort of baseball… Fantasy sports, we’re talking about specifically DraftKings and FanDuel which fantasy sports used to be you’d have a team, you’d pick your team, you’d basically go with that team throughout the year, adding or dropping players, making trades. These companies – and I think there are some more out there too but these are probably the two biggest ones – DraftKings and FanDuel – for football, it’s huge because basically what you do, from what I understand – I’ve never played – is you have an allotted amount of money of your salary or your payroll and you pick whatever players in the different positions and you have to come in under the payroll and there’s some contest every Sunday because there’s one game every week per team in NFL. You take the total points and they have this big contest and I think it’s either a million dollars or close to a million dollars for the first place every week. NASIR: At least not FanDuel but… MATT: DraftKings. NASIR: Don’t they advertise a million dollars? MATT: Yeah. I mean, I should know since there’s about a billion commercials between the two, if you watch any sports channels. So, here’s what happened. There was an employee who worked for DraftKings. Like I said, these are two different companies. He worked for DraftKings and I guess he’s privy to some information on, you know, who is selecting what players for this big contest and I’ll get to that ...

The guys discuss the lawsuit filed by PhantomAlert against Waze concerning accusations of data scraping a database. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. 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 here we are today on another episode. Today’s Monday – my favorite episode day, second to Wednesday. MATT: In the top two. NASIR: Yeah, top two of the week. MATT: Well, that’s good. You’re the one that kind of discovered this. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: Were you familiar with it beforehand? NASIR: Actually, it’s funny enough, how I found out about this, I happened to look at Google Maps and I was navigating somewhere and it said that there was a traffic incident reported by Waze and Waze is kind of like a navigating app but it’s really cool on road trips because what it’ll do is it’ll tell you if there is an accident in front of you or if there is a cop, a speed trap, and how it works is that you can actually report – like, if you see a police officer, you can say, “Okay, I just saw a police officer,” and hit a button and then it’s basically reporting it to the app and now everyone else sees it and so now there’s this kind of social aspect to reporting the traffic and different incidences or even attractions and so forth. And so, their data became so valuable because of the users that Google Maps actually acquired them for their data, of course, to integrate within Google Maps. Those of you who use Google Maps pretty regularly, you’ve already noticed in the past six months how much more information you have as far as traffic data. I remember in San Diego, it used to show those red, yellow, and green lines for traffic data only on highways because that’s the only way it had sensors. If you were in another city that wasn’t as advanced, you would have no traffic data whatsoever. But, now, you have traffic data on side streets and pretty much every street that has enough people based upon this kind of reporting data from Waze and other sources as well. MATT: I think that’s pretty common. At least I’m one of the few people that uses – or at least I feel like I am – that have an iPhone and use the actual Maps app that comes on there. I mean, people complain about it all the time. I never have problems with it. It works just fine for me. NASIR: I think it had problems in the beginning but that’s it, you know, because I think when Apple decided to, if you recall, I think at one point they said, “Okay, we’re going to not list Google Maps on the store at all,” and they had some backlash with that so I think it was more of a PR thing that anything else. MATT: Yeah, and I guess Waze, if you’re stuck in a traffic jam, you let people know so, maybe down the road, when you’re trying to decide where to go, someone might do the same for you. NASIR: Well, what’s neat about it is, if you have the program running – I think this is how it works – it’ll actually record how fast you’re going and things like that so it can actually record average traffic pace. MATT: Yeah, that’s what I was trying to figure out. Is that what all these little weird creatures are that look like Kirby? NASIR: Yeah, Kirby, from Nintendo, I believe. MATT: Is that what these things are? NASIR: Uh, I guess. They’re basically little dialogue bubbles with smiley faces on it, if you can picture that, if you’ve never seen them before. MATT: Yeah, but some of them are Kirbys and then there’s like a dog. Anyways… NASIR: Yeah. MATT: There’s Waze and there’s another site called Phantom Alert which looks to be a similar thing. one of the problems I have with them is it’s like, “Oh, DUI checkpoint.” It’s like, “Well, if someone should get a DUI, we don’t need to be telling people. NASIR: Yeah, speeding is one thing, but DUI traps are a different thing, that’s true. MATT: You’re causing more harm than you are doing good by letting people avoid DUI checkpoints. Anyway,

The guys close out the week by talking about the Houston based restaurant that failed to make a donation to a local food bank and latertried to rectify the situation by running an unapproved fundraiser. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to the business news. My name is Nasir Pasha and also joining us… MATT: Is Matt Staub. NASIR: Very good. We just got done with Restaurant Week a couple of weeks ago in Houston. When’s Restaurant Week in San Diego? I can’t remember. MATT: There’s a full-blown restaurant week and then there is some sort of half restaurant week or something or a pre-restaurant week but it’s not really… I don’t know. But I never participated because I don’t eat desserts. NASIR: Oh, yeah, it’s always like a three-course. I’m sure everyone’s aware. I usually go to restaurants during Restaurant Week but never order the fixed menu. MATT: The prefixed? Yeah. NASIR: It’s usually at least a three-course meal, right? Sometimes it’s five or what-have-you, depending on the restaurant you go to. MATT: Yeah. Usually, you’re looking at an appetite… like, an appetizer/starter, an entrée, and a dessert. And so, I’m not a big appetizer fan. I don’t eat desserts – period. For me, it doesn’t really make sense. NASIR: Period? MATT: Yeah. NASIR: I don’t eat desserts – question mark. I do eat desserts. Actually, it looks like San Diego Restaurant Week is coming in in a month. In fact, they have one month, seven days, two hours, thirty minutes, and four, three, two, one seconds. MATT: By the time this episode comes out, it’ll be closer. NASIR: Yeah. Why are we talking about this again? MATT: We’re talking about it because, in your backyard, in Houston, have you been to the Sparrow Bar + Cookshop? NASIR: No, it doesn’t sound like my cup of tea anyway. MATT: Well, yeah, it does. I mean, you like cool, trendy places. NASIR: I guess that’s true. I don’t like that it has a plus sign within the name. Like, how do you pronounce that? “Sparrow Bar plus Cookshop?” Just thinking about putting it into my Google to search for it or telling people, “Oh, meet us at…” I guess it’s just Sparrow and then it says Bar and Cookshop. Anyway… MATT: It’s because you don’t like math so the plus sign, you’re confused. NASIR: Yeah, there’s no equal sign. Where is the solution? If it gave me the solution, then I’d be fine. MATT: Yeah. So, this Sparrow Bar + Cookshop put on or announced a $45.00 prefixed menu in August to help raise money for the Houston Food Bank. The only problem is this fell outside of the Houston Restaurant Week so people were thinking, “Well, that’s kind of weird. I mean, usually, we do this $45.00 prefix or whatever the prefix menu during Restaurant Week like everyone else does.” Then, people did some digging and found out that, back in 2013, there was supposed to be a donation made to the Houston Food Bank. There in fact was not a donation made so the belief was that this $45.00 prefix menu was to cover that donation from two years prior. Also, I guess there’s guidelines for the food bank and you can’t use a charity’s name without their permission and failing to disclose how much of the $45.00 will be donated – both of which SB+C failed to do, didn’t get permission, and did not disclose how much would be donated. NASIR: What’s interesting is that, apparently, the person that wrote this article tried to get comment from the chef who apparently is some famous chef – or I don’t know if famous – she won Top Chef Masters Veteran, Monica Pope – it’s the person that owns it, I guess. But she was on vacation so she couldn’t comment. It’s hard to know exactly what happened here. All we know is that this Houston Food Bank didn’t actually receive any funds. By the way, Houston Restaurant Week is actually Houston Restaurant Weeks. Apparently, it lasts for like, I don’t know… MATT: 52 weeks. NASIR: It’s 52 weeks a year.

