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At the start of April I managed to catch back up with Peter Byck for this chat which feels well timed not just because it was a rare pause in his ongoing schedule of travels, but because there's a lot being rolled out right now by the whole 'Roots So Deep' team to scale up the impact that the docu-series has already seeded. We talk about:Touring with Roots So DeepThe importance of taking action (for regeneration)Food resilience and nutrient densityCommunity, scaling & next steps for Roots So DeepFor more background about Roots So Deep you can check out my previous interview with Peter: https://www.wearecarbon.earth/peter-byck-roots-so-deep/Or head to their website where you can watch the trailer, rent the series and explore their new Patreon & podcast: https://rootssodeep.org/Check out the special compilation from We Are Carbon which also features Peter:It's called "Time to Look At It Differently - Because Carbon Builds Life". Find it here: https://www.wearecarbon.earth/because-carbon-builds-life/Timestamps for this episode:00:00 - Intro02:14 - Touring with Roots So Deep06:43 - Importance of taking action11:20 - Resilient food & nutrient density17:50 - Regenerative grazing at a global context24:00 - Scaling with community and next steps

 1 After this, Jesus shewed himself again to the disciples at the sea of Tiberias. And he shewed himself after this manner.Postea manifestavit se iterum Jesus discipulis ad mare Tiberiadis. Manifestavit autem sic : 2 There were together Simon Peter, and Thomas, who is called Didymus, and Nathanael, who was of Cana of Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples.erant simul Simon Petrus, et Thomas, qui dicitur Didymus, et Nathanael, qui erat a Cana Galilaeae, et filii Zebedaei, et alii ex discipulis ejus duo. 3 Simon Peter saith to them: I go a fishing. They say to him: We also come with thee. And they went forth, and entered into the ship: and that night they caught nothing.Dicit eis Simon Petrus : Vado piscari. Dicunt ei : Venimus et nos tecum. Et exierunt, et ascenderunt in navim : et illa nocte nihil prendiderunt. 4 But when the morning was come, Jesus stood on the shore: yet the disciples knew not that it was Jesus.Mane autem facto stetit Jesus in littore : non tamen cognoverunt discipuli quia Jesus est. 5 Jesus therefore said to them: Children, have you any meat? They answered him: No.Dixit ergo eis Jesus : Pueri, numquid pulmentarium habetis? Responderunt ei : Non. 6 He saith to them: Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and you shall find. They cast therefore; and now they were not able to draw it, for the multitude of fishes.Dicit eis : Mittite in dexteram navigii rete, et invenietis. Miserunt ergo : et jam non valebant illud trahere prae multitudine piscium. 7 That disciple therefore whom Jesus loved, said to Peter: It is the Lord. Simon Peter, when he heard that it was the Lord, girt his coat about him, (for he was naked,) and cast himself into the sea.Dixit ergo discipulus ille, quem diligebat Jesus, Petro : Dominus est. Simon Petrus cum audisset quia Dominus est, tunica succinxit se ( erat enim nudus) et misit se in mare. 8 But the other disciples came in the ship, (for they were not far from the land, but as it were two hundred cubits,) dragging the net with fishes.Alii autem discipuli navigio venerunt ( non enim longe erant a terra, sed quasi cubitis ducentis), trahentes rete piscium. 9 As soon then as they came to land, they saw hot coals lying, and a fish laid thereon, and bread.Ut ergo descenderunt in terram, viderunt prunas positas, et piscem superpositum, et panem. 10 Jesus saith to them: Bring hither of the fishes which you have now caught.Dicit eis Jesus : Afferte de piscibus, quos prendidistis nunc. 11 Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land, full of great fishes, one hundred and fifty-three. And although there were so many, the net was not broken.Ascendit Simon Petrus et traxit rete in terram, plenum magnis piscibus centum quinquaginta tribus. Et cum tanti essent, non est scissum rete. 12 Jesus saith to them: Come, and dine. And none of them who were at meat, durst ask him: Who art thou? knowing that it was the Lord.Dicit eis Jesus : Venite, prandete. Et nemo audebat discumbentium interrogare eum : Tu quis es? scientes, quia Dominus est. 13 And Jesus cometh and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish in like manner.Et venit Jesus, et accipit panem, et dat eis, et piscem similiter. 14 This is now the third time that Jesus was manifested to his disciples, after he was risen from the dead.Hoc jam tertio manifestatus est Jesus discipulis suis cum resurrexisset a mortuis

Rounding Up Season 3 | Episode 1 – Grouping Practices That Promote Efficacy and Knowledge Transfer Guest: Dr. Peter Liljedahl Mike Wallus: We know from research that student collaboration can have a powerful impact on learning. That said, how we group students for collaboration matters—a lot. Today we're talking with Dr. Peter Liljedahl, author of “Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics,” about how educators can form productive, collaborative groups in their classrooms. Mike: Hello, Peter. Welcome to the podcast. Peter Liljedahl: Thanks for having me. Mike: So, to offer our listeners some background, you've written a book, called “Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics,” and I think it's fair to say that it's had a pretty profound impact on many educators. In the book, you address 14 different practices. And I'm wondering if you could weigh in on how you weigh the importance of the different practices that you addressed? Peter: Well, OK, so, first of all, 14 is a big number that publishers don't necessarily like. When we first started talking with Corwin about this, they were very open. But I know if you think about books, if there's going to be a number in the title, the number is usually three, five or seven. It's sometimes eight—but 14 is a ridiculous number. They can't all be that valuable. What's important about the fact that it's 14, is that 14 is the number of core practices that every teacher does. That's not to say that there aren't more or less for some teachers, but these are core routines that we all do. We all use tasks. We all create groups for collaboration. We all have the students work somewhere. We all answer questions. We do homework, we assign notes, we do formative, summative assessment. We do all of these things. We consolidate lessons. We launch lessons. Peter: These are sort of the building blocks of what makes our teaching. And through a lot of time in classrooms, I deduced this list of 14. Robert Kaplinsky, in one of his blog posts, actually said that he thinks that that list of 14 probably accounts for 95 percent of what happens in classrooms. And my research was specifically about, “How do we enact each of those 14 so that we can maximize student thinking? So, what kind of tasks get students to think, how can we create groups so that more thinking happens? How can we consolidate a lesson so we get more thinking? How can we do formative and summative assessments so the students are thinking more?” So, the book is about responding to those 14 core routines and the research around how to enact each of those to maximize thinking. Your question around which one is, “How do we put weight on each of these?” Peter: They're all important. But, of course, they're not all equally impactful. Building thinking classrooms is most often recognized visually as the thing where students are standing at whiteboards working. And, of course, that had a huge impact on student engagement and thinking in the classroom, getting them from sitting and working at desks to getting them working at whiteboards. But in my opinion, it's not the most impactful. It is hugely impactful, but the one that actually makes all of thinking classroom function is how we form collaborative groups, which is chapter two. And it seems like that is such an inconsequential thing. “We've been doing groups for forever, and we got this figured out. We know how to do this. But … do we really? Do we really have it figured out?” Because my research really showed that if we want to get students thinking, then the ways we've been doing it aren't working. Mike: I think that's a great segue. And I want to take a step back, Peter. Before we talk about grouping, I want to ask what might be an obvious question. But I wonder if we can talk about the “why” behind collaboration. How would you describe the value or the potential impact of collaboration on students' learning experiences? Peter: That's a great question. We've been doing collaborative work for decades. And by and large, we see that it is effective. We have data that shows that it's effective. And when I say “we,” I don't mean me or the people I work with. I mean “we, in education,” know that collaboration is important. But why? What is it about collaboration that makes it effective? There are a lot of different things. It could be as simple as it breaks the monotony of having to sit and listen. But let's get into some really powerful things that collaboration does. Number one, about 25 years ago, we all were talking about metacognition. We know that metacognition is so powerful and so effective, and if we get students thinking about their thinking, then their thinking actually improves. And metacognition has been shown time and time again to be impactful in learning. Some of the listeners might be old enough to remember the days where we were actually trying to teach students to be metacognitive, and the frustration that that created because it is virtually impossible. Peter: Being reflective about your thinking while you're thinking is incredibly hard to do because it requires you to be both present and reflective at the same time. We're pretty good at being present, and we're pretty good about reflecting on our experiences. But to do both simultaneously is incredibly hard to do. And to teach someone to do it is difficult. But I think we've also all had that experience where a student puts up their hand, and you start walking over to them, and just as you get there, they go, “Never mind.” Or they pick up their book, and they walk over to you, and just as they get to you, they just turn around and walk back. I used to tell my students that they're smarter when they're closer to me. But what's really going on there is, as they've got their hand up, or as they're walking across the room toward you as a teacher, they're starting to formulate their thoughts to ask a question. Peter: They're preparing to externalize their thinking. And that is an incredibly metacognitive process. One of the easiest forms of metacognition, and one of the easiest ways to access metacognition, is just to have students collaborate. Collaborating requires students to talk. It requires them to organize their thoughts. It requires them to prepare their thinking and to think about their thinking for the purposes of externalization. It is an incredibly accessible way of creating metacognition in your classroom, which we already know is effective. So, that's one reason I think collaboration is really, really vital. Peter: Another one comes from the work on register. So, register is the level of sophistication with which we speak about something. So, if I'm in a classroom, and I'm talking to kindergarten students, I set a register that is accessible to them. When I talk to my undergraduates, I use a different register. My master's students, my Ph.D. students, my colleagues, I'm using different registers. I can be talking about the same thing, but the level of sophistication with which I'm going to talk about those things varies depending on the audience. And as much as possible, we try to vary our register to suit the audience we have. But I think we've also all had that instructor who's completely incapable of varying their register, the one who just talks at you as if you're a third-year undergraduate when you're really a Great Eight student. And the ability to vary our register to a huge degree is going to define what makes us successful as a teacher. Can we meet our learners where they're at? Can we talk to them from the perspective that they're at? Now we can work at it, and very adept teachers are good at it. But even the best teachers are not as good at getting their register to be the same as students. Peter: So, this is another reason collaboration is so effective. It allows students to talk and be talked to at their register, which is the most accessible form of communication for them. And I think the third reason that collaboration is so important is the difference between what I talk in my book about the difference between absolute and tentative knowledge. So, I'm going to make two statements. You tell me which one is more inviting to add a comment to. So, statement number one is, “This is how to do it, or this is what I did.” That's statement number one. Statement number two is, “I think that one of the ways that we may want to try, I'm wondering if this might work.” Which one is more inviting for you to contribute to? Mike: Yes, statement number two, for many, many reasons, as I'm sitting here thinking about the impact of those two different language structures. Peter: So, as teachers, we tend to talk in absolutes. The absolute communication doesn't give us anything to hold onto. It's not engaging. It's not inviting. It doesn't bring us into the conversation. It's got no rough patches—it's just smooth. But when that other statement is full of hedging, it's tentative. It's got so many rough patches, so many things to contribute to, things I want to add to, maybe push back at or push further onto. And that's how students talk to each other. When you put them in collaborative groups, they talk in tentative discourse, whereas teachers, we tend to talk in absolutes. So, students are always talking to each other like that. When we put them in collaborative groups, they're like, “Well, maybe we should try this. I'm wondering if this'll work. Hey, have we thought about this? I wonder if?” And it's so inviting to contribute to. Mike: That's fascinating. I'm going to move a little bit and start to focus on grouping. So, in the book, you looked really closely at the way that we group students for collaborative problem-solving and how that impacts the way students engage in a collaborative effort. And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the type of things that you were examining. Peter: OK. So, you don't have to spend a lot of time in classrooms before you see the two dominant paradigms for grouping. So, the first one we tend to see a lot at elementary school. So, that one is called “strategic grouping.” Strategic grouping is where the teacher has a goal, and then they're going to group their students to satisfy that goal. So, maybe my goal is to differentiate, so I'm going to make ability groups. Or maybe my goal is to increase productivity, so I'm going to make mixed-ability groups. Or maybe my goal is to just have peace and quiet, so I'm going to keep those certain students apart. Whatever my goal is, I'm going to create the groups to try to achieve that goal, recognizing that how students behave in the classroom has a lot to do with who they're partnered with. So that's strategic grouping. It is the dominant grouping paradigm we see in elementary school. Peter: By the time we get to high school, we tend to see more of teachers going, “Work with who you want.” This is called “self-selected groupings.” And this is when students are given the option to group themselves any way they want. And alert: They don't group themselves for academic reasons, they group themselves for social reasons. And I think every listener can relate to both of those forms of grouping. It turns out that both of those are highly ineffective at getting students to think. And ironically, for the exact same reason. We surveyed hundreds of students who were in these types of grouping settings: strategic grouping or self-selected groupings. We asked one question, “If you knew you were going to work in groups today, what is the likelihood you would offer an idea?” That was it. And 80 percent of students said that they were unlikely or highly unlikely to offer an idea, and that was the exact same, whether they were in strategic groupings or self-selected groupings. The data cut the same. Mike: That's amazing, Peter. Peter: Yeah, and it's for the same reason it turns out; that whether students were being grouped strategically or self-selected, they already knew what their role was that day. They knew what was expected of them. And for 80 percent of the students, their role is not to think. It's not to lead. Their role is to follow, right? And that's true whether they're grouping themselves socially, where they already know the social hierarchy of this group, or they're being grouped strategically. We interviewed hundreds of students. And after grade 3, every single student could tell us why they were in the group this teacher placed them in. They know. They know what you think of them. You're communicating very clearly what you think their abilities are through the way you group them, and then they live down to that expectation. So, that's what we were seeing in classrooms was that strategic grouping may be great at keeping the peace. And self-selected grouping may be fabulous for getting students to stop whining about collaboration. But neither of them was effective for getting students to think. In fact, they were quite the opposite. They were highly ineffective for getting students to think. Mike: So, I want to keep going with this. And I think one of the things that stood out for me as I was reading is, this notion that regardless of the rationale that a teacher might have for grouping, there's almost always a mismatch between what the teacher's goals are and what the student's goals are. I wonder if you could just unpack this and maybe explain this a bit more. Peter: So, when you do strategic grouping, do you really think the students are with the students that they want to be with? One of the things that we saw happening in elementary school was that strategic grouping is difficult. It takes a lot of effort to try to get the balance right. So, what we saw was teachers largely doing strategic grouping once a month. They would put students into a strategic group, and they would keep them in that group for the entire month. And the kids care a lot about who they're with, when you're going to be in a group for a month. And do you think they were happy with everybody that was in that group? If I'm going to be with a group of students for a month, I'd rather pick those students myself. So, they're not happy. You've created strategic groupings. And, by definition, a huge part of strategic grouping is keeping kids who want to be together away from each other. Peter: They're not happy with that. Self-selected groupings, the students are not grouping themselves for academic reasons. They're just grouping themselves for social reasons so that they can socialize, so they talk, so they can be off topic, and all of these things. And yes, they're not complaining about group work, but they're also not being productive. So, the students are happy. But do you think the teacher's happy? Do you think the teacher looks out across that room and goes, “Yeah, there were some good choices made there.” No, nobody's happy, right? If I'm grouping them strategically, that's not matching their goals. That's not matching their social goals. When they're grouping themselves in self-selected ways, that's matching their social goals but not matching my academic goals for them. So, there's always going to be this mismatch. The teacher, more often than not, has academic goals. The students, more often than not, have social goals. There are some overlaps, right? There are students who are like, “I'm not happy with this group. I know I'm not going to do well in this group. I'm not going to be productive.” And there are some teachers who are going, “I really need this student to come out of the shell, so I need to get them to socialize more.” But other than that, by and large, our goals as teachers are academic in nature. The goals as students are social in nature. Mike: I think one of the biggest takeaways from your work on grouping, for me at least, was the importance of using random groups. And I have to admit, when I read that there was a part of me thinking back to my days as a first-grade teacher that felt a little hesitant. As I read, I came to think about that differently. But I'm wondering if you can talk about why random groups matter, the kind of impact that they have on the collaborative experience and the learning experience for kids. Peter: Alright, so going back to the previous question. So, we have this mismatch. And we have also that 80 percent of students are not thinking; 80 percent of students are entering into that group, not prepared to offer an idea. So those are the two problems that we're trying to address here. So, random groups … random wasn't good enough. It had to be visibly random. The students had to see the randomness because when we first tried it, we said, “Here's your random groups.” They didn't believe we were being random. They just thought we were being strategic. So, it has to be visibly random, and it turns out it has to be frequent as well. About once every 45 to 75 minutes. See, when students are put into random groups, they don't know what their role is. So, we're solving this problem. They don't know what their role is. When we started doing visibly random groups frequently, within three weeks we were running that same survey. Peter: “If you know you're going to work in groups today, what is the likelihood you would offer an idea?” Remember the baseline data was that 80 percent of students said that they were unlikely or highly unlikely, and, all of a sudden, we have a hundred percent of students saying that they're likely or highly likely. That was one thing that it solved. It shifted this idea that students were now entering groups willing to offer an idea, and that's despite 50 percent of them saying, “It probably won't lead to a solution, but I'm going to offer an idea.” Now why is that? Because they don't know what their role is. So, right on the surface, what random groups does, is it shatters this idea of preconceived roles and then preconceived behaviors. So, now they enter the groups willing to offer an idea, willing to be a contributor, not thinking that their role is just to follow. But there's a time limit to this because within 45 to 75 minutes, they're going to start to fall into roles. Peter: In that first 45 minutes, the roles are constantly negotiated. They're dynamic. So, one student is being the leader, and the others are being the follower. And now, someone else is a leader, the others are following. Now everyone is following. They need some help from some external source. Now everyone is leading. We've got to resolve that. But there is all of this dynamicism and negotiation going on around the roles. But after 45 to 75 minutes, this sort of stabilizes and now you have sort of a leader and followers, and that's when we need to randomize again so that the roles are dynamic and that the students aren't falling into sort of predefined patterns of non-thinking behavior. Mike: I think this is fascinating because we've been doing some work internally at MLC around this idea of status or the way that … the stories that kids tell about one another or the labels that kids carry either from school systems or from the community that they come from, and how those things are subtle. They're unspoken, but they often play a role in classroom dynamics in who gets called on. What value kids place on a peer's idea if it is shared. What you're making me think is there's a direct line between this thing that we've been thinking about and what happens in small groups as well. Peter: Yeah, for sure. So, you mentioned status. I want to add to that identity and self-efficacy and so on and so forth. One of the interesting pieces of data that came out of the research into random groups was, we were interviewing students several weeks into this. And we were asking them questions around this, and the students were saying things like, “Oh, the teacher thinks we're all the same, otherwise they wouldn't do random groups. The teacher thinks we're all capable, otherwise they wouldn't do random groups.” So, what we're actually talking about here is that we're starting—just simply through random groups—to have a positive impact on student self-efficacy. One of the things that came out of this work, that I wrote about in a separate paper, was that we've known for a long time that student self-efficacy has a huge impact on student performance. But how do we increase, how do we improve student self-efficacy? Peter: There are a whole bunch of different ways. The work of Bandura on this is absolutely instrumental. But it comes down to a couple of things. From a classroom teacher perspective, the first thing, in order for a student to start on this journey from low self-efficacy to high self-efficacy, they have to encounter a teacher who believes in them. Except students don't listen to what we say. They listen to what we do. So, simply telling our students that we have confidence in them doesn't actually have much impact. It's how we show them that we have confidence in them. And it turns out that random groups actually have a huge impact on that. By doing the random groups, we're actually showing the kids that we believe in them and then they start to internalize this. So that's one thing. The work of Bandura about how we can start to shift student self-efficacy through mastery experiences, where they start to, for example, be successful at something. And that starts to have an impact that is amplified when students start to be successful in front of others, when they are the ones who are contributing in a small group. And that group is now successful. And that success is linked in some small or great part to your contributions; that self-efficacy is amplified because not only am I being successful, I'm being successful in a safe environment, but in front of others. Peter: Now, self-efficacy contributes to identity, and identity has an interesting relationship with status. And you mentioned status. So, self-efficacy is what I think of myself. Status is what others think of me. I can't control my status. I can't shift my status. Status is something that is bestowed on me by others. And, of course, it's affected by their interactions with me in collaborative spaces. So, how they get to see me operate is going to create a status for me, on me, by others. But the status gets to be really nicely evenly distributed in thinking classrooms when we're doing these random groups because everybody gets to be seen as capable. They all get to be someone who can be mathematical and someone who can contribute mathematically. Mike: I want to shift back for a moment to this idea of visibly random groups. This idea that for kids, they need to believe that it's not just a strategic grouping that I've called random for the sake of the moment. What are some of the ways that you've seen teachers visibly randomize their groups so that kids really could see the proof was right out there in front of them? Peter: So, we first started with just cards. So, we got 27 kids. We're going to use playing cards, we're going to have three aces, three 2S, three 3s, three 4s, and so on. We would just shuffle the deck, and the kids would come and take a card. And if you're a 4, you would go to the board that has a 4 on it. Or maybe that fourth 4 is there, so to speak. We learned a whole bunch of things. It has to be visible. And however way we do it, the randomization doesn't just tell them what group they're in, it tells them where to go. That's an efficiency thing. You don't want kids walking around the classroom looking for their partners and then spending 5 minutes deciding where they want to work. Take a card, you got a 7, you go to the 7 board. You got an ace, you go to the ace board. Peter: And that worked incredibly well. Some teachers already had Popsicle sticks in their classroom, so they started using those: Popsicle sticks with students' names. So, they would pull three Popsicle sticks and they would say, “OK, these students are together. These students are together.” At first, we didn't see any problems with that. That seemed to be pretty isomorphic … to using a playing card. Some teachers got frustrated