Podcasts about Myspace

The world is opening back up and the internet's hottest club has everything- sexy kinksters, a Montero aesthetic and a clunky graphic interface from circa 2007. At FetLife dot com you can explore new and exciting sexualities- meet cougars, bears, bunnies and possibly predators all while navigating a naked MySpace-inspired fever dream. This week web-hostess with the mostess Tanjil Wright joins Nate and Christy in navigating the dated digital landscape of one of the internet's most perplexing pervy parties plus your calls and questions and what's turning us on this week!

In the wake of Facebook's bad news month, we discuss the communications challenges the company faces. A blip? Or a step on an irreversible path toward becoming the new MySpace? The necessary impetus to increased regulation? And would a company with an army of lobbyists ever see a regulatory regime that actually curbs its freedom... Continue Reading → The post Inside PR 555: Facebook – decaying from the Inside? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Ever wondered how motion design studios become known worldwide for their work? In today's episode Jay Grandin explains how he built Giant Ant from the ground up and why he feels the studio has been so successful. About Jay Grandin Jay is Co-Founder of Giant Ant, an animation studio in Vancouver. As Creative Director, Jay oversees nearly every project in the studio—leading the concept development and script writing processes, as well as being actively involved in design and animation. In 2006, after unexpectedly creating a series of viral videos with his wife Leah, the married couple found themselves quitting their full-time jobs and working on a freelance basis for MySpace. Slowly Jay and Leah's videos evolved from low budget live-action content to videos starring other people. Over time, the pair found themselves hiring team members and expanding into animation too.  Eventually (after the arrival of twins!) Jay and Leah split the business into two: one for live-action and the other is the Giant Ant we know and love today. Jay's story shows how even the top motion design studios have humble beginnings. Apply for our Accelerator Programme Read the full shownotes

Fb vs InstagramSocial media and all the likes that go with it.  We talk MySpace all the way to tik tok and how old we feel when our girls use social media 

Today's guest is someone I've known since 2007 through Myspace music day: Nashville Lyricist Malcolm DeWayne. This is the first time we spoke on the phone so we kinda catch up and reminisce about that era. How his family's music backgroud and Wu Tang's impact led him to become a rapper, Adult Swim, the music industry, balancing priorities in life and more!https://www.malcolmdewayne.com/https://www.instagram.com/malcolmdewayne/

Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! (https://www.patreon.com/topiclords) Lords: * Elena * https://www.propinquity.me/ * Nova * https://novalinium.com/ Topics: * Things I have learned about myself from being a professional matchmaker * The Mother of All Demos * The wine-dark sea * TWRP - Starlight Brigade * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9Q3i5w6-Ug * Unedited (syncable) commentary: https://youtu.be/VsFcnzBJlt4 * Challenges in scaling community organizing * https://youtu.be/DAN0OCagHzQ * https://thenewinquiry.com/hot-allostatic-load/ Microtopics: * Lack of confidence in your chocolate opinions. * Chocolate naan. * Fruit esters. * Chocolove. * A really mean fruit tart. * Giving the listeners homework. * Being self employed and feeling like you're constantly behind on some imaginary metric you haven't made up yet. * Propinquity. * Receiving an encrypted email asking if you want to work on a secret project and telling everybody about it on this show. * The Scoville scale of tidiness. * Doing an extremely tedious test to see if you have ADHD. * Laminating your ADHD certificate so you can keep it in your wallet in case you have to prove to someone that you have ADHD. * The power differential in relationships where one person is much more attractive than the other. * Retaining a panel of judges to rate all your clients' attractiveness from 1 to 10. * Video chatting someone who refuses to tell you where they work and you say "I'm writing down here that you work at Facebook" and then they immediately tell you where they really work, or if they just hang up then you know they work at Facebook. * Striving to get a good grade on your dating life, something that is normal and possible to achieve. * Instead of filling out your dating profile, just clicking "I'm feeling lucky." * The On Line System. * Whether smartphones are good. * If Facebook were more like MySpace and you could include Javascript in your status update so your status emits butterflies. * When Twitter didn't sanitize Javascript out of SVG uploads so you could include playable games in your avatar image. * TI calculators as a way to learn to program. * Giving kids these days the uphill-both-ways speech about how much worse TI calculators were in your day. * Tracker music on TI calculators. * From the future or from Xerox PARC? * What Apple did and failed to do with vertical integration. * An opportunity for disruption. * Running Turing-complete PostScript on your font cartridge. * Running Doom on your font cartridge. * The history of color perception. * The history of what color wine is. * Zeus' eyebrow color. * Whether all ancient Greeks were color blind or just Homer. * Greco-Roman poetic studies focusing on light and shadow but totally ignoring hue. * Dark in hue vs. dark in mood. * Stars that don't twinkle. * Catching stars from the sky by spraying them with water first. * A spaceship made of ferrofluid. * Not remembering any anime but remembering all their theme songs. * A genre of TV show that can only exist when there is disparity in the global economy. * First being scared of hyperspeed and then enjoying it and then being angry at it in the space of a few seconds. * Fantasy triangles. * A spaceship with truck nuts. * An ensemble of different animated character archetypes. * Establishing personality via the object the character is holding for their two seconds of screen time. * Trapping the protagonist in a simulation where they have to pretend to be a child chasing a star forever or until they sit up from the chair because it's not a very effective trap. * Banging on the geodesic Epcot sphere to be let inside. * Secret Service Ralph finally being promoted to pilot but insisting that he still be called Secret Service Ralph. * Everybody getting one Truck Nut and knowing you found your soul mate because your Truck Nuts match and you can pair them up. * Doing your best to bring up the arm count average. * Commander Meowch. * Using sentiment analysis to determine whether chat room users are about to be in a fight. * A Fletcher, meaning one who teleports around. * Figuring out which kind of moderator interventions will lead to good outcomes. * The September That Never Ended. * How to grow from a small community into a large community without changing the culture. * Being yelled at by 100 people each of whom aren't having the experience of harassing somebody. * Whether you can get rid of a forum user who is following all the rules but just nobody likes them. * Hot Allostatic Load.

After starting out in radio sports journalism, Katie never thought that her actual "dream job" would be helping businesses navigate the world of social media. Way back in the days of Myspace she ventured into the social media world and never looked back. Katie loves helping businesses and entrepreneurs find success in the digital world. She started her own business specializing in social media and digital marketing four years ago. She now offers a variety of coaching and "done-for-you" services for entrepreneurs, realtors, and home industry experts teaching them how to bring the "social" back to their social media. ww.nextstepsocialcommunications.com/training www.linkedin.com/in/katiebrinkley www.instagram.com/next.step.social www.facebook.com/nextstepsocialcommunications

A grab bag episode where we start discussing The Facebook/Instagram blackout of 2021 then take a left turn into what our social media lives looked like back in the MySpace days, The Gabby Petito Case, Becky schools Triple C when he totally messes up who the Vikings played last week and we end the episode on our Origin stories and why we love the people we love! Tune in for a great time!#robertpalmer #jjwatts #legend #miasara #facebookblackout #myspace www.RuminationsRadioNetwork.comhttps://www.instagram.com/brevityboxpodcast/www.instagram.com/RuminationsRadioNetworkTwitter: RuminationsRadioNetwork@RuminationsNEmail: RuminationsRadio@gmail.com Email: BrevityBoxpodcast@gmail.com https://www.patreon.com/RuminationsRadioMusic and Production by Mitch Proctor★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

You're two favorite hosts catch up about their weekend celebrating friend of the pod, Bethany That Bitch Hernandez and the bundle of joy she's bringing into the world. Are we here for couples costumes for Halloween this year? Ash and Lex share this week's 90s memories from thick acrylic nails to pagers. Did we really appreciate the MySpace days though? fLexx talks about how she got grounded after her parents found her MySpace quotes. Story time with Lexie. We all have that one celebrity person who you would hypothetically risk it all for, find out who cAshley & fLexx pick. Which famous person do you think has that good good?Ashley asks Lexie (and the listeners) if you ever had a job that she hated and what did she learn from it? Lexie finally gets a W with the Steelers this past football Sunday but she knows it's a rebuilding year. Is Kyrie really going to retire before getting the vax?Stay safe, wear a mask + remember… No Justice, No Peace until ALL BLACK LIVES MATTER! Stay connected: @ComeThruPod @FlexxLutherr @Ashlijaayy BUSINESS HIGHLIGHT:Hot & Cool Cafe located in Canoga Park at the bottom level of The Vert luxury apartment building. Black owned, brewed and vegan, you walk into a great ambience with incense flowing & the jams playing. Hot & Cool is a definite vibe! TV/FILM: Bad Sport on NetflixThe Great British Bake Off on NetflixWu Tang: An American SagaMAMBA MOMENT: Austistic student Ryan Lowry hand wrote a cover letter to find a job and it went viral on LinkedIn. We wanted to shout him out for being so brave!HEAT SEEKERS:This Week's Heat added to the Heat Seekers Playlist:Slum Village feat. Kanye West: Selfish Future feat. Gucci Mane: The Way It GoVibe to the Heat Seekers and follow the playlists: Apple Music/ iTunes: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/heat-seekers/pl.u-55D6ZylugW2MDM Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1BxWfYK7rJSPZhH4fBMJEt?si=9lFATMeBTDO1mvRMhbaxLQ Tidal: https://tidal.com/playlist/4eb24890-f738-4615-b98a-f68064149c27 *** Come Thru Media LLC does not own the rights to the music played during heatseekers.

My guest today is my friend Lou Kerner, a Partner at Flight VC where he manages the Israeli Founders Syndicate on AngelList. Lou is also the Founder and Managing Partner at The Social internet Fund, which invests in the primary or secondary shares of private social media or mobile companies. Lou started his career as a Wall Street analyst following media companies, spending four years at Goldman Sachs, before transitioning to operating tech companies. His first CEO role was at The .tv Corporation, which acquired the top-level domain .tv from the tiny island nation of Tuvalu. After .tv was acquired by Verisign in 2001, Mr. Kerner became the CEO of Bolt Media, the largest social media company before MySpace. After Bolt, Lou became an angel investor, best known for writing the first Wall Street style research report on Facebook, in 2010. Lou launched a small VC fund in 2012, and then joined Flight Ventures, where he focused on tech companies founded by Israeli teams. Since 2017, Lou has been focused on crypto as an analyst, investor, and advisor. Lou is one of the most followed crypto analysts (on Medium) and advises companies including Blockchain Co-investors (a crypto fund-of-funds), Casper (a layer one protocol), Props (an SEC-approved token used to drive loyalty programs), and Silver Castle (an institutional-grade digital asset manager). In addition, Mr. Kerner is a Partner in an AngelList Syndicate that actively invests in crypto projects. Furthermore, Lou started CryptoMondays, the largest crypto-focused Meetup group, with chapters in more than 50 cities around the world. Lou's passion and excitement for the space is contagious and he was a wealth of knowledge. In our conversation, we cover why crypto is the most important movement in the history of mankind, Crypto Mondays, Kerner's Law and DAOs, GameFi, the Everything Bubble, and much more. We begin our conversation by discussing what compelled Lou to start Crypto Mondays, their decentralized organizational structure, and the importance of Crypto Mondays to the fabric of the community. We continue our conversation by discussing the importance of community and how the strength of a crypto network can be derived from its network. Lou did an excellent job at explaining how to gauge the strength of the community by using Kerner's Law and the Value Delta. Another very interesting topic of conversation was GameFi. We discussed the emergence of GameFi and how MetaVerse will be all-encompassing. We finish our conversation by discussing the Everything-Bubble and why Bitcoin will become increasingly more important. -- Ledn provides financial products to help you unlock the power of digital assets. With a secure and easy-to-use platform, it's the simplest way to earn interest, borrow, and trade your BTC and USDC. For maximum accountability, Ledn offers Proof of Reserves attestations to give you peace of mind while you make the most of your Bitcoin. Untold Stories listeners can receive $50 in free BTC when you create a new loan. More info at https://untoldstories.link/LEDN -- This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co

Brenda grew up in a “sex silent” household and transitioned right into purity culture. For a naturally highly sexual person, this spelled dysfunction and disaster. She found her way out of abuse and repression, went through a period of intense exploration, and she is now an advocate and educator for other survivors of religious trauma. She shares her truth publicly and celebrates all of her experiences—even the “dark” ones, as they have anchored her learning along the healing journey.     Brenda Marie Davies is a 37-year-old cisgender woman. She describes herself as bisexual, open-minded, and single.  She describes her body as slim.   Book: On Her Knees: Memoir of a Prayerful Jezebel Website: www.godisgrey.com YouTube: www.youtube.com/godisgrey   THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR FOR THIS EPISODE: *** DIPSEA STORIES: go to www.dipseastories.com/goodgirls to get a 30-day FREE trial!   Bookmark moments: 3:47 - Brenda shares her first memory of sexual pleasure as early as age 3, rubbing on a couch and being redirected by her mother to do such in private. She grew up in what she calls a “sex silent” household, in which the sole sex discussion was an Oprah video about STD's. 9:00 - Brenda talks about how being exposed to Evangelical culture in puberty impacted her actions and outlook. 12:51 - Brenda shares an early fantasy around a boy at school which became an ongoing ravishment fantasy to circumvent Evangelical strictures (even though it uses victim blame phrases like “cause a brother to stumble.”) 19:43 - She talks about how she got into purity culture. She was a late bloomer, still playing Barbies in a Britney world, and she thought it gave her some safety. It did not; predation and dysfunction just changed shape. 25:35 - Brenda meets her husband at age 21, on MySpace. 32:09 - Brenda shares the story of losing her virginity on purpose to a guy she didn't plan to see again, her search through the Bible for sense, and her overlapping experiences with anorexia and a hymenectomy. Also, she ends up marrying him. 41:48 - Disembodiment is an issue, and weaponized scripture doesn't help. She also describes a role-playing adventure which backfires, and the dissolution of her marriage. 51:45 - She opens up about having a forced abortion in the midst of an abusive relationship in the midst of an exploration spree. 57:23- Brenda talks about some of her sexcapades. 1:02:18 - Brenda is bisexual; she shares her Star Wars-related coming out story. 1:09:58 - Brenda catches us up to present day and being single, including her advocacy work and living in deep personal integrity.   The Lowdown: Brenda answers questions about having sex on her period, number of partners, race, sex toys, positions, initiating or not, active vs passive, clit stimulation vs penetration, breast play, orgasming, g-spot, faking it, kinds of touch, hard red lines, porn, group sex, hair vs bare, blowjobs, swallowing, receiving oral, ass play, kink, dirty talk, laughter, confusing sexual urges, favorite body part, least favorite body part, sex life areas to improve, and old beliefs.   Patreon: All archived Good Girls Talk About Sex audio extras are now available for FREE!  They can be accessed at www.patreon.com/goodgirlstalkaboutsex.  I've done this because not everyone has the means to pay for access, and I know this additional material can be deeply important for some listeners. But creating this show isn't free, so if you'd like to support the work I do, I am grateful for your contributions at www.patreon.com/goodgirlstalkaboutsex.   BE PART OF THE SHOW: Rate this pod: Leave a rating and review at RateThisPodcast.com/goodgirls   Have a question or comment - Leave a voicemail for Leah at 720-GOOD-SEX (720-466-3739) - this is a voicemail-only line, so I promise you won't have to talk to someone in person!   Be a guest on the show - I'd love to talk with you! Fill out the form at www.leahcarey.com/guest   FOLLOW LEAH: Instagram - www.instagram.com/goodgirlstalk YouTube - www.youtube.com/goodgirlstalk Leah's website - www.leahcarey.com Podcast website - www.goodgirlstalk.com   WORK WITH LEAH: Individual and couples coaching - www.leahcarey.com/coaching     EPISODE CREDITS: Host / Producer – Leah Carey (email) Audio Editor – Gretchen Kilby Administrative Support - Lara O'Connor, Maria Franco Transcript creation – Jan Acielo Music – Nazar Rybak

