Podcasts about maybe amazon

Hey ya'll, Happy Thanskgiving to everyone who celebrates and thank you for being a subscriber, I truly appreciate each and every one of you! We had a blast on today's celebratory stream, especially given that today's "main course" was the amazing open sourcing of a reasoning model from Qwen, and we had Junyang Lin with us again to talk about it! First open source reasoning model that you can run on your machine, that beats a 405B model, comes close to o1 on some metrics

In this episode, our guest is an expert on AI and Amazon Science papers. He'll talk about Rufus, COSMO, Project Amelia, and all other AI advancements from the Amazon side and beyond. ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On Youtube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Join us for an engaging discussion with Kevin Dolan from Pacvue AI Labs as we explore the cutting-edge advancements in AI and Amazon's pivotal role in shaping this dynamic landscape. We'll unravel the mysteries behind intriguing names like Rufus, COSMO, and  Project Amelia, representing Amazon's ongoing AI initiatives. Kevin shares his expertise on the evolution of AI from its early conceptual roots in the 80s to the transformative impact of transformer models around 2019, which paved the way for groundbreaking applications like ChatGPT. Discover how Amazon's increased investment in AI research is manifesting in published papers and sophisticated models that are revolutionizing customer interactions. We also explore Amazon's integration of AI in tools for sellers, highlighting the launch of advertising AI that optimizes campaigns with precision. The potential of AI in enhancing tools like Helium 10's Adtomic and Cerebro for more efficient Amazon PPC campaigns and keyword filtering is discussed, along with the impact of Amazon's Rufus on the shopping experience. While Rufus aims to improve customer interactions, we critically assess its current limitations and ponder its potential to shift some search activities directly to Amazon from platforms like Google and Pinterest. Additionally, we dive into Amazon's transition from lexical to semantic search, emphasizing the importance for sellers to align their product listings with customer needs for visibility and success in an AI-driven environment. Lastly, we examine AI-driven tools like Project Amelia in Amazon's Seller Central and their potential impact on brands and sellers. While chat-oriented interfaces may translate vague intentions into useful actions, skepticism remains regarding their revolutionary potential. We emphasize the importance of exploring third-party tools like Helium 10 for added value and addressing the hype surrounding changes in seller practices, reassuring listeners that successful strategies remain largely unchanged. Kevin's insights and our conversation shed light on the future of AI in e-commerce, leaving us excited for what's to come in this rapidly evolving field. In episode 606 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Kevin discuss: 00:00 - Advancements in AI and Amazon Science 00:41 - Decoding the Amazon COSMO Algorithm 08:42 - AI Model Cost Efficiency Advancements 09:48 - Amazon's AI Innovations and Rufus 14:59 - Implementing AI Chatbots Inside Online Marketplaces 20:29 - Enhancing Amazon's Semantic Search Capabilities 21:12 - Leveraging Rufus and COSMO for Selling Success 26:59 - Impact of Science on Amazon Practices 28:10 - Enhancing Amazon's Product Understanding With AI 30:01 - Customer Preferences for Pregnant Women 35:22 - Amazon's Data and Product Listings 37:30 - Amazon's Project Amelia in Seller Central 38:42 - Amazon's AI Recommendations for Sellers   Transcript: Bradley Sutton: Today we talk to the person who knows more about AI and Amazon science papers than maybe anyone else in the world, and he's going to talk about all things Rufus, COSMO, Amelia and all other AI advancements from the Amazon side and beyond. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Series Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that's completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world.   Bradley Sutton: I'm not exactly 100% sure what I'm titling this episode, but I might have done something kind of clickbaity and say something. There is no such thing as the COSMO algorithm or something to get people to click on this. But let me just quickly explain that. Now. I don't mean that there's no such thing as Cosmo. There's a lot of documents out there from Amazon that talk about it, but there's nothing that says, hey, Cosmo is the new A9 algorithm, or there's nothing official from Amazon that says, hey, Cosmo is now in full effect across 75% of searches, or anything like that.   Contrast that with all the articles from Amazon that talk about Rufus. I mean, Rufus is a thing you can actually see in everything. So I just wanted to do a clickbaity title like that and we'll definitely get into Cosmo and things like that later. But I've got back on the show probably one of the persons who's the highest expert in the world as far as AI and also what Amazon has been doing as far as on the AI front, and that's Kevin from our own Pacvue AI Labs. That's why I'm wearing this. It's actually a Brazilian soccer team, Palmeiras, I think.   Bradley Sutton: I wanted to get something with a P on it. Yeah there you go.   Bradley Sutton: I have a Padres P hat too, but since I'm a Dodgers fan, it hurts every time I even wear that hat. So I was like, no, I'm not going to do it, considering the times that we're in right now. But anyways, Kevin, welcome back. It's been a little over a year since you've been on the show.   Kevin Dolan: Yeah, thanks for having me back. Last year was a lot of fun and we've been seeing a lot of things happen in the last year in AI, especially around Amazon's implementations of AI, so excited to talk about those updates.   Bradley Sutton: Cool. Now let's just talk about AI in general, general. You know, like AI is kind of like, I guess, like about two years, I mean, people have been talking about AI for years but as far as the, the more recent trendy version of the topic, AI, um, it's really been, you know, like you know, ChatGPT and things like that over the last couple of years. And let's just talk about what's happened in general over the last year. You know the improvement   Kevin Dolan: Okay, sure, yeah, I mean, like you said, AI has been around forever. We've been using the term at least since the 80 s in terms of technologies that we can actually use for actual production purposes. As we're using the term today, its meaning has shifted to largely refer to this current generation of models that we're seeing. That began in around 2019 with the introduction of what was called the Transformers model. This led eventually to a variant of that model called Large Language Models, popularized by Open AI's ChatGPT, and we've been seeing a sort of explosion in AI technology and investment into hardware, investment into research as a result of some of these findings. That has become sort of the current modern label of what is AI. We're talking primarily about transformer-based models that perform language or other modalities, including image generation, and we're talking about basically whatever is that front line of research that's happening right now. So you see this explosion happen with the release of the paper around 2018, 2019. And then you see the proliferation of training hardware that led to innovations like ChachGPT, where we're starting to see these emergent behaviors, where these models do start to exhibit something that you can really call intelligence. These models do start to exhibit something that you can really call intelligence.   I came on here last year to talk about all of the different papers I had read from the prior four to five years at Amazon Research. You can tell, when you look at the number of papers that Amazon is releasing, that around that time around 2021, 2022, they started to invest a lot more in their research department. When they started releasing papers in Amazon Science in 2018, there were five papers about search. The following year, in 2019, there were 18. By 2021, there were 40. And then the next year there were almost 70 papers. That seems to have leveled off at this point. We saw about 70 papers last year and so far in this year we've seen about 60 papers. So we're probably going to end up in the same realm.   So the number of papers that Amazon is releasing isn't really changing. What is changing is the complexity of the models that they're using is much more sophisticated and they're being targeted for much more practical use cases. You're seeing larger A-B tests where they're being run on material percentages of traffic on Amazon. You're seeing Amazon release actual AI features that are customer-facing, like Rufus, and we're seeing investments in hardware that make some of these models that used to be impossible to run in production now very conceivable. So I think we are seeing confirmation that Amazon is taking these technologies seriously. They're implementing it in production and it is starting to impact customer behaviors.   Bradley Sutton: What about non-Amazon AI Like what you know? ChatGPT, imagery you? Know, like a couple of years ago it was just hallucinating nonstop, and then last year a little bit better. You know images. You could not create humans, you know, or products in there without seven fingers and stuff in the general world of AI. How has that come along in the last year?   Kevin Dolan: Yeah, so I mean we are seeing continued investments in research and continued improvements on these models. The transfer model really revolutionized things, but the initial results that we were seeing out of those transformer models were a little disappointing. For the first time, we were starting to see computers understand language, computers being able to generate images, and our initial reaction was holy cow. We didn't know computers could do this, and then, as we started to use it a little bit more, we became really disappointed, because we're like, oh you know, all the people have six fingers. It's making up facts. You know, the things that it's saying don't really make sense. And so there's been a lot of people who have looked at this potential and started to invest material dollars in improving it to basically get to the point where now these technologies produce more reliable, more consistent results. There's still really major shortfalls, there's still issues, and I think you're going to see continued investment in this. The optimistic projections that you're getting from OpenAI. You know I'm personally a little bit cold on those, but who can predict the future? Who could have predicted that this would have happened? Yes, you are seeing improvements in image generation models, where the images that they're producing are now closer to reality. We're starting to see these used widely in industry, especially in fields like advertising, where you need to produce high volume creative. If you look at the features that Photoshop has released related to their Firefly AI image generation model, we're starting to see not only improved models but improved workflows for creatives to actually be using these tools in a way where, instead of just somebody typing some random prompt and getting whatever the system decides to give you now, people are actually able to control the output and get the output that they're looking for. So, between all of these things, you're seeing a lot of development to make these tools more practical to use. I'd say the biggest and most recent news is OpenAI's release of its strawberry model, which they call O1 in their release vernacular. The O1 model from OpenAI is performing thinking steps before it answers the question and hiding that thinking from you, the way that if you're asked a question, you might think about it a little bit before you answer it, and they're seeing really, really impressive results from that. You know we're getting closer to the place where these AI models might be able to do something that's a little bit more functional, a little bit more capable of actually interacting with real life data and real-life processes, you know, but we're still a little bit far away.   Another issue that we keep running into is the dollar cost of running these models. Towards the end of last year, at Helium 10, we developed a review sentiment analysis model that basically would read thousands and thousands of reviews for your Amazon products and produce some analysis and produce an analysis of what people are saying about your product. You know Amazon has a similar product. Ours goes a little bit deeper than that but the idea is essentially the same. You know what are people saying about your product, what can you learn about it in order to improve your product, improve your listing, etc. And one of the things that we ran into with that model is just how prohibitively costly these models can be to run on large sets of data, and so we're starting to see investments in making models smaller and more special purpose, and we're also seeing improvements in hardware that make running these models more cost effective. This is really going to start to unlock production capabilities, and that companies will now be able to run AI models profitably.   Bradley Sutton: Interesting, interesting. Now, yeah, we're always looking to add things that can utilize AI that helps Amazon sellers. You know we are launching this week advertising AI on our Atomic side, which is allow somebody to just enter in an ASIN and then our AI engine will kind of just create all the campaigns on its own and optimize them on its own. That's something that we've been using at Pacvue for a while, and we're integrating some AI things into tools like Cerebro, where you could have a prompt that allows you to filter out keywords or say, hey, can you please remove any Spanish keywords from the results? Or, hey, can you remove any branded? You know search terms, you know things that you know you could probably do on your own, but it just takes a lot longer. So, so, definitely, we're, we're keeping track of what AI can do, because anything that is doable. We want to go ahead and bring it into Helium 10.   Bradley Sutton: We know that getting to page one on keyword search results is one of the most important goals that an Amazon seller might have. So track your progress on the way to page one and even get historical keyword ranking information and even see sponsored ad rank placement with Keyword Tracker by Helium 10. For more information, go to h10.me forward. Slash keyword tracker.   Bradley Sutton: Now going back to the main topic, amazon. Before we get into the science more detailed, into whatever science documents have been released and things this year, let's talk about what is 100% already out there or talked about, which is like the Rufus and so Rufus, Cosmo I've got some personal opinions on it and that's all. A lot of this is, you know, until Amazon actually publishes something for sure, like you can't even say that, oh, a science document said this or that, because the great majority of the content of science documents actually doesn't actually get into production on Amazon. You know per se. You know so just because Amazon talked about in a science document. It's just a research paper, you know. But let's first about talk about the stuff that you know Amazon announced at Accelerate or has already rolled out to customers, like Rufus.   And then my general thought on that and again I could be wrong and I'll be happy to switch my thinking when Amazon does make some different announcements is that Amazon is always about the customer. Right, they want to give a better result for the customer. And then I don't feel that, like Rufus, for example. Fyi, in my opinion it's terrible as a buyer where I'm like, hey, what did the review say about this product and it gives me an answer. And guess what? There's no reviews on that product. So, as a consumer, being kind of skeptical about some of these AI things, I just can't use it. And now the other part of it is I don't think anytime soon the traditional way of searching on Amazon is going to be improved in that if I know I want to buy and I talked about this in a previous episode recently if I want to buy a coffin shelf, there is no better process than me opening my Amazon app and typing the word towards coffin shelf and looking at the results like there is nothing unless amazon connects my brain to, to the app. That is going to ever be better than that where? In other words, I am not going to go and have a conversation with Rufus with my thumbs, you know, like taking typing in a whole bunch of I used to be a secretary. I type like a hundred words a minute. So like, let's say, I was on the desktop app, I'm still. I'm a lazy person, as all human beings are. I am not going to say what do you think, Rufus, about coffin shelves out there? Like, like, no, I'm going to type in nine letters and then. So that part. I almost don't think Amazon is necessarily trying to change that part, because they know that it's already the most optimized experience for people who know what they're looking for.   Now here's the thing, though how did I get to that decision that I wanted a coffin shelf, like maybe I just knew it. But another thing is, maybe I'm just browsing like, hey, I want to uh, search on google what are trending, um, trending gifts in 2024 for teenagers with a gothic inclination, or something like that. Like, right now, I'm not doing that in Amazon, or, historically, I'm doing that like in Google, maybe Pinterest, you know, or maybe these other websites where I'm trying to get ideas. And then, all of a sudden, I read a blog, or I arrive on a TikTok or whatever, and I see, ooh, Coffin Shelf. I didn't even know that existed. Now let me go and type in coffin shelf on Amazon.   So I think the potential of, of a fundamental change in the way we shop could be that maybe some of these searches that people would normally start on a Pinterest or on a Google, maybe now you can start in the Amazon app, where what I would have typed for the Google AI or things like it's just going to go ahead and, and, and I can start the Amazon app where what I would have typed for the Google AI or things like it's just going to go ahead and I can start, you know, just browsing, browsing things, and at the end of it, you know like Amazon might, or Rufus might, tell me yeah, you know, like we see some spooky families by coffin shelves, and then here are the coffin shelves Now. Anyways, I normally don't talk very much when I interview somebody, but I'm very passionate about this. But are we on the same page here, or what? Correct me if I'm wrong or if you have different ideas.   Kevin Dolan: I mean totally with Rufus.   You know Rufus is out, it's public, it's something that anybody can interact with. So we know it's been implemented and if you've actually used it, I'm sure you found the experience a little bit disappointing. You know it does two main things it helps you to figure out what search you might have wanted to type in if you weren't completely sure, and it answers questions about a product once you're looking at a particular product. I think that those two things could be useful. You know, I think that it's certainly early in the implementation of chatbots to say that these things are fully capable, but I think what you're seeing with Rufus is mainly two things here. The first is there's intense industry pressure to implement AI in a visible way that all companies are feeling. After ChatGPT was released, no major tech company wanted to fall behind on that trend, and so you started to see these types of very visible generative AI features implemented in tech platforms across all industries. If you've got a website, there's a good chance you've got a chatbot at this point, and so it's hard to imagine a world where Amazon was not going to release something like this. They really, really had to because there was so much pressure to at least try it, see if it works, see how customers respond to it. Also, we know that Amazon looks towards other retail experiences to try and understand what ways they can improve the e-commerce experience.   It was not always the case that Amazon's primary vehicle for finding a product was a search bar. When Amazon was first released, it was largely node browse based. You would search through a series of categories and get to the product you're looking for, which is much akin to going to a store, looking at the different aisles, walking down the aisle that has your type of product and getting there. It was a major innovation for them to create a search engine that could search through any type of product and understand at some level what a person was looking for, and they've been making continuous improvements to that over the entire development of their company. I think with Rufus, the corollary in real life retail is going to a store and talking to an associate. If you go to a nice store where they have a more curated shopping experience, you might want to go and just talk to a person and ask them questions about the products that they're experts on. I think that's a sort of natural corollary to try to implement in an online context, but when I go to a store, if somebody comes up to me and starts telling me about their products, I'm personally not the type of person to respond to that, and so you know it's natural for me to look at Rufus with a little bit more skepticism than you know somebody who might enjoy that real life experience.   I think that there are shortcomings with Rufus. I don't think it's going to materially impact the majority of purchase paths for the majority of customers. I agree with you. There is no easier user interface that I can imagine. When you are looking for something, you want to just go to Amazon, type it in a search box, a brief description of what you're looking for and then yeah, all right, I've got a list of things to look at. I've got some pictures. I can scan some results.   I do find some utility with Rufus with respect to answering questions about products. You have to take it with a grain of salt because it can hallucinate. It can produce unactual information. However, I have used it in some context to ask a specific question about you know, can this product be compatible with some other product? And it will give you some kind of information that you can then verify using the listing, using the questions and I think that's helpful in order to use Rufus to come up with search ideas and things like that.   I found that those features are a little bit less useful but, like you're saying, if they start to integrate the experience of asking these questions in a more core way, in a way that feels less bolted on and gives you more than just a text output with links if it were to give you, say, a sort of a Pinterest board for product discovery, help you to better understand how to get to the listings that you want to find.   I could see a world where those user interfaces become material for less targeted searches, where you aren't really sure exactly what you want to buy off the bat. One of the things that they point out in the blog post about Rufus because they haven't released a scientific paper about it detailing the implementation. But one of the things they point out is, if you are going to involve yourself in some kind of activity like, let's say, ongoing camping in Joshua Tree, I might use a tool like Rufus to answer the question of what types of things do I need? You know the kinds of things that you might talk to a store associate at a camping store about and it can start to give you some ideas about this. But I think we're pretty far from the point where you would give it the same kind of trust as you would give as somebody who has put their body in a camping experience routinely.   Bradley Sutton: I agree. I think Rufus definitely has some potential to help things if the hallucinations stop, because there are things that as consumers, we do that takes time. After I land on a couple of products, I might start looking at the reviews. I might start looking at details of the bullet points and descriptions to see use cases and try and find out material. I might look at the images to see the stats and the ingredients of something, and these are all things that can take a lot of time, especially if I'm not sure where to look.   Like I don't know where a seller has put in their listing. You know which material to use, so I can definitely see Rufus helping there. But then, you see, my thing is then you know and this kind of goes now into the Cosmo discussion is I materially do not believe that sellers should be doing anything differently right now. To me, the people who Rufus and Cosmo might help, if anything, is the people. It's kind of like maybe leverage or leveling the playing field a little bit for some of the people maybe who are not doing the best practices.   You know, maybe I didn't put all the right keywords in my listing and so I wasn't indexed for it on day one, but then Cosmo or whatever, over time recognizes that the people who are buying my product are actually looking for it for this certain use case. It's kind of like what you and I showed last year on the podcast where noodle camera. Right, you know, noodle camera was not that keyword, was not at the time, I don't know about now, but was not in any listings on Amazon and it didn't have much search volume. So it's not like it was a big loss. But Amazon learned and we don't again. We don't know if this was Cosmo that did it or it's just Amazon algorithm, you know but Amazon learned that, hey, these people who are searching a noodle camera, they're actually looking for this stethoscope kind of camera that looks like a noodle, and so who don't? We don't know how long it took for that to actually become indexed as something, butthat's a benefit you know like. But at the end, if noodle camera was an important keyword, I, if I would have put that keyword in my listing from day one, I would have been the only one searchable. I wouldn't have had to wait for Cosmo or whatever A9, to kind of learn about that. And so again for the person who only keyword stuffs right, you're like, hey, I'm going to pull all my keywords from Cerebro and Magnet and just throw it in my listing and try and get it, each keyword four times.   Yeah, you know what? You probably should change your, your methodology, because that's not. That hasn't been the best way of doing things for years. But we've been teaching here at Helium 10 that you have got to talk about pain points to your product solves in your listing. You've got to show it in the images. You know what use cases. If you have collagen peptides, you've got to show people using it in their coffee. Not that they use the keyword coffee to search for collagen peptides, but that's how they are searching for it. They want something that is going to dissolve well in their coffee, and so you've got to be indexed from day one. You've got to talk about what pain points your product solves, and then that's what's going to put you on the radar of these Amazon AI things. And so in that sense, I don't think a seller's you know, most sellers should be changing their methodology at all because of any of these new things. What are your thoughts on that.?   Kevin Dolan: Yeah Well, I mean, I think it'll first be helpful to talk about what Cosmo is and what Cosmo isn't, because I've been reading a lot of the blog articles, watching the videos and I'm seeing something that tends to happen in tech sometimes, where a word or a technology is being used as a stand-in for some broader movement within the space. I'm seeing a lot of people conflating Cosmo, which is a specific research paper, a specific tool that was built and was tested. It's described very specifically in a scientific paper. Cosmo is this tool, but I think it's being used more broadly to capture a shift into focusing more on semantic search and less on lexical search, which is exactly what I had come on last year to talk about.   Amazon has been working on this for years and years, improving their search algorithm to not rely on a listing creator to actually put a specific keyword in their listing and then find it based on the existence of that keyword in the listing. Instead, try to understand the meaning of a product, how people use it, what people think about the product and all of these kinds of details, so that when somebody types in a search, it can effectively find the product that they're going to want to buy. That is a shift that's been happening for years. That predates transformer models, but we have started to see for sure an increased ability to actually do these things on Amazon. I think that what you're saying is correct. You know the best practices and what sellers should be doing with their listings hasn't changed. But that really depends on what they were doing, whether they were following the best practices to begin with. You know like you said, if they were keyword stuffing trying to find as many keywords as people might type into a search box and stuff it into their listing in as literal a fashion as possible to make Sammy-looking listings that cover as much search volume as possible yeah, that's a bad practice, and as we move into a more semantically focused search world, that becomes an even worse practice. Semantically focused search world that becomes an even worse practice.   What it also tells us is that some of the efforts that are required today to create listings that do involve inserting specific keywords and things like that. You may be able to shift your focus to what would actually be more helpful to customers, which is accurately describing your product, accurately describing how your product will be used and targeting specific customers and specific pain points. The more specific you are and the clearer and more accurate you are, amazon wants you to be in front of the customers who want to buy your product. So that's always going to be a good practice and that's ultimately what Amazon is trying to do when they're doing these types of experiments.   Now the Cosmo paper is interesting. The Cosmo paper was tested on a really large chunk of Amazon traffic using a very heavy, large language model. Compared to prior research, which does tell us that Amazon has made investments in the server capabilities to be able to run these models in production and keep searches within their tight latency expectations, so that, I would say, is certainly significant, it tells us that Amazon does have the hardware capacities to run some of these more advanced models and it tells us that we are going to see an increased focus on semantic search. I think that does affect consumer behaviors, it does affect the way that we rank for keywords, but what it doesn't affect is that best practice of describing your products accurately.   Bradley Sutton: Based on those scientific documents. What are some of the things where, again, just because it's in the science document doesn't mean that it's going to be implemented. But, you know, based on the results and sometimes you can kind of tell like, wow, this one had some pretty amazing results, so it's probably for sure going to be implemented. Can you talk a little bit more about the kind of things that maybe you've seen already implemented or you think will be based on all you know? Again, nobody has read more Amazon science documents than Kevin here. So what would you predict as far as the future, the next year or so?   Kevin Dolan: I mean, Cosmo is a specific tool and I think that the function that it performs is valuable to enhancing Amazon's understanding of a listing. So I certainly would not be surprised to see Amazon implementing this in a production capacity on a large swath of searches. That would not be surprising to me, but it's not as massive as the shift that we've seen into semantic focused search. Cosmo in particular discusses essentially a mechanism for enhancing Amazon's understanding of a product by taking into consideration things that aren't expressed in the query and things that aren't expressed in the listing. The example that they use in the paper, the canonical example, is if you're looking for shoes for pregnant women, a listing might not literally say shoes for pregnant women. It might produce a specific type of open-toed shoe that has good support, good comfort. That might not literally be listed as a keyword in the listing, but it might be something that the system can infer based on its knowledge of the universe, about what it's like to be a pregnant woman and the types of products that they might benefit from.   Cosmo is essentially a mechanism for enhancing listings with additional information to get closer to the user's intent based on a particular search.   If you zoom out and you look at the broader task of semantic search. That's always been the focus. The goal is something might not be said in the same language in a query as it might be when it's written in a listing, when it's answered in a question or when it's written in a review be when it's written in a listing, when it's answered in a question or when it's written in a review, and so the domain of language that's used for these two different ways of expressing thought aren't the same, and so we need to create algorithms that better understand what a user actually means when they type in a search, and what a product actually does and what functions it performs. This idea of understanding deep intent and the actual composition of a product is essentially the goal, and we are seeing for sure that Amazon is making these changes. We're seeing more results come back for listings that do not literally have the keywords typed into search and better match what is a user's real intent on shopping.   Bradley Sutton: But for it to learn that something is a good shoe for pregnant women, it basically would have to have some context, like maybe the reviews. Like somebody said, oh, I was in the second trimester and this was great. It's not going to pull that out of nothing unless, no, I was going to say maybe it knows that. Like, maybe somehow it knows the customer is pregnant and then, without even a review, it's a wow. We see an abnormally large number of pregnant women who are buying this. But I don't, I don't know. I mean, I think I big dad.   Kevin Dolan: I could tell you that, Cosmo, the paper itself does. You're talking about what's usually called avatar personalization, based on your purchase history. I know some things about you. I can kind of put you in this category of person, and I know that these types of people tend to buy these types of products. The Cosmo paper doesn't actually explicitly discuss testing avatar personalization. Doesn't actually explicitly discuss testing avatar personalization. What it does talk about is using recent Search Queries to better contextualize later Search Queries. So like, for example, if I'm searching for camping gear and then I search for mattress after that, there's a good chance that I specifically mean a camping mattress or an inflatable mattress rather than a mattress for a bed in your home that weighs 200 pounds. It can better contextualize a particular search query based on the searches that you've been performing in the recent past.   Avatar personalization is another thing that Amazon is always investigating and we have yet to see any really material evidence that it's been implemented. Almost all of the studies that I've read relating to that type of personalization they talk about the potential of it, but in practice they tend to perform pretty poorly. They either reduce sales or they don't materially impact sales, which is a major problem. They don't materially impact sales, which is a major problem, especially considering that cost of performing that personalization. Amazon does a lot to make sure that the searches that come back are within a very tight latency. They need to come back as quickly as possible and that's very important to the shopping experience. The more personalized search results are, the more expensive those search queries are going to be to run and the longer it's going to take, which materially affects your experience as a purchaser. Yes, hardware is improving. Yes, technologies are improving, but if you can just reuse results, it's always going to be a lot faster than if you compute it on the fly.   Bradley Sutton: But then, still, using the same example, I think, if you knew that, hey, your shoes have good cushioning and you designed it actually for pregnant women to be able to use, the best practice still is to put that keyboard in your listing for day one, so that at least you have a. You know, you don't have to wait for the AI to learn based on activity, you know. But then, if it's not something that's readily like, maybe you had no idea that people were using your shoes for gifts for people who are pregnant, like, maybe you had no idea. That's where, like, I think Cosmo, Rufus and stuff is going to help to uncover these sub-niches of people who are getting your product. But again, at the end of the day, this scenario, I don't think there's anything different that the seller needs to do as far as with their listing that we haven't already said. Now, at the same time, maybe they learn. I think this is going to open up some new potentials down the road. Like, let's say, Helium 10 starts seeing what the common Rufus things are being said about the product or what's the common queries. Maybe Amazon will make that available for sellers through some API that says, hey, this persona is buying your product.   Well, maybe I would go into my listing and change one of my images to show a pregnant person walking around with these shoes. But again, that's what you should have been doing for years. You know, like when you read your reviews and you notice like I used to sell this or I still do sell this egg tray, and I was reading the reviews one day and people were using this egg tray, this wooden egg tray, to as a serving platter for like sushi and also these chocolates, because you know the holes for an egg tray is very similar I was like I never would have thought that so in that situation, who knows, maybe Rufus would have seen the reviews and saw these images and now, all of a sudden, even though I don't have chocolates or sushi in my egg tray listing, I would be searchable for those keywords. But again, as soon as I would have seen that review or known that people are using my product in a way and this is what I did years before AI. You know cause this was years ago that I did this I went in and I did a reef photo shoot showing other use cases of it and I did one image, or like a quadrant of four images that showed somebody putting sushi in it, somebody putting chocolate in it, somebody putting this and that's, and then I put it in my listing too.   So, I was like I didn't want to wait for Amazon to hopefully index me for these keywords. So again, I just go back to the point that what Amazon is doing is not really making things where sellers are going to have to do something completely different, but they they're helping maybe the sellers who haven't been doing the best practices to get indexed for keywords that maybe they weren't smart enough to put in their listing. Yeah, I mean, I think so.   Kevin Dolan:            What you're ultimately seeing with Cosmo is taking information from Amazon's entire catalog, which includes billions of products, billions of product listings, billions of questions, billions of answers, billions of reviews.   There's a lot of information contained in all of that data, which starts to build a picture of how the universe works, and so, in a sense, you could think of it as Amazon using the information it's learned from existing listings to enhance all listings and build a more comprehensive picture of their catalog.   I totally agree with you that it doesn't change the best practices, and still, I would say it's now even more critical that you are taking into consideration the use cases for your products, the people who might be using it, and accurately describe these in your listings. I think that that is still absolutely the best way to rank for products. I think what it does is it shifts focus from some of those old school techniques that we were probably recommending 10 years ago. It's no longer necessary for you to enumerate all possible customers of a product, but instead focus on the key use cases and the key customers to your products, describe these things as accurately and as naturally as possible. It's not required for you to think of all the ways that you could possibly say pregnant woman. Instead, you can just describe the fact that this is useful for a person who is pregnant.   Bradley Sutton: Outside of Cosmo, Rufus. Obviously, they announced a lot of things at Amazon Accelerate, like Amelia for Amazon sellers. Any comments on other things that Amazon have been working on the AI front? Yeah, I mean I would say Amelia is Amazon sellers. Any comments on other things that Amazon have been working on the AI front.?   0:36:59 - Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean I would say Amelia is certainly interesting. Amelia is Amazon's internal chatbot for Seller Central. You know, I've yet to play with it. I've yet to see anybody who's actually had access to it, so I think it's just an early announcement. Maybe some limited people have access, but I would imagine it's going to undergo the hype cycle that we see for most chatbots, including Rufus. There's going to be a lot of excitement. The initial version will be pretty terrible. It will slowly get better over time.   The question is whether it will continue to receive enough investment to make it into a chatbot product that is useful for people, and whether chat is as natural an interface.   As you know, Seller Central is in and of itself. You know, I think we've spent a lot of time over the past 30, 40 years developing software interaction paradigms, so we have a good idea of what is easy to use software. There is potential that we could be using these more chat oriented interfaces to get to our vague intents that we have in our head a little bit more quickly, but we haven't really proven that out yet, and so I would say Amelia has a very similar potential to Rufus in that it's something that I believe could be useful if it is properly invested in, but the jury's still out on whether or not it's going to be a material impacting to people's workflow as you start to get access to it. I do recommend that sellers give it a try, just like with any of these tools see if it's useful for their workflows, but I'm not really holding my breath on it being revolutionary.   Bradley Sutton: A lot of the recommendations that Amazon gives in Seller Central is. I think a lot of sellers have learned to just ignore them because they're not exactly that useful.   And then. So, if this is, it's like putting lipstick on a pig, you know like sure you could put the AI word up, but if it's being based on something that you don't trust in the first place, you know, might be a little bit of time before we can implement it, but I think that Amazon is definitely moving in the right direction and that Amelia has nothing to do with the customer. You know, like we always say, Amazon is all about the customer, which is true, but I think that's just in itself is a step in the right direction, that, hey, Amazon is doing things that are going to try and help the seller, and that's a trend I've been seeing over the last few years. I think it's a very nice step in the right direction.   Kevin Dolan: On that front, we've definitely been seeing Amazon release features in Seller Central using AI that are more seller oriented, that help sellers to understand their products. They've released their own features for review analysis, which does get some basic, surface level summary statistics that could be helpful for people. I think Amazon is making investments there. However, they're always going to be a little bit step removed from the customer. They're always, at the end of the day, competing with sellers to some degree. There are certain things that they can do, certain things that they're limited on in terms of where their interests lie versus where the sellers lie, and so that's where tools like Helium 10 become much more valuable to customers, and so I do recommend that you look at the full suite of tools that you have available to you, because there's going to be things that Amazon will implement and there's going to be things that they're going to be hesitant to implement, for whatever reason.   Bradley Sutton: All right. Well, Kevin, thank you so much for riffing on this with me. It's something I'm passionate about because I'm all about. I'm not like Amazon, I'm all about the sellers, not about the customers, and so anything that affects sellers or you, you know, if there's going to be some big inherent change in the way that sellers need to do things, then I get very passionate about it. And especially when I hear I don't want to, you know, use the word misinformation, you know out there, but almost like scare tactics or just clickbaity stuff, which I just did in this very podcast with the title of it but with at least, if you're in a clickbait, at least let people know that what the real situation is, because I don't want I've had so many sellers come up to me because of just hearing things where it's like, oh, my goodness, I've got to change everything I'm doing for my keyword research.   I've got to change everything I'm doing for my listing optimization. And right now, the fact of the matter is, no, I'm still doing the exact same things I did last year. There are some slightly different things because there's new rules at Amazon of what you can and can't do and of course, I've switched, but as far as the way I make my listings and I structure it and how I do my keyword research. Not one iota different am I doing it now, and I have had the exact same success with getting to page one on all my main keywords and getting sales for the keywords I think I'm relevant for.   And so I think that's just important to know, guys, that as AI evolves, I'm sure I'm positive there's going to be new things that we might have to do as sellers and stay tuned. We'll let you know what those are, but right now, as long as you've been paying attention to our tutorials the last few years, you're not having to do anything different, in my opinion. So, anyways, thanks, Kevin, let's definitely bring you on in 2025. And you know, who knows, maybe AI will be we'll be driving all of our cars and we're driving like the Jetsons or something. I don't know what's. What's going to happen, but we're going to find out with you next year.   Kevin Dolan: Super excited. Thanks for having me.  