with the cards because with a card, sometimes what happens is that they get ripped or torn or they don't come back. Or they come back, and they're sweaty or they're hot. And it's like, “OK, where were you keeping this card? I don't want to know. It's hot, it's dirty.” They got ink on it. The cards don't come back. The kids are swapping cards. And teachers were frustrated by this. So, they started using digital randomizers, things like Flippity and ClassDojo and Picker Wheel and Team Shake and Team Maker. Peter: There were tons of these digital randomizers, and they all work pretty much the same. But there was a bit of a concern that the students may not perceive the randomness as much in these methods. And you can amplify that by, for example, bringing in a fuzzy [die], a big one, and somebody gets to roll it. And if a 5 comes up, they get to come up and hit the randomized button five times. And now there's a greater perception of randomness that's happening. With Flippity, that turns out actually it'd be true. Turns out that the first randomization is not purely random, and the kids spot that pattern. And we thought, “OK, perfect. That's fine. As long as the students perceive it's random, that it is truly random, that the teacher isn't somehow hacking this so that they are able to impose their own bias into this space.” So, it's seemingly random, but not purely random. And everything was running fine until about six to eight months ago. I was spending a lot of time in classrooms. I think in the last 14 months I've been in 144 different classrooms, co-teaching or teaching. So, I was spending a lot of time in classrooms, and for efficiency's sake, a lot of these teachers were using digital randomizers. And then I noticed something. It had always been there, but I hadn't noticed it. This is the nature of research. It's also the nature of just being a fly on the wall, or someone who's observing a classroom or a teacher. There's so much to notice we can't notice it all. So, we notice the things that are obvious. The more time we spend in spaces, the more nuanced things we're able to notice. And about six to eight months ago, I noticed something that, like I said, has always been there, but I had never really noticed it. Peter: Teacher hits a randomized button, and all the students are standing there watching, waiting for the randomized groups to appear on the screen. And then somebody goes, “Ugh.” It's so small. Or somebody laughs. Or somebody's like, “Nooo.” And it's gone. It's in a moment, it's gone. Sometimes others snicker about it, but it's gone. It's a flash. And it's always been there, and you think it's not a big deal. Turns out it's a huge deal because this is a form of micro-bullying. This is what I call it, “micro-bullying.” Because when somebody goes, “Ugh,” everybody in the room knows who said it. And looking at the screen, they know who they said it about. And this student, themself, knows who said it, and they know that they're saying it about them. And what makes this so much worse than other overt forms of bullying is that they also are keenly aware that everybody in the room just witnessed and saw this happen, including the teacher. Peter: And it cuts deeply. And the only thing that makes bullying worse is when bullying happens in front of someone who's supposed to protect you, and they don't; not because we're evil, but because it's so short, it's so small, it's over in a flash. We don't really see the magnitude of this. But this has deep psychological effects and emotional effects on these students. Not just that they know that this person doesn't like them. But they know that everybody knows that they don't like them. And then what happens on the second day? The second day, whoever's got that student, that victimized student in their group, when the randomization happens, they also go, “Ugh,” because this has become acceptable now. This is normative. Within a week, this student might be completely ostracized. And it's just absolutely normal to sort of hate on this one student. Peter: It's just not worth it. It cuts too deeply. Now you can try to stop it. You can try to control it, but good luck, right? I've seen teachers try to say, “OK, that's it. You're not allowed to say anything when the randomization happens. You're not allowed to cheer, you're not allowed to grunt, you're not allowed to groan, you're not allowed to laugh. All you can do is go to your boards.” Then they hit the random, and immediately you hear someone go, “Ugh.” And they'll look at them, and the student will go, “What? That's how I breathe.” Or “I stubbed my toe where I thought of something funny.” It's virtually impossible to shut it down because it's such a minor thing. But seemingly minor. In about 50 percent of elementary classrooms that I'm in, where a teacher uses that digital randomizer, you don't hear it. But 50 percent you do. Almost 100 percent of high school classrooms I'm in you hear some sort of grunt or groan or complaint. Peter: It's not worth it. Just buy more cards. Go to the casino, get free cards. Go to the dollar store, get them cheap. It's just not worth it. Now, let's get back to the Popsicle stick one. It actually has the same effect. “I'm going to pull three names. I'm going to read out which three names there are, and I'm going to drop them there.” And somebody goes, “Ugh.” But why does this not happen with cards? It doesn't happen with cards because when you take that card, you don't know what group you're in. You don't know who else is in your group. All you know is where to go. You take that card, you don't know who else is in your group. There's no grunting, groaning, laughing, snickering. And then when you do get to the group, there might be someone there that you don't like working with. So, the student might go, “Ugh.” But now there's no audience to amplify this effect. And because there's no audience, more often than not, they don't bother going, “Ugh.” Go back to the cards, people. The digital randomizers are fast and efficient, but they're emotionally really traumatizing. Mike: I think that's a really subtle but important piece for people who are thinking about doing this for the first time. And I appreciate the way that you described the psychological impact on students and the way that using the cards engineers less of the audience than the randomizer [do]. Peter: Yeah, for sure. Mike: Well, let's shift a little bit and just talk about your recommendations for group size, particularly students in kindergarten through second grade as opposed to students in third grade through fifth grade. Can you talk about your recommendations and what are the things that led you to them? Peter: First of all, what led to it? It was just so clear, so obvious. The result was that groups of three were optimal. And that turned out to be true every setting, every grade. There are some caveats to that, and I'll talk about that in a minute. But groups of three were obvious. We saw this in the data almost immediately. Every time we had groups of three, we heard three voices. Every time we heard groups of four, we heard three voices. When we had groups of five, we heard two voices on task, two voices off task, and one voice was silent. Groups of three were just that sort of perfect, perfect group size. It took a long time to understand why. And the reason why comes from something called “complexity theory.” Complexity theory tells us that in order for a group to be productive, it has to have a balance between diversity and redundancy. Peter: So, redundancy is the things that are the same. We need redundancy. We need things like common language, common notation, common vocabulary, common knowledge. We need to have things in common in order for the collaboration to even start. But if all we have is redundancy, then the group is no better than the individual. We also have to have diversity. Diversity is what every individual brings to the group that's different. And the thing that happens is, when the group sizes get larger, the diversity goes up, but redundancy goes down. And that's bad. And when the group sizes get smaller, the redundancy goes up, but the diversity goes down. And that's bad. Groups of three seem to have this perfect balance of redundancy and diversity. It was just the perfect group size. And if you reflect on groups that you've done in your settings, whatever that setting was, you'll probably start to recognize that groups of three were always more effective than groups of four. Peter: But we learned some other things. We learned that in K–2, for example, groups of three were still optimal, but we had to start with groups of two. Why? Because very young children don't know how to collaborate yet. They come to school in kindergarten, they're still working in what we call “parallel,” which means that they'll happily stand side by side at a whiteboard with their own marker and work on their own things side by side. They're working in parallel. Eventually, we move them to a state that we call “polite turn-taking.” Polite turn-taking is we can have two students working at a whiteboard sharing one marker, but they're still working independently. So, “It's now your turn and you're working on your thing, and now it's my turn, I'm working on my thing.” Eventually, we get them to a state of collaboration. And collaboration is defined as “when what one student says or does affects what the other student says or does.” Peter: And now we have collaboration happening. Very young kids don't come to school naturally able to collaborate. I've been in kindergarten classrooms in October where half the groups are polite turn-taking, and half the groups are collaborating. It is possible to accelerate them toward that state. But I've also been in grade 2 classrooms in March where the students are still working in parallel or turn-taking. We need to work actively at improving the collaboration that's actually happening. Once collaboration starts to happen in those settings, we nurtured for a while and then we move to groups of three. So, I can have kindergartens by the end of the year working in groups of three, but I can't assume that grade 2s can do it at the beginning of the year. It has a lot to do with the explicit efforts that have been made to foster collaboration in the classroom. And having students sit side by side and pair desks does not foster collaboration. It fosters parallel play. Peter: So, we always say that “K–2, start with groups of two, see where their level of collaboration is, nurture that work on it, move toward groups of three.” The other setting that we had to start in groups of two were alternate ed settings. Not because the kids can't collaborate, but because they don't trust yet. They don't trust in the process in the educational setting. We have to nurture that. Once they start to trust in working in groups of two, we can move to groups of three. But the data was clear on this. So, if you have a classroom, and let's say you're teaching grade 6, and you don't have a perfect multiple of three, what do you do? You make some groups of two. So, rather than groups of four, make some groups of two. Keep those groups of two close to each other so that they may start to collaborate together. Peter: And that was one of the ironies of the research: If I make a group of four, it's a Dumpster fire. If I make two groups of two and put them close to each other, and they start to talk to each other, it works great. You start with groups of two. So, having some extra groups of two is handy if you're teaching in high school or any grade, to be honest. But let's say you have 27 students on your roster, but only 24 are there. There's going to be this temptation to make eight groups of three. Don't do it. Make nine groups, have a couple of groups of two. Because the minute you get up and running, someone's going to walk in late. And then when they walk in late, it's so much easier to plug them into a group of two than to have them waiting for another person to come along so that they can pair them or to make a group of four. Mike: Yeah, that makes sense. Before we close, Peter, I want to talk about two big ideas that I really wish I would've understood more clearly when I was still in the classroom. What I'm thinking about are the notion of crossing social boundaries and then also the concept of knowledge mobility. And I'm wondering if you could talk about each of them in turn and talk about how they relate to one another. Peter: Certainly. So, when we make our groups, when we make groups, groups are very discreet. I think this comes from that sort of strategic grouping, or even self-selected groupings where the groups are really separate from each other. There are very well-defined boundaries around this group, and everything that happens, happens inside that group, and nothing happens between groups. In fact, as teachers, we often encourage that, and we're like, “No, do your own work in your group. Don't be talking to the other groups.” Because the whole purpose of doing strategic groups is to keep certain kids away from each other, and that creates a very non-permeable boundary between the groups. But what if we can make these boundaries more porous, and so that knowledge actually starts to flow between the groups. This is what's called “knowledge mobility,” the idea that we don't actually want the knowledge to be fixed only inside of a group. Peter: The smartest person in the room is the room. We got to get that knowledge moving around the room. It's not groups, it's groups among groups. So, how can we get what one group is achieving and learning to move to another group that's maybe struggling? And this is called “knowledge mobility.” The easiest way to increase this is we have the students working at vertical whiteboards. Working at vertical whiteboards creates a space where passive knowledge mobility is really easy to do. It's really easy to look over your shoulder and see what another group is doing and go, “Oh, let's try that. They made a table of values. Let's make a table of values. Or they've done a graph, or they drew a picture” or whatever. “We'll steal an idea.” And that idea helps us move forward. And that passive can also lead to more active, where it's like, “I wonder what they're doing over there?” Peter: And then you go and talk to them, and the teacher can encourage this. And both of these things really help with mobilizing knowledge, and that's what we want. We don't want the only source of knowledge to be the teacher. Knowledge is everywhere. Let's get that moving around the room within groups, between groups, between students. And that's not to say that the students are copying. We're not encouraging copying. And if you set the environment up right, they don't copy. They're not going to copy. They'll steal an idea, “Oh, let's organize our stuff into a table of values,” and then it's back to their own board and working on that. And the other way that we help make these boundaries more porous is by breaking down the social barriers that exist within a classroom. All classrooms have social barriers. They could be gender, race. They could be status-based. Peter: There are so many things that make up the boundaries that exist within classrooms. There are these social structures that exist in schools. And one of the things that random groups does is it breaks down these social barriers because we're putting students together that wouldn't normally be together. And our data really reveals just how much that happens; that after three weeks, the students are coming in, they're socializing with different students, students that hadn't been part of their social structure before. They're sitting together outside of class. I see this at the university where students are coming in, they almost don't know each other at all. Or they're coming in small groups that are in the same class. They know each other from other courses, and within three, four weeks, I'm walking through the hallways at the university and I'm seeing them sitting together, working together, even having lunch together in structures that didn't exist on day one. There are so many social structures, social barriers in classrooms. And if we can just erode those barriers, those group structures are going to become more and more porous, and we're creating more community, and we're reducing the risk that exists within those classrooms. Mike: I think the other piece that jumps out for me is when I go back to this notion of one random grouping, a random grouping that shifts every 45 to 75 minutes. This idea of breaking those social boundaries—but also, really this idea that knowledge mobility is accelerated jumps out of those two practices. I can really see that in the structure and how that would encourage that kind of change. Peter: Yeah. And it encourages both passively and actively. Passive in the sense that students can look over the shoulder, active that they can talk to another group. But also passively from the teacher perspective, that random groups does a lot of that heavy lifting. But I can also encourage it actively when a group asks a question. Rather than answering their question, looking around the room going, “You should go talk to the sevens over there.” Or “We're done. What do we do next?” “Go talk to the fours. They know what's next.” That, sort of, “I as a teacher can be passive and let the random groups do a lot of the heavy lifting. But I can also be active and push knowledge around the room. By the way, I respond to students' questions.” Mike: Well, and I think what also strikes me is you're really distributing the authority mathematically to the kids as well. Peter: Yeah, so we're displacing status, we're increasing identity. We're doing all sorts of different things that are de-powering the classroom, decentralizing the classroom. Mike: Well, before we go, Peter, I'm wondering if there are any steps that you'd recommend to an educator who's listening. They want to start to dabble, or they want to take up some of the ideas that we've talked about. Where would you invite people to make a start? Peter: So, first of all, one of the things we found in our research was small change is no change. When you make small changes, the classroom as a system will resist that. So, go big. In building thinking classrooms, random groups is not a practice that gets enacted on its own. It's enacted with two other practices: thinking tasks, which is chapter one of my book, random groups, which is chapter two. And then, getting the students working at vertical whiteboards. These are transformational changes to the classroom. What we're doing in doing that is we're changing the environment in which we're asking students to behave differently. Asking students to behave differently in exactly the same environment that they behaved a certain way for five years already is almost impossible to do. If you want them to behave differently, if you want them to start to think, you're going to have to create an environment that is more conducive to thinking. Peter: So, that's part of it. The other thing is, don't do things by half measures. Don't start doing, “Well, we're going to do random groups on Mondays, but we're going to do strategic groups the rest of the days,” or something like this. Because what that communicates to students is that the randomness is something that you don't really value. Go big. We're doing random groups. We're always doing random groups. Have the courage. Yes, there's going to be some combinations that you're going to go, “Uh-oh.” And some of those are going to be really uh-oh combinations. But you're also going to have way more situations where you go and then it turns out to be amazing. So, have that courage. Go with the random groups and do it persistently and consistently. Because there is going to be resistance. The students are going to resist this thing because at least when you're being strategic, you're being thoughtful about it. Peter: But this feels like too much chance. And they start to attribute, they start to map their emotions around being placed in strategic groups, which were often for a month, into this setting. And what we need to do is, we need to show that this is not that by being consistent, doing it randomly, doing it frequently, so they start to realize that this is different. This is not the kind of grouping structures that have happened in the past. And do it. Do it consistently, persistently. Do it for at least 10 days before you start to really see and really reap those benefits. Mike: I think that's a really great place to stop. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast, Peter. It really has been a pleasure chatting with you. Peter: Thanks so much. It's been a great conversation. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling all individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2024 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

Full Text of ReadingsSolemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles Lectionary: 590, 591The Saint of the day is Saints Peter and PaulSaints Peter and Paul's Story Peter (d. 64?) Saint Mark ends the first half of his Gospel with a triumphant climax. He has recorded doubt, misunderstanding, and the opposition of many to Jesus. Now Peter makes his great confession of faith: “You are the Messiah” (Mark 8:29b). It was one of the many glorious moments in Peter's life, beginning with the day he was called from his nets along the Sea of Galilee to become a fisher of men for Jesus. The New Testament clearly shows Peter as the leader of the apostles, chosen by Jesus to have a special relationship with him. With James and John he was privileged to witness the Transfiguration, the raising of a dead child to life, and the agony in Gethsemane. His mother-in-law was cured by Jesus. He was sent with John to prepare for the last Passover before Jesus' death. His name is first on every list of apostles. And to Peter only did Jesus say, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:17b-19). But the Gospels prove their own trustworthiness by the unflattering details they include about Peter. He clearly had no public relations person. It is a great comfort for ordinary mortals to know that Peter also has his human weakness, even in the presence of Jesus. He generously gave up all things, yet he can ask in childish self-regard, “What are we going to get for all this?” (see Matthew 19:27). He receives the full force of Christ's anger when he objects to the idea of a suffering Messiah: “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do” (Matthew 16:23b). Peter is willing to accept Jesus' doctrine of forgiveness, but suggests a limit of seven times. He walks on the water in faith, but sinks in doubt. He refuses to let Jesus wash his feet, then wants his whole body cleansed. He swears at the Last Supper that he will never deny Jesus, and then swears to a servant maid that he has never known the man. He loyally resists the first attempt to arrest Jesus by cutting off Malchus' ear, but in the end he runs away with the others. In the depth of his sorrow, Jesus looks on him and forgives him, and he goes out and sheds bitter tears. The Risen Jesus told Peter to feed his lambs and his sheep (John 21:15-17). Paul (d. 64?) If the most well-known preacher today suddenly began preaching that the United States should adopt Marxism and not rely on the Constitution, the angry reaction would help us understand Paul's life when he started preaching that Christ alone can save us. He had been the most pharisaic of Pharisees, the most legalistic of Mosaic lawyers. Now he suddenly appears to other Jews as a heretical welcomer of Gentiles, a traitor and apostate. Paul's central conviction was simple and absolute: Only God can save humanity. No human effort—even the most scrupulous observance of law—can create a human good which we can bring to God as reparation for sin and payment for grace. To be saved from itself, from sin, from the devil, and from death, humanity must open itself completely to the saving power of Jesus. Paul never lost his love for his Jewish family, though he carried on a lifelong debate with them about the uselessness of the Law without Christ. He reminded the Gentiles that they were grafted on the parent stock of the Jews, who were still God's chosen people, the children of the promise. Reflection We would probably go to confession to Peter sooner than to any of the other apostles. He is perhaps a more striking example of the simple fact of holiness. Jesus says to us as he said, in effect, to Peter: “It is not you who have chosen me, but I who have chosen you. Peter, it is not human wisdom that makes it possible for you to believe, but my Father's revelation. I, not you, build my Church.” Paul's experience of the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus was the driving force that made him one of the most zealous, dynamic, and courageous ambassadors of Christ the Church has ever had. But persecution, humiliation, and weakness became his day-by-day carrying of the cross, material for further transformation. The dying Christ was in him; the living Christ was his life. Saint Paul is the Patron Saint of: Greece Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

After this, Jesus shewed himself again to the disciples at the sea of Tiberias. And he shewed himself after this manner.Postea manifestavit se iterum Jesus discipulis ad mare Tiberiadis. Manifestavit autem sic :  2 There were together Simon Peter, and Thomas, who is called Didymus, and Nathanael, who was of Cana of Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples.erant simul Simon Petrus, et Thomas, qui dicitur Didymus, et Nathanael, qui erat a Cana Galilaeae, et filii Zebedaei, et alii ex discipulis ejus duo.  3 Simon Peter saith to them: I go a fishing. They say to him: We also come with thee. And they went forth, and entered into the ship: and that night they caught nothing.Dicit eis Simon Petrus : Vado piscari. Dicunt ei : Venimus et nos tecum. Et exierunt, et ascenderunt in navim : et illa nocte nihil prendiderunt.  4 But when the morning was come, Jesus stood on the shore: yet the disciples knew not that it was Jesus.Mane autem facto stetit Jesus in littore : non tamen cognoverunt discipuli quia Jesus est.  5 Jesus therefore said to them: Children, have you any meat? They answered him: No.Dixit ergo eis Jesus : Pueri, numquid pulmentarium habetis? Responderunt ei : Non.  6 He saith to them: Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and you shall find. They cast therefore; and now they were not able to draw it, for the multitude of fishes.Dicit eis : Mittite in dexteram navigii rete, et invenietis. Miserunt ergo : et jam non valebant illud trahere prae multitudine piscium.  7 That disciple therefore whom Jesus loved, said to Peter: It is the Lord. Simon Peter, when he heard that it was the Lord, girt his coat about him, (for he was naked,) and cast himself into the sea.Dixit ergo discipulus ille, quem diligebat Jesus, Petro : Dominus est. Simon Petrus cum audisset quia Dominus est, tunica succinxit se ( erat enim nudus) et misit se in mare.  8 But the other disciples came in the ship, (for they were not far from the land, but as it were two hundred cubits,) dragging the net with fishes.Alii autem discipuli navigio venerunt ( non enim longe erant a terra, sed quasi cubitis ducentis), trahentes rete piscium.  9 As soon then as they came to land, they saw hot coals lying, and a fish laid thereon, and bread.Ut ergo descenderunt in terram, viderunt prunas positas, et piscem superpositum, et panem.  10 Jesus saith to them: Bring hither of the fishes which you have now caught.Dicit eis Jesus : Afferte de piscibus, quos prendidistis nunc.  11 Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land, full of great fishes, one hundred and fifty-three. And although there were so many, the net was not broken.Ascendit Simon Petrus et traxit rete in terram, plenum magnis piscibus centum quinquaginta tribus. Et cum tanti essent, non est scissum rete.  12 Jesus saith to them: Come, and dine. And none of them who were at meat, durst ask him: Who art thou? knowing that it was the Lord.Dicit eis Jesus : Venite, prandete. Et nemo audebat discumbentium interrogare eum : Tu quis es? scientes, quia Dominus est.  13 And Jesus cometh and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish in like manner.Et venit Jesus, et accipit panem, et dat eis, et piscem similiter.  14 This is now the third time that Jesus was manifested to his disciples, after he was risen from the dead.Hoc jam tertio manifestatus est Jesus discipulis suis cum resurrexisset a mortuis.