01:17 - Danielle's Superpower: Empathy & Communication 01:56 - Going From the Hospitality Industry => Tech * @CodeSchoolQA (https://twitter.com/codeschoolqa) / twitch.tv/thejonanshow (https://www.twitch.tv/thejonanshow) 04:58 - Education Technology (https://tech.ed.gov/) (EdTech) * Disruption = Reinvention 07:18 - Anthropology + Tech / Working With People * Anticipating Needs 10:25 - Making Education Fun + Inclusive * Cultural Relevance * Revamping Outdated Curriculum * Connecting With Kids 16:18 - Transitioning Into Tech 27:57 - Resources * Learnhowtoprogram.com (https://www.learnhowtoprogram.com/introduction-to-programming/getting-started-at-epicodus/learn-how-to-program) * Documentation * YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/) * Community * #TechTwitter (https://twitter.com/search?q=%23TechTwitter&src=typed_query&f=live) * Virtual Coffee (https://virtualcoffee.io/) * Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/) 32:39 - @CodeSchoolQA (https://twitter.com/codeschoolqa) / twitch.tv/thejonanshow (https://www.twitch.tv/thejonanshow) 34:08 - The Streaming Revolution * New Opportunities For Connection * Hybrid Events * Introvert Inclusive * Accessibility * Reaching New Markets 39:45 - Making Tech Safe, Secure, and Protected * Greater Than Code Episode 252: Designing For Safety with Eva PenzeyMoog (https://www.greaterthancode.com/designing-for-safety) 44:03 - Advice For New Devs: Work on Technical Things Sooner Reflections: Mandy: The secret in tech is that nobody knows what they're doing! Danielle: Ask questions and lean into community. Tech needs you. Arty: Don't be afraid to reach out to community members for help. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Transcript: ARTY: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Episode 254 of Greater Than Code. I am Arty Starr and I'm here with my fabulous co-host, Mandy Moore. MANDY: Hey, everyone! It's Mandy Moore and I'm here with our guest today, Danielle Thompson. Danielle is a newly minted software engineer working in the education technology sphere of the nonprofit world, after making a major career change from working in hospitality and events for many years. As a code school graduate herself, she loves to help demystify tech for others with non-traditional backgrounds and works to open doors into tech with her friends at Code School Q&A, weekly on Wednesday nights at around 7:00 PM Pacific at twitch.tv/thejonanshow. Outside of work, she can typically be found with a nose buried in a book, hanging out with her doggo, and making delicious craft beverages. Welcome to the show, Danielle! DANIELLE: Thanks so much for having me, Mandy and Arty! MANDY: Awesome. It's great for you to be here. So before we get into the meat of our conversation, we always ask our guests the standard question of what is your superpower and how did you acquire it? DANIELLE: Totally. I think that my superpower is a combination of empathy and communication. I think I came by both pretty naturally—popped right out of my mom having both, I'm assuming. But both have definitely been amplified over the years by all sorts of experiences and hardships and just keep working to make them even more of a superpower. MANDY: That's really great. So I want to know about before we dive into your experiences as a new developer, I wanted to know about how you came into technology from your career change in hospitality, because I did the same thing. I was a waitress when my daughter was born 10 years ago and I was working for about a year before I was able to walk out. It was Mother's Day, my boss was being a complete jerk to me, and I was making enough money at that point that I just said, “You know what? I don't need this. I quit,” and I started my career in tech full-time. So I'm curious about your journey as well. DANIELLE: Yeah. Obviously, COVID has happened in the last couple of years and that was one of the major factors in me getting to this point of leaving hospitality and getting into tech. But I had already kind of been thinking about what comes next. I've been a manager for a few years and was trying to figure out how else I could grow and what new things I can learn and challenge myself with. And outside of ownership, which is a major headache, there wasn't really much that I could push further into, within hospitality. So when COVID happened and I lost my job because I was working as an events and bar manager for a local catering company, it was pretty obvious that things were not going to be coming back for the hospitality industry anytime soon and I needed to figure something else out then. And so, I started looking into different returning to education opportunities because I actually have an anthropology degree, of all helpful things that I could have gotten a degree in. But I found a code school in Portland, Oregon and jumped on that within a few months of COVID hitting to the full-time track and connected with a number of my cohort mates that we started doing the Code School Q&A on Twitch with the director of developer relations at New Relic and have been doing that for almost a year now and have officially made it in the industry as a software developer, too in the last few months. So you can do it, you can get into tech. [laughs] It's pretty funny, too because the type of job that I ended up getting is in education and technology sphere and I actually had a job in ed tech about a decade ago when I was still in college and had a remote job working with some family friends that got me hooked up with their company. And here I am doing something a little bit more in-depth technically than I was doing a decade ago, but it's funny how things come full circle. ARTY: Well, education in particular is something that also really needs some reinvention and innovation and with all the disruption, where do you see that area going? Just curious. DANIELLE: Yeah, absolutely. I feel that a lot of the changes that we've seen in COVID with remote work being such a prominent thing now and people wanting more balanced, more time with their family, more time with their critters, more time just not being miserable and commutes and stuff. I think that that's going to have a really long-term effect on how education happens and trying to make education more quality as well. I think it's really rad what the company I do works for. Our whole mission is to work to make education in America more equitable. So we do that by working very hard to work with experts in the curriculum sphere that ensure that our curriculum materials are as inclusive and culturally relevant as possible, that they are representative of a large and diverse group of people, and they even do a ton of anti-racism work as well and work to embed that within our internal and external culture, as well as the products that we create. So I hope that our company will continue to grow and make changes in the education world in America in general, because I think what we're doing is really, really, really important. ARTY: Definitely important and with all the change and stuff happening, I'm expecting some new and cool and exciting things that do make things better. One of the upsides of lots of disruption is it's an opportunity for us to sit back and rethink how things could be. DANIELLE: Yeah. ARTY: And one of the benefits of not being entrenched in the existing fields of the way things have been is it's also an opportunity to look at all the stuff we're doing with a fresh set of eyes from outside of that existing world and bring some new fresh insights to tech. Maybe my anthropology degree will come in handy in some different sorts of ways. I imagine some of those skills that you learned in that have some applicability in tech as well. Have you found your degree helpful in other ways? DANIELLE: It's funny. I think I ended up using my anthropology degree as a bartender far more than I ever would have as an actual anthropologist. That whole study of humans thing is something that is directly translatable to working with people no matter what field you're in. I feel that both my anthropology degree and my many years of hospitality experience have all led to a specific skillset that is very different from a lot of people that come into tech with more traditional backgrounds especially folks that go to college and get computer science degrees, and then they go to the tech industry and that's all they've ever known. I've known so many other experiences outside of that and my ability to think about what other people need and want, to be able to respond to that, and embed that in all of the work that I do as an engineer to really be thinking about the user and the people that are interacting with whatever I'm building and even just thinking about working on a team and how I have so many communication skills built up from what I've been doing for work in hospitality for many years. I think that it definitely gives me a very specific and unique way of moving through the world and way of being an engineer as well. That anthropologist hat definitely comes into play sometimes thinking about like, “Oh, like how do all of these dots connect?” and like, “How does this change over time and how do you see people like doing things differently now?” It's a definitely a fun lens to carry with me. MANDY: Yeah. Having been done hospitality, I'm just shaking my head because – [laughter] I know I've brought so many skills from being in that world for 10, 15 years at one point. DANIELLE: Yeah. MANDY: Just the way you talk to people and interact with teams and anticipate what other people need before they even know what they need, that's definitely a skill. DANIELLE: Yeah, definitely. I think that whole anticipating needs thing, too, it's like it can be both an internal and external benefit where you can think both about who you're building products for and also who you're building products with, and how best to communicate within teams, especially having management experience. That is definitely at the forefront of my brain a lot of the time, but then also thinking about like, “How can I make the best experience for somebody else that's actually going to be using this? How can I make this easy and intuitive and fun?” Especially within education, have to make sure that things are fun and interesting targeting kids that are K-12; it has to be meaningful, impactful, interesting, and engaging. MANDY: So how do you do that? What are some ways that you and your company make education fun for young kids? DANIELLE: I think I'm still figuring that out. We have many curriculum products that I'm still just touching for the first time, or haven't even looked at it yet and so, there's lots of fun, new things to discover. But I think the types of people that we bring on to work at my company, they're all experts in their field and renowned for the work that they do and so, I think that the quality of people that we bring into work with us and the kind of commitment that they have to work towards making education better and more inclusive, that is incredibly important. And how they also do an immense amount of work to make not just inclusivity a part of the major formula, but also that they work to make things culturally relevant. So like, thinking about how to tell stories to kids that actually means something to them today. I don't know, a weird example is thinking about some outdated curriculum that's talking about using a landline for a phone, or something. Kids are like, ‘What's that?” Actually integrating modern things like cell phones and things like that into the curriculum where kids actually touch that and use that every single day so it means something to them. Whereas, outdated curriculum that is just some story to them. It doesn't have tangible meaning. Being able to bring that into materials is really important to keeping things engaging and also, relevant and fun. MANDY: So the time when little Tommy was walking to the Xerox machine. DANIELLE: [chuckles] Yes, yes. MANDY: Somebody brought up a Xerox machine the other day. DANIELLE: Oh wow. MANDY: My goodness. DANIELLE: [laughs] Yeah, definitely. But I think it's just a constant looking at how we do things, and making improvements and making real connection with the people that are actually using our products to use. That both means working with teachers and getting a better understanding of what is helpful to them, what makes things easier for them, what helps them bring better quality curriculum to their classrooms? But then I think it's also connecting more directly with those kids that are engaging with our curriculum, too and figuring out what works and doesn't work for as many parties as possible. I think that's the anthropologist hat coming on again like, how can we bring as many people to the table as possible on the expert side, on the academic side, on the teacher side, on the student side? And even working to bring families to the table, too and looking at how families interact and not just parents, because it's really important to know that kids don't have just parents that are taking care of them—sometimes it's grandparents, sometimes it's foster families. And really thinking about a wider range of who is around these kids, and how to get them onboard and make things easy for them to interact. ARTY: It seems like getting into tech and these new tech skills that you've learned are also relevant in figuring out how to teach kids tech because we've got this new generation of kids coming into the world and learning how to code becomes more like learning how to read and write is fundamental skills move forward in the future. Are there ways that some of the things that you've learned through your own tech experiences you can see application for in education? DANIELLE: Absolutely. From what I've been seeing, I feel like there are a lot more resources out there for teaching kids how to code and teaching them more things about technology. I think that's amazing and should totally keep happening. I think having been a bit more focused on adults in my own outreach for helping people find their ways into tech I might be a bit more acquainted with reaching out to those folks. But I'm sure that that intersection of being in education for K-12 students and this passion that I have of helping to find their way into tech, or build more technical skills because they are skills that are so transferable in many industries. I'm in education, but I have a technical job. So there's lots of ways that those technical skills can be incredibly valuable and frankly, life-changing. The amount of opportunity and even just financial stability that can be found within tech is one of the main reasons that brought me to this industry and has really been a life-changing opportunity. It has opened so many doors already and I'm just like three months into my first developer job. Even before I was ever actually officially an engineer, I was able to find community and able to find an outlet for helping others and outreach to immediately turn around and hold a handout to try to help others make their way into tech as well. I hope to continue doing that work in more meaningful and impactful ways over time, and have wider and wider reach as well. ARTY: You had mentioned earlier about some of the difficulties of getting into tech and some of the challenges with finding resources and things that you were specifically missing when you actually showed up on the job. I'm curious, what was your experience like going through coding bootcamp and what were some of the gaps that you experienced that once you got on the job, you were like, “Oh, I didn't learn that.” DANIELLE: Yeah, definitely. Coding bootcamp was an incredibly grueling experience for me personally. I was on a full-time track six-month program and [chuckles] not having much technical experience whatsoever outside of editing my Myspace profile back when that was a thing and having [laughs] about a decade ago doing some basic HTML, CSS editing and maintenance for the company that I worked for an ed tech originally. That was what I was working with when I started coding bootcamp. So it was a real hard learning curve and a very fast-paced program for me to just dive into headfirst. My poor partner was like, “I basically didn't see you for six months. You were just a basement dweller at your computer constantly.” I would literally get out of bed, roll myself downstairs, get to my computer with a cup of tea in hand, and I would stay there until easily 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, 1:00 every night just trying to keep my head above water. But a few months in, things started to click and I wasn't fighting with all of these computer puzzles [chuckles] trying to do this. Like, I always feel like learning coding languages is a combination of algebra and a foreign language. So at a certain point, my brain just started getting into that better and things started making sense. That was a very exciting moment where I got much less miserable [chuckles] in my code school experience and in the pace at which I had to move to keep my grades up and everything. But the gap in between finishing code school and actually getting that first job is also another often-grueling process. There's so many jobs open in the tech industry, but basically, it's mid-level and above. It's like, I think two-thirds of the industry positions that are available are for mid to senior roles versus one-third of roles that are for junior associates. That is a big struggle, especially if you're not able to lean into community and building real connections, just sending applications out to the ether and never even hearing a peep back from companies. I think that whole experience, it's really hard for yourself esteem, especially having put in many months around the clock of work towards this new career that you've been told that you can get, that you can achieve. It's almost as much as a process getting that first developer job as it is to actually build those tech skills. I think one thing that is so important to stress in that in-between time is to lean into community, to connect with as many people as you can that are already in tech, even if they don't exactly have a developer job. Like, talk to anybody that will let you talk to them—talk to people in QA, talk to developers, talk to managers, talk to project managers. That was one of the things that I felt I needed to do early on in my coding experience to really have a better understanding of what was even an option for me of getting into tech and what could all these different jobs look like, and then making that transition to actually getting the first job. Yay, hooray for first jobs and being employed again. But I think one of the things that has been most striking in that change for me is going from this incredibly grueling pace. 8:00 in the morning, or so until 10:00 plus at night, non-stop coding for the most part, and then going to a 9:00 to 5:00 job where I can also make my own hours and I can take appointments as I need to. Like, I can go and get a haircut if that's something on my schedule and it's cool. As long as I'm getting my work done and showing up and contributing to my team, things are fine. So that transition of like, “Wait, I don't have to be at my computer a 1,000% of the time?” [laughs] and the pace at which you learn things, too is just much slower because you can have balance. That transition of feeling like you're not doing enough because you're so used to this hefty schedule, that's been a major transition for me. I think also coming from hospitality, too where you have to be there in person and oftentimes, somebody is going to call out sick at least every other week, or so. So you might be working like a shift and a half, or a double. There isn't a lot of balance in the service industry, especially now with COVID adding so many extra layers of complication to how that job works. Being able to just be like, “I need to go make a doctor's appointment,” and can just do that. It's like, “Okay, cool. Just put it on the calendar. You don't really need to tell me. As long as it's on the calendar, that's great.” [laughs] That transition has also been very strange. And I think maybe just the trauma of [chuckles] working in hospitality and not being able to just be a human sometimes and now all of a sudden, I'm like, “Oh, I'm a human and that's allowed? Okay.” Still have to check in with my boss frequently about like, “You sure it's okay? You sure it's okay that I'm a human, right? Yeah.” [laughs] MANDY: [chuckles] That was one of the things that I really loved coming into tech was the scheduling, open schedule, making my own hours. DANIELLE: Yeah. MANDY: And you're right, it was very strange at first. When I was waitressing, it was just always a go, go, go kind of thing and you had to be there, you had to be on, and if you didn't have tables, if you had time to lean, you had time to clean. DANIELLE: [chuckles] Yeah. Always be closing. You know, ABCs. [laughs] MANDY: So yeah, sometimes I still find myself on a random Thursday. I'll have my work done and I'll just be sitting here and I'm like, “Why are you sitting at your computer? Go do something, then check it and if there's stuff there –” Like, you don't have to have your ass in the seat from 9:00 to 5:00, or 8:00 to 4:00. You don't have to sit here for 8 hours and just stare at your inbox waiting for work. It's totally asynchronous and it's totally okay. I find myself having to give myself permission to leave my desk and just go and do something and work that asynchronous schedule. So tech is a really big blessing when it comes to that. DANIELLE: I totally agree. I think also, not being neurotypical myself, I have ADHD, and so, being able to actually allow my brain to work in the way that is best for how my brain just naturally operates. Like, I can sit at my desk and fidget constantly, and it's not going to bother anybody because I work from home, [chuckles] or I can shift between sitting and standing and sitting on my bed, or sitting on my stool and just move at my desk as much as I need to. I can also step away and go clean some dishes if that's what's making noise in my brain. I can go and take my dog on a walk and get some fresh air. That whole shift of having balance and being able to be empowered to advocate for what I need and how I learn and people are like, “Yeah, cool. Let's do that.” I think that's also very much a part of the company that I work for and the ethos that we have, which is all about making education better. So why wouldn't that also translate to the staff and how can we help you learn? It's such a wonderful thing to be a part of a team that's super invested in how I learn and helping me learn. I think another thing that was a big, strange thing about my transition into tech was I ended up getting a junior engineer role in a tech stack that I hadn't worked with, which is pretty common from what I've heard from mid engineer on. Because once you have some of the foundational building blocks of a handful of programming languages and some of those computer science foundations, you can pick up most programming languages. But it's not so common as a junior engineer to get that opportunity to work with a full tech stack that you haven't really worked with before. So that was another big transition like, “All right, you trust me time to figure this out.” ARTY: So it sounds like you walked into another big learning curve with your new job, too. It sounds like you were also in a much more supportive culture environment with respect to learning and things, too. What was the ramp-up experience like at your new company? DANIELLE: In some ways, I still kind of feel like I'm in ramp-up mode. I'm about three months in. But because we have so much of our product that is built around very specific curriculum components, that has very specific contextual knowledge, it's just going to be a process to figure out which projects have what information and have certain numbers of records, and are tied to certain standards that are required in different states and for common core versus for some of the states that we work with, what that looks like. But figuring out a whole new tech stack was and continues to be a very interesting challenge. I have to remind myself when I have gaps in my knowledge that it's actually to switch gears back into learning mode, that that is a thing that's supported and encouraged even. I even have little sticky notes on my desk that say, “Start with what you know, not what you don't know,” and that tension of when I reached the end of what I know and then going and finding maybe not necessarily the right, or correct resources, because there's so much out there that's good. That can be helpful. I think it's more about finding something that does work with how my brain learns things and being cognizant of how I learn. But also, remembering to dig into that fate that is being a developer, which is constant learning and ever-growing evolution of how we do things, and what things we do within the sphere of the developer. So I've signed up for perpetual learning and that's pretty great. MANDY: What are your favorite resources that you used and continue to use as you're still learning, and finding community, and things like that? DANIELLE: Yeah. I have certainly continued to lean on the curriculum for my school. It's online and it's free and that's rad. It's learnhowtoprogram.com. It's all put on online from Epicodus in the Portland area. Anybody can access it and that's wonderful. I'm a big fan of really great resources being available for free and making that more accessible. So continuing to use platforms that have that kind of ethos in mind is pretty great in my opinion. Reading the documentation is another great way to keep learning what you need to learn and sometimes documentation can be kind of dry, especially as a new developer, you don't always know what exactly it is that you're looking for. So being able to parse through documentation and figure out what's most important, but then also filling in the gaps of some of the things that you don't yet know, or understand with YouTube videos, or deeper dives into like, what does this one specific term mean? I don't know, let's go find out and plugging in some of those gaps is really helpful. I think figuring out how you learn, too whether that be very hands-on, whether that be visually, whether that be with audio, getting lots of repetition in; it's super helpful to lean into whatever works best for your brain for learning. I think perhaps even more important than digging into resources that are online is lean into community. I really can't say it enough, build community. If you work with Ruby, like I work with Ruby, build community within the Ruby community. Connect to people online, get on Twitter, connect to tech Twitter, follow different people that work with the languages and the tech stack that you work with, and join places like The Virtual Coffee and other really rad developer spaces that are meant to help you find the answers that you need and to maybe do it in a way that's a little less arduous because you're with people that are like, “Yes, happy helper.” Like, “How can I make things easier for you?” It seems like a much easier way to go through tech when you can do it with others and remember, that there are human resources out there for you, too. MANDY: You also had mentioned that you were connecting with folks over Twitch. DANIELLE: Yeah. MANDY: Can you tell us a little more about that? DANIELLE: Absolutely. So a friend of mine in my Epicodus cohort, she reached out to the director of developer relations that had done a lunchtime chat with us at one point and she was like, “I don't know what I'm doing. I am so stressed out. I don't know if I can actually finish this school and let alone finish school, but actually make it as a developer and I have questions. Do you have some time for some answers?” And he was like, “Yeah, do you want to actually do this online on Twitch? And how about you bring a couple of friends and let's just ask lots of questions and I'm going to record it?” She reached out to me and another friend of mine and here we are many months later still answering questions online about how to get into tech and what even are some of these things that we're talking about technically, or let's look at other roles outside of just developer, or engineer, that you can get into. So that has been an ongoing theme of how can I help others? How can I help provide community for people that might not have been as lucky as I have been to already have a preexisting community with many of my friends and my partner that were in tech? How can I help create that advantage for others and how can I help reach more people and help them understand what their options are and connect them to the people that need to know to get jobs? I think Code School Q&A, we are super, super excited about open doors for people to whether that be better knowledge, whether that be real human connection; what's most important to us is just supporting people as they are making transitions into the industry like we've been doing over this last year and a half. MANDY: So what is the Code School Q&A look like when you join? Walk me through it if I were to show up, what would I get? DANIELLE: Absolutely. So there's generally four of us on the stream and we ask a handful of questions, whether that be from our own experiences of like, “Okay, I'm a developer now and I've got some questions about some of these transitions that I am experiencing.” But we also lean into the audience as well and see what kind of questions they have, whether that be folks that are still in code school, or folks that are thinking about maybe potentially going back to school, whether that be computer science in a university setting, or bootcamp, or even self-taught people. We even have a number of folks that are already in their careers, too that are there to reach out and chat and provide additional feedback and support. So I really feel like it's a bunch of friends just getting together on Wednesdays and that group of friends just keeps building and expanding. It is very much like a support group, but it's also fun. Like, our first question of the day is what are you drinking and how are you doing? Because we all hang out and chat, and drink while we're talking about how to get into tech and definitely try to make it as fun as we can and crack jokes and interrupt one another and it's a good fun time, but helping people is what's most important. MANDY: And this is all live? Unedited? DANIELLE: All live. Unedited. Yes, yes, and 7:00 PM-ish AV is a whole beast in and of itself. I just had to set up a Twitch stream for the first time in this whole time of streaming over the last year. I've been writing my princess pass and just shown up [chuckles] for every Twitch stream and now I know how much goes into that. I still had probably another few hours of set up to get past just a minimum viable product of we need to be online on the interwebs and you need to be able to hear and see me. Got there, but it's a whole thing. MANDY: Twitch is certainly interrupting the industry, I believe. DANIELLE: [inaudible]. MANDY: Especially since the pandemic. All of a sudden everyone's on Twitch. We're doing conferences live, we're doing like – how do you feel about the whole Twitch revolution and how is it different from how people traditionally came and connected in tech? DANIELLE: Yeah. Having been in events myself—that was part of what my role was within hospitality—I personally really love that there's now this whole new opportunity for connection. I think it also makes connection way more accessible because folks that were already living some kind of quarantine life because of autoimmune disorders, or disabilities, or whatever that looks like, they couldn't easily make it to those conferences and now they have a way to connect with those conferences because of hybrid events. I think it's a really rad innovation that we're seeing and it's a really wonderful way to even just as an introvert. I'm like, “I don't have to leave my house to be able to see my friends and have a good time? Yes! I am super interested in this.” I can – [overtalk] MANDY: [inaudible]. DANIELLE: Yeah. I can hang out with my dog and give him scritches whenever I want, and still see my friends and build community within tech. Heck yes. Very interested in this. I think that accessibility feature that it provides is just, it's really wonderful to know that more people can become a part of tech communities because there's now this whole online outlet for folks that couldn't otherwise afford a flight to get halfway across the country to make it to this conference, or couldn't afford to get in the conference. There's lots of ways that just makes things more accessible. MANDY: Do you think it's going to continue much beyond the pandemic? Like, do you think when it's all over, we're just going to be like, “Oh, we're back to conferences,” or do you think this is going to continue to the streaming and the slack chats and the live Q&As and things like that. Do you think that's going to continue? DANIELLE: I hope so and I think so. I think that even just from a business sense, you can tap into whole new markets by having this addition of hybrid events. You can reach a whole new subset of markets and I think quite frankly, it'd be kind of foolish to not take advantage of the new ways that we've figured out that we can still have meaningful and authentic community. [chuckles] There's definitely a way to monetize that and I'm sure plenty of people out there doing it, but I think it's also given voice to people that couldn't previously access those spaces and now they're like, “Don't take this away. This is community. This is this is what I've built,” and I think people are going to be willing to fight for that and I think that companies will see the business benefit of continuing to do both. ARTY: So anthropology question then. [laughs] DANIELLE: Great. ARTY: How do you think this will affect us as a society of connecting more virtually instead of in-person in that we're significantly more isolated now than we were before, too in terms of in-person connection? How do you think that's going to affect us? DANIELLE: One of the first things that comes to mind is infrastructure has to change. I think that support for higher speed internet across the states across the world has become much more of a priority that is striking to people, especially thinking about kids having to figure out how to do online school. All of a sudden, when COVID first hit, some kids didn't have access to the internet, let alone a computer, or a tablet, or a phone that they could go to class and do their homework on. So I think that we're going to be forced to make technology and the internet more accessible by building better infrastructure to support those things and I think it's only a matter of time before there is better social support for getting technology in the hands of kids, especially, but getting them devices. Like, I know there are a number of initiatives out there that are giving small grants and stuff for people to be able to get computers, or tablets, or whatever and I think that we're going to just keep seeing more of that. Hopefully, fingers crossed because it's super important to be able to keep connection moving and I think keep moving our society in the right direction. ARTY: So do you have any concerns about that as well as how –? We all get plugged in and are affected and in not so good ways, too. On the flip side of that, where do you see things going? DANIELLE: My partner is in InfoSec. He is a security person. So that's definitely my first thought like, how do we keep the things that are most important to us and that are now online? How do we keep those things secure and safe and protected? Figuring out how to fill the gaps that are inherent within the security industry right now of there's just not enough bodies to fill all the jobs and build all of the security that needs to be built and maintain those things. That's going to be a whole new ball game that tech has to figure out and it's going to take a lot of manpower to make sure that we can protect people and protect the things that are most important to them, and even just protect those communities, too. Make sure that those communities can continue to thrive and also, be carefully moderated and curated so that there is safety for people to interact; that there is less bullying happening online, that there is less hate crimes that are being perpetuated online. Creating safe spaces for people and providing agency for them online is a whole new ball game when we're not even really that great at doing so in real life, in-person. There are a lot of groups that are going to have to fight harder to be heard, to be seen, to feel safe, and I think that's just an ongoing thing that we need to work at being better at. ARTY: So we need ways to improve the connectivity community stuff and then also, need ways as we do those things to create safety in our communities. DANIELLE: Absolutely. MANDY: Yeah, we just had a really great discussion with Eva PenzeyMoog about two episodes ago. She wrote the book Design for Safety and it was an excellent, excellent conversation about ways that as designers and engineers, we should be building our infrastructure safe from the beginning and not just going back – [overtalk] DANIELLE: Yeah. MANDY: And doing it after the fact, but realizing who the most vulnerable people are and protecting them from the get-go. DANIELLE: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's actually something that my company works really hard to do while we're designing our curriculum products is designing from the most vulnerable within our communities and using that as a starting point for how we build things and how we continue to maintain them. Because if you can keep the folks that are most vulnerable in mind, more people are actually going to be allowed to be safe, allowed to have agency, and allowed to grow. It's a far more inclusive space when we can think about the folks that don't always have access, or don't always have safety, or don't always have agency and designing with those people in mind first. MANDY: And that's how we'll end up filling all these empty seats right now that are available in tech – [overtalk] DANIELLE: Exactly. MANDY: Is by not eliminating these people, designing a safe environment from the start, and attracting different kinds of people into tech because tech needs more diversity. DANIELLE: Tech needs more diversity. Yeah, absolutely and I think that's one of the reasons why I keep doing Code School Q&A is because I want to see more people that look like me in tech. I want to see more people that don't look like me in tech. I'm very excited to bring as many people to the table as possible because I think that's when we also get the most creative and innovative. When more tool sets are brought to the table, more diverse experiences are brought to the table, we build far more robust systems, products, and things just get better when we have more differences from which to pull and more experiences from which to learn. MANDY: As we said in the beginning, you're a fairly new developer. So I wanted to ask you the question: what was one thing you wish you knew, that you know now, that you would have known back then? If you could give Danielle advice a year ago, what advice would that have been? DANIELLE: I think that advice would have been to start actually working on technical things sooner; to start digging into the educational materials that were provided for me for free before I ever started school. I think that actually digging into those materials and having the courage to not just wait until I was in a classroom setting to be able to interact with coding languages and learning how to program, I would have had such a less fraught time getting through school and giving myself the opportunity to get a bit of a head start and more of a foundation before just diving in head first and hoping that I kept my head above water. But I think also, again, leaning into community and not being afraid to ask for help, not being afraid to advocate for myself because it took me a good 2 and a half months before a really felt like I could speak up and say what I needed. That's 2 months of time that I could have been getting more of what I needed, getting more help learning faster and more efficiently, and just being less miserable in the early stages of learning and entirely new skillsets. So don't be afraid to ask for help. Don't be afraid to advocate for yourself. I think especially as a woman coming into a technical space, there is some extra fears of not looking like I could do this, or not feeling like I belonged not knowing what I was doing. But the thing to remember was that nobody knew what they were doing; we were all figuring it out together in that school program. Being the one to be like, “Hold up, this is not making any sense to me. Can we start this over again? Can we dig into what's happening here?” Often times, other people were like, “Oh, I'm so grateful you said something because I also don't know what's going on.” MANDY: Well, with that, I think that's an amazing thing to end on and we can move over to reflections, which I can go and start off with right away is that's the secret. Like, nobody knows what we're doing in tech. DANIELLE: [laughs] Nobody knows, no. [laughs] MANDY: Nobody knows. DANIELLE: Nobody knows yet. MANDY: That's the secret. Ask questions. Lean on your community. There are so many people out there. I know you mentioned tech Twitter, #techTwitter. There are so many nice amazing people that will have your back if you just put those questions out there and even say, “Hey, tech twitter, anybody free? Do you want to pair?” They'll be like, “Yeah, let's hop on for an hour, or two,” and especially right now is when people aren't really doing much again. [chuckles] People are out there. So again, it's a secret. Nobody knows. DANIELLE: [laughs] Yeah. I think I am totally on board with your reflections for the day lean into community and don't be afraid to ask questions. I think it's so important to know that tech needs you. Whoever you are, tech needs you and whatever valuable skillset you bring to the table, whatever diverse experiences you bring to the table, it's needed. You need more people that aren't traditional and whatever that looks like. There is space and there is need for you. I think come and ask your questions at Code School on Wednesdays. We need generally every Wednesday, 7:00 PM Pacific time. We are happy to answer your questions and help connect you to the people if we don't know answers because none of us totally know the right answer most of the time. MANDY: And how can people do that work? What's the URL? DANIELLE: Yeah. Come visit us at twitch.tv/thejonanshow. We also have Code School Q&A is participating in Oktoberfest, too. So you can find us on GitHub by looking up the Oktoberfest hashtag tag and you can find us on Twitter at Code School Q&A as well. MANDY: Awesome. ARTY: I just wanted to add that a little bit with lean into community, I was thinking about Mandy, when you were mentioning your story, when I was learning electron new technology I didn't know. I had this code base that I had to learn. I didn't know what was going on, I was frustrated, I couldn't get anything working, and then I tweeted and asked for someone to pair with me. Lo and behold, some random person from the internet was like, “Sure! I'd be happy to help! Let's meet up air on this,” and I managed to get over the major hurdles I had with getting my environment to set up and getting unstuck, figured out how to run the debugging tools, and all those things really happened as a consequence of nothing afraid to reach out. Even when you might feel like you're struggling with these things alone, there really is a community out there and people that are willing to jump in and help and I think that's really great cool thing. MANDY: All right, well with that, I think we're pretty set to wrap up. If you want to join us you are in Slack. Danielle will receive an invitation to join us as well in our Slack community. It is a Patreon where you can fudge to support us monetarily on a monthly basis. However, if you're not comfortable with that, or do not want to, you can DM anyone of the panelists and we will get you in there for free. So with that, I want to thank you, Danielle, for coming on the show. DANIELLE: Thanks so much for having me for a great conversation. MANDY: Awesome, and we'll see everyone next week. Special Guest: Danielle Thompson.