We're back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10's Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10's newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level. Amazon's new AI-powered tools https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/innovation-at-amazon/amazon-ads-image-generator-adds-aspect-ratio-capability https://www.aboutamazon.eu/news/empowering-small-business/amazon-announces-expansion-of-generative-ai-listing-tools-to-sellers-across-europe Amazon Ditching Air Pillows https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/20/amazon-plastic-air-pillows-to-be-replaced-with-paper-filler.html Imagine saving thousands annually on fulfillment costs by optimizing product dimensions. We explore the financial benefits of Helium 10's size tier optimization feature and how reducing an item's length by just one inch can lead to significant savings. Additionally, learn how Helium 10's Listing Analyzer and media comparison tools can give you an edge over competitors by enhancing product listings. With actionable insights and practical examples, this episode is packed with strategies to help you stay ahead in the e-commerce landscape. Tune in for all these valuable strategies and stay ahead in the e-commerce game! In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers: 00:45 - Amazon AI Power Tools 02:27 - Expansion of AI Tools in Europe 03:34 - Walmart+ Week 04:28 - Walmart Connect Video Module 05:22 - Amazon Air Pillows 06:35 - Affiliate Marketing Example 08:42 - SQP + BTP Updates 12:22 - Follow Serious Sellers Podcast 13:18 - New Feature Alert 16:34 - Training: Listing Analyzer ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On Youtube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: AI tool expansion from Amazon, a Walmart new video feature, recap of new features in search, career performance and brand tailored promotions this and more on this week's weekly buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is our Helium 10 weekly buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the new stories that's going on in the Amazon, Walmart, e-commerce world. We give you training tips of the week and we also let you know what new Helium 10 features were released. That'll give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let's see what's buzzing Just a couple of news articles of the day, so let's go ahead and hop right in it. Bradley Sutton: The very first one is from Amazon. It's entitled Amazon's new AI powered tools help advertisers easily create engaging and vibrant images. All right, so this is, you know, been out for quite a while now in in sponsored ads how you can upload an image and then create different backgrounds for that image. And now there's a couple of new features. First of all, this kind of cool, this article that we have linked to, probably down below in the comments has some quotes from our very own Melissa, right here from Pacvue, and you know she talks a little bit about it. Now, one thing that's interesting is or a couple of things that I noticed new that they're releasing is, first of all, that I noticed. New that they're releasing is, first of all, instead of you just having to do the prompt in order to let Amazon's AI know what to do for the background, it's gonna start scanning your listing and maybe kind of add some of its own flavor, even without you having to specify every single thing. The other new thing is that you're now able, through Amazon's AI image generation, to do it in different formats. You know like not just one exact. You know 10, 80 by 720 or whatever the heck it is Right. But you can do different formats because obviously there's different ad types, different image sizes for different use cases inside of seller central for ads or other things. Now, obviously, if you've been using Helium 10, or you've been using it or not, you hopefully know that you have access to not only this image generator but also, in Listing, builder is another image generator that you can create images for Amazon post sizes, for different A plus content modules, et cetera. So a lot of new AI stuff that, um, you know can definitely help you from Amazon. Bradley Sutton: Speaking of AI from Amazon, one more update about this topic. Another article here is entitled Amazon announces expansion of generative AI listing tools to sellers across Europe. So you know, months and months ago, we reported how, in Amazon USA, there's like a listing content builder that they had and some other things that have been released to Amazon USA. But now, as of a few weeks ago and through today, they're fully announced or fully launched in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom for those AI listing building tools, amongst some other things. For those AI listing building tools, amongst some other things. Now, you know, the last time I used it, it's not as intuitive, maybe, as you need to really make a great listing because it's not going to include all of your main keywords that you're going to need. But it's a good way to kind of like see, hey, what does Amazon think is important for your listing to have? But to really make your listing, still definitely use the Helium 10 Listing Builder. Make sure you're using all of the keywords in your listing. But now some of those AI features that we, as US sellers have had for a while now it is available in Amazon Europe. Bradley Sutton: Next article not really an article, but just a reminder from Walmart. It's kind of like their version of Prime Day this week. All right, so that has been from June 17th and it's going to go for a couple more days. Walmart+ Week is what it's called, and so I'm just curious have you checked your Walmart sales, those of you selling on Walmart? What kind of bump did you see? And it did your Amazon sales? Maybe those of you who sell on Walmart and Amazon, did you see? Maybe Amazon get a little bit of a bump? I'm also wondering how did you manage now that Walmart+ week is in a different week than prime day? Um, you know, if your listings are tied together, you can't really discount on one site and not on the other. So those of you who did deals on Walmart+, did you go ahead and do those same deals on Amazon? Just curious as to what some of your strategies were. Let me know in the comments below. Bradley Sutton: Another announcement that actually comes from Walmart. This is an email that went out to Walmart sellers. Take a look here. It says Walmart Connect is pleased to announce the launch of a video module, an item and module reordering for brand shop via shop builder. All right. So it says here bring your brand to life like never before. Use the new video module to create an engaging narrative about your brand and educate customers on your unique offering. So there's a couple more things that they announced, but this is you know it's. It's a lot of stuff that you know maybe we take for granted on Amazon, but Walmart hasn't had these kind of things like being able to put videos on your brand page. I mean, Walmart hasn't even had a brand page for that long. So a lot of cool things coming to Walmart that you're probably used to on Amazon, but now hopefully that'll help you get a little bit more, maybe some better conversion, maybe some more sales on the Walmart platform. Bradley Sutton: Next news article is from CNBC and it's entitled Amazon is ditching the plastic air pillows in its boxes. How many of you have gotten Amazon packages or maybe even gotten samples of your own shipments and maybe Amazon used like a big box and it had those like bags filled with air, right, airbags, I guess you can maybe call it. They call it air pillows right here in this article. But that is going away, all right, because they want to use 15 billion fewer plastic pillows annually, and now they're going to be adding paper fillers that are made from recyclable materials. All right. Now, from a customer standpoint, what I'm worried about is, depending on what this, this paper fillers is, is. If it's what I think it is, it's like those stuff that almost looks like comes from a shredder. I'm just worried it's going to be like that and then customers are going to complain that all this stuff got all over their packaging and all over their house and it's a little bit messy. You know, those air bubbles, just like you know, explode it and for a bad or worse experience for the unboxing part of it Does it make a big mess. You know, might, might be worth looking into. Hopefully not. Bradley Sutton: Next article is not really an article, or it was an article. It's by in style, but I brought it up to kind of like show an example of what happens because of affiliate marketers out there for Amazon. So this is actually something that just came up in the news and it really uh. You know, sometimes when I, when I'm looking for e-commerce news, I type in just regular keywords like Amazon and stuff, and this has nothing to do with e-commerce sellers, but it's something that got a lot of views. All right, this is an article by in style and it's entitled Priyanka Chopra just unlocked my new go-to airport outfit and it's $15 at Amazon. Bradley Sutton: All right, so this is a person who just made this article, you know, a couple days ago, and then you know she doesn't know this actress, right, but she just like saw, she just took an image from this actress's Instagram, put it on here, and then what she did was she found different sets from Amazon and other websites that look like what this actress was wearing, and then the links I noticed here were like Amazon affiliate links. Now, the one that was $15, I went to that listing here on Amazon. All right, so this is a. It says B T, f, B M woman's pajama set. Right Now, take a look before the article came out yesterday or two days ago now, on this on the 19th, this pajama set or whatever the heck it is, um, had a BSR of 453,000. All right, now this article comes out on the 20th yesterday and the BSR goes from 450,000 down to 6,000. I think you can probably see that that's a big sales increase. Bradley Sutton: So, again, a cool strategy for you is. You know, can you make your own article. That gets picked up. You know, the show starts showing up in news. Can you get your products? You know, somehow that come out in some of these blogs and articles and it could drive tons and tons of traffic to your list. I thought that was just a cool example of something that literally was just released yesterday, and then you can see the effect that something like that has on an Amazon listing A couple of things that actually were released like a month, two months ago. But when I look on LinkedIn and other places, I don't see too many people who know about it, and a couple of people I talked to like hey, did you know that brand analytics and brand seller promotions has this and that? And they said no. So I wanted to just go ahead and highlight, even though it's not like brand new news. Like I said, this was probably released a month ago. But just a reminder to check those of you who have brand registry go into your search query performance and then go into your monthly view at the brand level. You know, choose a month. You know, maybe choose May. That's the most recent month. And now, when you go all the way over to the right hand side and you hit the generate download button over here you are going to get some new options that maybe you haven't seen. So the ones you've seen before is simple view, comprehensive view, but now you've got a couple other reports here that maybe you knew about these. If you did, great. If not, go ahead and check it out. One is called Amazon's Choice Badge Data. All right, so it's going to show you, hey, how did your catalog performance go when you had an Amazon's Choice Badge, as opposed to when you didn't have it? The other one is Search funnel outliers data and it says search funnel metrics that include your top and bottom performing queries or outliers, and this allows you to focus on specific search query performance without the need to review thousands of queries. This data is only available at the monthly reporting range, so go ahead and take a look at your search query performance at the monthly level and at the brand level If you have not taken a look at this before. Bradley Sutton: Another thing that was launched a couple months ago or about a month ago that I don't see too many people talking about. You know we talked months and months ago about brand tailored promotions, and now there's a few new audiences that are available in brand tailored promotion, the ones that there's a few here that you know Amazon has had for forever right, or at least since it launched. I forgot if it was like late last year or early this year, but you know you've got your at risk audience, which is customers who haven't purchased recently nor frequently, with varied spend. You've got what I think is one of the one of most powerful ones here the brand cart abandoners. You know people who added your product to the cart but didn't actually purchase. You've got your brand followers here, but now you know there there's some other ones here that maybe you haven't seen, depending on the last time you check this, but you're able to make. Remember, the whole point of this page is you're able to make special promotions that go directly to these audiences. Bradley Sutton: So one is declining, promising All right. You ever heard of that one. It says customers from your brand's promising audience who are predicted to spend less with your brand in the next year. Uh, declining top tier. This is customers from your brand's top tier audience who are predicted to spend less. You've got your high spend customers. That's always been there. You've got potential new customers. What is that made of? It says customers who have clicked on your brand or your storefront or products, added products to their cart but have not purchased from your brand in the last year. Okay, so they never even purchased from you. You've got promising. All right, these are customers who purchased recently. They buy occasionally and they spend above average. All right, they've you've got recent customers. This is just a five percent sampling of your brand's customers. You search group performance. Those of you who are brand registered, go in there, take a look, play around some of these things. Maybe there's some potential for you to make some more sales, either by looking at some different data points or by targeting a new group of buyers. Bradley Sutton: I just wanted to show you, if you're watching this on YouTube guys, you know maybe getting this a little bit late this version of the news, the news, always comes first, as well as all of our podcasts. It comes out first on your podcast player. So if you have an iPhone, go into the Apple podcast app right now. All right, and those of you who are already following, just scroll down a little bit and pass the first few episodes. You'll see this. Ratings and reviews Do me a solid. Why don't you go ahead and give a rating, and if you're listening to this on the podcast already, you're on the Apple podcast player hit this ratings and review, and make sure to go ahead and leave a review right here by clicking on that. Just hit the tap to rate and then put the stars that you like. I would really appreciate it. Now, if you have Spotify, it's actually the same exact thing. Just type in serious sellers podcast, make sure to hit the follow button and then you'll be subscribed. You'll be the first to get these news each week. All right, that's it for the news this week. Bradley Sutton: Now we're going to hop into the Helium 10 new feature alerts, and it is a doozy, guys. This is pretty cool. I guarantee that none of you even knew we had this. Maybe a couple of you might've seen it in your alerts, but basically, this is something that could save you tons and tons of money. So it's called the the size tier optimization suggestion. I think it's going to be called. But basically, what you guys want to do, I want everybody who's got Helium 10, go into your dashboard and then go to your alerts page and then look if you have a message that says products with size tier optimization suggestions and then hit this button with the number. Basically, in a nutshell, what this is is if you have a box or a package in your entire catalog that is super close to like, maybe going from one size tier to the next, like if you could just take away a half inch or an inch and then you go from large standard size to standard size or something like that. We're going to give you a notification because a lot of you might not realize you're right on the border and maybe you can go ahead and shave like a half inch on your box, your next production run. Bradley Sutton: Let me just illustrate how much money this could make you. All right, this is one of my Project 5k account. So I'm going to go ahead and click on this number three because it says I have three products. That has size to your optimization. So when I hit that it takes me to those products and then I put my mouse over this information. You can see, look at this. It says we've identified an opportunity to optimize your fulfillment costs. If you reduce the length by one inch, you could go from large bulky to large standard size, likely decreasing the FBA fulfillment costs from 1075 to $7 per unit. Guys, my computer, like mine, tells me that that is $3.75 difference if I just take one inch off of one side of my product. Now let's just say that, uh, actually I know what, what, what this product is. This product sells an average of about five units a day, all right, so it's not like a top seller, but that's five, five units a day for the entire year. So let's, let's just take five units a day and times that by $3.75. Okay, that's $18.75 a day extra I could be getting or less in fees right Now we times that by 365. Bradley Sutton: This one alert guys that Helium 10 just gave me, if I actually act on it and obviously if I am able to shave an inch off $7,000 for the year, is that a valuable enough alert for you guys? And this is an item that only sells five? This is not one of my top sellers, obviously, right? What if you guys, if this was your item and you sold 25 units a day, all right, instead of five, that means that this alert potentially just made you $35,000. Are you guys rushing to your alerts page yet? I hope so. So again, go to your alerts page. Take a look at the top left. Does it say, products with size tier optimization suggestion. If so, take a look. You can't always shave an inch off of your package. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't, but I think you'd agree with me it's definitely worth a look. Bradley Sutton: All right, now let's go to our Helium 10 training tip of the week, something that will give you serious strategies for serious sellers. Let's say you're looking at X-Ray at your niche and you just want to kind of like really get a quick look at what's going on with the top competitors, because you're about to launch a new product I'm about to launch this new egg rack, or I am did launch this egg rack this week as a test on project X. And so, like I'm here in the Amazon search results and you guys maybe have selected different ASINs here. And what do you normally do when you select ASINs from X-Ray? You probably hit the run Cerebro button to go check on their keywords. That's great and all, but did you notice, right next to the run Cerebro button is a run listing analyzer button. So let me show you how this can be useful. So maybe let's just say these are all my direct competitors, these stackable egg racks. Bradley Sutton: Once I hit run with listing analyzer, it's going to take me to the listing analyzer tool and of course here in the middle I can see just some general stats about these other products and check their listing quality score and see you know who's ranking for the most important keywords and stuff like that. But there's a hidden button here that a lot of you do not look at. Now this is for those of you with a diamond plan, but it is called the media comparison button. So once you hit media comparison it takes you to a page where it shows all of the images that are in all of your competitors listings in a nice little format that you can download as a PDF. And first of all, I'm just going to look at this and see do I see common themes? This is this is nothing new. This strategy we've been talking about for years comes from Tomer Rabinovich. Shout out to Tomer. But it's like you should be looking at your competitors' images to see what common themes are working Like. Bradley Sutton: For example, I noticed that so many of these showed the stackability right. It showed how you put different egg racks and stack them up together. I see four out of the five. They've got human models in their listing. But basically you use this and kind of work, your photo shoot strategy, if you're using like a photography studio or maybe just somebody who's going to do 3D design or something like that just go ahead and print this, export this as a PDF and then now you've got all these images right here on one page instead of, you know, like trying to print off you know seven, eight different Amazon listings and then, you know, trying to coordinate that way with PowerPoint or something like that with your graphic designer. Bradley Sutton: So really cool tool that I think a lot of people are sleeping on right here in Listing Analyzer. But you can import listings directly from Xray in your Chrome extensions so that you can hit that media comparison button. All right, guys. That's it for the news this week. Thank you so much for tuning in. We'll see you next week to see what's buzzing.

