Podcast appearances and mentions of matt well

Our Friendly World with Fawn and Matt

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 7, 2022 56:00

Whether you are buying or selling a business, the transaction goes through the same steps. However, they are viewed from different perspectives. Sellers may not want to fully disclose all the blind spots while Buyers will want otherwise. Nasir and Matt battle it out in this Buyer vs. Seller to determine who has the advantage! Round 1: Prepare to Negotiate - Letter of Intent When it comes to selling a business, some of the most critical work is done before you even make your first phone call. A letter of intent serves as a way for both parties to get on the same page and lays the groundwork for what each of you can expect from the other. https://www.youtube.com/embed/t4KVprJ9m94 Round 2: Due Diligence and the No Shop Periods Buying or selling a business is a complex process. It's not just about talking about purchasing or selling the company's assets. For prospective buyers, it's important to understand that buying a business is not all about the numbers. Thorough due diligence of all facets of your target company is necessary for you to make a meaningful offer. https://www.youtube.com/embed/5tK8uMHZArQ Round 3: Warranties and Representations Representations and warranties are the biggest reason that verbal agreements are so risky. Representations and warranties set a floor on the quality of the purchase, define each party's responsibilities, inform both parties how they can end the deal, and help structure payments. https://www.youtube.com/embed/QoxOnUEGdxs Round 4: It's Closing Time Signed, sealed, and delivered. The signing and closing of a transaction is often the most critical stage in the process. It can either be smooth or cause delays that could undermine the transactions. https://youtu.be/AgEtBno39YA “Full Podcast TranscriptNASIR: All right. Welcome! We are talking buyers and sellers, acquisitions, mergers. It's a lot more than what you would think. MATT: That depends on what side you're on. NASIR: Everyone in business ends up at this point at one point in time. MATT: It's a very interesting dynamic. This is kind of a very weird interaction. 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 talking buyers and sellers, acquisitions, mergers. We are going, once again, head-to-head – Matt and I – taking different perspectives. This time around, we're not flipping a coin. Matt and I discussed it prior, and I am taking the buyer's point of view. MATT: That means I'll be taking the seller's point of view. NASIR: That would be weird if you also took the buyer's point of view, so that's good. MATT: Well, obviously, there's not a lot of positive results from the pandemic, but one thing I've noticed that has happened that's been a positive is there have been a lot of transactions between companies – like you said, mergers and acquisitions, things of that nature. We've seen quite an uptick of representing buyers and sellers in those sorts of transactions just because of the nature of it. I don't know necessarily if they were more motivated and what the actual reasoning was, but – at least in my opinion – there's been an increase in those sorts of transactions. NASIR: Absolutely. If you looked at the stats on M&A in general, it's a lot more than what you would think. You would think that – because of uncertainty, because of this, because of inflation – things would actually slow down, but that doesn't seem to be the case. M&A attorneys are quite busy. We're talking about buying or selling a business. We're general practitioners. We work with medium to small-sized businesses, but everyone in business ends up at this point at one point in time.

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The Gossipy Friend, how Twitter has destroyed our bond with one button; why friendship is so important and can save our society, especially right at this moment in time.

Play Episode Listen Later May 16, 2022 48:06

Sharing stories is the key to bonding. We explain the difference between sharing and telling a story. Then we get to the bad sharing which is another kind of storytelling/sharing (gossip) that destroys our bond, and we use Twitter as an example of how our society has lost the ability to connect. In this episode, we have a solution to bring us back together again. There is a way out of this. There is a way to have a better life, to have a beautiful society. And it's not as hard as you think. You don't have to figure out how to move mountains. You just have to sit in simplicity #Twitter, #gossip, #bonding, #connection, #storytelling, #misinformation, #crazy, #stupid, #the art of friendship, #land of Shinar, #The story of Babel, #Tower of Babel, #fragmentation, #confirmation bias, TRANSCRIPT The Gossipy Friend[00:00:00] Fawn: Yay for us. Hi everybody. Yay for us, meaning all of us together listening right now. Hi everyone. Guess what? I was partaking in a very boring conversation yesterday [00:00:15] Matt: was [00:00:15] Fawn: that with me? You were there, but you were not the reason for the boredom, but you were. I think we were all contributing to the boredom because neither side wanted to talk about anything.Because one side lives and believes radically different than ours. All this [00:00:32] Matt: would be yes, yes. The call [00:00:34] Fawn: with family[00:00:35] Matt: family. [00:00:36] Fawn: So as the conversation was being had on speakerphone and the whole family's at the table, I must admit that I was zoning out ( Matt exclaims sarcastically) and we are surrounded by boxes in our kitchen, at the moment, there was one box that was in front of me and it had in big, big letters "BELONG", like belong B E L O N G. And I started to play like, oh, what other words can I make out of belong? And so I realized with belong, you can create "ONE GLOBE". We all belong to one globe. So I was tripping out on that, the whole conversation; one global. Am I the only one tripping out on that?Isn't that great?!?! Anyway, [00:01:20] Matt: you know, actually, nevermind. [00:01:21] Fawn: No, go ahead. [00:01:22] Matt: Well, I wrote a computer program because that's what I do. And I programmed peoples, I programmed all of the house names of the house into it. And as it turns out, if I scramble up the letters in ALLEGRA, it actually spells like a genus of birds or something random.I mean, it's weird. Yeah, nobody else's full names came out to anything, but,[00:01:43] Fawn: but collectively our names come to "FAME". [00:01:46] Matt: Well, that's the first letter of each [00:01:48] Fawn: that's as complex as I can get.[00:01:50] Matt: I understand. Oh my God. I should get all the letters together. Scramble them up. [00:01:56] Fawn: Okay. Stop. So we digress. We have digressed even before we have started, we have a really good show today.Oh, well, you know, show we have a really important topic we want to talk about. We're really eager to get into. So I'm going to start. And then Matt, you come in. Okay. Matt is covering his mouth cause I told them don't you interrupt me? Let me, let me get my thoughts out first because I am the Chewbacca. I can't play games with people. If you interrupt me, or if you disagree with me or if you win, I get really mad, I, I can't function after that in a normal way.Matt is looking away. All right. So here we go. Initially, we were going to talk about the, what did we call it initially? The title we were going to use[00:02:47] Matt: "The Disagreeable Friend" , [00:02:48] Fawn: "The Disagreeable Friend" , and as we were delving into it, I realized, oh my goodness, this goes back to what we learned some years ago that, people get labeled as crazy or stupid.Right? When you are no longe

god society sharing friendship fame bond tower belong babel button destroyed chewbacca scramble moment in time shinar matt well

Raising private capital, kids, and generational wealth with Matt Faircloth

The Remote Real Estate Investor

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 5, 2022 35:11

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!

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How to become a WordPress ambassador w/ Maciej Palmowski

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 24, 2021 40:25

There's no better feeling than when you launch something that just clicks with people. I guess at the end of the day, folks that build businesses or create content are simply seeking acceptance. We want to see our idea flourish, to be adopted by the masses, and to leave an impact. When Maciej Palmowski launched WP Owls with his wife Agnieszka, it was (and still is) a publication that served the Polish community. But it clicked. People clicked, literally on to the website and their stories, so the co-founding duo decided it was time to go global. Combined they've published over 200 articles about WordPress and the community on the blog, with no signs of stopping. Oh, and if you're wondering how to get a job like WordPress ambassador at Buddy, you'll learn a thing or two about CI/CD today! Episode Transcript [00:00:00] Maciek: some people are afraid when it comes to version control system. This is a command line tool. So it's scary and it's only for developers now. That's not true. We can use get crack and it's really easy. We can use tower and there are probably some other tools also even using a gift and their web version.[00:00:20] This, this is also a really friendly approach[00:00:23] This episode is brought to you by mind size visit dot com for maintenance for WordPress. Woo commerce and more. Over at mind size. Dot com Hey, you know, it's all the rage these days. Woo commerce. You know, what's so difficult to maintain as a freelancer and a small agency. Woo. Commerce. Outsource your maintenance to mind size over@minesites.com. They're the only, service company that I know that servicing specifically for WooCommerce and supporting you as an e-commerce shop as a merchant. so you don't have to worry about how the heck to scale woo commerce, which is also one of the hardest things.[00:01:00] Yes. There's a lot of great hosting companies out there. But they're not going to help optimize the code, drill down under the hood and really make the right decisions. For your WooCommerce site. Check out mine, sys.com and check out their WooCommerce service plans so you can get to better ruin. That's a, probably not a joke. We'll use again. Check out mine. sys.com. Thanks for supporting the show.[00:01:25] Hey, do you like WordPress content in media? Like this? Do you like WordPress news and getting the hot takes community journalism and op-eds from your peers and colleagues in the WordPress space. Consider supporting the WP minute and the Matt report. By buying me a coffee over@buymeacoffee.com slash Matt report.[00:01:45] You can join the membership, which also has a private discord you can chat with like-minded injured individuals and get your hands in the WordPress news every single week in our discord server. Going to buy me a coffee.com/matt report that's buy me a coffee.com/matt report There's no better feeling than when you launch something that just clicks with people. I guess at the end of the day, folks that build businesses or create content are simply seeking acceptance. We want to see our ideas flourish, to be adopted by the masses and to leave an impact. When launched WP hours with his wife. Agneshka it was instill is a publication that served the Polish community.[00:02:22] But it clicked. People clicked literally onto the website and their stories. So the co-founding duo decided it was time to go global. Combined, they published over 200 articles about WordPress and the community on the blog with no signs of stopping. Oh, and if you're wondering how to get a job like WordPress ambassador.[00:02:41] At buddy get, you're going to learn a lot about that today, along with continuous integration and continuous development. If you're a small agency or a freelancer, it's time to start getting serious about how you manage code. And that's what today's lesson is largely about. Okay Onto today's episode[00:02:58] Matt: one question I didn't throw at you. How did you become a WordPress ambassador?[00:03:02] I see a lot of folks these days on my Twitter stream saying I would love to just work for a brand and talk about WordPress and talk about their products, any insights into how to land an awesome job like yours.[00:03:13] Maciek: To be honest, it's walls a bit of coincidence because. I was working at WP M Def as at their second line of support.[00:03:22] So I was mostly a developer and at some point Rafael, the CTO of Bobby, just reach out to me and asked, Hey, would you like to become our ambassador? Because on one hand, the day learned that WordPress is really getting bigger and bigger, and it would be a great idea to I have someone promoting their, their tool in worker space.[00:03:44] And on the other hand, we had the, we had the chance to meet earlier on because one of the organizers of a word can Poland it will be the last word component. So it was 2019 and there were one of the sponsors right then. So we had the chance to talk to meet. And I was using body for many, many years.[00:04:03] I was always asking questions asking for some new features. So, so, so they remembered that there, that there is one month. Of the dirt and he knows WordPress, and he probably likes our tool because he worked at a few companies and every time he asked us about something, because every company I switched during the first few years, it was one of my first decision.[00:04:28] Maybe let's try to adopt the body because it will speed up. Rework. So in the end, I, I have a chance to work here. And this is what I would say. This is a really a dream job.[00:04:40] Matt: Yeah. We're both biased because we both work for companies that represent WordPress in some either direct or indirect fashion.[00:04:46] And I have for many years now but this is a, this is a role that I think. Whether it's an ambassador hat or a title or some other title that, that you might get. I think this is a smart move for a lot of other WordPress companies to really invest in is you need to bridge that gap as we'll talk about in a moment, you need to be able to bridge that gap between that technology and that sort of average consumer of that technology, because it can't just be developer speak and it can't just be the marketing speak some at some point, these brands need to cross over in the.[00:05:17] And shake hands and agree that somebody can speak both sides of it. Exactly. And, and this is just an amazing time in WordPress. This space was so much acquisitions and, and big money coming into the space and bigger brands adopting. I think folks like you and I are going to be much more valuable.[00:05:32] Maybe we should ask for raises as you and I[00:05:36] Maciek: wait w with all our taxes rising in Poland, this, this is for sure what the, what I will do at the beginning of the next year[00:05:44] Matt: you were in here first. Okay. So let's talk about CIC D I know the definition, I'll let you define it. And more specifically why it's important for.[00:05:55] Let's say the smaller agency, who's starting to grow their business and take on bigger projects. Why should they invest in these areas?[00:06:02] Maciek: Yeah. So, CIC, D H first of all, it has nothing to do the CD part with compact disc. So don't worry. And I also heard that it sounds a bit like COVID and that's true.[00:06:14] It's it sounds a bit like this. And I think this is the biggest problem of Of our company of our world because this definition is everyone who hears this aggravation just don't know what are we talking about? Because some folks just won't do. I think they want to use this word just to feel more important or better or something like this.[00:06:37] To tell it more easy. It just automation it's just deployment automation. That's all because the CACD means it's continuous integration and continuous deployment. So, it's everything about testing and deploying in, in an automated manner[00:06:54] Matt: and to, and to illustrate, sorry to cut you off, but to illustrate like the typical.[00:06:59] The typical sort of a WordPress boutique agency, myself included. So I started an agency. I started with me and just my dad and I'm the technical one. My dad's helping him like run the business. We start growing an agency. We start selling more projects. Now I have. Relinquish my, my development skills with air quotes.[00:07:16] This is like 20 years ago and hire other developers and designers. Suddenly we have this small team of people and just sharing a single FTP account is no longer the answer to scaling in the same way of building websites and more complex websites. As we started taking on bigger projects over time, investing in a tool like this, whether it's buddy get or.[00:07:38] Is a smart move for anyone who's starting to grow a larger team and get on bigger projects. Cause it's just going to keep everything organized to a degree. Exactly.[00:07:46] Maciek: Okay. I work at body and this is my favorite tool, but it doesn't matter which one we will use. The whole CICT is not the tool it's a methodology or some would call it.[00:07:59] It's a philosophy of how we work. It's just about about the fact that we should test everything on one end and on the other end, on the other hand the way how we deploy stuff to the server is in an automated manner. The only thing that can be done manually is just the is just approving the.[00:08:19] Should we release this version. The rest should be automated in some way. And this is something perfect for also first of all agencies, because everyone also thinks that CIC D is just for those enterprise with like zillions of people and stuff like this. And that's not true. CIC, it will be also perfect for smaller companies because we don't have to invest for example, in in QA, because we can write some tests because there are so many methods and so many tools, thanks to which we can test our, either our code, either how our page behaves.[00:08:57] We can even Some part of accessibility testing only for dental or for 40% if I remember, but still it's more than, than, than a quarter of possibilities and we can test it everything. Each time we deploy our code and this can make not only our product better. It can be Teper because we won't waste so much time doing the boring stuff, because let's be honest testing at this point.[00:09:31] It will was[00:09:32] Matt: for everybody. Don't worry. You're not alone. Yeah.[00:09:35] Maciek: Probably saw it's, it's one of the most horrible things I could do. It's boring. It's repetitive. I just hate it. I just hate it. And every time I can create a short script that can do something for. I'm trying to do this, and this is exactly the same what most big open source project do, because could you imagine developing WordPress without having any tests and believing that moving something in Wandon of WordPress won't break something in the other.[00:10:08] So, especially that, yeah. Let me put[00:10:11] Matt: my business hat back on my agency hat back on. And I remember back in the day when my developers would, bring this to me and they'd say, Hey, we have to implement, of course the ICD, this methodology we have to do testing. We have to do all of this stuff. And the only thing that ran through my head was, oh my God, how much time and money is this going to cost me?[00:10:30] And how much is this going to slow down? The the timeline to launch a project or, get this iteration out to the customer who, only has a certain condensed budget is this thing is this of the mindset of look, it's going to be a little painful now, but in the future, it'll be much easier if that's how I've.[00:10:49] Digest that over the years, a lot of pain now, but a lot less stress in the future.[00:10:56] Maciek: Yes, that's it? Because this was a problem. I also had that one company I worked at that every time with other developers, we try to, Hey, maybe let's try and add some tests. We will. We'll benefit from it in the future, because right now, probably it will take us some time, but there are also like a few methods of writing tasks because we can either try to have like 100% coverage, which I think doesn't have a sense in any situation.[00:11:29] Or we just could try to focus on those critical parts of our website of our application. So if we know that. Some part of our website is critical. Let's say we know that our contact form is like the most important thing on our side. We should just write that small as using, for example, Cyprus testing.[00:11:53] If everything is working after each deployment, we don't have to cover everything. This is the only critical part we will need. Of course, the more tests, the better. And as you said, This is the problem that some agency owners or business department have that this is one more thing that the developers have to create.[00:12:16] So it will take much more time. And that is true. That is that's really true because this will take some extra time, but on the other things,[00:12:26] Matt: Sorry, go ahead. I just want to just ask the interject in this one question, cause I'm actually just really curious of, as, as I hear you talk about it and framed in a different way than I've heard over years, but a business owner again says, Hey, that con that sales lead form very important to our business.[00:12:43] That's where all of our sales contacts come in or our checkout page. Very. Business owner puts his hat on and says, Hey, isn't this why we're here in WordPress? We have gravity forms. We have WooCommerce, or these well-developed plugins. Isn't this code tested before it's shipped. How does something like this solve against that?[00:13:00] When we might be saying, boy, we just paid 200 bucks for gravity forms, license, what do we need to test this for?[00:13:06] Maciek: Because there are, there are few reasons. First of all, Gravity forms. Developers are humans and they also sometimes make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. This developer in the middle name.[00:13:20] Yes. This guy at get lab once just like destroyed their whole database and then they learned. They don't have backups. So yes, every wild makes[00:13:31] Matt: sound for six hours the other day. Yeah.[00:13:34] Maciek: And to be honest, after like removing the whole database, being down only for six hours. Great. Really, they, they get a tremendous job with with restoring everything can and stop.[00:13:45] But yes, they are humans. Second of all, our website runs on. Which can also break. There are so many moving parts. Also, there are other blockchains that could conflict with our plugin. So it's always better just to add this one extra test for our critical parts, because okay. That deployment will take, like, let's say five minutes longer, but I think it's much better rather than losing like $200.[00:14:17] Just like that before releasing the hotfix. So, so yeah, this is, this is something that, okay. It will take some time, but in the end, especially when we w when we plan to have a longer collaboration with, with this client, this will be something that all those tests will really help us in, in, in many things.[00:14:39] For example, if at some point we will want to. Like refactor some parts of the code then refactoring without having tests. It's maybe not impossible, but this is a very dangerous task because then we want to know anything about those loose ends. And so yeah, this, this artist situations, when, when, when this are something really, really.[00:15:01] Matt: Before we get to talking about you, co-founding, WPLS a couple of other questions here on the CIC D stuff. Is there a particular, so in podcasting, right? So I help people@mydayjobatcastles.com, getting them set up with podcasting. And it's not just, Hey, here's how you use Castillo's. They come to me and they say, oh my God, how do I start?[00:15:23] How do I get a podcast off the ground? How do I create content? How do I interview people? There's all of these other questions that come into creating an account at cast. Those that we have to submit. Things like testing and training and education and stuff like that. How do you all solve that at your day job?[00:15:39] How do you help people sort of on onboard to this new methodology, if it's new to them and make them successful so that they're not missing the things that really make it a valuable, a valuable solution?[00:15:51] Maciek: There are very few things that, that we can do. First of all Foundation of using CICT is using any version control system.[00:16:00] So this is the first thing we have to educate people on is using get just like this. If someone isn't using any version control system then this is something. Th this person has, has to learn. That's why we, for example, had this webinar together with get crack and because they have a really great tool for forget.[00:16:22] And yeah, because this is also a thing that some people are afraid when it comes to version control system. This is a command line tool. So it's scary and it's only for developers now. That's not true. We can use get crack and it's really easy. We can use tower and there are probably some other tools also even using a gift and their web version.[00:16:45] This, this is also a really friendly approach. I, so many people who wrote books using good using markdown and using pull requests for, for comments from, from other. And this is a really interesting method to do this, and it's, it's, it's totally possible. And like I said, this is the foundation of CIC D without it, we, we just won't know what changed and thanks to version control system.[00:17:10] We can, we can see those things on the other hand, because. That's beyond the CACD. It's kind of boring like that because CAC just connects the cool parts because we have this like cool server. We have this, our cool website and deploying one from the other, like this is the boring part. So, so I also try, especially on my Twitter sometimes to show some cool ways what we can do which I see, for example I think that the last week I posted how to, how to connect our pipeline.[00:17:47] So every time that our deployment is successful, it will lounge. I have the tiger on my, on Spotify, on my phone. And it works. Yes. It's useless in a way it's warm.[00:18:00] Matt: Yeah. Yeah. You don't want that going off on like a board meeting and we launched a new website and like I had the tire comes on, like hired this[00:18:07] Maciek: guy, I say, okay, this is a really great sign.[00:18:10] It's working. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's really terrific. And I also discuss with, with one of our, of our writers at the body he created an action to start a game server. I just don't remember in which game does by like in a press of a button and just like that, it just automated everything, created some balls that lounge everything on amazing.[00:18:34] It was working. So yeah, it's, it's, it's not only about moving files from one place to another. We can just do so many interesting things. It's just up to us. And because there are so many tools that have some open API APIs, CLS or anything. So it's so easy to connect everything with everything. So, so it's really great.[00:19:00] I. Even, like I said, I, now I have this, I have tiger, but I could, for example, using IFT T connect to. Our pipeline with like changing color of lights at my house, because why not? Again,[00:19:17] Matt: but again, of course, open API is automation. All of this stuff is fantastic. It's fantastic because. It allows you to have like this creative sense to unlock things that even the companies who are creating don't even haven't even realized yet.[00:19:33] Right? Like you were able to do things like notify your team about deployments that happen in different channels and different methodologies. Yeah. It's, it's fantastic. When you start to unlock all of this stuff, that creative mindset that you have that interest to explore and to develop and investigate I'm sure is what led you to releasing WP owls, right?[00:19:56] Like you've loved WordPress. You wanted to explore more of it. I assume I don't want to put words in your mouth and I'll let you explain it. But you know, here you are. I think 50, at least at the time of this recording, 55 issues published on WP owls.co walk me down that path. When did this start and who did you start it with and why are you still doing it?[00:20:20] Maciek: So, yeah, this is, this is a funny story because the Polish version has. More than 150 issues already. So it's much older. And it started with with the fact that I didn't listen to my wife carefully because at some point she asked me, Hey, maybe we will run a WordPress newsletter or something like this.[00:20:43] I'm using Facebook, just, just for our Polish community. And I wasn't listening. I just said, yeah. Great idea. Yeah. Let's do it. And yeah. And now we are those more than 100 episodes of the Polish issues of the Polish version, more than 50 of the English one. So yes, yes we are. We are still doing it. And when we started, especially because the Polish community.[00:21:12] Even if it's quite big, we all knew each other. So it was rather simple when we just posted that, Hey, we are starting the published version of WP hours. Many people are like at start started to follow in gas. And at some point we realized that Facebook wasn't the perfect choice. So we created our own website.[00:21:33] And when we have hit the 100 episodes, we decided, okay, it's time to go global. It's time to go global let's let's lounge, the double owls English version. And we fought that. Okay. We will have a bigger community, so it will be much, much easier to promote because we saw how it works with with our Polish community.[00:21:57] And we were a bit mistaken with some of the assumptions because for example, the most important marketing channel when it comes to the Polish version is. Estelle it's Facebook and for the English version, Facebook just doesn't work. I could almost remove it. And I think that no one would even even care about it.[00:22:21] Twitter is the most popular mediums here, which is great because I learned that I really loved with her opposed to Facebook, which I, which I really hate with all my heart.[00:22:34] Matt: Well, do you think it's, do you think the. For the Polish version is more successful because it's just where you started or are Polish people more, especially in the WordPress space, more tied to Facebook as it communications?[00:22:48] Yes.[00:22:48] Maciek: I figured that because in Poland looks like the Twitter is slowly mostly used either by politics or by a journal. So everyone is arguing with everyone and that's all when it comes to using our polished weeder. So yes, I, I really fully understand why people don't want to to use it.[00:23:12] And they like, especially Facebook groups because those are closed communities. But with CA when it comes to the English version The whole WordPress Twitter community is very open is it's really great. And I really loved it. I really love it. I really like hanging out there. So just, just, just like this enter, I think that I, I'm not sure when, when will, it will be published, but tomorrow, so it will be 19th.[00:23:43] It will be the first whole year of WP hours. We will be celebrating our first, our first barge night. And and I must say the going global was, was, was a great decision. It was a great decision. Okay. It is some ex it needs some extra work because every time we have to translate everything to English, because still thinking in our native languages much easier.[00:24:11] Yeah. But but like I said, it, it was worth it. We could lounge our our guests editors let's call it program. And w w and this is really the part of which I am so proud. This is working so great. And and yeah, we are. W we are hoping that it will, it will only get the better,[00:24:31] Matt: oh, congratulations.[00:24:32] On a year. I just celebrated nine years, a couple of days ago for, for this particular show. Once you pass a year, there's no turning back. They say you cannot stop at this point. Yeah, that's[00:24:44] Maciek: true. That's true because. Th we already see how much work we have put into something. And it would be a shame just to stop at that point.[00:24:53] Matt: Did, how do the goals change at all? Like what was the original goal for the Polish. Was it for you to just maybe get exposure to lead into maybe hiring you or something like that? And how do the goals change if at all shifting to a global presence?[00:25:07] Maciek: We have only one goal and it was more of a contribution towards WordPress.[00:25:13] That's all. We fought for a short while about monetizing it, but we. Once we decided that we don't want it. We don't want it. We, we want a WP hours and the Polish version to be our hubby rather than our our job B like, how is this nicely called? And This was the only thing that we want to achieve.[00:25:34] We wanted to give back something from, from us. And we know how many things are happening in the, in the worker space. So putting everything in one place I think it's a, it's, it's a nice contribution that that, that we are doing with the English version that all living that we that we wanted is just to, just to continue.[00:25:56] Doing this contribution about in the, in, in the larger scale. And even if we did not fault and we are, we don't want to monetize it. I, I would lie if I would set that it didn't help me with my, with my job because it's so much easier to connect with people because If I would be just much upon Muskie from, from body, less people would know.[00:26:22] And when I'm contacting them like, hi, I'm I work at at body, but you also may know me from WP ALS and many people already know me. So which ma it's so easier to connect with. If you saw our guest editors list, like there are, so I would call them workers, rock stars. We had, we had yells, we had Mar YAG.[00:26:47] We had so many interesting, interesting people from, from the workless world. And without WP ALS, I don't think I would even have had the courage to talk with with some of them, because why? Because. I am. I'm just, I wouldn't be just a workers ambassador and this makes me, and this makes it a bit easier, but I still remember the moment I wrote wrote an email asking Demariac from, from yells to be our guests to Dieter.[00:27:18] For sure. I had the small slip deprivation because I would never do it being like, because this is Marielle from yellows. This is yeah. I am here and she's right. So the interesting thing and the surprise in the morning.[00:27:34] Matt: Yeah. The, the interesting thing, and I sort of alluded to this earlier.[00:27:38] How this is an interesting time for like content creators, especially in, especially in the WordPress play space, in any space in every space. I should say. It's just very apparent in WordPress because content creators can get jobs for brands to, again, bridge those gaps between marketing and product or especially marketing and technical.[00:27:56] The other interesting thing, I think, which is going to carry through. Forever at this point, I think is folks like you and I, and some folks listening who are content creators who have a body of work that is valuable, but more importantly, an employee. Somebody who hires you to work for them, sees that as valuable and allows you to continue to do it.[00:28:19] Let me frame this from some experiences that I had when I got out of the day job, running my agency and looked for a full-time job back when I was having kids five, five or so years ago at this point, that body of work like you were saying, allowed me to, talk to other companies to get jobs.[00:28:39] I'd say 80% of them back then were, were like, yeah, this is awesome. Like continue to do the Matt report. You can work for us and keep doing it because it's a benefit to us really at the end of the day. And I get to retain that ownership. And it's not looked at. Oh, you're doing like a side hustle while you're working for us.[00:28:57] Like, no, that's not gonna apply. And I did have some of those conversations with very notable WordPress companies, I should say, which I won't say on air, but a few of them were like, no, no, you, if you work for us, you'd have to stop doing the mat reporting. And I was like, oh, okay, this, this conversation's done pretty quick because that's just not going to happen.[00:29:13] But what I'm getting at is I think content creators have this advantage from here on out. Like you can continue to create. Have it as a valuable asset to yourself, to the company you're working for. If both parties can agree that this is a, an okay relationship. I think the future is pretty bright for content creators to continue to love, like do this hobby thing, like as you put it and work for a company, but find mutual mutual benefit.[00:29:40] That was a long way of getting to that is no real question. But do you have any thoughts around the future of like content creators and how you can leverage that as an additive?[00:29:48] Maciek: Yeah, I think that, that, that, you're absolutely right with this because I think that many, because when, when I started my, my job in with workers, I remember that every time when we were creating sites, that there were like three types of of let's call it workers.[00:30:04] We had graphic designers, we had developers and we had the marketing team and there was. There were so many gaps between all of those teams. And now when I w when I look at some work titles of different people, I see that are more and more jobs that are connecting those gaps. We have now, all those the developer relations jobs, oldest, embassy leaders, advocates, and so on, I would still like to be called, I dunno, I worked with you in the corner or something.[00:30:36] Matt: Because why your pay rate keeps going up every time, the longer this conversation goes on, you and I are going to be getting paid a lot more money.[00:30:42] Maciek: Yeah. So, but, but, but this is Suffolk, this that I think that many companies started to realize that it's not so easy that, that the job we are doing became more and more complicated in so many on so many levels.[00:30:58] Not only when it comes to the technical stuff. But here, here also, we have all those headlights, not headless, so many approaches of doing our, our workers is right. But on the other hand, there are so many approaches when it comes to communication to writing content and. So for sure there will be more and more jobs that will be doing that, that will specialize in one small thing and it will benefit for forever.[00:31:30] Because really having specialists on things that may sound stupid for someone it's sometime maybe a big win. I don't remember who, but someone in our corporate space is is, is promoting himself as an expert about, about pages. And, and this is a great approach because the about page is something really useful.[00:31:55] Yeah, and it can get, it can build that relation between the reader of the website and to do, to become a future client or something like this. So, so yeah. Maybe a few years ago, hiring someone who calls himself an about page specialists may sound, let's call it weird, but now why not? Right. It may have sense.[00:32:21] Matt: Yeah. A hundred percent. I want to turn our sights on. Talking about creating content in the WordPress space, maybe WordPress, journalism, news, podcasting, and all the, all of this fun stuff you say that you, you want to keep it as a hobby. You don't want to turn it into a jobby, which I I'd imagine.[00:32:37] As soon as you first, as soon as you take your first payment, and let's say an advertiser suddenly, now you're sort of thrust into this area of like, okay, now I have to turn this into a business. I know this really well because I take sponsorship money. There is a need, I think. And again, there's not going to be a direct question here.[00:32:52] I'm just going to frame it and then happy to get your thoughts. I think there is a need for like great for great WordPress content, not just tutorials, not just interviews but content lead with opinion, journalism research, et cetera, et cetera put out there into the world because there are.[00:33:11] Sponsors out there. There are businesses out there that would like to support it. There's also businesses and brands out there that want to get their product or service out in front of other readers, listeners, viewers, if you're doing stuff on YouTube, there's plenty of, of market share out there. I don't think our particular space has matured enough.[00:33:34] And I mean that for both parties on one hand, I think the product owners that are out there are simply just looking for, for numbers, right? They want, they want clicks. They want page views. They want downloads, they want views. They want all of this stuff. Rightfully so. And there's less concern of great quality content.[00:33:53] And then. There's the other side of the product owner, who's like, Hey, I got this great product. How do I get it out there? I want the world to know about it, but the taverns not talking about it, I guess my work here is done. I think they just give up. Right. And there's no formal outreach.[00:34:10] There's no real true effort to reach out to folks like you and I to. To really do that. And if it is, it's just like this, please talk about my products. So you can promote me thing, which also sucks. Right. And then we flip that sphere around to the content creators, like uni where, ah, yeah, some of us, we, we get burned out from doing these projects because.[00:34:31] Whatever it's, it's just not enough people paying attention to it. There's not enough money in it. The WordPress world is largely out of our control to, to a degree. So there's things moving that we just can't control. Can't use the word WordPress or in, in any of our commercial endeavors there's stuff like that.[00:34:48] Fairly chaotic world. How do you see bridging the gap between, product companies that want to support great and unique content and want to get their product out there and the content creators like you and I, and others that are listening to this to like, keep things going and get valued at a particular.[00:35:07] Level that they should be valued at a big, huge topic. I just threw at you. But your thoughts on any of this?[00:35:13] Maciek: Yeah, that's right. It's, it's huge. Maybe I will start with a little background because for, for few years I had the chance to work at one of the biggest Polish technical portals and. There were, there were a lot of advertisement or, and I had the chance to contact with so many media agencies, advisors, and so on.[00:35:36] And this was the point when I realized I really hate advertisement in like any way. And when I am still thinking when it comes to WP ALS how to. Get some money, but not for me because I'm, I I'm earning enough at, at, at my day job, but to get some money just that I can found something something else for, for example, I could pay money for, for writers and like still trying to find the way, how to, how to make an advice advertisement that won't lose.[00:36:14] Like it's, it's an ad it's it's, it's, it's something really difficult. It's, it's something really difficult because like I said, I had banners, I had, I hate sponsored tags because in many cases you can feel that someone paid for it and it's it's, it's not real. It's not real. It's it's it's it's, it's just fake.[00:36:37] So[00:36:37] Matt: yes, this is, but don't you think in the WordPress world? Don't you think specifically in the WordPress world, we have an advantage as creators to either write or say ads that we really care about. Like if you're using, your particular buddy, get a software or if let's say gravity forms, sponsor the show, like I could really talk well about, gravity forms.[00:37:00] Cause I know that. Don't you think we're in a particular advantage to the make advertising?[00:37:05] Maciek: Yes. That is true. That there are many products that that I could advertise with. We'd like. Can you heart or anything? I would, I won't have to worry about that. I am, let's say lying to the people because yes, I could say those words, but this is, this is one problem about me because I always were at minimalist developer.[00:37:27] I use as few plugins as possible. So I could say great words about advanced Gusto fields. I could say great words about the body. About timber, but it's an open source project that wouldn't advertise in any way and maybe about Yoast because I always use them too. So there are not many products that I could advertise in a way.[00:37:53] And on the other hand, I know that there are so many services that are probably great, that are that are really far towards the users. And if I could find a way to. To figure out how to create those advertisements in a way that. Th that's will look more real more for, to, to, to my top, to my readers.[00:38:18] And it will be a great moment for me when I, when I, when I figured it out, I'm still trying to, to do, to find a way how to, because like I said for, for me, it would be great if I could sponsor some other people to, to, to write some great tax to to develop their. Stuff like this,[00:38:37] Matt: because there are so many, it sounds like advertisement and sponsorship is, is still on the table.[00:38:42] Like you're still exploring it. It might be something that you do with th[00:38:45] Maciek: this bout. Yes, it, it, it is it's but like I said, it's, it's not for me. I would just like want to have the possibility to, to pass the money, to, to, to people that. That needed more because like I said, I'm, I'm really happy with, with how many money I earn each month still.[00:39:05] If they want to tell them to give me a raise, I'm still open. So[00:39:09] Matt: they definitely will after this call Machek thanks for hanging out today and talking about all of this wonderful stuff. Listen, if you're a small agency boutique agency, you have a few developers on your team starting to take on bigger projects.[00:39:21] You're starting to punch above your weight. Sign those 20, 30, 40, 50, a hundred thousand dollars deals. It's time to get serious. Find my check. Well much I can tell us where can they find you to connect on the CIC D software that we talked about? And then where can we find you? If we want to write a post on WPLS[00:39:37] Maciek: I've instilled, the best way would be to connect with me through fruit for Twitter.[00:39:42] You can find me my nickname is . I hope that maybe you will, you will provide them. My link to my Twitter and accounting in a written way. And I think this is this. This is the best way to connect with me because it's, it's universal for all my worlds.[00:40:01] Matt: Fantastic stuff. Everyone else listening to this, my report.com report.com/subscribe.[00:40:06] If you want your weekly news delivered to you in five minutes or less, the WP minute.com. Sponsor us over there@buymeacoffee.com slash Maryport. Join our private discord. Join the conversation, get your hand in the. WordPress news. See you in the next episode. ★ Support this podcast ★