In today's Meat the boys talk about cum clean up, giving head to someone you're not attracted to, and dirty talk v. silence. But first, Nappi discusses shaky legs, diversifying, loyalty, and myspace rankings. Then, Jay details the symptoms associated with Dissociate Identity Disorder aka Multiple Personality Disorder and the boys do some role playing. Most attribute great sex to the physical sensation or emotional connection. However, almost all great sex has some form of communication. Whether that communication is sensual and loving or aggressive and humiliating, communication is key to having the best sex of your life. At least that's what we thought? In today's episode, the boys talk about talking too much during sex and silent dirty talk. Like your grandma said, “if you can't say anything to make her cum, don't say anything at all.”

Welcome Back to another episode of Black Seinfeld. Spooky season is finally upon us once again, and the guys give their recommendations. Bashtin and Gio speak about the Facebook outage. What was the cause? Was it from hungry hackers? Tune in to find out. Also, we get a rare sighting of a pissed off Bashtin.Enjoy! Get 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code BLACKSEINFELD at Manscaped.com. That's 20% off with free shipping at manscaped.com and use code BLACKSEINFELD all One Word. Unlock your confidence and always use the right tools for the job with MANSCAPED™. 

This week, I'm back on the road with my husband after a short break. Brett is back! My favorite thing this week is my birkenstock sandals #notsponsored, and Brett has a favorite thing this week too! For this episode, I'm talking all about the power of social media. I start by getting nostalgic about my early internet usage like MySpace and AOL instant messaging. I also discuss which social media sites I've never used, and which ones are my favorites. Then I share the story behind my first viral video, the scrub romper! I'm talking about the way I approach being a content creator as a nurse, and why it's important to maintain a level of professionalism online. I also get into the good and bad when it comes to using social media as a nurse. Thank you for supporting me and being a part of my journey! I play This or That: Social Media Edition with Brett, and to close out I answer a “Dear Blake” question and read shoutouts submitted on my website nurseblake.com/podcast. Each week we will take on a new nursing topic and bring up questions and stories submitted by our listeners. Tickets for my comedy show are on sale NOW! https:/nurseblake.com/ Enter for a chance to win through the free NurseCon app, the ultimate nursing organization! https://www.nursecon.com/ SUPPORT THE PODCAST BY SUBSCRIBING Thanks for listening!

On this episode, we get to know the story of the St.Louis hip-hop artist known as Mvstermind. From managing artists' MySpace pages back in middle school to now having his own Fortress of Musical Solitude, The Gem, we learn how his past has shaped his present growth as a musical artist and what he has in store for his art and community in the near future. We also talk about cereal and ostriches.

Ebony, from the TikTok famous family Team2Moms, talks about meeting Denise on MySpace, having 3 kids, and sharing their family life online to normalize LGBTQ parenting. Order the #ITOCT book Amazon, IndieBound, Audible. ovariestalk@gmail.com IG/Twitter/FB: @ovariestalk  Medium @robin633 Edited by EditAudio press Brett Henne theme song: Songfinch & Tiffany Topol Thanks to Betterhelp, KiwiCo, Modern Fertility, AND our Patreon supporters!

Ben's Bites #1 Today's Bite: Do You Remember Tom From Myspace? He was my first “friend” – likely, yours too! Who do you think had the most friends on Myspace??? Not a trick question. It was Tom. Why? Because he co-founded the platform!!!!! If you want a seat at the table… Bring the Table If you want to speak on the mic… Buy the Mic If you want to be an honoree at an event… Host the Event If you want the best view of the stage… Be on the Stage… If you want to speak to influencers… Become an Influencer If you want to “Win Friends and Influence People,” Make Friends and Be Influential…. The easiest way to become President of a company, club, or anything for that matter, is to start it. And, you don't need anyone to validate your worth or readiness. You can validate yourself. If you believe you are worthy… Everyone else will agree. YOU DESERVE WHAT YOU WANT. Don't wait for someone else to give it to you. - Listen on... Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/6GIUXbsHXx0…8sQLm6JR2vHOUuIw Itunes: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/roch…ns/id1537115928 - Follow me... Facebook www.facebook.com/balbertmarketing Instagram: www.instagram.com/realbenalbert Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/ben-albert-a74737106/ - OUR WEBSITE: www.rochesternypodcast.com -- RBC is made possible by www.balbertmarketing.com

In this episode of Prickly and Blooming Podcast, host Jessie Browning revisits her first episode to give an understanding of who she is and how she came to this project. At age 35, Jessie theoretically adored her life; she was a mama to four children and owned multiple businesses with her husband. But without an ability to cope or care for herself, an isolating darkness crept in. Through reckless self care, therapy, and lots of candor; Jessie found her joie again. She created Lajoie Society to embolden others to do the same. Each week, we will meet a woman who has an authentic story to share. Undoubtedly, Jessie will be sharing her big heart, unusual life, and countless theories with you along the way. Episode Timeline: [03:26] Jessie shares about how she met her husband in My Space years ago [05:28] Having four children in a wild succession [06:44] Jessie talks about her passionate motivation to start this podcast [09:04] The meaning behind the names: Prickly and Blooming and Lajoie Society [10:02] The significance of the cactus to Jessie: thorns and flowers, joy and pain, all needs to be celebrated [11:22] Who are going to be guests on this podcast? “Regular” women that have something to share to help move, inspire and motivate other women [12:25] Jessie opens up about her story and the pain that lead to her joy [19:09] Facing shame and guilt, trying unsuccessfully to “forget about it” [20:15] Jessie promised herself she will never be drunk again [22:10] Jessie decided to take back her body, losing weight, exercising and not drinking that much [24:39] Yoga set Jessie's heart on fire [28:06] Starting a food log and learning about the right nutrition choices [30:11] The moment Jessie decided to be a stay-at-home Mom [32:55] Jessie experiencing losing herself and questions her roles and identity [33:29] Drinking to cope was not suitable anymore

Opinions about email marketing in the music biz stretch as wide as a canyon. We hear all sorts of ideas ranging from "email marketing is dead" to "email marketing helped save my business in 2020". Why the wide gap and where are artists missing the mark with email?   On this episode of Creative Juice, we take a microscope to the 5 biggest mistakes artists make when it comes to email marketing, based on hundreds of artist audits inside our agency and in the wild! Hear our takes on the email marketing prowess of Billboard Top 200 artists, learn best practices to keep your fans engaged, and how to get people signing up for your list in the first place!   If you're conflicted between wanting to love email marketing and thinking it's as dead as MySpace, this episode will shake up those beliefs to help you avoid missteps in your own email marketing!   DISCOVER: Where Billboard Top 200 artists are falling short on email marketing How artists set themselves up to fail with email from the jump What you need to leverage email marketing as a competitive advantage What email cadence is best when planning a marketing calendar How to make automated emails authentic and intentional What you can learn about email marketing from Metallica, Luke Combs, and Taylor Swift     RESOURCES: Learn Email Marketing for Musicians Inside INDIEPRO EP139: How To Bribe Your Fans (To Join Your List) EP177: Why Email Marketing Still Crushes for Artists in 2021 Looking to expand your team or bring on an agency in the 2021? Apply to work with IndieX!   

 Samantha Bee sits down with activist, author, and founder of the Me Too movement, Tarana Burke to discuss her new memoir, Unbound, what it's like to realize Oprah knows your name, and if the world would have been a better place if we had just stuck with MySpace. 

"The drums blew my mind. As a kid I thought, I'm doing this" BANG! #TheHowieGames | This is a huge coup for the show! Kevin Parker, AKA Tame Impala, is one of the biggest recording artists on the planet. Kevin's story, from falling in love with the drums as a kid to general music superstardom, is a beauty! A combination of creative brilliance, hard work, and preparedness to follow his own path, has led Kevin from releasing music for free on MySpace, to selling out venues around the world. This is one very cool cat! Get your ears around this. It will give you a lift! ❤️ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"The drums blew my mind. As a kid I thought, I'm doing this" BANG! #TheHowieGames | This is a huge coup for the show! Kevin Parker, AKA Tame Impala, is one of the biggest recording artists on the planet. Kevin's story, from falling in love with the drums as a kid to general music superstardom, is a beauty! A combination of creative brilliance, hard work, and preparedness to follow his own path, has led Kevin from releasing music for free on MySpace, to selling out venues around the world. This is one very cool cat! Get your ears around this. It will give you a lift! ❤️ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  Playing sports at a high-level, today's guest studied personal growth and performance. They found that many resources focused 80% on the problems and only 20% on the solutions. Now he is on a mission to flip this statistic around to help more people. On his own podcast about performance and human wellbeing, his guests have included Sean Percival, former CMO of MySpace and Dan Brule, breathing master and Tony Robbins' breathing coach. Here today to help you have a health-positive impact on your business ventures, please welcome Mads Friis. Contact Info https://www.facebook.com/growthisland.madsfriis https://www.instagram.com/madsmfriis/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYLy4k2VbDX6DefVlLfW0uQ https://www.linkedin.com/in/madsmfriis/    

1. Tired phrases.2. Myspace.3. Homecoming. 

Before we start, feel free to support the podcast if you've been listening for a while by signing up for my Patreon for $1 and I will love you forever. Jeremy Weiss is one-half of the photography company, Day 19. He runs it with his wife Claire and together they take some amazing photographs for some very large Clients. What does this have to do with the late 90s scene? Well, you may have seen Jeremy's photos in the Stay What You Are album and also Piebald's We're The Only Friends We Have. He also was part of the team that opened up Small Empire in NJ and worked for Buddyhead. You can hear Travis Keller talk about Buddyhead in Episode 62. Thanks to Rama from Episode 148 for mentioning Jeremy at the very beginning of his interview which lead to us connecting and this interview. I got Jeremy on the Skype and this is what we chat about: Small Empire Hiring “Telly” from Kids Day 19 the ska band Starting his photography career because of Norm from Texas is the Reason Jon Cheese Getting involved with Buddyhead Running GTFU radio in LA Shooting the photos that are in Save's the Day's Stay What You Are album artwork Shooting photos for the Myspace secret shows Playing Risk with Piebald all day Rama from Big Wheel Converse seeing the photo he took of Casey from Hot Rod Circuit Keith Morris' stories on his radio show And a ton more Make sure you visit https://day19.bigcartel.com/ to buy some of their merch including the gray shirt that just says JERSEY on it I'll be at FEST in October if all things work out with this Delta thing so if you have any way for me to get backstage at some shows please let me know. You can email thiswasthescene@gmail.com. Check out my new book The Couples' Checklist for my webcomic dailyBred. It's a great gift for Valentine's Day. I also have an Instagram for it. If you market aggressively on Instagram Stories and want custom stickers then go here to get custom stickers or just email mike@drive80.com and I can send you samples. These are great for B2C companies and Realtors. Feel free to support the podcast for as little as $1 a month through Patreon Or go to thiswasthescene.com to possibly buy some merch.