Peter van Hardenberg talks about Industrialists vs. Academics, Ink&Switch's evolution over time, the Hollywood Model, internal lab infrastructure, and more! Peter is the lab director and CEO of Ink&Switch, a private, creator oriented, computing research lab.  References Ink&Switch (and their many publications) The Hollywood Model in R&D Idea Machines Episode with Adam Wiggins Paul Erdós Transcript Peter Van Hardenberg [00:01:21] Ben: Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Peter van Hardenbergh. Peter is the lab director and CEO of Inkin switch. Private creator oriented, competing research lab. I talked to Adam Wiggins, one of inkind switches founders, [00:01:35] way back in episode number four. It's amazing to see the progress they've made as an organization. They've built up an incredible community of fellow travelers and consistently released research reports that gesture at possibilities for competing that are orthogonal to the current hype cycles. Peter frequently destroys my complacency with his ability to step outside the way that research has normally done and ask, how should we be operating, given our constraints and goals. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Peter. Would you break down your distinction between academics and industrialists [00:02:08] Peter: Okay. Academics are people whose incentive structure is connected to the institutional rewards of the publishing industry, right? You, you publish papers. And you get tenure and like, it's a, it's, it's not so cynical or reductive, but like fundamentally the time cycles are long, right? Like you have to finish work according to when, you know, submission deadlines for a conference are, you know, you're [00:02:35] working on something now. You might come back to it next quarter or next year or in five years, right? Whereas when you're in industry, you're connected to users, you're connected to people at the end of the day who need to touch and hold and use the thing. And you know, you have to get money from them to keep going. And so you have a very different perspective on like time and money and space and what's possible. And the real challenge in terms of connecting these two, you know, I didn't invent the idea of pace layers, right? They, they operate at different pace layers. Academia is often intergenerational, right? Whereas industry is like, you have to make enough money every quarter. To keep the bank account from going below zero or everybody goes home, [00:03:17] Ben: Right. Did. Was it Stuart Brand who invented pace [00:03:22] Peter: believe it was Stewart Brand. Pace layers. Yeah. [00:03:25] Ben: That actually I, I'd never put these two them together, but the, the idea I, I, I think about impedance mismatches between [00:03:35] organizations a lot. And that really sort of like clicks with pace layers Exactly. Right. Where it's like [00:03:39] Peter: Yeah, absolutely. And, and I think in a big way what we're doing at, Ink& Switch on some level is trying to provide like synchro mesh between academia and industry, right? Because they, the academics are moving on a time scale and with an ambition that's hard for industry to match, right? But also, Academics. Often I think in computer science are like, have a shortage of good understanding about what the real problems people are facing in the world today are. They're not disinterested. [00:04:07] Ben: just computer [00:04:08] Peter: Those communication channels don't exist cuz they don't speak the same language, they don't use the same terminology, they don't go to the same conferences, they don't read the same publications. Right. [00:04:18] Ben: Yeah. [00:04:18] Peter: so vice versa, you know, we find things in industry that are problems and then it's like you go read the papers and talk to some scientists. I was like, oh dang. Like. We know how to solve this. It's just nobody's built it. [00:04:31] Ben: Yeah. [00:04:32] Peter: Or more accurately it would be to say [00:04:35] there's a pretty good hunch here about something that might work, and maybe we can connect the two ends of this together. [00:04:42] Ben: Yeah. Often, I, I think of it as someone, someone has, it is a quote unquote solved problem, but there are a lot of quote unquote, implementation details and those implementation details require a year of work. [00:04:56] Peter: yeah, a year or many years? Or an entire startup, or a whole career or two? Yeah. And, and speaking of, Ink&Switch, I don't know if we've ever talked about, so a switch has been around for more than half a decade, right? [00:05:14] Peter: Yeah, seven or eight years now, I think I could probably get the exact number, but yeah, about that. [00:05:19] Ben: And. I think I don't have a good idea in my head over that time. What, what has changed about in, can switches, conception of itself and like how you do things. Like what is, what are some of the biggest things that have have changed over that time?[00:05:35] [00:05:35] Peter: So I think a lot of it could be summarized as professionalization. But I, I'll give a little brief history and can switch began because the. You know, original members of the lab wanted to do a startup that was Adam James and Orion, but they recognized that they didn't, they weren't happy with computing and where computers were, and they knew that they wanted to make something that would be a tool that would help people who were solving the world's problems work better. That's kinda a vague one, but You know, they were like, well, we're not physicists, we're not social scientists. You know, we can't solve climate change or radicalization directly, or you know, the journalism crisis or whatever, but maybe we can build tools, right? We know how to make software tools. Let's build tools for the people who are solving the problems. Because right now a lot of those systems they rely on are getting like steadily worse every day. And I think they still are like the move to the cloud disempowerment of the individual, like, you [00:06:35] know, surveillance technology, distraction technology. And Tristan Harris is out there now. Like hammering on some of these points. But there's just a lot of things that are like slow and fragile and bad and not fun to work with and lose your, you know, lose your work product. You know, [00:06:51] Ben: Yeah, software as a service more generally. [00:06:54] Peter: Yeah. And like, there's definitely advantages. It's not like, you know, people are rational actors, but something was lost. And so the idea was well go do a bit of research, figure out what the shape of the company is, and then just start a company and, you know, get it all solved and move on. And I think the biggest difference, at least, you know, aside from scale and like actual knowledge is just kind of the dawning realization at some point that like there won't really be an end state to this problem. Like this isn't a thing that's transitional where you kind of come in and you do some research for a bit, and then we figure out the answer and like fold up the card table and move on to the next thing. It's like, oh no, this, this thing's gotta stick around because these problems aren't gonna [00:07:35] go away. And when we get through this round of problems, we already see what the next round are. And that's probably gonna go on for longer than any of us will be working. And so the vision now, at least from my perspective as the current lab director, is much more like, how can I get this thing to a place where it can sustain for 10 years, for 50 years, however long it takes, and you know, to become a place that. Has a culture that can sustain, you know, grow and change as new people come in. But that can sustain operations indefinitely. [00:08:07] Ben: Yeah. And, and so to circle back to the. The, the jumping off point for this, which is sort of since, since it began, what have been some of the biggest changes of how you operate? How you, or just like the, the model more generally or, or things that you were [00:08:30] Peter: Yeah, so the beginning was very informal, but, so maybe I'll skip over the first like [00:08:35] little period where it was just sort of like, Finding our footing. But around the time when I joined, we were just four or five people. And we did one project, all of us together at a time, and we just sort of like, someone would write a proposal for what we should do next, and then we would argue about like whether it was the right next thing. And, you know, eventually we would pick a thing and then we would go and do that project and we would bring in some contractors and we called it the Hollywood model. We still call it the Hollywood model. Because it was sort of structured like a movie production. We would bring in, you know, to our little core team, we'd bring in a couple specialists, you know, the equivalent of a director of photography or like a, you know, a casting director or whatever, and you bring in the people that you need to accomplish the task. Oh, we don't know how to do Bluetooth on the web. Okay. Find a Bluetooth person. Oh, there's a bunch of crypto stuff, cryptography stuff. Just be clear on this upcoming project, we better find somebody who knows, you know, the ins and outs of like, which cryptography algorithms to use or [00:09:35] what, how to build stuff in C Sharp for Windows platform or Surface, whatever the, the project was over time. You know, we got pretty good at that and I think one of the biggest changes, sort of after we kind of figured out how to actually do work was the realization that. Writing about the work not only gave us a lot of leverage in terms of our sort of visibility in the community and our ability to attract talent, but also the more we put into the writing, the more we learned about the research and that the process of, you know, we would do something and then write a little internal report and then move on. But the process of taking the work that we do, And making it legible to the outside world and explaining why we did it and what it means and how it fits into the bigger picture. That actually like being very diligent and thorough in documenting all of that greatly increases our own understanding of what we did.[00:10:35] And that was like a really pleasant and interesting surprise. I think one of my sort of concerns as lab director is that we got really good at that and we write all these like, Obscenely long essays that people claim to read. You know, hacker News comments on extensively without reading. But I think a lot about, you know, I always worry about the orthodoxy of doing the same thing too much and whether we're sort of falling into patterns, so we're always tinkering with new kind of project systems or new ways of working or new kinds of collaborations. And so yeah, that's ongoing. But this, this. The key elements of our system are we bring together a team that has both longer term people with domain contexts about the research, any required specialists who understand like interesting or important technical aspects of the work. And then we have a specific set of goals to accomplish [00:11:35] with a very strict time box. And then when it's done, we write and we put it down. And I think this avoids number of the real pitfalls in more open-ended research. It has its own shortcomings, right? But one of the big pitfalls that avoids is the kind of like meandering off and losing sight of what you're doing. And you can get great results from that in kind of a general research context. But we're very much an industrial research context. We're trying to connect real problems to specific directions to solve them. And so the time box kind of creates the fear of death. You're like, well, I don't wanna run outta time and not have anything to show for it. So you really get focused on trying to deliver things. Now sometimes that's at the cost, like the breadth or ambition of a solution to a particular thing, but I think it helps us really keep moving forward. [00:12:21] Ben: Yeah, and, and you no longer have everybody in the lab working on the same projects, right. [00:12:28] Peter: Yeah. So today, at any given time, The sort of population of the lab fluctuates between sort of [00:12:35] like eight and 15 people, depending on, you know, whether we have a bunch of projects in full swing or you know, how you count contractors. But we usually, at the moment we have sort of three tracks of research that we're doing. And those are local first software Programmable Inc. And Malleable software. [00:12:54] Ben: Nice. And so I, I actually have questions both about the, the write-ups that you do and the Hollywood model and so on, on the Hollywood model. Do you think that I, I, and this is like, do you think that the, the Hollywood model working in, in a. Industrial Research lab is particular to software in the sense that I feel like the software industry, people change jobs fairly frequently. Contracting is really common. Contractors are fairly fluid and. [00:13:32] Peter: You mean in terms of being able to staff and source people?[00:13:35] [00:13:35] Ben: Yeah, and people take, like, take these long sabbaticals, right? Where it's like, it's not uncommon in the software industry for someone to, to take six months between jobs. [00:13:45] Peter: I think it's very hard for me to generalize about the properties of other fields, so I want to try and be cautious in my evaluation here. What I would say is that, I think the general principle of having a smaller core of longer term people who think and gain a lot of context about a problem and pairing them up with people who have fresh ideas and relevant expertise, does not require you to have any particular industry structure. Right. There are lots of ways of solving this problem. Go to a research, another research organization and write a paper with someone from [00:14:35] an adjacent field. If you're in academia, right? If you're in a company, you can do a partnership you know, hire, you know, I think a lot of fields of science have much longer cycles, right? If you're doing material science, you know, takes a long time to build test apparatus and to formulate chemistries. Like [00:14:52] Ben: Yeah. [00:14:52] Peter: someone for several years, right? Like, That's fine. Get a detach detachment from another part of the company and bring someone as a secondment. Like I think that the general principle though, of putting together a mixture of longer and shorter term people with the right set of skills, yes, we solve it a particular way in our domain. But I don't think that that's software u unique to software. [00:15:17] Ben: Would, would it be overreaching to map that onto professors and postdocs and grad students where you have the professor who is the, the person who's been working on the, the program for a long time has all the context and then you have postdocs and grad students [00:15:35] coming through the lab. [00:15:38] Peter: Again, I need to be thoughtful about. How I evaluate fields that I'm less experienced with, but both my parents went through grad school and I've certainly gotten to know a number of academics. My sense of the relationship between professors and or sort of PhD, yeah, I guess professors and their PhD students, is that it's much more likely that the PhD students are given sort of a piece of the professor's vision to execute. [00:16:08] Ben: Yeah. [00:16:09] Peter: And that that is more about scaling the research interests of the professor. And I don't mean this in like a negative way but I think it's quite different [00:16:21] Ben: different. [00:16:22] Peter: than like how DARPA works or how I can switch works with our research tracks in that it's, I it's a bit more prescriptive and it's a bit more of like a mentor-mentee kind of relationship as [00:16:33] Ben: Yeah. More training.[00:16:35] [00:16:35] Peter: Yeah. And you know, that's, that's great. I mean, postdocs are a little different again, but I think, I think that's different than say how DARPA works or like other institutional research groups. [00:16:49] Ben: Yeah. Okay. I, I wanted to see how, how far I could stretch the, stretch [00:16:55] Peter: in academia there's famous stories about Adosh who would. Turn up on your doorstep you know, with a suitcase and a bottle of amphetamines and say, my, my brain is open, or something to that effect. And then you'd co-author a paper and pay his room and board until you found someone else to send him to.   I think that's closer in the sense that, right, like, here's this like, great problem solver with a lot of like domain skills and he would parachute into a place where someone was working on something interesting and help them make a breakthrough with it. [00:17:25] Ben: Yeah. I think the, the thing that I want to figure out, just, you know, long, longer term is how to. Make those [00:17:35] short term collaborations happen when with, with like, I, I I think it's like, like there's some, there's some coy intention like in, in the sense of like Robert Kos around like organizational boundaries when you have people coming in and doing things in a temporary sense. [00:17:55] Peter: Yeah, academia is actually pretty good at this, right? With like paper co-authors. I mean, again, this is like the, the pace layers thing. When you have a whole bunch of people organized in an industry and a company around a particular outcome, You tend to have like very specific goals and commitments and you're, you're trying to execute against those and it's much harder to get that kind of like more fluid movement between domains. [00:18:18] Ben: Yeah, and [00:18:21] Peter: That's why I left working in companies, right? Cause like I have run engineering processes and built products and teams and it's like someone comes to me with a really good idea and I'm like, oh, it's potentially very interesting, but like, [00:18:33] Ben: but We [00:18:34] Peter: We got [00:18:35] customers who have outages who are gonna leave if we don't fix the thing, we've got users falling out of our funnel. Cause we don't do basic stuff like you just, you really have a lot of work to do to make the thing go [00:18:49] Ben: Yeah. [00:18:49] Peter: business. And you know, my experience of research labs within businesses is that they're almost universally unsuccessful. There are exceptions, but I think they're more coincidental than, than designed. [00:19:03] Ben: Yeah. And I, I think less and less successful over time is, is my observation that. [00:19:11] Peter: Interesting. [00:19:12] Ben: Yeah, there's a, there's a great paper that I will send you called like, what is the name? Oh, the the Changing Structure of American Innovation by She Aurora. I actually did a podcast with him because I like the paper so much. that that I, I think, yeah, exactly. And so going back to your, your amazing [00:19:35] write-ups, you all have clearly invested quite a chunk of, of time and resources into some amount of like internal infrastructure for making those really good. And I wanted to get a sense of like, how do you decide when it's worth investing in internal infrastructure for a lab? [00:19:58] Peter: Ooh. Ah, that's a fun question. Least at In and Switch. It's always been like sort of demand driven. I wish I could claim to be more strategic about it, but like we had all these essays, they were actually all hand coded HTML at one point. You know, real, real indie cred there. But it was a real pain when you needed to fix something or change something. Cause you had to go and, you know, edit all this H T M L. So at some point we were doing a smaller project and I built like a Hugo Templating thing [00:20:35] just to do some lab notes and I faked it. And I guess this is actually a, maybe a somewhat common thing, which is you do one in a one-off way. And then if it's promising, you invest more in it. [00:20:46] Ben: Yeah. [00:20:46] Peter: And it ended up being a bigger project to build a full-on. I mean, it's not really a cms, it's sort of a cms, it's a, it's a templating system that produces static HT m l. It's what all our essays come out of. But there's also a lot of work in a big investment in just like design and styling. And frankly, I think that one of the things that in can switch apart from other. People who do similar work in the space is that we really put a lot of work into the presentation of our work. You know, going beyond, like we write very carefully, but we also care a lot about like, picking good colors, making sure that text hyphenates well, that it, you know, that the the screencast has the right dimensions and, you know, all that little detail work and. It's expensive [00:21:35] in time and money to do, but I think it's, I think the results speak for themselves. I think it's worth it. [00:21:47] Ben: Yeah. I, and I mean, if, if the ultimate goal is to influence what people do and what they think, which I suspect is, is at least some amount of the goal then communicating it. [00:22:00] Peter: It's much easier to change somebody's mind than to build an entire company. [00:22:05] Ben: Yes. Well, [00:22:06] Peter: you wanna, if you wanna max, it depends. Well, you don't have to change everybody's mind, right? Like changing an individual person's mind might be impossible. But if you can put the right ideas out there in the right way to make them legible, then you'll change the right. Hopefully you'll change somebody's mind and it will be the right somebody. [00:22:23] Ben: yeah. No, that is, that is definitely true. And another thing that I am. Always obscenely obsessed, exceedingly impressed by that. In Switch. [00:22:35] Does is your sort of thoughtfulness around how you structure your community and sort of tap into it. Would you be willing to sort of like, walk me through how you think about that and like how you have sort of the, the different layers of, of kind of involvement? [00:22:53] Peter: Okay. I mean, sort of the, maybe I'll work from, from the inside out cuz that's sort of the history of it. So in the beginning there was just sort of the people who started the lab. And over time they recruited me and, and Mark Mcg again and you know, some of our other folk to come and, and sign on for this crazy thing. And we started working with these wonderful, like contractors off and on and and so the initial sort of group was quite small and quite insular and we didn't publish anything. And what we found was that. Once we started, you know, just that alone, the act of bringing people in and working with them started to create the beginning of a [00:23:35] community because people would come into a project with us, they'd infect us with some of their ideas, we'd infect them with some of ours. And so you started to have this little bit of shared context with your past collaborators. And because we have this mix of like longer term people who stick with the lab and other people who come and go, You start to start to build up this, this pool of people who you share ideas and language with. And over time we started publishing our work and we began having what we call workshops where we just invite people to come and talk about their work at Ink and Switch. And by at, I mean like now it's on a discord. Back in the day it was a Skype or a Zoom call or whatever. And the rule back then in the early days was like, if you want to come to the talk. You have to have given a talk or have worked at the lab. And so it was like very good signal to noise ratio in attendance cuz the only people who would be on the zoom call would be [00:24:35] people who you knew were grappling with those problems. For real, no looky lose, no, no audience, right? And over time it just, there were too many really good, interesting people who are doing the work. To fit in all those workshops and actually scheduling workshops is quite tiring and takes a lot of energy. And so over time we sort of started to expand this community a little further. And sort of now our principle is you know, if you're doing the work, you're welcome to come to the workshops. And we invite some people to do workshops sometimes, but that's now we have this sort of like small private chat group of like really interesting folk. And it's not open to the public generally because again, we, I don't want to have an audience, right? I want it to practitioner's space. And so over time, those people have been really influential on us as well. And having that little inner [00:25:35] circle, and it's a few hundred people now of people who, you know, like if you have a question to ask about something tricky. There's probably somebody in there who has tried it, but more significantly, like the answer will come from somebody who has tried it, not from somebody who will call you an idiot for trying or who will, right, like you, you avoid all the, don't read the comments problems because the sort of like, if anybody was like that, I would probably ask them to leave, but we've been fortunate that we haven't had any of that kind of stuff in the community. I will say though, I think I struggle a lot because I think. It's hard to be both exclusive and inclusive. Right, but exclusive community deliberately in the sense that I want it to be a practitioner's space and one where people can be wrong and it's not too performative, like there's not investors watching or your, your user base or whatever. [00:26:32] Ben: Yeah. [00:26:32] Peter: at the same time, [00:26:33] Ben: strangers. [00:26:34] Peter: [00:26:35] inclusive space where we have people who are earlier in their career or. From non-traditional backgrounds, you know, either academically or culturally or so on and so forth. And it takes constant work to be like networking out and meeting new people and like inviting them into this space. So it's always an area to, to keep working on. At some point, I think we will want to open the aperture further, but yeah, it's, it's, it's a delicate thing to build a community. [00:27:07] Ben: Yeah, I mean the, the, frankly, the reason I'm asking is because I'm trying to figure out the same things and you have done it better than basically anybody else that I've seen. This is, this is maybe getting too down into the weeds. But why did you decide that discourse or discord was the right tool for it? And the, the reason that I ask is that I personally hate sort of [00:27:35] streaming walls of texts, and I find it very hard to, to seriously discuss ideas in, in that format. [00:27:43] Peter: Yeah, I think async, I mean, I'm an old school like mailing list guy. On some level I think it's just a pragmatic thing. We use Discord for our internal like day-to-day operations like. Hey, did you see the pr? You know, oh, we gotta call in an hour with so-and-so, whatever. And then we had a bunch of people in that community and then, you know, we started having the workshops and inviting more people. So we created a space in that same discord where. You know, people didn't have to get pinged when we had a lab call and we didn't want 'em turning up on the zoom anyway. And so it wasn't so much like a deliberate decision to be that space. I think there's a huge opportunity to do better and you know, frankly, what's there is [00:28:35] not as designed or as deliberate as I would like. It's more consequence of Organic growth over time and just like continuing to do a little bit here and there than like sort of an optimum outcome. And it could, there, there's a lot of opportunity to do better. Like we should have newsletters, there should be more, you know, artifacts of past conversations with better organizations. But like all of that stuff takes time and energy. And we are about a small little research lab. So many people you know, [00:29:06] Ben: I, I absolutely hear you on that. I think the, the, the tension that I, I see is that people, I think like texting, like sort of stream of texts. Slack and, and discord type things. And, and so there's, there's the question of like, what can you get people to do versus like, what creates the, the right conversation environment?