The Break-Up - How to Deal

Our Friendly World with Fawn and Matt

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 10, 2021 38:03

Friend breakups are just as painful as romantic break-ups. We have some strategies and stories to share that will have you feeling better. The Break-Up [00:00:00] Fawn: Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Good. All everything. Hi everybody. Hey, I don't know if it's the subject matter today, but I'm in a mood right now. [00:00:13] Matt: Sounds like I'm going to be tapping today. You know [00:00:17] Fawn: what? I don't think. I think no matter what you do right now, it's going to get all my last nerves. [00:00:23] Matt: So if I'm quiet, I'm in trouble. If I talk in trouble. Oh yeah. [00:00:27] Fawn: Everything. Everything is bothering me right now. Um, love LOVE IS WINNING. Um, it's the inner fight within that says I am done. And the other side of you you that is used to this situation or person to the point that stopping is like cutting off a vital part of life. This makes no sense to you cause you have no idea what I'm about to discuss today, right, Matt? [00:00:59] Matt: Well, [00:01:00] I, I guess we'll see, [00:01:02] Fawn: it's kind of like, what I'm about to talk about is kind of. And not kind of, but to me, what I've noticed is actually like a chemical addiction. Uh, today's topic is, are you ready? Matt has no idea. The breakup. [00:01:25] Matt: Yeah. Raise your hand if you've been through a breakup and that your hand, if you went well [00:01:29] Fawn: now, well, I raising my hand. I had one that finally went well and I use it as an nugget of wisdom from Santa Monica. And I'm not talking about like romantic breakup per se. I'm talking about break up in general, breaking up with a friend it is so hard and you think, oh, well it's just a friend, but oh my God, it is incredibly painful. Horrible. So I have some ways that will help with that [00:02:00] pain because breakup looking at the etymology of it, it's a disruption; disillusion of connection; separation into

god friend raise breakup horrible santa monica matt yeah matt so matt well

How Matt Is Replacing His Income By Trading Stock Options - 110

The Option Genius Podcast: Options Trading For Income and Growth

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 21, 2021 34:31

Allen: All right, everybody. Welcome to another edition of the Option Genius Podcast today I have with me, Matthew D'Ambrosi .He's one of our passive traders. And he's gonna be telling us how he got started and how he's doing pretty well right now. How are you doing, Matthew? Matt: I'm doing well. Thanks for having me on. Allen: Cool. Cool. So how'd you get started with Option Genius? Matt: Well, I have to actually go back, it's been quite a journey, I have to say, you know, it's more like a 15 year journey for me. Allen: Wow. You know, I was given a book by my sister at age 30. And I was a young guy, and I was just more not interested in reading books just kind of floating through life, didn't really have much direction. And the book was called "Automatic Millionaire" by David Bach. Allen: Okay. Matt: In that book, I wasn't really interested in reading it, but she handed it to me. So I said, at least go through it. And I started thumbing through and I came upon a compound interest chart. And it showed, you know, you're 19 years old, and you put $2,000 into an IRA, or Roth IRA, and you did that, and you continue to do that, it would be well over a million by the time you're 65. So I was caught immediately by that. And that's kind of where my journey began. So I took that information, and started reading more books. And I came across Dave Ramsey. He's kind of like a financial soldier, if you will, you know, to get out of debt. Yeah, kind of get your stuff together. And I started, I always thought about making money and you know, retiring early, it was always a thought of mine, it was a gold mine, it was definitely what I wanted to do. And I always felt like 65 is when I would do it just like everybody else. And I continue to read more, I read numerous articles and books. And about two years ago, I went to a workshop, and I was learning how to invest. And they introduced me to options and selling options. And I was told that everyone else was told, you know, it was risky. Don't touch it. There's a whole another world to me. Allen: Have you done any stocks or options before that? Matt: No, absolutely not. Allen: No stocks either? Matt: Not really, you know, I was more into mutual funds, I had gave my money to an advisor, I just believe that people had your best interest. And they're great advisors out there. I'm not saying they're not. But it really started me to take a hard look about how money is handled. And you're much better off if you take the plunge and believe in yourself and start looking into deeper and see that they can really work out for you if you're willing to take or have the interest really to go and look at that. So I started paper trading. And then I was wondering who else does this so I started searching. And then I came across your name, and I have to hand it to your master marketer. I've never had anyone hit my inbox like you. So I started listening to all your podcast, taking little by little, you know, all the information that you give out there and started little by little paper trading. And then I started making money slowly, you know, doing one contract, then adding two. And then now I'm pretty much on my goal to replace my income. And that's my ultimate goal so... Allen: Awesome. Matt: Just a regular guy, you know, I just kind of happy to be here. I'm really happy to be here today. Because I want to get the message out that you know, you're teaching just normal people like me, who have no experience at this. And it's really a wonderful thing if you're willing to get a hold of your fears and take a stab at it. Allen: Right. So you started about two years ago, you said? Matt: Yeah, about two years ago yeah. Allen: Oh two years ago. Okay. And you're still working? Matt: I am, yep. Allen: Okay, what do you do during the day? Matt: So I'm a forklift driver and it's tough work. It's very laborsome. And trading has allowed me to look at money in a different way. I just don't look at money as scarce as it was. So it's a whole different mindset. Allen: Yeah. So how do you find time during the day to trade? Matt: Generally I don't go until about 2:30 in the afternoon, and I go on to 2:30 at work so I spend the mornings pretty much studying and paper trading and learning and then even after work at 11 o'clock, sometimes I'll be up till 1am or so learning as well and paper trading and trying to think about things and whatnot so.. Allen: So you're all in? Matt: All in, absolutely. They say burn the ships and I burnt them. Allen: So what was your first trade? Matt: First trade I did was credit spread. I did far away from the money for about just one contract and I made like 18 bucks. It wasn't much but you know, you're, you talked about the options continuum. That was in that stage where I was very nervous and you know, you have these feelings and you feel like you're gonna lose all your money. And that's not true, if you study and really take what you have to teach, and I took it very slow and got into it. So after that, after you do, there's something about to do first live trade, it kind of clicks with you like, okay, that wasn't so bad, you know, not the think of the worst that can happen. So, yeah, I did it. And it's been a, you know, I'm gaining confidence each and every week. And, yeah, we just continue to evolve on that continuum. Allen: Cool. So if I can recap. So basically, you want to get into investing because you didn't like where it was going. And you didn't want to wait around till 65 to, you know, have a nest egg and retire and have somebody else in charge of your money. So you started looking at it for yourself, and you've been putting in time you've been studying, researching trading, paper trading? What else is it that you want to achieve, besides just the money aspect? Like what what is it about the trading that is, you know, speaks to you on a deeper level? Matt: Yeah, I think the main part and it's different for everybody, for me, it's actually you know, as you get older, you realize you don't know how much time you have on this earth. And, you know, you start looking at things like, Hey, you know, the time is right now. And if I can find a way to free up some time, I'm going to seize it, because I never want to look back and say, "Hey, you know, I got to 65" I'd be glad if I do. But to spend time with friends and family, I got, you know, parents are almost in their 80s, I would love to just free up just a little bit of time and already am and I'm already you know, I already feel successful. And that, you know, I found something that I can do and free some time up and actually see them. Allen: Okay. So when you say you feel successful, what does that mean in numbers? Matt: Numbers to me, it's like just even $500. And it's different for everybody. There's no doubt. I mean, $500 extra dollars a month is successful to me. It gives you just a little bit of breathing room. I'm a simple person, I don't need a lot. I drive a 2200 accord. I mean, it looks like it's gonna fall off the road. I'm not a man to really, you know, I love great things. I would love to get in a nice, wonderful car, but it's not the main driver for me. The main drivers just to spend quality time family and friends. Absolutely. Allen: Nice. Nice. Okay. So would you mind sharing how large your trading account is now? Matt: Yeah, I started with in the brokerage account, I started about 2 Grand, and I'm already up to about 16 right now. Allen: Wow, in two years? Yeah, that's phenomenal. Matt: Yeah, I mean, I'm also adding to it too, but.. Allen: Okay. Matt: It's amazing to see the compound interest grow. And I haven't been really calculating it like dollar for dollar. But I'm just more really tuned into just being successful and working through the trades. And not really focusing so much on, you know, $1 amount just being, "Hey, let me get this tray. Let me monitor it. Let me look at it. Let me learn from it". If I have any problems, if I look at it as a learning experience, I have to continue to go I want to be in it forever. You know, I want to continue to I want to be that guy standing, you know, 10 years, 15 years from now and still doing this. Allen: Okay, so you don't want to be a forklift driver anymore? Matt: No, I say, you know, I'm sure there are a lot of people who listen to podcast saying I hate my job. I do not I actually enjoy driving a forklift. I just don't want to drive 40 hours a week. Allen: Okay. Okay, so what type of strategies are you using? Matt: So right now I'm doing a lot of bull put spreads, I've ventured into bear call spreads. I'm also doing covered calls. I haven't done any naked puts yet. So I'm really kind of looking at some companies and, uh, you know, I want to know more about the companies and look at stable companies like you teach us and start doing options off of them. So, it's an ongoing process and what amazes me that you don't need to do a lot of different strategies to be successful. Allen: Right, right. Right. Okay. What's your if you had to only pick one, which was your favorite? Matt: At the moment, it'd be a bull put spread, but I have a feeling that's gonna change. Allen: Yeah depending on the market. Matt: Also venturing into into oil, like you're teaching in your program. Allen: Cool. Yeah. Welcome to that program. Yeah, it's definitely it's definitely the next level of stuff. You know, it moves faster, and it's more leverage. So the numbers are bigger. Matt: Yeah. Allen: Cool. So have you tried anything else that didn't work? Matt: You know, I've done about 60 trades so far. I've lost one. And I got out early, it would have worked out. And it was my first time losing money, but I look at as a big lesson. You know, there's a lot of feelings. I listened to one of your podcasts where you talked about how you lost and the feelings that surround that. Right. I think you have to kind of reevaluate and find the lesson in it. And the lesson I found in that trade was that I was trading too heavy. I was a little bit. I was actually doing too many contracts. I was a little bit too uncomfortable. Matt: So that it was is a really good learning experience to say, Hey, you know, I'm not really comfortable risking that much money. Let me just pare it back a little bit. And think about what I want to do here, so.. okay, that, you know, the experience of actually getting out of a trade out of our live trade because you know, your bloods pumping, and you're like, Okay, you know, am I hitting the right buttons? And I get now it's a little different than paper? Of course. Allen: For sure. Yeah. But did you say you did 60 trades and you only lost on one? Matt: Yes so far... Allen: And these are all real money? Matt: Real Money, yes. Allen: Wow. And what's your strategy? How are you doing that? Would you find that trading plan? That's amazing. Matt: You know, it's a lot of listening. I've read so many books, listen to podcasts, listening to education, I kind of go, I'm a very conservative person. So I trade very conservatively. So about 90% out or more, I try to get at least 23 cents, 22 cents, and then just move my contracts up as I feel comfortable taking that risk. Allen: Okay so if I heard you correctly, you are trading at about a 10 delta spread? Matt: Yeah, usually. Allen: And then you're trying to make about 5% on each trade? Matt: Yeah, but between four and 5% Allen: Between four or five? And how long do you stay in the trade? Matt: You know, it's almost embarrassing, but that's the level of how you get better. I really have my you know, you talk about your AHA moments, and one of them was mine. I didn't know you could get out of the trade. So I was always thinking you had to be there until expiration, but that's not obviously not true. So that was a big one. For me, I have to honestly say that, you know, when you're learning this, you just don't think of you don't know everything. Right? And I was like, oh, my goodness, you can actually get out of these trades. So I learned to get out. So you know, that's a benefit in my world, once you know how to get out, it takes a little bit of fear out. Allen: So when do you get in? How many days to expiration to get in? Matt: Generally, I'm between 28 and 35 days or so. Allen: Okay, and what how many trades at one time do you have on? Matt: I really try to do only as many as I can comfortably watch. I try to do maybe one a week. So about four trades at most that are going on? Allen: Okay, so four trades at one time. Okay. And so how much would you say you're making on a monthly basis? dollar terms? Matt: Well across two accounts. So I trade in my brokerage account, I trade under my IRA, I rockler. Right? I'm averaging about 1000 a week now? Allen: 1000 a week. Okay. That's amazing. So within two years, you're up to 4000 a month. And you're saying your account value is roughly around 16? Matt: Roughly 16. And then, you know, in the Roth IRA, it's considerably higher, but that's not money I really want to put a heavy risk of short term trading, but I do trade there. Allen: Okay. Yeah. Okay. All right. No, that's, that's crazy. And you're saying that you're almost to the point where it's getting close to where it's gonna replace your income or equal your income from.. Matt: Yeah I mean, I have no qualms about it. I my goal is to get make $5600 a month. And I know my number and but it's all about, you know, I guess one of the big reasons for me coming on is that you just have to trust the process. And you have to actually become in love with the process not be so result driven. I mean, it's important, you know, we all want results. But if you can find a love for the process, I think you're that much better? Allen: For sure. Definitely. Yeah. Because, you know, like you said, You've been putting in the time you wake up and you work on it. And then after work, you know, tired long day, but you still sometimes you still get it and to look at it being you wouldn't do it if you weren't like happy and excited. It's really something to find something. I feel like this is a point in my life where I really found something I love to do. And I really do. I really love this. And, you know, it's, I just want other people that are just regular people like me, and people come all the time and say, you know, you can do this and do that. But I am I tell you to my core, I'm just a regular person, I drive a forklift. And if anyone can do it, you can do it. And thank God, there are people like you have to teach this stuff. Because I would have killed 20 years ago to have someone guide me through just hitting me across the head of the board and be like, Hey, you know, listen. But that's not how life works. Allen: Right, no, yeah. You know, when you're ready, the teacher appears kind of thing. You know? Matt: It really is true. Allen: Yeah. Yeah. So the biggest thing that surprised you when you were doing this stuff, besides that you could get out before expiration? Matt: Oh, yeah, that was a big one. I think it's coupled with what other people say but also with what I think is that you can trade on something that you don't own. I think that's a big thing for people. Because we're just conditioned to be like, you know, if I can trade something, I have to own it. And that was a big like, wow, for me, for trading. You know, also the covered call as well. Allen: Okay. And so what was your biggest challenge? Matt: The biggest challenge for me was overcoming your fears. I mean, it's, it's definitely a big fear. And I don't take it lightly. Because, you know, we all worry about losing our money, we worked so hard for it. I mean, I work 40 hours a week just to make the bills and do everything that we want to do, we want a better standard of living. And it's very scary you know, you can think about losing all that money and a flash, and that's really fearful. And I think that's the biggest obstacle, but be to be able to papertrade it and learn from people like yourself that have gone through it. And like, they say, taken the arrows is all much better. I mean, you know, it's like, I talk to people, it's like, you're in a forest, and you don't know which way to go. And it's like, you have someone like yourself or someone else that has gone through this. And we're like, Hey, here's the path. You know, over here is a ditch over here, you know, there's a lion, go down this path, and you start to understand otherwise, you're just flailing around, and you'll be lost in that forest forever. So, you know, it's just one big journey, to be honest with you. Allen: Yep. Yep, yep. Yep. So is that the biggest thing that helped you overcome the fear? Got me a lot of people have that fear. You know, it's like, oh, my God, if I do this, what's going to happen? What if I press the wrong button? What if they take this away? What if you know, something, I do something wrong, my wife's gonna kill me, you know, how did you besides the paper trading was that the biggest thing that helped you overcome the fear? Matt: I think also, the actual structure of a credit spread, you know, knowing that when I have a set amount of money, that it's risk, I can only lose like, $500 in a trade or 480. That really helped me, okay, I was like, Okay, if you're uncomfortable, overall, losing $480 in this trade completely fails. And that's all I'm gonna lose. And I wrapped my head around that, then I can get past that barrier. And I can trade more and learn how to trade. I think initially, you just have in your mind that you're gonna lose all your money, which is not true. If you, of course, you I mean, you have to study and you have to pay attention. None of this is easy or simple. But you got to put in the time, I'm not saying you don't. But if you really want to, and you're, you have conviction, and you have desire, there's no reason why you can't do this stuff. Allen: So what do you think the future holds for you now? Matt: Well, I hope all good things. I mean, I go on with the, I hope I go in with the attitude. I'm really happy and excited to be part of the the oil, that's a whole another, the oil blank check trading program. It's a whole another world for me. And, you know, I kind of feel like, it's traded like options, but it's very different. And then I have to get in there. And it's like, you know, I'm back at the beginning a little bit. So I got to get him up to speed and learn that it's a whole another world. So you go through those feelings again, in a different way. So I'm kind of in the beginning, but I'm very hopeful for the future. And I just want to continue to be consistent and profitable. And that's all you can ask for. Allen: Yep. Yep. So would you recommend Option Genius to other people? Matt: Absolutely. I mean, I sing your praises almost all the time. I one of the big reasons is that how accessible you are. And you know, whenever I had a question, you guys are on top of it. I mean, I couldn't ask for any quicker response. And if you have a problem, you feel like someone's right beside you. And I really appreciate that. So yeah, I've absolutely, I would tell anyone to go to you and learn from you learn from you on the program. Allen: Yeah, we try. I mean, we're not perfect. And we don't work weekends. But some people, some people are like, Oh, I bought this thing on Saturday. Why haven't I got it yet? I have questions. I'm like, Oh, we don't work weekends, you know. See that's part of the job here. You know, I talked about it on the podcast, and the books and everything. It's like freedom. You know, that's the ultimate, the ultimate goal is freedom. And however you define it, yeah, the time to do what you want the money to do what you want, and you just, you know, if you want to go here, do this, or whatever, buy whatever you want. Like, I'm so happy and excited that you're feeling a taste of that, you know, it's like, "Okay, if I'm going to work, I'm going to make X dollars, but I can always be laid off". I can always get hurt. I can always, you know, get sick. I mean, so many people right now are getting sick and they can't work and they're all scared because they don't know what they're going to do. And you know, the fact that you're you found something that you can stay at home, press a few buttons, and you understand it and you're like, Okay, intellectually, I can make this work. And you put in the time in the effort. I've seen that. So kudos to you for that. Because I've seen a lot of people. They're like, Oh, yeah, no, no, this is supposed to be magic. I'm supposed to hit the Escape key and I'm supposed to get money coming out of my computer. Well, it doesn't work that way. You know, you have to put in time, effort, thought process. You have to do it over and over and over again, which you've done for the last two years. You've been putting your dues in I mean, obviously you're not done yet. Right? You still got a long way to go. Matt: Oh, yeah, absolutely my goal is never to be complacent. You know, never think I've no at all, because I do not. There's people out there that are very smart, intelligent, people that are learning, I always look at life, you can learn somebody, something from everyone, just like all the people, all the books that I've read, if you can get one good thing out of them, you can learn something from them, you're all the better. You know, I just learned to not look at one thing as the way there could be multiple ways. But you know, you have to take the good and almost make it your own as well. You know it, but it's on you. And you as you get older, you realize that it is on you to make this decisions. I don't want to bury my head in the sand and just hope you know, I wake up at 65 and I'm retired. So it's a process. And luckily, I fell in love with it. Allen: That's great. That's great. So let's say you get your goal and you're making 5600 a month from your trading. You still going to work? Matt: I think initially I mean, you know, it's a wonderful question to answer. I think initially, I would go with part time, because I like I do like my job. I do enjoy driving a forklift. But um, it would allow me to do some other things that I would want to do in life. I mean, I like gardening, I like painting, maybe learn Spanish, I always want to learn Spanish, you know, and I could put my efforts towards that. It's just, it opens a whole another world for you. And I mean, it really does. And it gives you a chance to maybe go into some things that you never dreamed that you would be. For instance, after this, I'm going on a boat, I would never dream that I would learn, I always didn't want to drive a boat, I was afraid to drive a boat, I was afraid I was gonna to crash into a dock. But I'm a member of a book club now. And I'm going to go out my wife after this podcast and get on a boat. And I'm learning how to drive and docket and it's like I believe trading is broad and open that world for me. Because I'm no longer fearful making mistakes. And I'm going to learn from them. And, you know, if I crashed into into a dock, so be it. I'll learn from it. And I'll get better. So that's the way I approach life now. And I think trading is a big part of that. Allen: Oh, that's wonderful. So the fact that you've been you've had some success in the trading has given you confidence in other areas of your life. Matt: Absolutely. That's something I can ever believe. Yeah, absolutely. Allen: That's so beautiful. Okay, so let's say one of your fellow employees at Costco, you're at Costco, right? Yes, yeah. So if one of your fellow employees at Costco comes up to you and says, Matt, man, I got to do something. You know, you told me you talked about trading a little bit, how do I how do I get started? What do I do? How do I make sure that I don't lose money? Matt: Well, go to Option Genius. But I would more so I would tell them that, you know, it's a process and you have to put in the work. There's no shortcuts. And you know, people say that all the time. And you have to really believe that in your heart, and you have to put in the work. And thank goodness paper trades out there. And you can make mistakes and learn from them. And just keep trying. And then when you're ready, do it. Somy advice is to absolutely take it slow. You know, everyone's different. You could paper trade three months, six months, but don't be hanging up for a year paper trading. I mean, you want to get out there and try. So but do it with a little bit of money that you're finally losing, and then just go on from there and reevaluate your process. So that's the advice that I would give them. And, of course, I want to help everyone out there, you know, because I have co workers that are in the same, I know the grind they go through each day. They're hard working people, they're looking for the same thing I am that they're trying to look, you know, to better their life or help people that are left to right of them, and get through and improve it. And, you know, this is out there for them. So I've just tell it, take it slow, be patient. I mean, it's very difficult to be patient, especially this day and age. But if you can harness that patience, you can achieve what you want to achieve. Allen: Well said, Well said. Yeah, I mean, you know, the cool thing is that we've I guess since you started, I think you've been sending us emails every once in a while. Matt: Probably a little crazy. Yes. Allen: Yeah no it's okay. It's not crazy? I mean, you know, I bombard people with email, we generally like to sometimes people, some people get three emails a day from us, it's like crazy. We need to work on that. Matt: I'm one of those people. And I'm like, wow, I'm like, man this is something else. Allen: There's too much going on. Yeah. So we need to work on a little bit there. But you know, so it's been fun to watch your progress over the past. You know, it's like, I try to if there's a trading email or whatnot, I try to read those. And if I don't answer them, at least I try to read and see what's going on. And I've seen your emails come through, and it's like, you know, this guy, he's getting it, you know? And whenever you ask a question, it's like, there there are some people that they're nice about it. And then there are some people who are like they expect the moon and the stars and everything in an email like, "Hey, I'm on your list. I want you to tell me every one of your secrets". Like how am I supposed to do that in an email? Matt: Yeah that's impossible. Allen: We share that for you. Like we could have a course about that. It would be like a 20 million-hour course. I could share everything and bring an email. I'm not writing all that stuff. But the fact that you took it slow and methodical and whenever you, you did the work. And then when you had a question, it was specific to that particular thing. So you could tell when I'm reading, I can tell, okay, this guy is actually trying to learn, he's actually trying to trade. And this has given me a question based on his actual experience. So I mean, that's in, you know, for those of you who are listening and be like, Oh, well, I asked a question, I didn't get an answer. Or, you know, he didn't give me a complete answer or whatever. It also depends on, you know, how you approach the question how the question is asked, and if it's gonna make sense or not, because we do get inundated with trading questions, and how do I do this? And how do I do that? And without proper background, we can't even give individual moves. Legally, we can't give individual advice. But even trading questions, it's like, okay, if I don't have the proper background into what you were thinking, when you were looking at a trade, then I can't give you a, you know, what I would do even because if I'm looking at a chart, and I think it's going to go down, and you think it's gonna go up, whatever I tell you, it's gonna be the opposite. And you'll be like, that doesn't make any sense. So I love the way that you have approached this. And you've been, you know, slowly, methodically, you pick something you realized from the beginning, you knew what you want it, you knew your why you understand, you know, compound interest, you understand how that works? And it's not going to happen overnight. How long do you think it took you until you started becoming like, consistently profitable? Matt: I would say about three or four months where I felt consistent, you know, first, you know, you could say, Oh, you know, it could be you just not, you're not sure until you really feel like, okay, I can repeat this month after month. And third kind of understanding, you know, not only the positives of a trade, but also the negatives, and you start kind of wrapping your head around it and start feeling comfortable, but not complacent, then you start, you feel like you're on the right road, so that that feelings and the results probably about three to four months for me specifically where I felt confident about the trade. Allen: Okay, and you trade the same stocks over and over again? Or do you choose different ones every time? Matt: I'm looking, you know, basically the same. You know, I tell the story, way back, I bought Airbnb, you know, an IPO, which stands for is probably overpriced. And I consider it as a mistake. But my wife and I did a covered call together, and we literally push the button together. And we're like, we made like, 500 some dollars off of that. And I was just like, we were just like, baffled, like, wait a minute that actually work. Like we just got paid for that. And we're just like, How can that be? So, you know, I read books on covered calls and things like that. And, you know, there's there's downfalls of covered calls as well, the dark side as you speak. And it's important to, to learn all the different strategies. But the point is, you don't need to know a ton of strategies to be successful, I think it's important for the viewer to focus on one and get really comfortable before you move on to other things. And I feel that's kind of where I am with oil now I'm comfortable with a trade and now unwilling to go into another world, and kind of explain that or, you know, explore that, and I'll take that slow as well. And, you know, it just starts being well, and overall process and you bring it together. And it's all about learning and what a beautiful thing. Allen: Yep. Yep. Very beautiful. So, and there might be some skeptics listening to this. And they'll be like, Well, you know, the last two years, we've had a really good bull market. So are you prepared for choppy market volatile market? down market? bear market? How would you adjust to that situation? Allen: You know, I think it's, I look back, I'm actually reading your book right now, how to hedge, you know, all the hedging strategies, and what I always call my replay in my mind, what will I do if there's a big crash, and I don't think you can ever, you know, fully prepare yourself, but there's a lot of things that you can do. I think the most important part of that is knowing a valuable company, it's knowing what kind of strategy you're going to use, you can never do bull put spreads continually, because you're going to get hit at some point. Right. So again, learn how to do a bear call spread and do some different things to hedge your position. So it you know, that's education by itself, but there's definitely some big things. You know, you got to look at each thing of, you know, a comfort level and then continuing education. I definitely am. I'll continue to get better at that as well. Allen: Yeah, yeah. Because I mean, there's no way to tell which way the market is going, you know. Matt: Sure. Allen: I mean, we've been lucky that we've had a nice fed induced (inaudible) rally recently, the last couple years. But again, we don't know how long that's going to last and what's going to happen after that. But as somebody who has been doing this for, you know, a little bit longer than you have. Matt: Much longer. Allen: It's good to be able to, like you said, you know, understand the different strategies as well. And you said you've done you know, two or three of them and you've, you've practiced them over and over again. So that when things do change, that you can also see that coming and then you can change with it. So You know, I was talking to someone earlier today, and we were talking about and he was, he was asking about iron condors. And he's like, yeah, you know, I've tried honor condors didn't work at all. So how do you make them work? I said, Well, you know, every strategy doesn't work for every person. Some people might like one strategy, and they're really good at it. And somebody else, their brother might try it. And their brother might be horrible at it. You know, it's different risk tolerances, and different personalities will tell what strategy you should work on. And so.. Matt: Yeah, that's really fascinating. Like you said earlier, you know, we talked about how you can get the same trade as somebody, it just turns out different. And I think it's, it's fascinating in psychology, and it's also how, you know, you think of a trade and everyone's into individual to that trade. So it's pretty interesting. Allen: And you said, you had studied psychology, right? in school? Matt: Yeah, I have a degree in psychology from the University of Alabama. And, you know, I just, I never knew what I wanted to do in college. And it's interesting, I find myself using it. Now. I it's the psychology of the markets. And I think about how why people sell and why people buy and, you know, a lot of it's fear based, sometimes people that are very smart, do stupid things. You know, you just think that it's not that way, but it is very true. So it's, it's a whole, I never thought I'd be using psychology, but I do. I'm fascinated why people think the way they do. Allen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting. It's very interesting. Yeah. I mean, I've been a big fan of psychology, just trying to understand myself, you know, and most of the time, like, you know, when we try to figure out, okay, hey, this stock went down today, what happened? A lot of times, we can't figure it out. I don't know, there's so many. There's so many background factors. But I think the study of psychology really helps in the big picture thinking, you know, you might not be able to figure out exactly why a stock moved up and down, depending on if there's some news about it. But the overall market like, hey, if this happens, then this is how people react. And then this is how they think. And then this is what happens in the stock market. So it's definitely a learning experience. And something that comes with years of experience, as you get used to it, say, Okay, I saw this happened. So I, I expected this to happen because of that. So it's really interesting. Allen: I really appreciate your time, Matthew, and just wanted to give you one more, you know, like hey, is there anything else that last words that you want to share with our audience? Matt: Just I encourage people that are, you know, maybe thinking just like how I am, you know, they're out there working everyday life, and they just don't think that this is possible, and I just wanted to really encourage them to, you know, take a shot at it. And really, you know, if you're really interested in it, and put your 100% into it. And, you know, you could really surprise you on the other end, what life has to offer to you if you really get into it. And trading is a wonderful way to do that. So I'd really encourage people of all walks of life to try to better their situation, I think it's a great, great avenue to do so. Allen: Right. And you got started again, how? Just by reading a book? Matt: Yeah, I was just really looking at a compound interest chart. I was just, I just looked at it. And I was like, man, I could just kind of see the overall plan. I was like, I didn't know, you know, you know, everyone wants to be rich, and they want to have enough money. And it was a different feeling. At that time, I was young, and you know, mostly when you're young, or just want to get things and accumulate things and, you know, burn the world down. And that's not the case, as you get older, usually, you know, you, you find out what's really important. And to me, it's time with family and friends. And once I saw that chart, I could see the kind of overall kind of structure if you will, what I want to do. And then now as I got into it, I started filling in the blanks and seeing what way to get there. And trading is really kind of sped that process up. And I'm very excited about it. Allen: So do you see yourself like, okay, hey, you know, and this year, or this keeps up and you know, this age, I'm going to be a millionaire or 100 millionaire or something like that- that doesn't appeal to you, right? Or does it sometimes? Matt: You know, like, I have a goal of turning you know, our money and making a million dollars. And that's, I wrote it down and seven years, I'd like to do that. If I don't get there, I'm not going to be upset about it. Like I said, you have to be happy about the process and excited about the process. And long as you're generally heading the right way. You can't help but be happy. I mean, if there's little setbacks, but if your general trajectory is moving forward, that's all you can ask for. And we're excited about that. So, you know, the number is less of a issue to me, as I get into it, you know, it's a great thing. And it's a great byproduct of what we're doing. But I think you just got to really look inward and be contentment and what really makes you happy in life, whatever it is you'd like to do. So, you know, money is just a tool to get there. And I I really feel that at this age, you know, it took me 20 years to figure that out. But yeah, it's exciting. Allen: Yeah, I totally agree with you and I'm excited for you, man. It's Just like, you know, you just get started now it's just, it's just up from here, you know, it's just the sky's the limit, and you know, a million dollars one day, you're gonna be like, Oh, that was nothing, you know? Let's go for 3, let's go for 5. Matt: You know, if not, I always say, Hey, you know, I can be happy I took a shot at So, you know, yeah, I left everything on the table. And that's what you have to do. And I couldn't be happier about that. Allen: But you've gotten it done. You know, it's not, it's not like, You got lucky, you've been doing it for consistently, you know, over and over and over again. And yeah, we've had a good market. And that helps. But you know, every market can be a good market, if you know what you're doing. So the fact that.. Matt: I'm very worried about that, because I started investing in 2009. Okay, so I've never seen a crash. And I know that and I'm aware that and I also look at, hey, what are my feelings going to be? And I try to read books about it, and listen to people and talk about their experiences, because I want to know what to do in that situation. So I could, that's a continuation thing for me. I mean, I know I have not been in a crash. That's all been up for me. And but I do know that I have to be wary of that. And I have to have a plan for that. And that's what I'm doing right now. So, you know, I don't want to get complacent and that I'm winning and winning and winning, because losses could be around the corner. And I just gotta know how to mitigate that process. Allen: So and see, I mean, just that comment right there. That's like, you know, this guy knows what he this guy's got a head good head on his shoulders. You know, he's not he's not overconfident. And he's not like, Oh, yeah, this is gonna happen for the rest of my life. I'm just gonna make money every month. No, I mean, I've been looking at it from all different angles, and you've been practicing and trading and different things. And you said, Oh, yeah, I've been doing put spreads. But I'm also doing call spreads, you know, because eventually, I'm going to need them. So it's like, yeah, there you go. That's it. I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, you do it the right way. You're doing it really the right way. And you started small and you're, you know, slowly, slowly, you're increasing. But you're still sticking to, you know, something that's manageable. You're not Oh, like you said that one trade I had. I mean, oh my god, out of 60 trades you've only lost one that's like, incredible. I never heard anybody do that. That's like, Well, can I give you my money? I want to go sail around the world here. You just take it in, take care of it for me. Matt: You can't have it back on if I lose it? Yeah. Allen: No, I think you'll be okay because you're getting prepared for it. You know, you're not blindsided. It's like, yeah, this is part of it. I've seen it. You know, you've maybe you haven't seen it yourself. But you've heard of it. But you're not. What are you like, 45 years at? Matt: I'm 45 Allen: Yeah, so you've been alive when there has been crashes? And oh, yeah. and stuff, you know, the.com bubble, everybody still remembers that? No, tell you about that. And, and stuff like that. So it's not like it's something completely out of the blue for you. If somebody was like 15 years old, or 20 years old - they're like, Oh, yeah, you know, I've never seen America crash. It's never gonna crash. But yeah, it's there. And you are, you're rounding out what I, you know, like, it's like, it's not just, you focused on something you learned about it, you practiced it, and you're like, Okay, this is working. Now I need to add to it, I need to add another skill, I need to add another skill. And you're, and you're still adding, that's the coolest thing that you're still growing, you're still learning. And you're still humble enough about it, so that you're like, you know, hey, I'm still working. And I work hard, and I have a good job, and I like it. But I would like to have more. And then eventually, I'm gonna work part time. That's really cool. Yeah. Matt: I actually parallel investing with running a marathon. You know running marathons is a very difficult process, and it takes a lot of work. And there's a lot of dips along the way, and at times you feel like quitting, and there's a point of elation, and you have an angle. And I kind of feel like that kind of parallels my trading style. So I know that there's going to be, you know, mile 15 is going to be horrible. And mile 18 could be even worse. And then you get the mile 24 and you're like, elated. It's almost at the end. And that's kind of how investing is, you know, you have great times and you have terrible times. And you have to, you know, when you're training, you're accounting for all these processes along the way. You know, what shoes do I wear? How do I do this? If it rains? How do I count for this? I don't feel good. How do I account for that? What did I eat? all that stuff is very similar to how trading is in trading really, you learn a lot about yourself, just like you do in marathon running. I mean, you learn about what you're really made of, and the risk that you take and who you are as a person. So I think there's a lot of parallels there. Allen: Wow, yeah, I've never run a marathon but it sounds horrible. Matt: Yeah, I mean, people are like, they're either they do it or they want it done. I've got the bug. I was crazy. I decided doing but um, I don't do them anymore. I maybe maybe have one or two. I mean, I will see but uh, you know, I want to keep my knees going into my 50s. Allen: Cool. All right, Matthew. I really appreciate it. This was great. I mean, it's wonderful to see you know, somebody go from knowing nothing to making you know, four grand a month trading part time. And, you know, it's like, Hey, I can do this. If you can do for you can eventually do more, and it'll replace your income and make all your dreams come true. So kudos to you for getting in the path, taking the risk, and trying it out, learning, spending the time, and I hope that people listen to this and they're encouraged by it, they're inspired by you, I mean when I heard your story, I was like, "we gotta get Matthew on the show". You know, forklift driver to early retiree. Matt: Yeah I hope so. I appreciate you guys and I can't thank you enough, you and your team, that there's actually people out there that teach this stuff and actually care about people, because there's a lot of people that don't have it all and I really appreciate that. Allen: Thank you Matt: Yeah I'm sure your viewers appreciate it as well. Allen: Yeah thank you for hanging out with us. Matt: Alright, thank you. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