In which Princess dives deep into her bisexual awakening - from badly censored anime to Emma Watson's eyebrows! Check out our Patreon - there are cool perks and you help support the podcast! https://www.patreon.com/thequeermoviepodcast We're a serious podcast and have a sponsor, SquareSpace support us! Help make the podcast profitable by going to squarespace.com/queermovie, and by using the code 'queermovie' at checkout. Find Us Online - Twitter: https://twitter.com/QueerMoviePod  - Website: http://www.queermoviepodcast.co.uk/  - Multitude: @MultitudeShows   Production - Hosts: Rowan Ellis and Jazza John - Editor: Julia Schifini - Executive Producer: Multitude - Artwork: Jessica E. Boyd   About The Show Queer Movie Podcast is a queer movie watch party hosted by Rowan Ellis and Jazza John. Join us as we research and rate our way through the queer film canon, one genre at a time. From rom-coms to slashers, contemporary arthouse cinema to black & white classics, Queer Movie Podcast is a celebration of all things gaaaaay on the silver screen. New episodes every other Thursday.   Transcript ROWAN:  Just quick mention at the top of this episode to thank two of our patrons over on Patreon, Jennifer and Toby who are supporting at the highest tier over there. We are so, so grateful. Thank you so much to our wonderful rainbow parents, Jennifer and Toby. If you want to support our Patreon then the link will be in the description. It's patreon.com/thequeermoviepodcast. [theme] ROWAN:  Welcome to the Queer Movie Podcast celebrating the best and worst and LGBTQ plus cinema one glorious genre at a time. I'm Rowan Ellis and I would like to welcome you to one of our guest specials. Oooh, very exciting. And today we are joined by, as usual, a very special guest who will be answering the question, what movies made you queer? I am very excited to welcome Princess, wooo! Popopow. Yay! PRINCESS:  Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to finally be here with you. I wanted to be talking to you and doing stuff with you forever. But we always are just so busy. And everything's so chaotic. So it's an honor to be queer here with you. ROWAN:  Oh my gosh, like ships in the night. I mean, I feel like in these podcasts with these guests, I always forget to actually introduce people because it's mainly like this is a cool person that I know about. And then I—I never actually do the proper podcasting of introducing them. So if you don't already know who Princess is, for shame, writer, YouTuber, pop culture thinker was the direct quote I believe. And I actually pulled up the quote from your YouTube channel, which I think is like chef's kiss, which is talking about pop culture, race, feminism, and other social issues with a lot of nuance and profanity.  Incredible. PRINCESS:  Yes. I— I do— ROWAN:  Love that. PRINCESS:  —I do love that. Sometimes I write something I'm like, that was good. I think that this is solid description. ROWAN:  So essentially, honestly, if you like this podcast, if you like anything that Me or Jazza do on the internet, you will love everything that our guest does. Across the entirety of the internet, so many projects. We'll leave in the show notes various links for you to look up what she's doing. First question for you, the first question we always do on this particular type of guest episode. I use queer in that intro as kind of like an umbrella catch-all term, you know, the movies that made me queer. But do you use other words to describe your identities? Does that make sense as a question for you? Or would there be some other kind of words going on there? PRINCESS:  No, absolutely. I use queer and Bi all the time. I am a very loud, proud stereotype bisexual person. And I love it. It's the term that I came into my queerness with. So even as I've evolved in people of like, well, what about pan or this, and it's like, I accept all those terms. But I call myself Bi and queer. And yeah, just very happy with. Happy being Bi. ROWAN:  Amazing, love that. And as such, you have bought along, I don't know what these are. I love when like all the guests keep up secret from me beforehand. And so it's always really fun to see what stuff people overlap on, because I feel like there's a lot of quite classic, especially the bisexuals. You do—there's a few that you all seem to have zoned in like some kind of homing beacon onto certain characters and certain movies. And then sometimes there are really left-to-field ones. So would you like to lay before me on the platter of sexuality, your first entry into this particular podcast vault? PRINCESS:  Well, I have to say, it's a precursor to this. I think like every—every queer kid can go back and find like, a billion moments where they're like, oh, yeah, like this because I was clear. Oh, yeah, I've totally quit that's why I like this. And for me, the thing I picked is the moment where I was just like, all of the denial just kind of like flushed down the toilet. And I was just like, well, it's no—I can no longer pretend that this is just - ROWAN:  The floodgates have opened. PRINCESS:  Just truly, fully opened. And it is— not even the movie itself, but the trailer for A24's, The Bling Ring. ROWAN:  Wow! What a deep call. What a throwback. Incredible Okay, so for those who don't know, what—what is The Bling Ring, if no one—somehow, someone has passed them by? PRINCESS:  Oh man, a true moment. Alright, so in 2013, Sofia Coppola, the soft girl boss directed at she is did an adaptation of the Vanity Fair article. The suspects were Louis Vittons about this—this gang quote-unquote, like “this gang of like rich kids” who were going into the homes of celebrities and stealing stuff from the celebrities. Purses, shoes, like it was chaotic. And it was a huge story. And in 2013 Sofia Coppola produced the film, and in the film playing one of the token members of The Bling Ring is Emma Watson. There's a scene in the trailer where Emma Watson is like, dancing and she does this thing where she like licks her upper lip and she's got like bangs, like she's like in the dance floor, she's having a good time. It's just kind of like licks her upper lip And I just remember thinking to myself like, oh, no, it's—oh no, it's finally—it's like the egg cracked, there was no—there was no more denial. There was no more like, oh, maybe I'm just—no, I was a homosexual. And I think it's because I always had a crush on Emma Watson. ROWAN:  Very valid of you. PRINCESS:  Thank you, um, in that front, but like, in a way where it's like I was always a girl's, girl. I always had female friends. I always wanted to be in the company ship of other women. So it was very easy for me to just be like, I just want to like be her best friend. And we could read books together, and we could like hang out like she likes to read, I like to read. You know, that kind of thing. And then first—the first thing that she did, was she got that haircut. When she like—after she was done filming that franchise. She cut her hair into this very cute like Audrey Hepburn, Anne Hathaway bob. And her face just like 10 times, just was like in my—in my mind, It's like, wow, she's so pretty. Wow! And I was like, no, it's fine. It's just—I'm just admiring her. ROWAN:  I just really love to admire people who can pull off pixie cuts. Like uh—it's just an intellectual admiration of that face type. PRINCESS:  Exactly.  ROWAN:  Yeah, of course. PRINCESS:  And so—and so—but then when The Bling Ring trailer came out, and I saw that lip lick, I thought I really realized oh, no, I'm getting, and I have a crush on Emma Watson for real, for real. ROWAN:  I love that.  PRINCESS:  And even though I don't particularly like The Bling Ring as a movie, that moment is imprinted on my soul forever. That—when I was sitting in bed thinking about like, we're gonna be talking about Xena again, or Sailor Moon, and I just like, I started reading some fanfiction, and then I was like, man, I really do still have a thing for Emma Watson. ROWAN:  Alright. Okay, here's what's so funny. I've never actually seen The Bling Ring. I think I would love it because it gives me the sense of like a movie that would really tickle the ADHD, like good bit of my brain in terms of it being just fairytale taken fast, basically. Like, that seems like there's probably been a lot of that happening in that movie. So I haven't actually seen the film. But I know the exact moment in that trailer that you are talking. I'm like, yep, I can see it clear as day. And I think it was that like, at least from my recollection. She did the like pixie cut and stuff, which was sort of like her version of I'm grown up now. Like I'm separating myself from this franchise, it is a child. But I feel like Bling Ring was the first like role that she took that was like overtly sexy. I'm here. I'm like an adult. PRINCESS:  Yes.  ROWAN:  And so it was obviously like, we're going hard on the idea of like, this is me stepping into my own. And she seems to have really put herself into that role. So— PRINCESS:  Yeah. ROWAN:  —it was just inevitable. PRINCESS:  It was inevitable. It was like—it was the definitely hollow movies came out. Then she was in Perks of Being a Wallflower. Then this and her cameo. And this is the end came in like the same year. And then you know, she's on and off for a while. I don't think she's done anything since Little Women. But she's just like, I think also, even though I don't like to her, how her Belle came together in the movie. I think like as a kid, like, I'd always love Belle from Beauty and the Beast. And in my mind, she and Belle, and like Audrey Hepburn and kind of like all of the like warm, soft white girl femme things that I'm really am attracted to, were like all combined in my mind with her because she was smart and a feminist and someone who just seemed very aware and even when she wasn't trying to get aware. And then what is even more peak bisexuals, that I always had a crush on her and Tom Felton. And then they had that—they had that whole back and forth thing where like she wrote the intro to his memoir. And I just remember like, just like giggling when I found that out. And then I was like, what's wrong with you? Like you don't understand! Everything Bi in me is so pleased right now, that they're like, friends. ROWAN:  A piece of context that I collect, everyone needs if you aren't familiar with the fact that Tom like the—I feel like the way that Princess has just told this story as if it's like some kind of historical event.  PRINCESS:  I know. ROWAN:  Like his book came out this year. Like that—that reaction is still within you—within your like very being, it feels like. PRINCESS:  It's—it's because, you know, for all of the things that I—that I—there are some fandoms that I really became queer in, or that I recognize my queerness in. And the things that I would ship and the—in the content I would consume. And so like the Draco, Hermione stuff, which is you know, very problematic hashtag I know. But because I had a crush on Emma Watson and Tom Felton as like people. It was like this perfect like blanket for me. And then there was although—there are always those rumors that like she had a crush on him in real life, which was confirmed. And so that brought me into a whole fit of giggles. And then I remember a couple years ago there was this image that one of them put on Instagram of like him teaching her the guitar, and like my entire like heart went into outer space. And then when the memoir came out, and I just—and I'm just like, wow! Emma Watson it—like their friendship just makes my heart very happy. But I just love the things that she's doing outside of acting. And I think The Bling Ring was the moment that I allowed myself to be like, no, I really have a crush on this girl. And it's weird because it's the first time I've ever had a crush on someone who was like my age, a real person and not a cartoon character. And someone who for my entire life had been like, both my age and a celebrity. Because I remember just the process happening and figuring out who this person wasn't it, which just very like. It was overwhelming. I think it's— I feel like that's probably how fed, the Jonas Brothers must feel. Who were like around the age when those, that's how I felt? Like Emma was all the Jonas's in one. ROWAN:  Roll into one girl. The thing that was like so interesting, as well as that they were, like worldwide known celebrities, but felt very accessible in a strange way. Like felt like, just like, oh, I just got picked as a child to be in this, this movie series. And I'm— I don't know it's all just a little bit crazy, isn't it? And now I'm like going on these fun little shows. And so I really— it was—I definitely think that, that, that she has been a —as well as just being a very, very lovely looking gal. PRINCESS:  So lovely looking gal. ROWAN:  That you know for a long time we've really overlooked the fact that she entirely acts with her eyebrows. PRINCESS:  Her and my girl Emilia Clarke those M's. They just love— but you know what the brows are free. It's fine. ROWAN:  It's— it's very—there are like—there is this one, she was in this. I think it was a BBC adaptation of Ballet Shoes.  PRINCESS:  Yes. Mmm. ROWAN:  Yes. Oh my god. That is peak Emma Watson eyebrow acting, and you could almost if you—like it would be dangerous playing a drinking game with it because you would— like it would—you would be absolutely wrecked by like the third scene. And then within it she plays a girl who loves—who wants to be an actor. And then she like doubles down on the eyebrows cheering, she does like a monologue from Puck PRINCESS:  Oh my goodness. ROWAN:  And it's incredible. And me and my brother like ca— it's really hard for us to watch an Emma Watson film. We have to like deliberately try to ignore her eyebrows like just cover the top half of the screen. I love that girl. And I think I agree with you in terms of like everything that she is seeming to let use her platform for and like trying to do with the fame that she got from a young age. But also I think there are just some elements of her. I'm like you, or do you just seem like a normal person?  PRINCESS:  Yeah. ROWAN:  And that it almost makes it more alluring. PRINCESS:  Yes. I think that's really true. And I think it's, I think when you compare like the Potter kid actors to like any other fandom, while there's definitely was gross. It was like the older men who were like trying to like sleep with her as soon as she turned 18. They just seem very level-headed, like it was before Instagram, before Tiktok, before we had that much accessibility. And also, I think to a degree them being British, and being around so many actors who could curate them and guide them who are these, like, you know, you've got like the best lessons ever. You have all these actors with like, decades and decades of experience under their belt, being around you to help you get through that. I think that's why most of them have turned out so well, is because they really had a lot of pragmatic, thoughtful people around them.  ROWAN:  Yeah. PRINCESS:  And I just find that so refreshing. And I think that even when I you know, I feel like if her and Emilia Clarke were in a movie that would just be like—it— that should be the trailer. It's just their eyebrows and their eyes. ROWAN:  That's all you see. PRINCESS:  Because all anyone— because that's what everyone would think about. ROWAN:  If the if— if movie poster designers had any balls like they used to, it would just be eyebrows. That's the poster.  PRINCESS:  Yeah. ROWAN:  If they— if they committed to the bid. PRINCESS:  We would love it.  ROWAN:  It wouldn't be one of these like posters with every single person's face that's on there, like, you know, the classic MCU posters now. I think specifically just when—they need to be cast together just so that we can go away. And then also, you know, it'd be great if Matt Smith was also in it. . That was just a blank space on the poster where Matt Smith belongs. PRINCESS:  Absolutely. Like you have the  the biggest like you have Amelia and Emma right here. Matt Smith on the side like a little ghost. And then you have Lily Collin just over there. no. People need to learn the art of making a great delicious poster again. Yeah. I just— you know, I think crushers are such a fun thing to look back on. Even if they are like celebrity crushes because the ability to like you get over a person was so normalized to Tumblr? That you could just be really out quietly to yourself, while still getting to appreciate these figures, and get to work out those fields. I think that's the thing that I kind of like about, the before I was a queer time in figuring out, was I got to do it by myself, you know? There wasn't a pressure that come out, cause I wasn't like anything big, the way I am now. But I really get to just enjoy, just having a crush and liking a person. But also not having to be a stan either, like I love her. I would do anything for her. but I'll still make fun of her eyebrow acting like I'm not ridiculous. ROWAN:  I kind of want to ask about the Tumblr, were you like a Tumblr teen? Is that where you were?   PRINCESS:  Oh, yeah. ROWAN:  Of course. Um, because I think that Tumblr weirdly is this kind of anonymized space, in a way in terms of fans. Like, you don't know how many followers people have. You can't tell who's like a big name in the fandom really. And then you also—there's no chance that your—people that you're a fan of will run into this content unless someone literally like showed them or they had some kind of secret Tumblr account. Whereas with the rise of Twitter, it feels like people are much more likely to be able to, like, directly try and contact people they're a fan of and like, have that kind of feel, like they might be able to have a reciprocal relationship. Do you see like a big difference between that energy that maybe I think when we were teenagers, it was more of a private thing, as it were like there was a community with the other fans and your friends as opposed to like having access to people? PRINCESS:  Well, you know, it was interesting, because I was a smaller public figure at the time, like, because I'd been doing YouTube for so long, people knew who I was. But it was a lot more people who were engaging with me in good faith. You know, like, it wasn't like, peop— there would be pushback or asking questions with the anons, but you could also turn that off. And that would immediately stop people from wanting to ask you questions because they didn't want to put their name to it. So I think even just having that option was a really good way of filtering out people who were there to troll you, or to antagonize you. And people who just really had questions to ask you. But I ended up making a lot of really good friends through Tumblr, and I think the tagging system on it was just so much better. Because if you were looking for a meta-commentary about something, you could just click on it and find that. And if you're looking for, like you know, for me, I think like something like Teen Wolf, and I was specifically looking for people who are anti-racist in that fandom. And I could just go to the tags and find who I needed and who I wanted, and soft block anyone that I didn't. And I didn't have to soft block everybody, I could just block those tags. And that would just keep me from go—like even now, like when I left— when I soft left Twitter because I still have to go on it for work. I'll go on Tumblr, and it's actually great because it's already been filtered for me. So when I go on it unless it's like a sponsor thing, I usually only see things I like, and I think that's really the ideal experience, is to just like, see the things you like when you're going online. ROWAN:  That's so true. Okay, now that you've named dropped Teen Wolf, I need to know if Teen Wolf has any part of your queer journey? The—that. PRINCESS:  No.  ROWAN:  Oooh. You know what, I love that for you. Truly. PRINCESS:  You know— you know it is is that like I, so—so I love like Teen Wolf, Merlin, a bunch of those shows. And um, but the problem was that there was just so much misogyny, and anti-blackness in those communities, that any enjoyment that I would have gotten out of some of the queer experiences were like, very thoroughly like, because—and I'm writing about this for—for my book. But like, it was just weird to see, like, like, I appreciate stearic as like a concept and a thing that people like, you know? like I get it. Like I get it. ROWAN:  That is the most diplomatic answer to like any fandom question is like, I appreciate this in theory, like I—I you know, the concept of the theory behind, but yes, entirely. I mean, Teen Wolf is pretty notorious for being this fandom, where they were like, do you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna find just two white boys who have never interacted on screen, and they be our ship. PRINCESS:  It was just like, again, I do get it because I do that with women all the time. You know, I peep— I understand the appeal of like super court for that very same reason. Y'all like two pretty white people together, that's fine. But then there'll be actual queer characters and quicker there's no color in it, and there'll be nothing. Or just a lot of harassment, because for me with it was just like, I get it. You want Arthur and Merlin to be a thing. That is not Gwen's fault, honey. Like, if Arthur was not dating Gwen, he would not be dating Merlin, because the writers of this series are cowards and will not let them be gay. Even though there are literal rules. I know there are literal books where like Arthur's is in a throttle with Lancelot and Guinevere. So it's just like, they're not doing that. But it becomes this situation where it's somehow treated like— the fight for representation can include attacking and harassing and demonizing black and brown people who are not standing in the way of your queerness. They are not doing that. They are just trying to enjoy that there's a black queen in the show. And it's like it always upsets me how the iron will go to the wrong people. And it stops you from being able to enjoy it. Because I used to like really like Stiles, on Teen Wolf. But then I began to see all these people who like, felt like liking Stiles, meant you had to like hate, Scott. And I just got slowly uncomfortable, like, we don't have that many Latino characters that get to be like really sweet himbo protagonists. Why are we acting this way? You can just like a secondary character like we all do it, we all do it. So it wasn't part of my queer experience, but it was part of like my intrasexual experience of kind of understanding what it meant to be like queer and brown in a fandom space. ROWAN:  I mean, I specifically at this point, really removed myself from any fandom spaces of something if I want to like it. I'm like, if this is the thing, I think I'm going to be a fan of, I'm outside of it. I consume it. I have my thoughts about it.  I talk to people I know about it. And then maybe I start dipping a toe into spaces when I know that like people I already follow who already talk about stuff that I like, or who have write good fanfiction, or do good fan art. If they've gotten into it, I might dip in. But like, even from the point of view of someone who's queer, and why you—like, it just completely destroys your interest in the shows to have misogyny racism. Like, homophobia, biphobia, somehow also enter these spaces that are meant to be so kind of inclusive with this idea of like fandom, being a space in which the mainstream, like lack of intersectionality, can be corrected, which I think is fandom is strongest, that when people use found it as an excuse to like double down on the kind of critiques that rightly or put against shows, it kind of just feels just the worst to me.  PRINCESS:  Yeah. ROWAN:  To be honest. PRINCESS:  Yeah. It's—it's a really interesting experience because I think that there are so many people who really come to fandom looking for a community and cannot accept that parts of their community might still have internalized issues, and , which is like every community has that. And we all in our time online, get pushback from that. And we don't always react really well, the first time it happens. We're human. But the point is that like after you sit with that for a while, are you going to like, actually address it or no? You know, how many times do you have to have fans telling you like, stop calling Gwen a gorilla before you'd realize that like, that's maybe not okay, and not helping your ship because it's not her fault that the writers don't want your characters to be gay. And I think also because queerbaiting was such a big like, this is when like Tumblr really started the queerbaiting conversation, and it got transferred onto Twitter. But I think that, because on Tumblr, you could have these long-form posts, and really get into the nitty-gritty. When we were talking about queerbaiting, we could really sit and discuss, like the specific moments and have like the gifts and everything to be like, this is what we're talking about. And because Twitter is such a shorthand thing, that term just got kind of like copy-pasted onto so many other things. And we—and you've talked about this a lot in your content, because I follow it because everyone should. Queerbaiting kind of lost its meaning as it got transferred and diluted from one space to another because you couldn't actually discuss it. You either accepted it with like a few bits of evidence, or you'd have a long thread that people would you— lose attraction for halfway through because a 10-piece thread is going to have so many different parts than one contained meta post. ROWAN:  Yeah, exactly. I mean, do you feel like there are any of these shows or movies or books, or any piece of media where you've entered into the fandom and felt like, oh, this, this is working? Like this—this makes me feel seen and appreciated as someone with these kinds of like intersecting identities. Or do you feel like it's not not really built that way, right now? PRINCESS:  I think that even with the best of intentions, a lot of places are not always ready to unpack their anti-blackness, like, that's been the biggest hurdle that I've seen, like, in almost every single queer community I've been in. Unless it was like a black show or something like your black lightning or whatever. There was always a difference between how people would treat the characters of color, versus the white characters. And there was always like, a reason why and it was always like about the writing. But I think the reason why it doesn't work well, is because the communities will just push out the people who are pushing back on them. And there's a—there's a desire to disengage because that's not what you're actually coming to it for. Which is kind of the tricky part is that a lot of people are going to Tumblr to just kind of enjoy and be in community with each other. And a lot of people just treat community as in like, we're just all gonna be the same and it's easy. And when you get that kind of pushback, and you have to ask, get asked these difficult questions that you are not ready to deal with. It's very easy to just label someone like an anti or pro this and then just dismiss them. And that kind of repeats the cycle. Because I do think that there are valid reasons to be frustrated, especially with that particular queerbaiting of the late 2000s and early 2010s. Because they definitely knew what they were doing. But there comes a certain point of which, why are you as a consumer, still supporting and dealing with things that are clearly not meeting you where you feel like you need to be met as a queer person. And something that we're still dealing with about as consumers deciding and really being picky about who we are choosing to put our energy behind. Because queer marketing can do a lot if it's done well. ROWAN:  a lack of queer marketing— PRINCESS:  Yeah. ROWAN:  —can—can be like really pass people by. I mean, the example I always think of is, in books, actually. There's a wild book called Wranglestone, and it had a—I don't think they thought it was gonna be as popular as it was. And I think it gained word of mouth because people were like, it's the gays on the book. It's the gays on BYA book. And so suddenly, they had to do a reprint, and I went into a bookstore when the reprint came out, and they still had copies of the old cover. And it was exactly the same except for this one quote on the back, that was added for the second print, which made it obvious it was gay. Because prior to that, there had not been any obvious gay stuff within the blurb, within the quotations, there was nothing. And suddenly they'd made it obvious because they suddenly clock like, oh, wait, the gay teens, aka the readers. Although, maybe they want to read this book.  PRINCESS:  Exactly.  ROWAN:  And I think that, that that's always like, they've been this weird balance of like, some places trying to conceal queerness because they— I guess they can think they can sneak it in front of straight people and they won't notice. But along the way, you're gonna miss a lot of queer people who are like actively searching for this representation, and kind of actively excited about it. I am curious as to whether any of the stuff that you were kind of like had on your list is overtly queer. Like whether that you've kind of felt representation from media that was trying to represent you? Or whether it's kind of been stuff that you've interpreted through a queer lens or connected through in a queer way that wasn't necessarily in the source material? PRINCESS:  Well, I think one of the things about having been into anime as a kid is like, the dress is a lot more of it, even when they couldn't necessarily kiss on screen, you kind of knew what was going on. Then the biggest thing for me is like, obviously, like Sailor Moon, where it was like, you know, Uranus, Neptune they're— they're are a couple and they— ROWAN:  Those cousins,  PRINCESS:  Those beautiful cousins. Yes. And I—I don't think— I can't— I don't know anyone who watched the dub and really thought that that was really what was going on. Like, it was just like, it was like, Oh, they're not, they're actually cousins. ROWAN:  Yeah, for those—for those who don't know, essentially, yeah, there was basically what it sounds like, there were two characters who were made in the I think it was like, specifically America when it was over in America that they did the English dub for Americans, and they claimed that these two women were cousins. While they were very much doing things that cousins like would not, should not be doing.  PRINCESS:  Holding hands very closely. Yeah. ROWAN:  Very closely, really giving that cousin energy. And so it's kind of now I think it does seem ridiculous, but it was essentially like censorship that was deliberately trying to make sure that there wasn't even like, an ambiguous relationship people could interpret as being queer. It was like, nope. Cousins, absolutely not. Let's not go there. PRINCESS:  Right. And even something like Cardcaptor Sakura, which we got became Card captor, and the dub, you know, the leading boy character, Syaoran, he's bi-canonically, and that was like, written around. And so it was—it was interesting for me of like, watching these shows that were either—that were subtly queer. And I say that in like, subtle only in the sense that they couldn't say it explicitly because of censorship. But everybody knew it was going on, like Xena. You know, I always tell my mom, like, you're the one who got me to watch Xena, so you can't blame me for being bisexual. It is like bisexuality, the show. ROWAN:  Truly.  PRINCESS:  And so those were the things that really at that age, really allowed me to feel comfortable. And then the works of Tamara Pierce. Because in her—especially in her Circle of Magic series, there is a lesbian couple in it, and like a normalization of the idea that you know, LGBT peoples do exist in these worlds. And I think as I got older and expand to like fantasy and things like that, it became very easy to read between the lines and be like, oh okay, that's a little gay. You know, the first time I read like, vampire, and I was like, so they have a kid huh? Alright, that makes sense. I'm picking that up. I love that we're both wearing striped sweaters, by the way, I just wasn't thinking about that. ROWAN:  Yeah. We matched deliberately.  PRINCESS:  We did it.  ROWAN:  That was very on purpose. I mean, like, Tamara Pierce, what a fool— I feel like, there is just this kind of experience. A certain experience of being into Tamara Pierce, as a teenage—as a teenager and most likely as a teenage girl into queerness pipeline is absolutely chef's kiss. I truly don't know why there hasn't been adaptations of those books. PRINCESS:  I  that all the time. It's so frustrating.  ROWAN:  It's very—listen, if you— if anyone who's is listening to this and you don't know the book series that we're talking about, essentially, it was like my absolute bread and butter. One world called and various books, standalone geologies, quartet, series that kind of spanned like hundreds of years that still, I think being written today. And they all were very, like the quintessential one I'd say, is probably the Lioness Quartet, which was the classic tale of like a girl who disguises herself as a boy to become a knight in it. Followed her from when she was like a kid to when she was in her early 20s. And it was that kind of energy of like, the 90s feminist vibes in a fantasy setting. And yeah, they—they—but they these books that did have these appearances that I hadn't come across before of like queer characters, or have kind of tomboy characters who were treated with respect and it was a really—do you—It's—you would be listening to this and be like, wow, primed for an adaptation. And yeah, so that's the next one. That's—that's my big pitch to if anyone—hi, Netflix, if you're listening PRINCESS: You can't trust them anymore. Maybe Amazon. ROWAN:  You know what actually, you're right. You're right. That's very true. BBC, if you want to do I guess, the entirety of the series and nine episodes, that is kind of your bag, then it's sort— it's available I say, as someone who has no affiliation with Tamara Pierce or her legal— legal team.  PRINCESS:  Give them show money. ROWAN:  Get—please, please give them something. [theme] ROWAN:  Hello, dear listener, this is Rowan from a slightly different time of recording. Sorry to interrupt myself here. But I just wanted to just quickly say if you're enjoying this episode of the podcast or any of the other episodes that we put out, then why not consider being a Patreon supporter? We have a Patreon where essentially, you can give a small amount per month and you get access to a bunch of really fun perks. We have perks of different levels, but essentially, you get access to things like our Discord where we talk about queer movies. We do a queer movie watch-along every month. You can also tell us what you want us to cover on the podcast. We also have perks including things like top 10 lists, where we give you recommendations of queer movies and queer TV shows that we've been enjoying and you should watch. We have a queer newsletter with the very gay stuff that we're finding all over the internet that month. So a bunch of very fun, cute perks that you get, as well as just the warm and fuzzy feeling of supporting this podcast and the work that we do so that we can, you know, pay the wonderful Julia who edits for us. So I will include the link in the show notes. It's patreon.com/thequeermoviepodcast. patreon.com/thequeermoviepodcast. We would love to see you over in the Discord sometime soon. And also, if you have indeed been enjoying this episode, then we think that you will enjoy some of the other podcasts from Multitude the podcast collective that we are a part of over here at the Queer Movie Podcast. So I thought I would just tell you about one of them. It's actually a brand-spanking new one, hot off the press. Spicy. It is Tell Me About It, a madcap game show about proving that the things that you like, are actually interesting. Hosted by Adal Rifai who you might know from Hello From The Magic Tavern, and Hey Riddle, Riddle, as well as our very own Erik Silver. In every episode, a guest comes on to share and defend their favorite thing, which honestly very up my alley, because I feel like you know, online where they say, what could you talk about for like 10 minutes straight? Anything. Truly, if I have a favorite thing, if I have something that I've enjoyed, I could rant about it forever. I want to tell everyone about it. So this is right up my alley, and I'm sure a lot of yours. But the way that they do it is through a series of absurd games and challenges. Of course, the trailer is actually out now, you can listen to it. And the first two episodes are going to be dropping on February the 23rd. So very, very, very soon, with new episodes after that every other Thursday. And theyou might have noticed the fact that I said yet. It comes out every other Thursday, which means that if you are used to listening to the Queer Movie Podcast on Thursdays, this could be your ultimate Thursday fave. You could—you could have a podcast from Multitude in your little—in your little podcast app every Thursday by double tagging us and this brand new spanking new podcast. So give the trailer a listen, and subscribe so that you are primed to get those first episodes coming next Thursday. Just before I get back to my chat with Princess, I wanted to say a massive thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode. And you may have noticed a lot of our episodes because very exciting, they're returning sponsor to the podcast. And if you're looking to build a website for yourself or your business, or ever have looked at building a website, I'm sure you have come across Squarespace. They are all in one place to do just that. You can build a site, set up an online shop, connect with your audience. I say a website for yourself or your business. But here's the thing, you could you—you could use it to make a website for anyone. A website for a friend, a website for your wedding, that's a thing people do, which I found out when I got invited to a wedding recently, that our website. The possibilities are truly endless. So we actually have used Squarespace to make the Queer Movie Podcast website. I also use it to make my own personal website, because I've never been relaxed a day in my life. So I constantly have a million projects going. I have a bunch of social media platforms, things like that. And Squarespace essentially is like, hey, you want to put all of those in one place? You just give people one link. You can link out to them, you can link your social media directly to your page so that it automatically pops up and displays posts from like your Instagram, from your Twitter. You have analytics as well, which, again, if you've never been relaxed a day in your life, you might look out for your website that you've made for your wedding to check. You know, how many people have been looking at that gift registry? Or if you have a business that you know, genuinely useful to figure out how people are finding your, your brand. What brand have you got? Your wedding photography brand? This sounds like I'm soft launching me and Jazza's wedding, I'm not. Um, but yeah, so that you want to find out where people—what are people searching for? What do people want? What are you providing to people, and how can you link those things up? And it is super easy with the insights that Squarespace has. Also, very exciting features that you might not have thought of including on your website, like a donation function. So you can encourage donations on your site for a cause that you care about. Like some kind of wedding-related cause, the theming really breaks down here, a worthwhile charity. I'm not a tech person, I'm not a coder. So very, very useful that they have a design function, which gives you templates and things that you can use and customize way easier. So if that sounds like something that is up your alley, if you're looking to start a website, for whatever reason, check out squarespace.com/queermovie for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code QUEER MOVIE to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Okay, back to the show. [theme] ROWAN:  So anime in terms of the possibilities that it opens up, it sounds like there was that element of like not necessarily having concrete, oh, I see these two characters kissing on screen and saying that their girlfriends and stuff, but that possibility opening up, is that kind of where it was landing for you? PRINCESS:  The—that's where it landed. And also, when I would read the Sailor Moon manga, it was also like the girls would kiss in that one. Like it was explicit that like there's even a whole thing where like, you know, Uranus is flirting with you, Usagi, and the girlfriend and her girlfriend. And then Pluto comes in It's like, oh, you all live together. And I go and raise this child. I see what's going on. So I think as I got out of just traditional Western media, which my parents were very encouraging of, and being able to read like other comics and seeing those experiences, it just became more and more normalized to me. And then just sort of like, I think Buffy at a certain level of like, even before I watched it, I knew the big thing about was that you know? Willow is a lesbian, which made it very shocking when I watched it from the beginning. And I'm like, what do you mean she likes Xander? I already stan. I thought she was gay. I thought she was a le—I felt betrayed in advance. I was like, what, what, what? Like, oh, it's just like, this is not what I signed up for. But then so it was very conflicting. But I was like, well, I can just be Bi, I guess in my headcanon because, you know, we—discourse for another day. ROWAN:  Listen, we truly peace has peaceful come to our lands when the bisexual Willow and the lesbian Willow headcanon has lived together in harmony. I'm part of that collective. I feel like you know, it's a fictional character, who has had relationships with both men and women. And therefore, you can—you can argue both sides and you can see yourself on both sides. Both the, I have had relationships with multiple genders, I find attraction to multiple genders. I am Bi-Pan and Willow is too. All the sometimes lesbians have relationships with men before they figure themselves out. Lesbian experience, and I believe they can all exist in harmony together. PRINCESS:  Absolutely. I mean, I'm just thinking that also just, you know, they'll—they'll like we'll— we'll become trans. I think have been a great trans woman character. So I'm just like  ROWAN:  You know what, that's—I take it back. That's the Galaxy burning take that we needed.  PRINCESS:  So I'm like that just as soon as it's like Oz comes out, realizes that they are trans woman, everything comes up, right as rain. It's like you were always in all the same.  ROWAN:  All coming together. The red string is connecting. PRINCESS:  Exactly. We just go right past standards, like that was just a mistake. We're just gonna— ROWAN:  Don't think about that—that's fine. Don't worry about it. So was it— it sounds like you sort of already knew there was like an element of queerness. Was this when you were already out or at least had figured out your own sexuality, or is this one of those things where you're like, oh, curious, a lesbian character? For no reason at all. I'll check that out. PRINCESS:  I think because I think I watched Buffy between my junior and the summer between my sophomore and Junior year of college. And junior year was kind of the year where I was sort of realizing things like yeah, I made it with my female friend but we're just like, fig— we're just hanging out, you know. ROWAN:  We're just friends of Katy Perry, just having a little bit of fun. PRINCESS:  Literally was obsessed with Katy Perry. Had I kissed a girl, I played it out all the time. I made like two Disney AMVs to I kissed a girl when that came out. ROWAN:  Of course she did. PRINCESS:  My friends printed out for my birthday like Katy Perry thing, say happy birthday to me. Again, it's one of those things where like, you look back, and it's like really. The call was coming from inside the brain. But the first show that I watched while I was queer, and that it really connected with me in that way particular, was Lost Girl. Particularly because the character was bisexual, was a succubus, had like relations between different kinds of genders. And while I still have like, my own critiques of that series on the whole, is it—it remains super important to me, and I'm actually watching it with my girlfriend right now. Because it was the first time that I was queer, and watching a queer show at the same time, and actively seeing things that made me feel seen. And also like she was the main character. She wasn't the side character, she wasn't she was the leading character, was a bisexual Succubus and like her being sexual, was not treated as a good or bad thing, it's just part of her nature. And I just really remember feeling just so held by that. And I think even when I critique it in terms of how it handled race, I'll always have like this bit of me that wants to share it with other people because it just meant so much for me at that time. ROWAN: I think that that is like a—feels like an almost universal experience of being I guess anyone who's—of an identity that has not had representation, necessarily, like held out to them and given to them, that you will have these things that you are like, I want to recommend this to you. I really liked this, it meant a lot to m., I might have to rewatch it to see how rose-tinted my glasses were when I was gro—when I was like completely like looking at it through the glasses of like, oh my god, the first time I've ever seen this. And then you go back and you're like, okay, so we have to acknowledge this, this, and this about it. But it is like when you don't necessarily have this wealth of representation, where you can be like, oh, there was enough of it that it feels comfortable to represent there, to talk about this particular representation because there's others that can fill in those gaps. Or this actually did it really well. That feels like a very— an experience I'm sure a lot of listeners will relate to in some way. Honestly. PRINCESS:  And because I was like older than—like not older, but I was in college then and I was like already know I was going to be like a lit nerd. I was unpacking a lot of it while I was watching it, which is why it's one of those things where like because I was already a nitpicky nerd, it's like, I've already— I can tell you the problematic before—about it before we even start watching. It's like so when I was I'm like, okay, so this episode has this, has this. Overall is very good, but we're just gonna prepare you. And I think that's kind of the good thing.this pushback about the idea of like, oh, you're gonna be like a buzzkill, if you like tell people it's like, I think most people with any real media analysis, understand that not everything is going to be perfect. Things are going to—can age weirdly, people can not necessarily know what they're doing. The important thing is like, acknowledging it and not trying to like pretend it doesn't exist. You know, I would much rather deal with acknowledging that there is transphobia in something, then be like, I mean, you could read it this way. It's like no, we'll read it the way that it is very clearly done in the story, which is transphobia. PRINCESS:  I mean, like I'm notoriously my entire personality is the show Black Sails. So yes,  PRINCESS:  Yes. I love Black Sails. ROWAN:  —because oh boy, season one.  PRINCESS:  Oh, yeah.  ROWAN:  And so I recommend it to people on like, but listen, season one is also a thing. So I gotta warn you. I gotta warn you for a whole season. I mean, it's still good, but like, oh, boy. PRINCESS:  Yeah.  ROWAN:  So I'm very used to the whole, I can love a piece of media that I'm also critiquing kind of energy to him. PRINCESS:  Yeah. Black Sails was a hard one because I remember that first season two, I watched it live and I'm just like, it's gonna be gay pirate soon everyone said, that's When Our Flag Means Death came out, it's like gay pirates. I've been here before. ROWAN:  I was like, oh, yes. My two shows, my two gay pirate shows. I really love the fact that they only were— having said that, you know, need lots of representation to get it right. Really the honest he said, Okay, we're gonna have exactly two gay pirate shows. And they're both going to be bangers and I respect that. It's like a concept. I think it's right, considering the Pirates of Caribbean was a bisexual awakening for so many people, and just felt like the proper legacy of piracy. PRINCESS:  And it was really interesting. I got to interview the writers of Black Sails. And I talked about that it was really important for them to like, acknowledge that like, part of the reason why people think of pirates as like, funny, you know, characters is because of propaganda used to sort of marginalize them, because they were on the outskirts of society a lot. Like kind of like how cowboys lot of, and there were people of color, freaks, formerly enslaved people. You know, women wearing, you know, male clothing, and it's like, wow, showrunners who actually do their research and appreciate their subject matter, I think also as it—as I get older, I think, no, actually, this is so funny. I, so I like a turn-based RPGs. And I love the game Fire Emblem. And one of the things that you could do in the Fire Emblem games is like put people in relationships. And so I would always just wanting to be putting all the girls together. And all the guys might be like, it's just normal, I just want everyone to be happy. And their best friends, they want to be best friends forever. So now they can get married. And so—and so it's very funny to like, go back and think about like, yeah, I really wanted all of these queer couples, and like, I'm playing the newest Fire Emblem now. And they have like a lot of callbacks to like, the older games. And I'm just like, oh, man, these are my babies. These are all my cute babies. And it's just been really fun seeing aspects of other characters that I really love come alive again. And finding all these little ways in which I was always kind of asserting my queerness in different ways. And coming to terms with sort of like what that meant for me. Because I don't think always meant one thing, or just one experience, which I think is fine. I don't think it ever should be just one thing to encompass so many people. But finding it in even places where I didn't expect it, I think was always a thrill of it, you know, of like, oh, my God, like I have this possibility. And that one, that possibility came up, I took it. That I really wanted to make it happen for me. And I think that's something that I really enjoy. You know that I'm older, I just really enjoy getting to be queer and enjoying stuff, and finding things where I don't have to make it up anymore. Or even if I go back to something that's older, to be able to see like—to see what they said I missed, because I think a lot of times authors are trying to do that. But they— they had so much pushback, especially when we were growing up about how queer you could make something without it being, you know, a whole issue. So it's actually fun for me to go and revisit things and figure out oh, like, this is the actual text, the actual text is gay. It was everyone else who was lying to me. ROWAN:  Hmm, yeah, definitely. And I think that that, like, I feel like I've talked to so many people who have found that like, the Fire Emblem experience that you've had in various places, whether it was like how they played with their dolls when they were younger, and like how they paired them up, or like playing their Sims and deciding like, who was living in the house with The Sims getting together. Or like fan fiction and fan art, and like finding those pairings that you wanted to put together to be like, ah, yes. And then as you're getting older, having more and more of awareness of like that being a deliberate act, rather than something that you are just doing to be part of the figuring out process, or because you're not even aware that that shouldn't be how the world works. And so it's really interesting seeing these ways in which exactly as you said like people are creating the queerness and like actualizing it in a way in front of them. You know, whether they're kind of cognizant of doing that deliberately and putting that out into the world to share it. Or just privately as part of like that growing up process. PRINCESS:  And also that like game, like even The Sims, like The Sims gave you like— you could have—in The Sims two, you could have gay couples, and they were just adopt a kid, like you just like ready to have a baby, instead of like, you know, having sex, you would just all of a sudden a woman would arrive with a baby and be like, here you are. And I'm just like, that's so convenient. Thank you. Didn't have to do any paperwork or anything. And so I really appreciate even those kinds of things, I look back of like, the possibility of being able to just enjoy things for myself. That is something that I just find so important. I really think that games specifically have become a really great way for people to play with their gender and sexuality and really, you know, get to experience it on their terms, and in spaces where they would not be able to do so. Like I liked Boyfriend Dungeon because I liked the idea that like you could have as many partners as you want of every flip, or you just be friends with them. And that was just—and either way, it was fine. And I think the more that we allow that to happen to like be able to be with any gender you want, pronouns you want in the game, and normalize it the better. We are going to be with giving younger queer kids, and queer adults who still enjoy this shit. The best experiences, while other people can just get normalized to it, you know. Like, it's not that big of a deal that to have pronouns in anything. It's just pronouns, guys. And also don't stream Harry Potter. ROWAN:  Yeah, that's a— that's a official order from the podcast, endorsed by Jazza, who isn't here. And as Jazza is the gamer amongst the podcast, co-hosts of me and Jazza. Jazza specifically used to work at Google supporting creators and was put on to gamers. And then me, it was like all these gamers, Jazza the gamer and then Rowan is this little extra person that was like, hi, I've never played a game in my entire life. I've—Does Dungeons & Dragons count? And Jazza's like, I love the game, but no, Rowan, that's a different kind of game. But again, like one of those games where people use it to explore their kind of gender and sexuality in a really interesting way. I guess it is that kind of participating in something and having a hand in creating it as you're interacting with a piece of media that someone else has created, means that it's like a safe place to explore, but also gives you enough, like creative control and autonomy to make those choices and, and feel like you've got like a part in it. PRINCESS:  Absolutely. And I love that part of it. Like I like— if I could design games or like do things like that, I would definitely want to do more of that. Because there's just so— the options are endless, especially because it's like, I want gays in space, you know, like I like—I like just game to play a game like even um, crusade kings where like, you can form alliances with other care—with other like nations, and they can be gay too. Like, you can just have those options of having queer alliances and doing those kinds of things or like, even in Civ VI now, they have King Christina, and like, all these other female and male models have played with gender in them, just already there. So if you don't know who they are, and you look up this kind of stuff, you can just figure out oh, there is this like gay ruler that was around during this time or this, you know, ruler who played with pronouns. I mean, playing with pronouns, especially in games, when you—like history games is such a common experience, you know, like female pharaohs, or like, women who call themselves kings and things like that, like there's so much there. And I think a well-made game is a great entry point to that kind of work. ROWAN:  Amazing. We're almost at the end of time. Oh, my goodness, time has absolutely flown. So I wanted to just ask if there's anything else that we haven't talked about that you wanted to mention, or that you wanted to bring up before we end? PRINCESS:  Um, no. Other than just kind of being surprised that A24 had a— had a grip on me at so young of an age. ROWAN:  I fully forgot The Bling Ring was an A24 film. Like it wasn't until you said, I was like A24, and I'm like, oh, a recent one. And then fully forgot that A24 has been around for more than like five years. PRINCESS:  Yeah, it's like them and Spring Breakers, which is like the—the tether of The Bling Ring. Oh, just like, oh, right, you know. And I think Spring Breakers is the energy I wished The Bling Ring had. But they're both in that same venue of like girls behaving badly, which I do appreciate. ROWAN:  Just being chaotic. I was thinking about it took me a second, when you. And I was like, oh, it's— it's not Spring Breakers. But I had that moment of being like, wait, which film is which? Okay, yeah, that'll— that'll make sense now. But I do—I mean, like, I think that it's, again, haven't seen Spring Breakers. And yeah, I feel like you could tell me like a particular scene from the trailer, and I'd be like, oh, yeah, not that exact one, because I think that something's just the internet immediately knows that this is—this is the thing people are going to want to get off. And they're gonna make it for you. PRINCESS:  No, absolutely. And I think that it's just you know, it's— it's so great to look back like when I was prepping for this episode, and like figuring out where I was going to start off with, with Emma Watson. It was just fun going back and looking at the trailer now. Every trailer, no matter what, may to include that theme. And then like every—because now you can see what the most replayed moment is out of thing. Every single one that most replays is the topic. And I'm like the people understand that this is what we want. ROWAN:  And whoever cut those trailers, understood what the people wanted as well. PRINCESS:  A good—a good trailer. Doesn't tell you the entire plot, but just gives you enough to be like titillated forever. It's so good. I really— ROWAN:  Every trailer should just have like a millisecond of that gift in it. Like any—any genre any trailer, give the people what they want, it's Emma Watson, licking upper lip with a fringe. PRINCESS:  That'll— that'll do it. Ah. ROWAN:  That fringe. PRINCESS:  A goo—a solid wig. I was very proud of her. But yeah, I just—I'm just really happy that I get to talk to you about gay shit. And that I can talk about my embarrassing crush because I'm not embarrassed by it. I love Emma Watson. I think that she does good things with her politics. And I just love— I don't think— I think honestly, if you were a queer kid and you had a crush on any of the Golden Trio, you turned out— everything turned out really good for you. Like, that's such a rare thing to say. But like, all of them have been pro-trans rights very much in the main. They all do normal kid things, Rupert Grint still looks hot as hell. He's a dad. He's a whole father now. ROWAN:  He has an ice cream truck that was like a whole thing for a while. He just like went around and gave out free ice cream, because it was like I got money and I guess what I'm gonna do with it is give ice creams. And I'm like, adorable. PRINCESS:  Yeah. And like Daniel—Daniel Radcliffe was a short Jewish king. He just like literally does whatever he wants with his money. Like him and Elijah Wood are just killing it in terms of like, short King got money on, hanging out. ROWAN:  Chaotic like indie film energy. I honestly love that. I feel like—never hasn't been a star that's— that big, but that I feel like any random person could write a weird short film and just get him to agree to be in it. Like any— I feel like any of you people listening right now if you wrote a short film, and made it weird enough, Daniel Radcliffe is going to be in it.  PRINCESS:  Absolutely. ROWAN:  He's gonna be like, sure, I'll pay you to be in it. PRINCESS:  Right. ROWAN:  I believe that with my whole chest.  PRINCESS:  Yeah.  Their— they are just good kids, lads, people who like I think they are the template of light. This is how you guide a child through the process of becoming immensely famous. And also giving them the space to just like, do whatever you want. Whether it be prestige, or you do like, you're gonna be like a sexy tavern boy, Dan Rad, like, do whatever you want. God bless. ROWAN:  Stunning. I have a final question for you.  PRINCESS:  Yeah? ROWAN:  Which is, do you feel like there's any— like as you've been going through the journey of like, your queerness, whether that is still ongoing, whether you feel like you're like settled, I've settled on my throne. Do you feel like there's been any of your experiences missing from representation, like you've—you've had a particular experience or a particular intersection of your identity, or a particular like life event that you've had that you're like, I don't know, if I've really seen something that's made me feel like, yes, this has been represented, this feels like it's something I've seen reflected back to me. PRINCESS:  You know, I think because I have enough privileges in my life. I think I'm pretty good. I think—I think I'm still trying to find just the baseline sometimes. Like I think First Kill and the character of Calliope was sadly like one of those characters that was like, oh, my God, this is so exactly, exactly what I would have wanted, and then it was gone. But I think in general, the thing that I that I really would love to see more of is just more, you know body diversity, more darker skin people, more discussion of STI and a non-stigmatic way. Because I think what I liked about feminism college girls, was that they had like the character who is a lesbian, she had chlamydia. And she's like, I didn't know. And they're all like, I didn't know that you could get chlamydia for sleeping with women. It's like, yes, you can girl, yes you can. So I just would like to just see more, you know, people who aren't able-bodied, people who, you know, who don't just have one partner throughout the entire thing. Normalizing STIs. Those kinds of little things that you may think, don't matter. But when we talk about sort of, like intimacy, and romance and sex, I think it's important to let people know that like, even if you're someone like for example, with herpes, or something like that, that you still are a little person because that happens all the time. And I think that just those small things make a big difference to people. So I'm lucky that I have had enough experiences and enough stuff with my own intersection. So even though it's not full, I mostly am looking for it to expand beyond someone like me into the more margins, you know/ ROWAN:  Yeah. Amazing. Sweet. Before I do my little ending, there was there anything else you wanted to add? Or that you forgot to say or anything like that?  PRINCESS:  Just that you're awesome, and I love the work that you do. And I'm really glad that we finally got to like, chat about something. And also like, we definitely need to do something about Black Sails eventually, because that would be so fun. ROWAN:  It's like truly. I'm like so excited for the fact that they are doing Percy Jackson. I'm, like, truly have never felt more safe in an adaptation in my life. PRINCESS:  I like as someone who was a—who was a fan of Artemis Fowl, I really am rooting for you, Percy Jackson kids.  ROWAN:  I'm not even a Percy Jackson kid. So the reason why I'm like have skin in the game for the Percy Jackson thing is because I used to work at Penguin who published them in the UK. And so I like weirdly had a relationship with it as lik