[00:29:35] And, and maybe that's just like a matter of curation and like standard setting. [00:29:42] Peter: Yeah, I don't know. We've had our, our rabbit trails and like derailed conversations over the years, but I think, you know, if you had a forum, nobody would go there. [00:29:51] Ben: Yeah. [00:29:52] Peter: like, and you could do a mailing list, but I don't know, maybe we could do a mailing list. That would be a nice a nice form, I think. But people have to get something out of a community to put things into it and you know, you have to make, if you want to have a forum or, or an asynchronous posting place, you know, the thing is people are already in Discord or slack. [00:30:12] Ben: exactly. [00:30:13] Peter: something else, you have to push against the stream. Now, actually, maybe one interesting anecdote is I did experiment for a while with, like, discord has sort of a forum post feature. They added a while back [00:30:25] Ben: Oh [00:30:25] Peter: added it. Nobody used it. So eventually I, I turned it off again. Maybe, maybe it just needs revisiting, but it surprised me that it wasn't adopted, I guess is what [00:30:35] I would say. [00:30:36] Ben: Yeah. I mean, I think it, I think the problem is it takes more work. It's very easy to just dash off a thought. [00:30:45] Peter: Yeah, but I think if you have the right community, then. Those thoughts are likely to have been considered and the people who reply will speak from knowledge [00:30:55] Ben: Yeah. [00:30:56] Peter: and then it's not so bad, right? [00:30:59] Ben: it's [00:30:59] Peter: The problem is with Hacker News or whatever where like, or Reddit or any of these open communities like you, you know, the person who's most likely to reply is not the person who's most helpful to apply. [00:31:11] Ben: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that makes, that makes a lot of sense. And sort of switching tracks yet again, how so one, remind me how long your, your projects are, like how long, how big are the, is the time box. [00:31:28] Peter: the implementation phase for a standard income switch Hollywood project, which I can now call them standard, I think, cuz we've done like, [00:31:35] Ooh, let me look. 25 or so over the years. Let's see, what's my project count number at? I have a little. Tracker. Yeah, I think it's 25 today. So we've done about 20 some non-trivial number of these 10 to 12 weeks of implementation is sort of the core of the project, and the idea is that when you hit that start date, at the beginning of that, you should have the team assembled. You should know what you're building, you should know why you're building it, and you should know what done looks like. Now it's research, so inevitably. You know, you get two weeks in and then you take a hard left and like, you know, but that, that we write what's called the brief upfront, which is like, what is the research question we are trying to answer by funding this work and how do we think this project will answer it? Now, your actual implementation might change, or you might discover targets of opportunity along the way. But the idea is that by like having a, a narrow time box, like a, a team [00:32:35] that has a clear understanding of what you're trying to accomplish. And like the right set of people on board who already have all the like necessary skills. You can execute really hard for like that 10 to 12 weeks and get quite far in that time. Now, that's not the whole project though. There's usually a month or two upfront of what we call pre-infusion, kind of coming from the espresso idea that like you make better espresso if you take a little time at low pressure first to get ready with the shot, and so we'll do. You know, and duration varies here, but there's a period before that where we're making technical choices. Are we building this for the web or is this going on iPad? Are we gonna do this with rust and web assembly, or is this type script is this, are we buying Microsoft Surface tablets for this as we're like the ink behavior, right? So all those decisions we try and make up front. So when you hit the execution phase, you're ready to go. Do we need, what kind of designer do we want to include in this project? And who's available, you know? All of that stuff. We [00:33:35] try and square away before we get to the execution phase. [00:33:38] Ben: right. [00:33:38] Peter: when the end of the execution phase, it's like we try to be very strict with like last day pencils down and try to also reserve like the last week or two for like polish and cleanup and sort of getting things. So it's really two to two and a half, sometimes three months is like actually the time you have to do the work. And then after that, essays can take between like two months and a year or two. To produce finally. But we try to have a dr. We try to have a good first draft within a month after the end of the project. And again, this isn't a process that's like probably not optimal, but basically someone on the team winds up being the lead writer and we should be more deliberate about that. But usually the project lead for a given project ends up being the essay writer. And they write a first draft with input and collaboration from the rest of the group. And then people around [00:34:35] the lab read it and go, this doesn't make any sense at all. Like, what? What do you do? And you know, to, to varying degrees. And then it's sort of okay, right? Once you've got that kind of feedback, then you go back and you restructured and go, oh, I need to explain this part more. You know, oh, these findings don't actually cover the stuff that other people at the lab thought was interesting from the work or whatever. And then that goes through, you know, an increasing sort of, you know, standard of writing stuff, right? You send it out to some more people and then you send it to a bigger group. And you know, we send it to people who are in the field that whose input we respect. And then we take their edits and we debate which ones to take. And then eventually it goes in the HTML template. And then there's a long process of like hiring an external copy editor and building nice quality figures and re-recording all your crappy screencasts to be like, Really crisp with nice lighting and good, you know, pacing and, you know, then finally at the end of all of that, we publish. [00:35:33] Ben: Nice. And [00:35:35] how did you settle on the, the 10 to 12 weeks as the right size, time box? [00:35:42] Peter: Oh, it's it's it's, it's clearly rationally optimal. [00:35:46] Ben: Ah, of course, [00:35:47] Peter: No, I'm kidding. It's totally just, it became a habit. I mean, I think. Like I, I can give an intuitive argument and we've, we've experimented a bit. You know, two weeks is not long enough to really get into anything, [00:36:02] Ben: right. [00:36:02] Peter: and the year is too long. There's too much, too much opportunity to get lost along the way. There's no, you go too long with no real deadline pressure. It's very easy to kind of wander off into the woods. And bear in mind that like the total project duration is really more like six months, right? And so where we kind of landed is also that we often have like grad students or you know, people who are between other contracts or things. It's much easier to get people for three months than for eight months. And if I feel like [00:36:35] just intuitively, if I, if someone came to you with an eight month project, I'd be, I'm almost positive that I would be able to split it into two, three month projects and we'd be able to like find a good break point somewhere in the middle. And then write about that and do another one. And it's like, this is sort of a like bigger or smaller than a bread box argument, but like, you know, a month is too little and six months feels too long. So two to four months feels about right. In terms of letting you really get into, yeah, you can really get into the meat of a problem. You can try a few different approaches. You can pick your favorite and then spend a bit of time like analyzing it and like working out the kinks. And then you can like write it up. [00:37:17] Ben: Thanks. [00:37:18] Peter: But you know, there have been things that are not, that haven't fit in that, and we're doing some stuff right now that has, you know, we've had a, like six month long pre-infusion going this year already on some ink stuff. So it's not a universal rule, but like that's the, that's the [00:37:33] Ben: Yeah. No, I [00:37:35] appreciate that intuition [00:37:36] Peter: and I think it also, it ties into being software again, right? Like again, if you have to go and weld things and like [00:37:43] Ben: yeah, exactly. [00:37:44] Peter: You know, [00:37:44] Ben: let let some bacteria grow. [00:37:46] Peter: or like, you know, the, it's very much a domain specific answer. [00:37:51] Ben: Yeah. Something that I wish people talked about more was like, like characteristic time scales of different domains. And I, I think that's software, I mean, software is obviously shorter, but it'd be interesting to, to sort of dig down and be like, okay, like what, what actually is it? So the, the, the last question I'd love to ask is, To what extent does everybody in the lab know what's, what everybody else is working on? Like. [00:38:23] Peter: So we use two tools for that. We could do a better job of this. Every Monday the whole lab gets together for half an hour only. [00:38:35] And basically says what they're doing. Like, what are you up to this week? Oh, we're trying to like, you know, figure out what's going on with that you know, stylist shaped problem we were talking about at the last demo, or, oh, we're, you know, we're in essay writing mode. We've got a, we're hoping to get the first draft done this week, or, you know, just whatever high level kind of objectives the team has. And then I was asked the question like, well, Do you expect to have anything for show and tell on Friday and every week on Friday we have show and tell or every other week. Talk a bit more about that and at show and tell. It's like whatever you've got that you want input on or just a deadline for you can share. Made some benchmark showing that this code is now a hundred times faster. Great. Like bring it to show and tell. Got that like tricky you know, user interaction, running real smooth. Bring it to show and tell, built a whole new prototype of a new kind of [00:39:35] like notetaking app. Awesome. Like come and see. And different folks and different projects have taken different approaches to this. What has been most effective, I'm told by a bunch of people in their opinion now is like, kind of approaching it. Like a little mini conference talk. I personally actually air more on the side of like a more casual and informal thing. And, and those can be good too. Just from like a personal alignment like getting things done. Perspective. What I've heard from people doing research who want to get useful feedback is that when they go in having sort of like rehearsed how to explain what they're doing, then how to show what they've done and then what kind of feedback they want. That not only do they get really good feedback, but also that process of making sure that the demo you're gonna do will actually run smoothly and be legible to the rest of the group [00:40:35] forces you. Again, just like the writing, it forces you to think about what you're doing and why you made certain choices and think about which ones people are gonna find dubious and tell them to either ignore that cuz it was a stand-in or let's talk about that cuz it's interesting. And like that, that that little cycle is really good. And that tends to be, people often come every two weeks for that [00:40:59] Ben: Yeah. [00:41:01] Peter: within when they're in active sort of mode. And so not always, but like two weeks feels about like the right cadence to, to have something. And sometimes people will come and say like, I got nothing this week. Like, let's do it next week. It's fine. And the other thing we do with that time is we alternate what we call zoom outs because they're on Zoom and I have no, no sense of humor I guess. But they're based on, they're based on the old you and your research hamming paper with where the idea is that like, at least for a little while, every week [00:41:35] we all get together and talk about something. Bigger picture that's not tied to any of our individual projects. Sometimes we read a paper together, sometimes we talk about like an interesting project somebody saw, you know, in the world. Sometimes it's skills sharing. Sometimes it's you know, just like, here's how I make coffee or something, right? Like, You know, just anything that is bigger picture or out of the day-to-day philosophical stuff. We've read Illich and, and Ursula Franklin. People love. [00:42:10] Ben: I like that a lot. And I, I think one thing that, that didn't, that, that I'm still wondering about is like, On, on sort of a technical level are, are there things that some peop some parts of the lab that are working on that other parts of the lab don't get, like they, they know, oh, like this person's working on [00:42:35] inks, but they kind of have no idea how inks actually work? Or is it something where like everybody in the lab can have a fairly detailed technical discussion with, with anybody else [00:42:45] Peter: Oh no. I mean, okay, so there are interesting interdependencies. So some projects will consume the output of past projects or build on past projects. And that's interesting cuz it can create almost like a. Industry style production dependencies where like one team wants to go be doing some research. The local first people are trying to work on a project. Somebody else is using auto merge and they have bugs and it's like, oh but again, this is why we have those Monday sort of like conversations. Right? But I think the teams are all quite independent. Like they have their own GitHub repositories. They make their own technology decisions. They use different programming languages. They, they build on different stacks, right? Like the Ink team is often building for iPad because that's the only place we can compile like [00:43:35] ink rendering code to get low enough latency to get the experiences we want. We've given up on the browser, we can't do it, but like, The local first group for various reasons has abandoned electron and all of these like run times and mostly just build stuff for the web now because it actually works and you spend all, spend way less calories trying to make the damn thing go if you don't have to fight xcode and all that kind of stuff. And again, so it really varies, but, and people choose different things at different times, but no, it's not like we are doing code review for each other or like. Getting into the guts. It's much more high level. Like, you know, why did you make that, you know, what is your programming model for this canvas you're working on? How does you know, how does this thing relate to that thing? Why is, you know, why does that layout horizontally? It feels hard to, to parse the way you've shown that to, you know, whatever. [00:44:30] Ben: Okay, cool. That, that makes sense. I just, I, the, the, the reason I ask [00:44:35] is I am just always thinking about how how related do projects inside of a single organization need to be for, like, is, is there sort of like an optimum amount of relatedness? [00:44:50] Peter: I view them all as the aspects of the same thing, and I think that that's, that's an important. Thing we didn't talk about. The goal of income switch is to give rise to a new kind of computing that is more user-centric, that's more productive, that's more creative in like a very raw sense that we want people to be able to think better thoughts, to produce better ideas, to make better art, and that computers can help them with that in ways that they aren't and in fact are [00:45:21] Ben: Yeah. [00:45:25] Peter: whether you're working on ink, Or local first software or malleable software media canvases or whatever domain you are working in. It [00:45:35] is the same thing. It is an ingredient. It is an aspect, it is a dimension of one problem. And so some, in some sense, all of this adds together to make something, whether it's one thing or a hundred things, whether it takes five years or 50 years, you know, that's, we're all going to the same place together. But on many different paths and at different speeds and with different confidence, right? And so in the small, the these things can be totally unrelated, but in the large, they all are part of one mission. And so when you say, how do you bring these things under one roof, when should they be under different roofs? It's like, well, when someone comes to me with a project idea, I ask, do we need this to get to where we're going? [00:46:23] Ben: Yeah, [00:46:24] Peter: And if we don't need it, then we probably don't have time to work on it because there's so much to do. And you know, there's a certain openness to experimentation and, [00:46:35] and uncertainty there. But that, that's the rubric that I use as the lab director is this, is this on the critical path of the revolution?  

Picture this: Three successful Amazon sellers from each corner of the globe sat down in a quaint Italian café, their journeys colliding over a shared passion for selling on Amazon. In this episode, we're chatting with Peter and Franco, our guests who symbolize the true essence of a global Amazon seller. Born in the US, raised in Australia, and operating out of Asia, Peter's journey through the world of Amazon selling is a fascinating tale. Then we have Franco, an Italian native who transitioned from a traditional upbringing to become a leading e-commerce entrepreneur. We listen to their stories, not just the triumphs but also the trials, like the time Franco's competitor created fake test reports to tarnish his reputation. Venture with us as Franco shares his extraordinary journey as an Amazon seller. From hitting his peak year of gross sales to navigating the fiercely competitive medical device field category, his story truly is a rollercoaster ride. Then we turn to Peter, who climbed to the number one spot in the health and personal care category within a mere three weeks. His dedication to producing reliable products and setting the right price point made him a standout entrepreneur. His unwavering commitment to his product and the pursuit of excellence are lessons for every budding e-commerce entrepreneur. As we bid our Italian farewell, we delve into Franco and Peter's strategies for success, from image testing to understanding European selling regulations and leveraging social media. Get a peek into Franco's vision of reaching nine figures and perhaps even owning a football team in Italy. We draw the final curtain discussing the potential of the Italian Amazon community and the role Amazon plays in shaping the European market. Join us for this riveting conversation brimming with success stories, challenges, and unique experiences in the world of Amazon selling. We promise it's worth the listen! In episode 509 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Franco, and Peter discuss: 00:00 - From Italy to Amazon 01:55 - Discovering Cultural Diversity in a Podcast 04:01 - From Australia to Italy 11:21 - Launching Products in Global Markets 14:58 - Challenges and Successes on Amazon 16:29 - Medical Device Field Competition and Tactics 24:32 - Strategies for Amazon Success 27:54 - Challenges With Listing Product on Amazon  32:35 - European Market Testing and Selling Strategies 36:21 - Discussion on Translations for International Marketplaces  39:25 - Italian Farewell and Appreciation for Italy ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On Youtube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: Today we've got sellers in the show that I originally met in Italy and now they're selling millions of dollars on Amazon. We're going to hear their story, which includes a case where one of their competitors even sent fake reports to the media about their product safety in order to get them kicked off of Amazon. How crazy is that? Pretty crazy, I think. What was your gross sales yesterday, last week, last year? More importantly, what are your profits after all, your cost of selling on Amazon? Did you pay any storage charges to Amazon? How much did you spend on PPC? Find out these key metrics and more by using the Helium 10 tool Profits. For more information, go to h10.me forward slash profits. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That's a completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And today we are doing what I think is a first we are having a three continent podcast at the same time. We're not recording this separately. I'm here in North America, we've got Peter, who, I believe, is in the Asian continent, and we've got Franco, who is in Europe. So welcome to the show. And the funny thing is, I met all of them in person, at least in Italy, which is why I'm wearing my Mona Lisa shirt, my Mona Lisa shirt, here. So anyways, welcome to the show, guys, and good afternoon and good morning to Franco, and it's good evening here. Peter: Thanks for having us. Bradley Sutton: Now I, as I said, I met these gentlemen at a conference in Milan, Italy, recently and you know, just talking to them a little bit and I was like man, all right, I don't want to know too much more because this sounds interesting and I just love to find out about the rest of you know your stories. You know, along with everybody else, the podcast. Now, that was like a couple months ago. So the cool thing is, you know, with my terrible memory, the little that they did tell me I've already forgotten. So, guys, I am going to be learning everything you know, right, right with you, with all the listeners today. So let's, first of all, you know the first thing that that that blew me away was, here's Peter, and you guys can't see him. You know he, he is, he's in Asia right now and he is of Asian descent. You know like he looks. I'm half Asian. I don't look Asian. Peter looks Asian and here he is sitting with me in this Italian restaurant and ordering in perfect Italian, like, what? Like? Do I really have jet lag? What is going on right here? Let's start with your backstory, were you? Uh, oh, yeah. And, by the way, the way he speaks English was also a little bit different, so were you. Were you born and raised in Australia, or were you born and raised? Peter: Yes, sir, I grew up in Australia, but actually I was, I was. I was born in the States. I don't know if I mentioned that in the state. Bradley Sutton: That makes it even more interesting I love it when we're about here in the States, in Minneapolis, minneapolis Okay, man, that's, that's. That's still the coldest I've ever been. Uh, not sure I want to go back there in winter, but all right. So you were in Minneapolis, and how? I mean? You know, the Minneapolis Australia connection is not very common, so how did that happen? Peter: Yeah, so if I take it back a step further, as you said, um, I'm, I'm Asian. My parents were born in China. Bradley Sutton: Okay. Peter: And they. They met in the US, so that's why I was born there, okay. And then, after um, they finished their studies, they decided they wanted to move to Australia. So when I was a baby, still be immigrated to Australia. Bradley Sutton: Okay, all right. And then now, growing up in Australia, what do you think you're going to be when you grow? Peter: Yeah, I didn't have any, you know, any special, different aspirations. I was like all the other kids. Bradley Sutton: Fine. Franco: Anything like that. Peter: Yeah. Bradley Sutton: Okay. Peter: I didn't think of being an entrepreneur or a commerce guy or anything like that. Bradley Sutton: Did you go to university in Australia? Peter: Yes, I did. I studied engineering Engineering. I had a very traditional upbringing? Bradley Sutton: Yeah, okay. And then, upon graduation, did you start working in that field? Peter: Yes, I did I um. So as I had no real exposure to my Asian roots, I wanted to do one year in Asia. So I ended up working in Hong Kong. So I worked in uh in Hong Kong for a little while with uh in the engineering field related to engineering. Bradley Sutton: Did you speak Chinese? Peter: I did not. That was one of the reasons why I wanted to go to Asia, because, growing up in Australia, yeah. At that time, I was the only Asian kid in school. Um, there was no real interaction with other families or anything, so, um, I just spoke English. Bradley Sutton: Okay, Now you know USA to Australia, to Hong Kong, how do you end up speaking Italian? Peter: So when I was in Hong Kong, um, I got headhunted for a job in Italy. So, yeah, I took the opportunity and went over there and um lived there for a few years and worked there for a few years. Bradley Sutton: Okay, that's cool that you learn the language. You know some people, uh, you know, go to other countries and you know years and they don't are not able to learn the language. That's a, that's a cool, uh cool skill there and and all right. So so that brings us to. I mean, obviously you're not in Italy anymore, so how long did you stay in Italy? Peter: Right, uh, I think it was about five years. About five years, about five years in a minute. Okay. Bradley Sutton: All right, and it was it during your your run in Italy there that you learned that you started on Amazon. Or how did you go from engineering to e-commerce? Peter: No. So, um, while I was in Italy, I also got headhunted for another job and I was moved to Shanghai. And while I was in Shanghai, I met a one of my friends who I did sport with, was very much into Amazon, and he always kept talking about it. And then, finally, uh, one day I said this sounds really interesting. Why don't you show me what you're doing? And I offered to invest in what he he was his business, because it sounded like it was really good. And he said no, why don't you just try yourself? So I did it as a um, as a hobby, for a while, and then eventually it became became a full time thing. Bradley Sutton: Okay, all right. All right. Now we're caught up to to kind of like the e-commerce list. Let's go ahead and take the journey with with Franco. Now for you it's a lot easier backstory Were you born and raised in Italy and lived there your whole life? Or or do you live in 17 million countries like, uh, peter? Franco: No, I was born and raised in Italy. I passed a couple of years in China, but it means that I was there like uh, every month of April and every month of October since 2003. So it's not was not like living permanently there. I was living in a hotel. So basically, I've been living my life in Italy. Bradley Sutton: Okay, all right. Now. What about you? Uh, what did you go to university for? Franco: I did pure maths and when I was starting at the university, I thought that I would be doing academia after that. Okay, and then it changed my mind. Bradley Sutton: Okay, what so? Upon graduation then, what did you enter into if you didn't want to go ahead and take that route that you thought you were going to take? Franco: Yeah, I did. When I graduated I didn't really know what to do because I changed my mind. I didn't want to be a university professor of math, so I was going into my other side of me, that was, being an entrepreneur. So I did an MBA and after that MBA I worked for a couple of years as a marketing assistant in a company and during that time I founded two companies, two different ones, with friends of mine. And then I resigned and from that point I always been an entrepreneur. Bradley Sutton: Okay, all right. So what year did you go full-on into e-commerce? Then what did you say? Franco: I went into e-commerce probably more than 10 years ago. Bradley Sutton: Dot com or other marketplaces, or what Now? Franco: in Europe, we're selling. Bradley Sutton: At that time, what I meant was yeah, the dot com is on Europe, but what I meant was like online sales or was it like a marketplace that you were on? Franco: No, it was our own e-commerce, our own website, and I was selling on with my company. I was selling rubber trucks that are the equivalent of tire for excavators and accessories for construction equipment, so something that probably even today you cannot sell on Amazon because like super huge and super heavy. Bradley Sutton: So you exited that company and then you said you became like a full-time entrepreneur. What was that endeavor like Full-time into? Like what was your? Was it just still online sales, or now you got into Amazon, or what happened there? Franco: Okay, so well, now most of my time is well, 100% of my time is on Amazon. But yeah, the other company, the one that's now, is doing Amazon as a long story, because it started in 1999. And we've been doing so many different stuff because we started from scratch with nothing. So we started doing multimedia content, then we went into doing CD and DVD duplication that means producing physical discs, then USB flash drives, accessories for smartphones, electronics in general, and then medical devices. When we went into medical devices, we went quite big on our e-commerce. That was not something that we were doing in this company. We're doing business to business mainly. And then from that, we went into Amazon. Not that we even had tried to do Amazon before, because we opened the Amazon account in 2014. But it was just a sort of let's see what's happening there, not really investing in that. So we were becoming big on Amazon since 2020. Bradley Sutton: All right, now we're kind of caught up in a similar timeline here. Let's go back to Peter then. Are you still selling your