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Jake Smith is Not Jaylen Waddle: The State of Football in Texas w/Ish Johnson

Purple Theory

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 29, 2021 54:19

This week, Parker and Grant welcome Ish Johnson (@IshmaelRJohnson) of Dave Campbell's Texas Football's Republic of Texas podcast. Ish is a repository of insight into Texas college programs, both big and small. Topics discussed include: —A surprising amount of Texas State talk —Sonny Cumbie is Matt Well's last hope —Baylor's rather promising hires and rather dismal QB situation —UTSA: watch them! —Texas's ceiling is not that high —Ish says nice things about many TCU players, especially Max Duggan —Seriously, watch UTSA's Sincere McCormick, along with Texas State's DC Williams and UTEP's Jacob Cowing Follow Parker @statsowar and Grant at @grantmcgalliard on Twitter, and subscribe to the Purple Theory Newsletter at http://purpletheory.substack.com!

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第1190期:Music and Such

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 19, 2021 1:49

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.

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Todd: Hello, Matt!Matt: Hello, Todd!Todd: Matt, I'm going to ask you some questions about pets.Matt: OK.Todd: First question, do you have a pet?Matt: Yes, my pet at my mom's house we have three pets; two dogs and a cat. My family actually raises dogs for helping blind people.Todd: Oh, really?Matt: Yeah.Todd: Wow, like how do they train the dogs?Matt: How do they train the dogs? Well, I mean it's a long process right? We get them when they're puppies and so we train them basic. You know, sit, come... really basic things. Then after they're about two year old they go to a different training school.Todd: Oh, wow. That's great!Matt: Yeah!Todd: Well, how many dogs do they usually train at a time?Matt: Oh, just one. We have our own dog and then we have a dog that we have that we are training.Todd: Oh, OK.Matt: Yeah, just one dog at a time.Todd: Do you ever see the dogs you trained like out on the street or anything?Matt: Sometimes we see them. They'll have like sort of conventions of reunions of the pets. Yeah, you get to see them every once in a while.Todd: Oh, wow! That's cool. Why do people keep pets?Matt: I guess the most important thing is companionship, right? So there is always somebody there for you that will like you no matter what.Todd: Yeah, that's true. OK. Besides cats, dogs and fish, what are some other pets people keep?Matt: Well, I guess if you are Siegfried and Roy you can keep a tiger or lion. I guess all types of things don't they?Todd: Yeah.Matt: I mean, my friend has a snake. I don't know if you mention that snake, ferrets and insects, spiders...Todd: OK.Matt: All kinds of things.Todd: All right. Yeah, like there is so many. What are some costs associated with keeping a pet?Matt: Food is probably the biggest cost. But also if you keep the dog, particularly a dog in your house when they are puppies and we have a lot of puppies they'll chew up everything they can so we're constantly replacing shoes and you know, cleaning up pee from the carpet and things like that. It can be a hassle.Todd: Yeah, OK. Thanks a lot Matt. By the way, where are you from?Matt: I'm from the U.S.A., from Minnesota.

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第1174期:Dogs

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 3, 2021 2:13

dogs minnesota siegfried matt yeah matt how matt well matt yes matt oh matt all todd yeah todd well

第1174期:Dogs

Marketing BS with Edward Nevraumont

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 3, 2021 2:13

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Don’t Spin The Wheel: The Fight Against Malvertising