Nasir and Matt discuss howmany companies maintain privacy policies which allow for the sale of personal data. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is 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 thank you for joining us once again for a series of information and events which you can take in your consideration. MATT: A series of letters that form into words which form into sentences and who knows what will happen from there… NASIR: Which eventually forms a podcast episode. MATT: Yeah, hopefully. We’ll see. NASIR: At least that’s the objective. MATT: If we have our personal data after this episode then we’ll have a podcast episode. NASIR: Well, this personal data thing is crazy. I know you’re just leading into your transition but we’re talking about this because it’s somewhat dated. Everyone remembers the whole RadioShack bankruptcy and then basically sold everything from A to Z. We covered a little bit about it but what was not as publicized is what happened to the actual private data that they’ve collected for over 100 million customers, including everything from social security numbers to credit card numbers to everything in-between. MATT: Well, luckily, for most people, they hadn’t shopped at RadioShack for a very long time so maybe there’s no personal data on file. NASIR: Most of the people are probably dead by now of those 100 million customers. MATT: It’s been at least ten years since I’ve been inside – probably fifteen years since I went to a RadioShack. NASIR: You know those times where you just need a cable or something like that? I was giving a presentation in the middle of nowhere – when I say middle of nowhere, I didn’t know where I was – and I needed a cable so I had someone go in looking around and they ended up going to RadioShack and they brought in the wrong cable and they went back two or three times and they ended up not having the cable, of course, that I needed. I was like, “What’s the point of this store? I don’t get it.” MATT: Well, at least it wasn’t your data. You had somebody else pay for it or buy it. NASIR: True. MATT: There was a bankruptcy case with RadioShack but it’s not just that. I mean, any sort of merger acquisition, asset sale, any sort of other transaction – let me get the data on this – the 100 biggest sites in the US, 85 of them included language in their privacy policy saying they could transfer user data if one of those triggering things happened – merger acquisition, asset sale, et cetera. NASIR: And that’s 85 out of… you said 100? MATT: Yeah. NASIR: You know, what’s interesting about these privacy policies that are pretty much required – you know, California is one of the first and I think we’ve talked about it in the past, it’s one of the first states to actually require privacy policies – you can pretty much put whatever you want. A lot of times, like Matt said, they’ll say, “Okay, we won’t sell your data unless we are acquired,” or something like that – that’s best case scenario. But, a lot of times, you can just say that, “Yeah, we’re going to use your data and we’re going to use it for marketing purposes,” or they word it in such a way that may not be as egregious but, at the end of the day, allows them to do what they want. MATT: Yeah, and similar to terms of service – probably even less so than terms of service – people don’t read the privacy policy on websites. I mean, typically, it’s either at the bottom of the page in the small link or you have to go to the site map and find it that way. It’s not something people openly go to – I mean, other than an attorney or someone really interested in tech-related stuff. I can’t see many other people going and checking that out. NASIR: Which I think is not unreasonable because, you know, when you surf and enter in forms and so forth,

Nasir and Matt celebrate the 200th episode by discussing America's pastime and why the FBI has decided to get involved with a scandal in Major League Baseball. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha – first baseman. MATT: Oh, no, I’m Matt Staub and, actually, I played first base because I’m left-handed. NASIR: Oh, that’s just my last name – first baseman. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. MATT: I only really ever played first base and pitched for a little bit but I was mostly first base just because, if you’re left-handed, that’s pretty much the role you get thrown into just because it’s advantageous. You have the glove on your right hand and you can catch all the balls that are thrown from the rest of the infielders. NASIR: I didn’t play much baseball but I think I was in the best position. Isn’t the best position in tee-ball right outfield? That’s what I was. MATT: There’s probably four outfielders. Well, in regular baseball, there’s only three outfielders but there may be, like, a left, a right, a right center, and a left center. NASIR: I’m pretty sure there was just three. I just remember – gosh, I hated that tee-ball. I did one season and it was horrible. I was a soccer guy. MATT: Yeah. I mean, I liked baseball but focused on other sports after a while – not soccer. NASIR: You were tennis and golf? You look like a tennis and golf guy. MATT: Yeah, I play tennis. I liked playing golf but I was never really good at it. But, yeah, tennis was what I went with. No regrets for me – easier sport to play than baseball. All right. Well, this is a pretty interesting story. It kind of just came out of nowhere. By the time this goes up, it won’t be fresh in the news but, as of the day we’re recording this, this is still a pretty new story and I guess there could be a lot of things that happen between now and then, but the FBI’s gotten involved with one of the baseball teams in the Major League Baseball. The St. Louis Cardinals are investigating this hacking issue. Let me give a little background facts here. The current Astros general manager used to work for St. Louis Cardinals. I’m not sure in what capacity but he had developed this system that was used that they called Redbird – this computer network that he was a part of. Eventually, he left the Cardinals and went to the Astros and developed a similar style computer system that he called Ground Control and there’s a lot that goes into this. I guess one of the big things – for those of you who don’t know a lot about baseball – there’s all these different levels before you come up to the major leagues. This whole minor league system and there’s a strategy of when you bring players up because you don’t want to bring a player up too quick because he might just not be ready and then it ruins his… it’s a mental game after that and then it just ruins him for the rest of his career. So, part of it was they have this whole system in place of when to bring players up but they also have more confidential information as well such as trade proposals – stuff that would be a great thing to have if you’re trying to get inside information on a team. So, Houston set this up. As of right now when I’m going over this story, they don’t know who the people in the Cardinals organization was that did this, but they basically were like, “Oh, yeah, that guy that used to work for us, he had that master password list, let’s take a look at it.” They took a look at it and I guess one or multiple passwords lined up and they were able to hack into the Houston Astros system at that point because I guess he used the same password. I guess that’s a whole other issue of where that’s crossing the line in terms of hacking but, you know, they were able to gain access to basically a lot of confidential and proprietary information in one of their opposing team’s systems and, yeah,