first product today, peter? Peter: Yes, I think I started with two or three, and all of those three products I'm still selling. How? Long has that been? Bradley Sutton: I started in 2017. Peter: Wow. Bradley Sutton: The same product. How many reviews do you have now approximately on that one? Peter: Maybe 3,000 or something like that. Reviews and ratings. Bradley Sutton: All right, so you're still selling the same stuff that you got into. How did you find that first product? Did you just take some course that a lot of people did and then just use the criteria to find the product and just struck gold in your first one? Or how in the world did you hit a home run with your very first product? Peter: So my friend had done the ASM course and so he suggested I did it as well. He told me the beginnings that I was doing the normal thing everyone was doing Just looking for a product that had an opportunity, that seemed like a good, not too competitive, good price, etc. Etc. And I was just lucky, I picked something that could last well. Bradley Sutton: Now, during this time you said you were back in China or were you in Italy? Peter: No, I was already in Shanghai at that point. Bradley Sutton: Ready in China? Okay, and then. So what marketplace did you launch this product on? Usa or Europe? Peter: Yeah, so I started in the USA. But I think within the first year I knew I wanted to be in Europe. So I immediately started in the European marketplace. I applied for VAT and everything. So yeah, pretty soon after the US Europe, I was into Europe. Bradley Sutton: Now? Was it any more easy than another person because you had lived in Italy before, or that meant nothing? Were you an American citizen, since you were born in America? Peter: Technically I have dual citizenship, but I always traveled on Australian passport. But, answering your question. So when I started Europe, I wanted to try the UK and Italy first before going into all the other countries. So, yes, there would have been a small advantage, starting with the Italian market, because I didn't have to worry too much about translations and more understanding what things were going. So small advantage, I would say, but not huge advantage. Bradley Sutton: Okay, All right Now. In the first couple of years of selling on Amazon, what was your peak of sales for like a year? Gross sales. Peter: I think it was about the second or the third year I reached seven figures. So I was going at seven figures for a while, but in the last two years I decided to focus more on profitability than revenue. So it's now in six figures, but making more profit overall. Now at what? Bradley Sutton: point did, like you said, it become your full-time job. At what level did you have to get to for it, to replace your engineering jobs that you've been doing for most of your adult? Peter: life. Yeah, I was able to replace it. I think it was maybe three or four years into the business, maybe four years. Bradley Sutton: You say you sell in multiple marketplaces. Do you aim for the same profit across the board, or is there a marketplace that's giving you better profit over another? Peter: For sure, Europe is way more profitable than the US, for products Is it? The shipping? Is it the? Bradley Sutton: PPC or what's you know, you're able to charge a higher price. What's the difference? Peter: It's the sellers in Europe. There's less of them, in my category at least, and the sellers are less sophisticated so they're not as good at branding PPC and just the basic stuff. Bradley Sutton: Okay, all right, let's go back to Franco then. So when you started on, amazon sounds like you started doing different things, but was there a point where you were only doing the medical devices, as you said, or did you start with only medical devices and that's all you've been doing this whole time? Franco: When I started in 2014,. We started with electronic, with accessories for smartphones, but I mean, we were making money with other stuff, so we were, we didn't really take it care of a lot about that and we were a little bit inexperienced. So we also did a couple of mistakes, like in the quality of the products. So we just like got a lot of bad reviews and we say, okay, we are making other stuff, we don't care about this, and we just kept the account open but we didn't use it. When, in 2020, we started doing medical devices, we went big almost immediately on Amazon. But before that, as I said, we were doing pretty well, like six or seven months before, on our e-commerce. That was the same e-commerce that was selling the electronics. That was like that website that we changed it and were you? Bradley Sutton: and were you only selling in Amazon Europe? Franco: Yes, because I'm proud to do not have the certification for selling in the US. They are very highly restricted and certified, so the regulatory stuff in US is completely different. Bradley Sutton: Now, what's been your peak year of gross sales? Approximately how much? 10 million, 10 million only in Europe in one year in medical devices. Yes, wow, is it safe to say that now Amazon is the main, as opposed to your? Franco: website. Are you still even? Bradley Sutton: doing anything on the websites or just all Amazon. Franco: We still have it. But I think it's very important because one of the reasons why we were successful on Amazon is because we know so well our customer. We know so well what they want from the product and when we launch a product we can tell to our customer. There is also this new product. You can also find this in Amazon, so it gives a lot of help. But because of the growth that we had on Amazon, we have a little bit of neglected our website. So as soon as we have more banned, we should keep making the website better and grow the website as well. Bradley Sutton: Now, as Peter was saying, europe is very profitable for him, partly in fact due to low competition. I would imagine being in the medical device field makes it even less competition. Would that be a fair assessment that it's very few competitors you have, or has it gotten a little bit more tough to? Franco: So I would say there are not so many, but the ones that are there are very aggressive, okay. Bradley Sutton: Aggressive as in they might do some black hat strategies and things like that, or what do you mean by aggressive? Franco: Yes, also Because on medical, it's very like you can get suspended for any kind of claim. So yeah, it's quite an aggressive field. Bradley Sutton: What's the craziest thing that has happened to you. I would assume that you've maybe had your account shut down or at least products suspended or what's been some crazy experiences you've had. Franco: The craziest things that happened to me was a competitor that wanted to get rid of all the big seller of the same product, so it creates some fake test report. It passed those tests to the media and from media they went on national TV and that was insane At the same time. Hold on, hold on. Bradley Sutton: So he made some fake report about like that your product is like unsafe, or something gave it to like a TV station and it got in TV. Franco: The first thing to give it to the media, to a newspaper To a newspaper and it made the biggest newspaper. From the newspaper, bump it to the national TV. Bradley Sutton: Yeah, and then and then. So what was the result? Like, did Amazon see that and then shut you down, or did you start getting bad reviews, or what? Franco: happened At the same. We were waiting experience on all the way to do stuff properly on Amazon. I mean, we didn't even have the brand registry at that time, so they were also able to hijack. At the same time, they hijacked our product and they left all our picture, the branding of our product, but we could not access our listing anymore. It's insane. I know it's insane. Bradley Sutton: Wow. Franco: Up to now I haven't heard of anyone that has an attack like that. Bradley Sutton: Yeah, it's intense. Franco: Yeah, and after like so the listing was destroyed because one month to get back the ownership of the listing and when it happened it was not possible to. I mean, it was like flu. That was probably more than a thousand of bad reviews, one thousand of, like one star reviews. Bradley Sutton: Now did the newspapers and media and stuff? Did they ever submit like retraction or correction? Franco: Oh well, yes, the newspaper, they we submitted like a press release, the newspaper, the newspaper added our press release to our today news. But customers don't really care. I mean, amazon business is a quick business, it's very quick. So we went, we look into that with, probably I think that the best lawyer we could find we usually have very good lawyers and there was no other way to have it fixed as soon as we wanted or to have like an economical compensation because of the way it was structured. Okay, the attack. Bradley Sutton: All right Now, peter, you know like it's safe to say that you've never had that level of attack, or you know? Peter: I don't think anybody has had that level of attack. So but I'm sure you have had my things on national television. Bradley Sutton: Yeah, I'm sure you've had some crazy things happen. Anything like anything that's happened to you. That would you say. You would call it. You know, your, your, your your kind of like worse experience on Amazon or craziest experience. Peter: I haven't had anything really horrible. I've had a lot of the standard like minor attacks from competitors, but probably the scariest one I had was Just I think it was three weeks before Christmas a big competitor in our space did an IP complaint against me and had my products suspended, but luckily I was able to get it back within a week. That could have easily dragged on for months, but I was very lucky. I got it back in a week. That was obviously very scary. How did you get it back? Just submitted appeals I used. I have a lawyer which I use all the time and even they said that's way faster than we normally see. You were really lucky. So I was just super lucky. Bradley Sutton: Okay, now you know let's not just scare everybody with all these bad stories. Peter, you know, sticking with you what's the best thing that's happened You're the craziest in a good way or biggest surprise, or biggest win you've had over the years on Amazon. Peter: I think the first one, which was really a happy experience for me. I've heard other guests on your podcast. I think they're similar. I had a product, one of my standard products, and in the UK suddenly I was having 10 times sales that I normally have. So and this was quite early on, so I still didn't know about being attacked, so I wasn't worried like I would be now, and in those days you could still write to the customers quite easily. So I was writing to a few of them and I got a response back that a celebrity. I've seen the products used by a celebrity on their you know, on their social media. So yeah, that was fantastic and yeah, I knew that celebrity. So it was pretty cool. Bradley Sutton: Awesome, awesome. Now you know you've sold in multiple marketplaces, but you know you're probably an expert, I would say on the Italian one. Is what you do on Amazon Italy, 100% the same strategy across the board? Like, I mean, obviously the language is different, but is your PPC strategy the same? Is your branding strategy the same? Is your keyword research strategy the same, or is there something different that you're doing in Italy? You know due to your experience there. Peter: No, I would say everything's particularly the same. As I mentioned before, it was a small advantage, and even now it's practically no advantage with the translation software that's available. So I'm just doing the same thing in all the marketplaces. Bradley Sutton: That's good to know, because you know some sellers out there. You know they start in a marketplace, whether it's Italy, whether it's Germany, whether it's USA, and they're like kind of scared sometimes to branch out because they're like oh man, I'm gonna have to learn a whole bunch of new strategies to go to this new marketplace. But no, it's across the board. I mean sure. You know every now, and you know there's VAT, you know, and then in Japan you might have to do a little something different. You know, but for the most part the strategy is the same. Now, what's going on these days with you know? You mentioned you sell in UK and Italy. What changed after the Brexit? Like, now do you have to send inventory to UK and then send inventory to Italy separately, and it's completely separated and segregated, or what was the difference after Brexit? Peter: Yeah, so you've probably heard of Pan-European and probably you'll. Listeners who have some experience know about Pan-European. Maybe I can explain that really quickly. Go ahead, please. It's like the US when you send a shipment to, it goes to one location and then Amazon will spread it out all over the US, right? Bradley Sutton: Yeah, we call that. North American remote fulfillment is what it's called over here. Peter: Right, so they have the same thing in Europe. If you're VAT, you registered in their core countries, which was UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain I think that's all of them. It was the same thing. You'd send it to one country and then they would spread it out amongst all the countries as if it was one country. So that was very convenient. When Brexit happened, the UK became its own separate country, so all the work that you do logistically, which you used to do for Europe, then you had to repeat it for the UK. So it's a bit of a hassle, time-wise. Bradley Sutton: Okay, all right. Now, switching back to Franco, you had the worst thing that somebody could possibly imagine happening. Now the same question that I gave Peter what was the best thing that's happening? I mean, other than the fact that you're not even selling the USA and you can still gross 10 million a year? I mean that by itself is pretty amazing, but what else other than that is a cool thing. That's happened to kind of like pump up people's spirits after feeling so sorry for you. Franco: Yeah, well, I think that if I put on my hand the bad thing and the other thing, the good things, the good thing outweigh the bad thing. And the best one was the velocity to which we could reach the number one in health and personal care category with our products like in three weeks. Bradley Sutton: So number one, as in BSR, one in the whole health category. Franco: Yes, yes, Wow, that's pretty impressive. Yeah, that was between 2020 and 2021,. We reached that position in like three weeks with our product. Bradley Sutton: that's why we got a time Three weeks from the time you launched yes, Wow, okay, well, okay, well, then tell me, I gotta pause you there. Then how in the world did that happen? Like, did you have some crazy campaign? Was it all organic? Franco: How would you go from zero to number one so fast? No, they were proud of the COVID. Bradley Sutton: Ah, okay, okay, that's the reason. Now, did you was this after COVID you started? Or did you just get lucky, like it was something you were starting and you had no idea COVID was happening and the timing was just right? Or how in the world did you manage that? Franco: Well, we have been manufacturing in China since, I told you, since 2003,. We have a very strong presence in China, and so when COVID hit in China in January 2020, I knew it was coming to Italy or to Europe. I was pretty sure. I also wrote article about that, and so when that happened, I was a sort of reference for many people to say, hey, can you help in something? Because you know, italy was the first country in the Western world to be hit very hard, and so we started doing those like masks, those kind of product for COVID, and at the beginning, we were just doing that for hospitals, like for what was really needed. Franco: And then after that, we went to doing this on our e-commerce and the reason was that we ran out of money because the request was so insane Because we look into that so deeply that we were 100% legit. Our problem was like, probably the safest you can buy at the right price. We didn't want to speculate. We really want to have the country, and so we had a good product at the right price and we have an insane amount of demand for all those state-owned stuff, like the police even the finance police was buying from us. And so when we ran out of money. We opened the e-commerce because we need some very short money cycles and you know, on e-commerce you get the money like right away. And so after that, six months later, and also we got a lot of. Our e-commerce was an instant success as well, because we were supplying all the hospitals and so our product with our brand was in every hand, everyone hands and so our e-commerce was an instant success. Franco: And then we asked it like in April 2020, to our product to be listed on Amazon, and Amazon didn't accept it. And you have to consider that at that time on Amazon, it was fluted with product that were not legit, like all the things you were finding on Amazon related to the kind of product was like not compliant. We submitted our product. We were rejected. We said, okay, I don't care, I have other stuff to do. And then in October, I tried to resubmit the product. It was rejected again, okay, but in November, for I don't know what I receive, like Without asking again to to be listed, the I so the listing the listing was there but was not like, not active. The list he became active. Franco: From that point, I think that because we have so much, I'd say, brand recognition, yeah. Trust from the customer. As soon as we told the customer we are on Amazon was like that. I mean, we could have been number one, probably in a week. The only problem was the, the velocity, and that we need to have the product on their warehouse. Yeah, and so it was like giving three days out of stock. One day, then three, because of the space that Amazon was giving us, because when you are number one, you have to send a truck every day, or even more and and so, yeah, that's the story, that's cool. Bradley Sutton: Now, you know, for the last part of this, you know let's just go back and forth with some, some strategies, you know, and I don't mean, oh, you know, keep your a cost down and and and have a nice logo, or you know it's just standard stuff. But you know each of you to be at the position you are, you know which is, you know Amazon is your full-time business and you've reached six, seven, even eight figures. You know you've got to have some, some unique strategies and some, some things that are that you feel are the difference of why you've been so successful. So we'll start, you know, franco, with you. What is something that you know? So you know, it could be a PPC strategy, it could be a launch strategy, could be branding strategy. Uh, what? What's your first strategy of the day? Franco: I think that's still uh, the obsession with the product is a key. So like, uh, having the best product you can have for your customers, and so listening to all the advice and Now you can use AI and do all your research. But, uh, do the extra, the extra mile. Don't only use AI, because AI is very good to finding, um, like patterns, like to put in together Something that is saying a different way, but it's not good to find out liars, and many times in the outliers there are some very good gold nuggets, so talk with as many as you can, even even call them and Understand what are they paying, what are they, what they really want. Franco: When you have the best possible product, then you need to apply all the techniques that amazon Required. Like I have the best possible page. Uh, add those pains and uh, emotion of the customer reflected in your stack image At the best possible main image ever. Like, do a lot of testing, an insane amount of testing, until you know you will be the number one choice and never Let the customer down. Whatever they have a problem, solve it, solve it. Solve it, because then you have To, you have to reach the position, then you have to stick to in the position. Yeah, it's an ever-ending story. Bradley Sutton: All right, switching back to peter. Uh, what's your um first strategy you'd like to share? Peter: Uh, I'd give a general one and then maybe an amazon specific one. Very general. Uh, I think there's a lot of listeners on your podcast that are maybe just starting out, so I would suggest just to keep things simple. I've seen some people they they try and go to advanced from the beginning and it's uh, they get in over their head. They don't understand what's happening. So I would just keep it simple, even though I've been doing it for a long time. I I also Follow the same principle. I don't have any, I don't have any full-time staff. I I just try and keep things as simple as possible. And then, specifically for amazon, as I mentioned before, I think if you're, especially if you're getting started, you really need to think about products or a product that you can brand. And if you, if you can't brand a product for example, if you're doing I don't know stationary or Cleaning accessories or something, it's very difficult to build a brand around that, to build User excitement. So that's something you probably need to consider as well. Bradley Sutton: Okay, Going back to Franco, you know like you can give us another strategy, but before you do that, I wanted to kind of like double down on what you were talking about. You know you were saying hey, you know, have the best listening, have the best images and and do a lot of testing. How are you doing this testing and how are you making sure that? You have you know the best. Franco: Well, I'm using all the Software as a service, as a this are available. So I like take my few four competitors and I test my main image against their, I mean against the main image of my competitors. Then I got all the advice from the pollers, like we choose this because of this, we don't like this because of that. We run AI on that. But we don't only run AI. Franco: I read all the response one by one and I try to see how can make it. I can make it better. And then I write like Something that, what, what need to be done. I pass this to my and I try to be very, very Pacific. Like many times, I take a piece of paper and make driving by myself, like this is how I want this to be, and then I pass to my designer and then the designer make a new Couple of variation and it test again and sometimes I go very deeply on that. Like I am not happy until, like I get that out of five possible choice of main image, my main image gets 60% of the clicks and the other four share the 40%. Bradley Sutton: So it's not just a matter of all right, hey, I won with 30%, another one has 28, another one has 26. That's even though you won. That's a failure to you until you can get to the 60%. Franco: Yeah, I won like 60% and 40% spread between the other four, then I know that I'll stand out, and this is the first step. Then I need to like the page has to be consistent. And then I need to maintain my promise to the customer. Bradley Sutton: Are you selling? You're still with Franco here. Are you selling in all European marketplaces, like including the newer ones like Poland, netherlands, or are you focused only on the bigger ones? Franco: So my sellers, I sell both on one P vendor center and three P seller central and I have all the accounts. I mean all the nine accounts in Europe, but the only one that really matters are the big five UK, Italy, Germany, Spain and France. And for the most of my product I cannot use the Pan European, as Pita does, because there are specific regulations for each. So there is on top there is the EU regulation, but then there are specific regulation on a country level. So, amazon, do not allow us to do the Pan AU. We need to stop the product on each country. Peter: Okay, that's a lot of work and increases your workload to manage your logistics in each country like that. Franco: Yeah. Bradley Sutton: All right, going back to Peter, you have any more strategies for us. But before you get to that, what about you? You mentioned UK and Italy. Are you also selling in all nine marketplaces, or are you only keeping your listings active in the big ones? Peter: Yeah, it was only UK and Italy when I first started in Europe to get an idea of how it worked. Bradley Sutton: And almost immediately. Peter: I think I only did UK and Italy for three months and then straight away I went into the Pan European. Bradley Sutton: So for the last few years. Peter: I've been, yeah, outside of the big five. Bradley Sutton: If you have to pick one of the newer ones, are they all doing equal or is there one that you feel? Hey, down the road, this could become the sixth one, that's a good question. Peter: Now I haven't really focused on any of the new ones. I think whether you're Belgium, sweden, I can't remember, but Poland's Check for public. But from what I've seen they're all very minimal. I haven't really put an effort into them. I wouldn't say there's one that particularly stands out. Bradley Sutton: And then for all of those, are you just using what Amazon does for the auto translation, or did you, did you commission official translation with a service or something? Obviously, you did the Italian one yourself, but what about for these other languages? Peter: Actually, I didn't do the Italian one myself. I used Yana's service, ylt shout out to Yana. But for the other marketplaces, no, I haven't specifically worked on those. I've just left it with Amazon doing their own translations, and then they have a similar system to NAF. So, for like for Canada and Mexico, then for the other countries that we just mentioned, they'll take the product from Germany or France or wherever, and then send it over. It's a similar system. Bradley Sutton: Okay, all right. Any more specific strategies for us that you'd like to? Peter: share. I do a lot on social media. I don't know if you've seen that's been a huge part of improving profitability in the last two years. So the PPC costs were going up incredibly Like for us. It was getting. Tacos was getting up to 30%, maybe even 40% for some products and now, with some strong, a lot of work on the social media side and managed to bring that down to less than 5%, which I think is quite rare in the industry for the TACOS Less than 5% TACOS. Wow, that's very impressive and most of the TACOS is brand defense on the product page. So, yeah, that's been huge for us to make that change. Bradley Sutton: All right. What does the future hold for you, Franco? Like you, just hey, let's just keep going. Or are you looking to exit your business and retire? You looking to start any more brands, or what's your you looking one year down the road, five years down the road? Buying a lower division Italians football team, or like what's gonna, what's gonna. Franco: Yeah, yeah, maybe, maybe Now. Well, my dream would be to. I have my figure. My company reached nine figures. That's a very, very difficult endeavor, and at that level. Bradley Sutton: I think you might be ready for Inter Milan or AC Milan. Franco: Forget the lower division, you'll be ready. Bradley Sutton: Let's buy one of those. Franco: What else. And that could be through acquisitions of other brands or through expanding our product range. We have been looking to many, many things, okay what about you, Peter? Bradley Sutton: What's the future hold for you? Peter: Yeah, I'm just happy doing what I'm doing. I don't have any new term plans to sell the business. Enjoy what I do and just gonna keep going. Bradley Sutton: All right, excellent. Now why don't we just go ahead and close this out with a one or two sentence words of farewell in Italiano here. Start with Franco. Say something for the Italian community out there. Franco: The Italian community of the Amazon vendors has to grow to a great potential. Amazon has become one of the most important markets in Europe. So, guys, we're gonna win Amazon. Bradley Sutton: All right, and, peter, where were your Italian words of wisdom? Peter: Italian. If someone in Italy hears this, I'll pass their Shanghai. So they're content with the Vedetti. Bradley Sutton: All right. Peter: I have no idea. Bradley Sutton: This host of the podcast is a crazy guy. Peter: Shoot a sexy host of this podcast is what I said. Bradley Sutton: All right, there we go. That's good, I'll believe that. All right. Well, guys, thank you so much. It was great to have you on. It was great to meet you and hang out in Italy. We found that little nice restaurant that I was not expecting much, but I was really, really delicious food. My whole time in Italy was good food, but I look forward to seeing you at a future conference, whether it be in Asia, north America or Europe. So thanks for coming on. Peter: Thank you. Franco: Thank you.