Up Next In Commerce

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 11, 2021 53:16

We’ve all seen it — maybe some of us have even fallen for the trick — you’re on an ecommerce site and a big “Wheel of Savings” pops up. This innocent-seeming discount offer, though, isn’t what it seems, and it’s doing damage to the end-user spinning the wheel, and the site the wheel pops up on. The world of malvertising and browser extensions has been causing headaches in the ecommerce world for years and brands are constantly looking for ways to fight back and regain control of their websites. Matt Gillis is helping with that mission. Matt is the CEO of clean.io, which offers real-time protection against malicious actors and code for some of the most-trafficked websites in the world. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Matt takes us through some of the methods bad actors are using to install malicious code on ecommerce sites, and he gets into the nitty gritty of why browser extensions like Honey and Wikibuy are hurting brand bottom lines, and why those extensions are making marketing attribution nearly impossible. But he also offers some solutions, too, so that ecommerce brands can finally win back control of the user experience. Enjoy this episode!Main Takeaways:Good Guy or Bad Guy?: Traditionally, malvertising is done by bad actors who infiltrate websites and take over through ads. But in the world of ecommerce, the bad actors are actually manifesting in the form of Fortune 100 companies that profit from website extensions like Honey and Wikibuy, which disrupt the user experience of the customer on the original ecommerce site. Solving that problem is the challenge for ecommerce brands that want to take back control.Sneakily Effective: In the malvertising world, the bad actors are at the top of the marketing game. They can achieve a 100% click-through rate at little to no cost because they are using sly, untraceable strategies. Targeting and eliminating those malvertisers is critical in order to level the playing field for ecommerce marketers to have success moving forward.Last Line of Defense: Publishing platforms hold most of the responsibility for the end-user experience. Everybody has a role to play in minimizing the risk of malicious buyers or advertisers, but ultimately, the publisher is the last line of defense against malvertising moving into the user experience, and they should be held accountable.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:Hey everyone. And welcome back to Up Next In Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles co-founder at mission.org. Today on the show we have Matt Gillis, the CEO at clean.io. Matt, welcome.Matt:Stephanie, thanks for having me. I'm excited.Stephanie:I am very excited to have you here. We were just talking about how cool your background is, and I think that's actually kind of a fun place to start of where you're at in the world. And tell me a bit about your background.Matt:Yeah. Hey, so I'm in Baltimore and we actually just took possession of this office in February, right before the pandemic. And so the irony is I've been here every day since the pandemic started pretty much.Stephanie:By yourself?Matt:But I'm by myself. So we have 4,000 square feet. We just did the mural right before the pandemic and no one on our team has been able to experience it pretty much. But yeah, cybersecurity company located in Baltimore, we're about 45 people, I guess you could say solving this problem of untrusted and malicious JavaScript that is ruining user experiences in revenue across the internet. That's us in a nutshell.Stephanie:Cool. Well, I am really excited to dive further into clean.io. Before we do that though, I was hoping you can kind of go through your background because I saw you've worked at places like AOL, you've been in publishing. You've been in ad space. Tell me a bit about what you did before you came to clean.io.Matt:So full disclosure, I'm old. And so I've been around a little bit. I've had some fun. But yeah, I think key things I've spent probably the last 20-ish or so years in a couple of different capacities. Right out of university, I started in the mobile industry and mobile at that time was just making phone calls, that's it. There wasn't even texting then.Matt:In fact, my job back in those days was I would stand on a golf course at a golf tournament and let people make free phone calls because that was the cool thing to do then. No one had cell phones and if they did, they were like those brick ones. You remember those ones that you couldn't fit in your pocket?Stephanie:Yeah. And you were the cool guy like, "I've got access to an awesome phone, anyone want in?"Matt:Yeah. And listen, men and women would come up to me and they'd be like, "Can I call back and check and see if I have any messages?" And so that was the cool thing to do then. I know it sounds so crazy that was a thing at some point, but yeah. So I worked at mobile operators in the early stages of my career.Matt:So I worked at Bell Mobility in Toronto, Canada. I'm from Toronto. And then I moved down here to work at Verizon Wireless. And at the end of my tenure at Bell Mobility and my tenure at Verizon, I was focused on some of the services that you live by on your cell phone today. So this was in kind of late '99 and then the early 2000s of things like video on demand on your phone, playing games on your phone, downloading ringtones on your phone, I'm sure you did that.Stephanie:Oh, ringtones, yeah [inaudible].Matt:They were, obviously a huge business at some point.Stephanie:Now if my phone rings I'm like, "Stop it, what are you doing? Who's calling me? Don't call me, text me."Matt:Put it on mute. Yes, exactly. So I was kind of part of the foundational days of things that you would do with your phone, before the iPhone. And then I went and took a swing at being an entrepreneur and joined a little small video game company. Our biggest game was Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? We did a lot of TV game shows. So we did, Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? And things like that.Matt:So I kind of walked the mile as a publisher for a while and then Capcom, which is the Japanese video game company acquired us. So I ran their publishing business for a few years and I got to experience what it's like to be a publisher and how hard it is to make money.Matt:And that was kind of in those early days of the iPhone where I'd say to people, "You'll go and spend $5 on this latte, but you won't pay $5 for unlimited use of a game over a period of time." And this is back in 2008, 2009. And so we had a real struggle and people weren't wanting to pay for our games. They want them free and free became kind of the thing on the iPhone.Matt:And so recognizing that struggle, I actually joined this company called Millennial Media, which was one of the earliest mobile ads platforms for app developers, helping app developers make money with ads. Some of our biggest customers at the time were like Words with Friends, if you've played Words with Friends-Stephanie:Yes, I have.Matt:... ads in every game. So we were kind of one of the foundational tech partners with folks like Words with Friends and various other games across the internet and apps. Did that for eight years through an acquisition with Verizon and AOL. And then we acquired Yahoo. So I ran the publisher platforms business at the combined entity of those companies, which was awesome.Matt:And one of the biggest problems in my time over that period was this thing called malicious ads, or malvertising as they call it. You probably are familiar with when you're scrolling away on your phone and all of a sudden it redirects you and says, congratulations, you won an Amazon gift card. And you're like, "I didn't click anything." Or spin the wheel for your chance.Stephanie:Yeah. I did that once I fell for it. I was like, "Oh, I spun it." I couldn't help it.Matt:Never spin the wheel, Stephanie.Stephanie:I only did it once, but yeah, afterwards I'm like, "That was a bad call. Why did I do that?"Matt:Yeah. So it was a big problem in my past life. And there were a few folks that were solving this problem and two of them were folks that I had worked with at AOL. When I left, it was called Oath at the time, which is Verizon Media now.Matt:I went and had lunch with these guys and they told me that they were spinning up this company called Clean Creative and set to solve this problem of malvertising. And I didn't have a job and it was getting too cold to golf. And so I said, "Hey guys, can I be an intern?"Matt:And so I came and hung around for a couple of days a week. And I was like, "You guys are really onto something here because this was a massive problem in my prior life." And so I said, "Hey, can I have the keys?" And they obliged. And that's how I'm here, started as the CEO two years ago. And we've kind of been blowing it up ever since. That's awesome.Stephanie:Yeah, such a fun story. So what is your day to day look like now? And what's your best day in the office look like while you're there by yourself? Are you around skipping around bicycling around the big office? What is your days look like?Matt:I do pace and I get my steps in over there. Day-to-day, we're startup, so we're small. And so as any of your listeners would know at a startup you do everything, and you take the trash out and you sign big contracts, hopefully you raise money. You kind of do run the gamut. So it's a little bit of everything. If you've worked at a startup you know that generally speaking, there's epic highs and epic lows. And so you have those days where you are the king of the world and you and your team are high-fiving and celebrating. And that's a little different now because you got to do it all virtually.Matt:Part of being at a startup is you get that culture of everybody generally speaking, being in an office like this, but we're a widely distributed culture now. We were before the pandemic where we kind of had, I don't know, five or six or seven locations among all of our people, but now we have 40 locations. So it's just like any other gig except there's really no net underneath you. You're walking this tightrope and hopefully you get to the other side.Stephanie:Yes. I definitely feel that.Matt:It's fun though. Isn't that why you do it?Stephanie:I mean, yeah, it's definitely really fun. Other times you're like, "Oh my gosh, I'm responsible for so many lives." And then other days it's like, "This is fun." So it's a good balance.Matt:Yeah. I mean, I won't lie. I had months of sleepless nights when we were raising money. We most recently raised our series A and we started raising it in March, right at the beginning of the pandemic. And yeah, all these people's jobs, for me, the pressure was on me to make sure that we could raise money and continue on this mission.Matt:The reality is, is the people behind the scenes are the ones that actually made my job easy because they're the ones that enabled me to go and tell the story of our massive revenue growth and our massive traction and our product market fit and all of that sort of stuff.Matt:Startups are hard, but there's a reason that many people once you leave the big company and you actually go and take your swing, that becomes the thing that you keep doing and doing and doing because you like having that euphoric feeling.Stephanie:Yeah. No, I definitely agree. And I mean, I think it's a good reminder too, as the CEO at any company to kind of get out of your way and hire a team that can support you and do things, but then let you do the higher level things like selling, raising money, such is a good point for, I think a lot of business owners who want to kind of stay attached to, "I've always been coding." Or, "I always did this part of the business." You need to step away and find people who can step in for you so you can go on to the next thing.Matt:Yeah, and focus on your strengths. Don't try and overcompensate and really... We did this thing called StrengthsFinder with our leadership team. And it was really about figuring out what are the strengths across this group of people that are practically leading the company. And you go, "Okay, well, I'm really good at this, this and this. And you're really good at this, this and this. Wow. We compliment each other. I should continue to keep doing this stuff. And boy, we should just let you handle all of this sort of stuff." So yeah, hire a diverse team and hire people that are way smarter than you and you'll be successful.Stephanie:So how have you seen the digital security landscape change? Maybe even over just the past year or two, what new things are popping up, what should e-commerce owners be aware of right now that maybe wasn't happening last year or two years ago?Matt:I would say that where we cut our teeth was in this malvertising space and what it is, is malicious JavaScript that's kind of being injected into the user experience through ads. And what we've seen is that the bad actors, the people that are doing it, are getting even more sophisticated over time. They have figured out how to get around the systems. They've figured out how to get around the checks and balances.Matt:And we kind of stumbled into this e-commerce world where we were protecting, we're protecting some of the biggest websites on the internet. There's seven million websites that run our code. Probably many of the websites that you go to everyday either to get your news or to read entertainment gossip, or that sort of stuff if you do.Stephanie:No.Matt:I'm not saying you do Stephanie, but we protect all of those sites; every single page view on those pages, we make sure that the user experience is protected and revenue's protected. And by the way, in that world, it's folks that I would say, delivering malicious JavaScript. What we started seeing in the e-commerce world is there's this whole phenomenon of what I would call untrusted JavaScript.Matt:Now in either case, the premise is you own your website. You should be able to control everything that executes on your website. You should be able to protect your user experience. You should be able to dictate your user experience because it's your website. On the malvertising world, what we saw happening was if folks had ads on their website, they had lost control of the user experience. They had lost control of revenue because any bad actor could just buy an ad and take over the user experience and get you to spin the wheel.Stephanie:Only once, but yes.Matt:Only once, but it happened. And so in the e-commerce world, what we've noticed is there's a lot of stuff happening on e-commerce sites, just like there is in any website that is without the permission or without the authorization of the person who owns the site. The biggest problem that we kind of dug in and gone to solve for is, if you ever heard of these things called Honey or Wikibuy?Stephanie:Yeah.Matt:So these are Chrome extension, Safari extensions, Firefox extensions. They sit resident on the user's device and Stephanie, when you're out shopping on your computer and you get to check out, Honey will pop up and say, "Hey, I've got coupons for you. Do you want them?" You as the user you're probably like, "Yeah, I'd love to get a discount. I'd love a better price, if I can get it without having to do any work." Honey does all the hard work for you.Matt:We think that's not really in the best interest of the merchants because they own their website and now someone is injecting code in and disrupting the user experience, disrupting your revenue. So just like it is in this malvertising world, the same phenomenon is happening over here. The difference is Honey is owned by PayPal. Wikibuy is owned by Capital One.Matt:So the folks that I would call "bad actors" in this world are actually fortune 100 companies. They're folks that you would expect to be able to trust. And what they're doing is they're actually injecting code in to disrupt the user experience and disrupt revenue. And so that's the problem that we've gone out and solved.Matt:We just launched our product that's called cleanCART. And what it is is it's a Shopify app and it gives Shopify merchants the ability to protect their carts at checkout and make sure that they can prevent this sort of code from disrupting user experiences in revenue. So it really is giving control of the websites back to the merchants.Stephanie:Oh, interesting. So when you implement that you just can't get coupons or are there other pieces that it kind of protects as well, or the user can't see coupons from a Honey or something, or are there other things that your app is also protecting against?Matt:So we're in, I would say the second inning of the baseball game. So early stages. We're really focused on to start is blocking the automation of these coupons. So we don't want to block you as a user going in and manually inserting the coupon. We think that's the intended use case. But what we think is unfair is that someone is standing beside you at checkout and handing you a mitt full of coupons and actually not even handing them to you, they're actually giving them and just scanning them all to make sure that they all have a chance to work.Matt:If you think about this analogy, the grocery store would never let someone come and stand beside the checkout and save you 30% off your grocery order while you're already ready to pay. And I think that's the phenomenon that we're trying to solve for in the earliest days, which is, let's prevent the automation from happening. Let's not prevent people from manually inserting coupons. Let's give control back to the merchants because it impacts them in so many different ways. Obviously, it impacts them from a revenue loss perspective.Matt:I talk to merchants every day. Many merchants are complaining that these injections are literally scraping and pulling 30% off of their cart value at checkout. So someone who had $100 cart, they go to checkout, Honey runs and it knocks their cart value from $100 to $70. That's kind of bad for the merchant, especially if that person was going to convert anyway.Matt:The other key thing is Honey and Wikibuy and these other discount extensions have made it really hard for merchants to have discounting strategies that they can track. And so what's happening is that promo codes are ending up in the wrong hands. It's creating an attribution nightmare for merchants where they think that this social media influencer or this Instagrammer, or this YouTuber is driving tons of sales and lo and behold, Honey has grabbed that coupon and is injecting it.Matt:And now every order that comes through where Honey was present on the page is applying that person's code. And so now the merchant not only has bad data that is going to ultimately drive their marketing decisions but now, they're also losing revenue and they're paying out affiliate fees to folks that generally didn't deserve that affiliate fee. So I think it's created a bit of a nightmare.Matt:And so, we felt this kind of pent up demand for this product. And that's exactly what's happened is that no one has solved it. We think we're first to market. And we think it's important that people are fighting for the merchants. There's been 10 years of growth in e-commerce over the last year. The pandemic driving a lot of that.Matt:And we think it's important that merchants really get control of their websites, get control of their margins, get control of their revenue and really get the right data to make the right data-based decisions of how they're going to run their marketing programs.Stephanie:Yes. I think that's a really cool story. You were just talking about how you were looking at a problem that people were complaining about, and then now you guys are like, "Well, let's solve it." Because I've read, I'm trying to think where this was, where they're talking about going to Reddit and looking at some of the threads of people talking about problems that keep occurring and occurring and how you could build businesses just based off Reddit threads. And you guys did that, just looking at problems with what merchants were struggling with. So a really cool example of how to build a business is look at all the problems that are going on and jump at solving it.Matt:Well, and I think the other key thing here is as you know is solving the problem, but also during that process of your hypothesis that you're going to develop of what you're trying to prove, it's you also need to prove that people pay for it. And that's, I think part of the foundation of what we've built here, obviously on the malvertising side, but also on the e-commerce side is it's a big enough problem. People need to protect user experiences.Matt:If you think about just in the internet in general, it's very expensive to create content. It's very expensive to drive traffic. And once you've done those two things, why would you leave it to chance that someone might come to your website and have a crappy user experience? Protect your user experience.Matt:It happened last week on the Harvard Crimson on the crimson.com where somebody was on Crimson and they got one of these redirect ads that took them to this landing page that said, "Hey, you're a Verizon customer click here and take the survey and answer these nine questions and you'll have a chance to win." And this user actually took to Twitter and said, "Hey @thecrimson, which is, I think their Twitter handle, you've got a crappy user experience. Why are you letting this happen?"Matt:I never even saw a reply from the Crimson. But when we did some investigation on what was going on, they don't even have protection on their website. So it almost feels irresponsible at this day and age to not be protecting your asset because your asset generally speaking, isn't your website, your asset is your users.Matt:And so protect your users, make them feel confident that when they come to your site, they're going to have a great experience. And so that's really what we've focused on is just delivering technology that solves a problem that people are willing to pay for. Because obviously without that, we don't have a business.Stephanie:So when thinking about like the Crimson example, that's all from a bad ad being run on their website, correct?Matt:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Stephanie:Someone was able to buy that ad unit have bad JavaScript, and then that's when they were sent to that Verizon survey. I'm I thinking about that, right?Matt:You're totally thinking about that right. And what's interesting about the thread is that when this woman went on to Twitter and said, "Hey, this is what happened. And here's a screenshot," there were a whole bunch of people that piled onto the thread of like, "Oh, here's what I think is happening." "Oh, you have a virus on your computer." Or, "Oh, you have a bad extension on your computer or whatever." Everybody had a hypothesis of what's happening.Matt:And so we actually went and captured the threat and reverse engineered it and said like, "Here's exactly what's happening." And yeah, it's all coming through ads in that case. And there's so many great things of the open programmatic ecosystem.Matt:So programmatic media being able to buy a single oppression at a time by single user real humans, real devices, real networks, like you know I'm having a one-to-one engagement with this person and in the malvertising world, that's a feeding ground for bad actors because they get to do the same thing.Matt:And quite frankly, they're better at it than any other advertiser out there because they're the ones who know how to pay 20 cents CPM and buy an ad and actually get 100% click-through as opposed to the rest of the world that's just hoping that they get a half a percent click-through rate. And so they figured out how to buy that ad, that ad renders on your device.Matt:And then usually it's like an onTouchEvent. So when you actually just touch the device, they put a transparent overlay on your device. And that turns into a click or they'll auto click something on your behalf, or however they decide to inject their technology. But yeah, it's as simple as that. And I think it's lucrative, otherwise-Stephanie:They wouldn't be doing it, yeah.Matt:What they do is they try to do it at the lowest possible level without getting caught. So if you think about sophisticated marketers, what do you do? Well, you pick the right users, you maybe frequency caps so that you don't lambaste them with ads. You want to hit them at the right time with the right message and all that sort of stuff.Matt:And so these bad actors have figured out how to very elegantly and in a sophisticated fashion, they'll hit you with that ad. But the reality is they'll probably frequency cap you to one so you can't reproduce the experience and that's how they evade getting caught in most cases.Stephanie:Yeah. Very interesting. I didn't understand the whole backend of how that works. I mean, I do spend a lot of time thinking about building incentives for advertisers because we build up our own ad networks to advertise our podcast and we bring on partners all the time.Stephanie:And it's really funny thinking through how to build incentives for especially newer advertisers when you might say something like, "Oh, we'll incentivize you based on a download." Then all of a sudden you're getting all these fake downloads. No, not downloads. We'll incentivize you based on consumption. Like, does someone listen to the episode? They wanted to hear it.Stephanie:And then you see instead of actually having good people come through and consume the episode, the advertiser will say, "Okay, I'll pay you to review the ad or review the podcast, which makes it show that you were consuming it because you had to for maybe a minute to then be able to review."Stephanie:And it's always interesting trying to figure out, I mean, and these people are not good actors maybe, I'm not really sure. But it's always very interesting thinking, how do you incentivize people to do the right thing and actually deliver and not try and always get around the rules and just meet a number which I'm sure a lot of the platforms deal with the same kind of thing, but-Matt:It's interesting you use the word incentivized, and that was a dirty word in the early days where most advertisers didn't feel that the word incentivize was a good user because they didn't truly have the intent to do the thing that you want because they were being paid or a bounty or whatever the thing is.Matt:I saw the evolution of incentivized in my mobile career where it became really hard to get people to consume video commercials, like 15, six second whatever that metric was. And in the games world, they figured out this thing and they actually rebranded it instead of calling it incentivized video, they actually called it rewarded video. And-Stephanie:I feel like that's a little more, I don't know.Matt:Well, listen, and so I talk about one of the apps that I love is this app called Candy Crush. And I've been playing candy crush for almost 10 years now, I think. And when's the last time you played the same game for 10 years? Like never?Stephanie:Yeah. That's impressive.Matt:But they've artfully integrated video into their app. And I think if you run out of lives, you can watch a 30 second spot that is unskippable. So you have to watch the whole thing. And then if you, do you get rewarded with that extra life or whatever it is, maybe a lollypop, I don't know. But yeah, so I think there's different ways to approach it. But you're right, usually when you figure out the bounty, everyone else figures out how to capitalize on the bounty.Matt:And I think the interesting thing with Honey and Wikibuy is they've figured out how to get paid for the bounty or get credit for the bounty when lo and behold, they didn't really do anything. All they did was they had code that was resident on the machine that allows them to kind of get credit for that user purchasing when I think it's questionable whether they had any influence on that.Stephanie:Yeah. I've kind of thought that too, when seeing different Instagrammers with their promo codes for e-commerce site. And I always thought like, "Oh, how does that attribution work?" Because I mean, she's sharing it here, but I'm sure it's very easy for someone who doesn't follow her to also find that code outside of a Honey, but just be like, send it to my friend, "Hey, use this code." They never even followed her and now, they've got 25% off or something. So it does seem like attribution can be tricky, even if someone's not using Honey. How do you think that world's changing right now to make it easier for merchants to track where their sales are actually coming from? It feels very messy.Matt:Oh, I agree. I think it's a total mess. That's why we focused on the automation because I think that's one of those low hanging fruit, but big problems. Honey will tell the world that they have 17 million or so users. I don't know if Wikibuy which is now called Capital One Shopping, I don't think they announced how many users they have. But what I can tell you is both of those companies are spending a tremendous amount of money acquiring new users.Matt:Every time I log into Twitter, usually the first ad that I get is from Honey. All throughout the Christmas season, the holiday season just recently Capital One which owns Wikibuy Capital One Shopping, they were running TV commercials for this product with Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta. So there's like a tremendous push for them to grow these user bases.Matt:In talking with merchants and we've got, I don't know, we've got maybe 25 merchants using our product right now. And we're in closed beta. That problem that you just mentioned, which is, "Hey, I worked with an Instagrammer and I gave them a code. And all of a sudden two days later, I've had a vitamin company tell me that story. I've had a sporting goods company tell me that story. I've had a toilet paper company tell me that story.Stephanie:They're using Instagrammers?Matt:They're using Instagrammers. They're using YouTubers. They're actually using podcasts as well.Stephanie:I mean, interesting to see how they're partnering on toilet paper.Matt:Because they're partnering for the audience on these podcasts and they're hoping that they can get that audience to find out about their product and again, then they're incentivizing them to come and become a customer. It's basically the same net story. The vitamin company told me they're like a supplement company. They partnered with one of the biggest triathletes in the world.Matt:Let's just say they had 50,000 or 100,000 followers, but you've got to imagine they're probably rabid followers. If you're into that, then that's probably the gold standard of who you would listen to. And that person did some blog posts and did some Instagram posts and posted their code and as soon as it happened, they saw a surge in sales attributed to that person.Matt:Now, the marketing person at the company was like, "Oh my gosh, we figured it out. We nailed this. We knew that people would be rabid about that person's content. We knew that person had so much influence to get people to come and buy." And then they're like, "Oh my God, it's Honey." Because literally they went from zero sales to 80% of their sales that had coupons was that person on Monday.Matt:I think it's a frustrating problem. And I think the sophisticated marketers have woken up and are like, "Man, we're bleeding money." One merchant told me that when they started kind of parsing out the attribution that Honey was costing them. They did about a million and a half in revenue online per month, so call it a $15 million business give or take. They believed that these promo code extensions were costing them about 150 grand a month, 10% their overall value.Stephanie:I mean, we just had a guest who they ranted about their hatred of Honey, I mean, even on the show. So I think it's maybe a couple episodes before maybe when yours is going to go out.Matt:Call me. We can help.Stephanie:Yeah, I'll send the link so you can hit him up.Matt:Absolutely.Stephanie:He was not a happy dude about Honey. But I guess when I think about promo codes, it kind of feels archaic to me. Maybe this is just a me thing, but it feels like where QR codes were where all of a sudden they're gone and you don't even think about them anymore. Promo codes kind of feel like that to me too of just, it feels like a manual old way of attributing things.Stephanie:How do you think about attribution when it comes to influencers and stuff or anyone, without having to use a code? Are you guys even thinking about a new way of doing things or do you hear of people trying new ways of attribution that isn't like I'm putting in a manual like Stephanie 20, to get my 20% off? Is there a new way of doing it?Matt:I mean, we're thinking through all those things. I think the challenge is specifically if you're using these one-to-many mediums. In a perfect world, I think you'd have a unique code for every user and so you'd have to authenticate. We'd know that that code went to you Stephanie and if you redeemed it, I would know that you actually bought something and you bought something because of this engagement that we had. I think in these one-to-many mediums it's, how else can you do it? And some of the challenges that the one-to-many mediums like think of YouTubers.Matt:One of the companies that we're working with has a problem where they have a very high dollar ticket item. Their item that they're selling is about 1,000 bucks. And obviously, if somebody grabs a code of 20% off that you're losing 200 bucks, it's a lot of money. Their problem was that they were doing YouTuber videos and they were publishing a code within the YouTube video to reach the audience. And for them, it was extreme sports, the audience that they were going after.Matt:Well, literally the next day, and I don't know if you know how Honey works. If you have a Honey on your machine, the very first thing that Honey does is it scrapes out anybody who manually puts a code in. So in order for Honey to be able to grab that code, it has to happen once where a real person saw the code and was motivated to go and type it in and buy.Matt:If that happened to me, if I got that code, I would go in and type it in. And if Honey were on my machine and then I hit okay, Honey will scrape that code out and now everybody who comes after me gets access to that code whether they saw that YouTube video or not.Matt:The problem for this company is spending a lot of money engaging with YouTubers and creating videos and obviously, doing the presentation layer of these offers. Well, once Honey gets a hold of the code... And what they've also found is that Honey and the other extensions, are not very merchant friendly. The relationship between Honey and these merchants is actually quite adversarial. And so it leaves them with no other option.Matt:I guess the two options: one, you just keep running your YouTube thing and you resign yourself that you're going to be paying out a 20% discount to everybody who comes and has Honey; which that stinks, that doesn't feel right or you need to reach out to the YouTuber. You need to recut the video. You need to recut the voiceover. You need to kill that code. You need to put a new code in. And so it's made this sort of marketing endeavor with YouTubers and Instagrammers and you name it very hard, because you're actually turning off codes.Matt:We saw one email which was interesting. I always say to people, let's remember we're all consumers too, you and I buy stuff on the internet, even though we're deeply entrenched in the businesses that we're running. I have Honey on my machine, so I can understand what that user behavior is, so that I can actually talk with merchants.Matt:One of the folks on our team bought a pair of shorts from one of these companies that advertises on Facebook and Instagram. And they were out of stock after he had ordered it, so they sent him an email. And they said, "Hey, listen, sorry you didn't have it but guess what, here's a code. You'll save X percent. But please, make sure you use it within the next 48 hours because Honey has been grabbing our codes and we're going to shut this code off."Matt:How can people market, if you constantly have to play whack-a-mole. And if you now think of the analogy, it's back to what we do in the malvertising side. If you aren't going to solve things with software, you're basically playing this long cat and mouse game that you won't win.Stephanie:I mean, that's why I think about merchants turning on and off codes.Matt:It's a nightmare.Stephanie:We were handing out swag and me just trying to... I had unique links that could work for more than one person and just thinking, "That could be tricky and go really bad." But I guess that's why I just think codes just feel, like I said, a little bit archaic. Why can't I just go to a YouTube video?Stephanie:I mean, the internet knows so much about me and where I'm at anyways. It should say, "Hey, Stephanie watched Matt's video where he was talking about this toilet paper." And then all of a sudden she's at our website, you can say, "Stephanie, a 20% coupon awaits you when you go here."Stephanie:And then when I get there it should know who I am and then be like, "Your coupons applied. And it will be applied for the next three days on this website or whatever, because I know where you've been and what you saw and where exactly you came from." Why can't it just work?Matt:I mean, I wish it was all that simple. Listen, we are taking obviously, technology solution to what we think is a longstanding and challenging problem. And in the malvertising world, the people in ad operations were literally playing whack-a-mole. Like, "Let's figure out where this bad ad came from." "Turn that demand source off." Or, "Turn that buyer off." And guess what, the bad actors, they just pop up again.Matt:And so we believe that, and I've seen and talked to merchants who are like, "Listen, here's how I solved the Honey problem." And they're like, "We actually created promo codes for 10% off, but the promo code was Honey is stealing your data."Matt:Because if you use Honey, you know that when Honey pops up it'll actually tell you the codes that it's implementing. They went on a mission to discredit and put the fear of God in their buyers that Honey was doing... They were like, "Honey is doing nefarious things with your data." And guess what, Honey D listed them as [inaudible].Stephanie:Well, there you go. Now, you know how to do it, I guess.Matt:The irony is, is that was three months ago that I talked to that merchant. And yesterday they cameback in and said, "Listen, we have a problem again."Stephanie:Honey added us again.Matt:No, this time they've got a Wikibuy problem. The problem is going to be never-ending, I think. Ultimately, we're hopefully going to give e-commerce companies the tools that they need to go out and be able to operate their business and focus their time on the things that really matter, in my mind, which is driving incremental revenue; not playing whack-a-mole with your promo codes and having to go recut YouTube videos. Hopefully, that's one of the big things that we help solve for.Stephanie:That's cool. I mean, I do like the idea of that one merchant you were mentioning where they said, "If you act within the next 48 hours or whatever, it'll only lasts this long." And I just had a guest yesterday who said that. I think it was either Burger King or McDonald's made it so if you're within 20 feet or something of a McDonald's they would send you a code and say, "You have five minutes to get to a burger King to get a free burger or something."Stephanie:And I'm like, "That's interesting." That's a good way to make people act quickly if you know something's expiring, I know I act a lot quicker. But I mean, of course, solve the problem that's number one. But I do think that's an interesting marketing tactic too.Matt:And make it measurable. I think that's the key thing is that... I often say, "What gets measured gets managed." And so hopefully, what we're doing is we're taking one of the things out of the equation that is making measurement really challenging for merchants. Again, using the triathlete example, yes, the marketer was high-fiving the rest of their team going, "We finally solved this." And then when they actually looked at the data they were like, "Damn it. I guess we got to go back to the drawing board."Stephanie:It's also just so tricky too, knowing how much of those people would have bought otherwise or not. So even looking and being like, wow, we have all this attributed to this one promo code and maybe it was because of Honey. But how many of those people would have bought if there wasn't some promo in there? It's just hard to know.Matt:We're solving that problem. We're giving merchants some deep analytics on exactly what's happening on their site, because we think there's a blind spot there where they don't know. For instance, how many users actually came to your site that actually had an injection capability? One of the extensions of Honey, Wikibuy, Piggy, Amazon Assistant, you name it. So we give them that lens.Matt:And then we give them the lens of, what were all the promo codes that they tried to inject? What was the most popular promo code? And stack rank those things and then going deeper down to conversion rate. And guess what, what we're seeing in these early days is that when you block Honey and Wikibuy at checkout, the vast majority of users actually still convert.Matt:And so that to me is the icing on the cake which is, guess what, you take control back of your website. You take control of your margins. You take control of your revenue. You now have the data you need to be able to go out and drive incremental sales. We think that's pretty powerful.Stephanie:I mean, that makes sense. I've heard a couple of times that also, discounts don't matter as much as you would think. I think they were talking about, they did a study between 10% off and 20% off. And actually, they were kind of the same when it came to consumer happiness. And what can be worse though, is if someone has the ability to go in and put a promo code in or something and then it doesn't work.Stephanie:I don't know if you remember those days of just going to the internet promo code for macys.com and trying out 10 different promo codes and all of them failing. I was way more unhappy then, than just not having one at all, just buying at full value.Matt:Let me tell you the opposite of that which is the worst-case scenario, in one of our merchants experience and that's why they're using our software. They're in the home interior space, so they do drapes and carpets and wallpaper and all that sort of stuff. And they were trying to build favor with interior designers because they wanted interior designers to know their site and know their stuff and all that sort of stuff. And so they did a very exclusive but unfortunately, a promo code that Honey got ahold of that gave interior designers 50% off.Matt:Well, lo and behold, as soon as one designer used that code and also had Honey on the machine, that code then got swept up in the Honey and everybody, every order that had Honey was now getting 50% off. Their customer service nightmare was that they couldn't afford to give every consumer 50% off, so they actually had to cancel orders; believe it or not.Matt:They called customers and said, "We can't honor your order with that coupon because that coupon was not intended for you." Created a customer service nightmare for them. And that's what they want to do is, they want to control their user experience. They want to control their revenue and their margins.Stephanie:Oh my gosh, that's horrible.Matt:Out of control. But think of that disaster of having to call someone and say, "Hey, I know you wanted to spend $500 with me, but only pay me 250 bucks. I can't give you 50 off but I can give you like 15 off, that's kind of what you were probably entitled to." So anyways, just trying to get control back in these merchants hands and let them control their destiny.Stephanie:I love that. When thinking about back to the now advertising piece, how much do you think it's on the publishing platforms? Is it their responsibility to make sure that they continue to increase their efforts to make sure bad actors aren't out there anymore?Stephanie:I mean, I know they're probably doing a lot. A lot of people like to hate on the publishing platforms and they want them to always do more and more and more. Is it maybe on them or maybe not on them anymore to continue to try and track those bad actors, who like you said are kind of popping up here and then they shut down and then open up a new account and do one off things and then shut down again. How should we think about leaning on the platforms like that?Matt:Well, I say to folks, the value chain in that industry is actually quite wide. And so from the bad actor who's putting their hands on the keyboards to the consumer, there's a whole bunch of players in the middle. I think it's on everybody to really have defenses in place and to make sure that they're protecting...Matt:So if you're at the front end, if you own the demand side platform that the bad actor's using, you need to have your own checks and balances to make sure that you're not bringing in malicious buyers. But all through that value chain, the onus is on everybody. But at the end of the day what I say is, the only person that can be responsible to that end user, is the publisher.Matt:Pick your publisher, if you are Fox News or you're the New York Post or you're the Washington Post, you're the one that has that ultimate relationship with Jenny or Johnny consumer who is surfing your site and consuming content. So you're the last line of defense. You're the one that created the site. You're the one that drove the traffic. You're the one that is using ads to monetize your traffic. It's really on you I think, ultimately.Matt:Now the publishers, all those folks that I named and there's millions of them, they all want to look upstream and they should. And they should hold everybody accountable upstream. But I think they're the ones that are really the that last line of defense.Matt:Because if you go to one of these sites and you have a crappy experience, you don't really care that it came through an ad. Like the woman at Harvard Crimson last week, she didn't know the origins of why it happened. And here's the other crazy thing, she knew that when she went to the Crimson, she was delivered a crappy experience.Matt:Now, the crazy part. First time we've ever done it, we actually did a private webinar with the end user because we wanted to explain to her here's exactly what's happening. She told us this story, she said, "Listen, I use ad block." And obviously, the risk to publishers are, if you don't create great experiences, your users are going to start using ad block.Matt:What she said was, in the desire to get real news and in the desire to really understand what's going on in the world and in the desire to actually make sure that real news publishers are actually getting compensated, she turned her ad block off and this is what happened.Matt:So shame on the Crimson for not delivering a great experience, because guess what? Now that user's like, "I'm not turning ad block off the next time I come to your site. You're not going to get paid for the traffic that I'm going to generate." So again, it really goes back to the publishers, the onus is on them.Stephanie:And thankfully, I think there is like new technologies popping up that maybe we'll be able to enable them or even just thinking about implementing. I mean, I've seen some advertisers looking into blockchain and having that as being kind of like a more source of truth to be able to know a one-to-one relationship and knowing who's behind... You don't know exactly who's behind what, but if you have it in a way where they sign up and they can't just start creating a million different accounts because they've got their one single one that they can go off of, it seems like there's a lot of ways that it can improve over the next couple of years that maybe hasn't been so easy the past decade or so.Matt:I agree. Obviously, there's industry bodies all trying to figure this out together. There's companies like us who are innovating and coming up with new and unique techniques to block these sorts of nefarious actors. I do think the biggest and most important thing is to recognize that the bad actors aren't just sitting still waiting for somebody to solve this problem. They're innovating honestly, a more rapid rate than many of the industry leaders that you would expect that have hundreds or thousands of people trying to solve this problem. Bad actors unfortunately, are innovating at quite a rapid pace.Matt:So the problem I think is going to evolve and change. We've seen it evolve to not just being ads but obviously, compromised Chrome extensions that just seems to be a great vector. And so I think you're going to see the problem move around and especially, if there's a lot of money in it. If there's ways for these guys to make money, you're going to see them salivate with... You're going to put up this defense and they're going to figure out this way to get around it.Matt:And there's so many different browser types. There's so many different machines. There's security flaws. There's zero-day. There's so many ways for these guys to actually buy and target, to only focus on iOS 13 and below and blah, blah, blah to reach their audience.Stephanie:So tricky. Hopefully, it'll get solved over the next decade. Cool. Well, with a couple minutes left, let's move over to the lightning round. The lightning round is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to ask you a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready, Matt?Matt:I am ready.Stephanie:All right. First the harder one, what one thing will have the biggest impact on e-commerce in the next year?Matt:Listen, I think it's been the gold rush for e-commerce merchants over the last year. In many cases I talk to merchants, they're like, "It was raining money last year." Sales were up five X, 10 X, who knows. I think the next year is going to be that year where folks actually look to efficiency, and they look to figure out where there are holes in the boat that they haven't had to look before.Matt:And I think that plays to our product because I think in many cases when it's raining money, you almost turn a blind eye to some of these sorts of things. But I think now folks are like, "Listen, if I can be more efficient. If I can take control of my revenue and my margins, I'm going to do that."Matt:So I think that's probably, this is the year of people now are catching their breath and they've figured out their distribution and they've figured out their fulfillment and their warehousing and all that sort of stuff and the panic that they had to do to keep up with the pandemic growth. Now, I think it's a deep breath of like, "Okay. Now, let's look at the math."Stephanie:Yeah. I agree, that's a good one. What one thing do you not understand today that you wish you did?Matt:What one thing do I not understand. I think the affiliate landscape is complex. I think there are a lot of legacy ways in which people have calculated incrementality and I'm not sure if they're all believable. And I hear a lot of feedback from merchants where it's kind of like they just brush it under the rug and they're like, "I know I'm probably paying for stuff that I didn't really get, but let's just let it go." I think every percentage point matters. That ecosystem, because I hear there's good guys and there's bad guys and I'd love to really dig deeper on that. And I think that's a big opportunity for us as a company.Stephanie:That's a good one. What's the nicest thing anyone's ever done for you?Matt:Wow. The nicest thing that anyone's ever done for me.Stephanie:I like to go deep.Matt:Yeah. That's a deep question. I think I've been fortunate throughout my whole career in that, I have been given opportunities that I probably wasn't ready for. And by the way, I had never been a CEO before I was at this company. And so, who knew that I'd be able to do it.Matt:But I think it actually starts way back to when I first graduated and I was seeking my first job. And I had a mentor that took a risk on me and gave me my shot. And I worked my butt off and hopefully that translated and he and she felt great about what I was doing. So I think the nicest thing, I've just been given opportunities that I don't think I deserved and hopefully I earned that respect and trust over time.Stephanie:That's a good answer. If you were to have a podcast, what would it be about and who would your first guest be?Matt:Wow. This lightning round is hard.Stephanie:Good. Needs to be.Matt:If I were to have a podcast. I love gadgets. I'm one of those guys that buys the infomercial type stuff. I bought one of those Rotisserie Showtime girls 20 years ago, I still use it.Stephanie:Worth it.Matt:Maybe it could be interviewing people who've built made for TV products and really understanding the backstories behind how they came up with the idea and how successful they were and God knows how much money we all made them.Stephanie:That's good. We had Kevin Harrington on the show, he was the original OG shark in Shark Tank. He basically made the infomercial. And it was very interesting hearing his perspective of how it started, where it's at now and Shark Tank.Matt:I'm fascinated by that ecosystem, it's super cool. And by the way, I always do buy one of those stupid things for my wife for Christmas and she hates me for doing it because she's like, "You're just burning money."Stephanie:I had fun buying it and watching the infomercial today.Matt:Believe it or not, one of my coworkers gave me a Squatty Potty for Christmas.Stephanie:I actually feel like those have good value though, the science is there. It's just a weird thing to buy your wife, if you got that for her. Someone gave it to you, got it.Matt:I was given it, by one of my coworkers, "By the way it works."Stephanie:And their marketing, I think that's the Harmon Brothers who did their marketing with the whole unicorn and they did the Poo-Pourri thing.Matt:Oh yeah, it's super cool. I love those kind of gadgets.Stephanie:That's a good one. I would listen to that show. All right. And then the last one, what's up next on your Netflix queue?Matt:Well, on my Netflix queue, I think I've got three episodes left on the Queen's Gambit.Stephanie:Love that show. That was a good one.Matt:I'm a documentary guy. I actually will tell you that I've been kind of hooked on HBO Max for a little bit. And I just finished the Tiger Woods documentary last night, which was fascinating. Nothing that you hadn't been told before. This guy through adversity has come back multiple times; knee surgeries, winning on a broken leg. So I'm into those sorts of stories. One of my guilty pleasures is The Bachelor, so it's on my DVR. I'm playing catch up on that.Stephanie:That's great.Matt:I love reality TV and that sort of stuff.Stephanie:I like where your head's at, me too. Well, Matt, this has been a very fun interview. Where can people find out more about you and clean.io?Matt:So you can find me at matt@clean.io. So if you want to send me an email, obviously happy to help you guys in any of your challenges and would love to hear your challenges if they're similar or if they're different than ones that we're solving for. Hit me on LinkedIn, so you can find me there. And our company website is clean.io.Stephanie:Awesome. Thanks so much for joining us.Matt:Thanks Stephanie. Thanks for having me.

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Podcast: Matthew Quale, President Bask Bank, Part 1

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 11, 2020 16:42

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

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Fight for Your [Trademark] Rights | Behind the Buy [6/8] [307]

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 31, 2020 41:17

Though things are coming along well, the journey would not be interesting if it was purely smooth sailing. After our buyer opens escrow, they are forced to push the closing date back when suddenly a letter from an attorney was received claiming the business, we are buying has a trade mark on the name! Now it’s time to for our buyer to either back off or buck up and fight for our Trademark rights! Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is our sixth episode of Behind the Buy, in our series where we uncover the business transaction of buying a business and you get to hear the inside scoop of our calls with our client. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I'm Matt Staub. NASIR: This episode, there's just so much to set up here. It's pretty dense, but I think we're gonna try to do it here. In this episode, there's two phone calls. At this point, if you guys recall in episode 5, the buyer and seller have gone through some periods of due diligence, there were some hiccups there with the lease and the seller made a dumb mistake by telling the employees prematurely. But we did get past that and we actually ended up signing an asset purchase agreement after it was drafted. Luckily, as soon as you sign the asset purchase agreement, it's not like the transactions over, you still have another period of due diligence, and that's a little bit more intense than the LOI due diligence period. That's about where we are right now. MATT: If you recall from the previous episode, we had, I think it was three different contingencies in place, so like you said, just because the agreement signed doesn't mean the transaction's done and the sellers getting paid at whatever the closing date is. What's funny about this episode is if we look back when we had that issue with all the employees finding out, that seems like it's really a drop in the bucket compared to this. This is like a grab bag of issues that came up. Listen to the call, it's just one after the other without even any transition to the next one just because there were so many things on our mind that I think just needed to get them all out there and discuss with us. NASIR: If I recall, after that happened in the last episode and the call before, you could tell that the seller is just gonna be fun to work with to say the least. There's two calls. The first call is really short. This is basically talking about the escrow period, but the second call, I just want to set it up a little bit because it's actually set very close either a week or so before closing. Our client actually sent us an email, it was late in the night or something like that and I remember, it was relatively urgent and so Matt and I talked first and then we got on the call with our client to discuss. I just wanted to set that up a little bit. Of course, like every episode, we have some defined words that we need to go over to make sure that it doesn't go over anyone's heads. I guess that's a little insulting to say, I probably shouldn't say that, or just a reminder of certain words that maybe some people may need a reminder of. MATT: Well yeah, it's not even just the listener, I think attorneys too with this first one indemnification clause. I'm not even sure there's a full understanding of that, but it's a very common provision that's -- I don't wanna say every contact, but most contracts, but essentially what it is is you have two parties, the indemnifying party and the indemnified party, and it's basically if there's a third-party claim made against the indemnified party, the other party then would -- I probably should not describe it like this because I'm just saying indemnify over and over. NASIR: It sounds like a big party, but it sounds great though. MATT: Long and the short, there's a third-party claim against one party, and then the other party to the transaction, in this case, would then have to indemnify that other party, meaning they'd have to basically become respon...

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The Digital Transformation of Rosetta Stone: How President Matt Hulett Earned Trust Transforming an Analog Business into a Digital First Experience

Up Next In Commerce

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 25, 2020 49:24

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.

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AS HEARD ON: WGAN Mornings News with Matt Gagnon: Surveillance, Big Tech and the Covid-19 Pandemic and more

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 23, 2020 8:14

Good morning everybody! I was on with Matt this morning and we had a good discussion about how big tech is trying to provide a technology standard for tracking pandemics using our smartphones and what this will mean to our privacy. Let's get into my conversation with Matt on WGAN. These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig There's a lot of people who are concerned about this so-called Patriot Act response to the COVID-19. We have Apple and Google working together to come up with a standard to use on our smartphone. Are you worried about whether or not the government's going to not only track you as part of this whole COVID-19 response but also do kind of a patriot act thing? Or they might try and force not us, our smartphone carriers to track us? Hi, this is Craig Peterson. Let's get into my conversation with Matt on WGAN. Matt It is 738, which means that it is time to talk to our tech guru Craig Peterson. He joins us every Wednesday at this time to go over what's happening in the world of technology. Craig Peterson. How are you this morning, sir? Craig Hey, good morning. I'm doing well. Matt Did you hear about this alleged hack of The WHO, the Gates Foundation, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology?. Craig I did, and I was going to ask you about it. Matt Well, what did you find out? Well, I mean, I, frankly, I just saw the headline. I didn't read anything about it. But I did notice that there was compromised information, a bunch of emails, I believe, and some data taken. But outside of that, I didn't read much about it. Craig Yeah, we've not verified it at this point. Some anonymous activists have posted about 25,000 email addresses and passwords that they're claiming belong to the National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organization, and the Gates Foundation. These are all different groups working to battle this Coronavirus pandemic that's been happening, and they've posted them out on some of these sites, you know, not quite dark web but like 4chan and, and a few others. We'll see what ends up happening, and it could be kind of enlightening to see some of the statistics, some of the numbers, some of the emails. It reminds me of the global warming hack that happened where it turned out all of these global warming scientists had been conspiring to present false information. I wonder what's going to happen here? Matt It's an excellent question, and perhaps we'll get an answer to it as time goes by. I've got some questions for you here, Mr. Peterson. My first one and this is significant to me because I've been watching this one. I've been waiting for this story to percolate it's way out because it was inevitable, frankly, but the Coronavirus has inspired a lot of people to want to know where people are and to track who's sick and where they're going. I've seen several stories over the last couple weeks of you know about Apple and the iPhone, and the devices we have in our hands turned into potentially tracking tools that would help surveil the American public as we fight the virus and whatnot. What what you know what truce is there to that? I mean, is there is that something that's happening now going to happen? Are we being surveilled? Are we going to be surveilled? What do you think, Craig? Craig Well, there's a lot of truth to that, because we are being surveilled to various degrees right now when it comes to the Coronavirus tracking. We've got Google, which has a tracker online. It's using information, like it does every year, for the spread of the flu based on the searches people are doing and collects data on people's searches. How do I solve this? What do I do to get over this particular illness? There's a lot of people who are concerned about a Patriot Act type response to the COVID-19. We have Apple and Google. They are working together to come up with a standard for use on our smartphones. Our smartphones all have Bluetooth in the middle. There's a unique software if you will, that runs On those little Bluetooth chips that can help to determine how far your device is from the other Bluetooth device. And the software that Apple and Google have come up with allows you to track whether or not you have been within six feet of someone else. So the worries are that the federal government is going to force this to be on our phones. Will they require us to run an app that allows them to trackback. Let's say you show up at the hospital, and you have the symptoms of COVID-19. And they want to find out who you have spoken to, you know, what have you done in the last two weeks? And right now, they have to sit there, and they go through your memory and saying who did you see? Where were you? With who did you have close contact? But what this will do is it'll allow them to look at your phone and find out everybody that you being within six feet of potentially contacts them, test them and quarantine them. And that's where the significant concerns are coming in. Matt We're talking to Craig Peterson, our tech guru. He joins us on Wednesdays at this time to go over what's happening in the world of technology. I mean, is this thing though, Craig. I mean, the requirement from the government. It is not the only thing that I'm afraid of, and I'm also scared these companies will just voluntarily start doing it. I mean, we're so integrated with Google and Facebook and everything else that we use in our lives technologically related that you know, they can, you know, without government requirements, just say, yeah, we're going to cooperate with the government here. We're going to track all of our people and do all these things kind of on our own. And it seems like they are almost ready to do that kind of stuff already. Craig Well, they already are Matt, and they're providing the information in an anonymized fashion. Now, you and I both know that the data had might have been anonymized, but it's quite, quite easy to D anonymize that data. Find out who everybody was. But what the concern here is with COVID-19 is whether or not you were within six or 10 feet from someone else. And the type of resolution most of our phones have won't tell them that because they can use the GPS, they can use the Wi-Fi signals to try to figure out where you are, and they can kind of get close. But do they know you're within six feet of someone at the grocery store? And the answer's no, or at the office or wherever you might have gone. It kind of rolls on here and we got warnings about next winters potentially bringing this back in a big way again, that's where I started getting concerned because these apps, First of all, I have not been well accepted they have been available in some Asian countries. At most, one-third of all people have used them, which makes it basically in the fact of, but secondly, if you know they decide, hey, this is something You have to have, are they going to be able to force it on us? I don't know. Are they going to be able to surveil us like they did, apparently about the whole Trump Organization, which has come out this week? That was their goal. I just don't know Matt. The technology exists to do it, and they are already doing it to some degree. Matt Indeed. All right. Well, Craig Peterson, our tech guru, joins us at this time every Wednesday to go over what's happening in the world of technology. Craig, thank you, as always, and we'll talk again next week. Craig Take care, Matt, Bye-bye. Matt Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. So coming up... Craig Hey, everybody, if you need a little bit of help in this COVID-19 time, we're giving away a little bit of free time, free consulting, I've set aside some 15-minute blocks where we can chat and help you out with your home computer, whatever it might be. And if you more extensive help, we also have some paid plans. It is free. Just go to Craig Peterson dot com and fill the contact form at the bottom of my home page. Craig Peterson dot com. We'll be glad to help you out. Everybody have a great weekend. We'll be back this weekend with more. Bye-bye Transcribed by https://otter.ai --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

AS HEARD ON: WGAN Mornings with Ken and Matt: Election Technology, FBI and Homeland Security Passwords and Passphrases