AUDACY JUST CAN'T HELP THEMSELVES…THE HAVE TO CUT PEOPLE.  YOU THINK AMAZON IS GOING TO STOP AT THURSDAY NFL GAMES? GET A GRIP! STOLZ AND HIS LEGAL DRAMA CONTINUE…IT'S REALLY STUPID.SALUTE TO A GREAT RADIO BROADCASTER. RIP. Welcome to the only podcast/video blog that talks about all kinds of media…and the impact on local sales and management.  Two media execs, Jackson Weaver and Keith Samuels do this each Tuesday and Friday.  Produced by InTown Media we welcome comments at jackson@intownmedia.com  Website www.intownmedia.com 

The Two Bobs episode 170 for Monday, December 20, 2021: What are The Bobs drinking? Rob enjoyed a Gingerbread Stout from Big Lake Brewing. https://biglakebrewing.com/on-tap/ Robert followed the rules this week and had a Christmas Pancakes Imperial Milk Stout with Maple Syrup from Hardywood. https://hardywood.com/beer/christmas-pancakes/ Follow us on Untapped at @PhilRoberts33 and @robertk328 or we'll send you a Meowy Christmas card. It's Not-So-Secret Santa time! This year's gifts were better than a one-year membership to the Jelly of the Month Club. This week's CRAZY NEWS is more real than Santa or those stupid elves we're forced to move around every night to appease our children. A guy named Ronald Booze got in trouble for doing exactly what you would think a guy named Ronald Booze would do. https://wjla.com/news/local/ronald-booze-awakened-in-running-car-charged-with-dui-arlington-county-police-gun-possession A Maryland homeowner burned her house down fighting a snake. https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/homeowner-fighting-snake-infestation-burns-down-maryland-house-officials/2899908/ A woman breastfed a cat on a plane. That is all. https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/woman-allegedly-caught-breastfeeding-a-cat-on-a-plane A Michigan woman was arrested for hiring a hitman through a fake web site. Everyone knows you should only order those through legitimate sites. Maybe Amazon. https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/12/us/hireahitman-website-cracks-crimes-cec/index.html A man used a flamethrower to resolve a parking dispute.https://www.gainesville.com/story/news/crime/2021/12/09/gainesville-man-charged-using-flamethrower-scare-off-teens/6449797001/ A man faked his own death by alligator to get out of his own wedding.https://dailynewsreported.com/breaking-news/man-fakes-his-own-death-at-the-hands-of-an-alligator-to-get-out-of-his-wedding/ Please share the show with your friends, and don't forget to subscribe! Visit www.thetwobobs.com for our contact information. Thanks for listening! Leave us a message or text us at 530-882-BOBS (530-882-2627) Join us on all the social things: Follow us on Twitter Check out our Instagram Follow Rob on Untappd Follow Robert on Untappd The Two Bobs Podcast is © The Two Bobs.  For more information, see our Who are The Two Bobs? page, or check our Contact page.  Words, views, and opinions are our own and do not represent those of our friends, family, or our employers, unless otherwise noted.  Music for The Two Bobs was provided by JewelBeat.  