The streaming economy—and much of the discourse around it—is based on a simple promise: all of the music. Not some of the music, not most of the music, but ALL of the music being available to stream on-demand. But as we all know, the cloud is far from complete. Artists from De La Soul to Aaliyah have long been absent, while entire eras of music blogs, mid-aughts mixtape culture and MySpace emo bands are simply unavailable, perhaps forever (RIP to the glory days of G-Unit, Dipset and your high school's best Dashboard Confessional impersonator). And while there are a few outlets still holding it down (insert prayer emoji for DatPiff), there is a sense that they are consistently under threat of soon disappearing as well. So on this episode, Sam and Saxon decide to take a look at music streaming from its margins, trying to think through what musical erasure can tell us about the future of listening, fandom, history and more.

Social media has too many people on it!  Have you ever said this about Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or any other social network?  At the end of the day the “power houses” of today may not be around tomorrow, remember MySpace?  So who will replace them? Joel Wolh and his professional social network Bizfluence is looking to take on LinkedIn! On this week's episode of The Start Down we talk about how Joel and his team are doing this and what he thinks the future of social media looks like. Host: Mike FicaraGuests: Mike Ficara and Joel Wolh

This week on The Marvelists Presents: Hypothetically Speaking - A Marvel What If Podcast, we ponder… “What If Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark?” Featuring the anti-hero Killmonger, we discover a whole new timeline involving a Tony that goes off and takes the deadly (and mostly right) Killmonger under his wing. We also assume there is no MySpace in this timeline, but we digress. In addition, we discuss the brand new trailer for Hawkeye! Follow The Marvelists on social media: Facebook/Twitter/Instagram: @TheMarvelists Subscribe to The Marvelists on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGe72jbm8J5IXsINZvrJAhg Support the show on Patreon: http://www.Patreon.com/themarvelists Buy our t-shirt: http://www.belowthecollar.com/themarvelists

#23  Step into the game with the MA girls for a one-on-one host-to-host discussion with VLOW and Nicole. Learn about their origins: how they met (which dates all the way back to the early 2000s) and how the podcast eventually came to be. It has been an awesome whirlwind of only 6 months since the very start of Matrix Assassins. Stay tuned! There are many more exciting things to come. Some topics discussed include:VLOW and Nicole discuss how they met, their backgrounds, the origins of Matrix Assassins, podcasting, life in the early 2000s, 6-month podcasting mark, DSM-V, psychology, therapy, psychiatry, awakening stories, MySpace, surface piercings, MTV, 9/11, 24-hour news cycle, predictive programming, Netflix algorithm, pandemic life, manifestation, corporate life, finding purpose, importance of community, escaping the matrix, spiritual warfare, detoxing, toxic personal care products, Q&A session, and so much more.  Primal Alchemy Link: https://bit.ly/3g7afQWUSE CODE: MATRIX10 for 10% offThank you stepping into the game with us!Follow us on Instagram: @MatrixAssassinsTwitter: @MatrixAssassinsLinktree: https://bit.ly/3eDMzmVSpotify Playlist: https://spoti.fi/3ANwOCiThis is the beginning of an incredible journey and we thank you for joining us as we all #AssassinateTheMatrix together

The internet isn't always useless, sometimes it does a better job than the cops! Amy Rapeer presents 9 Crazy Mysteries Solved On The Internet... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Trigger Warnings: gluten-free vegetarianism, policing women's clothing, misophonia, migraines, Shae the Dog, involuntary food rules, tik tok, tacos, dermatillomania, raw meat, the word "cheugy", Myspace, ADHD, Baby Foot, LuLa Roe, boba, self-diagnosis, impossible tasks, sagging pants, dental hygiene, body terrorism We are drinking matcha with boba from Boba Loca. Read The Body is Not an Apology. Send us your hates and loves! erinandaliee@gmail.com @erinandaliee @erintherye @alieechan

Visit the deluxe show notes page for this episode: http://penfriend.rocks/rouRead the text version: http://penfriend.rocks/rou-ts.Thanks for listening! Attention Engineer is a show where I share deep conversations with fellow artists about creativity, grit and determination. My aim is to consistently remind you - and remind myself - that creativity really is for everyone. .About my guest: Rou Reynolds is a vocalist, songwriter, composer, author and award-winning producer, best known for fronting Enter Shikari. Formed in 1999, the band are known for making outspoken, genre-spanning music accompanied by explosive live shows. Visit their website for music, merch and tour tickets..In this episode, we discuss pre-album writing anxiety and ways to get started on new projects, exploring subjects matter from songs in a more expansive way, the reality of being a supposed "Myspace band" - social media platforms as part of a larger puzzle, music making as mountain climbing: tough and lonely at times - but exhilarating, too, mindfulness and meditation as tools for a better understanding of ourselves and the importance of a decent chair when you're someone who sits in one all day long..About your host: I'm Laura Kidd, a music producer and solo artist releasing music as Penfriend. Come and grab two free songs plus letters about art and music from http://penfriend.rocks/hello..My new album “Exotic Monsters” is out now: http://penfriend.rocks/exoticmonstersSponsor the podcast here: https://penfriend.rocks/sponsorship.Have a fab day! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode, Hailey and Jess talk about the evolution of social media: from AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) to Myspace, to Facebook, to Instagram, and now to TikTok. This episode is full of laughs, funny stories about their childhood and embarrassing ones as well. Thank you to Switch Research for sponsoring this episode. You can use our code SOCIALSOUL20 for a discount on your guided self-love episode today at switchresearch.org

Niching down is definitely something you have heard on this podcast before, but our guest today, Rachel Brenke, takes niching to a whole other level. She is the founder of The Law Tog, Fit Legally, and Rachel Brenke. Her expertise allows her to help businesses monetize their niche market by selling before making it and coming up with unique selling positions. Rachel is a jack of all trades; she is a serial entrepreneur and lawyer and Ironman championship competitor. She earned her degree after becoming an entrepreneur, which she started in the mid-2000s during the height of MySpace. After earning her law degree, Rachel set out to help people start and grow their businesses by niching down. Tune in to hear Rachel's story… [01:12] Introduction to Rachel Brenke [02:07] Background on Rachel [04:08] History of Rachel's businesses [06:22] How to tap into and monetize your niche market. [11:26] Framework on narrowing down your niche [15:07] Approaching a unique selling position [17:39] Expanding from being the Contract Queen [20:00] Sell it before you make it [23:26] Final words of wisdom [24:29] Favorite growth tool [24:56] Favorite book [26:33] Connect with Rachel Resources: Connect with Rachel: Website: RachelBrenke.com Website: TheLawTog.com Website: FitLegally.com LinkedIn Twitter Instagram Rachel's Favorite Business Tool: Monday.com Rachel's Favorite Book: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by: Robert B Cialdini PhD ————————————————————————————— Are you getting a steady flow of highly targeted leads from LinkedIn?? If not, I can help… Get the ultimate guide to generating inbound leads on LinkedIn! Text 44222 with the word LIGUIDE or visit AskDennisBrown.com/guide If you enjoyed this episode, please RATE / REVIEW and SUBSCRIBE to ensure you never miss an episode. Can't get enough? Connect with me! AskDennisBrown.com LinkedIn Twitter Instagram [Free Giveaways]

Come with us back to the sunshine state of Florida, where we discuss a case involving a three-way love affair that went completely left. Left to the sense, that one girl ends up dead, one in jail, and the man involved just living his best life. That's right, we're talking about a 2009 crime involving Sarah Ludemann, Rachel Wade, and Josh Camacho. Two women vying for one man's affection — a man who seemed to care less about either woman, but who enjoyed the Myspace debacle and physical melee.It would not be the Café if we didn't discuss these things openly and honestly — but most importantly — while having a good ole drink in our hands. Listen in to our honest and raw conversation.Stream wherever you listen to podcasts or on our website. Grab your favorite beverage, sit at our table, and DRINK, LISTEN, & CONVERSE!!!Come chat with us as we stream the video complement to the podcast live on Twitch, Youtube, our Facebook page, on this webpage, or on our Twitter pages (links in the Watch the Pod link below) at 7:30 PM EST on Thursday, September 2, 2021. Don't forget to give us a review. :-) Buy Us a CoffeeLinks to Listen / Watch the Pod & All Social MediaSign-up for the NewsletterClick for Episode Transcript

Facebook, Friendster and MySpace weren't the only companies that pioneered social media. In 2006, a new company turned the act of “tweeting” into an opportunity for wide-ranging commentary, and made your number of “followers” a status symbol. On this episode, Steven talks to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, who also co-founded Medium.com and wrote the memoir Things a Little Bird Told Me.Listen to new episodes 1 week early and ad free, and access exclusive seasons of American Innovations with Wondery+. Join Wondery+ for exclusives, binges, early access, and ad free listening. Available in the Wondery App https://wondery.app.link/innovations.Support us by supporting our sponsors!Monday.com - Visit Monday.com/podcast for your free two-week trial.ZipRecruiter - Go to ziprecruiter.com/AI, to try ZipRecruiter for free.Nord VPN - Go to NordVPN.com/innovations, or use code innovations to get 73% off your 2-year plan plus 4 bonus months for free. Be quick because this offer is for a limited time only. Plus, there's a 30-Day Money back guarantee if NordVPN is not for you so there's no risk.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You're 15 years old. You just ate Wednesday night supper at church and it's time for the youth group to meet up for fellowship. Last night on Myspace, Jennifer told you she'd be there. You're wearing the fresh new graphic tee you bought at the mall this weekend. Life is good...except it's not. You walk in and there is no Jennifer, no friends, no fellowship. Only youth pastor Dabo, and he's chock-a-block full of unsolicited opinions he can't wait to speak at you. It's the Clemson Preview. If you like what we do, consider throwing a dollar our way through our Patreon! A $1 monthly contribution gives you access to our Discord server and burgeoning community of goobers ready to talk about football and all things enthusiastically. All proceeds will be donated straight to the Dawgs for Pups campaign during the 2020-2021 football season.Send us your questions using the hashtag #askcbc or use good ole fashioned email - ChapelBellCurve@gmail.comYell at us on Twitter Chapel Bell Curve Twitter - @ChapelBellCurveNathan Lawrence on Twitter - @NathanJlawrenceJustin Bray on Twitter - @TheJustinBray 

This week we welcome CT's strongest comedian / funniest strong man Pete Angelo. Growing up as a big guy in a small town, when Pete started to realize he had feelings for men, he wasn't exactly sure how to navigate that terrain, so for a while he held it in. We are so glad he was eventually able to express his true self and share with us his stories of how he did it. As with most coming of age stories in the early 2000's, we're sending a huge shout out to Myspace.  Follow Pete: IG: @MetalPeteComedy Follow Pinky Promise: IG: https://instagram.com/pinkypromisepod Twitter: https://twitter.com/pinkypromisepod FB: https://facebook.com/pinkypromisepodcast

The little but feisty firecracker Miss Dominique Pianelli joins us and tells us all about how her interest in technology started. They get into a fun conversation about the days of "My Space". Cruz is a Geek Techie himself and he and Dominique connected over being Nerds and there are some fun moments you don't want to miss. Dominique tells us all about her amazing education path, from loving Pharmacy and going to Arizona State, to transferring school to change her major to an undeclared business major to be more well rounded. Her Dad was super supportive through all her studies and encouraged her to study, science, tech and business, as well as being an entrepreneur. College was fun for Dominique and she is a perfectionist. She was one of 3 women that graduated in her program in a male dominated industry, where they are not used to the beautiful cheerleader type. Right out of college she got hired by Hobby Lobby in Oklahoma City where she worked for 6 years. She was the youngest hire ever and loved working there and still credits them with teaching her very valuable lessons she still uses today. Today she works at Granular Agriculture with Agriculture Technology to help farmers make better margins and to provide farmers to make better decisions financially. She loves what she does. Once she became established she is now very respected in her industry. In todays world there is a big movement around women in tech as well as an all around big diversity in a former all white male industry. Then we learn all about her involvement with the Marc Cuban Bootcamp for high school students. Artificial Intelligence is a huge passion of hers. It started in Dallas but has expanded nationwide. She talks about ethics around Artificial Intelligence and how scary it is. Then she talks about Nano Technology. She says "the more advanced we get the more we are playing God". The computer is already smarter than humans. Dominique talks about the most rewarding and challenging parts of her industry. She has definitely broken the stereotype. Party with Miss Polly:Most Common Sex Accidents - "LOST TOYS"Question of the Day:Would you tell a friend that is coming onto you that you are not into them like that or just back off.

In This Episode You Will Learn About: Why flexibility matters Where flexibility helped us Where being rigid hurt us How to be more flexible in life   Resources: Visit chrisharder.me/mastermind to apply for our elite mastermind group Text “PODCAST” to 310-496-8363 to get your questions answered on our Q&A segment or get coached on the show!   Show Notes: Flexibility creates opportunity. When good things pop up in life, you will only be able to say “yes” if you've been intentional about building flexibility into your life. And a lack of flexibility is only going to cost you opportunities. We're going to show some examples of both in our life – as well as how you can build more flexibility into your own. A few months ago, someone made an offer on our Scottsdale, Arizona home that was way higher than we thought it was worth – much more than we paid for it. And even though we had only been there a few months, we saw that it was a major opportunity to make a lot of money fast. That offer ultimately fell through, but it led to us putting our home on the market to see what happened. The flexibility to be OK with either outcome gave us an incredible opportunity. On the other hand, an example of when a lack of flexibility robbed us of opportunity is when our friend Jim Kwik wanted to use my recording studio to record an interview with Tom, the founder of MySpace. But the studio was completely booked for the day and Jim said he was hoping to get Tom to do an interview on our show after his interview. He told us to “Start making room for the miracles.” It's important that you leave space in your calendar for things to show up, but this doesn't mean to do nothing. You have to go out into the world to allow miracles to show up. Just don't be so rigid that you aren't willing to see those miracles for the opportunities that they are.

The feds want to break up Facebook// The Office//What the younger generation is doing on social media//Conway laughs at people who litter.