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 26, 2020 14:52

Good morning everybody! I was on with Matt and Marty (who was sitting in for Ken.) We had a good discussion about election technology and what different states are doing to assure that they are secure. We also talked about the FBI and Homeland Security about Passwords and Passphrases and security. Here we go These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig If the Secretaries of State get hacked, I'm not sure we can feel comfortable. Would they even know that hacking occurred? If they did, it would be much after the fact. Craig So well, this morning, I was talking on WGAN in their affiliates about some of the voting technology, you know, Super Tuesday is coming up. I compared some of the election technology in different states. What's good. What's bad. We talked about the new FBI press release that came out, that is I hope going to have a significant impact on security. It is fascinating stuff. So here we go. Craig By the way, I talked a little bit about our tutorials and coming up. Yeah, man, You won't believe the work that went into these all for you. It is part of my give back. I am not trying to sell you, upsell you, or anything else with these. Anyways, here we go with this morning on Ken and Matt more. Joe things technology.t tech guru Craig Peterson is on right now on the WGAN Morning News with Ken and Matt. Matt Alright, we're back ladies gentlemen it is 738 on the WGAN morning news with Ken and also Matt. There is no Ken today. There is a Marty Groman he is over there. He is still wearing the Mardi Gras beads. Marty I am, Yeah, the party's just wearing off now. How many Mardi Gras jokes Do you get to do? Is it a party for me? Matt You know, I should have a whole roster of them. Marty But you don't work out times in the early 90s. Back in the good old days. The real Mardi Gras. Yeah, way down there. The crew of Baucus indeed. Matt Well, I don't know if Craig Peterson's ever been to Mardi Gras, but he joins us now to go over what's happening in the world of technology. Craig, How are you this week? Craig Hey, I'm doing well. Yeah, there's a lot of party stuff. A Marty McFly, Cartoon Network has one of their top shows right now as Marty character in it to see. So yeah, he's getting around. Marty Everyone's getting on the bandwagon. Matt I don't know how to segue. So we're going to go ahead and just move into the attack already. Well, we do have an election coming up. Craig Peterson. Of course, in South Carolina, we've already seen a few primaries as well. And they've all gone smoothly with no trouble as we all know. There is an evolving question, though, that every time we have an election, we sort of debate and talk about and ask ourselves a very similar question? How can we make sure that these things are on the up and up? How do we make sure that our voting is secure? How do we make sure that it is all done correctly, and that nobody hacking and changing votes and manipulating things? On a more fundamental level? How do we protect our elections in technology? Craig Yeah, real big question a big problem. There are a few states have and, in fact, quite a few now that are using these election machines that we've grown to know and love, where we have a piece of paper effectively. And you fill in those little ovals there using the pencil or felt tip pen, right. You guys are familiar with those, right? Because you voted, right. Yeah. Those are right now, anyway, the best type of technology used for voting. There are other states and go all the way on the other side, and use these touchscreen voting machines that are running Windows XP. Now Windows XP hasn't been supported for many, many, many years, and they are connecting them to networks. When you vote, you just you touch the screen saying you're voting for so and so but some of these machines, they've got configured steal tickets. So you say, I'm voting Republican, or I'm voting Democrat. Or maybe you have Libertarian in that in a state right. People have repeatedly complained that the machines are improperly registering their votes. They'll say I'm voting for President Trump but somehow was recorded for Bernie Sanders. Right? That's, that's kind of the nightmare scenario. We don't want to see this Fall. If you vote and your votes not counted or correctly counted. When these things hit the news, and there is no audit trail like in some of these states, all you have is this computer that identifies that you voted for Bernie Sanders, even though you meant to vote for Donald J. Trump. They hit the news, all of a sudden everyone's all worried that somehow maybe my vote didn't count. Maybe there's cheating going on. Both of these could be true when using some of these types of technology. So there is a $10 million contract that has been awarded, it was awarded last year to come up with a secure voting machine. It looks like it's going to be more of a secure method of voting. There are so many ways that voting can be hacked. I just mentioned the machines themselves. If they are connected to a network ever, there is a potential for hacking. Optical Scanning machines used in New Hampshire are never connected to networks. They're loaded up, they put a little, basically a thumb drive into them, and they dump what the load is all about. But ultimately, there are multiple places that it could be hacked and could be hacked at the Secretary of State's office, where they're compiling all the votes from all of these machines throughout the state. It could be hacked again at the Secretary of State's office but on the website, where they post results, and where the federal government goes to get the results from the Secretaries of State. There's nothing fancy about how the votes are collected nationally. So your question going right back to it, Matt, have Can we trust the election? How can we trust the vote? Right now, I'd say here in Maine we are in pretty good shape. In the majority of states are in pretty good shape. There was a lot of money. I can't remember the numbers, exact number but a lot of money that was set aside and given to states to upgrade their voting machines. The temptation is always as we talked to with Ken here about this a couple of weeks ago. Should we buy the Betamax right or buy the newest, greatest latest, and coolest technology? We see right now from the FBI and Homeland Security reports, generally speaking at this point, it doesn't look like there will be a lot of problems this year. There was disclosed some significant issues in few states in the 2016 election with problems with hacking attempt, explicitly directed at the Secretaries of States in several different countries. Those Secretaries of State have been informed about it, those of them that come out recently. Ultimately, I guess we won't know how good it is until sometime after the fact. That part of it doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy, is that the average time to figure out a hack occurred is your business is around six months. If the Secretaries of State get hacked, I'm not sure we can feel comfortable, would even know that they've been hacked. If they did, it wouldn't be much after the fact. So just let's stick with the old fashioned way for now, because it's the best way, the brand new way, by the way, that $10 million award. It looks like they are leaning towards a paper solution as well. So it's an electronic voting machine. And you touch the screen so that you vote for people you want. It spits out a piece of paper with your votes on it, you then take that piece of paper with your votes on it, and you give it to ever to whoever is, is running that little local election, they run it through a scanning machine. That is not much different from what we're doing today. And that's, that's a suggestion as to what the most secure type of voting will be. Marty Craig, it's, it's Marty. So yeah, it fills in the Oval for you then. But let me ask you if I may change topics on you a little bit. These trackers kind of drive me bonkers, right. When I when I visit, you know, the onion dot com or something the banner ads seem like they take forever to load. I added the DuckDuckGo extension to Google Chrome, and it cut that right off. I mean, what is your take was was that a good idea? A bad or bad idea? Craig Well, we've just had over 500 extensions removed from the Chrome extensions store, store, even though they're free, right, you have to pay for them. And as a general rule, I advise against using those extensions. In about two weeks, Marty, I'm going to have some training that I'm going to be releasing that's free. I'm not trying to upsell you or trying to sell you anything about some of these extensions that are going to keep your information safe. Now DuckDuckGo is well known as one of the best guys out there when it comes to blocking your tracking. Some of the others that I'm going to be covering in training include Ghostery, and you should be using HTTPS anywhere, which does something a little bit different. pundants amazing. You block origin and others. I'm going to go through those a couple of hours worth of training that I'll be releasing here in a couple of weeks, but Marty, I think you're right, use DuckDuckGo for your search engine. And there are more and more these extensions that are trying to keep your privacy. And I haven't looked at goes. But as a rule, those guys have been great and make sites load faster. Over to you. Marty That's what it does. Craig Ultimately, you know, all of these different extensions that I just mentioned in there, we're going to be doing this training on all of them will make it load faster. And you take a site like forbes.com that just has a crazy number of trackers on it. And the ads that you mentioned, like the ads, loading, and taking time, it makes Forbes go from about it took four minutes for me the other day to completely load everything on Forbes homepage. It was that bad. Then when I turned on these blocker extensions, it went from four minutes down to five seconds. So they're not only tracking us, but they're making our lives miserable. Trying defined to stuff we're looking for on the page. Right, Marty kids are there cluttered with all this junk too, right? Marty Yeah, it's awful. I frankly, I don't miss it. But it does make it all a little bit cleaner. But back over to Matt, I think you had a question. Sure. Matt I got one more quick one for you before we let you go, Craig. The password that I am going to be required to change in like, I think, a couple of days here at the radio station is among the 8000 different passwords that I have to change all the time. And there are no new recommendations. I understand it from the FBI that we are using passphrases instead of complex passwords. So like instead of d3, 724 dashes, but you know, period, whatever, some crazy combination of letters, whatever we should be using passphrases Why don't you explain that a little bit. Craig Yeah, well, get this quick. I'm going to go into this more on my show on Saturday at 1 pm So you can tune in there. And it's a two-hour show, and we go into quite a bit of depth on some of these things. But I'm glad you brought it up because this is one of the essential pieces of advice in the security world in the last five years. About five years ago, a study came out saying that rather than those types of complicated passwords that you just mentioned is not practical based on today's technology. Here's the bottom line recommendation from the FBI and from the research that's been out there, use a string for random words together, and just put a dash in between each of the terms, or space, whatever you'd like. A passphrase is something that might make sense to you, something that might not make sense at all, but something you can remember, and that's the essential part. Now, if your business, like for instance, Matt, your business might require some more company passwords, you might want to share this article with them. So you still might have to have those crazy ones or numbers, letters, uppercase, lowercase, special symbols, etc. But in reality, those are not the best passwords nowadays, make sure it's at least 15 characters long. Throw a few non-related words. For instance, making America great again would be a lousy password. Marty I thought I was going to use I can't drive 65. So there you go. That's probably not one to use now that you mentioned on the air Marty, that's true. Craig Yeah. But those types of passwords are the best. Matt All right, well, Craig Peterson He is our tech guru. He joins us at this time every Wednesday to go over what's happening. Excuse me in the world of technology. Craig one more time promo for the show, when is it? What time where can you listen to it? What are you going to be talking about? Give me that one more time before you go and then, and then we'll say thanks. Craig Okay. I'm not the automaton that Marty is when you ask that question. The show this Saturday, every Saturday from one till three, I talked about the latest in technology with an emphasis on security. We're going to be talking about some of the cloud services that businesses are using thinking that somehow they're safer, right? But how to make it safer. We'll talk a little bit more about the passwords. Ransomware is on the rise right now. Apple Macintoshes. It turns out there's more malware out there and get a few more things as well. But this weekend shows Saturday at one we're kind of focusing on cloud software. Matt All right, his name is Craig Peterson. He is our tech guru. He joins us at this time every Wednesday to go over what's happening in the world of technology. Today was no exception to that, Craig, thank you very much. And we will talk to you again next week, sir. Craig Gentlemen, take care. Bye-Bye. All right. Appreciate it, Craig. Transcribed by https://otter.ai --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

america donald trump technology fall state tech elections forbes fbi states south carolina republicans heard democrats maine bernie sanders voting throw secure secretary trail new hampshire excuse audit homeland security chrome passwords libertarians mardi gras super tuesday ransomware cartoon network dhs credentials google chrome oval scanner marty mcfly duckduckgo optical secretaries windows xp touchscreens betamax transcribed ghostery matt you craig peterson matt well baucus matt all wgan craig yeah craig so wgan morning news

AS HEARD ON: WGAN Mornings with Ken and Matt: Privacy, Monitoring, Kids and Screen time, and AG Barr vs Apple Encryption and more

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 23, 2020 14:38

Good morning everybody! I was on with Ken and Matt. We had a good discussion about Privacy and Monitoring then we got into Kids and Smartphones and a study that says the issues are not as bad as we have been led to believe. Then it was onto the FBI and AG Barr vs Apple Encryption. So here we go with Ken and Matt. These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig If you have a company phone, monitoring of it is likely because the company doesn't want it to be lost, and if it is, they want to be able to recover it. They want to keep their data safe, all reasonable things. But many companies are now tracking you when you are going outsourcing go to the coffee shop. Hello, everybody. Great Dieter song here. Glad you joined me. A lot of news in tech this week. You got to make sure you catch my show this weekend. We're going to get into smishing a lot more. We're going to be talking about some new research out there about this company that just came out of real secrecy that is ending our privacy. We're going to be talking about a significant change over in Marriott where they're trying to compete like so many brick and mortar businesses with the online world. So what is Marriott doing to compete? I don't think you'd get much more brick and mortar than when it comes to hotels and resorts that they own all over the world. All of that will be coming up this weekend. Make sure you subscribe to my podcast so that you get all of this and more. And let's get off to this morning's conversation with Ken and Matt up in Maine. Ken Welcome to the program, sir. As usual. Yeah. Cold weather. Well, we do live in New England. So you know, it's going to warm up before the snowstorm on Saturday. Craig I lived halfway out in Canada halfway up to the Arctic Circle, and more than halfway actually. And I remember days when the air temperature high was 2030 below zero. And so this isn't so bad. But you know, as you get older, you just don't tolerate it as well, I think. Ken So. You know, I'm looking at your website, which is collectivism.com. You have some exciting topics today, for example, chat. Let me see which ones do we care about? How about somebody named Chet, what do we care about Chet when we're mad and Ken? Matt That's true. It kind of sounds like an older man. Chet was a name from a long time ago. It's true. Craig 2:10 Yeah. A long time ago. I love this article from the Wall Street Journal. They've got a very, very cool illustration on it, where Chet wakes up in the morning, and he goes in and gets his coffee and does things throughout the day. And what the Wall Street Journal is showing is this fictional worker named Chet, as he's going through the day, his employer is tracking his activities. So for instance, when you get up in the morning, most people the first thing they do in the morning and the last thing they do at night is to check their email. Well, if you're checking your email, the business knows Hey, Chet, just checked his email at 635 in the morning, and then if you have a company phone, that phone is probably tracked as a company doesn't want it to be lost. I want to be able to recover it. They want to keep their data safe, all reasonable things. But many companies are now tracking you when you are going out. So say go to the coffee shop. And the local coffee shop has free Wi-Fi. And your phone connects to that free Wi-Fi network. While the business probably has a setup, so it makes a VPN call into them. They've got the GPS coordinates of your location. As you're walking around the office, your phone has Bluetooth on it, and it has Wi-Fi on it. And all of that can be tracked. The big-box retailers are pretty much all tracking us by our cell phones because we connect to their Wi-Fi networks. It is a warning to everybody from the Wall Street Journal, and the stuff we talk about almost every week, about our activities, travels, and the tracking they are doing. And when we're talking about the business side, Chet's phone conversations on his work desk phone, and potentially the cell phone can be recorded, transcribed, and monitored. They know who is calling, but it isn't necessarily looking for bad things from Chet but potentially looking to see to whom he speaks. Is he somebody that's a mover and shaker in the organization? Is he someone who's inspiring other people, helping other people, tutoring mentoring other people. So there is a lot that's going on in just our regular day to day lives. That I think frankly, Ken, a lot of people aren't paying enough attention to this monitoring. We've got to keep an eye on our privacy. I'm going to be talking more about that as well on my show. Matt We are talking to Craig Peterson, our tech guru. He joins us at this time every Wednesday to go over what's happening to excuse me, in the world of technology. A great one that caught my eye here was the discussion Kids phones, my 12-year-old who was about to be 13 got a phone this year against my wishes, but whatever, that's a different conversation. Anyway, he got one. A lot of parents, including myself, have a lot of apprehensions about their kids getting phones and the effect that it has on them and sort of whether or not it leads to, you know, obviously, either anti-social behavior or like depression and whatnot. And then, of course, there's the cyberbullying stuff and all the things that go along with that. So far, I've been rather pleasantly surprised by his level of maturity with the phone and how it has not dominated his life. So now, there's certainly more time for him to disappoint me, but he's done an excellent job with it so far. Nonetheless, the reason I'm bringing it up is you have something to talk about as it relates to research and what it has recently shown and found about sort of kids and cell phone usage. What do you think is essential to communicate about that now? Craig 5:52 Well, I think you're doing some of the right things because cyberbullying is a very, very big deal. I was bullied pretty heavily in As a kid, but back then, it was people you know, their kids using two by fours hit me up the side of the head and pull knives on me, you know, really, really nice school. Um, but nowadays, it's different because back then, yeah, kids usually get away from the bullies, I may be able to see them from a distance, and you know, I can getaway. But nowadays that cell phone goes into your home, and the kids just can't get away from it. Some of the comments that other kids might say can be very, very mean and nasty. So you're right to be worried about that. Another thing people have been worried about, I think legitimately, is, you know, when Ken and I were kids, we got in and got sat in front of the boob tube. And that was kind of our babysitter for part of the day. I know, and they were worried about whether or not it was going to cause problems with our brains. And in some cases, it's pretty apparent that it has right, Ken. Ken I use a TV all the time to babysit my six and a half-year-old twin grandchildren. It is a great babysitter. They have good shows like Mickey Mouse Clubhouse now. Craig Is DisneyPlus subscription? Yes, Ken Yes, all of that and all the Star Wars to my grandkids love Star Wars. Craig Do they? The generation Z's aren't into Star Wars. So what else doesn't work? Well, there was a study published last Friday here, Matt, by two psychology professors and, and they look through some other studies, they come through about 40 different studies, and this is according to the New York Times. They're looking at social media use depression and anxiety amongst adolescents. Is it tied is it related? And these two from one from the University of California, Irvine, who was the lead author published it in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry says, quote, there doesn't seem to be an evidence base that would explain the level of panic and consternation around these issues. So, from what they're saying, there is a right to be concerned here about kid's phones and some adverse effects from the social side. Social media and smartphones with the kids there, they still stand out there questions about their brain development, what by the time they're adolescents, it's nowhere near as big a deal with causing brain development issues as when they're under five years old. But the other thing to really worry about is is what Danny and I were talking about. And he, of course, he's got the smartphones. You guys both have that everybody has a smartphone. There are smishing campaigns. Matt What's Smishing? Craig Smishing is, you know what phishing is, right? Of course. Matt Of course. We have had to take not less than 650,000 online training here at the WGAN morning news about said phishing ploys and whatnot. So, yes, we know that well. Craig 9:12 You do understand the difference between using an ax to cut through the ice to do your fishing in the winter, and when to those screws, instead, Right? Oh, Nevermind. So with smishing, it is another version of phishing, and it's using SMS or text messages. There is a big smishing campaign going on right now. Danny has seen some of these things come through as a lot of people have. I've got an article about it up on my site this week. What's happening is they're pretending they're us. They're pretending they're Apple or pretending they're a lot of other people. So adults know that you don't respond to phishing campaigns. You don't answer these numbers that you don't recognize. You get a text message from Apple. Hey, Does Apple send you texts like this? And expect you to call back, so we don't call back, which is the right thing to do, by the way, all the time. Don't call numbers that you don't recognize and don't answer the phone. But man, how about your 12 or 13-year-old or have you trained him well enough. Do you think Matt Do you think he has run through the full rocky training montage yet? No. Ken Okay, so that's the other thing I'd be worried about. We are talking to Craig Peterson. He is our tech guru. He joins us every Wednesday at 738. You can also hear him on WGAN on Saturdays at one o'clock, and he has a website Craig Peterson dot com. Quickly why does the FBI need Apple to hack into my iPhone? Craig Oh, what a great question. Fantastic question, mate. Hold on, let's just give people, you do understand? Yeah. Matt Well, every once-in-a-while, you know, we leave no clock. Craig The FBI wants to hack into your phone because you've got an iPhone 11 right, Ken Yes. Ken No, no I kept the iPhone 10 because I don't need the 11 Craig Exactly and that's excellent advice. I think the job, okay. Nicely done. Toys Craig My advice right now is if you're going to get a new phone get an iPhone 10 the XR right now I mean I the XR is that the regulars. Ken I'm going to have a big size. Craig Okay. Yeah, yeah, it is. It's one of the big moments. So, don't upgrade until the 12 comes out or maybe the 13 until 2021. Maybe 22 because that's when 5g is going to stabilize. Okay, but back to it. Your iPhone 10 probably not the FBI cannot hack into your phone. But some of these other iPhones, the older ones, like the ones that were just used recently in Pensacola. He shot his phone, and phones of that age, they don't need Apple's help to crack into it. But even as probably the FBI is asking for help, perhaps because the phone was so severely damaged, it was shot, right, right in the face. But Apple is excellent about trying to make sure these phones are secure. And the big question here and it's been for a long time, should the FBI or other government agencies be able to break any encryption basically at will or with a court order? And I am torn on this subject. I think they should not be able to because I look at it as our private papers. And we do have a right to privacy in those papers in those records. And nowadays, we're talking about our iPhones, frankly. Matt All right, well, Craig Peterson tech guru extraordinaire, joins us at this time and every Wednesday to go over the world of technology, this being no exception to that. I appreciate you joining us, as always, Greg, and we'll talk to you again next week. Craig Hey, gentlemen, thanks. Take care. Bye. Bye. You bet. Matt All right, we are going to take a break. Craig All right, everybody, again, I usually release the Saturday morning. So keep an eye on your email, you're going to want to follow them along. And we're going to be having a unique series of a little podcast but also emails because I want you to have this stuff written so you can share with your friends and family. I know not everybody listens to podcasts, right. And I'm going to be starting to send those out over the next couple of weeks about some specific security things. Some things you can do, using the tools you already have, to make yourself your, your friends, your family's computers, smartphones, etc. more secure, so we'll be going over that, so keep an eye out. Make sure you subscribe if you haven't already. Please subscribe to the podcast I'd appreciate it if you think it's worthwhile. I love it because those are the numbers that I see. My email list is just Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe, and I send every week an email, and in that, if you scroll down a little bit, you'll see links to each one of my podcasts for the weeks, including my appearances on various shows. And so with that information, you can just click right on the link and listen to that specific podcast. So I appreciate it. Craig peterson.com slash subscribe. Take care, everybody. We'll be back on Saturday. Transcribed by https://otter.ai --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

AS HEARD ON: WGAN Mornings with Ken and Matt: Iran Wiper Attacks, Cyber Security and the California Consumer Privacy Act and more

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 8, 2020 9:57

Good morning everybody! I was on with Ken and Matt. We talked about what is going on with Iran and how they are planning on damaging the US economy with a different type of malware that they have used successfully in the past. We talked about the teeth that have been added to the California Consumer Privacy Act and how it can affect companies nationwide. So here we go with Ken and Matt. I am doing Facebook Live today on this Iran threat so be sure to tune in. These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig Hey, good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson, here I was out with our friends Ken and Matt up in Maine. We went through some of the Iran controversy, some similar stuff to yesterday with our friend Jim Polito. Then we delved into what the California law is all about, and what you will have to do as a business owner. I mean, like last week, quite literally, this law got teeth on January 1. So I went into a fair amount, in fact, a lot of detail on that one as well. If you're involved in a business, have any information on any consumers that live in California, this new law has a lot of teeth. So here we go with Ken and Matt. Matt Gentlemen, but now it's time to talk to Craig Peterson, our tech guru. He joins us now as he always does this time on Wednesdays. Craig. How are you? Craig Hey, doing well, speaking of issues, there are a few things in the news, aren't there? Matt Well, not anything major, except that goes out to have a new cookie that's coming out. But in terms of tech news, we certainly had some issues going out in Iran. And there's a lot of talk about how they would retaliate. But there may be ways that we can do it that are not necessarily militarily but probably more technological. Once you tell us you know about that. Craig I think this is kind of big news right now is that we are already under attack and we have been for a couple of years. Iran has been one of the major players when it comes to cyber hacking online. Most people already heard about China and Russia attacking us and North Korea, of course. Still, they have been at this for a very long time, as you know, the last 40 years. They have been going after the United States after Saudi Arabia after Iraq tried to get control of that region. And they did a massive hack back in 2012 on Saudi Arabia's largest oil company, and they were able to destroy an estimated 30,000 computers over at Saudi Aramco. Then just this last fall, we had another big problem. And our government came out of that point and said, Hey, listen, everybody, be careful. Make sure your computers are up to date or doing some serious work on trying to prevent hackers because they, at that point, we're going after our businesses. Now, here's the big difference between going after companies electronically to hack and going after the government. Most small, medium businesses don't have any extra money to spend on real security, and we look at some of the stats, for instance, Ars Technica, a great website with all kinds of excellent technical information. Ars Technica every year has what they call it Death Watch. This year on our on their Death Watch. They're saying, Symantec is going to die this year, they will be out of business, and Symantec, of course, those are the guys that make Norton Security. They have a lot of other security products, but they don't work anymore. In the small-medium business space, companies are using things like AVG and Norton and McAfee and many others to try and protect their systems. Still, they are not effective against the current types of malware attacks. You might ask, why would anyone care about my small business? Why would anyone care about my home account? My home computer? Iran is doing something known as a wiper attack. And those wiper attacks, destroy everything entirely on your computer. So unlike a ransomware attack where it's encrypted, and you have about a 50% chance if you pay the ransom of getting your data back with ransomware, Iran just wants to destroy our computers. Why? Well, because they are the lifeblood of the US economy. The majority of jobs created in the US are in the small-medium business space. So Iran has started attacking us. The government's warning us right now. The military is notifying us, the FBI, the NSA is telling us that we have to pull up our socks. So I advise companies right now to pull up their socks, on the security front. Hire a local expert on computer security, attend some of my free webinars, go to my website, watch some of the videos that I have up where I'm doing training. It is an easy way for a small country like Iran to attack to the United States without facing a lot of retribution. Now, I don't think they're going to go like full-bore and try and bring down every business in the country. They don't have the resources to do that. We have in the cyber space a concept known as mutually assured destruction, where they know better than to go full bore against the US, but in reality, they are going to cause damage. Looking at some recent statistics in the small and medium business space, if attacked, 20% declare bankruptcy within a week after being hacked like this. You've got to protect your business. I can't say this enough. It's your investment. It's your life savings. It's your job. It's your responsibility. Whatever the reason, we business owners must pull up our socks in this country. Ken We're talking to Craig Peterson. He's our tech guru. He joins us on Wednesdays at this time. Craig, California, is up to their old tricks. There's a new privacy law kicking off there. What do I need to know about that? Craig Yeah, this is a very, very interesting question. We've been approached about this a lot over the last week. California has a privacy law that has a couple of requirements that must be understood and for which you must pay attention. First of all, if you have any customers in California, this law might apply to you. And if you have more than 25 million dollars in revenue, or you make half of your money through selling things, selling mentalistic Cetera. So $25 million company basically with any customers in California, this law applies to you. It's been in effect for more than a year. But as of the first of this year, this new California law takes the European privacy regulations and adds more to it. So basically, Matt, to answer your question. If you do have more than $25 million in revenue, the law in California now requires you to be able to let people request their information from you. That means you must be able to tell them what information of theirs you have. Who has access to it and has seen it, including people within your organization. Who you may have shared it with and who you have sold their data to, and then there's a right to be forgotten clause. So if they say you have Have to erase all the information you have about me. You have to delete it. Now there's been significant pushback from banks and insurance companies because they say, Hey, listen, we track everybody. And we don't know who's looked at all of the records. We don't know any of this stuff. We sometimes get even tell you whose data we sold to third parties. Remember, banks and insurance companies are continually using these data aggregators, who are It seems that regularly losing data. So when it comes to the whole California situation with their new privacy law, we can't do what we did with Europe, and most companies just said well forget about it. We're not to get a compliant don't care if you're blocked us. Now you are going to have to comply, and compliance work is already underway in California. They're coming after companies all over the country. Which is why I've been receiving a lot of phone calls and a lot of emails. So by the way, expect a launch like this to come up and just yourself here in Massachusetts, they already have one kind of similar, and they're tightening it up. We now have three states that have these types of privacy laws, and the feds are looking into it. We expect by next year, half of the States will have these types of requirements and perhaps federal legislation. So make sure if you have any information on any consumers any information that you look into this, you talk to your attorney, you must speak to your IT people, we have to tighten up how we handle data. Ken Great data. Craig Peterson our tech guru joins us every Wednesday at 730. Thanks, Craig. We will talk to you next week. Craig Hey, take care, gentlemen. Bye Bye. Thanks. Matt Alright, well, that was enlightening. Transcribed by https://otter.ai --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

The Magic of Audio and How it Makes You Feel

Marketing Upheaval

Play Episode Play 20 sec Highlight Listen Later Nov 6, 2019 33:43

How much do artists promote and get paid for their music? How does Elton John write a song? Matt talks about the music industry from a creative’s POV.Visit www.creativeouthouse.com/podcast for complete shownotes and transcripts of every episode.Hey everyone, this is Rudy Fernandez from Creative Outhouse. And this episode I spoke with Matt Still, a Grammy Award winning engineer and music producer. Matt has worked with people like Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Santana. He's worked with OutKast, Lady Gaga, and the list goes on and on - from legends to new artists. Matt and I have known each other for a long time, and I always enjoy talking with him. We talked about how he got started. We talked about the changes in music and the rights of artists, because Matt also advocates for the rights of performers and artists, which I admire. So I think people who make music have these magic powers that create this miraculous thing that profoundly affects us emotionally, makes us think and affects our lives. We talked about that too. Check it out. Welcome to Marketing Upheaval.TranscriptRudy: Welcome to Marketing Upheaval. My guest is Matt Still, Matt is a Grammy Award winning music producer and engineer. He's a national trustee for the Recording Academy and an artist in residence at Kennesaw State University. In his 25 plus years in the music industry, he's seen a lot of things change, and he's managed to change with them. So we're going to talk about that. Thanks for joining me, Matt.Matt: Thanks for having me.Rudy: So, I'm going to just for the listeners, start with shameless name dropping, if that's okay, because you're pretty modest guy, but I don't think you ought to be. You work with Elton John. Yes, you've worked with OutKast, Fallout Boy, Lady Gaga, Rod Stewart, Santana, Allison In Chains, BB King, Arrested Development, TLC. You've worked with Stevie Wonder and Patty LaBelle. Then it goes on and on and on. So how does a kid who grew up in Georgia and loved music grow up and become a guy who works with all these legends.Matt: Well, I've been in music my entire life. I started playing the piano and taking classical piano lessons at the age of four. So music was always a part of everything I did. And I never really thought about doing anything other than music. Yeah, you know, really, and I wanted to be I wanted to be the performer. I wanted to be the next Elton John. My mom bought me an Elton John songbook, but when I was a teenager. I think it's kind of ironic that I'm actually been working with him for over 26 years now. But I wanted to be the performer. And I remember when I was in bands in high school and in college, and we go into recording studios, and the recordings never came out sounding the way I wanted. Check out the complete transcript and shownotes at https://creativeouthouse.com/2019/11/06/matt-still-grammy-winning-audio-engineer-and-producer/Support the show (http://www.creativeouthouse.com/our-work)

AS HEARD ON: WGAN Mornings with Ken and Matt: Future of Communications and Lying to your Bank and more

The ALPS In Brief Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 16, 2019 13:59