About WillWill is recovering System Administrator with a decade's worth of experience in technology and management. He now embraces the never-ending wild and exciting world of Information Security.Links: Color Health: https://www.color.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/willgregorian TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at the Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by CircleCI. CircleCI is the leading platform for software innovation at scale. With intelligent automation and delivery tools, more than 25,000 engineering organizations worldwide—including most of the ones that you've heard of—are using CircleCI to radically reduce the time from idea to execution to—if you were Google—deprecating the entire product. Check out CircleCI and stop trying to build these things yourself from scratch, when people are solving this problem better than you are internally. I promise. To learn more, visit circleci.com.Corey: Up next we've got the latest hits from Veem. Its climbing charts everywhere and soon its going to climb right into your heart. Here it is!Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. Sometimes I like to talk about my previous job being in a large regulated finance company. It's true. I was employee number 41 at a small startup that got acquired by BlackRock. I was not exactly a culture fit, as you probably can imagine by basically every word that comes out of my mouth and then imagining that juxtaposed but they're a highly regulated finance company.Today, my guest is someone who knows me from those days because we worked together back in that era. Will Gregorian is the head of Information Security at Color Health, and is entirely too used to my nonsense, to the point where he becomes sick of it, and somehow came back around. Will, thanks for joining me.Will: Hello. How are you?Corey: It's been a while, and so far, things are better now. It turns out that I don't have—well, I was going to say I don't have the same level of scrutiny around my social media usage that you do at large regulated finance companies anymore, but it turns out that when you basically spend your entire day shitposting about a $1.8 trillion company in the form of Amazon, oh, it turns out your tweets get an awful lot of scrutiny. Just, you know, not by the company that pays you.Will: That's very true. And you knew how to actually capitalize on that.Corey: No, I sort of basically figured that one out by getting it wrong as I went from step to step to step. No, it was a wild and whirlwind time because I joined the company as employee 41. I was the first non-developer ops hire, which happens at startups a fair bit, and developers try to interview you and ask you a bunch of algorithm questions you don't do very well at. And they say, “Well, I have no further questions. Do you?”And of course, there's nothing that says bad job interview like short job interview. “Yeah, just one. What are you actually working on in an ops context?” And we talked about, I think, migrating from EC2 Classic to VPC back in those days, and I started sketching on the whiteboard, “Let me guess it breaks here, here, and here.” And suddenly, there are three more people in the room watching me do the thing on the whiteboard.Long story short, I get hired and things sort of progressed from there. The acquisition comes down and then how, uh, we suddenly, it turns out, had this real pressing need for someone to do InfoSec on a full-time slash rigorous basis. Which is where you came in.Will: That's exactly where I came in. I came in a month after the acquisition, if I remember correctly. That was fun. I actually interviewed with you, didn't I?Corey: You did. You passed, clearly.Will: I did pass. That's pretty hard to pass.Corey: It was fun, to be perfectly blunt. This is the whole problem with startup FinTech in some ways, where you're dealing in regulated industries, but at what point do you start bringing security in, as someone—where that becomes its own function? And how do you build that out? You can get surprisingly far without it until right afterwards then you really can't. But for a startup in the finance space, your first breach can very much be something of a death knell for the company.Will: That's very true. And there's no really good calculation on when you bring those security people in, which is probably the reason why—brace yourself—we're talking about DevSecOps.Corey: Oh, good. Let's put more words into DevOps because goes well.Will: Yeah. It does. It really does. I love it. You should look at my Twitter feed; I do make fun of it. But the thing is, it's mostly about risk. And founders ought to know what that risk is, so maybe that's the reason why they hired me because they felt like there's existential risk around brand and reputation, which is the reason why I joined. But yeah, [sigh] fundamentally, the problem with that is that if you hire a security practitioner, especially the first one, it's kind of like dating, in a way—Corey: Oh, yes.Will: If you don't set them up correctly, then they're doomed to be failed, and there are plenty of complexities as a result. Imagine you're a scrappy FinTech startup, you have a bunch of developers, they want to start writing code, they want to do big and great things, and all of a sudden security comes in and says, “Thou shalt not do the following things.” That's where it fails. So, I think it's part culture, part awareness from a founder perspective, part DevOps because let's face it, most of the stuff happens in infra side. And that's not to slam on anybody. And delicious goes on.Corey: Yeah. Something that I developed a keen appreciation for when I went into business for myself after that and started the Duckbill Group, is that when you talk to attorneys, that was really the best way to I found to frame it because they've been doing this for 2000 years. It turns out InfoSec isn't quite that old, although occasionally it feels like some of the practices are. Like, you know, password rotation every 30 days. I digress.And lawyers will never tell you what to do, or at least anyone who's been doing this for more than six months. Instead, the answer to everything is, “It depends. Here are the risk factors to consider; here are the trade-offs.” My wife is a corporate attorney and I learned early on not to let her have any crack at my proposal documents in those days because it's fundamentally a sales document, but her point was, “Well, this exposes you to this risk, and this risk, and this risk, and this risk.” And it's, “Yes, I'm aware of all of that. If I don't know how to do what I do, effectively, I'm not going to be able to fulfill this. It's not the contract; it is the proposal and worst case I'll give them their money back with an apology and life goes on.”Because at that point, I was basically a tiny one-man band, and there was no real downside risk. Worst case, the entity gets sued into oblivion; I have to go get a real job again. Maybe Amazon's hiring, I don't know. And it's sort of progressed from there. Left to their logical conclusion and letting them decide how it's going to work, it becomes untenable, and it feels like InfoSec is something of the same story where the InfoSec practitioners I've known would not be happy and satisfied until every computer was turned off, sunken into concrete, and then dropped into Challenger Deep out in the Pacific.Will: Yep. And that's part of the issue is that InfoSec, generally speaking, hasn't kept up with the modern practices, technologies, and advancements around even methodologies and culture. They're still very much [unintelligible 00:06:32] approaching the information security conversation, militaristically speaking; everything is very much based on DOD standards. Therein lies the problem. And funny enough, you mentioned password rotation. I vividly remember we had that conversation. Do you remember that?Corey: It does sound familiar. I've picked that fight so many times in so many different places. Yeah. My current thing that drives me up a wall is, in AWS's IAM console, you get alerts for any IAM credential parents older than 90 days and it's not configurable. And it's, yes, if I get a hold of someone's IAM credentials, I'm going to be exploiting it within seconds.And there are studies; you can prove this empirically. Turns out it's super economical to mine Bitcoin in someone else's Cloud account. But the 90-day idea is just—all that does—the only good part of that to me is it enforces that you don't have those credentials stashed somewhere that they become load-bearing and you don't understand what's going on in your infrastructure. But that's not really the best-practice hill, I would expect AWS to wind up staking out.Will: Precisely. And there lies the problem is that you have basically industry standards that really haven't adopted the cloud mentality and methodologies. The 90-day rotation comes from the world of PCI as well as a few other frameworks out there. Yeah, I agree. It only takes a few seconds, and if somebody is account—for example, in this case, IAM account—has programmatic access, game over.Yeah, they're going to basically spin up a whole bunch of EC2 instances and start mining. And that's the issue is that you're basically trying to bolt on a very passe and archaic standard to this fast-moving world of cloud. It just doesn't work. So, things have gotten considerably better. I feel like our last conversation was, what, circa 2015, '16?Corey: Yeah. That was the year I left: 2016. And then it was all right, maybe this cloud thing has legs? Let's find out.Will: It does. It does. It actually really does. But it has gotten better and it has matured in dramatic ways, even on the cybersecurity side of the house. So, we're no longer having to really argue our way through, “Why do we have to rotate passwords every 90 days?”And I've been part of a few of these conversations with maybe the larger institutions to say, look, we have compensating controls—and I speak their language: ‘compensating controls'—you want to basically frame it that way and you want to basically try to rationalize why, technically speaking, that policy doesn't make sense. And if it does, well, there is a better way to do it.Corey: I feel very similarly about the idea of data being encrypted at rest in a cloud context. Yeah in an old data center story this has happened, where people will drive a pickup truck through the wall of the data center, grab a rack into the bed and peel out of there, that's not really a risk factor in a time of cloud, especially with things like S3 where it is pretty clear that your data does not all live in easily accessible format in one facility. You'd have to grab multiple drives from different places and assemble it all together however it is they're doing it—I presume—and great. I don't actually need to do any encryption at rest story there. However, every compliance regime out there winds up demanding it and it's easier for me to just check the box and get the thing encrypted—which is super easy, and no noticeable performance impact these days—than it is for me to sit here and have this argument with the auditor.It's one of the things I've learned that would arguably make me a way better employee than I was when we worked together is I've learned to pick my battles. Which fights do I really need to fight and which are, fine, whatever, click the ridiculous box. Life goes on.Will: Ah, the love of learning from mistakes. The basic model of learning.Corey: Someday I aspire to learn from mistakes of others instead of my own. But, you know, baby steps.Will: Exactly. And you know, what's funny about it is that I just tweeted about this. EA had a data breach and apparently, their data breach was caused by a Slack conversation. Now, here's my rebuttal. Why doesn't the information security community come together and actually talk about those anti-patterns to learn from one another?We all keep it in a very in a confidential mode. We locked it away, throw the keys away, and we never talk about why this thing happened. That's one problem. But, yeah, going back to what you were talking about, yeah, it's interesting. Choose your battles carefully, frankly, speaking.And I feel like there's a lesson to be learned there—and I do experience this from time to time—is that, look, our hands are tied. We are basically in the world of relevance and we still have to make money. Some of these things don't make sense. I wholeheartedly agree with my engineering counterparts where these things don't make sense. For example, the encryption at rest.Yeah, if you encrypt the EBS volume, does really get you a whole lot? No. You have to encrypt the payload in order to be able to secure and keep the data that you want confidential and that's a massive lift. But we don't ever talk about that. What we talk about and how we basically optimize our conversations, at least in the current form, is let's harp on that compliance framework that doesn't make sense.But that compliance frameworks makes us the money. We have to generate revenue in order to remain employed and we have to make sure that—let's face it, we work in startups—at least I do—and we have to basically demonstrate at least some form of efficacy. This is the only thing that we have at our disposal right now. I wish that we would get to the world where we can in fact practice the true security practices that make a fundamental difference.Corey: Absolutely. There's a bunch of companies that would more or less look all the same on the floor of the RSA Expo—Will: Yep.Corey: —and you walk up and down and they're selling what seems to be the same product, just different logos and different marketing taglines. Okay. And then AWS got into the game where they offered a bunch of native tools that help around these things, like CloudTrail logs, et cetera, and then you had GuardDuty to wind up analyzing this, and Macie to analyze this, but that's still [unintelligible 00:12:12], and they have Detective on top of that, and Security Hub that ties it all together, and a few more. And then, because I'm a cloud economist, I wind up sitting here and doing the math out on this and yes, it does turn out the data breach would be cheaper. So, at what point do you stop hurling money into the InfoSec basket on some level?Because it's similar to DR; it's a bit of a white elephant you can throw any amount of money at and still get it wrong, as well as at some point you have now gone so far toward the security side of things that you have impaired usability for folks who are building things. Obviously, you need your data to be secure, but you also need that data to be useful.Will: Yep. The short answer to that is, I would like to find anybody who can give you the straight answer for that one. There is no [unintelligible 00:13:00] to any of this. You cannot basically say, “This is a point of stop.” If you will, from an expenditure perspective.The fundamental difference right now is we're trying to basically cross that chasm. Security has traditionally been in a silo. It hasn't worked out really well. I think that security really needs to buck up and collaborate. It cannot basically remain in a control function, which is where we are right now.A lot of security practitioners have the belief that they are the master of everything and no one is right. That fundamentally needs to stop. Then we can have conversations around when we can basically stop spending the expenditure on security. I think that's where we are right now. Right now, it still feels very much disparate in a not-so-good way.It has gotten better, I think; the companies in the Valley are really trying to basically figure out how to do this correctly. I would say the larger organizations are still not there. And I want to really, sort of, sit from the sideline and watch the digital transformation thing happen. One of the larger institutions just announced that they're going to go with AWS Cloud, I think you know who I'm talking about.Corey: I do indeed.Will: Yeah. [laugh]. So, I'm waiting to see what's going to happen out of that. I think that a lot of their security practitioners are up for a moment of wake-up. [laugh].Corey: They really are. And moving to cloud has been a fascinating case study in this. Back in 2012, when I was working in FinTech, we were doing a fair bit of work on AWS, so we did a deal with a large financial partner. And their response was, “So okay, what data centers are you using?” “Oh, yeah, we're hosting in AWS.”And their response was, “No, you're not. Where are you hosting?” “Okay, then.” I checked recently and sure enough, that financial partner now is all-in on Cloud. Great. So, I said—when one of these deals was announced—that large finance companies are one of the bellwether institutions, that when they wind up publicly admitting that they can go all-in on cloud or use a cloud provider, that is a signal to a lot of companies that are no longer even finance-adjacent, but folks who look at that and say, “Okay, cloud is probably safe.”Because when someone says, “Oh, our data is too sensitive to live on the cloud.” “Really? Because your government uses it, your tax authority uses it, your bank uses it, your insurance underwriter uses it, and your auditor uses it. So, what makes your data so much more special than that?” And there aren't usually a lot of great answers other than just curmudgeonly stubbornness, which, hey, I'm as guilty of as anyone else.Will: Well, I mean, there's a bunch of risk people sitting there and trying to quantify what the risk is. That's part of the issue is that you have your business people who may actually be embracing it, but then you—and your technologists, frankly speaking. But then you have the entire risk arm, who is potentially reading some white paper that they read, and they're concluding that the cloud is insecure. I always challenge that.Corey: Yeah, it's who funded this paper, what are they trying to sell? Because no one says that without a vested interest.Will: Well, I mean, there's a bunch of server manufacturers that are going to be left out of the conversation.Corey: A recurring pattern is that a big company will acquire a startup of some sort, and say, “Okay, so you're on the cloud.” And they'll view that through a lens of, “Well, obviously of course you're on the cloud. You're a startup; you can't afford to do a data center build-out, but don't worry. We're here now. We can now finance the CapEx build-out.”And they're surprised to see pushback because the thing that they miss is, it was not an economic decision that drove companies to cloud. If it started off that way, it very quickly stopped being that way. It's a capability story, it's if I need to suddenly scale up an entire clone of the production environment to run a few tests and then shut it down, it doesn't take me eight weeks and a whole bunch of arguing with procurement to get that. It takes me changing an argument to, ideally a command line or doing some pull request or something like that does this all programmatically, waiting a few minutes and then testing it there. And—this is the part everyone forgets—McLeod economic side—and then turning it back off again so you don't pay for it in perpetuity.It really does offer a tremendous boost in terms of infrastructure, in terms of productivity, in terms of capability stories. So, we're going to move back to a data center now that you've been acquired has never been a really viable strategy in many respects. For starters, a bunch of you engineers are not going to be super happy with that, and are going to take their extremely hard-to-find skill set elsewhere as soon as that becomes a threat to what they're doing.Will: Precisely. I have seen that pattern. And the second part to that pattern, [laugh] which is very interesting is trying to figure out the compromise between cloud and on-prem. Meaning that you're going to try to bolt-on your on-prem solutions into the cloud solution, which equally doesn't work if not it makes it even worse. So, you end up with this quasi-hybrid model of sorts, and that doesn't work. So, it's all-in or nothing. Like I said, we've gotten to the point where the realization is cloud is the way to do it.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Oracle HeatWave is a new high-performance accelerator for the Oracle MySQL Database Service. Although I insist on calling it “my squirrel.” While MySQL has long been the worlds most popular open source database, shifting from transacting to analytics required way too much overhead and, ya know, work. With HeatWave you can run your OLTP and OLAP, don't ask me to ever say those acronyms again, workloads directly from your MySQL database and eliminate the time consuming data movement and integration work, while also performing 1100X faster than Amazon Aurora, and 2.5X faster than Amazon Redshift, at a third of the cost. My thanks again to Oracle Cloud for sponsoring this ridiculous nonsense. Corey: For the most part, yes. There are occasional use cases where not being in cloud or not being in a particular cloud absolutely makes sense. And when companies come to me and talk to me that this is their perspective and that's why they do it, my default response is, “You're probably right.” When I talk about these things, I'm speaking about the general case. But companies have put actual strategic thought into things, usually.There's some merit behind that and some contexts and constraints that I'm missing. It's the old Chesterton's Fence story, where it's a logic tool to say, okay, if you come to a fence in the middle of nowhere, the naive person, “Oh, I'm going to remove this fence because it's useless.” The smarter approach is, “Why is there a fence here? I should probably understand that before I take it down.” It's one of those trying to make sure that you understand the constraints and the various strategic objectives that lend themselves to doing things in certain ways.I think that nuance gets lost, particularly in mass media, where people want these nuanced observations somehow distilled down into something that fits in a tweet. And that's hard to do.Will: Yep. How many characters are we talking about now? 280.Corey: 280 now, but you can also say a lot with gifs. So, that helps.Will: Exactly, yeah. A hundred percent.Corey: So, in your career, you've been in a lot of different places. Before you came over and did a lot of the financial-regulated stuff. You were at Omada Health where you were focusing on healthcare-regulated side of things. These days, you're in a bit of a different direction, but what have you noticed that, I guess, keeps dragging you into various forms of regulated entities? Are those generally the companies that admit that they, while still in startup stage, actually need someone to focus on security? Or is there more to it that draws you in?Will: Yeah, I know. There's probably several different personas to every company that's out there. You have your engineering-oriented companies who are wildly unregulated, and I'm talking about maybe your autonomous vehicle companies who have no regulations to follow, they have to figure it out on their own. Then you have your companies that are in highly regulated industries like healthcare and financial industry, et cetera. I have found that my particular experience is more applicable to the latter, not the former.I think when you basically end up in companies that are trying to figure it out, it's more about engineering, less about regulations or frameworks, et cetera. So, for me, it's been a blend between compliance and security and engineering. And that's where I strive. That doesn't mean that I don't know what I'm doing, it just means that I'm probably more effective in healthcare and FinTech. But I will say—you know, this is an interesting part—what used to take months to implement now is considerably shorter from an implementation timeline perspective.And that's the good news. So, you have more opportunities in healthcare and FinTech. You can do it nimbly, you can do things that you generally had to basically spend massive amounts of money and capital to implement. And it has gotten better. I find myself that, you know, I struggle less now, even in the AWS stack trying to basically implement something that gets us close to what is required, at least from a bare minimum perspective.And by the way, the bare minimum is compliance.Corey: Yes.Will: That's where it starts, but it doesn't end there.Corey: A lot of security folks start off thinking that, “Oh, it's all about red team and pentesting and the rest, and no, no, an awful lot of InfoSec is in fact compliance.” It's not just, do the right thing, but how do you demonstrate you're doing the right thing? And that is not for everyone.Will: I would caution anybody who wants to get into security to first consider how many different colors there are to the rainbow in the security side of the house, and then figure out what they really want to do. But there is a misconception around when you call security often, to your point, people kind of default to, “Oh, it's red teaming.” Or, “It's basically trying to break or zero-days.” Those happens seldom, although seems they're happening far more often than they should.Corey: They just have better marketing now.Will: Yeah. [laugh].Corey: They get names and websites and a marketing campaign. And who knows, probably a Google Ad buy somewhere.Will: Yep, exactly. So, you have to start with compliance. I also would caution my DevOps and my engineering counterparts and colleagues to, maybe, rethink the approach. When you approach a practitioner from a security side, it's not all about compliance, and if you ask them, “Well, you only do compliance,” they're going to may laugh at you. Think of it as it's all-inclusive.It is compliance mixed with security, but in order for us to be able to demonstrate success, we have to start somewhere, and that's where compliance is—that's the starting point. That becomes sort of your northern light in a referential perspective. Then you figure out, okay, how do we up our game? How do we refine this thing that we just implemented? So, it becomes evolving; it becomes a living entity within the company. That's how I usually approach it.Corey: I think that's the only sensible way to go about these things. Starting from a company of one to, at the time is recording, I believe we're nine people but don't quote me on that. I don't want to count noses. One of the watershed moments for us when we started hiring people who—gasp, shock—did not have backgrounds as engineers themselves—it turns out that you can't generally run most companies with only people who have been spending the last 15 years staring at computers. Who knew?—and it's a different mindset; it's a different approach to these things.And because again, it's that same tension, you don't want to be the Department of No. You don't want to make it difficult for people to do their jobs. There's some low bar stuff such as you don't want people using a password of ‘kitty' everywhere and then having it on a post-it note on the back of their laptop in an airport lounge, but you also don't want them to have to sit there and go through years of InfoSec training to make this stuff makes sense. So, building up processes like we have here, like security awareness training, about half of it is garbage; I got to be perfectly honest. It doesn't apply to how any of us do business. It has a whole bunch of stuff that presupposes that we have an office. We don't. We're full remote with no plans to change that. And it's a lot of frankly, terrible advice, like, “Never click a link in email.” It's yeah, in theory, that makes sense from a security perspective, but have you met humans?Will: Yeah, exactly.Corey: It's this understanding of what you want to be doing idealistically versus what you can do with people trying to get jobs done because they are hired to serve a purpose for the company that is not security. “Security is everyone's job,” is a great slogan and I understand where it's going, but it's not realistic.Will: Nope, it's not. It's funny it's you mentioned that. I'm going through a similar experience from a security awareness training perspective and I have been cycling through several vendors—one prominent one that has a Chief Hacking Officer of sorts—and amazingly enough, their content is so very badly written and so very badly optimized on the fact that we're still in this world of going to a office or doing things that don't make sense. “Don't click the link?” You're right. Who doesn't click the link? [laugh].Corey: Right. Oh, yeah. It's a constant ongoing thing where you continually keep running into folks who just don't get it, on some level. We all have that security practitioner friend who only ever sends you email that is GPG encrypted. And what do they say in those emails?I don't know. Who has the time to sit there and decrypt it? I'm not running anything that requires disclosure. I just don't understand the mindset behind some of these things. The folks living off the grid as best they can, they don't participate in society, they never have a smartphone, et cetera, et cetera. Having seen some things I've seen, I get it, but at some point, it's one of those you… you don't have to like it, but accepting that we live in a society sort of becomes non-optional.Will: Exactly. There lies the issue with security is that you have your wonks who are overly paranoid, they're effectively like the your talented engineer types: they know what they're talking about and obviously, they use open-source projects like GPG, et cetera. And that's all great, but they don't necessarily fit into the contemporary context of the business world and they're seen as outliers who are basically relied on to do things that aren't part of the normal day-to-day business operations. Then you have your folks who are just getting into it and they're reading your CISSP guides, and they're saying, “This is the way we do things.” And then you have people who are basically trying to cross that chasm in between. [laugh].And that's where the security is right now. And it's a cornucopia of different personalities, et cetera. It is getting better, but what we all have to collectively realize is that it is not perfect. To your point, there is no one true way of practicing security. It's all based on how the business perceived security and what their needs are, first and foremost, and then trying to map the generalities of security into the business context.Corey: That's always the hardest part is so many engineering-focused solutions don't take business context into account. I feel very aligned with this from the cost perspective. The reason I picked cost instead of something like security—because frankly, me doing basically what I'm doing now with a different position of, “Oh, I will come in and absolutely clear up the mistakes you have made in your IAM policies.” And, “Oh, we haven't made any mistakes in our IAM policies.” You ever met someone for who not only is that true, but also is confident enough to say that? Because, “Great. We'll do an audit. You want to bet? If we don't find anything, we'll give you a refund.” [laugh]. And it's fun, but are people going to call you with that in the middle of the night and wake you up? The cloud economics thing, it is strictly a business hours problem.Will: Yeah, yeah. It's funny that you mention that. So, somebody makes a mistake in that IAM cloud policy. They say, “Everybody gets admin.” Next thing you know, yes, that ends up causing an auth event, you have a bunch of EC2 instances that were basically spun up by some bad actor, and now you have a $1 million bill that you have to pay.Corey: Right. And you can get adjustments to your bill by talking to AWS support and bending the knee. And you're going to have to get yelled at, and they will make you clean up your security policies, which you really shut it down anyway, and that's the end of it. For the most part.Will: I remember I spun up a Macie when it had just came out.Corey: Oh, no.Will: Oh, yeah.Corey: That was $5 per gigabyte of data ingested, which is right around the breakeven point of hire a bunch of college interns to do it instead, by hand.Will: Yeah, I remember the experience. It ended up costing $24,000 in a span of 24 hours.Corey: Yep.Will: [laugh].Corey: And it was one of the most blindsidingly obvious things, to the point where they wound up releasing something like a 90% pay cut with the second generation of billing. And the billing's still not great on something like that. I was working with a client when that came out, and their account manager immediately starts pushing it to them and they turn to me almost in unison, and, “Should we do it?”—good. We have them trained well, and I, “Hang on,”—envelope math—“Great. Running this on the data you have an S3 right now would cost for the first month, $76 million, so I vote we go with Option B, which is literally anything that isn't that, up to and including we fund our own startup that will do this ourselves, have them go through your data, then declare failure on Medium with a slash success post of our incredible journey has come to an end; here's what's next. And then you pocket the difference and use it for something good.”And then—this is at the table with the AWS account manager. Their response, “So, you're saying we have a pricing problem with Macie?” It's like well, “Whether it's a problem or not really depends on what side of that transaction [laugh] you're on, but I will say I'll never use the thing.” And only four short years later, they fixed the pricing model.Will: Finally. And that was the problem is that you want to do good; you end up doing bad as a result. And that was my learning experience. And then I had to obviously talk to them and beg, borrow, and steal and try to explain to them why I made that mistake. [laugh]. And then finally, you know [crosstalk 00:29:52]—Corey: Oh, yeah. It's rare that you can make an honest, well-intentioned mistake and not get that taken care of. But that is not broadly well known. And they of course can't make guarantees around it because as soon as you do that you're going to open the door for all kinds of bad actors. But it's something where, this is the whole problem with their billing model is they have made it feel dangerous to experiment with it. “Oh, you just released a new service. I'm not going to play with that yet.”Not because you don't trust the service and not because you don't trust the results you're going to get from it, but because there's this haunting fear of a bill surprise. And after you've gone through that once or twice, the scars stick with you.Will: Yep. PTSD. I actually learned from that mistake, and let's face it, it was a mistake and you learn from that. And I feel like I sort of honed in on the fact that I need to pay attention to your Twitter feed because you talk about this stuff. And that was really, like, the first and last mistake that I made with a AWS service stack.Corey: Following on my Twitter feed? Yeah, first and last mistake a lot of people make.Will: Oh, I mean, it was—that's too, but you know, that's a good mistake to make. [laugh]. But yeah, it was really enlightening in a good way. And I actually—you know, what's funny about it is if you start with a AWS service that has just basically been released, be cautious and be very calculated around what you're implementing and how you're implementing it. And I'll give you one example: AWS Shield, for example.Corey: Oh, yeah. The free version or the $3,000 per month with a one-year commitment?Will: [unintelligible 00:31:15] version. Yeah, you start there, and then you quickly realize the web application firewall rules, et cetera, they're just not there yet. And that needs to be refined. But would I pay $3,000 for AWS Shield Advanced or something else? I probably will go with something else.There lies the issue is that AWS is very quick to release new features and to corner that market, but they just aren't fast enough to, like, at least in the current form—you know, from a security perspective, when you look at those services, they're just not fast enough to refine. And there is, maybe, an issue with that, at least from my experience perspective. I would want them to pay a little bit more attention to, not so much your developers, but your security practitioners because they know what they're looking for. But AWS is nowhere to be found on that side of the house.Corey: Yeah. It's a hard problem. And I'm not entirely sure the best way to solve for it, yet.Will: Yeah, yeah. And there lies a comment where I said that we're crossing that chasm right now…. We're just not there yet.Corey: Yeah. One of these days. If people want to hear more about what you're up to and how you view these things, where can they find you?Will: Twitter.Corey: Always a good decision. What's your username? And we will, of course, throw a link to it in the [show notes 00:32:33].Will: Yeah, @willgregorian. Don't go to LinkedIn. [laugh].Corey: No. No one likes—LinkedIn is trying to be a social network, but not anywhere near getting there. Thank you so much for taking the time to basically reminisce with me if nothing else.Will: This was awesome.Corey: Really was. Will Gregorian, head of information security at Color Health. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an ignorant comment telling me why I'm wrong about rotating passwords every 60 days.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need the Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

Amazon denied reports it will accept Bitcoin payments soon, but seemingly, it's only a matter of time before the tech giants embrace the token economy. Maybe Amazon really isn't preparing to accept BTC as payment for its goods and services before year's end, and perhaps Apple isn't in fact adding $2.5 billion of Bitcoin to its balance sheet — although both events were reported recently, they are still unconfirmed. The question still remains: If and when the tech giants do commit, what impact will they have on the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry? Would it spur crypto adoption or revive Bitcoin as a medium of exchange? Would it confer a seal of approval on digital assets and discourage governments from clamping down on blockchain-based tokens? For complete show notes and for the full premium experience with video, visit our YouTube channel at http://CryptoNewsAlerts.net

This week on In the Dirt, we tackle tire volume (courtesy of a Rene Herse discussion in The Ridership), Road Tripping, Group Riding, the AZT 750 and vaccinations.    Support the Podcast Rene Herse Tire Volume Discussion  Join The Ridership Episode Transcription (please excuse any errors) GRP In The Dirt Ep. 19 [00:00:00] Craig: [00:00:00] Randall welcome to the show [00:00:01] Randall: [00:00:01] Always a pleasure to be with you Craig. How are you my friend? [00:00:04] Craig: [00:00:04] I'm doing good. At this point I think you can almost say Craig welcome to the show [00:00:09] Randall: [00:00:09] Yeah  you're still hosting vastly more often than I am so I need to up my game here. [00:00:16] Craig: [00:00:16] Speaking of upping your game you've transported yourself yet again since our last broadcast So you were in Utah [00:00:23] Where are you? [00:00:23]Randall: [00:00:23] So I am back in San Francisco staying in the marina for the month I was very fortunate to have some friends who were out of town and just said here are the keys to the apartment So I have been road tripping and house sitting and otherwise Taking advantage of a very flexible situation over these months which has been great [00:00:41] Craig: [00:00:41] Yeah it was cool on your way back from Utah did see you in Palm desert California was nice for an hour for a coffee and a little conversation [00:00:51] Randall: [00:00:51] Yeah [00:00:52] we had a coffee and a slush tone My Watching your son go down and slip and slide the bunch of other kids in Palm desert [00:00:58]Craig: [00:00:58] That may be interesting to some of our listeners I think where are you headed next even more interesting is that before or after you headed to the grand canyon [00:01:06] Randall: [00:01:06] That [00:01:06] was after So I had been in Southern Utah for a couple of weeks podding with a couple of friends and actually my youngest sister which was great So we hit up Bryce and Zion and a few different Parks in that area a lot of trail running a lot of hiking and a lot of just being outside Brought a fire pit along since sitting around sitting outside around a fire pit making things in the walk really lovely time and [00:01:30] a reminder of what life was like before pandemic two of my friends had been vaccinated and the rest of us got tested And so we did it in his safe away as we could and then being [00:01:40] Craig: [00:01:40] It's so nice to have some of that Normalicy creeping back into our lives I feel the same thing There's just been some casualness to my interactions with people that wasn't present A month ago prior to me getting the first shot of the vaccination Anyway [00:01:55] Randall: [00:01:55] Yeah And I just got my first shot today which I'm very pleased about and it's no panacea the effectiveness with new variants is still being tested and is shown to be a little bit less or potentially quite a bit less effective with new variants and then there's still research to be done on how long it lasts But with boosters and with more people having some degree of immunity does seem like the worst is behind us which is such relief Plus the risk of serious illness is significantly lessened with these vaccines to so strongly encourage everybody to take advantage as it's opening up to the full population [00:02:30]Craig: [00:02:30] And after this is published tomorrow I'm going away for my second shot So I'm excited about that. [00:02:35] Randall: [00:02:35] Very cool Very cool [00:02:37] Craig: [00:02:37] So you actually made it you actually made it into the grand canyon Did you not [00:02:41] Randall: [00:02:41] I did after I left my group of friends and my younger sister there drove down to the south rim and camped out and then woke up the next morning had a lovely breakfast and coffee on the rim and then ran down to the river A really nice way to spend a day got back up at about one o'clock or so one 30 [00:03:00] then, Had a beverage with a friend in Flagstaff and then continued on to Sedona [00:03:05] Craig: [00:03:05] Nice Is that a 3000 foot drop off the edge [00:03:09] Randall: [00:03:09] I think it's 48 [00:03:11] [00:03:11] Craig: [00:03:11] Been a hell of a day of getting back out [00:03:13] Randall: [00:03:13] Yeah I was more beat than I was expecting to be but granted it was a bit brazen of me to do aGrand Canyon run relatively off the couch. I haven't been training much at all I've been using this time to Recover overall And I was definitely hurting towards the end of it but it was something I'd been wanting to do for some time and was really a day well spent [00:03:33] Craig: [00:03:33] Yeah the one time I went down there I remember the way out It was like it was all good until it wasn't and that's like still got another 1500 feet to hike out of here [00:03:42] Randall: [00:03:42] Yeah Yeah It was it was stunning though I just went didn't out and back on the south Kaibab trail for those in the know or who are curious there's also you can do rim to rim I didn't do that People who do that rim to rim in a day that's pretty ambitious and you can also go up the Angel's Landing trail I believe which is a bigger loop which I didn't tackle because it was another seven miles of flats And I didn't need that. [00:04:05] Craig: [00:04:05] Okay Hey did you know that the Arizona trail race the AZT there's the 350 and the 750 And the 750 involves hiking the grand canyon rim to rim with your bike on your back [00:04:21] your tires are not allowed to touch the ground. You can't ride in that park as you probably saw, so to complete the Arizona trail 750 [00:04:30] you have to hike down and out the other side [00:04:33] Randall: [00:04:33] oh that sounds awful and even if you were allowed to ride your bike down it would probably be a bad idea at least not without a proper dual suspension mountain bike with knobbies And on which case you have that much more bike to carry up all the stuff that is completely unrideable [00:04:50] Craig: [00:04:50] Yeah for the listener There are a few really good documentaries I've seen on Netflix I believe Maybe Amazon prime about the AZT 350 and the 750 Really cool, Definitely not gravel bike terrain It's purportedly a very difficult Rocky route In fact many people find it just too rough to even attempt but it's one of these bike packing races that has a grand de par day And people just go off and it was finished Days and weeks apart from one another [00:05:22] Randall: [00:05:22] Okay So people are stretching it out over a period of time enjoying the scenery It's not like a 24 hour slog or something like that where people are just knocking out 300 400 miles a go. [00:05:33] Craig: [00:05:33] It's longer than that but it's definitely raced So I think every year there's people who are doing it as dare I say tourists but that's probably not the right word but there are definitely people going forward and there's definitely an FK T For the AZT Three 50 and the seven 50 that people are gunning for periodically [00:05:51]Randall: [00:05:51] Beast mode. That's that's a lot of riding or more than I I have the stomach for at the moment [00:05:57] Craig: [00:05:57] Exactly So speaking of riding [00:06:00] and racing I actually had a good time I think both Saturday and Sunday I saw the return of proper gravel racing. And while it may be a little too soon for me to don a number of both physically and really just where I'm at in terms of the pandemic it was really cool to see my buddy Sam Ames' race the rock cobbler go off outside of Bakersfield in California The race has been around a number of years He's been a guest on the podcast I was excited to see they were sponsored by Bianchi this year So getting a little bit more resources behind the event. Sam's known for the quirkiness of his events. The first year I think had riders ride through someone's house part of the course Which is crazy So I was waited with bated breath to see what's was going to be the shenanigan of the year And the one thing I saw Courtesy of our friends at pure gravel who were filming a lot of it Was they had a ball pit can say from the footage I saw unequivocally If you're ever presented with a ball pit in a gravel race do not try to ride it I think 100% of the people I saw crashed and some crashed heavily [00:07:13] Randall: [00:07:13] How deep is this ball pit I suppose there's like a there's a zone where if it's not deep enough it's really bad. But if it's deep enough it's you're still going to crash but it'll be delightful. [00:07:23] Craig: [00:07:23] Yeah I think it was I think it was not deep enough for the way that people were grimacing when they stood up [00:07:30] [00:07:29] Randall: [00:07:29] Oh geez [00:07:31] Craig: [00:07:31] But anyway I mean that the guys again follow pure gravel on Instagram They've got some footage of that race and I think people get a kick out of and then another account on Instagram I started following with Southeast gravel And there was event called the Greenwood gravel grinder which had some hitters out in it Out on the east coast and it was fun they had a motorcycle out there capturing footage So it reminded me of maybe mid south in 2019 where I was just able to sit as an armchair quarterback and watch athletes just rip through these gravel courses fun Again we were as we were talking about a few minutes ago Just the sort of senses of a return to normalcy beginning to be there And so that was a lot of fun to see [00:08:13] Randall: [00:08:13] Excellent Yeah I have a couple of events that I'm looking at for the late spring, early summer on the east coast And It does feel like these things can be pulled off safely Now granted with a lot of good protocol and people adhering to it [00:08:27] Craig: [00:08:27] Yeah I think when you subtract out maybe the food and beverages afterwards or at least alternate how they're delivered you really do have the opportunity If writers are being safe then I think you can pull these things off [00:08:40] Randall: [00:08:40] Yeah I think the biggest thing is out on that I can think of is like you can stagger the starts So people are all grouped together but really having a rule around drafting and things like that Cause it's actually in that draft That is also the sweet spot for any sort of vapor coming out of one's mouth And so it's a good place to get a good dose of [00:09:00] COVID if you're drafting somebody [00:09:02] Craig: [00:09:02] That's the trickiest thing for me because as when I'm dying late in the race if I see a wheel to follow I'm definitely going to hop on [00:09:08] Randall: [00:09:08] Yeah Yeah It definitely needs to be an explicit rule that stated and that everyone agrees to I think so for all you event organizers out there something to consider [00:09:19] Craig: [00:09:19] another event popped onto my radar that I thought the listener might be interested in in Trinidad Colorado lifetime who's the owner of crusher and the Tuscher and Unbound gravel formerly dirty Kanza And started a new event called the rad dirt Fest And it's part running festival part gravel festival [00:09:38]Long time listeners may be familiar with Trinidad Colorado because I had an interview back in 2019 With Ron Della Rocha reached out to me and said I really want to make this region of Colorado which is in the The very Southern tip very close to New Mexico A gravel destination because we've got phenomenal roads We've got some nice mountain passes just a perfect place for gravel racing So it was interesting And I reached out to Juan and asked him if he had been in contact with the lifetime team And he said he had interesting that they're picking another kind of mountain community To impact and hopefully in a very positive way for a region that doesn't have going on Now that certain industries have left the region [00:10:25]Randall: [00:10:25] Very cool it's springtime in the gravel events world [00:10:29] Craig: [00:10:29] Yes [00:10:30] the blossoming of gravel again once again hopefully this tail end of the year is were hoping 2020 would be where gravel events were plentiful The investment and organization levels were continued to increase and improve And people were just out there having a blast [00:10:47]Randall: [00:10:47] And it ties into the other end of the gravel event spectrum now that we are going to chat about today which is impromptu gatherings of people and being able to facilitate that more effectively [00:11:00] Craig: [00:11:00] Yeah Yeah [00:11:01] exactly Speaking of impromptu gatherings you had a bit of an adventure last weekend right [00:11:07] Randall: [00:11:07] I had a great adventure so talk about quirky events.PanocheSo there's the the super pro series here in California which my good friend Isaac has done in the past and has volunteered for And so he had all the beta on the route that we did in the Panoche Hills which is not a very well known area of California but it is stunningly beautiful And we got there it's halfway between LA and San Francisco off the five So off the five kind of and then if you go west of there on the other side is Hollister and there's Panoche road That goes through and it's a pockmarked paved road but lots of potholes but I was fine barnstorming it in my Prius So a really stunning area And we got there before everything had dried out So you had these beautiful hues of different greens and wild flowers out and then some brown Hills in the distance and a good amount of [00:12:00] elevation I think the highest point is 3000 plus hella steep like brutally steep in sections both at the end down so we definitely got worked and it was a just a really delightful time weather couldn't have been better And we stayed at the Mercey Hot Springs which is a stunning little sanctuary in the middle of this desert area Where there's the only Grove of trees for some distance and it's just filled with birds that wake you up in the morning and you wake up to a beautiful sunrise really fantastic [00:12:29] Craig: [00:12:29] That's awesome How would you characterize the dirt as compared to  Marin county [00:12:33]Randall: [00:12:33] Marin county the actual trails themselves are way more fun to ride I would say what's unique about being out there is the vistas and the beauty of the terrain and the fact that you can be so remote So close to a major metropolitan area it was just gorgeous for that And being able to do a monster loop and just see the whole ridge line that you're going to tackle as you're riding [00:12:56] Craig: [00:12:56] Was it a sort of double track slash fire road Or were you on single track [00:13:00]Randall: [00:13:00] Mostly Doubletrack And some of it was properly fun and technical I tend to like the faster flowy mixed Doubletrack single track stuff that we have here in the bay but this was rewarding in a different way This was a cover lots of ground slog your way up a big hill Get a beautiful view rewarding ride [00:13:19] Craig: [00:13:19] So out of intellectual curiosity if you were living in that area you think your wheel set would be different than it normally is And for normal I always have in my mind that you're [00:13:30] a 650x47 guy [00:13:32] Randall: [00:13:32] Yeah actually no I wouldn't run any more and I wouldn't run any less in Marine I would run more and in fact in when we'll keep that mostly under wraps but I do have some plans for something that would allow for a little bit more in the future [00:13:47] Craig: [00:13:47] Yeah I was find it interesting as everybody knows I'm usually in that 650x47 although I'm down to 43s right now camp And I wonder if I went somewhere with a little less technical terrain whether I would opt for something narrower as plenty of riders do [00:14:02]Randall: [00:14:02] It actually ties into another thing we're going to discuss today which is this article from Rene Hearse Who you had on the podcast before that was shared in The Ridership talking about whether wider tires are slower or faster And its findings suggest that tire construction is a major determinant there not tire volume And so there's really no upside to going with those 650x43s but there is the downside in that you don't have all that extra volume to take the shock away. So I would I'd be sticking with minimum 650x47 for the sort of stuff that we ride I am curious about how you find those though [00:14:41] Craig: [00:14:41] Yeah I'll let you know since I'm just switching over to them again I've on this journey to test the limits and everything in between So I've got a 700 by 32 slick setup but a durable tire from Panaracer gravel king plus And then the Gravel king SK [00:15:00] 650x43 now that the set up on and I should disclose And I'm very excited about this I was invited to become a Panaracer ambassador for the year [00:15:10] Randall: [00:15:10] Awesome That's great. [00:15:12] Craig: [00:15:12] And it's a little bit like coming home. It's fun because the Panner racer gravel king SK on my original open 650x48 Was the tire and the bike set up that really opened my eyes to what gravel could be and mean And I don't think I'd swap that tire for two years In fact I only stopped running it when I got my open simply because WTB or WTB was the tire offering that that you guys had to offer on the Thesis yeah it's fun coming full circle and seeing if these tires were everything that I remembered them to be And as I said I've set up these super narrow road tires It's super nice It's funny to say super narrow at 32 millimeters But I've slept them up and I've been trying to ride a little bit of dirt on them just set again just to test the limits and also encourage myself to choose different routes. Get further north into Marin before I hit the dirt and try some new stuff [00:16:12] Randall: [00:16:12] I do find it remarkable how capable that set up can be on hardpack. I've ridden around here on the peninsula this the Sweeney Ridge loop that has a section of single track going up and some beat up broken down paved sections coming down and between [00:16:30] 700x30 setup on our wide rims and then having the dropper post So I can really take the edge off by using a bit of body English letting the bike dance underneath me it's remarkable how fast that stuff can be hit especially if you I think I have the added advantage of knowing that I can replace the rim cheaply enough but So I take I might take more risks than most but nonetheless [00:16:52] Craig: [00:16:52] Yeah I was riding I was in Topanga for the last weekend and I was riding it on some dirt those 32s And I will say it was definitely in my head descending no problem whatsoever climbing As it was flowing I felt good I didn't feel like I was getting too crazy in the corners but as I started to pointed downhill I really found myself backing it off [00:17:13] And that's where the big tire volumes You just don't have to think about it I think that's what I love about running big it'll get up the Hills and no problem when you're going down the Hills you can just hit more stuff [00:17:24]Randall: [00:17:24] And I want to come back to this article that I was brought up a moment ago because it's relevant to this conversation It's talking about essentially they're making the argument that without a well constructed which means higher end materials generally what in the aftermarket with tires like Rene Hearse there are others who make premium tires as well with similar construction incidentally in their case by Panaracer  you're not losing out on rolling resistance And in fact it was a very interesting phenomenon that they found here Which was they're looking at tire pressure And [00:17:56] Craig: [00:17:56] favorite subject [00:17:57]Randall: [00:17:57] Yeah and I this is actually something that it [00:18:00] makes sense to me having read it but I definitely didn't Intuit it at first. I want to use his words here So he's looking at optimal tire pressure And what they found was that   Having a lower pressure can have low rolling resistance or relatively high efficiency having a higher pressure can have a relatively high efficiency but there's a middle pressure where it's actually the worst of both worlds And the mechanism that they suggest is this, and this is a quote is the tires are pumped up harder Suspension losses caused by vibrations increase more than the hysteric losses caused by deformation of the tire because those as those go down as a result the total combined resistance goes up at first So you can either minimize suspension losses with low pressure Or hysteric losses with high pressure but the compromise means that both suspension and hysteric losses are relatively high and you go slower than you would at either end of the spectrum. Which for me is a license to continue running low pressure which I was going to do anyways. [00:18:58] Craig: [00:18:58] Yeah it's fascinating And I will link to my conversation with the author Jan Renee from Renee Hearse cycles And I encourage everybody to check out his blog on Rene or stock com and we'll link to the conversation in the ridership and you'll be able to find your way to these blog posts but it was fascinating And as you and I were talking about offline I'm not totally sure I've got a crappy gauge on my pump relatively crappy I'll say and it's just consistent Like it's crappy [00:19:30] across every time I pump up the tire So I know what I think I know I'm not exactly sure where I'm at I do a little bit by feel and a little bit by the gauge But I'm concerned that I may end up in the middle zone because I think that's the easiest place to be it's pretty easy to your tire up to the maximum recommended tubeless pressure And know that you're too high on the pressure [00:19:54] The too low side is maybe something that's we fear hitting Because there are realistic concerns right Of going too low on the tire pressure You're going to bottom out You might damage your rim but how to avoid being in the middle for your individual weight and set up is tricky and it's probably going to involve a little bit of personal trial and error maybe that's all investing in a little bit better Quality tire gauge [00:20:19] Randall: [00:20:19] Yeah it's the tire gauges that come on the vast majority of bumps are pretty rubbish and they're good from a relative perspective measuring from one day to the next in comparing those pressures So if you ever pressure you like stick with it but not as an absolute measure of accuracy And so I'll probably be investing in the same So at the same time There's still that element of knowing how I ride how things feel and that limits of where I can tell that I'm close to bottoming out a rim on the terrain that I'm riding And that tends to be one of my gauges cause I ride pretty hard So that limits the low end of the pressure I can use especially A bit of [00:21:00] the dropper posts and a bit of body English helps to mitigate that to some degree but at the same time one bad line can be a bad day with a cracked carbon rim [00:21:09] Craig: [00:21:09] Yeah I think my experience on the mountain bike is definitely so much time and time again like experiment on the lower side of the spectrum not the higher side of the spectrum [00:21:17] Randall: [00:21:17] Oh yeah you don't want to poke a stick [00:21:21] Craig: [00:21:21] Exactly fascinating stuff as always And as we know people will geek out over tires and tire pressure all day long [00:21:28] The other thing that was cool I wanted to highlight is you've been getting together with That select group of people via The Ridership And of the things we all have always talked about in the ridership is we're out of this pandemic How do we facilitate getting people together and think about tools to make that coordination easier and better [00:21:50]Randall: [00:21:50] Already we're seeing this behavior just emerge so we're currently running the forum on slack And so in slack you can have direct messages with I think up to eight people Is that right. So in this case one person suggested it. And then another person chimed in with a route And then three more people hu We're interested So the hell's Yeah and I think from there it went to a DM or maybe it started in a direct message thread. And these are people who I had met One was a good friend two others I actually met through Thesis they were early Thesis riders And then the fourth was a friend of theirs And we had only ever interacted as a group [00:22:30] Out through the forum and then described came together and started planning the camping arrangements Who's bringing what and all that stuff And just being able to do it asynchronously but quickly in this sort of format and invite people and share materials like routes and campsites And so on on the fly was a great experience And so there's some things that we could probably do to enhance it further and we'll be experimenting with some plugins and so on in slack but it was really just very encouraging It's this it's the second or third time that I've had this sort of thing come together and we're seeing other people do it as well Other people in the regional channels saying Hey I just got vaccinated does anyone want to plan a ride for later in the month This sort of thing [00:23:11] Craig: [00:23:11] Yeah That's what it's here for not to overly plug The Ridership but everybody listening is invited a free forum to connect with other riders And as Randall said we're actively listening to everybody in the forum and trying to build great things that are going to enhance your cycling experience [00:23:30]Randall: [00:23:30] Online tools for the facilitation of offline connection and experience And everyone gets a free RideWithGPS account as well [00:23:37] Craig: [00:23:37] Yeah Absolutely I think that's a good time for us to call it quits for this week Good to reconnect And now that you're in the bay area before you leave again and we're going to get for a ride together [00:23:48] Randall: [00:23:48] Yeah [00:23:49] I will see you on Friday [00:23:51] Craig: [00:23:51] Right on  