Amy found out after the fact that she left the tag on a shirt during a client meeting. Niko Moon stops by the studio to talk about his new album, meeting his wife on Myspace and performs some songs for us on his guitar including his cover of “It's A Great Day to Be Alive” by Travis Tritt. In Bobby's mailbag, Bobby helps a listener who asked a co-worker when she was turns…but turns out she wasn't pregnant. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

In this episode, the gang goes through a whirlwind of topics and pent up energy after not recording for a couple weeks. Highs & lows in the intro turned into a conversation about drugs which turned into a conversation about mental health (jump to 16:08 for the discussion on panic attacks and techniques to end them). In “I Did Something Weird Last Night”, the entirely WEIRD choices made by OnlyFans this week (unfortunately, we recorded before they walked back their decision to maintain their current business structure) (27:51). Then the topic of what to do when your current partner and an ex are suddenly in the same time and place (33:27) and how to best address that (39:15). Finally, they wrap things up with a VERY contentious f*ck-marry-kill (46:55).NEW EPISODES DROP EVERY MONDAY!For listener submissions and booking contact keepyourselfwarmpod@gmail.comFind us on Apple PodcastsFind us on SpotifyFind us on Google PodcastsFind us on YouTubeInstagramTwitter

To all of ours 90s babies out there…. How bad do you miss your childhood? AIM, MySpace, moon shoes, Light bright? CAN WE GO BACK? take a trip down memory lane with us as we talk about old games, toys, food, fashion and of course, music. I mean is there a better feeling then when you hear a song that you completely forgot about? I don't know about you all but we were absolutely screaming lyrics to Avril Lavigne back in 2004 before we even had our first heartbreak. But damn those times were good. Go listen now and comment any thing we missed!!!!

En el primer episodio, te conté los inicios de la cultura de Internet. Es decir, el paso del chat de Messenger a las primeras redes sociales. MySpace y Fotolog nos dieron la bienvenida. Fueron como nuestra niñez digital: nuestros primeros pasos de saber qué es esto. Para la segunda entrega, quise hablar de la adolescencia. Nos hacemos mayores y conseguimos nuestros primeros trabajos. Las redes se profesionalizaron y todos aquellos jóvenes que escribían en blogger o wordpress, subían imágenes a Fotolog y colgaban canciones en MySpace, se hacen famosos, influencers y creadores de contenido digital. Pero además de Instagram y sus influencers, otra corriente de creadores apostaron por otro tipo de contenido. Es lo que recogí en el siguiente episodio. Dedicado en exclusiva a YouTube y cómo influyó aún más que Instagram en la cultura de Internet, su dominio fue tal que alcanzó industrias como la cinematográfica, la televisión y la música. Y en este cuarto episodio de "La Historia de Internet" nos hemos centrado en explicar porqué muchos creadores se fueron de YouTube a Twitch y los motivos más allá de los puramente económicos. ¡Espero que te guste! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/victorabarca/message