The guys close out the week by discussing why companies like Google and Facebook are raising their ownminimum wage pay and how one company in Seattle isblowing up the minimum wage model. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that news. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. NASIR: I feel like I don’t have to introduce myself anymore – like, ever – not even on the podcast. I’m just talking about in general anywhere. MATT: Just go right into it. NASIR: People should know who I am. MATT: You’re the new… I don’t know. Who’s the most recognizable person? NASIR: Abraham Lincoln. MATT: Most recognizable living person. NASIR: Oh, Abraham Lincoln. MATT: I was going to say Obama but I think it’s an athlete – like, Michael Jordan, I think used to be the most well-known person, most recognizable person in the world. NASIR: But maybe not now. If you think about it, there’s a whole generation of kids that haven’t even seen Michael Jordan play. MATT: What was it? Like, Jordan and then Tiger Woods was really popular. I don’t know. Maybe Lebron James now. NASIR: No, it has to be a movie star or celebrity, not an athlete. It’s more universal. MATT: There’s not even any big movie stars or musicians. NASIR: Actually, it depends – like what you referenced last week – their Q score. My Q score has gotten up there enough that I should just not have to introduce myself anymore. MATT: Yeah, you should wear a shirt that has your score on it. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: Very good. Well, good work. NASIR: Thank you. MATT: Next time you and I are in the same spot and we’re meeting someone for the first time, I’ll just introduce myself and you won’t say anything. NASIR: Exactly. And, if they don’t know me, I’ll get upset too. MATT: Just leave? NASIR: I’ll act offended, yeah. MATT: Well, I can’t make a connection from that to this so I’m just going to go into this but there’s a couple of things that have popped up, one of which is a little bit older but just increases in pay in general. And so, the reason we’re talking about this – for those of you who haven’t heard – Facebook just announced or recently announced that they’re going to pay a minimum $15.00 per hour to contract workers, right? Yeah, to contract workers such as cafeteria staff and janitors just to deal with this minimum wage thing that’s going on. I mean, $15.00 is higher than pretty much everywhere else other than the one spot in Washington State. NASIR: I don’t know if they’re at $15.00 yet. I think they will be or something but, yeah, you’re right. MATT: What’s interesting about this is it’s raising the minimum hourly rate of contractors, contract workers, so not employees. NASIR: Yeah, I thought that was strange too. MATT: Contractors will receive a minimum of 15 days of paid vacation, $4,000 new child benefit for parents who don’t receive parental leave. Isn’t that, like…? NASIR: Exactly. That’s why I think, when they say “contractors,” I think this article’s incorrect somehow. MATT: It has to be – inc.com? NASIR: No, I’m serious, because also they’re talking about lower paid workers regarding their janitorial staff and cafeteria. Like, okay, you could have a janitor or cafeteria workers in contractor status but, with Facebook having a campus and a building and they probably need something there on the full day, I don’t think that’s the case in this case so I still think they’re still employees. MATT: Yeah, that was the first thing I noticed, too. Just the job they were performing, it seemed like it was an issue. This has to be employees, I guess. NASIR: First of all, no contractor gets paid vacation or new child benefits, you know? MATT: Well, we won’t dig too deep into that. If it’s the case that they are independent contractors, we’ll maybe talk about it. But this kind of connects to this company in Seattle. I guess Washington State really loves to treat peo...

Nasir and Matt discuss the investigative report concerning nail salons andthe abusivetreatmentthat many workers are experiencing. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and we also add our legal twist to that business news. My name’s Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. NASIR: And we are two lawyers that have nothing better to do than talk about business and the law. I love it. MATT: You don’t see many lawyers with podcasts, I’ll say that. NASIR: You know, I was thinking, we’ve been doing this for a year – like, more than a year now, I think, right? We missed our anniversary. MATT: We’re closer to two years than one. NASIR: Oh, that’s true because we started in December 2013? MATT: I think it was at least October. NASIR: Oh, really? Okay. Then you’re right. You’re right. But, I don’t know, it’s fun. MATT: Possibly even before that. NASIR: Our listenership is much more than it used to be. I mean, it took a while to get where we are but that’s fun – fun stuff. MATT: Neither one of us is a celebrity so putting something out there is not going to… NASIR: Neither one of us is a celebrity but, collectively, if you add our celebrity status, you know, collectively, I think collectively we’re a celebrity. MATT: There’s a score for that. Everyone’s assigned a score based on your notoriety or presence as a celebrity and it has to do with online. It starts with a “K” I think. NASIR: Is it Q score? MATT: Yes. NASIR: The recognized industry standard for measuring consumer appeal of personalities, characters, licensed properties, programs and brands. Man, I need a Q score. MATT: Yeah. NASIR: Let’s figure out how we can do it. Nasir Pasha… MATT: This is our whole episode of you trying to come into the ultimate conclusion we have low Q scores. NASIR: It says we don’t have any data for me. They just need to update it. Obviously, this is way behind. MATT: All right. Well, we’re going to talk about a few things, one of which really is I say it comes as no surprise but maybe that’s just because we’re more familiar with it than other people but there was a recent piece that came out in the New York Times that did – I don’t know if it was an investigative search but – a detailed story on nail salons and just the abuse that these workers are getting and their treatment at these nail salons. It kind of details all the things that have gone on or that are going on in New York and it’s kind of crazy. Like I said, I mean, you and I were familiar with these things, but even reading through some of these findings, it’s still pretty insane. NASIR: Wait. Wait. How was I familiar with nail salons again? I know you were but… MATT: I thought, well, I don’t know. I guess maybe it was just me. NASIR: I just know everything because of what you tell me in your experiences. MATT: I don’t think I’ve actually ever been to one. NASIR: You just have them come to your house or something? MATT: Not quite but never had any work done on the nails. NASIR: Well, the bottom line in very New York Times-like fashion, they do go into pretty good detail. They talk about even just how many manicure places there are, particularly in New York City. If you compare it to cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and Boston, of the maps that I’m looking at, and just the concentration in New York City is just a little bit different and it’s because of the cultural association with the Vietnamese nail salons and I think that has a lot to do with it. MATT: Well, yeah, I mean, in this story here, they even talk about a cultural hierarchy or a racial hierarchy. A lot of these shops are owned by Koreans. NASIR: Okay. MATT: This is the racial hierarchy as is described – Korean, China, and then non-Asian. That’s kind of the hierarchy of these places and I guess that it is what it is and I’m not surprised there’s any sort of racial discrimination going on just based on the other things that have happened....

Nasir and Matt talk about a recent decisionthat ruled on whether employers couldrun a reference check on LinkedIn for job candidates. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. 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: I’m sorry, who? MATT: Matt Staub. NASIR: Oh, Matt! Oh, great. MATT: Didn’t have your headphones in. Are those the new cordless Beats headphones or whatever the thing they got unveiled at the draft yesterday? NASIR: I thought those were out for a while, no? MATT: There’s these new cordless, they might be intended for athletes, but they’re not even cordless because there’s still a cord that goes behind the head connecting the two headphones. NASIR: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually have one of those for running. I didn’t like them. They didn’t stick in my ear because it has Bluetooth in it so it has some weight to it. I’d just rather have something light to plug in and that’s my story on that. Let’s talk about the law and business. MATT: And LinkedIn which I don’t know if we’ve even talked about LinkedIn ever. In California, there was a decision – actually, in Federal court – that a reference search on LinkedIn is not a consumer report under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. What people are saying or what people were complaining about was a prospective recruit applies for a job and the employer could do a reference search via LinkedIn and kind of see the backstory, the history of these potential prospects. NASIR: Well, when we say “people,” keep in mind that it’s not like some LinkedIn user decided to file this lawsuit. I mean, this has definitely been perpetuated from an attorney and they see LinkedIn as a target. I mean, that’s how I see it because I can’t really see any wrong here, what prompted someone to complain that LinkedIn is not presenting information correctly that all the requirements that are required with this Fair Credit Reporting Act, how is this consumer or this LinkedIn user hurt in some way with the information that was provided since especially they are the ones that actually provided the information. MATT: I didn’t really understand that at all because it’s people complaining about potential employers can see their past work history, references, anything like that. But, if you don’t want that on there – you voluntarily posted that on LinkedIn – if you’re that concerned about that, just don’t post it in the first place would make the most sense, right? NASIR: Yeah, and that’s pretty much what the court decided as one of the factors. But they actually broke it down in step-by-step, you know, whether LinkedIn’s profiles are considered or it’s information that’s been provided are “consumer reports” or reports that contain information solely as for transactions or experiences between the consumer and the person making the report. And so, not only did it not fit in that definition but also they went on to explain how it’s not a consumer reporting agency, these plaintiffs actually provided this information. You know, when we go on LinkedIn, it’s not like our employers are putting our past history on their work; we’re putting it on there. In fact, we could put whatever we want in there. It could be true or false. MATT: I still just don’t understand the idea behind bringing this lawsuit in the first place. Like, the employers are discriminating against them before they can even do an interview? Or I guess discriminating against them in the employment search process? NASIR: I think what it is is that, if they’re able to say that LinkedIn is a consumer reporting agency and that they have to comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act, then they can say that, in the past X number of years, they haven’t complied with the Fair Credit Reporting Act and they’ve made all these violations and, therefore, this class of LinkedIn users is entitled to all these money damages.