Goodreads is a social platform where readers congregate. Are the ways in which we can market our books to these people without being sleazy? Jesper has no idea about Goodreads, so he asks all the stupid questions, while Autumn tries to convince him that Goodreads is a good platform. (For the record, Jesper did claim his author profile on Goodreads the day after the recording of this episode) Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.  SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.  Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you'll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.  Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (1s): You're listening to the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need an literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt. Jesper (30s): Hello, I'm Jesper. And I'm autumn. This is episode 112 of the Am Writing fantasy podcast. And we're going to discuss a topic today where, eell, I'm a total noob. Autumn (46s): That's very honest stuff, you know? Jesper (48s): Yeah. But luckily, well you autumn, you're not. And so we're going to talk about how to use good reads as a promotional tool to market books. So I don't know anything about that. Autumn (1m 3s): Yeah. You've never even claimed her author profile on there. You probably have reviews that you've never even looked at, but I can't imagine I enjoy. Goodreads is one of those things, I, I want to be on it more than I am. So maybe this will be another reminder to myself to get back on there and do something now maybe. Jesper (1m 24s): And I I'm hoping that I will learn a thing or two today as well. Autumn (1m 28s): Maybe I'll inspire. You. You'll have to tell me if I inspire you to maybe think about claiming your author profile by the end of today's podcast while you're setting yourself a very high goal. I, I took persuasive Fessel philosophy in my persuasive psychology actually in my college days. So we'll have to see if it comes out. Jesper (1m 52s): Yeah. Yeah. Just don't get disappointed. Autumn (1m 57s): Right. I'll try. Maybe I can convince you to give me your author profile. Jesper (2m 2s): Well that you could probably yes. Autumn (2m 4s): Okay. We'll have to see how it goes. Jesper (2m 8s): Yeah. Yeah, indeed. Yeah. I know you have a crazy times on your end. How's it going with all your jinxing of electronic stuff and destroying computers and have you screwed something else in the meantime? Autumn (2m 21s): Oh yes, absolutely. Besides destroying battery operated water pumps, I managed to, for some reason, make Adam's Mac, my husband's at Mac air unstable. So it stopped connecting to the internet. I just, my phone's. Okay. Thank goodness. It must be as no, we have a life case on that and it is, we've been joking because yeah, I've told you, my husband knows the, the Fe and my next series, I'm releasing, they cannot touch and they actually end up putting electronics and Faraday cages. Autumn (3m 3s): And it's like, my husband's now talking about making me go. I'm like, Oh, I can brand that for my books. So I still think he thought I'd be that excited about hearing. I can get my very unfair day cage from my laptop. Jesper (3m 19s): That would be a very interesting author image. And try to explain why, why you're sitting inside a cage. Autumn (3m 29s): I might need it. I do not know why things go scurry around me, but I've been extremely cursed racks the last couple of weeks. But I did just pick up my laptop like 45 minutes before we needed to get into recording today. And the student Q and a. So I'm I actually got it online and all my files were actually there. The logic board had been toasted somehow, but it didn't destroy my files. Just the logic board go figure I broke logic, but it's feels so good to have it back. And it's working and they replaced the keyboard and it's also fancy and nice. Autumn (4m 13s): It almost looks new for the memory was only decent. I'd be happy. It'd be perfect. Jesper (4m 19s): I honestly really hope that you're going to get out of your jinxing cycled quite soon so that you can just, you know, don't break things and just get back into your group without all this stressful stuff. It's Oh my God. I feel bad for you. Autumn (4m 37s): Yeah, it definitely had a few days where I've closed up shop early and just gone and read by Kindle, which thank goodness it hasn't broken on me yet either, but my husband actually knows I'm accident prone. So he got me like the most indestructible Kindle that you can buy. It's called a Voyager and it is like shockproof waterproof, you know, drop, kick it proof. I don't know if it's me proof, but so far so good. Knock on wood. Yeah. Jesper (5m 4s): Maybe Amazon will learn something that it was not as proven as they thought it was. Autumn (5m 9s): Oh yes. Well, if anyone ever wants to test something to see if it's, indestructable send it to me, I've broken indestructable glasses before, so please let me have a try. Jesper (5m 22s): Not even from trying, it's just not, you just use it normally and then you will break it. Autumn (5m 27s): That's true. I confess that as true anyway, but how are things on your side of the ocean? Jesper (5m 36s): Well, nothing as exciting as on your side, that's for sure. Yeah. I don't really know if there's that much to share since last week's episode. It's just been one of those working weeks where I've just been focusing on getting my words in these, the first draft of the reader magnet is done now. Yeah. Autumn (5m 55s): Yes. You sent that to me, at least your, I still have to do Jesper (5m 58s): My edits and add to it, but yeah, we've been writing. It's been exciting. Yeah. Yeah, indeed. And as we said before, we not very good at celebrating. You actually pointed this out to me in an email, you said like, remember to celebrate, like, and, and honestly I did actually think about it when I sent you the last chapter. I did stop for two seconds to think maybe I should celebrate. So, and then I went onto the next thing on its dupe list, but so he had a two second acknowledgement of an achievement. And then, but I always, I almost would say that those two second is already an improvement because before I didn't even have those. Jesper (6m 40s): So it is slightly better, but not a, not a lot better. I could also mention that the, I just wrote up a whole post for our patron supporters on how the new iOS 14 rollout that is coming here early 20, 21 might affect Facebook ads. So this is, yeah, this is a pretty big deal for us authors who rely heavily on Facebook ads and the new iOS 14 will actually block some ad stuff or I would say not blocked, but it's, it's more to do with the fact that previously Apple operated with an opt out methodology, so that if you did not want the phone to share information with Facebook, for example, you had to actively go in and opt out via settings. Jesper (7m 35s): And the Apple is changing that with the new iOS so that you have to opt in. So you will actually be prompted by your phone to say, do you want your, your, the phone to share information with, for example, Facebook? And of course, most people will say, no, we don't want that. And then some of the ads becomes a problematic to run because Facebook cannot collect the data that they could before. So yeah, I wrote up a whole post on Patrion for our supporters on how I view this, what are the consequences, how to deal with it. So that was sort of a scary and interesting thing all at once there. That is, that sounds interesting. Autumn (8m 16s): Cause I know for me, I actually run Firefox and they have a Facebook corral, which blocks you from the Facebook pixels on websites. And I always feel sneaky by doing that, but I also feel like I'm undermining someone else's data. Oops. Narrator (8m 34s): A week on the internet with the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. Jesper (8m 39s): To welcome back Jeffrey on Patreon. Autumn (8m 42s): Yes. Thank you, Jeffrey, for coming back, you had a little glitch where you're gone for a little while and you've returned to us. So thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much, Jeffrey, for your continuous support of the am writing fantasy podcast. We really appreciate that. And I dunno, I feel like saying a few words about Patreon here or Yeah, that's, it's, it's a very wonderful platform and it really, it is what supports this podcast and lets us pay for the recording and the hosting and all of those things that is actually all paid out of pet pantry on every single month. So thank you for everyone who supports us there. Jesper (9m 22s): Yeah. And I fully understand that, you know, we live in a media reality right now where podcasts are free and that's fine. The reality though is also that we can't make a living from something that is free. So that's where we use patron and we are not running any ads on the podcast either. So we're not getting any money from there. So we entirely funded by patron as, as autumn just said, I could also mention, for example, that we just, we did have a, this week, one of our very strong patron supporters leave us on Patrion or the last week due to the person's financial situations. And that is fully understandable people. Jesper (10m 2s): So changes, you know, circumstances can change in your financial situation. And first and foremost, you have to take care of yourself. So I'm just saying this because supporting us on patron doesn't mean that it has to be forever. If you have the capability support with maybe just $1 a month for now, that is awesome and it makes a difference. And then if you laid on your circumstances might change, then don't feel bad about it. It's perfectly fine. If you don't have to drop out and spend your money somewhere else after all, you have to take care of yourself and your family before anything else. I think that the one thing I would like to point out autumn here is just that I think that the trouble with this kind of thing is that most people always think that somebody else will take care of the supporting stuff, you know? Jesper (10m 54s): And in truth, if everyone just stopped thinking that and pitched in with a dollar, then I wouldn't have even have to mention this at all, because then it would be fine. Yeah. At the end of the day, Autumn (11m 7s): The Wikipedia often says the exact same thing. And I always do think, you know what? I can sit there asking for like two bucks, I always send Wikipedia something when they ask. I admit it. Jesper (11m 18s): Yeah. I mean, the thing is that this podcast is not just recorded for the fun of it. We actually do take it quite seriously. And we're trying to give you very useful and also some, sometimes just entertainment but useful advice. And if you do appreciate that, if you find it helpful in any way, please go and check out Patrion and you can follow the link in the show notes and see if, if maybe it would be something you could support us a bit there. Yeah. Autumn (11m 49s): Don't forget with our new website rebuild, which is finish by the go check out and writing fantasy.com. But if you go to am writing fantasy, fantasy.com/writing hyphen tips, or just go into the website and go into the blog, we actually added a button just to donate. So if for some reason you don't want to do patchy on you don't want to do. I mean, there's rewards there and hundreds of posts at this point and writing tips and marketing tips. But if for some reason you don't want to do that, but you would like to help us out and be able to, you know, support the podcast. You just want to do a one-time little gift. We made that possible on the website. So go check that out and we appreciate that as well. Autumn (12m 31s): Thank you so much because it does really help keep the lights on here, especially when you have one, half of your tribe is electronic accident prone. Yes. Okay. Anything else to add to, or should we move on to our conversation on Goodrich will only, I can say that it's not true of the moment, but by this time this is released. We will be over 3000 members on am writing fantasy Facebook in our group. And we're so close right now. We're, we're literally a day or two away. So, but definitely by the time this is released. So come join us on am writing fantasy Facebook, because it's just growing like insane. And when everyone there is wonderful. Autumn (13m 15s): Excellent. Yes, please do that. So there's probably something like a hundred million readers on Goodrich. I believe autumn probably close. I think the last time I'd seen was 95 million was the stats they had released when I took a webinar with them a year ago. So it's probably gotta be a hundred million readers, not just members, readers, people who love books. It's some million people look, I love books website. And I think this is one of the reasons why I'm a newbie to good reads because you know, in our little, let's say publishing company here, you, you and my publishing company advertising is sort of the stuff that I do, but good Reese has like considering you have your, okay, let me just put out a good read CEO here. Autumn (14m 13s): All right. So I'm an in, I'm in a meeting with the other executives and it's like, how many people do we have on the platform now? A hundred million. Okay. That sounds good. How do we capitalize on that? Well, so we don't why, well, I don't know. We don't have any ways to put any ads or monitor these people. So they're just using our platform and it's scrape. Yeah. Okay. Maybe it's great, but is I just don't get it. I mean, why can you not place apps on Goodrich? For example, with that many people, it would, it's like the most obvious place to advertise, but you, you can a bit, Jesper (14m 52s): And we're going to talk about that, but it's very limited. Autumn (14m 55s): It is very limited and it used to be a little less limited. I used to run good rates ads, but compared to AMS ads, they actually didn't perform that well, which is just to me crazy because these are people who love books, but yeah, use only so many ways you can actually give good reads money, which is probably why those ways that you can get good reads money. It costs quite a bit of money, but in its own way, from the author perspective, that's actually awesome. It's hard to give them money. You have to, there's other ways that you can go talk to these readers and find them. Autumn (15m 35s): And so it's all free. It's kind of cool. Jesper (15m 40s): It is cool. But I have a feeling that a lot of stuff that we're going to talk about here, or rather that you're going to talk about and I'm going to listen. But I think a lot of it has to probably do with there's a lot of time investment involved here. I have a feeling Autumn (15m 56s): There could be, but I mean, I guess if you're going, if you consider it a social media platform that is a hundred percent readers, why would you go to Facebook where it's like your aunt, Betty and your cousin, and they don't even read your books or do you want to go where there's readers, who you can go in, like sort through by the genre and find them and connect with them and have a great fan base. Where should you be spending your time? If you're going to spend some time on social media, it's not, you know, or looking at political tweets. Jesper (16m 31s): Yeah, no, I understand that. But maybe just before we get into all of those things that you can do, do you have any, because as you said before, it's even when you could run ads, they were not converting very well. And given that there is a hundred million or 95 or whatever, I don't think those 5 million makes a difference, but let's say around a hundred million readers on good reads. Why, if no, let me rephrase that. If it was very effective in terms of selling or marketing your books, I would think that every author would spend quite a lot of time on good reads, but I spent quite a lot of my time brushing up on the latest marketing things and, and ad strategies and all I do that all the time. Jesper (17m 24s): And I never ever hear about you should be spending time on good reads. So I'm just wondering now that I've never really used good reads. So of course I'm, I don't have any, let's say I don't have any standpoint in terms of arguing why or why not, but I'm wondering if you have any reflections on why is it not converting that well, w w what is it is it's to do with the audience that is Andrea or Autumn (17m 50s): Why? I think it's the, I think it's sort of almost like talking about a Kindle unlimited. If you, I know some authors who are a hundred percent Kindle, Kindle unlimited, and they're making a living wage off of that. And I know some authors who are on good reads and they are invested, it is their number one social media platform. It's where they spend all their time and the ones who are doing that. I mean, you're talking directly to readers and they're doing well. They, the webinar I took with good reads said that, you know, if they showed some books, that's like, this is a new release. This is one that basically went on fire on good reads. Autumn (18m 31s): And because of that, it was very popular across the board. Got the New York times bestseller lists all of these things simply because it started on good reads and got that burn going. So it can be an incredibly powerful platform, but I think most authors are spread out or they're not concentrating enough on just one platform and doing really, really well in it. And I mean, I have to say, like, I, I love good reads, but I also hate it because it is owned by Amazon now. And they have not put much money into it as it is like a 1990s platform. It looks terrible. Yes. Autumn (19m 11s): It's a really old, outdated, it's a forum. I don't even particularly like forums. You can't, you have to know HTML to even put in an image much less an image and a link. So you have to know a little bit of coding. Yes. You actually have to know coding to you mean you could just do stuff kind of blandly, but if you want it to make it look pretty again, that's probably my graphic designer decide coming out there that, you know, I, I know HTML coding whenever I'm on there and I want it putting in post photos and things. So it's so archaic and everyone keeps trying to create the next good reads. You know, a lot of platforms are trying to create a new version of good reads, but no, one's managed to knock it out of the number one spot for readers. Autumn (19m 54s): And I think there's a few reasons there, and maybe it's inertia because everyone's already there and until it explodes or Amazon takes it away, or it makes it a paid for platform. They're just going to say on good reads, because right now, even though Amazon owns it, it's kind of, it's got its own people, its own personality. It has librarians that manage the data and stuff. And they're fun to talk to. I've had to, I've had the fun of asking them a few questions. So it's got its own kind of thing going. I think, I think if you really, if even me, if I really invested the time and got going, the number one thing you can do as an authored to change your book sales is to go and talk to readers to go and build up your reader base Emma's are good. Autumn (20m 40s): Reads is a fantastic place to go and do that, but you have to be invested and dedicated and not just jump in and out and in and out, you got to go in and be part of the group. And the membership know that that part is perfectly fair. And I understand that, but I guess my question is, can you get them and maybe we're going to get into this so you can save the answer. If it's something we've got to get into any way. But as I said, I'm a new PSO. I'm I'm asking the stupid questions. Fair enough. But can you get people off of good reads and onto your email list in any easy way? Short of there is I think one or two ways and we will get into that. Autumn (21m 20s): So, yes. Okay. But let's go. Not as easy, it's not as easy as adding a button to your good reads author profile. It's not that easy, but there are other ways that you can do that. Okay. Well, what do you want to stop them? Well, I think we should start with the obvious ones. And one of them we've already touched on is that good reads used to do advertising, used to do self-service ads, almost the same as AMS ads, except it was actually a little more archaic and old fashioned AMS is like so much more sleek compared to what you could do on good reads. And I have used them and it took for ever to even spend $50 there. Autumn (22m 4s): It just was, it was really, I can see why they stopped doing it because they were not serving very well. They did not generate a lot, but I thought it was funny because just to double check before we ran this today is I did check on what their advertising says and it says no longer doing it, but they did say that this is literally for quote, for larger budgets, looking to drive maximum awareness on good reads, contact our advertising team to learn about our customized book, launch packages from larger budgets. So if you're a brick and mortar publisher or JK Rowling go to Goodwill. Yeah. I would think it was something similar to because Amazon also has it, the advantage program. Autumn (22m 47s): If you get into that, you, you can get not the investors program itself, but I forgot what it's called, but they have some, some branding banner stuff that you can get posted on, on Amazon. And I think if I remember correctly, I think the minimum spend to get into that program is 50 K. Oh my goodness. I was like, you don't just do that, right? No, no, no, no. So you, you were a serious publishing house or an author who is amazing. Yeah. When you can say, Oh yeah, 50 K nut up problem. So there is that. And I think the other thing that most people know good reads for is book giveaways. Autumn (23m 27s): Because if you're a reader, you know, there is a way it's so easy to sign up for either an ebook or a paperback of giveaway. And I remember the day where they were actually, I think the cheapest $50, maybe it was more, but there was a time they were super cheap to run. But now the minimum, the starting price is $119. So they're not that cheap anymore. That's not horrible. And if you're going to run a Kindle one, it has to be, you have to be published through Amazon. So through KDP and you can give up to a hundred books of an ebook giveaway, or if you want to do a print book giveaway, you can have a smaller, you know, just do like five print books or even 10. Autumn (24m 10s): So those two options are there. And I think most people know about them. And I did them once upon a day. But now that they're a little more expensive, I save up for maybe a big splash, like the final book of a series or something like that. You want know, do something special with it, but those are great, great and popular ways of actually quickly connecting with readers. So if you want to give one a try, I would highly recommend it. Jesper (24m 39s): Yeah. And the one thing I do understand about these giveaways is that one of the key benefits of it is the, there is like a social amplification built in meaning that I think everyone who enters a giveaway automatically has that book added to their, want to read shelf, which then creates a story in the newsfeeds for all their friends and followers. So that's pretty neat. You know, that, that way it's sort of that amplifies the word of mouth basic. Autumn (25m 9s): Yes, exactly. It is. And that's what, I don't know if, if most people realize like that's how good reading works. It took me a while to figure out because good reads has a couple of different areas. It has the forum area, the groups. So you can go into groups and forums and get to meet people and chat. There's like an archaic version of Facebook. If people are not used to forums, I they're not picture related enough for me. And I think that's why I don't like them. They're all textual and I'll go, my husband loves them and I just find them appalling. So I'm just not a good on forums, but I should spend more time there. But then they have a side that is like sorta like Facebook newsfeed, where it's an ongoing feed and you get to see things posted by your friends. Autumn (25m 50s): So the more friends you have or the more friends someone else has, you know, they, it gets shared more widely. And you would like to be just like Facebook. You would like to have your feed, something about your book, show up a couple of times, maybe a day. So all of the things I'm going to suggest are basically ways of getting your book, something you're sharing to show up, just so that people see it. But obviously the number one goal is to get basically as many friends as you can. And the best way you can do that, as you can either go friend, everyone who say likes a book that you like, which is probably a perfectly way of doing it. Cause you want to stick into your genre. You want to, you know, keep people who, you know, go everyone who reviews your book, ask them to be your friend. Autumn (26m 34s): You can do things like that. Or obviously you can share with your newsletter, your list on social media, other platforms. That's why you go into Twitter and you'll see someone say, Hey, I'm a good reads author. Find me here. That's because they want people to follow them. And so if they're following you on Twitter, you want to get them over to good reads as well. You're going to have to bring people into the platform, even though it already has a hundred million readers, you know, you have to find them and connect with them. It's a lot of networking. But to do that, that gets the amplification that you just mentioned. You want to spread your message to everyone's newsfeed on good reads. Jesper (27m 11s): And that's where I'm getting slightly nervous here, right? Because you're not in terms of having to bring people in. And I understand that all that, but building a reader list, so to speak on somebody else's real estate, that's like the number one thing we talked about in the self-publish sex success course that you should not do. You know, you have to get them onto some email list, meaning that you own the list of readers and they're not built on a good reads or the same thing applies to Facebook groups. There was people who build up a huge Facebook group and that's the only place that they can connect with those readers. And what happens to data at Facebook decides that, well, maybe now we're going to charge you to be able to post our stuff in your own group. Jesper (27m 57s): Otherwise we're only going to show it to 10% of them or whatever, you know, you never know what's going to happen. And that's why at least in the self publishing costs that we always say, you have to get people onto your email list. That's the only way you can control your own customer list. And that was why I was asking before, can we get them out of so, okay, let's say we get them into good reads then, but how do we get them out of there and onto our email list? Autumn (28m 25s): Well, we will, there's a few places where we can look at doing that besides obviously, you know, by getting them to shelve and buy your books. Even if you disappear off of good reads, for some reason, the fact that they have your books and hopefully in all your books, they have links to where else they can find you. So that is one important thing. But yeah, this is definitely using another platform to build. Hopefully you want to pull them into your own list, but I do think occasionally with something that it is book dedicated and reader dedicated. It's not bad to have a presence here because these are readers. These are active, hungry readers. These are people who really love books. Autumn (29m 6s): And if you're going to spend some time, you know, any time, this is a place to be better than Facebook, better than anywhere else. This is definitely an audience you should look at because there's a lot of people who love books and will be active on this and have been active for years and years. Jesper (29m 26s): Hmm. Okay. Fair enough. Autumn (29m 29s): I know I haven't convinced you got the wool work on it. We'll work on some of this sharing and I'll see if we can get some stuff that's over, you know, how you can move them into your newsreader list, how you can get them off of that. I mean, I have to admit, I had a following on what, what Pat and I haven't been back there for ages, but it is interesting to see like where you can build up reader relationships and which are the ones that are worth keeping or which are the ones that are going to go and then buy your books. And I will say on good reads, these are the ones that are going to go buy your books. These are ones you want to make friends with. Jesper (30m 3s): Interesting. Why the ads never worked very well then, or maybe it was more to do with how the ads were served and stuff rather than the actual audio Autumn (30m 11s): You were really, you could only ever use your book cover, which kind of makes sense. I mean, it's your book cover? And the copy was very limited. And I think where they show up the website, just being as old styles as it is, they just weren't being served well. No. Okay. I would say, I think Amazon has too many ads, but Oh my goodness. They're not going to slow those down anytime. So I think they're going to add more, to be honest, especially now that I do have a Kindle and you see how they, the ads come up on your Kindle and it's something that the Regenera can I at least choose which books are going to show me anyway. So let's get into choosing that, but yes, exactly. Jesper (30m 56s): But I can get a lot of weird ones on my Kindle as well. It's like, I don't know why you advertising this to me. I'm never going to buy it Autumn (31m 2s): Exactly. Not the right audience. Right. So sort of I mentioned the forums. So sort of going onto the forums and being the troll that, you know, every time someone says, I want a book recommendation and you're just sharing your own book, which I don't recommend. Don't do that. This is not, we're going to just skip the forums. As I mentioned, that is not my forte, but you can go and join the forums and you should be there as a participant, as a reader. And also, you know, occasionally maybe once every 1 million posts mentioned, you're a writer to get people over to your side. But once I told her, that's probably not that bad. Autumn (31m 43s): It seems like it, like, they never want to hear that you're a writer in these groups, but you should go and be active as a reader. And that's fine, but we're here to talk about how you can help your author platform. So let's look at that and we'll go through some really quick ones that are really easy and well, these are ones you most people should know about, but if you start an author profile, you actually go and claim it. If you've already published in Amazon, you have an author profile over in good reads. And so what you do is actually claim it. You don't create it. It's kind of, it's different that way. It's already there. It's already there. You, if you have, you probably already have books that are not only there under your author profile, but have reviews. Autumn (32m 28s): People have already been doing this for you. So it's a matter of going in there saying, Hey, that's mine and setting up your profile and adding your pictures and doing things like that. And you can link your blog if have a blog outside of good reads, you can link it. So you can post they're very similar to your Amazon author profile. Jesper (32m 45s): Yeah. Well, I was just about to say, why don't they just, I mean, it's all owned by Amazon. They should just pull it from the author central on Amazon. That then done. I mean, Autumn (32m 55s): Yeah, you, we won't talk about why they haven't done this stuff, but yeah, that would make things a little bit easier. Okay. Jesper (33m 1s): Well, what if I wanted to talk about that? Autumn (33m 4s): Do we want to give tips or do we want to complain about Goodreads. Jesper (33m 7s): Okay. Let's give tips then. Autumn (33m 8s): Okay. One of the things I think is pretty cool though, is you can actually upload videos. These will show up under your author profile so that when readers go and like, look at you as an author, which is a lot easier to do than on Amazon. You know, it's something you actually tend to go to people's author profile a lot more than the book profiles, so you can upload videos. So if you have a book trailers, if you have videos of you reading, if you have audio books and you've made some cool Clippy things, I have shown some to you. I love doing those. So if you do some stuff like that, this is a great place to go ahead and post them. And then they show up on your author profile. They have a nice little, I mean, nice for good reads. Autumn (33m 49s): Okay, nice for the 1980s little spot that they sit and they can show up and you can go share them. Another really kind of thing. As you're setting up your author profile, you can actually add a spot for favorite quotes. And so I know most people think of like, you know, life savings. Like one of my favorite ones is when life, when all is said and done, there's more said than done. Well, that's a great quote, but it has nothing to do with my books. What you want to do is on your author profile, share some of your favorite quotes from your own book and have them up there as your favorite quotes. And obviously say the book it's from it kind of will check people's interest. Autumn (34m 31s): If they see something they think is pretty cool as well. And so there's another one you can do is you can join groups, which I've mentioned with the forum. So it's just like Facebook and they get to know you as an author, but you can also create your own fan group. So if you wanted to create your own group dedicated to, you know, maybe a genre, maybe a certain type of book, or just simply your own books, you can create something like that there. And that is where I think you can really work on bringing authors or readers over to your profile because you have a lot more control. The forums have usually one or two threads that are, you know, the ones that people are introduction. Autumn (35m 16s): And that's where you can say, Hey, dream, join my newsletter list to get a free book or get a free book here. So this is where I think you can really get into the control and directing people to say, Hey, I have this freebie. If you sign up here, you can get people over into your newsletter. And that's one I think is an important one, but of course you need to get people over good reads and then over enjoining to your fan group. But the nice thing is the groups that you've created as well as the groups that you're a member of show up on your author profile. So it's not like it's hidden. It's, it's very clearly posted that says, Hey, there's this fan group for my books go here. Autumn (35m 56s): And plus you can post it on your blog. And every time, the nice thing about good reads is every time you touch something on there, you share something, it shows up in the newsfeed. So you need to do like, you know, go in once or twice a day and update something, update a book you're reviewing just one little, one little thing as much as you would do do and do a tweet of course, with good reads. I don't think there's any scheduling platforms. It's like, HootSweet, I'm trying to think there's nothing where you can go and push a post through. So you actually have to go to the good reads platform and type in physical letters and share things by being there physically in person. Jesper (36m 38s): But what if I only want to run? I don't want several, you know, fan groups or where, whatever we want to call it or read a group. So I don't want that. I just want one. And for example, in our case, it is on Facebook. We have that group. So what then, so in order to leverage the people who are on good reads, so do you then have to create a group and have it here, or can you create a group and just point them somewhere else or something? Autumn (37m 8s): I think it would have to have something active on good reads, otherwise people forums and stuff. You see things float to the top that are active and people are asking questions. And so if no one is actually in it, it's just going to drop to the bottom to the abyss and will not be shown. So you would actually have to have people in here and posting questions, but then you're all Jesper (37m 30s): Of a sudden running two different groups Autumn (37m 32s): There is. And then, so it's a choice of where is the best place to be hosting, hosting your readers? You know, is it Facebook or is it good? Reads? Yeah, indeed. Okay. And so, and I've mentioned, you know, reading books. So being an active reader, if you read books, you should do your good reads reviews should add them to your own shelves. All of those touches, like I said, they show up in your timeline. And so that way people will see them. They'll see who you are. They'll see that, Hey, I like that book too. They might come and check you out, but let's get into the more interesting things that most people I don't think realize are available on good reads. And one of my favorite is that you, most people go in, they claim their book from Amazon. Autumn (38m 18s): That is one thing that does feed through. So if you publish a book on Amazon, it feeds through to your good reads profile. Was you doing anything? That's you just go and say, yep, that's mine. Yep. We're good. But you don't have to do it that way. You can, even if you don't have a pre-order, you can, as long as you have a blurb, something you're got and maybe a coming soon image, you can actually go ahead and create your book in good reads with like a coming soon image. And then you can use that to post updates on the book, using a general update option. That's under your author profile, or you can post it as if you're reading up reading the book or review update. Autumn (38m 58s): So all those things will make it show up and they'll have this coming soon image, and then it'll get people to go. And like, they can go ahead and shelve it. So they know when the book does become live, it's actually going to show up on their shelf. So that's a great way for they'll see all the updates. And of course there's some, there is a small problem with is if you're not good with computers or if you're good with computers like me, but you destroy them. When you touch them, you break them. You there's some backend things like once the book is live, you have to have the addition. You know, you want the pretty cover, the one of the proper edition. And that is stuff that every author is perfectly capable of doing, but you have to know where to go to do this. Autumn (39m 41s): And again, this is a 1980 style website, so it's not the most intuitive, but once you figure it out, you can do that because I know I've had some book cover changes, and you got to change, which edition is the one that readers will see. And sometimes you have to combine additions and it's some backend stuff it's not exciting. It's only if you like being a librarian is fun, but it is fun. It is possible. And it is a neat way of saying, Hey, I have these books coming up. They are here. They're splashy. They'll show up. It's it is nice way of promoting a book that's coming up. Jesper (40m 18s): Yeah, for sure. And I was also thinking, well, the stuff you said before about, you know, adding some sort of updates on a regular basis, I think, and if I'm incorrect here and correct me, but I think what you can do is I think you can link. I don't know how to do it, but I think you can link between your Kindle and your good reads author profile. And then if you are making highlights or notes on your Kindle, as you're reading a book, it will pop up on good reads as updates. Jesper (40m 60s): Is that right? Autumn (41m 1s): That is right. That is my favorite feature. And I'll get to in just a second. I have like two other ones I want to get to. But yeah, that is, that is one of my favorite things. And I can't even put my finger on why, but Jesper (41m 14s): That helps a bit in terms of you having to go down, post something, then, you know, if you're just reading and highlighting something you like, and that's automatically a post right data. So that's nice. Autumn (41m 23s): It is nice. And it's, there's a few cool features with that as well. And that's called Kindle notes and highlights. So, Whoa. Yeah. But speaking of that, so part of what you should do when all your books make sure your Amazon ASN number are in the book information, because by doing that, that opens up a feature that allows people to look inside just like they can do on Amazon. So that's a good way of getting readers to be able to open it up. And it's a quick little change that a lot of people don't even realize that you have to go and make sure the ASN number is there. It sometimes doesn't come through automatically or it's on the wrong edition. You need to go and check these things out and it works great. Autumn (42m 7s): And so before we get to my favorite one, there's also, there's something called the, ask the author questions. And these are a lot of fun too, because I have gotten readers who have read my books and then they go in and they ask questions and it's right there under your author profile and heavily good reads. It does give you a few generic ones that you can answer. And plus you can put in a prompt. So if you have a book you're coming out with, that was just released, you can say, Hey, ask me questions about my new release, blah, blah, blah. So you can put that in there. So it'll help inspire people to ask questions, answering the questions, makes them show up in the newsfeed, which is very useful. Autumn (42m 48s): And also it shows up permanently under your author profile. So, so people go into your author profile and they can see other questions that you've been asked and that you do answer them that you're an active author on good reads. So that's, I always love it when I see a new question in there from someone, and then I feel bad if it's been a couple months or something, because I'm on a good read slope. And I'm like, so sorry, but it is, it is great. And yeah, it's also fun. It's one of those things where you try to get your newsletters, you know, anyone to go and ask you a questions because it does give you an excuse to show up on timelines and it gives you something to talk about. And plus it's always fun to find out someone has questions about your books. Jesper (43m 28s): Hmm. I agree. Autumn (43m 30s): So Kindle notes and highlights. That's I guess that I don't know why this is my favorite, but so this is one of those things, like you've mentioned, if you're reading in your Kindle and you come across a section and you see where someone's highlighted something, that is actually something that becomes a really cool feature specifically on good reads. So if you click on it, you know, you'll often see comments we'll open up as well. Well, as an author, if you write the comments, they will show up on top. So I think that's actually kind of a cool feature. So as an author, you can go in and they say the most powerful and impactful. One is the first one you do in a book. And obviously the last one you write in a book, but you know, depending on how long your book is, you don't want to do dozens of these, but maybe five, 10 per book, you can go and highlight. Autumn (44m 22s): And you can say, what inspired you to write the scene or what this meant to you? Just anything about that setting that moment, why it's in the book and you can do a little explanation there, or just say, Hey, you know, or you could do a little teasing, hint, whatever you want to do and readers can actually comment on it. But then once you sync it with Amazon, it goes up to good reads. And there's a special page called your Kindle note and highlight page. And I will admit, it's not as easy as just thinking you actually have to go in there. And once it's sinked, you have to say, yes, please share to good reads. But again, so if you do five or six of them, you can, once you do that, you can just do one a day. Autumn (45m 6s): Then you don't have to do all five or six at the same time. You don't want to, you know, you want to spread this out. So you get a whole week out of this. And then, you know, people ask, they comment back on it. You know, they share it. You can have a whole conversation about it. And that's what I think is kind of, kind of a fun way. It's you get to interact with a reader directly in your book and that makes it kind of fun. Yeah. I can see that. No, you don't sound convinced at all, but it is funny. Cause I don't know why, like I said, I don't know why I like it, but I do think it's funny cause I've had a good reads. Autumn (45m 48s): Amazon representative actually reached out to me directly saying, Hey, you know, can you we'd love it. If you would do this on your first, your debut novel and stuff like that. Jesper (45m 57s): And I'm like, geez, it's not everyday. You get an email from a platform that says please, and maybe they were emailing everyone, but it made me feel special. So yeah. That's fair enough. Yeah, but I don't know. It just, I don't let's say look down upon good reads in any way. And I can definitely think that there, there's probably a lot of authors who get a lot from it. And, and I don't question data such that the only thing that why I'm hesitating and why I'm not sounding very convinced, I think is because it sounds to me like good reads in the census very much like Reddit in the sense that it's a place you need to participate as a reader there or in Reddit, you have to participate as, as one of the people in the group, you know, you not on read. Jesper (46m 50s): If you go, if you just start going down and promoting your own stuff, they will go crazy at you. But it, and it sounds a bit like it's the same here. You know, you have to engage as a reader and then maybe some people will start checking out your stuff. And maybe you can, you can sort of build up some POS around your books in that way. And of course there are those examples where somebody has made it onto the New York times bestseller list, as you mentioned before, but that's probably the lightning in the bottle kind of things, you know, there's very, very few who will do that. So I can, I can recognize that it is a real relationship Autumn (47m 31s): Slash community building tool, nothing wrong with that, as I said, but I think you just, you have to like to spend a lot of time on good reads and you cannot, at least in my mind right now, I think you can not view it as a marketing tool because it's really not. The marketing is like secondary. At least that's how I feel about it. I would think I don't disagree. But I think the difference is that even though the marketing is separate secondary, your books and buttons to buy your books are right there in front of the reader. So they're on, they're hungry for books. Autumn (48m 13s): So on Reddit, they might not be on there looking necessarily for books unless you're in the one that's, you know, is for books as a reader here, they, these really are people looking for new books. And I mean, we didn't even get into there's like lists. You can add your books to, and have people vote on them. There's let's Topia. There's so many different avenues of getting your books out to different people. And they're looking for them actively on this website. And that's why I think unlike Facebook, unlike a lot of other places, if I was going to tell one author who like what social media platform should I start on? I would probably say, do, do spend time on good reads. Autumn (48m 54s): It really can make a difference. You can connect with actual readers. And often these are serial readers. These are hungry readers who will read, you know, 12, 20, 30, 50 books in a year easily. They, they have reader challenges annually on how many books you can read. So this is, this is the population you want to be hungry for your book. So I would leave it at that. If you're gonna start out as an author and you want, you don't know what social media platform to start at, try this one, see if you can make a difference because this one could actually really help you. Okay. Show. Yeah. Autumn (49m 33s): Maybe some people got inspired to do a bit of good reach. Yeah. So she will leave it at that. Let's leave it at that. Okay. So next Monday, I should have a very interesting interview for you where we are going to share some inputs on how to get a traditional publishing deal. Narrator (49m 54s): If you like, what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Autumn and Jesper on patreon.com/amwritingfantasy for as little as a dollar a month, you'll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.  