EP273 - Amazon FBA Roll-ups with Alex Kopco of Forum Brands  Alex Kopco is the Founder and COO of Forum Brands, a roll-up of digitally-native consumer brands selling via Amazon. In this interview we discuss Alex's experiences at Target and Amazon prior to founding Forum Brands. We talk about Forum Brands specific business model and their unique tools and expertise for Amazon sellers, the Amazon FBA Roll-up trend in general, and the future of commerce. Episode 273 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday August 19, 2021. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 273 being recorded on Thursday august 19 20 21 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:40] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott showed listeners Jason as you and mr. snow two of my favorite topics are Amazon and Entrepreneurship lately there's been a lot of exciting intersections in that area as different companies have been started to kind of quote-unquote roll-up Amazon FBA Sellers and explore a. House of Brands kind of concept leveraging Amazon so we're going to dig into that topic tonight and joining us on the podcast to help us explore that is Alex kopco he is the CEO and founder of form brands Alex welcome to the show. Alex: [1:18] Thank you so much super excited to be here guys. Jason: [1:21] Alex we're thrilled to have you and Scott, that Scott wasn't just giving you lip service these are his two favorite topics so he's going to be super annoying to talk to, but before we jump into form Brands which we are excited to get to we always like to give listeners a little bit of a taste about our guest, backgrounds and how you came in your role and if I have it right I think you have kind of a perfect background for your current role. Alex: [1:48] I do yeah it's true I have spent, really the last decade in e-commerce I got my start working for Target specifically for target.com at the time when target.com was actually still being powered by Amazon Target, little known fact was the largest seller on Amazon's Marketplace back when I was there and I was part of the team, that was rolling target.com off of the Amazon platform, which was a great first experience in my career to see what this whole e-commerce thing was about working for especially a big box retailer and one is well respected as Target and is good at merchandising and all the great things that Target does it really did feel like the wild west despite it being a 50 year old company and then I transitioned was looking for just a change in life a change in scenery and you know the winters in Minneapolis can be pretty brutal and so I actually had the opportunity to go work for Amazon and Seattle where I over a number of years had basically every retail job that you can imagine at the company also did a stint at Amazon as a product manager where I was working on Amazon's physical retail stores team. [3:08] The non grocery version which was super super interesting a ton of Technology went into powering the Amazon stores as well and so I oversaw some of the technology aspects there and really, over my course of my career at Amazon fell in love with the power of data the power of. [3:26] You know under understanding customers based on what they do as well as what they say and being able to provide you know surprise and Delight moments for them regardless of whether they were online or in stores and for me you know my passion for entrepreneurship since these are Scott's two favorite things Amazon entrepreneurship. [3:45] Sort of nurtured at a very young age and happy to delve into my memory Palace there but, the the impetus for really leaving Amazon to strike out on my own was predicated on they just ongoing shift to e-commerce and the adoption and of course you know the covid-19 pandemic has, greatly sped that up but it was always a fascinating space for me and so really just had that itch and decided that the time was right at my career to make that leap. Jason: [4:15] That is awesome and so just just so I'm being perfectly clear that our listeners you loved Amazon so much that when Target stopped working with them you quit and joined Amazon. Alex: [4:25] In as many words yeah sure let's go with that hahaha. Scot: [4:32] Jason you are the chief digital officer of Target right do I have that right. Jason: [4:35] Yes one of yes. Alex: [4:37] Wrong Jason Goldberg goldberger. Scot: [4:39] Oh gosh I get that confused. Alex: [4:41] I have to confess Jason I did a double take when I first saw your name and was like this can't possibly be goldberger and then realized that I was adding an ER to your name. Jason: [4:50] Alex to make matters more confusing a you should know that the day that Jason joined Target I got three 800 LinkedIn invites from from target employees. Alex: [5:01] One of those might have been me Jason. When Jason joined he and I I forget how this happened but he and I was basically in the first meeting he ever had it Target and. Then I was in a number of subsequent meetings and so we just sort of kept running into each other and it became a running joke over the rest of my time at Target which was not that much longer that every time you ran into each other it was just you know one of those moments so it's been fun to watch Jason's career evolve. Jason: [5:33] Yeah yeah. Nobody cares but like the overlaps are are super complicated I've actually worked with Target for an awfully long time in fact I was in a conference room in Minneapolis on 9/11 with Jeff Bezos. Doing the Amazon contract the the day that the Twin Towers was hit and did a lot of work with Steve Eastman and Michael Francis and although. Alex: [5:59] Yeah yeah. Jason: [6:00] So I do have a sort of a Target history and then of course I'm at publicist which owns Sapient which was the big team that helped stand up target.com when you guys moved off of them. Alex: [6:12] That's right project Everest. Jason: [6:14] Exactly so lots of overlaps but, as per usual I just talk about all this stuff well you actually did it so so we're excited to hear about it from you but I think Scott is undoubtedly going to ask you some Amazon trivia questions first. Scot: [6:33] Yeah yes so it must have been interesting you know I haven't been as deep as you guys have at Target but I have spent a lot of time at Amazon seems like a big culture difference there what was that like. Alex: [6:46] Yeah it was a big culture difference I think the biggest difference in my experience was I was. [6:56] Well there's two two components to this first and foremost I felt like I had a tremendous amount of responsibility from the very very first day at Amazon Amazon having built much of its own technology internally you know there were there were safeguards there were checks and balances you couldn't really screw anything up but I had a lot of control over, Mi Piel which you know when I would interview people or when people would join the team I would sort of like in my business too and I was a better manager and video games for a number of years and I would liken it to my little video games or my little comic book shop on the street corner and you know we would talk about what is our window front look like today we've got to walk our store and make sure that you know some kid didn't spit gum on our floor and so it was it was very much that feel and I had the power to keep things clean and sort of do what I thought was in the best interest of customers. [7:54] Target on the other hand it is a company that has one of the most iconic brands on the planet you see that Bullseye and you just instantaneously know even if you're not, from America we pretty much know what Target is and so with that you know with, with great power comes great responsibility with great branding comes great responsibility and so my experience at Target was a little bit different in that, a we were big you're really big when I joined Amazon we weren't that big at the time and I work for Amazon Canada so we were really not that big. [8:27] Target was big and so the the conversations with vendors the responsibility that we had two guests You know despite being, working for the e-commerce arm of Target we took. Sort of the brand very very very seriously and everything was in the spirit of ensuring that people when they, interacted with that Bulls I had the best possible experience and so it was it was just a different ethos right it was a different mindset, and one worked great for one company for the last five decades the other was kind of making it up as they went along and now have become one of Earth's largest companies and there were no guarantees either way but it certainly was a very interesting, mindshift and I learned a lot of both to be totally honest with you and a lot of my reasoning for going to work for Amazon was not because Target rolled off Amazon and then I went to work for Amazon but it was because I felt like I actually wanted both sides of that coin I wanted to both have the big box retail how do you how do you take. A legacy brand and bring it into the digital world and, what about that disruption what what about that company that is leading that disruption leading the efforts of bringing retail into the digital world and so. It was a little bit selfishly I just wanted to be as well as well-balanced as I possibly could be. Scot: [9:55] So did you work for Amazon Canada the whole time are you kind of bounce between the u.s. and Canada. Alex: [10:00] So I work for Amazon Canada when I was in retail eCommerce retail for the whole time I did work very closely with my US based counterparts I worked on the initiative which is now known as narf but internally was known as Naf n which was the unification of the North American supply chain I supported the launch of Amazon Mexico and so you know one of the benefits of working for a smaller, arm within a big company as you have a lot of resources at your disposal but you also have a lot of latitude to try things I launched which prime in Canada when we bought which I brought virtual bundling technology to Canada's a twenty-five-year-old no nothing in the tech space which was incredibly interesting and again really started to give me that feel for the power of Technology, and and and Building Technology that can enable anybody in the company to be successful not just the people who know how to wield the technology. Scot: [11:03] A lot of people that have worked at Amazon that start companies they bring a lot of the management principles over is that something you plan on doing or you're just like starting with the clean white board. Alex: [11:15] Man yeah Amazon's culture is it is definitive and we certainly have borrowed, in many cases inadvertently a lot of the principles you know one of our our core leadership principles is bias for Action we have one that is called act like an owner we have one called the best ideas when which is you know, hybrid of is write a lot and invented simplify and we did this sort of inadvertently but you have to admit the principles are pretty darn good. And you know Dave Glick and I saves over at Flex we often and he does a lot of post on LinkedIn talking about the impact that Amazon's culture had on him and how he brings that to flex and I a lot of what he talks about resonates very deeply and we kind of joke about you know once an Amazonian always an Amazonian it always comes back up in some in some fashion. Scot: [12:09] Yeah someone that's an outsider and having interacted with all the different tech companies the other ones have these like little Pro way things like, yep what does it do no evil or be don't be evil or something where's the Amazons when you know and they end up being mocked by all the employees at the end of the Amazon ones they just seem so much more solid and and you know I've seen the document where they give case studies and then what not to do and what you know Jeff Bezos little stories around the principle so it it just has so much better thought out than any of the anything else I've ever seen. Alex: [12:46] Yeah yeah you know we. Even the most resistant employees I think drink at least a little bit of the Kool-Aid when you get there because it's impossible to avoid you can't not be in a meeting. Especially when tensions are high and this is the whole purpose of having strong leadership principles is so that when you can't be in every meeting and every discussion, you want people working for you to behave and make decisions in a way that are consistent with how you would do it that is the Hallmark of that of strong leadership principles and like you can read the everything store which I did when I was interviewing with Amazon and they say you know. Jeff has this thing about like oh the customer's always in the room leave the empty chair like we talked about customers as if they're actually in a room that's not that's not a lie that's not like a thing that you know has been spawned at like we literally do that we say, like what would the customer think about this how's that going to impact the CX like we care very very deeply and that's just one of the principles and so people use them in their vernacular and actually my wife still works for Amazon, and our friends sometimes get a little bit annoyed because occasionally she and I will be talking about a hard thing at work and we'll just default to, sort of the Amazon lingo and they're like you guys have to know how you sound to outside people which is. Not great. Scot: [14:14] Amazon Romance. Jason: [14:15] I do think the Amazon leadership principles are legit and you know have certainly contributed to their their culture surviving even as its scale, but just just a counter-argument to Scotts point they did add two new leadership principles this year and one of them basically is don't be evil. In parentheses it says two employees. Alex: [14:37] Yeah I mean. Scot: [14:40] That's just an overreaction to crying at the dust particle. Alex: [14:43] That was yeah I was there during during the infamous New York Times article it got some things right I got some things wrong. Scot: [14:55] Were you crying at your desk. Alex: [14:56] I was not personally crying at my desk no and I don't know anyone who did but I also would not say that I knew every single person at Amazon either. [15:13] Um It's fun fun for me not that much fun for probably listeners but I'll just give you the anecdote, Jeff is like a rare unicorn around Seattle and anytime you see him it is a Jeff sighting, and people will like stop what they're doing and immediately run back to their desks to tell everybody that they had a Jeff sighting and my only judge sightings really came from from the stage, at the All Hands meetings I was fortunate enough to work on some projects that one just do it Awards which is one of the awards where Jeff gives out a Nike shoe and there's a whole story behind that and so my interaction was limited to the. Jeff announcing a thing on the stage in my face being up on a on a wall that was those are my only sightings. Scot: [16:12] Nice to get picture of you and Jeff. Alex: [16:14] I did not yeah yeah yeah. Scot: [16:15] We can Photoshop at Jason's of Photoshop Drupal will create one for. Alex: [16:21] Yeah you can you can put my face on. Jason: [16:22] I'll put all three of us. Alex: [16:24] There you go yeah with chassis so when I was at Amazon actually co-founded an internal employee network called connected Amazon. And it really sort of started actually it started from Target honestly because one thing that Target does exceptionally well is they have all of these sort of like. [16:46] Affinity groups isn't there like employee networks and there's like an acapella group and there's you know the women who ride motorcycles group, and so I was a member of all these different sort of Target networks and I got to meet the global VP of Lego and I got to meet you know higher-ups at LinkedIn and it just was always really fascinating to me and sort of. [17:09] Made me feel really happy that I work for Target and when I started at Amazon they had a finity networks but they didn't do a lot. I mean they were they were sort of identity based and it was not. The programming just wasn't as robust as what you got from the Grassroots Target organizations and so a friend of mine and. A couple of other people got together I must have been there for months at the time, and started this group connected Amazon to try to provide some some amount of programming for that and Andy Jesse was actually kind enough to be one of our fireside chat speakers, and we booked the biggest room that they had on campus at the time I think it could fit about 400 people. And we had 400 people like an hour and a half before the fireside chat even started and so we had all these people live streaming and all the like conference rooms and one of the buildings there and from there you know it kind of took on a life of its own so I credit Andy for you know really making connected Amazon as big of a deal as it has become which I think now they've got 30 40 thousand amazonians are like registered members of connected Amazon and they've got a nice big budget and full-time people doing programming and that all came out of the grass roots. Jason: [18:28] Very cool so truth be told we could probably do Amazon stories all night and be perfectly happy but I do want to talk about foreign Brands obviously so before we jump into that into much detail Scott kind of alluded to the business model but can you kind of give us the foreign Brands elevator pitch. Alex: [18:48] Yeah so you know Scott is right in that there are a number of groups really around the world now who are looking to acquire Amazon FBA businesses do a sort of brand of Brands roll them together we fall into that but we think about ourselves a little bit differently I think the moniker that gets thrown around a lot is is aggregator. We don't see ourselves as that and you'll. Probably based on my background understand why you know our model is not to do a high volume of deals it's too it's to be principled and disciplined. In the deals that we do do and we are much more focused on building, a concentrated portfolio and specific categories that we believe we can turn into like household Staples and so actually as much as I love Amazon and again you're right we could probably spend you know two hours just swapping stories about that. Our goal is to. [19:52] Take fledgling brands that we believe have a lot of potential and put them wherever the customers who want to shop for those products are shopping and that maybe on Amazon and we hope that it is but even if it's not, we'll find ways to make sure that our products are available for the customers who want to buy them and so, what that means is we might review a thousand deals a year and will acquire a handful of them rather than you know. Does it meet our basic minimum criteria if yes then we'll proceed and so it's just a little bit of a different a different mindset for us and it causes our employees to make decisions differently which is. And literally the document that we have when we due diligence is called the what you have to believe document it's do we actually believe in this brand can it actually become a consumer household staple. If yes then there's a whole bunch of other criteria that we review if no we're okay passing on a deal and it's nothing against the brand owner it's nothing against the seller we're just very disciplined for what we're looking for. Scot: [20:58] And then so it is a busy space so how would you help help me kind of have a mental map of how you guys fit in so there's there's thrashy oh there's like one out of Austin whose name I can't remember there's a couple others, how would you kind of feel that you guys differentiate from from the pack. Alex: [21:20] Yeah we're we differentiate in two ways first and foremost like I was describing where operators first. Right we my two co-founders both come from the investing World they run a very efficient Ma, process the other kind of oversees the holding company in the structure within I oversee all things related to Brand growth and I have a team of probably fifty percent X amazonians who have have a similar mindset as me which is again we build we believe in the power of a brand and we believe in, brand Equity we believe in the direct-to-consumer space as a way of making sure that were able to reach customers who get genuine value out of our products, and so that's us was the most exciting thing so we're again very selective in our deals secondarily is our Tech and Scott we were kind of, bantering about this you know before we started recording but we are, highly highly highly focused on building and integrated omni-channel system, internal to form Brands and this is not this is not meant to be a knock to any of the software out in the world but my belief is that. [22:39] Is that there is value to Building Technology that suits the company that we are trying to build rather than having to build a company that suits the technology that's available to us today. And again it sounds like a semantic difference but it's a big mindset shift, from my team where every single employee regardless of whether you're in Mna Corporate Finance or marketing you're all product managers every single person is tasked with finding ways to automate the automatable use data to make decisions ask for systems that we either don't have or that are underdeveloped so that we can build something that works for form Brands and makes each and every one of our employees more efficient. Scot: [23:23] Give us an idea of the scale like where are you guys maybe Capital raised or number of Brands kind of in your your pack if you will anything you can share but obviously don't want anything super confidential. Alex: [23:35] Sure sure so we're not disclosing the number of brands that we have right now but we did recently announced a 27 million dollar series a equity raise led by Norwest Venture partners are seed was done by and FX at a Palo Alto and so you know that that 27 million that we recently raised is is being put two purposes one hiring hiring like crazy building out the team of world-class operators first and foremost and then secondarily is to a focus on technology and that is you know scaling up our Tech stack hiring a high-performing you know World Class Tech Team, we've got a number of data scientists and we're already finding ways to optimize our businesses that we do owned by way of machine learning it's also we actually use machine learning to help identify high quality Brands to potentially reach out to as well and so again it sort of tech underpins everything that we do and we're investing very heavily in that space. Jason: [24:43] Awesome and you kind of mentioned that you were being selective on Acquisitions like do you have. Any specific criteria like are most your criteria around Financial metrics to other particular product categories or particular. Go to market models are things that like sort of play into your your preferred portfolio companies. Alex: [25:06] Yeah so we are focused on certain categories categories that we refer to sort of colloquially as. I thought I was going to put your that word and I totally got it colloquially as consumer durables so we steer clear from food and beverage, we steer clear from you know fad related items we I mean you could really like an us to sort of, New Age Procter & Gamble where we're focused on you no pets and home and kitchen, patio lawn and garden we have you know we play in the fitness space the outdoor space and so these are really things that are like, you know you would go, to your cousin's house and open up their cabinets or look in their closet and you would find a bunch of our products there that's what we're really focused on so we will stay away from like clothing we don't do fashion brands, um and from there you know we have what we call the four pillars because as a good Amazonian I love my Frameworks, but you know it's are sort of M A decision-making framework which you know we're very transparent about when we get, into the conversation with Sellers and it's something that you know our approaches to be very seller friendly we. [26:32] Over index in the hand-holding because we want to make the deal as comfortable as possible. My co-founder Reuben who leads all the MMA efforts he still personally gets on all the calls with Sellers and so Financial profile matters category matters but again a lot there are a lot of other considerations that go into that what you have to believe what we have to believe collectively as a team as an investment committee as operators as brand builders, and so were we are. We view these deals as puzzle pieces that we look to fit together. Scot: [27:13] Is part of your strategy to so you acquire these Brands you get them you know I think there's probably some consolidation where you know what we've seen with other players is a review of the packaging bringing them over into a Consolidated marketing team usually some consolidation around sourcing and fulfillment, and then you get your technology platform let me play pause there is that is that you guys do all those things. Alex: [27:41] Yep absolutely I mean I think a lot of that is you know and most of the players us included are what at most two two and a half years old so these are like there's still a lot of table Stakes stuff. To be done with these with these Brands as we're fitting them into our process and our portfolio for sure. Scot: [28:00] Gonna think I know the answer this one but I'll ask anyway so then you know one strategy and I'm obviously a big proponent of this is if you can do acts on Amazon you can do you kind of typically do you know the same amount call it you know X again over on other channels is part of your your plan to then go across different online channels with the brands or do you really want to just kind of focus on Amazon for a while and DoubleDown based on on the platform Super Bowl. Alex: [28:31] My Amazonian this is about to show here so we have what we have the concept of Amazon's day one we have we have play books which we called a0 and A1, and the day Zero playbooks are sort of that table Stakes stuff can we consolidate at ports, can we you know is are there opportunities for us to redo the packaging, will get deep into the reviews and apply NLP to reviews to make sure that we have a good understanding of what customers like and equally important what they don't like about the products that were acquiring and so we'll do all that day 0 stuff, to sort of get our house in order and that is predominantly Amazon focused right most of these businesses, do the vast majority of their sales on Amazon and so. [29:20] For us to be world-class operators like we must be world-class at Amazon that that is core to the strategy. From there we move into day one because at