The guys discuss why the Blackfish documentary may have led to a class action lawsuit against SeaWorld for fraud. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our Legally Sound Smart Business podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. NASIR: Hope you guys had a good weekend and are ready for probably the most important news story that you’ll be hearing today. MATT: In your time, when you lived in San Diego, you had the SeaWorld unlimited pass every single year. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: I think you bought multiple passes just because you wanted to lay out on the seats and take up multiple spots. NASIR: I realize you’re joking now but, one year, we had passes because my wife’ nephew was in town and he loved going there. We went there and – I don’t know – to me, it was one of the most depressing places on earth, you know, as opposed to Disneyworld which is supposed to be the happiest. MATT: There’s one in Florida and one in San Diego, is that right? NASIR: No, I think there’s more, actually, than that. MATT: In the US. NASIR: Yeah, I think there’s more in the US, too. I think there’s one in San Antonio. MATT: Oh, is there? NASIR: Yeah. Yeah, I think the two main ones are Florida and San Diego though. MATT: Okay. Yeah, because I’ve never been to the one in San Diego. I’ve driven by it a bunch of times. I’ve been to the one in Florida a long time ago. Yeah, I’m not the avid fan like you. NASIR: No, okay. Actually, they have three. They have one in Orlando, San Antonio, and San Diego. MATT: Okay. NASIR: So, I guess those are the three we named. MATT: Yeah. So, the firm almost covers all of those states. Maybe we can be part of this lawsuits that’s going on. NASIR: Exactly. MATT: Well, I guess, just to give a back story, I don’t know, I assume… have you seen the Blackfish documentary? NASIR: I haven’t so it is kind of hard for me to be so opinionated. I am pretty opinionated about it but I don’t think I have a lot of facts that maybe that movie may actually demonstrate to back that up. MATT: Yeah, I’ve seen it. It’s a pretty big piece against SeaWorld and just essentially the treatment of the animals there. If you think about it, who knows how much of that is true. If you think about it, just look at the size of the animals and look at the size of the tanks that they’re being held in and it kind of makes sense. Obviously, it would be in terms of size to be in the ocean and things like that. But the Blackfish documentary gained a lot of publicity, got a lot of traction. A lot of people were watching it and realizing that they don’t like SeaWorld anymore. I guess it never dawned on them previously. NASIR: All of a sudden, yeah. MATT: Yeah, it’s like, “Yeah, now that I think about it, I really don’t like this thing.” That was a huge thing that’s happened over the last couple of years and I know recently – I don’t know how recent or how long ago this has been going on but – I’ve seen commercials that SeaWorld has put out essentially saying that some of the things in that documentary or these allegations are not true. I don’t know the specifics. NASIR: I just saw the commercial this morning, in fact. They were promoting the hashtag #askseaworld and #askseaworld.com and making some statements. For example, they were saying how studies have shown that the animals in captivity in our facilities live as long as others outside in the wild which is an exact opposite allegation to what I think other people are saying. But what’s interesting, they use this #askseaworld and, of course, it backfires on them online. You know, I read some of the comments and you mentioned the tank size. One of the comments was or one of the questions is, “Why is your parking lot ten times bigger than the sizes of your tanks?” So, I thought that was pretty funny. MATT: Yeah. Obviously, they’re trying to do this new marketing campaign and the #askseaworld. I mean, really,

Nasir and Matt talk about an ice cream maker that is attempting to produce organic versions of Ben & Jerry's flavors. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. 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: Welcome to our program. We have a good one today. My favorite type of food – well, I think it’s one of my favorites – ice cream. I think it’s my favorite dessert – actually, vanilla ice cream and brownies is my favorite. MATT: Yeah, ice cream, you scream, we all scream for lawsuits. NASIR: Wow. That was great. I love that. MATT: There hasn’t been a lawsuit involved in this yet. NASIR: No, there hasn’t. MATT: Yeah, I should have jumped the gun there, but possibly… And so, you’re going to have to help me out with this because I don’t eat ice cream so I don’t know what’s even going on. NASIR: Yeah, I’ll explain to you everything that you need to know. MATT: It’s this cold food you eat with a spoon. NASIR: I’ve been eating it since I was a kid so I’m pretty sure I’m an expert unlike everyone else. MATT: I’ve had ice cream before so it’s not like I never had it, yeah. It’s just been a very, very long time. So, obviously, Ben & Jerry’s, that’s got to be one of the top ice cream makers – if not the top in terms of what you can buy in stores. I think people are familiar with them. We’ve talked about them before on the podcast, I believe, as a B Corp. NASIR: Maybe. Yeah, probably. I’m sure we’ve mentioned them. MATT: I think they’re kind of one of the biggest companies that’s referenced when you’re looking at B Corps. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: So, anyways, Ben & Jerry’s, they have these crazy flavors – or names, at least – and there’s this new company – or newer company, new-ish – Three Twins. NASIR: Which is very misleading, by the way. Is it three sets of twins or triplets? MATT: That’s a good question. NASIR: I think, if they meant three people, they would say triplets, right? MATT: Yeah, three twins doesn’t make sense. I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, three twins. NASIR: That would mean six people. MATT: Yeah, my head’s exploding thinking about that. NASIR: What’s weird is three twins, obviously, it’s the name, but then they have a picture of three different people. MATT: Yeah, that’s why I’m confused. NASIR: Already you know that these guys are a little crazy. MATT: Something’s up. NASIR: Something’s up. MATT: So, basically, what he’s doing is trying to produce the organic version of some of these Ben & Jerry’s flavors. For example, Ben & Jerry’s has Chunky Monkey and Cherry Garcia. Three Twins has one called Cherry Chocolate Chunk and the carton says, “We’re not monkeying around with this combination of banana, walnuts, and chocolate.” It’s not another one with The Grateful Dead. Ben & Jerry’s has the Grateful Dead one and he does a little tribute to them as well saying, “You’ll be grateful that this sumptuous combination is available in organic.” NASIR: Sumptuous. MATT: Sumptuous? NASIR: Sumptuous. MATT: Yeah, I said that. That’s what I said. NASIR: Yeah, you’re right. MATT: Ah. So, basically, what it sounds like is he’s created these organic versions of Ben & Jerry’s flavors – at least some of them – which is kind of weird. I would have thought that Ben & Jerry’s would have had their own organic flavors by now anyways given the nature of kind of how they operate. NASIR: That’s true. MATT: But it’s interesting because, I mean, he admits to it. You know, “We’re not ripping off what they have. We’re paying a tribute to these flavors,” and, you know, it’s different because it’s organic. I said the lawsuit thing at the beginning. I don’t know if there is going to be lawsuit with this. NASIR: Well, Matt and I were trying to figure out, okay, if Ben & Jerry’s would allege some trademark infringement issues because I’m sure they’ve trademarked their flavors – at least they hold some kind of tradem...