We are thrilled to announce the third session of our new Incubator Program. If you have a business idea that involves a web or mobile app, we encourage you to apply to our eight-week program. We'll help you validate your market opportunity, experiment with messaging and product ideas, and move forward with confidence toward an MVP. Learn more and apply at tbot.io/incubator. We look forward to seeing your application in our inbox! Peter Voss is the CEO and Chief Scientist of Aigo.ai, a groundbreaking alternative to conventional chatbots and generative models like ChatGPT. Aigo's chatbot is powered by Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), enabling it to think, learn, and reason much like a human being. It boasts short-term and long-term memory, setting it apart in terms of personalized service and context-awareness. Along with host Chad Pytel, Peter talks about how most chatbots and AI systems today are basic. They can answer questions but can't understand or remember the context. Aigo.ai is different because it's built to think and learn more like humans. It can adapt and get better the more you use it. He also highlights the challenges Aigo.ai faces in securing venture capital, given that its innovative approach doesn't align with current investment models heavily focused on generative or deep learning AI. Peter and Chad agree that while generative AI serves certain functions well, the quest for a system that can think, learn, and reason like a human demands a fundamentally different approach. Aigo.ai (https://aigo.ai/) Follow Aigo.ai on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/aigo-ai/) or YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl3XKNOL5rEit0txjVA07Ew). Follow Peter Voss on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/vosspeter/). Visit his website: optimal.org/voss.html (http://optimal.org/voss.html) Follow thoughtbot on X (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Peter Voss, CEO and Chief Scientist at Aigo.ai. Peter, thanks so much for joining me. PETER: Yes, thank you. CHAD: So, tell us a little bit about what Aigo.ai does. You've been working in AI for a long time. And it seems like Aigo is sort of the current culmination of a lot of your 15 years of work, so... PETER: Yes, exactly. So, the quick way to describe our current product is a chatbot with a brain, and the important part is the brain. That basically, for the last 15-plus years, I've been working on the core technology for what's called AGI, Artificial General Intelligence, a system that can think, learn, reason similar to the way humans do. Now, we're not yet at human level with this technology. But it's a lot smarter and a lot more usable than traditional chatbots that don't have a brain. CHAD: I want to dig into this idea a little bit. I think, like a lot of people, I've used just traditional chatbots, particularly like ChatGPT is the latest. I've built some things on top of it. What is the brain that makes it different? Especially if you've used one, what is using Aigo going to be different? PETER: Right. I can give a concrete example of one of our customers then I can talk about the technology. So, one of our big customers is the 1-800-Flowers group of companies, which is Harry & David Popcorn Factory and several others. And wanted to provide a hyper-personalized concierge service for their customers where, you know, the system learns who you buy gifts for, for what occasions, you know, what your relationship is to them, and to basically remember who you are and what you want for each of their 20 million customers. And they tried different technologies out there, you know, all the top brands and so on, and they just couldn't get it off the ground. And the reason is because they really don't learn. And we now have 89% self-service on the things that we've implemented, which is pretty much unheard of for complex conversations. So, why can we do that? The reason is that our system has deep understanding. So, we have deep pausing, deep understanding, but more importantly, that the system remembers. It has short-term memory. It has long-term memory. And it uses that as context. So, you know, when you call back a second time, it'll remember what your previous call was, you know, what your preferences are, and so on. And it can basically use that information, the short and long-term memory, and reason about it. And that is really a step forward. Now, until ChatGPT, which is really very different technology from chatbot technology, I mean, chatbot technology, you're assuming...the kind of thing we're talking about is really augmenting call center, you know, automatic call center calls. There, you need deep integration into the customers' back-end system. You obviously need to know what the latest product availability is, what the customers' outstanding orders are, you know, all sorts of things like, you know, delivery schedules. And we probably have, like, two dozen APIs that connect our system to their various corporate databases and so on. Now, traditional chatbots obviously can do that. You hook up the APIs and do things, and it's, you know, it's a lot of work. But traditional chatbot technology really hasn't really changed much in 30 years. You basically have a categorizer; how can I help you? Basically, try to...what is the intent, intent categorizer? And then once your intent has been identified, you basically have a flowchart-type program that, you know, forces you down a flowchart. And that's what makes them so horrible because it doesn't use context. It doesn't have short-term memory. CHAD: And I just wanted to clarify the product and where you mentioned call center. So, this isn't just...or only text-based chat. This is voice. PETER: Yes. We started off with chat, and we now also have voice, so omnichannel. And the beauty of the system having the brain as well is you can jump from text messaging to a chat on the website to Apple ABC to voice, you know. So, you can basically move from one channel to another seamlessly. You know, so that's against traditional chatbot technology, which is really what everybody is still using. Now, ChatGPT, of course, the fact that it's called ChatGPT sort of makes it a bit confusing. And, I mean, it's phenomenal. The technology is absolutely phenomenal in terms of what it can do, you know, write poems and give you ideas. And the amount of information it's amazing. However, it's really not suited for commercial-grade applications because it hallucinates and it doesn't have memory. CHAD: You can give it some context, but it's basically faking it. You're providing it information every time you start to use it. PETER: Correct. The next time you connect, that memory is gone, you know [crosstalk 05:58] CHAD: Unless you build an application that saves it and then feeds it in again. PETER: Right. Then you basically run out of context we know very quickly. In fact, I just published a white paper about how we can get to human-level AI. And one of the things we did and go over in the paper is we did a benchmark our technology where we fed the system about 300 or 400 facts, simple facts. You know, it might be my sister likes chocolate or, you know, it could be other things like I don't park my car in the garage or [chuckles], you know. It could be just simple facts, a few hundred of those. And then we asked questions about that. Now, ChatGPT scored less than 1% on that because, you know, with an 8K window, it basically just couldn't remember any of this stuff. So, we use -- CHAD: It also doesn't, in my experience...it's basically answering the way it thinks the answer should sound or look. And so, it doesn't actually understand the facts that you give it. PETER: Exactly. CHAD: And so, if you feed it a bunch of things which are similar, it gets really confused because it doesn't actually understand the things. It might answer correctly, but it will, in my experience, just as likely answer incorrectly. PETER: Yeah. So, it's extremely powerful technology for helping search as well if a company has all the documents and they...but the human always has to be in the loop. It just makes way too many mistakes. But it's very useful if it gives you information 8 out of 10 times and saves you a lot of time. And it's relatively easy to detect the other two times where it gives you wrong information. Now, I know in programming, sometimes, it's given me wrong information and ended up taking longer to debug the misinformation it gave me than it would have taken me. But overall, it's still a very, very powerful tool. But it really isn't suitable for, you know, serious chatbot applications that are integrated into back-end system because these need to be signed off by...legal department needs to be happy that it's not going to get the company into trouble. Marketing department needs to sign off on it and customer experience, you know. And a generative system like that, you really can't rely on what it's going to say, and that's apart from security concerns and, you know, the lack of memory and deep understanding. CHAD: Yeah. So, you mentioned generative AI, which is sort of one of the underlying pieces of ChatGPT. In your solutions, are you using any generative solutions? PETER: No, not at all. Well, I can give one example. You know, what 1-800-Flowers do is they have an option to write a poem for your mother's birthday or Mother's Day or something like it. And for that, we will use ChatGPT, or they use ChatGPT for that because that's what it's good at. But, you know, that's really just any other app that you might call up to do something for you, you know, like calling up FedEx to find out where your goods are. Apart from that, our technology...it's a good question you ask because, you know, statistical systems and generative AI now have really dominated the AI scene for the last about 12 years, really sort of since DeepMind started. Because it's been incredibly successful to take masses amounts of data and masses amounts of computing power and, you know, number crunch them and then be able to categorize and identify images and, you know, do all sorts of magical things. But, the approach we use is cognitive AI as opposed to generative. It's a relatively unknown approach, but that's what we've been working on for 15 years. And it starts with the question of what does intelligence require to build a system so that it doesn't use masses amounts of data? It's not the quantity of data that counts. It's the quality of data. And it's important that it can learn incrementally as you go along like humans do and that it can validate what it learns. It can reason about, you know, new information. Does this make sense? Do I need to ask a follow-up question? You know, that kind of thing. So, it's cognitive AI. That's the approach we're using. CHAD: And, obviously, you have a product, and you've productized it. But you said, you know, we've been working on this, or you've been working on this model for a long time. How has it progressed? PETER: Yes, we are now on, depending on how you count, but on the third major version of it that we've started. And really, the progress has been determined by resources really than any technology. You know, it's not that we sort of have a big R&D requirement. It's really more development. But we are a relatively small company. And because we're using such different technology, it's actually been pretty hard to raise VC money. You know, they look at it and, you know, ask you, "What's your training data? How big is your model?" You know, and that kind of thing. CHAD: Oh, so the questions investors or people know to ask aren't relevant. PETER: Correct. And, you know, they bring in the AI experts, and then they say, "Well, what kind of deep learning, machine learning, or generative, or what transformer model are using?" And we say, "Well, we don't." And typically, that's kind of, "Oh okay, well, then it can't possibly work, you know, we don't understand it." So, we just recently launched. You know, with all the excitement of generative AI now recently, with so much money flowing into it, we actually launched a major development effort. Now we want to hire an additional a hundred people to basically crank up the IQ. So, over the years, you know, we're working on two aspects of it: one is to continually crank up the IQ of the system, that it can understand more and more complex situations; it can reason better and be able to handle bigger amounts of data. So, that's sort of the technical part that we've been working on. But then the other side, of course, running a business, a lot of our effort over the last 15 years has gone into making it industrial strength, you know, security, scalability, robustness of the system. Our current technology, our first version, was actually a SaaS model that we deployed behind a customer's firewall. CHAD: Yeah, I noticed that you're targeting more enterprise deployments. PETER: Yeah, that's at the moment because, financially, it makes more sense for us to kind of get off the ground to work with, you know, larger companies where we supply the technology, and it's deployed usually in the cloud but in their own cloud behind their firewall. So, they're very happy with that. You know, they have complete control over their data and reliability, and so on. But we provide the technology and then just licensing it. CHAD: Now, a lot of people are familiar with generative AI, you know, it runs on GPUs and that kind of thing. Does the hardware profile for where you're hosting it look the same as that, or is it different? PETER: No, no, no, it requires much less horsepower. So, I mean, we can run an agent on a five-year-old laptop, you know, and it doesn't...instead of it costing $100 million to train the model, it's like pennies [laughter] to train the model. I mean, we train it during our regression testing, and that we train it several times a day. Mid-Roll Ad: When starting a new project, we understand that you want to make the right choices in technology, features, and investment but that you don't have all year to do extended research. In just a few weeks, thoughtbot's Discovery Sprints deliver a user-centered product journey, a clickable prototype or Proof of Concept, and key market insights from focused user research. We'll help you to identify the primary user flow, decide which framework should be used to bring it to life, and set a firm estimate on future development efforts. Maximize impact and minimize risk with a validated roadmap for your new product. Get started at: tbot.io/sprint. CHAD: So, you mentioned ramping up the IQ is a goal of yours. With a cognitive model, does that mean just teaching it more things? What does it entail? PETER: Yes, there's a little bit of tension between commercial requirements and what you ultimately want for intelligence because a truly intelligent system, you want it to be very autonomous and adaptive and have a wide range of knowledge. Now, for current commercial applications we're doing, you actually don't want the system to learn things by itself or to make up stuff, you know, you want it to be predictable. So, they develop and to ultimately get to full human-level or AGI capability requires a system to be more adaptive–be able to learn things more. So, the one big change we are making to the system right now is natural language understanding or English understanding. And our current commercial version was actually developed through our—we call them AI psychologists, our linguists, and cognitive psychologists—by basically teaching it the rules of English grammar. And we've always known that that's suboptimal. So, with the current version, we are now actually teaching it English from the ground up the way a child might learn a language, so the language itself. So, it can learn any language. So, for commercial applications, that wasn't really a need. But to ultimately get to human level, it needs to be more adaptive, more autonomous, and have a wider range of knowledge than the commercial version. That's basically where our focus is. And, you know, we know what needs to be done, but, you know, it's quite a bit of work. That's why we need to hire about 100 people to deal with all of the different training things. It's largely training the system, you know, but there are also some architectural improvements we need to make on performance and the way the system reasons. CHAD: Well, you used the term Artificial General Intelligence. I understand you're one of the people who coined that term [chuckles] or the person. PETER: Yes. In 2002, I got together with two other people who felt that the time was ripe to get back to the original dream of AI, you know, from 60 years ago, to build thinking machines basically. So, we decided to write a book on the topic to put our ideas out there. And we were looking for a title for the book, and three of us—myself, Ben Goertzel, and Shane Legg, who's actually one of the founders of DeepMind; he was working for me at the time. And we were brainstorming it, and that's what we came up with was AGI, Artificial General Intelligence. CHAD: So, for people who aren't familiar, it's what you were sort of alluding to. You're basically trying to replicate the human brain, the way humans learn, right? That's the basic idea is -- PETER: Yeah, the human cognition really, yeah, human mind, human cognition. That's exactly right. I mean, we want an AI that can think, learn, and reason the way humans do, you know, that it can hit the box and learn a new topic, you know, you can have any kind of conversation. And we really believe we have the technology to do that. We've built quite a number of different prototypes that already show this kind of capability where it can, you know, read Wikipedia, integrate that with existing knowledge, and then have a conversation about it. And if it's not sure about something, it'll ask for clarification and things like that. We really just need to scale it up. And, of course, it's a huge deal for us to eventually get to human-level AI. CHAD: Yeah. How much sort of studying of the brain or cognition do you do in your work, where, you know, sort of going back and saying, "Okay, we want to tackle this thing"? Do you do research into cognition? PETER: Yeah, that's a very interesting question. It really gets to the heart of why I think we haven't made more progress in developing AGI. In fact, another white paper I published recently is "Why Don't We Have AGI Yet?" And, you know, one of the big problems is that statistical AI has been so incredibly successful over the last decade or so that it sucked all of the oxygen out of the air. But to your question, before I started on this project, I actually took off five years to study intelligence because, to me, that's really what cognitive AI approach is all about is you start off by saying, what is intelligence? What does it require? And I studied it from the perspective of philosophy, epistemology, theory of knowledge. You know, what's reality? How do we know anything? CHAD: [laughs] PETER: How can we be sure? You know, really those most fundamental questions. Then how do children learn? What do IQ tests measure? How does our intelligence differ to animal intelligence? What is that magic difference between, you know, evolution? Suddenly, we have this high-level cognition. And the short answer of that is being able to form abstract concepts or concept formation is sort of key, and to have metacognition, to be able to think about your own thinking. So, those are kind of the things I discovered during the five years of study. Obviously, I also looked at what had already been done in the field of AI, as in good old-fashioned AI, and neural networks, and so on. So, this is what brought me together. So, absolutely, as a starting point to say, what is intelligence? Or what are the aspects of intelligence that are really important and core? Now, as far as studying the brain is concerned, I certainly looked at that, but I pretty quickly decided that that wasn't that relevant. It's, you know, you certainly get some ideas. I mean, neural networks, ours is kind of a neural network or knowledge graph, so there's some similarity with that. But the analogy one often gives, which I think is not bad, is, you know, we've had flying machines for 100 years. We are still nowhere near reverse engineering a bird. CHAD: Right. PETER: So, you know, evolution and biology are just very different from designing things and using the materials that we need to use in computers. So, definitely, understanding intelligence, I think, is key to being able to build it. CHAD: Well, in some ways, that is part of the reason why statistical AI has gotten so much attention with that sort of airplane analogy because it's like, maybe we need to not try to replicate human cognition [chuckles]. Maybe we need to just embrace what computers are good at and try to find a different way. PETER: Right, right. But that argument really falls down when you say you are ignoring intelligence, you know, or you're ignoring the kind of intelligence. And we can see how ridiculous the sort of the current...well, I mean, first of all, let me say Sam Altman, and everybody says...well, they say two things: one, we have no idea how these things work, which is not a good thing if you're [chuckles] trying to build something and improve it. And the second thing they say...Demis Hassabis and, you know, everybody says it, "This is not going to get us to human-level AI, to human-level intelligence." They realize that this is the wrong approach. But they also haven't come up with what the right approach is because they are stuck within the statistical big data approach, you know, we need another 100 billion dollars to build even bigger computers with bigger models, you know, but that's really -- CHAD: Right. It might be creating a tool, which has some uses, but it is not actual; I mean, it's not really even actual artificial intelligence -- PETER: Correct. And, I mean, you can sort of see this very easily if...imagine you hired a personal assistant for yourself, a human. And, you know, they come to you, and they know how to use Excel and do QuickBooks or whatever, and a lot of things, so great. They start working with you. But, you know, every now and again, they say something that's completely wrong with full confidence, so that's a problem. Then the second thing is you tell them, "Well, we've just introduced a new product. We shut down this branch here. And, you know, I've got a new partner in the business and a new board member." And the next day, they come in, and they remember nothing of that, you know, [chuckles] that's not very intelligent. CHAD: Right. No, no, it's not. It's possible that there's a way for these two things to use each other, like generating intelligent-sounding, understanding what someone is saying and finding like things to it, and being able to generate meaningful, intelligent language might be useful in a cognitive model. PETER: We obviously thought long and hard about this, especially when, you know, generative AI became so powerful. I mean, it does some amazing things. So, can we combine the technology? And the answer is quite simply no. As I mentioned earlier, we can use generative AI kind of as an API or as a tool or something. You know, so if our system needs to write a poem or something, then yes, you know, these systems can do a good job of it. But the reason you can't really just combine them and kind of build a Frankensteinian kind of [laughs] thing is you really need to have context that you currently have fully integrated. So you can't have two brains, you know, the one brain, which is a read-only brain, and then our brain, our cognitive brain, which basically constantly adapts and uses the context of what it's heard using short-term memory, long-term memory, reasoning, and so on. So, all of those mental mechanisms of deep understanding of context, short-term and long-term memory, reasoning, language generation–they all have to be tightly integrated and work together. And that's basically the approach that we have. Now, like a human to...if you write, you know, "Generate an essay," and you want to have it come up with maybe some ideas, changing the style, for example, you know, it would make sense for our system to use a generative AI system like a tool because humans are good tool users. You know, I wouldn't expect our system to be the world chess champion or Go champion. It can use a chess-playing AI or a Go-playing AI to do that job. CHAD: That's really cool. You mentioned the short-term, long-term memory. If I am using or working on a deployment for Aigo, is that something that I specify, like, oh, this thing where we've collected goes in short term versus long term, or does the system actually do that automatically? PETER: That's the beauty of the system that: it automatically has short and long-term memory. So, really, the only thing that needs to be sort of externally specified is things you don't want to keep in long-term memory, you know, that for some reason, security reasons, or a company gives you a password or whatever. So, then, they need to be tagged. So, we have, like, an ontology that describes all of the different kinds of knowledge that you have. And in the ontology, you can tag certain branches of the ontology or certain nodes in the ontology to say, this should not be remembered, or this should be encrypted or, you know, whatever. But by default, everything that comes into short-term memory is remembered. So, you know, a computer can have photographic memory. CHAD: You know, that is part of why...someone critical of what they've heard might say, "Well, you're just replicating a human brain. How is this going to be better?" And I think that that's where you're just...what you said, like, when we do artificial general intelligence with computers, they all have photographic memory. PETER: Right. Well, in my presentations, when I give talks on this, I have the one slide that actually talks about how AI is superior to humans in as far as getting work done in cognition, and there's actually quite a number of things. So, let me first kind of give one example here. So, imagine you train up one AI to be a PhD-level cancer researcher, you know, it goes through whatever training, and reading, and coaching, and so on. So, you now have this PhD-level cancer researcher. You now make a million copies of that, and you have a million PhD-level cancer researchers chipping away at the problem. Now, I'm sure we would make a lot more progress, and you can now replicate that idea, that same thinking, you know, in energy, pollution, poverty, whatever, I mean, any disease, that kind of approach. So, I mean, that already is one major difference that you make copies of an AI, which you can't of humans. But there are other things. First of all, they are significantly less expensive than humans. Humans are very expensive. So much lower cost. They work 24/7 without breaks, without getting tired. I don't know the best human on how many hours they can concentrate without needing a break, maybe a few hours a day, or six, maybe four hours a day. So, 24/7. Then, they can communicate with each other much better than humans do because they could share information sort of by transferring blocks of data across from one to the other without the ego getting in the way. I mean, you take humans, not very good at sharing information and discoveries. Then they don't have certain distractions that we have like romantic things and kids in schools and, you know. CHAD: Although if you actually do get a full [laughs] AGI, then it might start to have those things [laughs]. PETER: Well, yeah, that's a whole nother topic. But our AIs, we basically build them not to want to have children [laughs] so, you know. And then, of course, things we spoke about, photographic memory. It has instantaneous access to all the information in the world, all the databases, you know, much better than we have, like, if we had a direct connection to the internet and brain, you know, but at a much higher bandwidth than we could ever achieve with our wetware. And then, lastly, they are much better at reasoning than humans are. I mean, our ability to reason is what I call an evolutionary afterthought. We are not actually that good at logical thinking, and AIs can be, you know. CHAD: We like to think we are, though. PETER: [chuckles] Well, you know, compared to animals, yes, definitely. We are significantly better. But realistically, humans are not that good at rational, logical thinking. CHAD: You know, I read something that a lot of decisions are made at a different level than the logical part. And then, the logical part justifies the decision. PETER: Yeah, absolutely. And, in fact, this is why smart people are actually worse at that because they're really good at rationalizations. You know, they can rationalize their weird beliefs and/or their weird behavior or something. That's true. CHAD: You mentioned that your primary customers are enterprises. Who makes up your ideal customer? And if someone was listening who matched that profile and wanted to get in touch with you, what would they look like? PETER: The simplest and most obvious way is if they have call centers of 100 people or more—hundreds, or thousands, tens of thousands even. But the economics from about 100 people in the call center, where we might be able to save them 50% of that, you know, depending on the kind of business. CHAD: And are your solutions typically employed before the actual people, and then they fall back to people in certain circumstances? PETER: Correct. That's exactly right. And, you know, the advantage there is, whatever Aigo already gathers, we then summarize it and pop that to the human operator so that, you know, that the customer -- CHAD: That's great because that's super annoying. PETER: It is. CHAD: [laughs] PETER: It is super annoying and -- CHAD: When you finally get to a person, and it's like, I just spent five minutes providing all this information that you apparently don't have. PETER: Right. Yeah, no, absolutely, that's kind of one of the key things that the AI has that information. It can summarize it and provide it to the live operator. So that would be, you know, the sort of the most obvious use case. But we also have use cases on the go with student assistant, for example, where it's sort of more on an individual basis. You know, imagine your kid just starts at university. It's just overwhelming. It can have a personal personal assistant, you know, that knows all about you in particular. But then also knows about the university, knows its way around, where you get your books, your meals, and, you know, different societies and curriculum and so on. Or diabetes coach, you know, where it can help people with diabetes manage their meals and activities, where it can learn whether you love broccoli, or you're vegetarian, or whatever, and help guide you through that. Internal help desks are another application, of course. CHAD: Yeah. I was going to say even the same thing as at a university when people join a big company, you know, there's an onboarding process. PETER: Exactly. Yeah. CHAD: And there could be things that you're not aware of or don't know where to find. PETER: Internal HR and IT, absolutely, as you say, on onboarding. Those are other applications where our technology is well-suited. And one other category is what we call a co-pilot. So, think of it as Clippy on steroids, you know, where basically you have complex software like, you know, SAP, or Salesforce, or something like that. And you can basically just have Aigo as a front end to it, and you can just talk to it. And it will know where to navigate, what to get, and basically do things, complex things in the software. And software vendors like that idea because people utilize more features of the software than they would otherwise, you know. It can accelerate your learning curve and make it much easier to use the product. So, you know, really, the technology that we have is industry and application-agnostic to a large extent. We're just currently not yet at human level. CHAD: Right. I hope you get there eventually. It'll be certainly exciting when you do. PETER: Yes. Well, we do expect to get there. We just, you know, as I said, we've just launched a project now to raise the additional money we need to hire the people that we need. And we actually believe we are only a few years away from full human-level intelligence or AGI. CHAD: Wow, that's exciting. So, if the solution that you currently have and people want to go along for the journey with you, how can they get in touch with Aigo? PETER: They could contact me directly: peter@aigo.ai. I'm also active on Twitter, LinkedIn. CHAD: Cool. We'll include all of those links in the show notes, which people can find at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions for me, email me at hosts@giantrobots.fm. Find me on Mastodon @cpytel@thoughtbot.social. You can find a complete transcript for this episode as well at giantrobots.fm. Peter, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it and all of the wisdom that you've shared with us today. PETER: Well, thank you. They were good questions. Thank you. CHAD: This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening, and see you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot, your expert strategy, design, development, and product management partner. We bring digital products from idea to success and teach you how because we care. Learn more at thoughtbot.com. Special Guest: Peter Voss.