Let me show you behind the scenes of the new funnel we’re using to sell two comma club live. On this episode Russell talks about using the invisible funnel, which had basically disappeared over the last several years. Here are some of the cool insights to listen for in this episode: Find out what an invisible funnel is and why it’s no longer in the Dotcom Secrets book. Hear the story about how Daegan Smith invented the invisible funnel after an accidental dine and dash. And see how Russell is bringing the funnel back to life after years of not using it. So listen here to find out all you need to know about an invisible funnel and how you can use one in your own business. ---Transcript--- Hey everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I’m going to be talking about a funnel called the Invisible Funnel. And guess what, it’s back. Alright so if you read the original Dotcom Secrets one of the funnels I talked about was a funnel called the Invisible Funnel. And it’s interesting because I’ve used the invisible funnel for a long time, and then we wrote the book, I put it as a section inside the Dotcom Secrets book, and then the book launched, Clickfunnels launched and everything’s been crazy the last 5 or 6 years and I have not done an invisible funnel since then. And because I hadn’t done one since then, nobody else did one. I haven’t seen an invisible funnel for 5 years. And even though it’s an amazing strategy, I talk about it in the book, I show the strategies. So when I was doing the new version of the Dotcom Secrets book I was like, “It’s a really cool thing, but people don’t use it, so it must not be that valuable, so I’m just going to write it out of history.” So the new version of the Dotcom Secrets book did not talk about the invisible funnel. Anyway, so fast forward and actually, not fast forward, let me rewind. So let me tell you first where the invisible funnel came from, I’ll tell you what it is and how we’re using it right now. So the invisible funnel came from my buddy Daegan Smith. So what happened was, Daegan and I were actually at a Traffic and Conversion event and we were hanging out at lunch time, we were eating a bunch of food, had a good time, and then we got done, we both got up and went inside the event room and we sat down and we started talking. And then he leaned over to me, I can’t remember, I leaned in and said, “Hey man, thanks for paying.” I’m like, “I didn’t  pay.” He’s like, “I didn’t pay either.” We’re like, “Oh crap.” So we both jump up and we run out and we’re like, “Ah, we didn’t pay. We’re so sorry, we didn’t mean to ditch you. Here’s the money. Here’s the money for the food.” And we went back in the room and sat through the rest of the event, and for me, I didn’t think much about it. But Daegan is a genius and the wheels in his head start spinning, start spinning. And he’s like, “Man, did you see what happened, the law of reciprocity? We got this meal, it was amazing, so much so that even though we technically wouldn’t have had to pay, because we got away with it, not knowing. The reciprocity was so strong I needed right then to go back and make sure the person was paid.” So the wheels started spinning in his head and he’s like, “What if we did a webinar that way where, well not a webinar but like a class or course or whatever, where instead of charging someone up front you say, ‘hey, come to the webinar, experience it, and then after it’s over, if you like it, pay me. But if not, then don’t worry about it.” And that was kind of the initial brainchild of the invisible funnel. It was a funnel that was basically backwards like that. So he kind of pioneered that, did the first version where he basically had a funnel and it was like, zero dollars, but you had to put a credit card in to just reserve your spot, come and attend the whole thing and if you love it, don’t do anything and after the webinar is over, I’ll bill you $100. But at the end if you’re like, ‘uh, it’s not for me.’ Let me know and I’ll give you your money back. Or you know, I won’t bill your credit card. So it didn’t cost you anything. So he did the first version of that invisible funnel, and he did it, and it killed it for him. So I remember I saw it and I watched what people do and I was like, ‘That’s genius.” So the next day I was like, “Daegan, I’m going to do one of those.” And he’s like, ‘It’s called the invisible funnel.” I’m like, “Oh, that name is so good.” So I was like, alright, I’m doing the invisible funnel. So we went and created on and it was that same kind of thing. And what’s crazy for me, if you look at a typical webinar, let’s say I get 1000 people to register, I might get 300 to show up, right, 30% show up rate. If I did a paid webinar, like a paid product, if someone pays $30 or $50 for a course, I may have sold, maybe I’d sell 100 of them. This is back then. So that was kind of my thing. If I do a free webinar, I’ll get 30% show up rate, if I do a paid, I think it was $47, a paid $47 webinar, maybe I’ll sell 100 to my list. That’s probably like, if I push hard I might get 100 sells. So I did it, but I did this little flip. It was a webinar, ended up being, it was supposed to be a 4 hour training, 4 hour deep dive on this one topic. And it was free up front, you gotta put a credit card in to reserve your spot. Then you experience the whole thing, then at the end of it, if you decide, at the end of it, I’ll give you an email address, if you don’t love it you can let me know, you can email me and we’ll give you your money back free. But if you do love it, do nothing, and then 2 days later or whatever, we’ll bill you the $50. So we launched it, and I don’t remember the exact numbers, but I feel like when I did that, I sold like, 300 people signed up. I was like, “Wait, what? That’s crazy.” So 300 people, so 3x more than I would have sold if I just sold it as a product. Based on kind of my estimates of what I thought I was going to do. Then I did the webinar and what’s crazy, like 85 or 90% show up rate. People showed up because they were paying for it, they wanted to make sure. I had some people that told me, “I signed up just to prove you wrong. I sat through 4 hours and by the end I was like, man, Russell. You earned my money, definitely bill me.” When all was said and done I think we had 10% of people who canceled and asked for their money back. So there was a little bit there, but even with 10% canceling, it means 90% of the people we actually billed, which is still way more than the 100 people that I would have had, had I sold it up front. So that was the thing, and me and Daegan tested a whole bunch of variations and variables on that and different things. One of the things we tested is basically, you sign up for zero dollars, and you pay afterwards, or if you want to prepay, you get a discount. We tested that and it was like 50% of people put the prepay to save money. I was like, that’s crazy getting money up front too. Anyway, we did all these different tests and eventually, Daegan and I actually did a 2 or 3 daylong event in DC, with a group of about 100 really amazing marketers, and we taught this concept. And it was really, really cool. And fast forward a year later, I include it in the Dotcom Secrets book, and then it disappeared off the face of the earth. So anyway, we were planning to do this new Two Comma Club Live event, some of you guys have seen it. If you go to twocommaclublive.com, as of right now we’re in the middle of it. And when we were kind of preparing this, just a thought in my head came and I was like, “What if we, what if we went invisible funnel on this?” Most of the people on my team were like, “What does that mean?” I’m like, but a couple of people knew from back in the day. They’re like, “We haven’t done that in forever.” I’m like, ‘I know, we should totally invisible funnel this thing.” So that was the concept, so that’s what we’ve been doing. So for the last two weeks now we’ve been promoting it. So basically you come to Twocommaclublive.com, you put your credit card in, we don’t bill you anything and then we’re doing a 3 day live event. I’m going live for 3 days, intense, it’s going to be really, really fun. And then after the event’s over, if you love it, you pay $197, and that’s kind of how it works. And then there was a pre-pay where you can save $50 and get it for a$147, if you pre-paid, plus you got replays for like 5 days at the end, or something like that, whereas you don’t get replays if you do the other way. So that’s kind of what we did, and that’s how we structured it. And right now it has been killing it. We are over 2000 sales so far, it’s like 60% of the people are taking the pre-pay, which is amazing because now we can spend tons of money to buy ads and bring people in. And we still have another week, about a week left before the event actually starts. So my goal is probably 3 to 4 thousand people registered, which is amazing. And we’ll do the presentation and it’s going to be really, really fun. So that’s what’s happening and I just wanted to let you guys know the invisible funnel is back, and if you haven’t done one that’s the structure, that’s the concept, that’s how it works. If you want to see me talk about it in the original Dotcom Secrets books, you gotta find one of the old ones, which I don’t even know where you get those anymore. Maybe Amazon? Or borrow your buddy’s book if he’s got one of the originals. But that’s kind of the concept of what the invisible funnel is and how it works. It’s pretty powerful. So I’m excited to see the stats afterwards, you know, to see if it’s like back in the day, only 10% of the people cancel. Maybe it’s less now? But I’m doing a 3 day event as opposed to a 3 or 4 hour webinar. But it’s pretty cool. Anyway, I just wanted to kind of give you guys that as an idea, another selling tool, another type of funnel you could test. A way to get paid up front to create something, a way to get a massive goodwill to your audience and reciprocity when you have a chance to serve them, and they get to tell you at the end if it was good. Can you imagine going to a movie and be like, “I’m going to go watch the movie and after it’s done I’ll let you know if it’s good. If I like it, I’ll pay you.” You know, or go to a restaurant and be like, ‘I’m going to eat all the food. If it’s good then I’ll pay you. If not, I’m not going to worry about it.” That’s literally what you’re doing to your customers, you’re giving them this opportunity to come and like have a meal on me. If you love it, pay me. If not, don’t worry about it. I don’t really care. Imagine the reciprocity that builds with you and your audience. And for some people, they’re going to take advantage of it, for sure. But the majority of people are good humans and they’re going to love it, and it’s going to give you the ability to serve them when they may have said no ahead of time. They may have, for my people they might not have spent $200 on a ticket to a virtual conference, but now because we did this the other direction,  they’re saying, “I’m going to test it out, just try it, see if Russell’s as cool as he thinks.” And because the barrier is lower, they come in. And then they can experience it. Anyway, that’s what we’re doing and if you want to see one in action go to twocommaclublive.com, it’ll be up for the next couple of days before the event starts, and you can see what it looks like there. So that’s what I wanted to share with you guys. The invisible funnel is back, I hope you use it, I hope you enjoy it. And with that said, I’ll talk to you guys all again later. Bye everybody.

When you sit and talk to Mario Scalzi about Itlay, it's like a living version of Google. Ask Mario a question, and he doesn't even need time to think, he answers instantaneously. Maybe Amazon can rename its Alexa to Mario. "Hey Mario, what about the Marche region of Italy can you tell us?" If you want the answer, you will have to listen to this edition of the Total Tuscany Podcast. Mario is one of our regular guests on the podcast because he brings so much value to you when we talk with him. Of course, we always find time to talk about his company, Parker Villas, but the stories he shares about going off the beaten path are what inspire to plan our next trip! When planning a trip, you are going to need a place to call home. Sure there are several places you can rent from online. But do you really know what you are getting? Take the guesswork and the worry out of your rental property. Parker Villas offers exclusive homes throughout Italy. What does exclusive mean? Well, you can't rent them anywhere else. Every villa has been inspected and meets the five star standards that Mario has demanded since he founded the company in 1993. "So Mario, what about Etruscan history can you tell us?" Again, if you want the answer, listen to the podcast! Not only will you get lots of information in detail, Mario tells us the best places to visit if you want to experience the history of the ancient people had had a significant impact on Roman culture.

Take a ride with me through my day driving for Shipt, a new grocery delivery service that is freeing me from the structure of the traditional “job.” Maybe Amazon should have went automated after all… --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I talk about the wrong mentality of new sellers, and the opportunity we have with Amazon Australia!