Nasir and Matt list off the biggest mistakes they see start-ups make and offer their advice on how to avoid these issues. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and also add our legal twist to those news stories. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. NASIR: And we’re here today, we are talking about messing all the bad mistakes that you business owners make all the time. MATT: Yeah, it’s coincidental because I know you messed up Valentine’s Day which was two days ago so we’re talking about more business-related mess-ups. NASIR: Yeah, not personal mess-ups. MATT: This is a nice fit for you though, I think, but we’re not going to get into personal stories on this podcast. NASIR: Thank you. MATT: There’s a lot of ways that businesses can mess up and I guess we’re going to focus more on start-ups specifically and, you know, obviously, there’s ways you can screw things up at all stages in your business, but there’s crucial things at the beginning that could really be big impediments down the road. To me, one of the biggest things that could happen for a company, especially if they don’t really know each other beforehand, is not having any sort of agreement in place or at least something in writing saying who is doing what or I guess, more importantly, what the ownership is of the specific individuals because, oftentimes – not oftentimes – sometimes, you’ll have a couple of people get together, you know, start working on a project together, it turns into something, maybe even goes so far as to even file something with the state and become an actual entity, but don’t come to an agreement on who owns want or if there’s a majority and just kind of more defined roles, I guess. To me, that’s one of the bigger things where I can see a start-up just not getting it right from the onset. NASIR: I think we’ve talked about this – at least a couple of weeks ago or so – about how partners get together and they’re excited about their business idea and they’re like, “Okay, let’s just do it 50-50.” But then, down the line, that ends up not making sense or you have more than two partners and everyone expects it to be equal when, in reality, that may not make sense when one person may be putting a lot of money in than the other or they have this somehow vague agreement and, whether it’s in writing or not, it usually needs to be a little more specific than that and that requires, frankly, tough conversations. MATT: Sometimes, when companies start up, they need some money and so they’re kind of willing to do anything to get that money and sometimes they have to give up equity to do so. So, I know you recently wrote a really nice post that we’ll link in the notes of this episode about ways to keep control while still maybe achieving some of those other things. NASIR: I do like control because, to me, the control aspect is actually worth more than the equity itself. I mean, obviously, you need equity – some kind of equity ownership – to make it worthwhile. But, when you have control, sometimes, the only person you can really trust is yourself. When I say “yourself,” it doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t be with other people and you can’t share control with other people. But, when you’re dealing with outsiders or people that you haven’t been in business with for a while or don’t have a tremendous amount of trust then it’s risky, right? I mean, I’m not saying that you’re doomed to fail, but there’s a level of risk in there. Yeah, I like that. I think some of the other things that start-ups just we see over and over again is they do do-it-yourself incorporation processes – whether they go through LegalZoom or otherwise. You know, we’ve seen a number of weird things, but some of the basic stuff that you would think would be covered are things like – I don’t know – filing an S corp and then having an entity, or a foreign person owned a share for the S corp which you can’t...

The guys end the week by talking about businessesdenying job applicants unless they are tobacco free. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist for you, the listeners, to enjoy at your home, at your work, or while you’re working out, or really any time that you want to play this podcast. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub, and I hope no one’s listening to this while working out. You need something upbeat! NASIR: We can add some workout music to the background. We’ll just have Matt add that on cue right here. I assume he actually has some of that. That’d be funny if he just left that in there and just be blank, but either way. MATT: I guess the beginning and the end both have that guitar or whatever that is. I’m no musician. NASIR: That’s okay. MATT: And I guess I’m also not going to know a lot about what we’re talking about today because I don’t smoke either which is what the subject of this Friday’s podcast is. NASIR: Well, you’re tobacco-free so I suppose you know about that. MATT: That’s true. I’ll take it from that perspective. So, an interesting topic dealing with a tobacco-free hiring policy – and I guess I should say the name of the place that is doing this – University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. NASIR: Yeah, which makes sense. MATT: Yeah. NASIR: In fact, their logo is literally a C crossed out or on their billboard it says, “Cancer,” and it has it crossed out in red which is kind of cool, but then I think a comedian that was in Houston came to town once and he was like, “Yeah, I saw that billboard and it looked like the goal was cancer and then they completed that so they crossed it out.” Something to that effect. I thought that was clever. MATT: Now, applicants there are going to be screened for tobacco use. It’s just part of the application and those who test positive will not be eligible for immediate employment with the cancer center. But, if they remain interested in the job, they’re going to be given tobacco suscitation materials and instructions for obtaining this which I think is really cool, actually. This is a really great policy and procedure that they have in place. I mean, I haven’t heard of something similar really before. If I have, I guess I forgot about it. But I wonder if this is going to start making waves throughout the country. I mean, for Texas – you know better than me, you live there – is there possibly people that smoke more? NASIR: Houston’s a little bit different than the rest of Texas. But, coming from San Diego, I think there are more smokers here in general. I mean, San Diego, it’s unique. MATT: Definitely. NASIR: Yeah, I guess San Diego’s pretty unique in the country. What’s interesting, I think, in the medical field – and anyone who’s listening who’s in the medical field I think can attest to this – you’d be surprised how many physicians, nurses, or people in the health-related field actually smoke. I actually know a pulmonologist that actually smokes and this guy works with lung cancer and stuff like that. So, I do think it’s a problem in general, of course. But, in the health industry, I mean, can you imagine? You know, the University of Texas and MD Anderson, their purpose is trying to rid the world of cancer and yet they have employees that may be smoking which is a huge cause for not only cancer but all these other health risks as well. MATT: There’s no health benefits of smoking. NASIR: And I just thought of one of the reasons they may be doing this on top of the PR aspect is, if they have a self-insured plan or even a fully-insured plan or whatever and providing health benefits, their premium and their cost will be much less, especially how the new ObamaSare works and Affordable Care Act works, if your employees are more healthy, then you’re going to benefit from that. And so, if you have employees that don’t smoke,

Nasir and Matt end the week by diving into the topic of drones and where the law stands with their usage. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. And my name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. NASIR: I keep starting our intro with an accent but maybe I’m just hearing it. MATT: What type of accent? I can’t tell anything. [REWIND] NASIR: Business in the news and add our legal twist. I don’t know what kind of accent – some Midwestern/Californian accent. MATT: I mean, where you’re from, and it’s similar to me, we’re both from the Midwest but we’re not southern enough to get the southern accent. NASIR: No, we’re not. MATT: I wasn’t close enough to Chicago to get that. You were a little bit closer to the East Coast than I was, but you don’t get any of that. So, we’re in a spot where it’s pretty – well, I shouldn’t say “normal.” NASIR: Normal. Yeah, we’re pretty normal. I’m sure we use some words, like you probably use the word “pop” too, right? Or no? MATT: I use all the different words. I don’t favor any of them. I just say whatever. NASIR: I’m the same way. I think I’ve gotten used to using the word “soda” because, when I say “pop,” people will look at me weird – at least in California they did. Here, everyone looks at me weird in Texas. MATT: There’s a thing that came out, I don’t remember if it was a year ago or two years ago but it basically looked at 25 different words – you know, like, soda, pop, Coke, something like that – and it had a map of the US and it was color-coded on who said it. It was actually pretty cool. NASIR: Yeah, absolutely. There’s even different phrases that describe different situations. MATT: Someone recently made a comment to me that wasn’t from the US and they were saying, “You know, if the US formed today, all these different states would be different countries because a lot of them are so different than other parts.” I mean, you and I are very good examples. California and Texas are very different than pretty much every other state in the US. NASIR: Yeah, even New York. I mean, those are the three states that we practice in. It’s interesting how the law has developed in the three different states and how you can see even just taking one body of law like employment law and how each state approaches general concepts differently. I think, from an employment perspective, New York and California are pretty close in their interpretation and how they implement it but still very different, and Texas is on a different planet altogether for sure. MATT: Yeah, that’s very true, very true. Well, we’re going to talk about a lawsuit just to set up the topic, but it was in Virginia so none of this. I was hoping it would apply to one of the three states we talked about. NASIR: You’re always looking for a transition, I know. MATT: But we’re going to talk about drones. And so, the thing I was getting to about Virginia was this guy just settled with the FAA which is the Federal Aviation Association, is that right? NASIR: I think Administration, right? MATT: Yes, Federal Aviation Administration, you are correct. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: So, he just settled with them for a whopping $1,100 on a $10,000 fine. NASIR: Sweet. MATT: Pretty good, 10 percent of what he owed. So, you want to know what he was fined for? NASIR: Yeah. MATT: The fine was that he was using his drone for commercial purposes and this was a few years ago, wasn’t it? 2011. NASIR: Yeah, this was before drones really became a consumer product. MATT: So, he was operating it for commercial purposes but using it also in a reckless manner while filming a commercial at the University of Virginia. So, I don’t know what the reckless manner part means. NASIR: Yeah, he was probably hired to film or take some photos or something to that effect and didn’t know how to drive the drone, apparently. MATT: It’s actually funny – quick side story – I went to...