Good morning everybody! I was on with Ken and Matt per usual their base is expanding which is really kind of cool. They are adding stations and things which is quite exciting. Anyhow, I had a good conversation with them about our privacy security or what to do about it and what's in the news right now that the statistics are really getting scary frankly. Especially when I when it comes to small businesses, and of course, we discussed a little bit about what they are doing, what their bosses are doing over there at the Portland radio group, and what maybe you shouldn't be doing if you're that de facto IT person in your organization. I think what the Portland radio group is doing is a great step and it's going to make a huge difference for them. These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles: The Future Communication Means No Phones Maintaining Privacy Means Obfuscating Online Security Answers More Than Three-Quarters of US Businesses Are CyberAtttack Targets Keeping Windows Safe Means Patching, Patching, Patching and More Patching --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig Good morning everybody! Craig Peterson here. I was on with Ken and Matt per usual their base is expanding which is really kind of cool. They are adding stations and things, which is quite exciting. Anyhow, I had a good conversation with them about our privacy security or what to do about it and what's in the news right now that the statistics are really getting scary frankly. Especially when I when it comes to small businesses, and of course, we discussed a little bit about what they are doing, what their bosses are doing over there at the Portland radio group, and what maybe you shouldn't be doing if you're that de facto IT person in your organization. I think what the Portland radio group is doing is a great step and it's going to make a huge difference for them. Matt Gagnon Gentlemen, it's his time once again, Craig Peterson tech guru extraordinaire, and host of the Craig Peterson show on this Very Radio Network joins us now as he always does at this time on Wednesdays what's happening, Craig? Craig Hey, good morning. I don't get it here. The Red Sox are not in the playoffs now. But you guys are saying. Ken Altschuler That is correct, sir. That is correct. I did, however, win the World Series last year. So Craig it's okay. Isn't it kind of a weird thing, though, because you'd think if they were such a powerhouse last year, how come they didn't even make it into the playoffs? You know, I'm not a sports guy. You can tell. Matt I could give you lots of answers. But we're not here to hear me talk about baseball our way. Ken Would you rather talk about Jethro Tull? Matt As long as that conversation could go? Ken Do you agree with me that the Jethro Tull should absolutely be in the rock Hall of Fame and it's a travesty that they're not? Craig I absolutely agree. I don't get it. Why are they putting country music people in and other Ken Whitney Houston, Whitney Houston, Craig Whitney Houston. I can see like some of the blues and Some of the old some of that eventually turned into rock and roll that makes sense. I can see that one. Well, you know, pop music gab Jessel told definitely, but anyway. Ken Yeah. So I was gonna ask you a question about lying on your password recovery questions but before we but but I want you to explain to me how AI systems are going to cause phones to disappear. Craig Yeah, this isn't going to be an eventual type of thing. What what's happening is we're putting microphones everywhere. They're in our cars. Our cars now of course have built into the many of them, you know, Wi Fi, it's time into the cellular data network, where we've started to see the rollout of 5g, which is really designed to allow pretty much everything ever manufactured to be on the Internet at very, very high speeds at very low cost. So what we're going to see over the course of the next five years, certainly the next 10 Yours is there will be internet available everywhere via every device you can think of. You know, we've got Levi's with their trucker jacket that has built in internet. Basically, it has remote controls and things, but right into it. So this is what the eventuality is now, tie that into artificial intelligence, and tie all of that into the ability for these systems to understand what we're saying. Now, in reality, it's going to take a while before they really understand it, but they are pretty darn good right now just talking to Alexa. We know that. So put all of this into a big pot and stir it up. Since it's Halloween. We'll call it a big cauldron. And stir it all up. You're going to end up with these artificial intelligence systems that are also just continually getting better and better. With the internet connectivity everywhere microphones everywhere, so to the point where you won't carry Any sort of a device that you would identify as a phone, you might have a little pin on your lapel that talks to you when you talk to it, etc. That might be a little projectors, here, there and everywhere so you can see things as kind of a screen. By the eventually this is all going to be tied right into our brains, it's going to be going into our optic nerves. We are going to become a little bored is when it kind of boils down to But before that, we're just going to be talking to devices and having them read our messages and send our messages and use it as as our communicator with no more phones. Matt We are talking to Craig Peterson, our tech guru who joins us now as he always does on Wednesdays at this time. Craig they force us here at the WGA and morning news to watch these security videos trying desperately to drag the employees not just this radio station but all Portland radio group radio stations. into being more secure with their email and stuff. Clicking on those things that say that their downloads and downloading them onto your computer and having a virus and so on and so forth. I believe that we have to watch those videos because more people are falling for it and more attacks are happening from outside. And this is a problem that's getting worse. Am I wrong about that? Am I right about that? Are we seeing a rise in email attacks? Craig No, you're absolutely right. In fact, we'll be talking a little bit more about that next week, because there's some new statistics are just coming out right now on that. But we're seeing right now that 76% of us businesses have been attacked, they've experienced a cyber attack in the last year. 76% is absolutely crazy how many organizations have been attacked and 63% of businesses reported the loss of some type of corporate or customer information in the last 12 months. It's absolutely huge and, and frankly, too many businesses are ostrich, ostrich. You're such a work. They're sticking their heads into sand, right? They're saying they're gonna it's not going to happen to me. Now bigger businesses, when you get out of the SMB space, the bigger ones over 500 employees are taking this seriously. They are doing the right things. They're doing what the Portland radio group is doing. They're making sure their employees are trained in what to watch for because most of these bad really bad cyber attacks that have happened besides ransomware have happened because of things employees do and have done and that includes opening emails. So the bad guys are good. They've come a long way from the days when it was you know And my heart goes out to that poor Nigerian prince who lost all his money. And all he needs is Us Bank Account to transfer the money through. And all you have to do is you know, keep a little commission but a lot of use your bank account. Today what they're doing is they are breaking into websites for businesses. And they're stealing all of the data they can get their Well, some of the data that they're stealing and they're going after are your password recovery questions. And they can from that find out all kinds of information. Now this goes back to of course, our friend Sarah Palin. Remember this back in 2008, a 20 year old college student broke into her Yahoo account and stole a bunch of emails from there. How does he do it? While he googled her password recovery question answers. He found out what her zip code was her birthday people will you The name of their dog, their child's birthday wedding date, social security number, but use all of these things to break into account. So the bottom line here is Portland Raider groups doing the right thing by making you watch videos. They should make you watch my videos because they're much more interesting. But, but it is the right thing. Because that is the primary way your email that the bad guys are using to manipulate you by using things like your password recovery questions, to be able to get into your accounts and it's a very, very bad thing. And that's what I'm saying right now. Everybody, you should lie on your bank password recovery questions absolutely should lie on them. When it says what high school did you graduate from? Makeup something don't just use Scooby Doo his high school graduation. But you know poolesville that's not a great one. Completely make something up what high school? Did you graduate from college ended software? And you have to remember all of these answers because you shouldn't be using different answers on every website. So put them all into a password management management program. That's what I do. Use different password recovery questions every time. You can get my password recovery. I have a 10 page thing on passwords. Okay. 10 page special report. So it uncovers password recovery stuff, but what software should you buy? Which ones are free? What should you do? But this is all part of the same thing. And you can get that by the way, just like Craig peterson.com slash password password and get that password recovery thing. But this is complicated. You need to do training with your employees and email. According to the FBI. His latest report is the number one way the bad guys are stealing from our businesses. Matt Wouldn't it be easier to just not have computers anymore? Ken Seriously, it would be what would it be like if there was no internet? I was a very good typewriter. I mean, I could type again, if I had to. Yeah. People have to use a phone. Although they were scams that way too. Is it done? Okay. Craig Peterson joins us every Wednesday at 738. And you can hear him on Saturday from one to three on WGAN. Matt So 76% of us businesses have experienced a cyber attack in the past year. Craig Yeah, definitely. You know, it ties all in and it's it's very, very, very big. The SMB space is the space of going after that small medium businesses. Some people call the mass and the, you know, small medium enterprises. And the reason they're going after these smaller businesses, which are basically the under 500 employees, isn't because necessarily that's where the money is, but it's Because that's where they are least prepared for the attack, they're least ready for it. And they leave their money laying around. I picked up some new clients that have had their entire operating account stolen can imagine that you rely on your operating account to pay your bills to pay the vendors, maybe you are using it for payroll as well. And all of a sudden, it's empty. That is a killer for businesses that especially small medium businesses, and so now you're stuck you're in big trouble and they're going after them because they are not ready. Now the some of the stats here also are amazing that it okay 76% of cyber businesses or businesses that cyber attack and 63% of them lost their intellectual property as we mentioned, or customer information the last 12 months but those businesses 63% 50% of them will be out of business in six months. So it's 63% over 76%. And they take 50% of that they will be out of business within six months. And the really scary part is of those somewhere around 30% file for bankruptcy. The week it happens, because they realize that they just can't pay their bills. They're incomplete trouble. So everybody, do what Ken and Matt have been doing. Make sure your employees get training on email, email handling. If you are a home user, a small office, Home Office retiree, make sure you are very careful, basically, nowadays never clicked on anything in the emails is that one of the popular things right now is they're trying to get you to do something. So they'll save things like hey, we've got video of you visiting a porn site. And here's your password. Here's your username and be Cuz you're reusing passwords, it is one of your password. So anyways, I know we're out of time here. But this I can't stress this enough because I've seen so many people, it just breaks my heart that that aren't ready for this. If you're a small business, you have to address this. And you got to take some time and maybe one of the ways to start, if you're interested. Grab it right now, which is Craig peterson.com slash password. That's a great place to start playing some training, do it with your employees and, and protect your business. It's your investment. And if you're the defacto IT person in your organization, you're going to get blamed when this happens to you. Matt Well, on that cheery note, ladies, gentlemen, Craig Peterson, our tech guru who has been joining us as he always does on Wednesday morning is is done for the day. So thank you, Craig. Appreciate it as always, and we will talk again next week. Craig, Hey guys, thanks a lot. Alright. Matt So we're going to take a quick break we'll be back on the other side of the break coming up next on WGAN Transcribed by https://otter.ai --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

ALPS In Brief – Episode 35: How to Assess Risk to Your Firm? Assess yourself!

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 7, 2019 21:11

ALPS Risk Manager Mark Bassingthwaighte sits down with Matt Sims, co-founder of Standpoint Decision Support Inc. to discuss risk assessment and some new technology that is helping lawyers maximize billable hours, save time, and reduce risks to their practice. Transcript: MARK BASSINGTHWAIGHTE: Good morning. It is a beautiful day here in Big Sky Country. I'm Mark Bassingthwaighte, the risk manager with ALPS and welcome to the latest episode of ALPS In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. Today I am very pleased to have as my guest Matt Sims, and Matt is a co-founder with a company called Stand Point Decisions. MARK: And Matt and I met not too long ago up in Vancouver, at an ABA conference. And we just got to talking about risk management. And Matt has a really gone in a very, very interesting direction. So today we're going to be talking about risk management, Stand Point and a few other things. Before we jump into this, Matt, can I have you take a few minutes and just fill our listeners in, in terms of your background? MATT SIMS: Yeah, certainly. Well, thanks. Thanks very much for having me on the podcast today, Mark. Really appreciate it. And yeah, so Stand Point and where did we come from? We've been ... there's two of us, Steve Wilson, Dr. Steve Wilson and myself, and we've been working together for just over 10 years. And Stand Point is sort of a coming together of two worlds. MATT: One is Steve's world of quantitative data analysis, and he's got a Ph.D. in quantitative data analysis, and approached me one day about 10 years ago and said, "Hey, I'm seeing some other applications for the work that I do." And he wanted to get together with somebody who had some of the business side and the marketing and communication side of things. MATT: And so we teamed up and our very first customer was the Law Society of BC here in British Columbia where we're based. And we knew nothing about the area of law or regulation, but this was our first contract. And lo and behold, 10 years later, it seems that we found ourselves a bit of a niche. Because we've only ever worked with those in the legal profession, and primarily legal regulators up to this point. So, kind of an accident that we fell into this space. But that's how we are. And 10 years later we're still at it. MARK: Fascinating, fascinating. And what are the backgrounds ... You've shared a little bit about Steve, what's your background here? MATT: Yeah, my background has primarily been in technology. So I've worked for a number of large technology firms, everything from network services to hardware. And then over the last 10 years, I got into the software development space, and my focus has primarily been on management operations, and then definitely in the sales and marketing aspects of it as well. MARK: Okay. All right. And can we talk a little bit about, what are the problems that Stand Point really is trying to solve? I think both historically and where we're at 10 years down the road now. MATT: Yeah. Yeah. So 10 years ago, the problems we got into starting to solve, were really not much different than the problems many of these same organizations have today. Which is, we've got a bunch of data on hand. We have some strategic decisions or policy decisions to make, and we need to somehow inform these decisions with the data that we have. And sometimes that's a bit of a daunting task, especially in today's world when there's just so much data. MATT: You know, you've got spreadsheets, you've got experts in the room who have inputs on things. And so, basically, we were trying to pull together all of these various sources of data and people and help them solve problems. And some of the earlier problems were trying to understand complaint data. That was the big one. So regulators are usually the receiver of complaints from the public. MATT: And if there's an issue with a lawyer, and they wanted to try and understand, what are the root causes of these complaints, and is there a way to, using analytics, to get ahead of them a little bit? And proactively get out there and try and deliver resources that can help to bring those complaints down. MATT: So yeah, the early days we're looking at complaint data. We've looked at program data to see if certain courses or programs are being effective in what they hope they might do. And then of late, we've been getting into self-assessments. And so, trying to understand how lawyers are self-assessing themselves against a model of professionalism. MARK: Yeah. And that's where you and I really got into some interesting conversations. And so, how does the platform ... How have you moved past Stand Point and gotten into this consulting piece, the lawyer self-evaluation? Can you describe where we're going with that? MATT: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So the first five or six years, we were just primarily doing one-off consulting projects, doing data analysis on those. And then at one point we thought, "You know, we've got a lot of experience here. We really now understand that the typical types of datasets that regulators and legal organizations are using. And we understand a lot of the problems they're trying to solve with that data. MATT: So what happens if we put that onto a platform and try to automate some of the analysis and the reporting so that we could deliver solutions faster to our customers, and also solutions that were more scalable?" Because when you're a consultant, you're only as good as you can run, as fast as you can run. But when you embed some of that knowledge into a platform, now you can scale it up. MATT: And so that's how we transitioned from just pure consulting and professional services into more of a platform. And then our very first customer on that platform was the Colorado Supreme Court, which was rolling out a voluntary self-assessment program to the lawyers of the state of Colorado. And so that's where we got our start about three years ago now with the platform itself. MARK: And if this is Avvy Pro that we're talking about, or that's the next step? MATT: That's right. No, Avvy Pro is the name of the platform, yeah. MARK: Okay. And you know, when I think about ... Matt, for many years as you're aware, I've done a lot of personal consulting if you will, going in and visiting law firms all over the country. And doing what we would call risk visits, and have been in literally well over 1200 firms now over the years. MARK: But we got to a point ... You see, this is a very expensive service. It really is. To do it one firm at a time sending somebody out in terms of the travel, it just, it doesn't scale up very well. And what I like about what you're doing is, you're taking this much, much further, and can take the risk management processes that I've been doing over the years, and bring it to the masses. MARK: That said, there are all kinds of products in the marketplace. In terms of even just Cloud-based case management systems, in and of them of themselves, they can be from an insurance perspective, a very effective risk management tool. What is the value of Avvy Pro, how do you see this defining yourself? What's the niche here that you're going after? MATT: Yeah, no, that's a good question. And you know, I think it's squarely in the same camp that you've been working on for all these years, Mark, which is risk reduction. MARK: Okay. MATT: And we've looked at multiple the types of value that the program provides. So one of the things the platform can provide for a lawyer is a fast way to determine what CPD, at first, they want to look at for the year. So doing a self-assessment results in a report that actually gives you your areas of priority, and it can even start to serve up some of the CLE resources that you might want to get into. MATT: So we see it as a time saver for lawyers. And we know that lawyers are very focused on saving time because they need to maximize the billable hours. And so the time savings is one thing, but at the end of it all, it always seems to come back to risk. Right? And how can we reduce risk to a practice, whether that's for a firm or for an individual attorney? MATT: And so at the end of the day, that's what we're delivering to lawyers and firms out there is a reduction in risk. And it's quantifiable, in the sense that there was the study out of New South Wales from the University of Melbourne, where they looked at a group of lawyers who took a professional self-assessment. And they studied this group of lawyers over a period of time, and they found that those lawyers had a 60% less chance of receiving a complaint than the lawyers in the group who hadn't taken the self-assessment. And so this has become the genesis of a lot of these PMBR activities from some of the regulators across the country and has really shown the light on the fact that you can reduce risks to your practice and into your firm immediately just by doing a self-assessment. MATT: And the interesting thing, Mark, is that it's not necessarily got to do with the scores you give yourself. In other words, whether you score high or low on your self-assessment, it doesn't really matter. It's just the process of going through that, which increases self-awareness and changes behavior. And the numbers show that you have a much less likely a chance of having a complaint if you've done one of these self-assessments. So, that's really the core value of what we're trying to do. MARK: Well, that's really interesting. What I'm thinking about as you share this, is sort of how cybersecurity education is evolving. And as you're well aware, I'm sure, the weak link in cybersecurity is the users in any law firm, any business, just due to social engineering. And there are some similar studies there that if you educate, appropriate behaviors or more responsible behaviors occur early on in the process. But it drops off over time. MARK: So I guess, sort of thinking about that, if I become a user of Avvy Pro, do I have the ability to, I don't know, keep this fresh in front of me? Is this kind of like a one-off, once and done thing, or is it something I can come back to over time, share with others in my firm? See where I'm going in terms of ... What's the model? I'm just trying to understand the model. MATT: Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. And so yeah, even though there is a one-off benefit to taking a self-assessment, you're absolutely right that there is a tail off of that benefit over time. And so the idea is that you revisit this, right? And the whole idea of self-assessing too is so that you can establish a benchmark for yourself. And ultimately, what you want to be able to do is move that mark forward, right? You want to have a continuous improvement cycle happening year over year as a professional. MATT: Because the self-assessment I took five years ago shouldn't be where I am today as a professional. I mean, we always want to continue to improve. And so the idea would be to revisit your self-assessment every six months, every year. MATT: What the right interval is, we're not exactly sure. But we do know that coming back to it and reassessing is definitely a way of refreshing on this. And then, what happens is you reset some of your benchmarks and your scores, and then the CLE resources that the platform provides change up based on what your priorities are this year. Because they might be different from last year, right? MATT: So yeah, continuous improvement is something that definitely needs to be looked at. And we actually did a study with a regulator on one of their programs. They had a small firm course that they put out, and they just didn't know if it was helping. And so we analyze some of the data on the lawyers who had taken that course, and it was similar to the self-assessment. MATT: Whereas they had seen an immediate value, but we had a five year study period and the tail off was very evident in the numbers. That the benefit of that program had reduced over those five years. So the whole message is, yeah, you've got to keep at it. You can't just stop. It's not like exercising, right? You don't go to the gym once or twice and then you're done. You've got to keep going back. MARK: Again, just to be clear for our listeners, you've talked about going in, doing a self-assessment, getting a score, and awareness can make a real difference. I assume that there's more to this than just sort of scoring yourself. That if I do get a low score, perhaps in, I don't know, client intake or calendaring or something like this, and I assume these are the types of procedures that you're looking at. Are there resources? MARK: I mean, what's the ultimate benefit to me if I become a client and get in, and go through this evaluation? What do I get for the effort? MATT: Right. And so yeah, you've nailed something there, interesting. Because one of the things we observed over the years is that there is no shortage of information available to lawyers out there. I mean there's websites and PDFs and courses, and there are so many resources available. What we saw was, typically the problem is that people don't know where to start. So they think they might need help in communications, for example, or calendaring or client intake like you said. But trying to go through and weed through and find the right resources is sometimes a bit of and challenge, and a time-consuming effort. MARK: Yes, I can relate to this. MATT: Yeah, so what we are trying to do is make that jump between that gap between my self-assessment and the resources that are available to me out there. And so what we've done is, again, we take that self-assessment and let's say you score yourself low on calendaring. The platform takes that low score on calendaring and then matches that, algorithmically, to the available resources in the platform library. MATT: And so the resources in the library are tagged according to their content. And so, your self-assessment will pull up a bunch of calendaring resources. Maybe it's a YouTube video, maybe it's a course, maybe it's a quick blog post from somebody on calendaring. But it will serve you the resources that are most applicable to the needs you've identified, which we think really starts to, again, save time for lawyers so that they're not out there Google searching their way around, trying to find things. MARK: Right. And in my mind, this is what really differentiates you from a lot of other types of platforms and systems, procedures, products available for lawyers to help in their practice. This goes in a completely different direction. I really like the idea. Again, this is risk management for the masses in terms of really scaling it up, so that any lawyer can ... Or I assume from an administrator or whoever wants access to this within a law firm can sign up. Very, very good. MARK: What's the future? Where do you see this going, short term and long term? MATT: Well, short term we're just trying to get the platform exposed to as many jurisdictions as possible. So we've got some good conversations happening out there right now with a bunch of areas. Typically, we have delivered the platform through a legal organization as opposed to direct to lawyers. And so it's been delivered by a regulator or a bar association. Or potentially an insurer like yourself. MATT: And then yeah, future, we've got lots of other ideas around the platform and how we can improve efficiency. And again, basically, reduce risk and save time for lawyers. One of the things we've been looking at, which we're really kind of curious about, is whether we can improve the CLE accreditation process, and collecting credits and submitting them to your regulator. Because as you know, lawyers need to need to have their number of credits every year. And it's different for every jurisdiction. MATT: And there's this ... If you look at the way the credits go, the regulator has the bag of credits, and they assign or permit certain service providers or education providers to give those credits out to lawyers who have come in and taken their courses. Right? MARK: Right. MATT: And then the lawyers take those credits and then what do they do? They give them right back to the regulator at some point and say, "I got my 10 credits for the year, I got my 20 credits for the year." MATT: Well, I was looking at that and I thought, "This is like a currency system, right?" It's basically a currency that comes from the regulator to the CLE provider, and then to the lawyer and then back to the regulator, and the regulator being the central bank. And so I've got some background in the blockchain space, and I looked at this and I thought, this is a solution, or the blockchain is a solution to taking that manual process of affidavits and sending PDFs, and yes, I was in that course on this date. And digitizing it with a token, a digital token. And so, one of the things we want to be able to do is say, okay, if you come into Avvy Pro, you do your self-assessment, you consume some resources which are CLE accredited. Let's make that real easy for you to get that credit from your regulator. And so that's their future vision, is to try and take this thing and then add on functionality. MARK: Yeah, I am loving this. Because over the years, trying to keep the manual sending stuff in and the states, if they're different, it's just a headache. But that's solving a good problem. I like that. Matt, it's really ... I so enjoy visiting with you and learning about all that's going on here. If any of our folks in the listening audience would like any additional information about Stand Point or Avvy Pro, is there a way they might be able to contact you? MATT: Yeah, certainly. So, individual lawyers who are curious about the platform and would like to try and take the self-assessment themselves can go to avvy.pro. And so that's A-V-V-Y dot pro, and they can jump in there and try it out, and have a look at what it delivers. And standpointdecisions.com is the professional service's website. And that would be for organizations, firms, bars, and regulators who'd be interested in finding out more about the work that we've done in the past. MARK: Yes. Yeah. And I assume you are interested, if a state wanted to look at doing something like this, similar to the colorized supreme court model that you share, I assume that that's something you guys are still looking at as well. This isn't all about moving into just the individual lawyer space. Am I correct about that? MATT: Absolutely. Yeah. No, absolutely. It all usually starts with the jurisdiction itself. And then they deliver access to the platform to their lawyers. MARK: Got It. Very good. Well, thank you. I appreciate your taking the time to visit. It's always a pleasure. And to all of you listening, I hope you found something of value today and if you have any thoughts about folks you'd like to hear from in the future or a topic you'd like to hear discussed, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. You can reach me at mbass@alpsnet.com again, mbass@alpsnet.com. Thanks for listening folks. Have a good one. Bye-bye.

MAG 05: Marriage Is Your First Ministry - Interview w/ Matt & Lisa Jacobson from Faithful Life podcast

Marriage After God

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 13, 2019 54:50

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.

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Third Party Candidates, Immigration, Howard Schultz, and Trump with Matt Plautz

Liberty Revealed

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 18, 2019 32:22

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

Will Crowdfunding and General Solicitation Change How Companies Raise Capital? [e298]

This Week In Film Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 3, 2018 27:26

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,

new york california texas philadelphia illinois companies car sec gofundme samaritan regulation correct crowdfunding raise capital solicitation matt yeah matt there matt well matt they nasir pasha

Episode 5 - All the benefits of ketones

Wild Health

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 26, 2018 29:09

What’s it take to make a ketone? Jody: OK, so what’s up. Last night at dinner I saw you guys order the exact same food, painstakingly divide up the olives and cheese and pickles on the charcuterie board, and then 50:50 split a dessert. And you’ve been pricking your fingers and testing your blood. I know you’re both super weirdos, but I feel like there’s something more going on. Matt: You caught us. So, we have a hypothesis about how we each metabolize ketones differently based on our genetics, and we’re doing a controlled 40 hour experiment where we eat the exact same calories, do the exact same workouts, sleep the same, and basically compare our BHB levels before and after exogenous ketones and also after a workout to look at utilization. Jody: Oh. that’s like one of the least weird things I’ve seen you guys do, but I do think I’d like to hear more. Intro music [1:33 -3:17] Mike: Matt and I have been obsessed about ketones for some time now. First, we were both playing around with ketogenic diets. Actually, I did my first ketogenic diet back in 1998. Lost like 50 pounds, then immediately put 70 back on when I went back to carbs. But then after I got healthy, we both started playing around with ketosis, for its health benefits, not diet. Matt: Yeah, a lot of people believe that ketones are the glue that hold together the fabric of longevity. Weather that’s true or not remains to be seen, but we at least know that ketones, specifically BHB has a host of beneficial effects for overall health. Alot which mimic calorie restriction. Mike: Calorie restriction has been shown to extend lifespan in a host of animals. It does this through a reduction in the insulin and the growth hormone/IGF-1 axis which eventually leads to more FOXO proteins in the nucleus and an upregulation of antioxidant production by the cell. Ketones do the same thing generally, we think by inhibition of histone deacetylases that repress transcription of the FOXO3a gene - allowing for more antioxidant production, but because ketones also directly reduce blood glucose and igf, they also affect the GH/IGF axis. In fact, it may have been the presence of ketone bodies during calorie restriction all along that lead to an increase in lifespan. (1) [3:17-5:15] Matt: Ketones, administered exogenously in non-human studies have been shown to extend lifespan as well, suggesting they ketones independently have an effect on lifespan, without the need for starvation or a ketogenic diet. Jody: what are you guys even talking about? I thought we were going to talk about your stupid dieting crap you’re always texting me about. Mike: Sorry man, maybe we jumped the gun. Matt and I just get so excited about ketones. I can’t help but get to talking about it in depth. Jody: Yeah, ketones and everything else on this podcast. Alright so the other day I get the text from you with a picture of a blood ketone device and the number 1.9 on it, along with a text saying 24 hour fast + hard bike ride. I could tell you were super proud of yourself, but honestly, I have no clue what youre talking about. I mean, I’m super proud about your fast bike, but that’s not groundbreaking. I remember talking a little bit about ketones in the fasting podcast, what are you doing with monitoring your ketones and why? Matt: Well, as we got into in the beginning, Ketones appear to function as cellular signals which in essence may prolong lifespan. Mike: Yeah basically independent of their effect on metabolism and the reduced oxidative stress associated with using fats instead of sugar for cellular energy, they also function on a molecular level to activate portions of your genome to promote longevity through transcription of FOXO3 gene which leads to production of things like superoxide dismutase and glutathione. Two huge players in the antioxidant world. Basically histone deacetaylaces block FOXO3 and BHB blocks these deacetylates. [5:15-7:48] Jody: there you go again. Can we do this with less biochem and more bro? Matt: Sure, circulating ketones may be the reason calorie restriction works. I’d like to live forever, therefore, I want ketones in my blood. Jody: So just go into ketosis, cool podcast over….. Mike: Hold up, let’s be honest. Ketosis is pretty tough for most people. I’d say the minority, like 2%, can stay in ketosis all the time. In fact I don’t personally know anyone who has stayed in ketosis for more than a few years without at least cycling some. So the question Matt and I keep playing with is: Can we increase our daily ketone value though time restricted eating? How does exercise and fasting affect our ketone levels? Do exogenous ketones have the same effect as endogenous. Meaning, can we just chug a $90 ketone ester drink everyday and get the same metabolic and cellular signaling effects? Jody: Finally 15 min into the podcast to tell me what we’re talking about. Matt: Yeah, this is super cool. So Mike and I have been playing around with blood ketone monitors. Basically a glucose monitor like where you prick your finger and get a value for your blood ketones. The number will usually be in the 0-3 mmol/L although some people in deep ketosis can crank it up to 5. Jody: Right, I’m familiar with this to some degree. But I thought you had to be on a ketogenic diet for like 3 days to really drop into ketosis. Mike: Ketosis is the body’s response to starvation. You can dip into mild ketosis pretty quickly through combining a relatively low carb diet at baseline, fasting, and throwing in some exercise to help deplete your glycogen stores early. Matt: Yeah Valter Longo’s work on the FMD is basically doing the same thing, just over a longer period of time. Granted, what we’re talking about is bigger shock to the system, but it’s also a lot faster Mike: yeah and we think, could put you into a spot of ketone production, histone acetylation, FOXO3 activation, and mTOR inhibition much quicker. Jody: Right, what data do you have to support that. Matt: 0% [7:48-10:30] Mike: Yeah, let's be clear here, there is no data to support this, kinda. Well actually, now that I think about it there is some mouse data. This study in SCIENCE, yes I said SCIENCE from 2011 showed that fasting, CR and the administration of exogenous ketones to human and mouse tissue decreased histone deacetylase activity. IN human kidney cells treated with bHB levels as low as 1 mmol, with an almost linear relationship. Meaning the higher the ketones, the higher to blockage and the more advantage. Next they tested the theory on live mice through fasting 24 hours (about the equivalent of 3 days for humans) a CR diet, and also with exogenous ketone administration. They found ketone levels of 1.5 with 24 hour fast, 0.6 with CR and 1.2 with exogenous ketones. All levels and methods of increasing bhb at the cellular level lead to histone deacetylation, as well as FOXO3 activation and in this study even helped protect kidney cells from oxidative stress. Jody: So, what are those empty bottles over on the counter? I feel like they’re relevant to this discussion. Matt: Yep. That’s 2 25g bottles of ketone esters. Jody: Seriously, sign me up so basically anyway I can get ketones in my body is the way to go? Mike: According to this study, I don’t really see a downside. Although there is some evidence that people like me, with PPARalpha mutations may have increased cholesterol production in the face of circulating ketone bodies. I’ve been enacting my plan for some time now, with pretty regular ketone production and exogenous ingestion, and haven’t seen a big spike in cholesterol. --Personal test N of 1. Matt: This is super interesting, because I can’t get my ketones as high as you. If I fast all day, workout, and ingest exogenous ketones, I’m maybe at like 1.2. Not the 1.9 you’re getting. Mike: Yeah could be my cells just aren’t as good at utilizing ketones. In which case, that could make for some pretty nice advantages assuming they still have the histone deacetylase activity. Wow we are way off topic now, and in the realm of fake science. Let’s get back to the pseudo science instead. [10:30-16:00] Discussion of previous day foods and results Jody: Yep, Matt, tell me how you do this, whats the protocol. [16:00-22:11] Matt: So i’ve told you how I eat previously, but briefly, I wake up, have breakfast which is black coffee, cinnamon and chaga. Then skip lunch. Drink a bunch of water. Exercise late morning or midday, then have some MCT oil around lunchtime. Sometimes I’ll take exogenous instead, but that’s expensive, so usually not. If I do, I prefer the ketone esters because I’m not a huge fan of some of the other stuff in ketone salts, and also cause a higher bump in bHB. That’s sort of my lunch. Then I don’t eat again until dinner. The goal, is to deplete glycogen stores as soon as possible to push the liver into fatty oxidation and increase bhb in the blood. That way I spend more time with ketones circulating during the day and get all the benefits we are talking about. Mike: Similar for me, although I try to workout in the morning. Get that glycogen depleted as soon as possible. The advantage here, as you might notice is that we’re only doing time restricted eating. So still consuming the same number of calories, but getting several hours of ketosis and pumping it up with exogenous ketones to improve the histone deacetylation. The other thing that matter is to have a relative low glycogen store in the first place. You’ll see higher ketone levels sooner if you’re not filled to the brim with glycogen. So a higher fat diet at baseline say 60% or so, along with regular exercise should put you closer to nutritional ketosis and allow you to jump off the cliff a little sooner. Jody: Ok, so in general, low carb diet at baseline. Start fasting after dinner the night before. Work out the next morning, don’t eat until dinner and take some exogenous ketones in the afternoon. Matt: That’s one way to do it. Of course you could just water fast for 3 days or do the FMD for 5 days and probably get a similar response, although you may be in ketosis a bit longer. Mike: Yeah, but the nice thing about this protocol is it allows me to spend more days in doing this. If I do a 3 day water fast or a 5 day FMD, realistically, I’m gonna refeed for a few weeks before doing it again. With this protocol, I can get away with this every other day. Thats a lot of time with ketones, granted not as much as long term keto diet, but a nice alternative, especially for someone like me to cannot tolerate ketosis with my genetics. [22:11- 23:37] Jody: So what sort of exercise are you guys doing. Mike: My preference is HIIT stuff. I want glycogen depletion, so I I’m going for intensity. Studies have shown that work near your VO2 max or lactate threshold deplete glycogen the fastest, to the tune of 5 x faster than easier slower efforts. (3) If you think about it physiologically you get 32 mols of ATP for every glucose molecule during aerobic exercise versus 2 mmol of atp for every glucose molecule from anaerobic exercise. Thus for the same cellular energy usage, you burn way more glucose with anaerobic exercise. So interval anaerobic efforts should burn way more glycogen than a slow easy talkative aerobic effort. Matt: Furthermore, HIIT has also been shown to improve basal metabolic rate for hours after exercise leading to even more glycogen depletion. [23:37-27:45] Jody: How about the exogenous ketones. You guys mentioned esters and salts. How do I know which one to buy. Matt: That’s pretty easy, how rich are you. Jody: like in pesos? Matt: Exactly, you’re probably buying the salts then. They are way cheaper, like maybe a 2-3$ per serving, but have a ton of salt in the form of sodium, potassium, and magnesium. They use the salts to stabilize the ketones. They are pretty salty, but not too bad tasting. Many of them come with some MCT power as well, which you may or may not want. Technically the MCT is breaking the fast, , but you should still have a relative uptick of ketone levels - which is out goal. Mike: Yeah, I’m not a fan of the MCT, too much sat fat for me and messes up my cholesterol. You can find ketone salts without the MCT as well. Matt: And then there are esters. They taste like rocket fuel and cost as much as I paid for my first car. Jody: that's not much. Matt: well, per serving, they are close to $30 per serving. But they have about double the effect on blood ketones. Which is hard to argue with. I think basically if money isn’t an issue, esters are the way to go, although there have been some concerns about contaminants. Jody: Ok, so to summarize: Wake up fasted and continue with some black coffee and water, exercise sometime in the morning with a long HIIT workout to deplete glycogen. Drink plenty of water, and down some ketones after your workout to bump your ketones back up. Esters are best, but salts are cheaper, with or without MCT in them. Then stay fasting for the rest of the afternoon, and eat dinner. This should get your blood bHB to at least the mmol range and should be causing some histone deacetylation, activation of antioxidant, life prolonging genes like FOXO3 as well as improving your insulin sensitivity, and spending more time with inactivation of the GH/IGF-1 axis which can prolong life as well. Mike: You got it. So Tomorrow, let's all do this together. Jody, you can use my old used finger lancets to check your bHB. Sorry, those things are expensive, can’t have you using fresh ones. Then we’ll report back and record a follow up talking about how we felt and how high we got our ketones and thus our FOXO3 activation. [28:05-end] Dudes prick their fingers(!!) and discuss results https://iubmb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/iub.1627 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3735349/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4278539