EP164 - News live from ICSC OAC  http://jasonandscot.com Jason & Scot gave a presentation at the International Council of Shopping Centers Open Air Centers show in Austin Texas and got together afterward to record a news update. Amazon Project Zero - New brand protection program Walmart Earnings.  Same store sales up 4.2%, E-Com for the quarter up 43% (up 40% for the fiscal year), guidance for next year is that e-com will grow 35%.  Profitability of e-commerce continues to be a challenge for Walmart, and they expect that to continue.   Walmart stores offering "Online Grocery Pickup" (OGP)_ grew from 800 to 2100 stores this year, and is expected to grow to 3100 next year. JCPenneys Earnings. Revenue down 8.4%, same store sales down -4% (vs. 4.3% expected).  They announced the closure of 18 stores, and said to expect more in subsequent years). L Brands Earnings - Victoria's Secret same store sales down 7%, will close 53 stores. FedEx launched a new delivery robot, SameDay Bot Stamps.com dropped it's exclusive deal with USPS, a possible precursor to an Amazon partnership (or acquisition). Target launched Target Plus, a new invite only marketplace to expand Targets online assortment. Marketplace software vendor Mirikl announced a new $70M fund raise, reflecting investor confidence in the marketplace model. Jason will be at ShopTalk in Las Vegas next week and will moderate two panels: MONDAY, MARCH 4, 2019 TRACK 4, SESSION 4: 2:50PM - 3:30PM TOPIC: Selling on Marketplaces John Evons, VP, Global Direct-to-Consumer, KEEN Bridget Davies, VP, Revenue & Seller Growth EBay Jordan Bass, Head of eCommerce, The Wonderful Company TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 2019 TRACK 2, SESSION 5: 3:35PM - 4:15PM TOPIC: Creating a Single View of the Customer Charlie Cole, Chief Ecommerce Officer, Samsonite Steve Miller, SVP, Marketing & eCommerce, JOANN Stores Greg Fancher, SVP & Chief Information Officer, Express Jason and Scot will be giving a joint presentation (and recording a live show) from ChannelAdvisor Connect in Austin on April 8th and 9th. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 164 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, February 28th, 2019. Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. New beta feature - Google Automated Transcription of the show: Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 164 being recorded on Thursday February 28th 2019 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host, Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:40] Alright alright alright hey Jason welcome back Jason Scott show listeners we are joining you live live live in the same room which rarely happens and we are here in Austin Texas at the icsc OAC conference. Jason: [0:57] That is a mouthful very impressive specially with Matthew McConaughey standing right behind you. Scot: [1:02] Yeah yes sir this is a conference that will you put her on and I have all it I'll let you introduce the conference. Jason: [1:09] So I think icsc is a Trade Organization for shopping centers and this particular event is about the, open-air centers which is like, a strip malls and power centers and lifestyle outdoor malls so it's a bunch of real estate people from retail companies and a bunch of. Individual property owners that own these these properties that host them all Z's my senses this category Mall, tends to be less aggregated in the big Regional malls where you name the three big mall operator. Scot: [1:46] Yeah I guess so it's a sold-out show about 500 folks here and fair yeah it's pretty interesting we were here doing a talk I don't want to say too much I think we're going to try to turn it into kind of a visual but video presentation so we're going to try a new form out with that but we were asked to come give kind of a live version of the show and we talked about you were always the folks to get to get in front of a bunch of retailers and Tom they're going out of business if so that was exciting. Jason: [2:14] Yeah I put a bunch of them on a slide that said you don't want to be here. Scot: [2:18] And then I saw some people storm out so I think Mission achieved we think we just killed. Jason: [2:24] One way or another. Scot: [2:26] I wish we have a lot of one and dones here with a Jason and Scott show Roadshow. Jason: [2:35] Exactly we are the ultimate one-hit-wonder but I had fun chatting with you and in a rare occurrence we budgeted an hour for the presentation and took exactly an hour. Scot: [2:45] Yeah yeah if we could just be as good on the podcast that would be amazing but we we nailed it. Jason: [2:51] I like to think when we go long we're just making our audience more. Scot: [2:55] Yeah we're giving them more content for their their dollar. Jason: [2:57] No I mean they have to stay on the exercise bike longer. Scot: [2:59] Truth absolute yes do not get off the the cycle will work time constraint here cuz I've got to hop on a plane next week you or in Las Vegas that shoptalk I'm super envious this is I'm going to miss this year shoptalk unfortunately. Jason: [3:11] It will not be a true shop talk without you to be my my co-pilot but I am looking for to go of course it's been a, Erasure the last couple years it's sold out this year it's at the Venetian I want to say that more than 10,000 people last year so expect it'll be. A big shindig and I'm moderating to panel so I'm doing a panel on Monday in the afternoon at like 2:50 on selling on Marketplace has. Scot: [3:40] What that's my topic. Jason: [3:41] I feel like this would have been your panel has you gone but they're trying to channel, You by inviting me and so I can have the halo effect but we have a couple sellers that are. The telling marketplaces so we have keen is on on the ship which is a great Footwear brand from, from my old Hometown Portland Oregon and then Jordan bass I don't know what this guy did wrong in life but this is will be, the second time he's been on a panel that I moderated and Jordan Reed's e-commerce at the wonderful company so I always like to. Wonderful company owns a Fiji Water so I like to spend. 30 40 minutes talking about the Fiji Water girl with him and then I like to get into the details about how they're able to Shell the pistachios and just sell the the unshelled pistachios are the shelled pistachio. Scot: [4:31] Can you have you been on your panel to. Jason: [4:33] I do incident in addition that you sellers are we have Bridget Davies who is the VP of Revenue and so our growth at eBay so we'll get to hear from from eBay's perspective about how Brands and should be thinking of amusing. Using Marketplace. Scot: [4:48] Cool and then decide for marketplaces what are you talking about. Jason: [4:51] Yep sit in on Tuesday I have a panel called creating a single view of the customer so talking about. Kind of aggravating Gator dated to get that 360 degree view of the customer and how you do personalization and data capture and in all those kinds of things and so we have. Three retailers on on the show we have a. Charlie, who has been on the podcast so I vaguely remember that show because I think we did it in the middle of a party and there may have been some drinking. Scot: [5:22] There was some inviting I remember Charlie is pretty outspoken so I think he'll ask me a fun panel I'm going to call I'm going to call it now. Jason: [5:29] Yeah I think so too and Charlie runs e-commerce at Samsonite which is of course Samsonite but also to me and and i e bags, incident we've got Steve Miller's that's VP of marketing and e-commerce at Jo-Ann stores in so that you know they have an interesting perspective on, on a digital in End customer capture so that that'll be interesting to talk about and then, we have a Greg fanshare who's the the CIO at Express and express as one of the most interesting, long-running customer Affinity programs in the apparel space so he'll be an interesting perspective as well. Scot: [6:07] Free call and then we are back together here in Austin actually April 8th tonight we're going to do another live version of the show for a channel advisor connect so we should start thinking about doing the sides when you get back from Vegas. Jason: [6:19] Do you think I will Channel advisor just pay for us to keep this room at the Fairmont so I can just leave my stuff here. Scot: [6:24] Probably not this is a this is a pretty fancy I don't there is a Residence Inn I'm so maybe maybe they'll store your bags over there. Jason: [6:31] Oscar. Scot: [6:33] Cool well it wouldn't be a Jason Scott show without some Amazon news new your margin is there opportunity, quotes of the day Amazon announced a new program for Brands I wanted to kick this one over to you Jason cuz I wanted to get your perspective on it tell us about Amazon Project zero. Jason: [7:03] Finally I get to be the one to do some Amazon news I feel like that's always your thing. Scot: [7:07] Since you're taking my panels I'll give you the whole Amazon news thing too but I'm going to talk about digital fact tags going for it. Jason: [7:17] Project it was kind of interesting so this is a new program that Amazon just announced this week and it's a, program by invite only for select Brands and it apparently gives them these brands of the ability to flag and take down a counterfeit listings. And so. Without any intervention from Amazon or any appeal process a brand that's in the program would have a self-service tool where they could. Identify a counterfeit copy of their product and take it down so for example of Vera Bradley was mentioned as one of the. The pilot customer so they they saw counterfeit handbags on the on the site they could take him down and that's the part. In the short run that I'm most interested in and there's probably the most buzzed-about and there's some pros and cons to this this program, this is part of the bigger counterfeit program anti-counterfeit program they don't actually have a program. [8:22] The weather trying to get Brands to serialize their product and literally like Prince a unique. Serialize barcode on every product and so Amazon's offering that if you, go to this expense when you manufacture your product to put this authentic Asian serial number on each product the Dell validate those serial numbers when they bring them into, the Amazon fulfillment center echo system and so they'll the only allow products with valid serial numbers to come in so this is. Kind of a systemic way the Amazons offering to help Brands keep only authentic products on the site but the reason that's not super interesting in the short run is for a brilliant benefit from that they have to be willing to print this. Spinning a serial number on a package that you need freeze packages. In incremental expense normally they just awesome print the package in huge bulk and then they have to put it on every single package in the channel so it wouldn't be just on the, set of goods they're sending Amazon they have to print it on, everything they sell at Walmart and Kroger and everywhere else and so I have not heard of any adoption for that other than small. Scot: [9:40] So I've been at this for over 20 years now and eBay has gone kind of around the horn on this a couple times where that does program called verified rights owners, the song is a bureau and they they went through a phase where you can kind of like go and solve your room and then the brands way over reach to know they would just kind of go knock out any third-party seller that was selling stuff without any kind of way of validating that it was not even talked to be counterfeit and then they had to kind of like to swing back and I'm in the telecommunication to see if Brands Conover reach on the sand and it just because a third party is selling a Louis Vuitton bag doesn't mean it's kind of it and you know you have to think it's a little kind of murky so it'll be interesting to see I do think, my my easy prediction is going to be a lot of overreaching going on early on with this third-party sellers will go through an outrage phase gmv will go down in these categories in Amazon will then kind of have to swing the pendulum back to some Middle Ground so we'll see how that happens for third-party sellers, I do think I'll be a short-term negative for third-party sellers. Jason: [10:44] Yeah I mean I think there's a couple of ways to look at this somewhat cynical so. Light at the moment most brands would say there's not enough tools to protect the brand on the site right and so there's a. [10:58] A complaint process but it feels very slow and, sort of automated and things take a long time to percolate and you don't necessarily ever see any action in a bit and an even to event Avail yourself of those limited tools you had to have a formal relationship with Amazon which in most cases meant you had to be selling products. [11:16] Through Amazon and so you know some of the brands that most don't like the counterfeit stuff on Amazon have also made the decision not to sell on Amazon themselves and since they have no relationship with Amazon Amazon doesn't make those tools available to them so some some people would say that some of these brand protection tools one of their their secondary purposes is to entice Brands to, to participate on the platform and so I've heard a lot of people speculate that that's one of. The main reasons that Nike for example participates on Amazon is to Avail themselves of the Amazon brand registry so this is more powerful tool presumably as far as we know you have to be in Amazon, brands are selling on Amazon platform to use it so that's another enticement to some of those those holdouts and you know per your point, brands are almost certainly going to over-reach lots of Brands don't like gray Market product even though that's perfectly legal to sell on the, on the side or they don't like product that doesn't comply with Matt, pause price policy even though they don't really have the right to take that down so pretty likely as they invite more people in the program people were over reach you and I were speculating a little bit. Maybe Amazon even already knows that and doesn't care like there's a. [12:34] A hypothesis would be then Amazon wants to improve some machine learning to improve the automated detection of these counterfeit things and said the first thing you need is a big data set, listings that have been identified as counterfeit and so one would thing you do if your Amazon you hire a bunch of people. Look at the listings do the research figure out which were fake and which ones weren't flag all the ones that are fake and then you eat all that data to a machine learning algorithm and eventually you have a really smart system to identify counterfeit and if you were Amazon and didn't want to pay all those, to do that work you could sort of outsourced to the brain by temporarily giving them the tools to Flagstaff themselves, knowing that they would eventually Miss use the tools and you have a great excuse to take the tools away from them but in the interim you have built a good dataset you could use to train a machine Learning System. Scot: [13:24] Another another signal is the product reviews so I've seen many product reviews especially in the health and beauty category it seems to be where I I see it most we're pretty significant number of reviews will say this is not really from, Brand X it's is fake and then so you know that's another interesting signal so maybe if a brand comes in and then does Mark that and they'll get, yep the machine learning could get smarter and no okay up books like these reviewers are right that this is a counterfeit or or if it's not taken down though they'll learn the opposite. Jason: [13:54] Yeah and if you're not a regular selling Amazon like you you'd be shocked how deep are this goes like the the fraudsters are super sophisticated now in the black hat tactics are really evil so for example, they're not likely to write a bunch of negative reviews about your their competitive product they're actually more likely to write. Positive reviews that they know Amazon will flag is fraudulent about their competitors products. And figure takedowns and things that way knowing that Amazon's is very slow and not very good at responding to those complaints about accidental. Scot: [14:29] Cool so also in the news Walmart had some earnings so walk us through the highlights there. Jason: [14:35] Yet so I think it was overall a good quarter for Amazon their same-store sales for Walmart their same-store sales were up 4.2%. Oh that's that's not a huge number but by retail standard that's a very good number again you know there's a lot of retailers the same start negative same-store sales, so 4.2 is reasonably healthy across such a big number that they have and I'm more relevant to our listeners there econ was up 43% for the quarter. [15:06] Cousin hit their 40%. Increase for the year which was their guidance last year so they basically hit it exactly now that issued new guidance for next year and they're, predicting 35% eCommerce growth so still a big number still bigger than Amazon certainly bigger than than that industry overall, but but like many e-commerce sites their rate of growth is is probably decelerating and as we've talked about on the show, a lot of Walmart's e-commerce growth is really tied to this grocery program they have right and so you know unlike traditional general merchandise e-commerce where you know you you put the listing up once available to everyone at Shops at walmart.com, when you put eggs up for sale in a particular store, does eggs are only available to Consumers that our shopping within a close Geographic proximity of that one store then so it's e-commerce sales it's it's it's listed as e-commerce but you almost have to think of it as same-store sales. [16:09] You know that when they they add more stores there their growth seems really high but the reality is is because they went from a store that wasn't selling groceries online to a store that now is and so if you look at it through that lens, Walmart is a little more than halfway through making grocery even available on all their store so they announced that they're at 2,100 stores have online grocery pickup right now, they have 4,000 stores they said by next year. [16:37] 3100 store so that's about the same amount of growth next year they had this year so if you were a investor or Speculator its it seems pretty safe. They added a thousand swords of grocery this year and that drove this is big 40% growth number, they're planning on adding another thousand stores next year that if they hit that stores. Probably going to you know not be that impressive did they cheat 35% growth and they have one more year and them but what you be really worried about is how they calm. Ecommerce sales after that final year when they don't have more more stores to open, and then the other thing is interesting to me is they also announced that only 800 of the stores do they have home delivery and you guys are all heard me talk about I think curbside pickup a bigger deal than home obviously a lot of people do want home, so the only 800 of the 4,000 stores do home and Walmart has used a variety of. Internal and external vendors to do home delivery so they have this thing called spark delivery which is kind of using their own employees to deliver, and they've done some mixed press on that it doesn't seem like it's a huge piece of their delivery Network they partnered with a lot of the third-party delivery firms. [17:51] To do that delivery and that they're only at 800 stores they said they want to double that next year given that they're leveraging Partners you expect that means they're going to lean into their Partners even more. About a week before their earnings deliv announced that they were actually stopping their Walmart partnership. And it first you would assume oh my gosh Walmart my stove fire them for some reason but the the word on the street is that deliver actually turn to Walmart off, because the. Delivers using a gig workers and the workers were so dissatisfied with the deliveries they were getting from Walmart that they started refusing. To get them and that the fundamental complaint is. Hey you're doing worker you take in order to deliver groceries you go to the store the order is not ready you have to wait a long time you have a bunch of downtime. As the deliv driver talk about it. It's a bad experience for the delivery drivers and a lot of inefficiencies on Walmart's part and then on average the customers that are most ordering home delivery are the ones that are farthest away from the Walmart stores which are. [19:01] If you're very far from Walmart store your super roll and it said expensive long delivery thing so it sounds like. There's still some some optimization than improvements. To get home delivery nails at Walmart but it seems like the curbside pickup is going quite smooth and then I guess the last big talking point is, despite the fact that he Converses growing huge it's a significant contributor to that top-line growth it's not a contributor to profitability and in fact Walmart talks about having a loss on their entire e-commerce business and given that there, Thomas make 10 billion dollars in an incremental capex expenditures between now and 2020 they've actually said you can expect. Those losses to increase in potential accelerate in so. They're talk about like a strategically one of the few things Walmart needs to make progress on that they haven't is. Getting profitability on that e-commerce sales. Scot: [19:58] Girl has any Wall Street analyst, picked apart the the growth to see how much is incremental and how much just kind of moving from the offline to the online, part of The Ledger. Jason: [20:09] Not that I have seen and I like to be honest I haven't even seen that you would think at the very least people would start a back into a same-store sales, number and I haven't seen that yet now you you get a lot more of the investor Communications than I do for some reason there's some. People perceive that you're like smarter and more economically successful. Scot: [20:30] We'll get we'll get some of our interns on this for maybe a few drops of also this morning JCPenney announce there are things I thought there's a couple interesting things there that the stock surged and I was like oh they must be out of trouble but really it turns out to be one of these less worse than books. So Revenue was only down 8.4% year-over-year I think there was concern out there as we heard this kind of continuing drumbeat of the back end of Q4 was slow we've had more bankruptcies we got Payless Shoes is kind of have they filed or their tottering on the brink of filing so a lot of people are really concerned about JCPenney so this ended up being kind of a new idea positive in that it wasn't as bad as people that kind of imagined, same-store sales in 219 were only down 4% versus, proceed 4.3 that's like at a point swing compared to Walmart which is pretty interesting Avenue CEO I won't even try to say her last name do you know how to say it Joel Soul Tallahassee while I will try Soul Town and so she made two announcements that were interesting and there's there's this other weird thing that happens in retail now when you announced store closures or stock pops because there was like Yay work closing stores, obviously you can't like enough the endgame there as is. Jason: [21:48] Add trendline doesn't doesn't go forever. Scot: [21:49] Yeah so she knows they're going to close 18 of the main stores and nine of their home and Furniture footprint I and then she declined to give 2019 guidance and then said no pretty much telegraphed expect a lot more store closures so you kind of said something to the effect of we're evaluating all the stores there's no sacred cows all that kind of new CEO stuff, kind of an interesting whipsaw there is so so I see we had Ron Johnson and he left at 13th and there was a guy to co since then so she's like the third since Ron Johnson. Jason: [22:22] Yeah they had the original CEO come back after Ron Johnson and then they had and I'm I'm going to say the name wrong Marvin. Scot: [22:31] Marvin and I he was big on appliances were one of the first things that you'll did was yank all the appliance stuff out so you know it's interesting to watch these gyrations as he's trying to figure out what what they want to be when they grow up. Jason: [22:46] I didn't even know you were allowed to just take a pass on offering a guidance. Scot: [22:51] You can't have soy Amazon only gives 1/4 of guidance they don't give annual guidance and it's more of the trend these days not to offer. Jason: [23:00] Incident in rounding out this foreclosure news L Brands which is the parent company of Victoria's Secret and. A bath one by. Thank you very much I was desperate to say their competitors name. Scot: [23:20] You're the marketplace guy and now I'm the retail. Jason: [23:22] Exactly I love, so they also had a tough quarter or same-store sales in Victoria Secret was down 7% then after closing 53 stores and of course they've been in the news lately for, seemingly not being in touch with the their customers in the marketplace always being accused of that so obviously, they they have a particular image that they try to sell their customers they don't necessarily have super inclusive sizing the a like absolutely do not have super inclusive sizing of models selling their stuff, and as there's been more backlash to that the the management team's response has been pretty like from my perspective. They have a legitimate point for their brand they need to find a much more elegant way to measure message. Scot: [24:16] Yeah at some point you face an existential crisis in you change your mind on those things will be interesting to see if feel feels like they're up against that with 53. Jason: [24:23] Or your successors change change. Scot: [24:27] Absolutely. Some interesting news in the Des kind of delivery category So Yesterday FedEx released a new robot delivery system this one is pretty cool, a little background so Amazon. I think it was three weeks ago they announced that they're also testing a little robot delivery there's looks like a little Moon kind of a Rover because it's got six wheels I don't think that there they can like scissor up or anything like that it just think it is a really good traction on a flat surface. Jason: [24:59] Pick one perfect neighborhood in in like a Seattle suburb that has a perfectly smooth sidewalks that I can go on. Scot: [25:04] Or on Mars so is there does your two options so craters and and a sidewalk in Seattle so out of Memphis FedEx is announced a new robot and its really cool it's called the same day and they partnered with the Segway folks to there's a kind of famous scientist in Cayman and most people know him for Segway but he also before Segway he took the same technology that is in Segway that allows you to use as gyroscopes things to create a balancing system create a wheelchair this is been really huge for four people are disabled this wheelchair can go upstairs so you using the same technology for this robot and in the video you know they show it kind of numb going through some pretty rough terrain and then it can kind of effectively climb up stairs so really cool video there a lot of press for them rarely do you have, delivery on on things like the night shows but one of the one of the Jimmy is the Kimmel or one of the other guys they said they had it on there I'm so really good PR for FedEx they're going to roll it out in Memphis and then quote-unquote other cities so they haven't announced those yet did you have a pretty nice list of brands that are launching it with so Pizza Hut Target Lowe's and AutoZone and if so this is kind of this interesting the last mile delivery problem using robots to do that other interesting thing about the robots that I saw was there using a lot of autonomous vehicle technology so these things are connected they have a little bit of a lidar camera kind of thing on it. [26:31] I'm there. I dug into this pretty good and I couldn't get a lot of details on that so I can be interesting this to learn more about what that looks like cuz I think there's some pretty meeting problems for these things you is there a human just driving this remote from a central location or is it actually autonomous there hasn't been that I saw a lot of detail on that aspect of it. Jason: [26:52] Yeah that'll be interesting when I know we had a lot of attitude yes this year's just even a side effect of a lot of these lidars is they, they're really bad for camera so you can imagine ironically the the FedEx robot taking out all the the ring doorbell. Scot: [27:13] Yeah and another something about lidar as you can shine laser pointers I didn't confuse it. I'm taking meds and someone trying to steal a package by confusing the FedEx robot with a light iron so interesting to see what what happens from these things I bet you know seems infinitely safer than drones in the lot easier to test these out then you haven't had that pee involved in Lacosta, also in Shipping News a couple of quick ones stamps.com is interesting so everyone knows kind of the front end stamps.com but the biggest chunk of stamps.com is they went acquired all the shipping companies that are out there shipstation ship works. Jason: [27:52] And by shipping companies you mean software vendors that help people ship stuff. Scot: [27:56] Yeah for colic smbs and like eBay sellers in Amazon sellers stamps went on this kind of acquisition spree in is accumulated a lot of the large package shippers using the stamps.com software then they have this connection into the USPS just called in Deca they had an exclusive relationship the USPS and they would effectively get sales commissions or I don't know the right terminology there did eventually get a revenue Sheriff's whenever you would buy you $3 for an overnight kind of a delivery from from the USPS if you miss one of the many stamps platforms they would make like a nickel or something like that the shipping so many products that ended up being a really big. [28:39] Part of the revenue will they announce the week ago they were ending this exclusivity Arrangement will USPS and you know the market freaked out but was really interesting is reading the tea leaves on that the CEO of essentially sad you know there's. [28:54] So much going on Amazon and set the bar at 11 so we need to have much higher service levels that we offer and then there's a fair amount of speculation that this is an interesting if you were going to go do a deal with so so a couple of things you have together if Amazon we're going to you know open up their shipping Network for anyone to use it like a FedEx UPS, that's one if in the second half if you wanted to do a deal with them then this is the first step of what you would do if there's a lot of speculation that stamps.com is going to be a front-end into more of a Amazon Logistics kind of solution and you know that that's going to be pretty fascinating. [29:39] Sidebar I've been I'm going to road trip so I don't usually do a lot of road driving I file a lot like you do and I have been blown away by the number of Amazon Prime trucks so I went on a three-hour drive from Raleigh to Washington DC and I literally saw 20 Amazon trucks Emmys on the road it's just like startling how much Amazon Logistics is going on out there then in our area I'm sure in Chicago we see the prime trucks I don't get anything from FedEx or UPS to my house anymore from Amazon that's all direct Amazon so they've definitely kind of started trimming out certain zip codes that must have high Prime density and are doing deliveries through that that smile van program where they have this 1099 networks they built up so big moves happening under the under the surface in the world of of delivery. Jason: [30:25] Yeah I believe so you won't see the bands as much in Chicago because Chicago was an early Market where they build out a. A network of actual Amazon W2 delivery people and so they're there full-time Amazon employees but they don't use the mark Vance so the majority of my packages get delivered by an Amazon employee, one of the easy ways to tell by the way is if you go in till like the mobile app and you look at your orders when Amazon delivers a package they take a photo. That UPS or FedEx won't you if you have a photo as proof of delivery than you know it Amazon for some pride delivered it. The Vans are mostly reserved for those there's third-party companies. That that are franchisees of Amazon Fulfillment of you will end in Chicago we have a blend of flex drivers and. Amazon W-2 employee so we don't have as many of the franchisee. Scot: [31:24] And then the last hit bit and this is back into the world of marketplaces there's a company out of France called Miracle m i r a k l and just want to send them a shout out they just announced 70 million dollar round and what they do is they go primarily to retailers but they also work with some malls in a lot of other other places where you can have a Marketplace so think of it as kind of a Marketplace in a box of so you can kind of say hey let's say I don't know hey JC Penney you want to add a Marketplace here's the software and all the components you need to integrate that in with your existing shopping cart functionality full disclosure their partner of Channel visor so we're already pre-integrated with him so we can go to bring a bunch of celery along with the software and then the last thing I actually forgot to put in the show notes is, Target at least that they have a Marketplace so I saw a thing on cnbc's it looks like targets doing some Marketplace stuff which is interesting so these marketplaces are a kind of I feel gratified talked about him for a very long time and we could only talk about even Amazon but now we have. Copious marketplaces and talk about with obviously Walmart it's a big part of what they're doing and it's interesting to see not only Miracle raise a pretty substantial round of funding to keep spreading the marketplace fire and now we have. Jason: [32:46] So it is interesting to me and almost feels like a a new wave of marketplaces so you obviously you have the businesses that are fundamentally marketplaces I gave an Amazon there their they're. In the past have been some retailers that leaned in the marketplaces so you know Staples talked a lot about it and I still think run one although you don't hear them talk about as much. Scot: [33:09] Actually close to them. Jason: [33:11] And of course the best by briefly ran one and closed it down and so for a while there was a whole Market places are great but not. Every retailer can earn the traffic to make the marketplace work. Now for your point we're seeing I mean Walmart's is leaning heavily in the marketplace is this new Target initiative Albertsons is an interesting, tackling marketplaces from a fresh and frozen perspective which will be unique. Scot: [33:40] Yeah Urban Outfitter has one. Jason: [33:42] And then for your point like Miracle being able to raise money means that there's investors that that think that that's a, a trend that we're going to continue to see as well so it'll be interesting to see how it plays out I almost wish I had founded some company that made money helping people sell on Marketplace. Scot: [34:00] You're a chief strategy retail Commerce digital officer you don't have to worry about mundane things like. Jason: [34:07] No no no but keep doing a good job you may eventually earn another initial in your title of your. Scot: [34:11] I keep working on it sorry. Jason: [34:12] It's important to have goals and that we are going to have to leave it there because, it has happened again we've used up all the allotted time for this a special Scott has to get to the airport short edition of the Jason and Scott show so if you have any questions or comments about the show jump on Facebook and leave them there let us know how much you prefer this much shorter version of the guests, and as always if you enjoyed it would love to get that five star review on iTunes. Scot: [34:43] Thanks for joining us everyone and remember... Jason: [34:46] Until next time happy commercing.

Even though this year was a less violent Black Friday than in years past, is it really the most appropriate way to kick off the season of thankfulness and goodwill with leaving your family to go out and battle it out for a giant screen TV?  Maybe Amazon has the right idea by sending drones to you.  In 2014 we are launching Wendy back out on the dating scene under (the) covers with the V-Cam in hopes of exposing hypocrisy and Wendy’s girlie parts.  In the meantime she continues to dig out until her extended New Year’s Eve deadline.  Old movie review or reviews on old movies and some people just don’t know the value of a dollar, even when it’s their job.  All of this and more… www.CocktailsandCreamPuffs.com

Want to purchase a 3DS XL directly from Amazon? That's not going to happen. Maybe Amazon can fulfill the purchase from another website, but it just isn't the same. What's going on? There are a few rumors, and you'll have to listen to PB & Jason #97 to find out! By listening, you'll also learn about the pre-E3 "Judges Week" all those video game media outlets aren't talking about! Don't forget some impressions of the Sega Vintage Collection: Streets of Rage title I'm currently playing. All this and more are found in PB & Jason #97! Click through for the download and streaming links. PB & Jason is recorded in front of a live studio audience every Wednesday. For ticket information, please email jason@pixlbit.com.

Want to purchase a 3DS XL directly from Amazon? That's not going to happen. Maybe Amazon can fulfill the purchase from another website, but it just isn't the same. What's going on? There are a few rumors, and you'll have to listen to PB & Jason #97 to find out! By listening, you'll also learn about the pre-E3 "Judges Week" all those video game media outlets aren't talking about! Don't forget some impressions of the Sega Vintage Collection: Streets of Rage title I'm currently playing. All this and more are found in PB & Jason #97! Click through for the download and streaming links. PB & Jason is recorded in front of a live studio audience every Wednesday. For ticket information, please email jason@pixlbit.com.