Nasir and Matt discuss the company in danger of being sued for having a Chrome plugin that allows students to compare prices of college textbooks from all sources. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business legal news and my name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. NASIR: This is our second episode for our new format where you can also send in your ideas and some questions to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. MATT: That is correct. NASIR: That is correctamundo. MATT: Our theme this week – well, it wasn’t intentional, I don’t think, maybe it was – basically, things that are created to make consumers’ lives cheaper and then bigger companies getting upset and then coming after the people that created the ideas. NASIR: It’s a pretty common theme. I think people have covered it many times before. MATT: Yeah, it’s a common thing. NASIR: Very specific, but… MATT: Yeah, on Monday, we talked about the guy who started the site that will basically get you cheaper flights. Today, we’re going to talk about – it’s not even a site – it’s a… NASIR: Chrome extension. MATT: An extension, yes. An extension on Chrome that you can download that will basically get you cheaper textbooks and I know that, the last couple of years, it’s been a really huge deal with, like, the price of textbooks. I mean, even when we were in school, I know it was outrageously expensive to buy books, especially if you’re going to use it for… I mean, did you ever do the thing where you would buy a book, like, a new book, and then you would go return it to the bookstore at the end of the year and just sell it back and it was two percent of what you bought it for? NASIR: Oh, yeah, it was ridiculous. I think the first year, I just lost, it was like half the tuition I was paying, basically. It was crazy how much I spent on books. And then, you realize, of course, the professors don’t even use all the books or what-have-you, or the book itself is written by the professor. MATT: That’s the worst. NASIR: Yeah, you know. But then, I think it was, like, towards the second or third year, I think by this time they already had these book comparison sites. I think I used, I think it was AbeBooks. On our campus too, there was a couple of bookstores. There was one on campus but then also off-campus that basically it was called KB Books for all you San Diegan natives there. And they sold basically all the same textbooks with a little bit of a cheaper price. It was still pretty expensive but at least it was an alternative so it kept the prices a little competitive. MATT: There are all these sites out there that do comparison tools. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: Especially now with the ebooks being more prevalent that those popped up. I can never get into those just because I like to read on actual paper. Anyways, before I get too off-track with my history, like I said, there’s all these different sites that do price comparison tools for textbooks. There’s a whole bunch of them, way more than I realized, but these people, these two guys created this extension for Chrome called Occupy the Bookstore. So, you can download it, let’s say you’re searching for a book, you hit the book and this thing will pop up and run a search of every book and then, if you were on the university’s website and you’re like, “Oh, I can actually get this book for much cheaper,” it’ll direct you to that. So, you can see why some of these places are pretty upset. I think the biggest site, Follett? NASIR: Yeah, I think they’re a publisher. Well, okay, they service college bookstores. So, they’re either a publisher or some kind of distributor company or whatever. I’m sure they represent many different authors or publishing companies, I would assume. They’re apparently a $2.7 billion company according to this Chrome extension developer. MATT: Yeah. So, just like on Monday, we had some tortious interference with contract.

The guys end the week by talking about an international crowdfunding site getting censured by the SEC. They also answer, "I live in California but my LLC is setup in another state. At what point am I doing business in California?" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right, 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. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. NASIR: That’s right, and we are covering probably the most entertaining topic, I think, known to man – not pizza, but SEC censures. MATT: Well, I don’t know. If people are listening to these in order, the last thing we just got done talking about was tax. NASIR: Oh, yeah. MATT: People really hate that stuff. I like it, but… NASIR: That was the last episode and we lost, basically, I’m already predicting, like, the stats just… everyone just stopped listening after that point. So, that’s okay. We covered the San Diego Magazine and that’s still going on. MATT: Yeah, we should get a trademark for “Hidden San Diego” for podcasts. NASIR: If we get as much controversy as they did, it’d be a great hit for us. MATT: All right. Well, like I said, this is a crowdfunding site. I assume it’s Eureka Capital SPC. NASIR: Uh, yeah. MATT: Eureka Capital. NASIR: I was thinking, like, yeah, Eureka… Oregon or Washington? I can’t remember which. I think it’s Washington. MATT: Oregon. NASIR: Oregon. MATT: Washington. I don’t know. NASIR: They’re basically the same state. MATT: There’s a Eureka, California, up north. NASIR: Well, it doesn’t matter. They’re spelled differently and not in the northwest. MATT: So, the reason it was spelled differently is because it’s incorporated outside the United States. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: So, I think that’s why, and that’s pertinent to this because, according to the SEC which is the South Eastern Conference which is a big football powerhouse conference for those listening. NASIR: Ah, that’s right. Also, called the Securities and Exchange Commission, I believe. MATT: That’s also true. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: Apparently, the way this was set up, they’re not allowed to have investors come from the United States. So, the way they prevented US investors from coming in was asking them, you know, there’s a disclaimer saying, “No US individuals can invest” and they had a thing saying that but then, if you went to register, one of the options was the United States and then you were able to register and invest. So, obviously, that’s a problem. It’s like, if you went to a brewery website and it says, “No one can be on this site unless you’re 21 or older,” then you put in some information for 1998 as your birthday and they still let you in. Or, I guess, if you went to a bar and you’re like, “Oh, I’m not 21,” and it’s like, “All right! Come on in then!” NASIR: Come on in! Yeah, that’s actually a pretty good analogy I would say, and the reason this is an issue is because SEC is obviously designed to restrict the sale of securities and, you know, whether you’re selling equity in your company or what-have-you raising funds, whatever you offer has to be regulated by them. In complying with that regulation, it’s not too easy for most companies – depending upon how much you’re raising – when a third party gets involved and getting a percentage, you know, acting basically as a broker dealer, that’s also prohibited unless you’re licensed and doing it properly. I think, in this case, they were set up in the Cayman Islands – that’s kind of suspicious in itself – and, even though they weren’t publicly targeting United States citizens, it seems like it was pretty accessible to them and it reminds me of the online gambling thing, right? Wasn’t there a time where all the legal gambling was a dot-net but then the illegal ones was dot-com or vice versa and, technically, you weren’t allowed to do so from the US side but they w...