Episode 4 - The World’s Perfect Diet

Wild Health

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 20, 2018 52:14

Jody: Matt and Mike, I’m confused. There are 4 trillion books and articles about what the best diet is. The fasting trial went awesome, but what should my everyday diet be? What is the perfect diet? Matt: Well, a few years ago I decided that I would no longer discuss 3 things in public: Religion, politics and diet. It’s a no win situation and the easiest way to get into a fight. No one listens. Everyone has set opinions and just gets ticked off when you ticked off when you talk about it. I’m out. Mike: But we definitely have very strong opinions based on our medical training and the hundreds of books and articles we’ve read. We talk about it non-stop with each other because we don’t care if we piss each other off. Matt: Oh, yeah, I love talking about. Just not in public. Jody, if you turn off the recording, I’m happy to dive in. Jody: Ok, sure. Click. It’s off. Matt: That sounded like you just made a clicking sound with your mouth. Jody: What?!?!. Come on, you know me. Trust me. 2:00 – 4:00 Matt: Alright, since it’s just us, let’s go. Tell me what you do now. Jody tells us what he does now and we discuss. 4:20 – 5:30 Matt summarizes: I just made this up. Eat food, mostly plants, not too much. And if you’re great, great grandmother wouldn’t recognize it, then don’t consider it food. Mike: That sounds familiar. Jody: Yeah, because he just ripped that directly off of Michael Pollan word for word. Matt: How dare you accuse me…… Ok, ok. You got me. Problem is that I’ve read hundreds of books and thousands of articles on nutrition and food and I’ve yet to be able to sum it up more succinctly than Michael Pollan did in The Omnivore’s Dilemma more than a decade ago with that statement. So, if you haven’t ready that book, read it. It’s definitely more complicated than that in general, but every other recommendation I could give comes with some caveats and explanation. That’s a great summary. And it gets you at least one pareto law there. You get at least 80% of the benefit. Michael: Right, but we’ve got more than 2 sentences worth of time here. Our goal is always 2 pareto laws, to get to 96%, so let’s dig in a little and go a bit deeper. As much as you and I obsess over this stuff, I bet there’s a few things we could teach people. 5:30 – 7:00 Jody: Can we start by explaining those two sentences. Matt: For sure. The beauty of them is that it conveys so much information is so few words, but a bit of clarification is in order. First off, eat food. The next sentence explains that a bit, but a bag of Cheetos and a frankendog you get at the gas station isn’t food. Calories don’t equal food. Your great great grandmother didn’t have snickers bars, lean cuisine meals, and powerade. So, don’t eat it. Your grandmother did have pot roast, venison, carrots, and spinach and onions from her garden. Those are foods. Jody: So, stay away from 99% of the things in the grocery store. Matt: Exactly. I was so proud of my kids the other day when a neighbor told me they were at her house and when she offered them a snack my 6 year old said “actually, we only eat things that come out of the ground.” I acted embarrassed and apologized if it seemed rude, but I was totally pumped. My kids absolutely do not eat what I’d like for them to. They beg for ice cream and other junk that other kids get, but I was so proud that maybe it’s getting through to them. 7:00 – 12:30 Mike: And the mostly plants part and not too much is pretty simple. The more micronutrient dense whole vegetables you can consume the better. In general we all are overfed due to the convenience of food in modern society and the social aspect surrounding meals. So, generally, eating low calorie micronutrient dense foods is a generally safe plan, and the food that checks that box are vegetables. We’ve already talked on the podcast about calorie restriction and it’s health and longevity benefits, so go back and listen to that if you haven’t already. Jody: OK, that’s all good and well, but I’m trying to think what people can actually take away from this and how they can improve their diet. Obviously, following those two rules could have a massive benefit, but let’s get specific. Why don’t you guys walk me through a typical day of food for you and let’s discuss why. I’ve seen you both without your shirts on more than I’d like to and you obviously eat a pretty good diet to have 6 packs at whatever age you are. Mike: My diet has been pretty variable over the last couple years, something we can get into later, but my general day fits one of two molds: fed or fasting. For the most part I am alternating between eating a normal breakfast, lunch, dinner on fed days and fasting from 6pm to 8pm on fasting days (26 hours of fasting). This is just what I’ve found works for me, but generally I’m interesting in achieving some of the advantages of fasting, without sacrificing too much performance or activity. More on that later. So on those fed days my breakfast is generally oatmeal, with blueberries, apples and peanut butter, made with almond milk. Plus coffee, lots of coffee. I’ll generally work out in the morning after breakfast, and lunch will be a green smoothie, made with almond milk, about 2 cups of spinach, ½ an apple, a handful of broccoli sprouts, macadamia nuts, and some sort of plant protein power. Sometimes I’ll throw some flax, hemp seeds, or chia seeds in there. As well as some turmeric. The cocktail changes daily and is a nice way to add variety. It’s also a great way to get some raw micronutrient dense foods without cooking or a lot of prep work. Dinner is all over the place, and variable based on the kids, if we’re going out, wtc. In general, I have a salad with whatever I’m eating. That salad usually has some nuts or seeds on it, often has some sliced avocado, and I make all my own dressings out of EVOO or Avocado oil- typically with apple cider vinegar. The remainder of the meal is typically fish, veggie pasta, or grains and veggies. Some of the things I’m really jazzed on are fish tacos- been really dialing in this nectarine, avocado, cabbage and kale slaw that just makes those tacos so delicious. Also, been really into chickpea pasta which I often make with a ton of veggies and a sage and olive oil sauce. You might be able to tell, I’m mostly vegan, with the exception of fish. We can get into that later, as well. 12:30 – 13:30 Jody: What’s up with the broccoli sprouts, is that like alfalfa sprouts. Mike: Kinda, except they are like the best possible thing you can put in your body. To list a few this molecule appears boost your immune system, fight cancer, act as an antiinflammatory agent, and even induce apoptosis. (0) It can help prevent CVD, alzheimers, fight polution, and improve insulin resistance. Basically, name a disease and sulflorophane either helps prevent it or make it better. It’s present in broccolli, but about 50x higher concentration in broccolli sprouts. So I grow these things in a jar for 3 days, then freeze them and throw them in a smoothie. Don’t cook them as it can damage the molecule. Matt: Yeah, broccoli sprouts are a super food for sure, but everything else you eat is total crap. Mike: well why don’t you share your diet with us first, then we can make fun of each other in sync. 13:30 – 15:00 Matt: Yeah, that’s a good idea. Mike and I are different. We’ve had genetic testing and know that we need different diets based on our SNPs and experimentation. So, here’s what I ate yesterday: At 0700 I’m getting kids ready for school and I had coffee. Black coffee. Mold free. no calories from sweetener or cream. The only thing put in it is chaga, which is a mushroom and cinnamon. We could do a whole episode on the potential health benefits of chaga, but this drink has basically zero calories in it, so I get the benefit of a continued fast as I start my day, but I get all the incredible antioxidant and super food beneifts of coffee, caffeine, chaga, and cinnamon. Jody: Can you dig into that before you move along? I thought we needed to cut back on coffee. Matt: Well, sure if you want to live a shorter, more crappy life. The benefits of coffee are clear. 15:00 – 16:00 Mike: Truth, the data on coffee is in, and in my opinion, it’s clear there are numerious health benefits of coffee. To rattle some of those off: Coffee makes you not die: Seriously in a 2008 study in Annals of Internal Med found was an inverse relationship with coffee consuption and CVD. Basically the more coffee people drink the less CVD related mortality. (1) Coffee makes you smarter: it inhibits adenosine and basically functions as a stimulant making you happier and allowing you to think faster. (2) It’s full of nutrients and antioxidants like manganesse, niacin, riboflavin, pantothenic acid. It helps detox your liver: reducing mortality from liver cirrhosis and liver cancer (3) Helps fight off alzheimer's disease (4) Jody: Sweet , what about cinnamon and that chaga deal? Mike: Yeah Cinnamon is one of those things with virtually no downside. It has anti-inflammatory effects (5), reduces heart disease risk through lowering fasting glucose levels and LDL concentration (6), and to top it all off, it’s loaded with antioxidants. Jody: So cinnamon is basically like a superfood that everyone should be taking? Matt, what about that weird mushroom thing you were talking about? 16:00 – 17:00 Matt: Well, first off, it’s a super cool looking mushroom that looks like a big clump of dark dirt or bark growing on birch trees in the northern hemisphere. I would love to say I harvest it like I do my other mushrooms, but I just buy it online. I live too far south. It has tons of vitamins an minterals. B comple, zinc, calcium, vitamin D, selenium, manganese, copper, potassium, rubidium (Jody, I know you’re always looking for good sources of rubidium), iron, and others. It’s an antioxidant, can reduce LDL, there’s some research that it slows cancer growth, has triterpines, which are good for you (either google that or just trust me), supports the immune system by regulating production of cytokines, and several other benefits as well. It’s a really cool food. So, that’s my breakfast 17:00 – 20:00 Jody: Then lunch Matt: OK, so sometimes I eat lunch and sometimes I just continue fasting with more coffee. If I continue fasting to really get my time restricted window down, I’ll usually have some coffee with MCT oil in it. That MCT being converted to ketones and caffeine gives the metal boost that most people want in the afternoon without the crappy 5 hour energy or something that has aspartame or other harmful chemicals in it. And if I have some important mental or deep work to do, then I’ll usually add a packet of lion’s mane mushroom coffee. It’s a nootropic that increases neurogenic growth factor, and really gives an amazing 1, 2, 3 punch with the caffeine, ketones, and lion’s mane without the sluggishness of food and a big lunch. I get really productive work done. Jody: Ok so skipping one meal, breakfast, is probably a bit of a stretch for most people already, and we’ve talked on the podcast before about the benefits of time restricted eating, but skipping both breakfast and lunch is a bit much. What if you do eat lunch. 20:00 – 21;20 Mike: Well, really quickly. Just in case someone missed it, there are big benefits to time restricted eating, or as some people call it, intermittent fasting. They’ve done rat studies where they fed them the exact same amount of calories each day, but when they did it in a smaller feeding window they did so much better metabolically. It seems to lead to more energy, better insulin sensitivity, more mental clarity, and a lot of other benefits. I’m with Matt in trying to get that feeding window down as small as possible. 8 hours if I can, or even 4 hours if possible. Only eating from 2-6pm is my ideal goal, but as active as we are, it’s hard to get enough calories in such a short window. 21:20 – 22:00 Matt: Yeah, exactly. So, I usually break my fast right after I workout. So, occasionally I will eat in the AM, but only if I’ve earned those calories. Otherwise, you asked about my lunch. My classic go to lunch is 16 ounces of bone broth, which I make big batches of at home every couple of weeks and some almonds or walnuts with it. I feel like a million bucks when I get that really nice shot of healthy fats and protein, and all the nutrient dense goodness that is bone broth and true nuts. Jody: What do you mean true nuts. Matt: I mean not peanuts. They’re a legume, and I don’t count the as a healthy food for me. Too inflammatory. 22:00 – 23:00 Mike: Here’s one place where Matt and I differ. I eat peanuts daily, as peanut butter to the tune of 2-4 tablespoons. And my CRP and inflammatory markers are nonexistent. I eat tons of other legumes as well, basically have to if your vegan. Now that doesn’t mean everyone will tolerate it as well, you‘re going to have to experiment yourself, or get your gut microbiome tested to really know if your sensitive to that stuff. If there is anything to really worry about with peanuts, it’s probably their likelihood of containing aflatoxins. Peanuts grow underground, and have a tendency to be colonized with aspergillus which is a source of aflatoxins, which may be a carcinogenic compound to the liver and raise the risk of liver cancer. 23:00 – 24:50 Jody: Ok ok, you guys play nice. Matt, What about the whole plants thing you mentioned earlier you haven’t mentioned a plant all day in your diet yet? Matt: Well, first off, where do you think coffee, chaga, cinnamon, and nuts come from. Those animals? Nope. And if I don’t have my bone broth with me, then I focus on the same thing: Nutrient density and healthy fats. So, a huge salad or giant bowl of vegetables with olive oil and salt and pepper is perfect for me. Jody: What about protein? I know you workout a lot. Shouldn’t we be focused on protein? Matt: Absolutely not. Maybe if you’re a developing country. But look, the vast majority of Americans get way too much protein. Protein is a dirty fuel. You should get just enough for building muscle and repairing your body, but it shouldn’t be your source of fuel. It has too many problems associated with it. You, I, and nearly everyone listening to this probably gets plenty of protein unless they’re a vegan, in which case they should think about protein. But for an omnivore, it’s just not near the top of what you should be concerned with. 24:50 – 27:30 Mike: I think a good rule of thumb is 1 gm of protein for every kg of body weight. That's the max you need, even if you’re an athlete. Protein got way over hyped in response to the low carb fad diets as an alternative macronutrient to carbs and fats (which most people still thought were bad for you). In general, I’d say worry way more about the quality of the food you are putting in you and forget about the macronutrient profile. Jody: You keep saying macronutrients, what are you talking about. Mike: Macronutrient just means the % of calories coming from proteins, carbs, and fats. I don’t think the numbers matter, unless you are going for nutritional ketosis. And the %’s will vary vastly from one healthy diet to the next, take mine and Matts for example. I eat about 50% carbs, 40% fat, and 10 % protein. I bet matt is closer to 10% carbs, 70% fat, and 20% protein. But generally, we are both eating healthy, and in ways optimized for our own performance and body type. Jody: Got it, ok Matt, what about dinner? 27:30 – 28:50 Matt and Mike and Jody discuss why personalized diets are so important and their experience with ketogenic diet and why it worked great for Matt, but not for Mike when they tried it. 28:50 – 31:00 Matt: Same goal. Super nutrient dense food that comes from whole food sources, mainly plants. My go to is an instapot concoction I make. I combine vegetables from my garden and farm. What is ripe and in season. This is very important. I think there’s a very important nutrient density difference in local foods that you eat with the rhythms of the seasons compared to foods flown from around the world after being picked before their ripe and then gassed to make them ripen. Big difference. So, I combine that with wild and cultivated mushrooms. Jody: Oh, yeah, shrooms. Matt: Not those shrooms. These are magic, but not psychoactive. Magic because of their nutrient density. I inoculate logs and grow golden oyster, shiitake, lion’s mane, and a lot of other species at my farm, and we also forage and find tons of milky’s, chicken of the woods, maitake, chanterelles, morels, boletes, and so many amazingly nutritious and delicious wild foods. Now, talk about nutrient density. Nothing is higher on my list than wild foraged mushrooms. And then I add the most nutrient dense protein and fat source I know, which is bone broth and organ meats. Yesterday for me that was lamb liver and heart that I got from my close friend who raises sheep in a truly beautiful and humane way on pasture their entire life. Jody: Hold up. Did you just say lamb heart. Matt: Yes. Don’t be like my 6 year old daughter who just says “oooh”. It’s one of my biggest pet peaves about our society that we’ve been trained culturally to only eat the least nutritious part of the animal, the muscle. It’s crazy, and honestly kind of boring if you ask me. You get so much more rich nutrition from the organs, and I find it a little unethical really. At my restaurant we’ve been trying to teach guests that “we don’t raise filets”. We raise cattle. No one grows a lamb chop. We birth, care for, and raise sheep. The entire animal. We should respect the animal by consuming as much as possible, and we should respect ourselves and our bodies by feeding them the most nutritious parts. Jody: OK, pretty sure you lost some people, but basically, bone broth, locally raised vegetables, wild foraged mushrooms, and organ meats. Anything else. 31:00 – 32:00 Matt: Well, that’s pretty close to the perfect meal for me. If you want my true and total weirdness to come out, then I will confess that my end goal is to get to the point where all of those things I’ve planted, raised, and killed myself. To me, that’s the ultimate meal and that’s why I have a farm and am trying to learn to hunt and learn traditional skills like butchery. Is that weird? Absolutely. And I’m not a kill joy that’s going to point out the inhumanity of feed lots when someone at my table orders a traditional filet. But there’s something about being that connected to my food that gets me super jazzed. And obviously, I’m in KY and am never going to be able to provide my own salt, spices, or some things. But the closer to this ideal I can get the better. Jody: alright…….so, basically you want to go back in time thousands of years and throw away all the progress we’ve made with agriculture, technology, the division of labor, and our ability to spend our time doing other productive things than just growing, hunting, and preparing food. 32:00 – 33:10 Matt: Well, no. Ok, kind of. I mean, I’m all in favor of appropriate technology for making our lives better. But the key word is appropriate, which we don’t have time to unpack. I just want to be more connected to my food. What I just described is obviously not for many people, but the nutrient dense part I totally stand by. You can do all of that with food you buy from the store or your farmer’s market. No need to get all crazy intense like I do. Jody: So…...what’s that diet called? Is that paleo, keto, what? Matt: Well, I don’t think it’s got a label. It’s definitely pretty close to those things. You could definitely call it paleo, but it’s a bit more than that. And it’s definitely not keto with all the wild mushrooms and vegetables, which technically have too many carbs to truly be in ketosis. Trust me, I’ve tested by BHB levels with pretty much every variation of this. Jody: BHB levels? 33:10 – 34:45Matt: Ketones. Jody: Right. That’s why I thought you were keto. Matt: Well, I am, sometimes. I do occasionally try to go hard into ketosis, at which time I’ll cut out the carbs. There are major benefits to ketones and the diet that leads to them. Autophage and similar benefits as fasting. But I cycle this, as I think there are also tremendous benefits to all the plants that I have to cut out to start truly producing a lot of ketones. Jody: So, how often to cycle and how do you choose? Matt: Well, I’m always a fan of trying to go all ancestral and wild as possible and let nature be the guide when I can. So, what I mean by that is that I will eat tons of the wild mushrooms when they’re in season. I eat asparagus in the spring when they’re ready to harvest. And I eat vegetables in the summer and fall when they’re ripe and we’re harvesting in my area. In the winter is usually when I try to eat keto more. Just like people 300 years ago living in Kentucky would have much less carbs and fresh veggies available in the winter, that’s when it makes sense for me to live on meat and fat and be more often in ketosis. I think the seasons and what is available locally is the best guide for me personally as to when I’ll eat keto, fast, or focus on super nutrient dense plants. A plant that I would the crap out of when it’s in season I’ll avoid when it’s not. Jody: And I assume you’ll link to all the scientific articles in the show notes. 34:45 – 35:50 Matt: Oh, for sure. And just off the top of my head I can count…...upwards of…...zero articles to backup my thought that this is the perfect diet for me. Mike: Ok, that’s helpful. Matt: I mean, seriously, we could do a whole episode on the benefits of a ketogenic diet. I think that’s been talked about ad nauseum. The affects on insulin sensitivity, longevity, mental acuity, etc. Very similar to the data on fasting. We could definitely link that that. And we could provide tons and tons of data on the benefits of a plant based diet in general when we’re talking about whole plants, especially leafy greens, broccoli, and vegetables with super high nutrient density and super food components. Antioxidants, phytonutrients, blah, blah, blah. Eat your veggies. The problem is that I believe very strongly in all 3 of those things, so this method of cycling according to nature makes the most sense in my mind when it comes to practically applying this knowledge. Jody: Mike, you do the same? Do you cycle in and out of ketosis. 35:50 – 38:30 Mike: Nope. I mean, we can all agree to cut out sugar, processed foods, and things like that, but it turns out that the perfect diet for you isn’t the perfect diet for me because I’m a different person with different genetics. I’m stoked for you, Matt, that you’ve had such a great experience with keto. And from what I can tell, it seems like your experience is the majority. When you look at the data out there, people on nutritional ketosis diets seem to have overall improvements in cholesterol, which suggests improved CV risk, improved insulin sensitivity, which leads to less DM2, and a lot even feel more fresh, clear headed, and even perform better- especially as endurance activities. Unfortunately, there is a minority of people, like me, who have a different experience. About 1.5 years ago I tried nutritional ketosis. Actually I did it as a fat kid when I was 18 or so, but didn’t know enough to get labs checked. That lasted about 4 months, and I lost a ton of weight and put it all back on when I went back to carbs. But last year, early 2017, I gave nutritional ketosis another go, with the goal of improving my cholesterol and insulin sensitivity - for my overall CVD risk. I’ve always had bad cholesterol, despite generally eating a clean diet and exercising regularly. So I went into ketosis. I ate healthy, a lot like the stuff you are eating Matt, just les carbs. It took me about

Episode 2 - How to live forever with fasting (ok, well at least longer and better)

Wild Health

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 20, 2018 32:31

How to live forever the Fasting Episode 0- 1:00 Jody: Guys, I don’t want to die. Matt: Shut your mouth Jody: Sorry. I’m just scared. Mike: Seriously, keep your pie hole shut Jody: What did I say? Matt: You’re not hearing us. Just don’t eat, man. You can talk. Just quit shoving calories down your gullet. Jody: And I’ll live forever? Mike: Well…….maybe……… 1:00 - 2:40 Mike: Ok, so no you’re not going to live forever, but if you want to extend your life, then honestly, simply eating less is probably the absolute best way to do it. And that’s a pretty cheap, easy intervention. Matt: Except it’s not completely simple. Yes, calorie restriction has to been shown to really lead to increased longevity in a lot of animal models. It not only leads to longer life, but better longer life as well and extends median and maximal life span in rats, mice, fish, flies, worms, monkeys, and yeast. Jody: That’s really exciting. I can’t wait to tell my pet yeast and flies. They’re gonna be so pumped. What about humans? That’s what I happen to be. Or pretty close to it. Mike: Great point. Yes, it’s pretty difficult to replicate some of these studies in human. You can double a fly’s life span in a study and it only takes about 2 weeks to get results and no one is crying over not being able to go out for pizza with their friends. So, it’s both hard to extrapolate this data, and it’s hard to repeat in humans. Matt: Right, but we we do know a few things…...we think. The fact that we see this effect in multiple species means it “probably” applies to many other species not studied, including us because it doesn’t seem to be a species specific adaptation, and when it applies to primates, it usually applies to us. And there was that really great U of Wisc study of primates where they restricted calories by 30%, and the monkeys were living to be the equivalent of like 130 in human years. And, they were living better! Less calories reduces metabolic rate and oxidative damage and improve age-related markers like insulin resistance. So, you don’t just live longer. You actually age more slowly, which is different. It’s better. 2:40 - 3:50 Jody: Sold. I’ll just cut 30% off my cheesburger and fries and live forever with the amazing, disease free body I have now. Mike: Well…….if it was that simple we wouldn’t be talking about it. Matt: You’re gonna rain on our parade and talk about the brain integrity study, aren’t you. Mike: Yep. It’s almost like you and I have discussed this before. Jody, before you or your grey mouse lemur primate go balls to the wall with calorie restriction you should check out the study at Nature.com just this year. Yes, these lemurs lived longer. 50% longer. So, translating that to humans that’s like going from 80 to 120, and they seemed to live better like the other studies with reduced aging-associated diseases and preserved brain white matter. BUT, they had accelerated loss of grey matter in the cerebrum. Matt: Ok, ok. So, yes, Jody probably doesn’t have much grey matter to spare. But what does this mean exactly? They still had all those benefits, just like all the other studies as well, and this one, single downside. Seems like the balance of benefit to harm is still pretty heavily in the benefit category, right? 3:50 - 4:50 Mike: Well, probably. And like you and I have discussed in the past, we may be able to moderate or eliminate that downside by getting a little more clever than a simple, strict 30% calories restriction forever. Jody: The suspense is killing me. Any chance we skip the talk of IGF, gene transcription, protein synthesis modulators, etc and just tell me what to do. Matt: We got you. We’ll give you some action points, but let’s geek out just a bit more for the science nerds out there. Let’s dig into this lemur study. I love this study because these primates are very similar to humans, not just metabolically, but also when it comes to their brain aging. They get amyloid lesions, which correlates to Alzheimer’s in humans, so we think they’re a very good model to compare to. So, let’s discuss. Jody, why would you care about your grey matter and if it atrophies? Jody: Seems bad. What do you mean? Matt: Well, you’re brain isn’t going to look worse in a bikini with atrophied grey matter. Your thick skull has it hidden. So, why do you care? 4:50 - 5:40 Jody: Well, I don’t want to pee my pants and forget my kid’s name when I’m old. Matt: Exactly. It’s obviously the effect that’s important. And luckily for us, they studied that’s it. The headline of the story is that the grey matter atrophied, and that’s what everyone was talking about. But when you look at these monkeys’ performance on motor and cognitive tests they actually didn’t really have a drop off. So, I would absolutely hate for anyone to throw the baby out with the bathwater based on this and say not to calorie restrict because of this MRI finding that no one showed actually had a clinical effect. Jody: So…...it doesn’t matter if the grey matter atrophies. Or it does matter. Matt: That’s an easy answer. I have no idea. I’m just saying, we have real clinical benefits, and there are what LOOK like negative effects on MRI, but absolutely no proof of clinical negative effects. Jody: So, you’re not worried about grey matter atrophy? 5:40 - 6:50 Matt: I definitely didn't’ say that. I want my grey matter to be plump and robust as possible if I had a choice, but I don’t want to give this more credit than it’s due. You’ll notice that CR actually had sparing effects on the white matter. So, I have no idea what this means. Performance wasn’t affected one way or the other in this small primate study. There’s clearly a big benefit to calorie restriction, and if we somehow can mitigate this quote-unquote problem, then I’m all for it. If I figure out how, then I’m all in. Otherwise, I’m still a big fan of CR. Let’s just talk about how exactly now. Jody. Yes, lets. Because the more I think about it, I’m not sure I actually want to cut 30% off my cheeseburger the rest of my life. Mike: Well, I don’t think you necessarily have to. You see the reason CR works is because, we think it reduces things like the igf-1 axis and the tyrosine kinase pathway. Both of these functions are active in the fed state and can lead to aging, cancer, diabetes, heart diseases. But CR and fasting also works by activating cellular mechanisms for autophagy and apoptosis. Autophagy means to eat one-self. Jody: Dude, that doesn’t sound good. 6:50 - 8:40 Mike: I know, but what if your cells are just eating the weak broken-down parts of themselves. That's an oversimplification of the process, but basically calorie restriction induces a fasting state that leads to your cells looking to themselves for nutrients and energy. They automatically activate autophagosomes which scavenge the cell for broken proteins, old organelles, mitochondria, and other structures in disrepair. In essence, it’s a way for your cells to be out with the old and in with the new. Without fasting, or calorie restriction, you’re cells don’t go into autophagy and don’t get the chance to clean out themselves. Apoptosis, is similar, although it happens on a higher level, leading to cellular destruction of old broken cells and eventually replacement with new ones. Both, mechanisms occur in response to CR or fasting and are the panacea of longevity research right now. The idea being that cell rejuvenation and regeneration leads to management of and prevention of chronic diseases such as diabetes, CVD, Alzheimer's, autoimmune diseases, basically anything that can kill you. So, getting to my point, you don’t have to activate these pathways with strict chronic calorie restriction for the rest of your life, turns out you can turn these pathways on and off relatively quickly, and still gain some of the benefits without losing 30% of your calories. For example, anybody that follows this literature knows about the man, the myth, the legend. Valter Longo. He’s shown pretty good results with his fasting mimicking diet, which is not as difficult as traditional fasts, probably has the same benefits, and I have personally used……….. 8:40 - 12:35 Matt: Ok, so I have some issues with the FMD. My first issue is that they sell a product to go along with it. Now, when I first heard this I completely dismissed the whole thing outright. Honestly, it made me a little mad. I had always felt like the CR data was not only very convincing because of its sophistication, but also because I’m very, very skeptical of medical research as a whole because there’s just so much stinking money from pharmaceutical companies and so many conflicts of interest that it’s hard to trust. But what could be more free from conflict than something that is the absence of consumerism or paying for pills. Who benefits from you buying and eating less? So, it just really ticked me off to see a product all of the sudden tied to the research. Of course, I then found out later that Dr. Longo donates his shares to a non-profit and doesn’t take money from it. So, I have massive respect for Dr. Longo and his work and I’m not suggesting anything nefarious of the man, but I’m still a little skeptical of this product. I don’t think it should be hard for people to get the same benefits, just as easy, without buying something. Having said that, I totally get that having a pre-packaged meal may mean higher compliance and benefit for more people. I get it. There’s just something about eating food from a wrapper that will always bother me, especially if I can get the same results without doing that. So, for me, what I recommend to my family and do myself is a similar 5 day FAST with homemade bone broth instead of their packed product. Obviously, you have to be careful about your protein intake in general if you want to true benefits of fasting and the autophagy, but someone with my metabolism can take a pretty good amount of bone broth and get those results. We’re not going to go into the signaling and issues around too much protein right now. I really don’t think we’re approaching those levels of protein with what I propose. And I feel comfortable having my mom, who doesn’t have my metabolism take 12-16 oz of bone broth per day during her fasting period. And, honestly, there are so many great benefits of such a nutritionally dense food as bone broth that I prefer that to their packaged product even if both were free. I think it’s a better choice personally. All that collagen, minerals, etc. Yes, I understand that making bone broth is more difficult than buying the products. But if you could see the look on my dog’s face when she gets the leftover bones, that’s priceless man. Of course, you could totally do a 5 day water fast if you’re super hard core. But one of the things I liked about Longo’s most recent study is that he had a 75% compliance rate. I do not think that would have been possible with a strict fast. And no reason to torture people if we really could get similar results without the pain. 12:35 - 14:00 Jody: Ok, so 5 days per month of FMD, either with their product as a support like bone broth. I would love to have your glowing skin and youthful joints, Matt, by getting that extra collagen protein in my diet. What about intermittent fasting? Useful? Do that also? Instead of this? Matt: Well, define intermittent fasting. What do you mean? Jody: I mean, skipping breakfast basically. Eat dinner at 8p and don’t eat again until noon the next day. So, 16 hour fast each day. Matt: Right, so that’s what most people mean with IF. I think a better term is just time-restricted feeding. And I’m a huge fan. I do that exact protocol, and I try to restrict my feeding window to as small as possible. 8 hours, from noon to 8 is good, but if I can get it down to 6 hours from 2-8 or even 4 hours and eat only between 2-6pm, or even just eat one big meal in the evening then I think there are great benefits to that. Studies have shown that to be an independently positive thing to do for body composition and other markers even if you eat the exact same amount of calories. So, yes, doing this is great regardless of whatever else you do with more prolonged fasts. 14:00 - 15:15 Mike: I think it’s important to recognize the differences though between time restricted feeding and prolonged fasting or a fasting mimicking diet. To truly activate autophagy you need to be in a fasting state, and for the most part, we think you need to diminish your glycogen stores. Now that might be possible if you throw in a hardcore workout into a short fast, but for the most part, we think it takes 2 days or more to activate autophagy. I have not seen or heard of autophagy occuring at any meaningful level with just 24 hours of fasting. And not with time restricted eating. Not to say those are bad for you, just they don’t activate autophagy. Personally, I do both. Time restricted eating, and less regularly, I’ll go a FMD or a prolonged fast. That way you get the metabolic and hormonal advantages of time restricted eating, along with the apoptosis, autophagy, and longevity advantages of prolonged fasting. 15:15 - 19:30 Matt: Plus when you refeed after a prolonged fast you get stem cell activation that re-grows healthy cells leading to organ and tissue rejuvenation. So, that’s why I don’t straight 30% calorie restrict every day like in these studies. That’s a great study protocol to apply to rats or monkeys for years at a time. But that’s tough. It sucks to eat 30% less of the cheeseburger the rest of your life. I think it’s much easier to time restrict my calories, but still totally feast at the end of a long day, and then only occasionally muster up the willpower to do a prolonged 3-5 day fast. Most days, I’m active. 4 kids, multiple jobs. I need the calories. But time restricting both gives me health benefits and more freedom with my time honestly. Having to only worry about 33% to 66% as many meals as other people means I can spend that time and energy on reading esoteric studies on time restricted feeding. (Discussion about when to eat during the day between Mike and Matt. What time is the best time to eat based on the science and what works for your family and life situation) 19:30 - 21:25 Jody: Sweet, I’m sold. So, tell me EXACTLY what to do? Matt: Well, I think we’re close to agreement, but here’s where it gets tricky. Mike and I agree on a lot of things but animal fat is not one of them. Mike: Yeah, I’ve got the genetics that prevent me from managing dietary saturated fat appropriately, so I go with Longo’s vegetarian version of the FMD, plant based products and protocol. When I’ve done the FMD, I’ve done 800 cal/day for 5 days. I usually skip breakfast, just have black coffee. Then have a small lunch and dinner. Usually soup and a salad. Lots of veggies, maybe some pasta in the soup, or lentils. Sometimes some hummus and carrots. But the overall goal is the same. I go for 50% calories from fat, 40% from carbs and 10% or less from protein. The low protein is key so you don’t activate the IGF-1 axis or tyrosine kinase pathway. You need a relative amino acid 21:25 - 23:00 Matt: And I’m not against that. I just think we can do better. Look, I eat the vast majority of my calories from plants and am a huge believer in the healing powers of plants and all the phytochemicals and benefits of a plant based diet. But I also believe we’re totally evolved to derive big benefits from the right type of animal nutrients. Grass fed, humanely raised, homemade bone broth is my jam. I say follow the guts of the protocol with respect to total calories, but I’m gonna give you my bone broth I make. My bone broth has about 100 calories per 10 oz. 5g fat and 7g protein. And I want you to eat super nutrient dense foods the rest of the time that have amazing benefits for detoxification (broccoli), brain health (sardines and walnuts), and sanity (coffee) 23:00 - 25:35 Here it is Day 1: 1100 calories 32 oz (2 jars) - 320 calories - (lots of pink himalayan sea salt, pepper, and some turmeric) 16 oz broccoli with 1 tbsp grass fed butter - 250 calories (100 calories from butter) 3/4 cup walnuts - 375 calories 1 can of sardines in EVOO - 150 calories All the black coffee you want and all the water you can drink Macros: Protein g - 12 walnuts, 22 bone broth, 12 brocoli, 18 from sardines (64 total) Fat g - 12 from butter, 39 from walnuts, 1.5g from broccoli, 18 from bone broth, 9 g from sardines Carbs: 8 from walnuts, 30g from broccoli, Fat: 64% protein: 22% carbs: 14% Day 2-5: 800 calories Same, but reduce to ¼ cup walnuts Walnuts optional on all days - probably better results without walnuts FMD percentages: Day 1: fat - 56%, protein - 10%, carbs -34% Day 2-5 - fat 44%, protein 9%, carbs - 47% 25:35 - 27:00 Mike: To summarize: The macronutrient percentage for fat and carbs likely doesn’t matter, but the protein does. You should keep your protein intake somewhere around 7-10% of total carbs. The overall benefits you’re going to get from an FMD, just to simplify is: Immune system improvement Apoptopsis of precancerous or cancer cells Weight loss and improved body composition Reduction of CRP and oxidative stress Better mental performance from increased brain-derived neurotrophic factor Improvement of glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity Healthier and probably increased stem cells -all leading to increased longevity…….unless you get hit by a bus. So, try not to get hit by a bus. Jody: Cool. Those are pretty specific instructions. So, I’m going to do this for 5 days and then what do I do the other 25 days. And I’ll get blood tests at day 1, day 5, and day 30, right? 27:00 - 28:45 Matt: Yep. Come to the clinic and we’ll hook you up. And you probably need to take a month between each 30 day test to get back to your baseline. That way we take the scienciness of this from a 1 out of 10 up to a 2 out of 10. Twice as scienc-ey if my unscientific math is correct. For the other 25 days you should eat normal, but time restrict to 8 hours. Noon to 8pm as your eating window. That work for you? Jody: Yeah, I can do that. What about other people listening to this. Should they do this? They should probably consult their doctor, right? Matt: Sure. Or don’t. Honestly, that statement you see on everything of “consult your doctor” annoys the crap out of me. It tends to imply an all knowing doctor that just doesn’t exist. I mean, if you’re sick in general, have a physician you really trust and really knows you and stays super up to date with this literature, then great. Go for it. But I know lots of doctors. And I know lots of non-doctors who just keep up with what’s new. Medicine in general is always at least a decade behind the latest research. So, someone who cares, and reads can be just as informed as a doctor. So, never trust someone just because they’re a doctor. I know this will be unpopular with other doctors, but I’d say 95% of what I know and believe I know despite my medical school training. They told us that 50% of what we learned in medical school is probably wrong. In my experience over the last decade I’d say that’s gross underestimation. 28:45 - 30:05 Mike: Come on, I think you’re doing two things here. First, you’re underestimating the number of doctors out there who really care and keep up with the literature. And you’re overestimating the number of informed patients out there who are going read 100 books and 1000 articles per year like you and I do because we love it. Most people just want to be told what to do. Matt: Ok, you’re right. I just don’t want people to give doctors too much credit. The M.D. behind the name means nothing. Ask your doctor what their favorite books on nutritional science are. If they rattle off 4-5 immediately, then take their advice. If they’re obese and can’t name 1, then please go to someone else, or do the research yourself. That’s all I’m saying. Also, if you’re going to do a straight water fast, then I’d say you do need medical supervision. Labs, monitoring, etc. Fasting isn’t dangerous, but like anything, the more hard core you go on it, the more risks there are that come along with those extra benefits. I think if you’re doing this FMD protocol, this is going to be safe for 95% of people who are healthy, not pregnant, etc. If you’re nervous, sure, consult your doctor. Also, this isn’t medical advice. I’m talking to Jody only here. This is informational only. I’m talking to you, lawyers out there. 30:05 - 31:00 Jody: Cool. So, what if I want to eat optimally those other 25 days? What type of diet in general should I do? And any drugs I can take to live forever? Mike: Ha! Do you have a few more hours? Matt and I can debate the merits and pitfalls for keto, paleo, vegan, etc. Matt, what’s the most optimal diet? Matt: Yeah, let’s actually tackle that in the next podcast. I know we both have some pretty strong beliefs about that. I think we agree on 90% of things, but it’s really fun to argue the the finer points. In general Jody, do this: As Michael Pollan says in the Omnivore’s Dilemma: Eat real food, mostly plants, not too much. And as a nice heuristic to use, don’t eat it if your great, great grandmother wouldn’t recognize it. So, nothing out of a box or wrapper or with a list of ingredients you can’t pronounce. 31:00 - end Mike: I can get behind that. Would love to hash out all the controversy around saturated fat, cholesterol, gluten, dairy, and dive deep into personalized diets based on genetics. Matt: I can’t imagine anything more fun. And, yeah, the pill question. That’s gonna take some time. We’ll dive into that also. And while we’re at it, we should talk about the other things that may increase lifespan and quality: specific molecules (aka drugs), meditation, exercise, etc. Those things deserve their own specific podcast, though. For now, “let food be thy medicine”, Jody. Master that, and we’ll talk about some next level stuff just coming out that may have a really profound effect on longevity. I’ll bring you the food for my part of the experiment. That’s the stuff I eat every day, so I’m stocked up at all times with those things. Why don’t you take some before and after shirtless pics doing those super sexy poses people do in magazines. I think you’re gonna get some good body comp results. Mike: And the Prolon goods are in the mail from me. Jody: Can’t wait. I’m on it.