Devin: What do you see as your superpower?Peter: It's grit—grit and values. Grit comes from values. Grit comes from having an aim, a mission.Peter Rostovsky's fintech startup, Raiseway, grew out of his personal experience helping a friend raise money for his startup. Exploring the possibility of investment crowdfunding, he was flummoxed by the sheer number of portals to choose from. At the time, there were over 40, a count that has now topped 70.“That kind of started this very long exploration into the execution problem with investment crowdfunding for founders of startups and small businesses,” he says, having learned that crowdfunding can be difficult.Last year, Peter asked me to serve as an advisor to Raiseway, and I was honored to accept. He is an advisor to The Super Crowd, Inc., a public benefit corporation.Raiseway is potentially game-changing because the vast majority of businesses in the country that can benefit from crowdfunding are small and can't afford expensive consultants but can afford to use an app that will guide them through and, using AI, help them execute their crowdfunding campaigns.Peter has two critical tips for folks looking to crowdfund:* Assess your community. Before you launch, assess your community to determine how large, accessible and warm it is. * Don't bet on “if you build it, they will come.” To get people to invest, you need to drive people to the investment opportunity thoughtfully and strategically. They won't find it on their own.In building Raiseway, Peter leverages his superpower: grit.AI Podcast Summary* Devin Thorpe interviews Peter Rostovsky, the founder and CEO of Raiseway, a crowdfunding app for entrepreneurs.* Raiseway is designed to streamline the crowdfunding process and help entrepreneurs accelerate their fundraising journey.* The alpha version of Raiseway is currently available for free use.* Peter's work with Raiseway could completely alter the investment crowdfunding landscape.* Raiseway aims to make crowdfunding more accessible and affordable for small businesses and startups.* Peter's key tip for entrepreneurs considering crowdfunding is to thoroughly prepare and evaluate their community and connections before starting.* Peter's superpower is his grit and determination, which he developed through his experiences as an immigrant and in running his own business.* Peter believes that being okay with failure and having a few wins under your belt can help develop grit.* Raiseway can be accessed through the app; contact Peter directly.How to Develop Grit As a SuperpowerPeter developed grit as he grew up. Born in St. Peterburg, his family moved first to Moscow and later to Bryansk, a city he describes as a “hellhole.” Later, still a teenager, he immigrated to the United States, facing a fresh set of cultural challenges.The difficulties adapting to new situations, cultures and individuals helped him develop the grit he deploys to build his business.Peter faced a challenge recently. After publicly announcing the launch of the alpha version of the software would happen on April 15, the startup missed the deadline. He admits feeling ashamed due to missing the self-imposed but now public due date.After worrying that he couldn't possibly recover, he took responsibility for getting the process back on track and, within weeks, got the product launched. It is now available as a free download for a limited time for those interested in help with their crowdfunding campaigns, willing to provide feedback.Peter offers some advice for developing grit. “I am a former F-student through and through,” he says. He acknowledges that the learned helplessness phenomenon applied to him. The key to overcoming it is to “get a couple wins under your belt.” “You can point to them in your life and say, ‘Well, no, I'm not a failure. I did this, this and that.' It's not only professional, it's personal as well,” he says.By following Peter's example and advice, you can make grit a superpower that enables you to do more good in the world.Guest-Provided ProfilePeter Rostovsky (he/him):Founder & CEO, RaisewayAbout Raiseway: Raising money with crowdfunding is prohibitively hard for businesses that need it the most - small businesses and startups. Raiseway is a software service to make investment crowdfunding easy and affordable to execute. From the moment of learning about crowdfunding through campaign preparation, execution, and reporting to investors, Raiseway provides businesses with digital tools to increase their chances of successfully raising capital with crowdfunding for a monthly subscription fee. Website: raiseway.appBiographical Information: Born and raised in St. Petersburg and Moscow, I moved to New York in 2011 to finish high school. After graduating with a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from CUNY Hunter College with a focus on geopolitical risk analysis and the work of the UN, I sold and serviced capital markets intelligence services. After working at Panjiva, Roubini Global Economics, Debtwire, and Preqin, I decided to apply the learnings to serve small businesses that need access to capital the most. Twitter Handle: @peter_raisewayPersonal Facebook Profile: fb.com/peter.rostovsky.7Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/peter-raisewayInstagram and Threads Handle: @pool_bread Superpowers for Good is a reader-supported publication. To receive early access, top-secret rewards and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.On July 19, 2023, we'll hold the first-ever SuperCrowdHour with an extraordinary panel I'll moderate, discussing “The Power of the Purpose Round.” The panel will include Parker Clay CEO Ian Bentley, DealMaker CEO Rebecca Kacaba and Renew VC founder Mark Hubbard. You're entitled to a 50 percent discount as a Superpowers for Good reader! Join us for just $5 when you use the discount code SUPERCROWD. Register here. Get full access to Superpowers for Good at devinthorpe.substack.com/subscribe

Full Text of ReadingsSolemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles Lectionary: 590/591The Saint of the day is Saints Peter and PaulSaints Peter and Paul's Story Peter (d. 64?) Saint Mark ends the first half of his Gospel with a triumphant climax. He has recorded doubt, misunderstanding, and the opposition of many to Jesus. Now Peter makes his great confession of faith: “You are the Messiah” (Mark 8:29b). It was one of the many glorious moments in Peter's life, beginning with the day he was called from his nets along the Sea of Galilee to become a fisher of men for Jesus. The New Testament clearly shows Peter as the leader of the apostles, chosen by Jesus to have a special relationship with him. With James and John he was privileged to witness the Transfiguration, the raising of a dead child to life, and the agony in Gethsemane. His mother-in-law was cured by Jesus. He was sent with John to prepare for the last Passover before Jesus' death. His name is first on every list of apostles. And to Peter only did Jesus say, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:17b-19). But the Gospels prove their own trustworthiness by the unflattering details they include about Peter. He clearly had no public relations person. It is a great comfort for ordinary mortals to know that Peter also has his human weakness, even in the presence of Jesus. He generously gave up all things, yet he can ask in childish self-regard, “What are we going to get for all this?” (see Matthew 19:27). He receives the full force of Christ's anger when he objects to the idea of a suffering Messiah: “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do” (Matthew 16:23b). Peter is willing to accept Jesus' doctrine of forgiveness, but suggests a limit of seven times. He walks on the water in faith, but sinks in doubt. He refuses to let Jesus wash his feet, then wants his whole body cleansed. He swears at the Last Supper that he will never deny Jesus, and then swears to a servant maid that he has never known the man. He loyally resists the first attempt to arrest Jesus by cutting off Malchus' ear, but in the end he runs away with the others. In the depth of his sorrow, Jesus looks on him and forgives him, and he goes out and sheds bitter tears. The Risen Jesus told Peter to feed his lambs and his sheep (John 21:15-17). Paul (d. 64?) If the most well-known preacher today suddenly began preaching that the United States should adopt Marxism and not rely on the Constitution, the angry reaction would help us understand Paul's life when he started preaching that Christ alone can save us. He had been the most pharisaic of Pharisees, the most legalistic of Mosaic lawyers. Now he suddenly appears to other Jews as a heretical welcomer of Gentiles, a traitor and apostate. Paul's central conviction was simple and absolute: Only God can save humanity. No human effort—even the most scrupulous observance of law—can create a human good which we can bring to God as reparation for sin and payment for grace. To be saved from itself, from sin, from the devil, and from death, humanity must open itself completely to the saving power of Jesus. Paul never lost his love for his Jewish family, though he carried on a lifelong debate with them about the uselessness of the Law without Christ. He reminded the Gentiles that they were grafted on the parent stock of the Jews, who were still God's chosen people, the children of the promise. Reflection We would probably go to confession to Peter sooner than to any of the other apostles. He is perhaps a more striking example of the simple fact of holiness. Jesus says to us as he said, in effect, to Peter: “It is not you who have chosen me, but I who have chosen you. Peter, it is not human wisdom that makes it possible for you to believe, but my Father's revelation. I, not you, build my Church.” Paul's experience of the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus was the driving force that made him one of the most zealous, dynamic, and courageous ambassadors of Christ the Church has ever had. But persecution, humiliation, and weakness became his day-by-day carrying of the cross, material for further transformation. The dying Christ was in him; the living Christ was his life. Saint Paul is the Patron Saint of: Greece Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

Welcome to the newest episode of The Cloud Pod podcast! Justin, Ryan, Jonathan, Matthew and Peter are your hosts this week as we discuss all things cloud and AI,  Titles we almost went with this week: The Cloud Pod is better than Bob's Used Books The Cloud Pod sets up AWS notifications for all The Cloud Pod is non-differential about privacy in BigQuery The Cloud Pod finds Windows Bob The Cloud Pod starts preparing for its Azure Emergency today A big thanks to this week's sponsor: Foghorn Consulting, provides top-notch cloud and DevOps engineers to the world's most innovative companies. Initiatives stalled because you have trouble hiring?  Foghorn can be burning down your DevOps and Cloud backlogs as soon as next week.

Having ADD or ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Hear from people all around the globe, from every walk of life, in every profession, from Rock Stars to CEOs, from Teachers to Politicians, who have learned how to unlock the gifts of their ADD and ADHD diagnosis, and use it to their personal and professional advantage, to build businesses, become millionaires, or simply better their lives.   I wanna give a shout out to Skylight Frame, the official Skylight frame. They are sponsors of this episode of Faster Than Normal. Let me tell you about Skylight! So I have a daughter, you all know, her name is Jessa, she's nine. Jessa, like any nine year old, doesn't really do what I tell her to do until I say it like 4, 5, 6, 18, 54 times. And the problem with that is that when your ADHD, you're kind of forgetful to begin with. So Jessa sits there and I tell her, Jessa, change Waffles' pee pads, my dog right? [@petersdogwaffle on INSTA] Changes defense. Okay, Dad. And she goes right back to Roblox. And then two times later, Jessa change Waffle's pad? Goes, okay, Dad goes right back to robots. And by the fourth time, I've forgotten about it. She's forgotten about it. Waffle doesn't get his pee pad changed. No one's happy. And the house smells. So Skylight Frame eliminates that. It is a essentially a calendar. It's calendar with pictures. It sits on your wall, it connects to wifi, it connects to your Google calendar, and it adds your chores. So I tell Jessa say, Hey, Jessa before you leave for school, before you get in your iPad to play Roblox, before you go to school, are all your chores done? Are they green on the board? She looks. Now I gotta change Waffles pads. Change the pads, comes back. Click. Not you waffle. I, I know you heard your name, but I'm actually not talking about you. I'm doing, doing a podcast. He click, she clicks on the, click it on the, on the chore, it goes away. When all her chores are done, she gets her iPad, everyone wins. It makes life so much easier. It is unbelievable. It's a 10" inch touchscreen display. It's digital, it's gorgeous. You put all your photos in from your photo album, you can send 'em all there. And when it's not in calendar mode, you get a beautiful display of all the pictures. Totally worth it. And as always, thank you Skylight for sponsoring this episode as well as many others of the Faster Than Normal Podcast.  https://www.skylightframe.com Discount Code:  PeterShankman for 10% off, up to $30 off. Robin Maddox, LMFT, is a pediatric mental health expert with over a decade of hands-on experience following data-driven, evidenced-based strategies to support and heal children, adolescents and families. As Director of Behavioral Health at Clay, a virtual company within early education centers, she has guided the development of an early identification platform that provides a comprehensive suite of behavioral and developmental tools for school communities that serve children ages 0-5.  Prior to Clay, Robin worked as a child and family therapist in her own private practice (Maddox Counseling), and at The Family Institute at Northwestern University. She previously served as Director of Special Education at Notre Dame College Prep, where she created, developed, and implemented a Special Education  Program for students with Down Syndrome, Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Trisomy 13, and other developmental disabilities. Robin also has prior experience as a Director and Executive Board Member for Camp Hope, a summer camp for children and young adults with developmental disabilities. Today we learn… Often with neurodiversity, by the time a therapist is seeing a child, they are pulling them out of the river. A good part of Robin and Clay Behavioral Health's purpose is hiking upstream- to see why so much of our young neurodiverse population is getting thrown into the river in the first place. By intervening and putting good tools in the hands of teachers and parents, we're learning more about our kids, a little earlier in life than before concluded. Today we learn about why and how. Enjoy! 00:40 - Thank you so much for listening and for subscribing! 01:52 - Introducing and welcome Robin Maddox  03:30 - What drove you towards special education and towards neurodiversity as a whole? 04:35 - What is Clay? 06:11 - Six short sessions of work with a four-year-old, would take years with the same teenager 06:45 - How a ‘heads-up' about your child, can be almost as effective to parents as a diagnosis 07:30 - It's a GIFT! You don't even have to stand in line for it; just learn how to use it! 07:45 - What if the school says: “We can't test your child until they are six”? 08:36 - You don't have to wait for a diagnosis. Tools are ready and available.  09:04 - How kids feel about themselves? How do they feel about themselves by age 5, at kindergarten? 10:00 - All of the research right now is on how one-third of teenagers have identified as having anxiety or depression. What the research shows is that those kids are showing those signs even at ages 3, 4, 5. 10:40 - What kind of signs should parents be looking for? 11:10 - How do people find out more about you?  Web:  https://carebyclay.com  email: robin@carebyclay.com  Socials:  @carebyclay on Twitter  INSTA  Facebook  and LinkedIN 11:40 - Thank you so much Robin!! 11:45 - We are thrilled that you are here and listening! ADHD and all forms of Neurodiversity are gifts, not curses. And by the way, if you haven't picked up The Boy with the Faster Brain yet, it is on Amazon and it is a number one bestseller in all categories. Click HERE or via https://amzn.to/3FcAKkI My link tree is here if you're looking for something specific. https://linktr.ee/petershankman 12:00 - Faster Than Normal Podcast info & credits. Guys, as always thanks so much for subscribing! Faster Than Normal is for YOU! We want to know what you'd like to hear! Do you have a cool friend with a great story? We'd love to learn about, and from them. I'm www.petershankman.com and you can reach out anytime via email at peter@shankman.com or @petershankman on all of the socials. You can also find us at @FasterNormal on all of the socials. It really helps when you drop us a review on iTunes and of course, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already! As you know, the more reviews we get, the more people we can reach. Help us to show the world that ADHD is a gift, not a curse!  — TRANSCRIPT via Descript and then corrected.. mostly somewhat:   As always, thank you Skylight for sponsoring this episode as well as many others of the Faster Than Normal Podcast. https://www.skylightframe.com Discount Code:  PeterShankman for 10% off, up to $30 off. [00:00:40] Peter: Hey guys. Peter Shankman, another episode of Faster Than Normal is Coming Your Way at Lightning Speed. Wanna give a big shout out as always. Skylight, skylight calendar and skylight frame. Like I, I, look, I'm not gonna tell you again how much has changed my life. My daughter's getting sick of hearing it. But I will say this, yesterday morning we were about to walk out to school and I looked and I noticed that the, um, dog doggy pee pads were not changed. And I said, Jessa I see if you're forgetting something. And she's like, no, I have, you know, I have my water bottle, I have my backpack. I'm like, really? You have everything? She's like, yeah, everything you need. Like, did you clear off all your chores or, oh my god, I forgot. She runs, she looks at chores. What? Well, I'll take care of your pads right now. And she ran and she changed the pads two seconds and she clicked that, that, that, that touchscreen and got rid of her chores today and everything went green. And she was incredibly happy. And I'm like, I'm like, why'd you forget? She's like, because you were talking to me. So obviously it was dad's fault cuz that's what happens. But check them out. Skylight frame.com. Use code Peter Shankman for up to 30 bucks off your order. I love this thing, one of the best things I have in my kitchen, uh, other than my, uh, ninja Ninja foodie, which is a whole ‘nother discussion. But anyway, welcome to the ever sort of fast than normal. I am thrilled that you're here. We are talking today to Robin Maddox. She's a pediatric mental health expert with over a decade of hands-on experience following data-driven evidence-based strategies to support and adhere heal children adolescents, and families. She works for a cool company called Clay. And Clay is sort of like this virtual company within early education centers. So think like zero to five when like 90% of the brain develops, right? And they have this comprehensive suite of behavioral and developmental tools for school communities that allow. More insight into what's going on and, and more sort of awareness of any sort of, uh, neurodiversity long before I guess other people would get it. Um, prior to Clay Robin was a child and family therapist in her own private practice and at the Family Institute at Northwestern University. She was the director of Special Education at Notre Dame College Prep. She's much smarter than me, I can tell this. She created, developed and implemented a special education program for students with Down Syndrome Autism, cerebral Palsy, tri ME 13, and other developmental disabilities. Robin also has prior experience as director and executive board member for Camp Hope, a summer camp for children and young adults with developmental disabilities. I have a dog named Waffle. Either way. It is great to have you on the products, Rob, on podcast. Robin, my God. You have, you have a, you have quite the background. [00:03:04] Robin: Thanks Peter. Thanks for reading that bio.  [00:03:07] Peter: Notre Dame. Are you an Irish fan?  [00:03:09] Robin: No, I'm actually not. Um, it was the, you know, first job I got. [00:03:14] Peter: So you're one of the few rams I discovered that there are very few people with connections to Notre Dame that do not shout, go Irish at every conceivable opportunity. [00:03:20] Robin: Yeah, that's not me.  [00:03:21] Peter: That being said, thrilled to have you as always and thrilled to have everyone listening as always. So, Robin, talk to us first about. Sort of what drove you towards special education and towards neurodiversity as a whole? Because, you know, it's, it's a, a lot of people go into it, but you're very specific. You're very specialized here.  [00:03:39] Robin: Yeah. I love that question. Uh, when I was in high school, I did a camp for kids with disabilities, um, pretty profound disabilities. So my Camper, who I was in charge of for the week, uh, was non-verbal in a wheelchair, and I was in charge of feeding her, changing her diaper, and she was older than me. Um, but I feel like she taught me more about life in that five days that I was taking care of her than I had you know, ever experienced. And so that drove me into special ed, um, in, in my undergrad. And then I met one of my students, um, family therapist. They came to observe me at school and I was like, that's exactly what I wanna do. And so for the last 10 years I've been in, um, child and family therapy, working with kids with disabilities and all different neuro divergence.  [00:04:29] Peter: It's not easy.  [00:04:32] Robin: Yeah, it's not easy, but it's really fun and really rewarding and um, I love it. [00:04:37] Peter: I imagine it would be. Tell us about, so Clay is really interesting. So this is one of those things that get sort of to the heart of what's going on long before other people figure it out.  [00:04:44] Robin: Yes, yes. I joined Clay because, you know, I felt as a therapist, I was so burnt out. I was, you know, helping one family at a time, pulling them out of the river and never going upstream to see why are you getting thrown in the river. Um, and I think so often, you know, parents are bringing their kid to the pediatrician and saying, you know, we're having these different behavior issues. Um, or they're having behavioral issues at school or home, and the pediatrician has 10 minutes, you know, for all the vital health assessments and vaccines, and they're not equipped to always handle behavioral health issues. And then the teacher's pretty burnt out and not always equipped, and the parents burnt out and not equipped. And the end result is, you know, from zero to five when it's the most. Like you said, the most crucial time, 90% of the brain's growing these negative neural pathways get set. These negative coping and self-soothing skills get set. Negative family dynamics, negative association with school and negative self-esteem. And then the research says kids don't land in my office until 11 years later. I. So, you know, that was kind of my goal at Clay was, and what Clay is doing, we're solving this, um, we're intervening and putting the tools in teachers and parents' hands earlier. So what I can do in six sessions with a four-year-old would take years and years with a teenager. And we're really seeing the mental health crisis start in preschool. Even though they're talking about teenagers,  [00:06:07] Peter: You're preventing having to undo things essentially.  [00:06:09] Robin: Yes, exactly. Exactly. [00:06:11] Peter: Huh. That is interesting. I mean, it's, it's interesting the statistics you rattle off there. I, I always talk about how, you know, it's difficult to undo years of being told you're broken, but I didn't realize it started that early.  [00:06:22] Robin: Yes, I know often. That's fascinating. Yeah. Often we undermine how important, uh, Zero to five is, and it's really the most crucial. And it's when parents are the most burnt out and, um, you know, many preschool teachers are underpaid and overworked and have these massive classrooms of behavior issues and they're not equipped to handle it.  [00:06:41] Peter: I'm still blown away by, by five years old. So, so you're saying is if you get the kids in. Before that sort of settles. [00:06:47] Robin: Yeah. When we, you know, it's much, much easier. We've found our research so far of the kids that we've screened, a third of them have been flagged for, you know, a certain behavior concern. Um, 40% of those kids were flagged for anxiety and 19% were flagged with A D H D symptoms. And so we're not diagnosing them, but we're flagging the teachers and the parents with this is what's going on. So they're not just a behavior issue, they're not a lazy kid who's not trying or purposely being defiant. They actually have something else going on. And if we can give them really effective coping skills and ways to talk to the kids. And, um, you know, to really see the gifts. I love that about what you do on your podcast is always talking about the gifts of A D H D and there are so many gifts of anxiety and gifts of A D H D and we really have to help kids get those coping skills and see that as their superpower and, um, figure out how to make school and family life work for them. [00:07:45] Peter: Talk to me about the parents. So I was just talking to a parent who said that, yeah, pretty sure my kid has is, is neurodiverse, but. We can't test him until he's six, according to the school. Mm-hmm. Right. And so I'm curious, when you go in and talk to parents who are at a much younger age  [00:08:00] Robin: Yep. Right.  [00:08:00] Peter: What's the, what's the reaction, what's the response? [00:08:02] Robin: Yeah, I mean, it's a common response of like, they're too young to have ADHD. They're, um, you know, it's kind of crazy to put my four year old in therapy. And I hear that and I get it, and we can't diagnose ADHD pre four, but we see the symptoms and we definitely see, um, the family genetics of that. So, if a parent has ADHD or anxiety, we typically, you know, there's a higher rate of a kid having that. And so there's never any harm in getting coping skills and language around ADHD or anxiety or autism sooner. You don't have to wait for a diagnosis. If you're seeing some of the symptoms and you're seeing the behaviors, we can jump in there and, and get coping skills. I'm not, I'm not encouraging, you know, an increase in diagnosis. I'm just encouraging an increase in screening and getting those tools.  [00:08:51] Peter: Right, right. And it's interesting because I don't know, I, this is the first I've ever heard I like, like think I know what I'm, you know, I've heard a lot about this. The first thing I've ever heard about. Young age, um, about really sort of young age intervention. [00:09:04] Robin: Yeah, it's crucial. It's really crucial in terms of how kids feel about themselves. You know, often you'll see a five year old going to kindergarten and already feel like they're stupid. They don't wanna go to school, they're a bad boy or bad girl. They're bad at listening. Um, they get all of these messages about themselves before school's even started. Right. And that's what, and, and you know, the family dynamics have been set up. So, um, you know, parents get in a loop of how they've been parenting a, a kid, and it really affects how they cope, how they self-soothe. And then I see them 11 years later and they're addicted to their screens or they're using food to cope, or they're depressed or anxious. And so what I try to tell parents is if we intervene at four, you won't be doing this at 15. You know, you won't have a depressed, anxious kid who's who's using negative coping skills. That's our hope.  [00:09:58] Peter: And the research backs it up, Robin.  [00:10:00] Robin: Yes, yes. You know, the, the mental health crisis, all of the research right now is on teenagers being anxious and depressed. One third of of teenagers are, um, identified as having anxiety or depression. And, and what we're seeing is those kids are, they're showing those signs at 3, 4, 5, um, and we can intervene way sooner.  [00:10:24] Peter: Wow. Three, four, and five. They're showing sign of depression. That is, that is sad.  [00:10:30] Robin: Yeah. Of what will end up, you know, I think we might not see a kid who's depressed, but we could see a kid who's, um, you know, got some pretty [hectic?] Behavior and, and then they start to feel depressed about  [00:10:41] Peter: what kind of signs should parents be looking for? [00:10:42] Robin: Yeah, I think when it's persistent, uh, when it's happening in more than one setting. So if it's happening at school and at home, that's, you know, a good sign that, that it's prevalent in both places. Tantrums, unexplained tantrums, um, pervasive, you know, negative moods, feeling like you're walking on eggshells around your kids. Um, feeling like nothing you do works seeing that like typical parenting strategies or typical school strategies are not working. And I think anytime you have that gut feeling as a parent, something's not right, or I think something's going on, or I think they're gonna be the kid and I. You know, first grade where we get them diagnosed. Right. Intervene now. You don't have to wait.  [00:11:24] Peter: That's a really, that's really good advice. It makes a lot of sense. I think it's gonna help a lot of people. Robin Maddux how can people find you?  [00:11:29] Robin: Yes, you can find us @ carebyclay.com and carebyclay.com. Cool. Yes. www.carebyclay.com .And you can always email me at Robin robin@carebyclay.com [00:11:40] Peter: Awesome. Well, I think this is gonna be a very, very helpful episode. I really appreciate taking the time, Robin, as always, thanks to our audience for listening. Thanks to Steven Byrom for being our amazing producer/editor. We'll be back next week with another episode where we will learn a lot and hopefully continue our mission to let the world know that all forms of neurodiversity are gifts, not curses. We'll see you soon.  — Credits: You've been listening to the Faster Than Normal podcast. We're available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google play and of course at www.FasterThanNormal.com I'm your host, Peter Shankman and you can find me at shankman.com and @petershankman on all of the socials. If you like what you've heard, why not head over to your favorite podcast platform of choice and leave us a review, come more people who leave positive reviews, the more the podcast has shown, and the more people we can help understand that ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Opening and closing themes were composed and produced by Steven Byrom who also produces this podcast, and the opening introduction was recorded by Bernie Wagenblast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week! 