Amazon it's always day one, so really it's day forever but we call a day one and those are the things that a our technology Powers right and Scott you know the power of optimization of being able to have an integrated platform where, data from one part of the business marketing. Informs actions in another part of the business product development and design packaging pricing right and so our ability to tie these things together these sort of disparate data points actually build a mental model and I, I'm sure that my team is so tired of the phrase mental model because I preach it constantly but that's really what it's about for us as building that mental model so. [30:10] That was a long-winded way of answering your question which is yes we will be opportunistic brand by brand, um in channels off Amazon and you know we're operating in eight countries right now we are operating across five or six channels and so our footprint is already, diverse and you know were a year old at this point. Jason: [30:37] Awesome side note you can always tell a tech first company when they start counting at day 0 instead of day one. Alex: [30:45] Exactly I'm so glad Jason that you picked up on that. Jason: [30:49] I'm tracking and so that reminds me I do want to kind of. Cook down into your Tech stack for a second but before we do I'm just always curious like it seems obvious like one of the big. I'm sort of investment theories here would be you acquire these companies and you have. Unique expertise capabilities and Tech that then causes those companies to be more valuable. You help them become more efficient on Amazon more successful etc etc and that that accelerates the value of your investment. Each of those companies probably had some unique skill sets like I'm always curious. Like does it work out that those companies are able to help each other very much and are using like. Are you providing most of the value-add or are you acquiring a lot of value-add from these individual companies that then benefits the rest of the portfolio. Alex: [31:48] Yeah yeah you know currently it has been. The former we are providing most of the value-add. So where we are actually seeing things move is as the space becomes. More well-known I mean there are so many sellers right so many many many of them do still do not know that an exit. Is an option for them many still are under the misconception that e-commerce. I don't want to do this anymore I guess I'll just shut my store down I'll go on Permanent Vacation mode and that is tragic to me. Because they have loyal customers they're generating real cash and so it's a shame for companies to shut it down what we're seeing more and more in the conversations that we're having with. [32:42] Perspective Cellars is. [32:45] This desire to remain plugged into the brand and frankly this is how we win deals. In a lot of cases is because we care very deeply you know Simon sinek has one of the most viewed, TED Talks ever right we should start with why and that is how we start we start with why did the entrepreneur start this business, and sometimes it was like I don't know I was in college and needed some extra beer money or I had to pay rent or whatever other times it was you know my mother had this malady that caused her not to be able to do a certain thing and so I found this product and decided that maybe it could help other people right and every single story is different and so we learn a lot in the stories but we also do learn a lot from the sellers and we're super flexible with our pricing structure we don't have sort of a. We don't really have like a take-it-or-leave-it style we want a suit. [33:44] Sellers in the ways that that works the best for them and so some are willing to take a little less up front but they want to benefit and participate in the upside over the next year we're happy to do that and the extent that they want to be plugged in and. Launch more products and use our Tech and you know get support from our team, we're happy to do that as well and so it really is a case-by-case basis there's no sort of one sweeping, you know this is how we do it forever flexibility is kind of the name of the game for us in a lot of ways. Jason: [34:16] Got it and so let's talk about that that Tech stack for a second I'm always curious what people. Decided to build and find the most value and building like are you mostly building tools around. Catalog management and digital shelf for you doing like magic pricing logic are you doing like ad. Buying and placement and all that like what what sort of problems are you trying to solve with the tax debt with your Tech stack for to the sellers. Alex: [34:46] I'd be curious to hear what your next two items would be Jason because everything you just said and more actually where we started was we started with an engine that I alluded to earlier that helps us identify high quality assets that meet our criteria that's where we began, and so we you know started plugging into a variety of datasets from a variety of companies, tying it together you know applying our own modeling on top of it and now use that to identify brands, the tertiary benefit from that is when you have a lot of data at a category level. [35:30] You can start to also Benchmark yourself, and so we've been able to you know build benchmarks and say what should what should this company be doing what could this company look like what what if scenario A through Z happened where would we fall, in this space and from there it's kind of grown organically and so catalog management I mean you can't run a direct-to-consumer business. On one channel let alone many channels let alone in multiple GEOS if you don't have a strong sort of item master so we certainly, started their focused very heavily there in the early days to make sure that we had, a sound way of tying all of these data points together across customers across orders across products and brands. [36:17] And from there yeah I mean there are natural extensions in all facets right pricing drives forecast, and our forecast drives our inventory Buys in our inventory buys Drive how much warehousing space we need or our consolidation at various ports are ordering Cadence and. Guys let me know if you want to talk about the state of the supply chain right now around the world but that is a huge problem in and of itself and so we've invested heavily in, Tech in Building Technology that gives our people visibility to every single step of the supply chain so that we know, day by day minute by minute where goods are. Because as I'm sure you guys know if you fall out of stock like falling out of stock especially on Amazon as a really really really really big deal, because not only is there the Miss sales from that but you also have to then reinvest to you know get your advertising spun back up and to reclaim potentially your spot in Search and that's really expensive to do and so, The Economic Opportunity there is not just well we have you know Air Freight. For extra holding costs or Miss sales but it's also advertising its also customer experience it's also, bundles which also fall out of stock if a component is out of stock and so the blast radius is wider but we have a way to tie that all together and be able to make smarter economic decisions based on that. Jason: [37:46] Yeah that's a super important point and I'm still shocked how many people don't don't get that but if you're out of stock for three days out of a month at Target and you was three days worth of sales. Um but you're out of stock at Amazon and what happens is you fall to what's called page 2 of search which is equivalent to being delisted. And then you've got to earn your way back and so that's funny like my, question about your text deck I'm always curious how people answer because well in the old world those were all separate tools and you could kind of buy best-in-class tools from all these different vendors and each one did a point thing but my hypothesis in like, Dynamic digital shelf world is. All those tools have to be integrated because they're all totally dependent on each other like you like I'm shocked how many Amazon sellers are buying ads on out of stock. Alex: [38:43] Oh my gosh. Jason: [38:44] And like you know I mean it like just all these things are so so interrelated in a in a way that, that is a very different model than traditional brick-and-mortar retail. Alex: [38:56] That's right you know we were opening up our office and one of the. Super lame ideas that I had for a decoration was to build a physical value chain of paper chain and. I thought it'd be really fun to you know first and foremost has have everybody's names on it because Dan the day you don't have a company if you're only as good as the people that work for you that is. That is true without exception. Over the long run at least but but you're absolutely right right like the interrelationship between every single. [39:33] Touchpoint of a company whether you're again MMA marketing for and growth supply chain. Every single decision that you make has a ripple effect on every other person and so you know when we think about our organizational structure we try to be as flat as we can be we purposefully encourage people to meet, their counterparts in other organizations so that they're not just sitting in a silo and saying well I'm on the marketing team, and that is a supply chain problem not my problem actually it is because you're about to blow your budget getting that thing back on page 1 off the page of Doom because this thing went out of stock so you need to be in lockstep so you can pull back on the spend so that you're not buying spending 40 percent of your budget on out-of-stock, right especially if it had a sin God forbid falls out of stock it's a big deal and people need to be talking about it but my biggest thing and I beat this drum constantly is the problem with having. You know 25 Point Solutions is then you have 25 dashboards you have to look at you have 25 systems you have to log into and you have to make the connections yourself and sorry but like human brain it gets tired people have a bad night people have a bad day and you make mistakes but by being able to pull it all together visualize it in one space. [40:55] And see. How pulling lever a effects object Z like that that is what we constantly push ourselves for and constantly drive toward. Jason: [41:07] Yeah yeah and so you kind of answered you ask me like what would the next things on my list be for your road map and you kind of the name them right its supply chain and analytics for those, for those very reasons you just covered sidenote are you hosting your Tech stack on Azure did you did you go Google Cloud platform or azure. Alex: [41:26] Wow I think you're kidding but no Amazon Amazon web services all the way. Jason: [41:33] I'm shocked that makes a lot of sense now but as soon as you try to expand off of Amazon to those other platforms your that's going to become a. Alex: [41:41] Yeah I know we use some gcp products we use looker we use five Tran for some API connection so we're you know we started on AWS because frankly. They gave us free credits and so why are they sticky with that. Jason: [41:57] Yeah yeah that I hear that's a decent business. Um the you open the door to a super interesting topic right now which is like supply chain and product liability particularly around holiday this point. Um earlier this week Target and Walmart both had earnings calls and they both assured investors that they were well positioned for holiday but why. You hear from any of the suppliers and it sounds a little dicey no one can hire anyone everybody's Factory workers are on strike. Um tons of disruptions in Asia right now going the wrong way I'm on pandemic stuff like what what your POV for Holiday are we are we in for some pain or is it overblown. Alex: [42:44] I mean by your gifts now is my POV you know it I think it's going to be tough I think it's going to be tough I don't think, well I don't know covid is the big. The big asterisk to everything I'm about to say because we've already seen in Ningbo for example the poor shut down for a couple of days because of a couple of covid cases they're one of our factories got completely flooded by the typhoon I mean, there are already so many issues beyond the fact that there are at any given time 50 boats trying to get into the port of LA and. Some of those containers belong to us some of those containers belong to Target and Walmart and so we're kind of all collectively in. This for lack of a better term we're in this boat together the difference is. [43:40] The Big Box retailers and a lot of the big players have you know a much much larger physical Warehouse footprint where presumably. They have seen these potential issues coming and have you know, bought Goods in advance of meeting to get them on store shelves you know we certainly have but as early as we thought we were, we probably could have even been a month or two earlier because we're still seeing delays really across the board. Um and it's and a lot of it is international a lot of it is domestic right like will get bumped from you know delivery from point A to point B and you know Kentucky to New Jersey and you know UPS won't show up. And that's not a knock on UPS like maybe their truck driver got covid right I mean there's so many small things that compound the delays. I think it's going to be tough. And I hope I'm wrong like I'm saying this but I really hope I'm wrong I hope we all get to sleep very happily at night because we had, great holiday season kids are happy and we're all happy I really hope that's the case but we're preparing for the worst. Jason: [44:53] I know that it's possible for both to be true right like Target and Walmart could have enough leverage that they do believe they're going to be okay from a supply chain and it could be the rest of the world that. Um struggles but right side note on the demand I think Home Depot also had an earnings call this this week and they mentioned that they got there first. It's mid-august they got their first shipment of Halloween goods and they're already out. Alex: [45:22] Oh man oh man. Jason: [45:25] Yeah so / your shop early comment I think yet not only is availability a problem but also. As you know everything's just getting more expensive because the cost of those containers and shipping and everything just keeps, keeps going up and that that leads me to part 2 of why I'm not going to sleep this holiday period last holiday Scott coin This this term that got a lot of Attraction ship a get in, and we talked about you know the fact that like obviously covid drove everyone online and so there was this you know. [45:58] Outsized demand for for e-commerce fulfillment and you know UPS and FedEx have a finite ability to flex to meet that. The I'm curious like it seems like it's going to be an equal or bigger problem, this year and I'm chuckling because the United States Postal Service just announced that they discovered this new business practice, the FedEx and UPS have been doing called surcharges so now even even US Postal Service is looking to do holiday surcharges and they're you know all the quotas for Holiday are already out, and of course your friends and Amazon are you know largely the one and only, retailer add scale that owns their own a lot of their own Last Mile so I do you is is that an advantage for being on the Amazon platform are they likely to run out of capacity and constrain fbas like do you. Worried about fulfillment this year and how that's going to impact holiday at all. Alex: [47:02] I am less worried about outbound fulfillment as I am inbound because of what you just said which is capacity constraints. And you know any listener who has an Amazon business knows that. [47:16] There was a change this year we're while because last year Amazon started imposing, skew level caps right and so even if you had a portfolio that was concentrated around one or two top selling products that do 85 percent of your sales you know at least you could probably be okay on those even if you hit caps on sort of your tail selection they moved to a model which is, it is at the account level now a cat and we were all super happy about that because we said well we have all these new products that we're launching and because they have no sales history we can only Trickle, 20 units in at a time we followed a stock another 20 units we fall out of stock in the problem with the domestic delays is we could be out of stock for three weeks. On that right even if our warehouse is next door to the Fulfillment center, we could still not have our products sellable again for 3 weeks and there is nothing that will kill your cold start product launch faster thinking out of stock, right and so that that has been an issue throughout the year and they kept saying you know July 1st the Caps will be lifted and they were and some cases and they weren't and other cases and so my big concern is just that we won't have the capacity, available to us at FBA to get all of the goods in that we need to get in and so even if we are have a dozen two dozen. [48:40] You know, thousand shipments waiting there's nothing that you can really do there's no one that you can pick up and call and say hey can you like you know nudge nudge wink wink get my stuff in faster you just can't do it and so you just wait. [48:52] And that's a really uncomfortable spot to be in so you know and then and so we operate in Canada right we have seen on Amazon Canada where, the whole fulfillment centers have shut down due to covid and you see promised dates go from 2 days for Prime shipping to seven days for Prime shipping no matter which zip code you put in no matter where you say you are in Canada we've had some of our products that. [49:17] The prime delivery date is a Six-Day window and that has been the case for months. And so outbound from that perspective it does depressed demand that's why I'm saying by stuff sooner because you might get a Six-Day promise, but yeah I'm more concerned about the inbound and being able to keep Goods on the digital shelves through the through the entirety of the holiday season, because you can't you can't remanufacture that demand and if we come out super super heavy like, maybe it helps us through Lunar New Year which was also pretty tough last year but yeah it's going to be really interesting and so again we're doing everything that we can to try to. You know make sure that all of our ducks are in a row all of our goods are Stateside everything's ready to go. On the chance that we can actually get you know Goods moved in but it'll be a struggle. Jason: [50:14] Yeah yeah and as you alluded to the Canadian Supply chains even more fragile because one of those sled dog teams get sick and a whole Province gets cut off namjoo. Alex: [50:24] I had I had Xboxes the year Xbox One released idexx boxes on a train. In the middle in the dead center of the country and we literally sent a helicopter to pick the Xboxes up, the train and fly them to Toronto so that we could actually meet because we took pre-orders right and we had to meet release date delivery on those Xboxes so we've done some crazy stuff to make it work in Canada. Jason: [50:52] Yeah that's a whole new new definition of air air freight geez. The the drones will hopefully sell help with that I did want to you mentioned that you were seeing kind of the the caps and quotas moving from from skews two categories, one interesting hypothesis I've heard from a bunch of like reasonably high volume Amazon sellers at the moment is. As the catalog has gotten so huge and there's like some counts like 800 million skus in the catalog now, um there's a hypothesis that Amazon is strongly preferencing new skus and so a lot of people have said that they feel like. The the caps and quotas that they're getting on, mature skews that in the old days like your quota would have just gotten bigger every year based on your sales history that they're now running into this new problem, Amazon is reserving a fair amount of space for new stuff instead of the old stuff and I can imagine, that's scary and or problematic in in your business model have you seen that at all is that viable. Alex: [52:03] I have seen shatter about it that is we have empirically not seen that to be the case for our brands. We also don't operate in every category you know I'm sure there are plenty of higher-volume you know on a brand by brand. Basis sellers out there who are seeing crazy stuff, for us like I said we're launching a whole host of new products and it's 20 units at a time and then you sell out but now your cap is 60, you're like awesome I have three times the cap but it's still 60 it's not 6,000 which is what we would need to actually you know generate the volume that's going to get us on page one and so. While our you know top-selling products we are running up against caps there as well it has not been. [52:56] The issue really comes from when you have a brand level cap your best selling products are inevitably going to take up most of the calf. And in order for us to hold a rational level of Safety stock it doesn't leave a whole lot of extra space for the new products and so you know again we're not really seeing that that. You know thought bear out in our businesses doesn't mean that they aren't. But yeah it just we don't we don't pun intended we don't put a lot of stock in that right now. Scot: [53:35] The, one question we've been following this kind of Amazon versus Shopify debate and we've had some folks on talking about headless Commerce, have you guys thought about you know another big strategy for anyone selling on Amazon is it open up your own website have you guys chosen a platform there or do you have any opinions about kind of where the e-commerce platform Wars are going. Alex: [53:59] I have a lot of opinions we are so the direct to Consumer space, is is what we firmly believe is like very core to our ability as a company to build long-term value. To have a website that customers interact with engage with our loyal to no no to find products from we believe that score for some Brands more than others right, we have inherited. By way of acquisition most people just spin up a Shopify account and then fulfill the FBA and so we have predominantly leaned into Shopify as a platform for now I think. [54:51] We are still so focused. At this time especially at this time in making sure that we're in stock on Amazon and that we have sort of that nuts and bolts Day Zero operational excellence with Amazon which is core to our portfolio that we haven't, we haven't we haven't dedicated a tremendous amount of resources and fully kicking the tires on all of the Headless options all of the other platform options we've had conversations with all of them we haven't actually, made a concerted effort to say we are 100% doing away with Shopify in favor of X for these reasons we haven't seen the need quite frankly. Scot: [55:35] And then so you've been in the retail game for quite a while one of our kind of favorite ending questions is if you kind of think forward let's say 3 or 5 years kind of take you out of the, the current where do you where do you see e-commerce? Alex: [55:52] Wow I asked a flavor of this question when I interview people. Scot: [55:56] We're turning it on you. Alex: [55:58] So What this is bringing up is feelings reactions to a lot of the changes around consumer privacy you know iOS 14 and all of their for the platforms, that were. You know I'll say hoovering up data and applying it and sometimes great ways and in other times may be less great ways I. [56:29] It hurts me a little bit inside because what I believe is that actually. [56:36] The the ability for us to build like to use data to build products that Delight customers. That is core to again building long-term value and I also believe in this is getting back to the question that the ability. To reach customers where they want to shop with the products that they're most interested or that that suit them the best I think we've taken a step back from that. And my hope is that we will continue to evolve responsibly. As a society and as companies as Leaders of sort of this new wave of retail in a way that can still surprising Delight customers that can deliver product innovations that are meaningful and they're not just you know we, wiggle a little here we do a little dongle there and today it's a new product because it's actually fundamentally not like I love you. The next 3 to 5 years as an evolution toward getting even smarter about the products that were building even better at, reaching consumers who are actually interested in what we're, selling so that you're not just on your endless Scroll of social media and you're getting hit with ads that are is completely irrelevant and it sort of degrades your experience on that platform and the degrades the brand experience and that's what we care about we care about the brand experience. Jason: [58:02] That would be awesome if it plays out we'll have to see ox. Alex: [58:05] We will see. Jason: [58:06] Exactly well hopefully you'll be like retired and fabulously wealthy so you'll just be be watching it from Jeff Bezos jot but that's gonna have to be where we leave it because it's happening again we've used up an hour of our listeners time. I know it goes fast we've certainly enjoyed chatting with you if listeners have any comments or questions they're encouraged to, hit us up on Twitter or leave us a note on our Facebook page and as always if you enjoyed this episode we sure would be grateful if you jump on iTunes and give us that five-star review. Scot: [58:41] Alex we really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule dominating the Amazon aggregation world and if folks want to find you online what's kind of the best place to you are you on the the Twitter box are my spacer where do you hang out online. Alex: [58:58] Oh my gosh do I still have a MySpace account that's kind of scary. Jason: [59:02] He has a Twitch account he's he's twitch he's a twitch streamer. Alex: [59:06] That's right yeah no you can find me on Twitch no I am predominantly on LinkedIn you can connect this me follow me on LinkedIn shoot me a message there feel free to drop me a line Alex at foreign Brands.com otherwise I am on the Twitter box but I am. Sadly not as much of a contributor as I wish that I that I wish that I could be I'm just not that funny. Scot: [59:28] Well I think you did pretty good here on the show you were funnier than Jason which is what's actually kind of a low bar but. Jason: [59:33] Yeah don't I don't let that stop me for god sakes. Scot: [59:35] Do you think is the most activity out of his grumpy old man tweets. But that's a topic for another show but thanks we really appreciate the time and. Jason: [59:49] Until next time happy commerceing.