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Week 088: Let's Watch: Rampage (2018) - Commentary Track

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 5, 2018 104:28

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第119期:Sushi

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Play Episode Listen Later Jul 14, 2018 0:58

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Todd: OK. Matthew, we are going to talk about food.Matt: OK.Todd: What kind of foods do you like?Matt: Well, now I'm in Japan at the moment, I'm eating a lot of sushi.Todd: OK.Matt: I've only got two weeks left here so it's kind of sushi three times a week.Todd: Oh, wow! You really love the stuff.Matt: Yeah, it's fun. It's great.Todd: Where do you eat sushi?Matt: Well, we either buy it in a supermarket, kind of buy a tray, about a thousand yen, or we'll go down to the conveyor belt restaurant just down the side the university on our way home.Todd: OK.Matt: Pick up a few plates.Todd: The conveyor belt restaurant.Matt: I don't know the Japanese word for that. We call it the conveyor belt restaurant.Todd: When you go to sushi, how much does it cost?Matt: Well, it's 130 yen for one plate, and usually there is two of us that go and usually we spend about one and a half thousand yen (1,500), about ten plates.Todd: Ten plates!Matt: Yeah! We like it!

第97期:Water Wonderland

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Play Episode Listen Later Jun 28, 2018 1:03

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Todd: What is your hobby?Matt: I suppose it is scuba diving?Todd: Oh, nice! Well, tell us about scuba diving.Matt: Well, I haven't been for awhile because I have been living in Japan and it's expensive to do it here, but when I was in Thailand I went scuba diving quite a lot. I did the PADI certificate. I just love it. I did quite a bit of scuba diving both in the Gulf of Thailand and the Indian Ocean and saw whale sharks, leopard sharks and all sorts of things.Todd: How do they compare, the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Thailand?Matt: Well, the Gulf of Thailand is quite polluted and there is a lot of shipping that comes up from Singapore to Bangkok, whereas the Indian Ocean, it's called the Andaman Sea but its part of the Indian Ocean is a lot cleaner but it can be affected by monsoons.Todd: OK. Great. Thanks, Matt.

Interview: Snipe, AKA Alison Gianotto

The Laravel Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 21, 2018 58:56

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.

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Episode 8: Cyber Coverage 2.0

The ALPS In Brief Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 21, 2018 13:07

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-

Mattress Giants v. Sleepoplis: The War On Getting You To Bed [e293]

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 2, 2018 34:52

With a seemingly endless amount of new mattress options becoming available, it is unsurprising that the market has become increasingly aggressive. As companies invest in more innovative solutions to get in front of customers, review sites, blogs and YouTube videos have moved to the forefront of how customers are deciding on their mattresses and how companies are attempting to battle for their business. With affiliate marketing becoming a colossal business for v/bloggers with the most coveted traffic, mattress companies are willing to pay influencers high affiliate commissions, but when relationships sour those same companies are just as glad to pay their attorneys. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to the podcast! My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. Two attorneys here with Pasha Law, practicing in California, Texas, New York, and Illinois. NASIR: And this is where we talk about the business in the news and, also, add our legal twist to that business news. MATT: This is going to come out after Thanksgiving, but I think this is a very appropriate story for Thanksgiving Day because it deals with actual sleeping, I guess, but it deals with mattresses. NASIR: Do a lot of people buy mattresses on Black Friday or during Christmas holidays? MATT: After the meal. NASIR: I was thinking, like, the day after, you go out and buy a mattress. One thing I didn’t realize is that this mattress industry is cutthroat. You wouldn’t think so, but it seems like, if you’re in the industry, whether you’re in retail or you’re in this now, these online mattress companies, this is where everything’s going now. You can literally buy your mattress online. You see it all over the internet – even on TV now they advertise for it. It’s pretty crazy. MATT: Well, we’re going to be talking about the online aspect of it, as you say, but it makes sense if you’ve ever driven around and you see one company or one building business that sells mattresses and you’re likely to see a handful within a couple of minutes. I think the reason that is because, like you said, competition. Someone’s going to go to one store to look for a mattress. If they buy, that’s it. If not, there are going to be a bunch of competitors right there that can make the sale. NASIR: The whole mattress thing, I’m sure you’ve bought a mattress before, I assume. MATT: Never. NASIR: Well, let me tell you what it’s like… The whole mattress buying process, it’s never fun. I mean, not that shopping and stuff like that is ever fun. But it’s like they’re all the same. You’re making this kind of long-term investment where, if you make a mistake, even if they give you a guarantee return or whatever, you can try it out for 30 days, you’re not returning no mattress. Whatever you buy, you’re keeping. I can say that I’ve had pretty decent mattresses in my life. I would say that I kind of just get used to them – whether I like it or not. MATT: All very good points. I’ve felt the same things. I don’t know about you, but the last one I purchased was actually online and it was through an ad on some podcast I had listened to. Like you said, it was try it out for a hundred days. If you don’t like it, we’ll come and pick it up. If you have to send it back, that’s not even feasible, really. I don’t know how you would even do that. But, yeah, it’s a big investment. They say, depending on how much sleep you get, I guess it would be anywhere from 25 percent to a third of your time of your life, potentially sleeping on a mattress. NASIR: Yeah, that assumes that, when you’re sleeping, you’re sleeping on the mattress. MATT: Exactly. What we’re going to do is we’re going to kind of go through this. It’s a really interesting story that’s played out for a couple of years here dealing with online sales of mattresses which seems to be the growing trend. There’s a lot of different companies out there doing it – one of which is Casper which we’ll get into.

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What is a charity?

ACNC Charity Chat

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 20, 2017 12:45

A discussion with Assistant Commissioner Murray Baird about the origins of charity, what it takes to be a charity today, and the difference between charities and not-for-profits. acnc.gov.au Transcript Matt: Hello and welcome to Charity Chat – the ACNC’s podcast. In this episode, we’ll talk about the origins of charity, what it takes to be a charity today and the difference between a charity and a not-for-profit. My name is Matt Crichton and I’m from the Education team here at the ACNC and joining me today to talk about these issues is the Assistant Commissioner of the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission – Murray Baird. Hello Murray. Murray: Hello Matt. Matt: Murray, I think a lot of people would have an idea of the concept of charity and generally know what it means to be a charity in the community. Can you give us an overview of your idea of the concept of charity, its origins, and what it means to be a charity today? Murray: Yeah. Well it may come as a surprise to many in the community that the charity is much wider than we would normally expect. I think most people think of charities as organisations that help the community or assist people in need. But the idea of charity, go back about 400 years, is much wider than that. Originally, Queen Elizabeth I had to work out where people put money into charitable funds and whether it was being properly used. So she gave some ideas in an Act of Parliament as to what we meant by charity. And these were over time distilled into four categories. The first category was the popular meaning – that was caring for people in need who were ill or disadvantaged. Matt: Right, what most people would associate with charity? Murray: Yeah that’s right. But it does go further because the second category is advancement of education. So education is seen as good for the community and if it’s done on a not-for-profit basis, schools and universities also fall within the concept of charity. Matt: OK and I think that one is probably one that doesn’t quite fit the regular conception of charity for many people. It’s one that probably sits off to the side a little bit. Murray: Yeah, but I suppose if you think about it, a community is much better off if there is access to education and before the government was fully involved in education, clearly people who stepped up and offered it on a not-for-profit basis, were regarded as doing good works. Matt: Yeah, right. Murray: The third one is the idea of advancement of religion. So it was presumed that if you were involved in religion, you were giving people hope and security and moral improvements and that was good for the wider community. So advancement of religion came in and that covers all religious expressions. And then there was a grab bag of things that we thought were good for the community and we recognised all to be charitable. And over the years, the big ones that emerged there, were that the safety and security of the community; the progress of the community and encouragement of, interestingly enough, agriculture and business; we have protection of the environment, and arts and culture were said to be good for the community. So they were just put in a fourth category of other things beneficial to the community. Matt: Right, so there was recognition that there were plenty of other things that benefitted the community but just didn’t fit into those other three categories of charity that were available at the time? Murray: That’s exactly right, yep. Matt: And you mentioned that these categories came about over centuries, has there been any further sharpening of the concepts of charity or even a codification of these charitable purposes since? Murray: Yeah I think that’s a good way of looking at what happened in 2013 when the Australian government, for Commonwealth purposes, set out in the Charities Act, 12 charitable purposes. And the traditional ones are there under Advancing Health and Advancing Social and Public Welfare – there’s Advancing Education and there’s Advancing Religion. But what it does in setting out 12 charitable purposes is tease out that fourth category that I talked about earlier. And so we also find on that list Advancing Culture; Reconciliation; Mutual Respect; Tolerance; Human Rights; Safety and Security; Animal Welfare; the Environment and Advocacy for charitable purposes. And they even put a grab bag in called Other Purposes that are similar to those ones set out. Matt: Right, so even miscellaneous remains? Murray: Yeah, miscellaneous is still in there. Matt: OK and if we consider the charitable purpose or purposes as just one aspect of operations that an organisation must have if it’s to be considered a charity and registered with the ACNC as a charity, what are the other criteria that an organisation must meet? Murray: Yeah, there are three hoops you have to jump through. The first is you’ve got to be not-for-profit and that doesn’t mean you can’t make a profit – in fact we encourage charities to be sustainable - to have a bit of surplus at the end of the year. What it means is your purpose is not to give private profit to individuals. Matt: OK. Murray: You can pay staff – that’s reasonable. You can of course give benefits to the people who are the objects of your charity, but you can’t set out with a purpose of creating wealth for people. Matt: Right, so you can’t be distributing any surplus that the organisation may come across to any members or anything like that? Murray: No paying dividends. Matt: Of course not. And the third hoop, Murray? Murray: Yeah. When I mentioned three hoops – not-for-profit – it’s got to come within that list of 12 charitable purposes. And it also should be able to show public benefit. Public benefit can be looked at a number of ways. One, is it’s the opposite of private benefit – so it’s not there for individuals to gain wealth. Matt: Yep. Murray: But also, it has to show that there’s something good happening in the wider community, and it’s got to be more than just a small group or a family group. It’s got to be public benefit. So public benefit has got lots of flavour to it, but it really means that when we look at it, we say “Yeah, that’s good for the community.” And it’s also the opposite of detriment to the community. Matt: Of course. Murray: So if a charity has a track record of doing really bad stuff, we might say “Well, that’s not for the public benefit. That’s for the public detriment. We’re not going to allow it in.” They’re the three things. It’s got to be not-for-profit; got to have a charitable purpose; got to be for the public benefit. Matt: And are there any things that would strike a line through an organisation that wants to be registered as a charity? Are there any restrictions on what they can and can’t do? Murray: Yeah, there are a couple of things called “disqualifying purposes”. And those disqualifying purposes is to have a purpose of doing things that are illegal, and that makes sense. We don’t particularly want organisations to set up for illegality. And the other is not to cross the boundary into the political arena. Now, there’s a lot of debate about where that boundary is, but the Charities Act helps us by saying it’s the support or opposing of a political candidate or a political party. So that then makes you a political instrument instead of a charitable organisation. Matt: OK, right. Murray: That’s not to say you can’t be involved in the marketplace of ideas and express opinions as a charity on issues that will come up in the political process. But it’s when you actually say to people “Vote for this candidate. Vote for this party.” That’s what we’re on about. We’re on about the furtherance of this party or the opposition to that party, that really gets you into a different area. Matt: And how about an individual then? Could I register myself as a charity? Murray: You’ll recall that we talked of a public benefit – what we say is that an individual can’t be a charity. You have to at least have a group of people who come together for that charitable purpose. Matt: Right, OK. Murray: So we call it a “body of persons”. You could incorporate; become an association or a company – you don’t have to… as long as you’re an identifiable crowd and you could prove that you have a charitable purpose and you’re not-for-profit and for the public benefit, you can become a charity. Often, a constitution is the document in which you will express that purpose. Matt: Right, OK. And just touching on this concept of not-for-profit briefly, because we have talked about it in the context of how an organisation can become a charity, that I think there may be some confusion still in the public consciousness about the terms “charity” and “not-for-profit”. These terms don’t mean exactly the same thing but then again they’re not mutually exclusive, are they? Murray: I think if you think of one large circle of not-for-profit organisations – that will include sporting clubs which are not charitable; that will include membership and social clubs that are not for the public benefit generally. They’re for the benefit for the people who joined them. Matt: Right. Murray: It might be in a Bridge club – that’s not-for-profit but it’s not charitable. Matt: OK. Murray: So it is said that there’s probably about 600,000 not-for-profit organisations in Australia, but there’s only about 55,000 registered charities. So charities are simply a subset of not-for-profits. Matt: OK. Murray: So you can be not-for-profit and not a charity, but you can’t be a charity without being not-for-profit. Matt: OK, so we should think about charities as being – they’re not-for-profits that have a charitable purpose? Murray: Exactly and are for the public benefit. Matt: Yeah, of course. What about the organisations, and there would be a few out there in the community, that have a mixture of purposes? So they are not-for-profit; they do have a charitable purpose, but then they also have other purposes that aren’t considered charitable according to those 12 categories that we spoke about just before? Murray: Yep. We talk about having to have solely charitable purposes. Now, that needs a bit of unpacking because you can have purposes in support of your solely charitable purposes. So there can be other purposes, but they must be what we call “ancillary”. But if they’re an independent purpose, beside a charitable purpose and the other purpose is not charitable, that pollutes the idea of a charity. Matt: OK, so that would prevent them from being able to register as a charity, because a charity needs to have solely charitable purposes? Murray: Yeah, solely charitable but you can have some ancillary purposes or supportive purposes. Matt: OK, well that may be a useful way to think of the phrase “ancillary purposes” actually. They are the supportive purposes – the ones that are there to support the charitable purposes of the charity? Murray: Yeah that’s right. I think that if you had a charitable purpose and an independent non-charitable purpose, you might think of creating two separate organisations. Matt: OK. Murray: One which could register, and the other which could run in parallel as long as it wasn’t some form of device to be able to get around the system. But it would be possible to have cooperation between two organisations. Matt: Well that’s just about all we have time for. Thank you very much for your time today, Murray. I think you’ve done a great job explaining the concept of charity, where it’s come from and also where it sits today, particularly that point about the difference between a charity and a not-for-profit. Murray: It’s interesting that we’re called the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission. I think when we were first envisaged, we were starting with charities and perhaps we would move to not-for-profits as well, but there’s nothing on the horizon for that as far as I know at the moment. Matt: Yes, well maybe at some point, sometime down the line. Thanks again, Murray. We really appreciate you taking the time today to explain all things charity and not-for-profits to us. Murray: Thanks very much, Matt. Matt: Be sure to check out other episodes of ACNC Charity Chat and other resources including guides, facts sheets and webinars on our website at acnc.gov.au. And if you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, subscribe on iTunes or wherever you happen to access it. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.

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Ultimate Legal Breakdown: Subscription Box Businesses [e286]

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 3, 2017 39:36

On this episode of the Ultimate Legal Breakdown, Nasir and Matt go in depth with the subscription box business. They discuss where subscription box companies have gone wrong(4:30), the importance of a specifically tailored terms and conditions(6:30), how to structure return policies (11:45), product liability concerns (14:45),the offensive and defensive side of intellectual property (19:00), forming partnerships (23:30), when to form multiple entities (31:45), and rules and logistics for shipping (34:00). Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business! My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub, and we’re two business attorneys with Pasha Law. NASIR: Yeah, welcome to the podcast today. We are doing our ultimate legal breakdown of the subscription box business. MATT: Yeah, looking forward to this one. it’s a pretty fun topic because subscription boxes can offer many different things. I’m sure that most listeners have probably either ordered their own subscription box or maybe have their own business. NASIR: You’re saying most people either have their subscription box business? Most people have subscribed to one, at least. I mean, some people are addicted to it. MATT: Well, it’s nice. NASIR: And they can be addicting. MATT: And we’ll get into why that’s the case. Just for those of your that aren’t aware, subscription boxes, it’s a pretty simple concept – at least the service aspect of it. Basically, you pay an amount and it’s typically every month but every month you get a delivery to your doorstep and it contains a boxful of items. It can be anything. I mean, I think the ones that people might be most familiar with might be a Blue Apron food service or Nature Box, Dollar Shave Club. NASIR: Dollar Shave. Loot Crate seems popular, too. MATT: The general concept is you pay this monthly amount and, every month, you get a box of different items and most of them are themed to, like I said, some sort of concept behind it – whether it be food, whether it be some sort of artistic thing. At this point, it’s a pretty booming industry. It can be anything few and far between – and I believe, when we checked here – 5-billion-dollar industry, 2,000 different services, according to My Subscription Addiction which is my go-to for subscription box statistics. NASIR: And it’s growing! I mean, 3,000 percent as far as online visits for subscription companies people are interested in the last three years, people are interested in this stuff and it seems like there’s basically two types of these businesses – the ones that curate products that they basically pick a theme – like, you said, the Blue Apron where they just kind of put together food that might be good for this particular recipe; some of them actually create their own product and it may be a different product every month. Somehow, they are actually the creators of it. So, it’s two types of categories there. MATT: Right, and we’re going to get into this later but, obviously, if you have the ladder there – the one where you’re creating your own product that you’re delivering out, you might have a little bit less to worry about from a legal stand. Well, I guess I shouldn’t say that. NASIR: Less than more. MATT: Yeah. NASIR: It’s a different type of liability. MATT: Let’s get into some of these big issues here for these businesses. I think it all kind of starts where a lot of businesses do – with the underlying contract. In this case, the terms and conditions for these services. You know, I’ve ordered my own subscription boxes. I’ve kind of looked around it. Some others, just to see what’s out there. Surprisingly, a pretty wide array of terms and conditions, terms of service, whatever you want to call it that are out there. Some of them are very well-detailed, some of them are… NASIR: Horrible. MATT: Yeah, I was going to put it nicer than that but, yeah. NASIR: No, they are horrible. We have a few subscription box clients. In fact,

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Can Companies Protect Against Foreseeable Misuse of Apps [e285]

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 1, 2017 4:02

Nasir and Matt discuss the suit against Apple that resultedfrom a car crashed caused by the use of FaceTime while driving. They also discuss howforeseeable use of apps can increase liability for companies. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Hi and welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business! I’m Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. Two attorneys here with Pasha Law – offices in California, Illinois, New York, and Texas. NASIR: Welcome to the podcast for a little short break we had between our last episode and this is where we discuss current business news with a legal twist. Today, we are talking about how developers – especially mobile app developers and other business owners in that space – can deal with possible liability for their software apps and their products. In this case, it’s a sad story of an Apple app that actually caused, well, it’s alleged to have caused a deadly accident. MATT: Yeah, let’s do a little bit of the background here on how we first started discussing this. There was a car accident back – actually, on Christmas Eve in 2014 – in Texas. The reason this is just kind of surfacing now is they just filed the lawsuit here, two years. I assume that’s the potential limitations. They had to get that in in time. But there was a car accident with a driver – a 20-year-old – who was on his way to visit family on Christmas Eve. He was – for whatever reason – using Facetime while driving. For those of you who aren’t Apple or iPhone users, Facetime is basically a video call. You’re able to see the other person and vice versa when you’re doing a phone call. Kind of like Skype, I suppose. He’s driving on the highway and wasn’t necessarily paying full attention. He crashed into the car of this family and – you kind of alluded to this – the sad story behind this is it resulted in the death of the family’s 5-year-old daughter who was in the backseat. There was actually four people in the car – the parents and the two kids. I believe all were injured. I believe the other three were injured and then, of course, the unfortunate death of the 5-year-old. That’s kind of the backstory of what happened here. So, what happened has happened since. The family is now suing Apple, essentially alleging that Apple is negligent and not having any sort of safeguards that would restrict the use of Facetime while driving. When I first heard that statement, I thought, “Well, I don’t really know about that,” but the interesting thing about this is Apple actually had, as early as 2008, when they filed for this patent and developed this technology. They call it kind of lockout technology. It would basically lock out the driver from using certain apps while operating the vehicle which, now with that knowledge, I didn’t know if that was something you would come across or you knew about but, when I found that out, I was like, “Oh, well, that makes this case a lot more interesting.” NASIR: But I have an inherent problem with the argument because, you know, just because you filed a patent, you have an invention, there’s commercialization – and this is kind of off-topic – commercialization of an invention is a lot different thing than actually inventing it in itself. Like, I can invent a machine that travels through time but because it costs a billion dollars to make, I haven’t been able to actually build it yet. And so, I’m looking for funding today. The point is, you know, just because they invented it, I can still file a patent but that doesn’t mean they can actually implement the software. For a practical example, maybe they had the technology but maybe the processor speed of the phone isn’t fast enough to be able to quickly detect if you’re moving or whatever reason. Alone, by itself, assuming that argument is valid just because they have a patent doesn’t mean it’s a viable option to protect the user. MATT: Well, yeah, with your invention, you could essentially just be sued for whatever bad thing happens then because why didn’t you just emplo...

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How Starbucks Turned Coveted Employer to Employee Complaints [e274]

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 15, 2016 26:53

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

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Can a Business Be Held Liable for Crimes Committed by Clients? [e272]

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 23, 2016 17:05

Nasir and Matt discuss the criminal charges facing FedExinvolving the alleged transportation of illegal drugs. They also talk about how business owners should address working with customers that may be breaking the law. 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 so, business news, right? That’s what we cover? What’s the business news that we have today? MATT: Well, it could be business or it could be legal – preferably if it’s a Venn diagram, it’s something in the middle. NASIR: That’s where we come in. MATT: Yeah, that’s what we try to cover at least. This would quality as business news even though we don’t do— NASIR: Drugs? MATT: A drug or a criminal – too much criminal law – or at least I don’t. I don’t know about you. NASIR: I don’t do too much of it. Let’s just put it that way – just the right amount of criminal law. MATT: Fair enough. So, this is a pretty interesting case. I think the actual indictment was two years ago? 2014, I believe. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: Brought against FedEx. Yeah, 2014, Grand Jury indictment. Essentially, they were accused of a few things – conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, distribution of controlled substances, conspiracy to distribute misbranded drugs, and misbranding drugs – things of that nature. Basically, what was happening, I believe it dealt with pharmaceuticals was the primary area here but, essentially, FedEx was being the courier between people shipping these illegal drugs and the people on the receiving end. I think it’s really the case is going to come down to – at least when I was reading this – I mean, when we’re recording this I guess the trial has just started so I guess we might know more once this comes out, as we often say, but what was FedEx’s knowledge of what it was transporting between Illegal Point A to Illegal Point B? NASIR: The complaint and some of the press around this describes the situation where drivers literally complained about bringing parcels – specifically pharmacy parcels because I think they’re labeled differently – to delivery addresses that were nothing more than parking lots or schools or even vacant homes. And then, when they delivered it, there was all these multiple cars parked and people waiting outside for the deliveries. Of course, as soon as the packages or package is dropped off, people come and get it and bring it home. MATT: Right, and that’s definitely one of the big points here, obviously, is the driver of these trucks – and they are employees if you recall, we’ve talked about that before – it was FedEx, right? That had that issue. NASIR: They both had that issue, yeah, but I was thinking it was specifically FedEx, I think so – at least in California. MATT: The drivers were coming back to upper level management telling them exactly what you just said – that these deliveries don’t seem 100 percent legitimate here – you know, pulling up to a location near the delivery address and people running up. I think there were instances of people just actually jumping into the FedEx trucks and trying to get these packages. You had the drivers reporting issues like this and, from how it’s been painted – at least in the media here – is that, you know, FedEx knew about these things and just kind of chose to do nothing about it. I think the prosecution had a pretty good quote, if I can find it. Here is part of it – basically, they faced a choice and the choice was to stop or go meaning that they knew that these illegal deliveries were happening. Time and time again, they went. That’s probably not the quote I was looking for but you get the point that they’re being accused of essentially knowing that these illegal deliveries are occurring and I think they’re playing the card of “well, we’re just the courier; we didn’t know about it; we’re not responsible for the fact that these ...

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Why Yahoo Is Auctioning Off Over 3,000 Patents [e271]