Nasir and Matt recordtogether for the first time forthe 100th episode. They give some updates onstories discussed in previous episodes of the podcast, including Arian Foster's failed IPO, the Ryan Seacrest patent dispute with Blackberry, Johnny Manziel's trademarks, the outcome from the Airbnb squatter, the settlement from the Oakland Raiders cheerleaders, and the podcast patent lawsuit involving Adam Carolla. Special thanks to Co-Mergefor providingspace for the recording. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast, Legally Sound Smart Business, where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: My name is Matt Staub. NASIR: And we are at number 99 episodes – or no, what are we at? MATT: 100. NASIR: Oh, 100, yeah, that’s right. 100 episodes recording live in… where are we right now, Matt? This is your pad. MATT: Oh, yeah, Co-Merge in San Diego. Finally made it out here. NASIR: Voted one of the top co-working spaces in the nation. MATT: Yeah, number three co-working space in the US, recently voted. NASIR: Voted by Matt and Nasir Pasha. MATT: Yeah, I didn’t like it number one, but we’ll work you out of here for a while. NASIR: Yeah, we’re recording in San Diego together for the first time ever after a hundred episodes and probably last. MATT: It’s not really live though because this is going to be edited. NASIR: Oh, that’s true. MATT: It’s not live streaming. NASIR: Yeah, though we do have a very wide live audience in the lobby. MATT: There are a lot of people here for some reason that showed up, yeah. NASIR: Not for us, though. MATT: Well, there’s a lot of seats so there’s a lot of space for people to sit. There’s a lot of people outside. NASIR: I don’t think we’re going to do any question this time around but we’re going to have a nice update on some of the old stories that we’ve covered in these past years – less than a year but in the last hundred episodes – or 99 episodes. So, what do we have starting off? MATT: Well, I figured, what’s what best place to start than Episode 1? And this is actually pretty funny. So, I’ll give a little bit of background for every story we do just so, if people didn’t listen… NASIR: No, they listened. Everyone has listened to every episode. MATT: First episode, we talked about Arian Foster, the NFL player. It was basically an IPO for him, sort of. He was going to get paid $10 million for 20 percent stake of his future income – so, contracts, endorsements, and other business ventures. We talked about this on October. Let’s see. Well, actually, I guess it came out October 21st. I don’t know. We recorded it before that. And he got injured on October 28th and he was out for the season. So, he actually never played… he got hurt on the game on the 28th but, you know, had four carries and then didn’t play for the rest of the year. So, Fantex which was the company that was supposed to do this 10-million-dollar offering ended up just kind of pulling out on this or postponing it. I don’t know if it’s going to ever circle back around because he’s playing this year. Today, we’re recording on a Sunday. He’s questionable for today but he actually has played a couple of games. NASIR: Yeah, I feel like we had cause of his injury or something because we basically called that as one of the biggest risks in investing – that these running backs get injured all the time. MATT: Right. NASIR: Literally within a week. I think we recorded on a Friday and that’s Sunday that occurred, right? MATT: Yeah, that would have been it, yeah, because it came out on Monday the day after. NASIR: Okay. MATT: Yeah, we recorded on Friday, he gets – forget what he heard. He heard something about this seriously on Sunday and then Monday episode came out – our first episode ever and it was already… NASIR: Yeah, if you guys remember, it was kind of a novel way to raise funds for him. But, what was weird is that,

Episode 106: Day One of the drama classroom   For many teachers, the first day of class is the most important day of the whole year. What do you do on “day one?” Listen to five drama teachers talk about what they do with their students to make the most out of that first day. Show Notes Join the Drama Teacher Academy Episode Transcript Welcome to TFP – The Theatrefolk Podcast – the place to be for Drama teachers, Drama students, and theatre educators everywhere. I'm Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk. Hello, I hope you're well. Thanks for listening. Welcome to Episode 106 of TFP. You can find all the links for this episode at theatrefolk.com/episode106. Now, on the day that this podcast airs, some of you will just be getting in the last throes of summer. Some of you started school two weeks ago which boggles my mind. It has been engrained in me for, I don't know, almost forty years that school starts the day after Labor Day. School starts the day after Labor Day. You people who start school in August, they're freaking me out. And some of you, speaking of which, you're getting ready to get going right now, and what that means is teachers everywhere across the country, across multiple countries, that first day of school has either just happened or is looming, and for many teachers, the first day of class is the most important day of the year. What do you do on Day One? So, let's find out. We have five teachers who share what they do with their students to make the most out of that first day. Everyone is different; everyone is valuable. Let's get to it! Lindsay: Okay! So, now I am talking to Teacher Matt Webster. Hello, Matt! Matt: Hi there! Lindsay: And you teach in North Carolina. Matt: Yes, outside Charlotte, North Carolina. Lindsay: Awesome. We're talking about Day One. How many different classes do you see at the beginning of the year? Matt: Beginning of the year, I have a lighter load because I'm the department chair for fine arts so I teach typically two classes a day and people are going to pull their hair and roll their eyes at that, but I teach two classes a day and, usually, I have four classes overall that I teach and two of them are often beginning theatre classes. That's not true; I teach eight classes because we do A Day, B Day. So, I have more classes. Lindsay: All right, Matt. You teach a lot of classes, right? Matt: Yes, I have less than most, but it's all good. Lindsay: So, let's talk about those beginning theatre classes. So, you're walking into this class for the first time, it's Day One, it's your beginning students, what's the first thing you do? Matt: First thing I do is hand out my syllabus because the syllabus is the contract between the teacher and the students, and it lays out the expectations for everyone. It also gives the rules of the classroom, it lays out the curriculum that we're going to follow, and basically tells the students what I expect from them, what this class is going to look like, and what I'm looking for out of them as students as the teacher. Lindsay: Okay. So, you think it's more important to do that kind of legwork first as opposed to, “Hey, let's play a game! Hey, let's do that!” Why do you choose to do it that way? Matt: There's always time to play games and setting that tone, Day One, is going to set the tone for the rest of the semester or the rest of the year, and it might not take the whole time to go over all of that material and we'll still have time to maybe play a game. But, when you start off playing a game, what you're telling the students is “this class is playtime” and that's what they'll take away from it. And, if you want your class to be more than playtime, then you need to set that expectation. Lindsay: Awesome. Thank you very much! Now I am talking to Jessica Stafford. Hello, Jessica! Jessica: Hi, Lindsay! How are you? Lindsay: I'm all right. Okay.

Nasir and Matt talk about how a businesses based on a fad can succeed and answer, "I don't have money to pay for certain services. Can I trade my products for other company's services?" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: This is Legally Sound Smart Business. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And my name is Matt Staub. NASIR: And this is the business podcast where we cover business in the news and give our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you submit, the listener, to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. You know, I think I said “business” in that last thirty seconds about 50,000 times. MATT: It’d be some sort of record, probably. NASIR: I’m pretty sure. Call Guiness. MATT: All right. Well, let’s see, we have a story here. NASIR: We do? Let’s listen! What do we have? MATT: I don’t know, you’re going to have to help me out with this one because I don’t eat sweets. I don’t eat desserts. NASIR: That’s true. MATT: It’s a cupcake-based story. There’s this company, Crumbs is what it’s called, but it speaks more to fads. And so, this company, Crumbs Bakeshop, they actually went public back in 2011 because I guess they, you know, it was during the cupcake craze apparently and their stock I think started in the mid-teens and now it’s below 50 cents. NASIR: Oh. MATT: And I say “cupcake craze” because that’s kind of what it was. I’m sure you’ve seen this in a bunch of cities. There’s cupcake shops that pop up and have become pretty popular or at least they were popular and who knows whether they’re popular now. Juicing is really popular right now. There’s a lot of juice places popping up. We have talked about this before – like, the food trucks, that was a big craze. That was a fad. But this is what I’m getting to. If your business is a fad, what do you do when it’s not a fad anymore? NASIR: You have to recognize whether it is a fad or not. If it is, then I’d exit as quick as possible. MATT: Yeah. NASIR: I wonder if these founders of Crumbs – is it Crumbs or Crumb? I haven’t even heard of them, by the way. I’ve been to a number of cupcake places in my time. It’s not necessarily my cup of tea but I have been there once in a while with family and so forth. MATT: Doesn’t your Twitter handle say Cupcake Connoisseur on it? NASIR: Well, that’s true. I do test taste for a number of cupcake companies but, like I said, I got tired of it. I just wonder if Crumbs, after their IPO which just boggles my mind that it actually found a firm that was willing to back such an IPO but anyway, I wonder if these founders actually were able to just exit out of it. Did they lose money? I bet you they got a piece of it and had a successful business and I think it’s time for them to get out because fads are okay. If you’re in business and your product becomes really popular and you think it may go out later, that’s not a big deal. But, if your product is easily to be copied and done by anyone else, then that’s a problem in itself. I mean, a lot of these cupcake guys, I mean, how many did we know – and, unfortunately, I knew a lot – that were all of a sudden selling cupcakes out of the house and selling them to their neighbors and so forth? And then, they wanted to open up a shop and, you know, I’m sure that all the cupcakes are good but, frankly, the difference between the greatest cupcake and a good cupcake is just not there. MATT: Like I said, this is a tough topic for me because I don’t even eat cupcakes so I don’t know if there’s a big difference. NASIR: It’s the same thing with those yogurt shops. You mentioned those yogurt shops, right? MATT: Well, don’t say that in front of my wife because she will strongly disagree with you. NASIR: Ah. MATT: There is a big difference between them. NASIR: No, there’s not. In fact, I’ve had friends that have actually invested and gotten into the industry. I made my opinions very clear about it but, first of all, yogurt shops were a huge thing.