It's the mid 2000s, and social media is mainstream. MySpace has eclipsed Friendster and been acquired by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Meanwhile, another company is quietly reinventing social media yet again, founded by a college sophomore with a rare combination of technical skill and strong business instincts. His name is Mark Zuckerberg, and his company, The Facebook, will soon challenge MySpace and its new corporate owner for control of the social media landscape.Listen to new episodes 1 week early and ad free, and access exclusive seasons of American Innovations with Wondery+. Join Wondery+ for exclusives, binges, early access, and ad free listening. Available in the Wondery App https://wondery.app.link/innovations.Support us by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week we hold off the coming apocalpyse with pure kitten power, it's the only way to truly be sure. So grab those diarys, find a suitable writing implement and be inspired by nine world saving songs from The Bambies, Trigger Cut, E.T. Explore Me, Sister Suzie, The Cramps, Millie Manders And The Shut Up, Los Chicos, Umbrella Assassins and Beach Riot.Oops, Comedy Suburbs, Voice of Jeff, Tony has your Facebook comments, Myspace, last week, our new cover, running, Apocalypse Babys update, Brand New Cherry Flavour, From the Vaults, Tony's International Gig Guide, this week, cleaning, Izzatwat, OMD and as the apocalypse is now officially on us we hope you enjoyed your life and thank you for listening... Bon Voyage!Song 1: The Bambies – Teen EngineSong 2: Trigger Cut – Solid StateSong 3: E.T. Explore Me – Drug MeSong 4: Sister Suzie – Are You Gonna (Give Me A Kiss)Song 5: The Cramps – Eyeball In My MartiniSong 6: Millie Manders And The Shut Up – Broken RecordSong 7: Los Chicos – Party TrainSong 8: Umbrella Assassins – Missed The BusSong 9: Beach Riot - Wraith