Nasir and Matt discuss UPS laying off 250 employees over the decision by one worker. They also answer a question on the best techniques to keeping employees long-term. Update: Those 250 employees have been rehired. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: This is Matt Staub. NASIR: And we’re ready to go on Episode 30. Talking about UPS. MATT: Yeah, we have a good UPS story here that happened and this was in New York. Basically, because of the actions of one of the employees – and, for some reason, I thought that UPS drivers weren’t necessarily all employees but some of them were independent contractors, but I know you’re not going to get into that because I know you hate the distinction between the two. NASIR: Please, no. MATT: There was a 90-minute protest by one of the UPS drivers and it happened and people kind of went along with it. As a result, they have already dismissed 20 of the workers and they’re planning on terminating another 230. So, 250 potential employees are going to be let go because of one person’s 90-minute protest. I think he was a union activist. Of course, it was over an hour’s dispute, too. I’m sure it’s something that’s probably legitimate. I don’t know if you heard about this story at all but it seems like UPS might not be making the best call in this situation. NASIR: Well, it’s not easy. I think it’s tough. Basically, I think these drivers are in a union and, for whatever reason, when you have employees in a union, all the rules tend to change when it comes to employment law issues. There’s a lot of provisions in there but, basically, what UPS is saying is that, yeah, you have a right to do certain things and a lot of unions have a right to strike and so forth, but this particular action of this particular protest is against the labor contract that we have. Therefore, it’s blatant in subordination and it’s an illegal conduct. Therefore, we have every right to terminate the employee for this. I don’t know if it’s the case that the employee was doing the 90-minute protest and the other employees joined him but I thought that the protest was because that one particular employee was terminated for misconduct and then these other 250 employees did a 90-minute protest. Either way, the point is still the same. MATT: Yeah, it was kind of unclear. It makes a lot more sense than how I described it previously. Here we are. A group of 250 employees walked out for 90 minutes. That’s what it was. NASIR: We have a long history in our country of striking and protesting. Without getting into the details and politics of unions in itself, I think the most important thing to get from this is that (1) UPS is not going to terminate and also hold to that termination – they haven’t backed up on this – without a pretty solid standing ground in doing this. Keep in mind, too, I also read that some of these cities – including New York – are not necessarily too happy about UPS’s actions and are threatening to terminate the contracts that they may have with UPS as well. MATT: UPS took a pretty no-nonsense approach to this. I kind of respect it, assuming they did it in the most legally appropriate way possible of just saying, “Hey, we have people that are walking out or protesting. We’re not going to put up with that. If that’s what you’re going to do, we’re just going to get rid of you.” 250 is a lot of people, don’t get me wrong, but the distribution center has 1,400 workers. I guess they can find people to replace them. NASIR: For an hour and a half, I mean, they claim that, because of that hour and a half, things get delayed and, if things get delayed, then they incur penalties from it. That’s probably true and so forth and there’s no doubt that they probably incurred some expense from this, but I think the point is they wanted to make a point so this wouldn’t happen again or they won’t be manipulated through these protests.

This week's episode features the best moments through the first 20 podcasts. Topics include the popular sauce vs. crust debate, having your employees work on Thanksgiving, the interview with Jerry Sanders, legalities of running a fake promotion, Texas A&M licensing the 12th man to Seattle, and the first and last employee vs. independent contractor discussion. Thanks again to everyone who has made this podcast a success through the first 20 episodes. Full Podcast Transcript MATT: Hey everybody! Matt here! We have something a little bit different for you guys this week as Nasir and I weren’t able to synch up our schedules. Seeing as this is our 20th episode, we figured we could do a “best of the first twenty.” We selected some of our favorite stories and questions as well as some audience favorites and we hope you guys enjoy it and continue to support the podcast. But, before we get started here, I did want to give a little thanks to some people that have gotten us this far. Our producer extraordinaire, Chris, for all he does – he’s the jack of all trades of this podcast; our assistant, Jennifer, for helping us schedule and line up the guests; our guests themselves for making the show more interesting than two attorneys just talking to each other; and to our listeners who, if it wasn’t for our listeners, we wouldn’t even be here. So, sit back and enjoy this “best of the first twenty” and, as always, keep it sound and keep it smart. [MUSIC] NASIR: Our first article here today. What have we got, Matt? MATT: This is pretty interesting. It’s kind of confusing, too. It’s two companies that are disputing – Torchy’s Tacos and Texas Taco Company – but the dispute is over pizza. So, right off the bat, they chose awful names. It’s not surprising they’re now in a lawsuit against each other. But it essentially comes down to the trade secrets. Obviously, you know, in restaurants, we’re talking about the food that’s made or possibly even a certain recipe that is put together with some of the ingredients. NASIR: Matt, you realize this is the second pizza article we’ve covered? I know you like pizza but we can’t keep doing this. Maybe down the line we can do a pizza-themed episode but this will be the last one for a while, I promise. MATT: Yeah, I usually just scan articles and, when I see the word “pizza,” I just select it just because I enjoy talking about it. It’s been such a big part of my life – working for years in a pizza place. NASIR: Well, hopefully, your experience can come into play in this. This is dispute on the ingredients, the training manuals, and so forth. Frankly, what kind of ingredients go to a pizza? It’s pretty basic. MATT: Well, yes and no, it depends if people make their own sauce. Places are typically going to make their own dough. Some of the bigger chains have frozen dough but I guess that too is also a recipe that’s brought down from corporate. The dough is big, the sauce can be big; other than that, the toppings are the toppings. You’re not going to get a bunch of variation there. I’m guessing it’s probably over the dough. We’re already getting into my pizza love now. In my opinion, the dough is the most important part of the pizza – the crust. NASIR: Really? I think it’s the sauce. I mean, dough is important but, to me, if it’s a good sauce, it makes a big impact. MATT: That’s one person’s opinion. NASIR: Yeah, it’s the opinion. MATT: There are some pictures on here, too. It looks like it’s some sort of stuffed pizza or pizza that’s got the crust on top as well. The two pictures look very similar – down to the plating, the cut, the plating style. They do look identical. This is pretty interesting because, if you look down later in the article, there is some sort of investigator involved, too. NASIR: I think they hired a PI, right? They sent a PI in to investigate and they saw that they were using the exact same plating techniques and the exact same recipe. In fact, I’m reading here,