After this, Jesus shewed himself again to the disciples at the sea of Tiberias. And he shewed himself after this manner.Postea manifestavit se iterum Jesus discipulis ad mare Tiberiadis. Manifestavit autem sic :  2 There were together Simon Peter, and Thomas, who is called Didymus, and Nathanael, who was of Cana of Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples.erant simul Simon Petrus, et Thomas, qui dicitur Didymus, et Nathanael, qui erat a Cana Galilaeae, et filii Zebedaei, et alii ex discipulis ejus duo.  3 Simon Peter saith to them: I go a fishing. They say to him: We also come with thee. And they went forth, and entered into the ship: and that night they caught nothing.Dicit eis Simon Petrus : Vado piscari. Dicunt ei : Venimus et nos tecum. Et exierunt, et ascenderunt in navim : et illa nocte nihil prendiderunt.  4 But when the morning was come, Jesus stood on the shore: yet the disciples knew not that it was Jesus.Mane autem facto stetit Jesus in littore : non tamen cognoverunt discipuli quia Jesus est.  5 Jesus therefore said to them: Children, have you any meat? They answered him: No.Dixit ergo eis Jesus : Pueri, numquid pulmentarium habetis? Responderunt ei : Non.  6 He saith to them: Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and you shall find. They cast therefore; and now they were not able to draw it, for the multitude of fishes.Dicit eis : Mittite in dexteram navigii rete, et invenietis. Miserunt ergo : et jam non valebant illud trahere prae multitudine piscium.  7 That disciple therefore whom Jesus loved, said to Peter: It is the Lord. Simon Peter, when he heard that it was the Lord, girt his coat about him, (for he was naked,) and cast himself into the sea.Dixit ergo discipulus ille, quem diligebat Jesus, Petro : Dominus est. Simon Petrus cum audisset quia Dominus est, tunica succinxit se ( erat enim nudus) et misit se in mare.  8 But the other disciples came in the ship, (for they were not far from the land, but as it were two hundred cubits,) dragging the net with fishes.Alii autem discipuli navigio venerunt ( non enim longe erant a terra, sed quasi cubitis ducentis), trahentes rete piscium.  9 As soon then as they came to land, they saw hot coals lying, and a fish laid thereon, and bread.Ut ergo descenderunt in terram, viderunt prunas positas, et piscem superpositum, et panem.  10 Jesus saith to them: Bring hither of the fishes which you have now caught.Dicit eis Jesus : Afferte de piscibus, quos prendidistis nunc.  11 Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land, full of great fishes, one hundred and fifty-three. And although there were so many, the net was not broken.Ascendit Simon Petrus et traxit rete in terram, plenum magnis piscibus centum quinquaginta tribus. Et cum tanti essent, non est scissum rete.  12 Jesus saith to them: Come, and dine. And none of them who were at meat, durst ask him: Who art thou? knowing that it was the Lord.Dicit eis Jesus : Venite, prandete. Et nemo audebat discumbentium interrogare eum : Tu quis es? scientes, quia Dominus est.  13 And Jesus cometh and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish in like manner.Et venit Jesus, et accipit panem, et dat eis, et piscem similiter.  14 This is now the third time that Jesus was manifested to his disciples, after he was risen from the dead.Hoc jam tertio manifestatus est Jesus discipulis suis cum resurrexisset a mortuis. Music: Hail thee, festival day.

Having ADD or ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Hear from people all around the globe, from every walk of life, in every profession, from Rock Stars to CEOs, from Teachers to Politicians, who have learned how to unlock the gifts of their ADD and ADHD diagnosis, and use it to their personal and professional advantage, to build businesses, become millionaires, or simply better their lives. Hey guys, Peter Shankman the host of Faster Than Normal. I wanna talk for a second about the Skylight Calendar, the wonderful sponsors of this episode and one of the things that keeps myself and my daughter on track. Skylight sits on your wall and tells you what you have to do today; what chores your child has to do today. It's basically a family calendar all-in-one. You can color code. It is amazing for people with ADHD. I am truly in love with this thing. We look at it every single day. It tells us the weather. It tells us what's on our calendar. It tells us what chores are left to do. Oh, time to feed the dog! - Mark it off on the calendar. My daughter can check the box when she's done and the chore disappears. It is one of the best things we've ever had. You can get yours with a discount using code: PeterShankman for 10% off, up to 30 bucks off. You're gonna love this Skylight calendar.  And you are gonna love.. I mean, truly it is amazing for people with ADHD or basically anyone who wants to keep track of their schedule. It sits on the wall, added bonus. You can throw your own photos onto it as a screen saver- on your wall! So now your wall has pictures. That's cool. Check it out. I'll put the link in the show notes. https://www.skylightframe.com Discount Code:  PeterShankman for 10% off, up to 30 bucks off. -- Entrepreneur, social media expert, influencer and now CEO of the hottest events in NYC, Liv Schreiber has a vision for changing how New Yorkers meet and build relationships and social communities. In the past, it was intros from friends, families, gym workout buddies or boring dating apps. Today, New Yorkers are growingly turning to the 26 year old Schreiber who's “Hot and Social” events are selling out in 36 seconds. Hot and Social has developed an event strategy where the attendees not only have an opportunity to meet and speak with their peers but an invitation to become friends in a world that many times seems so uninviting and cold. The events have continued to gain traction, and the waitlist for Liv comes from a family of entrepreneurs which you frequently will see in her content. The tagline of her company is "99% of the attendees show up alone, 100% leave as friends". This unique concept has led to some of the largest restaurant and club companies in NYC to reach out with the hope of securing a Hot and Social event for some of the most well known venues in the City. Schreiber is overwhelmed with the support and can't wait to bring her concept to other cities.  Schreiber has already worked with brands such as Anheuser-Busch, Moxy, REVOLVE and Rumble. Her TikTok and Instagram accounts have been blowing up- giving Schreiber the ability to package her social, with Hot and Social's accounts and event sponsorship. The Digital Renegades CEO Evan Morgenstein sees Schreiber as a perfect new client, "Myself, coming from Rockland County and having my family in the event promotion business most of my childhood, I see Liv as a refreshing new take on bringing people, brands and unique experiences together. Liv is so smart, she lives this lifestyle- so it's authentic and she has her finger on the pulse of the 22-35 year old market in NYC and beyond. We are going to make this an international brand and I can't wait!" 00:40 - Thank you so much for listening and for subscribing! 01:44 - Welcome and introducing Liv Schreiber! 02:17 - On the importance of not feeling alone in a classroom setting. 03:34 - We don't need a lot of friends, but we need a few good ones. Would you agree with that? 04:20 - Tell me what your story is, how you came up with this idea. What's your background? 05:00 - Ref: Brand Caffeine 06:24 - What pushed you to decide to do something for friendship; as opposed to like dating, relationships, or the usual fare? 08:40 - Tell us about the people who go to & enjoy these events? To me it sounds like a root canal? 09:43 - What do people talk about? 11:00 - Why do you think we as adults sort of forget how to make friends? 12:26 - How do people find out more about you Liv? Web:  https://www.livschreiber.com Socials: @livschreiber on INSTA and TikTok  Then.. @hotandsocial on INSTA and Liv's Styling account is @styledbylivschreiber in INSTA & TikTok 12:25 - Can more friendships benefit everyone with ADD or ADHD and Neurodiverse? 13:07 - Thank you for your work here Peter!  13:18 - Thank you Liv! 13:20 - Another big shout out to Skylight calendar! 13:24 - We are thrilled that you are here!  ADHD and all forms of neurodiversity are gifts, not curses. And by the way, if you haven't picked up The Boy with the Faster Brain yet, it is on Amazon and it is a number one bestseller in all categories. So check it out. Click HERE or via https://amzn.to/3FcAKkI My link tree is here if you're looking for something specific. https://linktr.ee/petershankman 14:06 - Faster Than Normal Podcast info & credits. Guys, as always thanks so much for subscribing! Faster Than Normal is for YOU! We want to know what you'd like to hear! Do you have a cool friend with a great story? We'd love to learn about, and from them. I'm www.petershankman.com and you can reach out anytime via email at peter@shankman.com or @petershankman on all of the socials. You can also find us at @FasterNormal on all of the socials. It really helps when you drop us a review on iTunes and of course, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already! As you know, the more reviews we get, the more people we can reach. Help us to show the world that ADHD is a gift, not a curse!  — TRANSCRIPT via Descript and then corrected.. mostly somewhat:  [00:00:40] Peter: Hey everyone, what's up? My name is Peter Shankman. I'm the host of the Faster Than Normal podcast, and I wanna give a big shout out to Skylight for sponsoring this episode again, Skylight Calendar, guys, I told you about this thing before. I love it. It sits in my kitchen wall and tells my daughter exactly what she has to do. It tells her what she has to bring to school. It tells her what she can leave home. It tells her what chores have to be done. I don't have to yell at her anymore. She doesn't complain. We can throw photos on there of family, of friends, of my parents, of her, of of her mom's parents, everyone. She sees everything. She can touch screen it when she's done. She loves going over feeding the dog and then touch screening to say that she's fed the dog and the chore disappears. They're color coded, which is great for people like me who have ADHD and people like you. Check out Skylight. It is a phenomenal, phenomenal calendar. It'll make your life so much easier and simpler,. You'll have so much less to complain about. Skylightframe.com . Use code Peter Shankman and get up to 30 bucks off your first offer. And I wanna thank them again for sponsoring the podcast. The Skylight calendar is incredible. Skylight frame.com. Check it out. https://www.skylightframe.com Discount Code:  PeterShankman      Okay guys, another episode of Faster Than Normal! I am thrilled that you're here! About two or three months ago. I had coffee with the one we're about to talk today. Her name is Liv Schreiber and Liv calls herself, the one who's making friendship cool again, and it's really interesting. She runs a very cool company where she basically throws parties to let people make friends, and we're talking about that, but we're also talking a bigger picture about friendships. So Liv, welcome to Faster Than Normal- so good to have you! [00:02:11] Liv: Hey Peter, you're the best. So good to finally get to be talking to you here. This is awesome!  [00:02:17] Peter: Now I'm glad to have you. I wanted to do this for a while. It's, um, you know, it's interesting, the, the, I was, I was talking last week to a elementary school. I was reading them the new book, the Boy with the Faster Brain, and everyone was, you know, it was funny to watch the kids, right? Because 30 kids in the classroom and they bun Bud buddy up with their friends to walk to the auditorium where we were doing the speech that's, I was following them, you know, talking to the teacher and I look over and all the kids have somehow buddied up with another kid and they're all holding hands and there's one who, I guess, I guess someone was absent and didn't have anyone to hold hands with and he's just sort of like walking behind everyone. And he looked a little sad. My daughter was with me cuz she had the week off from school and she walked up, she grabbed the kid's hand. Right. And my daughter's nine. This kid I think was like five or six or whatever. And, and you immediately saw the change in the kid. The kid was like, he went from like, we have no one to talk to. Like, oh, someone's holding my hand. Yeah. And he was all happy and everything. Uhhuh. It really is amazing. We don't, you know, we joke, I joke a lot that I hate people. Right. I don't think we talk enough about how valued and how important friendships are, not relationships, not dating, not marriage like crap, but the concept of friendships, right? We don't need a lot of friends, but we need a few good ones. Would you agree with that?  [00:03:29] Liv: Absolutely. And when you think about it this way, like you're, you know, that kid grows up and he moves to New York City and he doesn't know anyone and he is starting a new job and he doesn't have anyone to talk to. Like, that's debilitating and, and just one person can make a huge difference in his life. So, you know, I was that kid. I moved to New York and I knew no one, and I was jealous of people in the street who had plans. And Peter, I'm not weird, you know. I have friends, but for some reason in your twenties and your thirties, it's so hard to make those adult friendships that really can make a huge difference. So, um, I noticed that and just kind of got sick of having this, this issue and figured other people might as well.  [00:04:12] Peter: Tell me for, okay, so let's go back. Tell me what you do. Tell me your story. Um, you're not, you have never been diagnosed ADHD but you're pretty sure you have it. I met you, I knew in about three seconds you did. Tell me what your story is, how you came up with this idea. What's your background? Tell us the whole thing.  [00:04:26] Liv: Yeah, absolutely.  [00:04:27] Peter: As far as my audience is gonna know, looking at your photo, they just say, oh, she's six foot. Of course she goes to all the clubs. Of course she has tons of friends. I'm right. [00:04:34] Liv: I'm actually five four. I'm not six foot.  [00:04:36] Peter: You come across very tall in your photos. Tell us the biggest story about you. [00:04:39] Liv: So I'm uh, from New Jersey. I have a twin brother. Grew up with a family of entrepreneurs. Every single hu human in my family line has been an entrepreneur. My dad has major ADD, um, and I've always just had a million different things that I love to do. My brain is non- stop. It's exhausting being inside of it. Um, I have a really hard time focusing on just one thing. Um, I have little quirks and, and things that I actually read about in your book that I thought were just me things, that happen to be, um, ADD things. So I've kind of harnessed it as my superpower and the things that I really love. I've been able to turn into businesses that make money. So the first is brand caffeine. Uh, my twin brother and I own a digital marketing agency and we launch content strategy, paid ads for brands and personal brands. Um, so we're responsible for making people blow up on social media and their sales. Um, but in terms of my personal, I, on Liv Schreiber have, um, a following on Instagram and TikTok, both of which, um, on my explorer pages think I have ADD as well. So I'm constantly getting fed, you know, signs. You have ADD every day. Um, and then, you know, I started Hot and social about a year ago. Where people come to meet new people. It's not weird. They're not weird people. It's all super cool and um, the premise is everyone comes solo and leaves as friends. So it's really, really special and very fulfilling.  [00:06:12] Peter: I like that. What brought you to create something where people, you know what, most people have created a dating app. Create a relationship app. I remember, I remember going to the hell back in like early two thousands, going to the hell that was the J-Date, matzo balls every Christmas and, and, and leaving and thinking that there was no hope for humanity and I wasn't really wrong. But, um, tell me what, what, uh, pushed you to decide to do something for friendship as opposed to like dating relationships, which is usually where everyone else goes. [00:06:39] Liv: Yeah. Number one, I'm not like a, a very sexual influencer showing my boobs on Instagram. So it, it just wouldn't, as a Lisa Lit, our shared friend would say, no fit my brand aesthetic. Um, That's number one. Um, it started out as hot and single because my twin brother was single. And I go around and I interview people who are hot and single, but that's just not the root of who I am. So in honor of that authenticity, um, switched it over, rebranded to hot and social. And the point is, is that when you come in just looking for friends or just looking to meet one other people, you're always pleasantly surprised and leave with more, especially if you do happen to meet a romantic connection. It's not something that you went in looking for. And I think that's the problem with a lot of dating apps is people are going in with this expectation and being let down every time.  [00:07:32] Peter: Yeah, it makes sense. I mean I think that that, you know, especially cuz dating apps need people to get let down in order for them to continue to make money. Exactly. Right. If everyone on dating apps found everyone immediately, they're, they're, you know, dating apps anymore.  [00:07:43] Liv: Right. And the great thing is there is a cap in, I guess some societies on romantic partners, but there's no cap on friendship. You can come and come back and come back again and still, you know, be excited by new people that you're meeting.  [00:07:58] Peter: It's very possible. Um, tell us about the people who go to these events, because I imagine that if you're going to an event to make friends, right, there's two types of people who go to the, to an event to make friends type of people who, you know, I don't think people imagine like, oh, this is actually gonna be fun. I'm looking forward to this. You know, for, for a lot of people, d, ADHD, going into a room full of people where the expectation is you have to talk to all these people. You've never met. Right. And you have to, uh, make small talk for an hour, two hours, three hours is the equivalent of going to a dentist.  [00:08:33] Liv: No, no, no.  [00:08:35] Peter: I'm not saying, I'm not saying that's what you do, but for a lot of people with adhd, I mean, I don't necessarily know if going to a, going to a room, Hey, you're gonna go to this room and you're gonna, there's a hundred people there and you're gonna talk to 50 of them, and good luck. You know, that, that, that, I don't know. Root canals, I, I sort of broke up my mind. So tell us why this is different and tell us how people sort of survive this and enjoy it?  [00:08:54] Liv: Okay. I love that. That's really funny. Um, so the number one thing is everyone's on the same page, so you're picturing yourself as going somewhere alone, where other people may know each other. This is. Peter. This is like freshman year of college. Everyone's on the same playing field. No one knows each other at the events. I show up solo. So it's really exciting because if you're someone that's looking to challenge themselves or just try something new or get out of the typical bar scene, it's really awesome because the energy is actually like ADD puppy. It's so friendly, so warm, so welcoming, so much great energy because you can literally turn to anyone there and know that they want to talk to you. I know that you wanna talk to them. Um,  [00:09:43] Peter: what do people talk about?  [00:09:44] Liv: Talk about everything. Where are you from? Where in the city are you? And we always have an activity, so it's not just like gathering people in a room with drinks. I barely drink, so it, that just wouldn't make sense. What we do is we do fun things. So, um, we're having pickleball tournaments. We had one on Friday, we have another one this coming Friday. So you know, everyone like does some rose and rally. We're drinking rose, and then we're going to rally. And learn how to play on the courts. We have comedy shows coming up, so it's like there's always an experience and something to talk about or look forward to or bond over. Um, and I think that's what makes us different.  [00:10:19] Peter: There's obviously a need for these things, right? Why is it so hard to make friends and not so much just, you know, oh, in New York, I think it's hard for adults to make friends, period. Because we're, as kids, it's sort of expected of us, right? I remember I have this great photo of my daughter, um, when she's like two years old and she's with a bunch of her friends on the playground and we, someone said, okay, it's time to go, everyone, get your buddy. And they just walked over and they immediately held hands and there was no, uh, issue with that because that's what they're trained to do, right? So we trained them to do that. But at some point as we mature the concept of go find your buddy disappears, right? And people either go out on their own or they have their own social circle and they don't wanna move out of. Why do you think that is? Why do you think we, for lack of a better word, forget how to make friends? [00:11:10] Liv: I think we get so absorbed by our own selves and, and by our own lives that we kind of forget that the world is going on around us. Like I, I think work comes into play and finding a partner comes into play and friendship kind of gets pushed to the side. Um, and it's sad because people kind of start, stop growing, right? Like, you know, every year in college we're forced to learn something new. But you become an adult and you kind of forget that that life is like a classroom too, and you have to constantly be pushing yourself and learning new things and meeting new people. So, you know, I, I don't think it's anything to shame ourselves about. I think it's just about remembering, oh, this thing's still going on, and, and there's so many people that are super cool that are out there that we don't even know exist yet.  [00:12:02] Peter: It's very, very possible. I think that, that we get into these ruts, we get into sort of these moments where it's like, okay, I'm good. I have enough. Right? I don't need more. I don't want go through because it's hard to make friends, right? No one ever said it was easy, and so if we don't, if we have what we have and we're comfortable and we're in our comfort zone, we don't necessarily have to do more because that's hard to do. The problem is nothing grows in your comfort zone, and so over time you need to do that. [00:12:23] Liv: No, I, I, exactly. I hear you. I agree with that. [00:12:26] Peter: Uh, Liv how can people find you? What? I know you have a phenomenal Instagram. I follow it. What, what? Tell people what it is. So how people can find you more.  [00:12:31] Liv: It's at Liv Schreiber. L i v s c h r e i b e r. Um, and Hot and Social is Hot and social. H o t and s o c i A L. Am I okay. I need to wake up. Um, But yeah, I'm super excited and I think also having ADD or undiagnosed ADD for everyone who's watching is actually such a benefit in friendships because you know, there's no one else who can text 20 of their friends at eight in the morning and check in on them and ask them how they're doing. Like I think having ADD actually is a huge, um, it, it, it's really a huge asset to my friendship. So, Peter, I'm really grateful that you've taught me that and reading your book and hearing, uh, you know, about all your tips and tricks on this podcast has really helped me. So thank you so much. Yeah. [00:13:18] Peter: I appreciate it. Thank you. It's great. It's great to have you and, and, and hopefully we can connect again and see each other in person again. I had a lot of fun over that coffee a couple months ago. It was fun.  Um, Guys, you've been listening to Fast Than Normal. We appreciate you. We love that you're here. If you haven't already checked out the new book, the Boy With the Faster Brain, it was on Today in New York yesterday on the Today Show. It is blowing up. It is. It is gaining a lot of traction, if you haven't, please leave us reading on Amazon. We love that. But either way, we will see you next week with a brand new episode. Thank you again to Skylight frames, skylight calendar, https://skylightframe.com. Check them out. To 30 bucks off with code PeterShankman. We will see you guys next week. Have a wonderful, wonderful week. Stay safe, stay healthy! ADHD and all Neurodiversity are gifts, not curses. We'll see you soon.  — Credits: You've been listening to the Faster Than Normal podcast. We're available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google play and of course at www.FasterThanNormal.com I'm your host, Peter Shankman and you can find me at shankman.com and @petershankman on all of the socials. If you like what you've heard, why not head over to your favorite podcast platform of choice and leave us a review, come more people who leave positive reviews, the more the podcast has shown, and the more people we can help understand that ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Opening and closing themes were composed and produced by Steven Byrom who also produces this podcast, and the opening introduction was recorded by Bernie Wagenblast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week! 

About our guest today, Teresa Clark: An innovative and forward-thinking leader Teresa Clark is the founder and alchemist of The Wellness Revolution. A pioneering culture and employee wellbeing company reimagining the workplace to unleash human potential. Built on the belief that the world of work plays an important role in transforming society and that by supporting people to live happier and healthier lives we can co-create happier and healthier societies together. She is deeply passionate about social justice, human flourishing, and the power of creativity to transform society. A public speaker, transformation and resilience expert, Teresa's moving personal journey as a woman who received a 4-year prison sentence for the deaths of 3 of her friends in a car accident where she fell asleep at the wheel after a festival, has led her on a turbulent journey of personal recovery from extreme physical injury, psychological and emotional trauma. The deep remorse and transformative journey of finding peace and amends birthed a life trajectory driven by a magnanimous compassion to create positive social change centered around a deep passion and purpose to help others.  With 12 years of experience working within mental health for the criminal justice system, NHS, and charity sector, she has consulted at local and national levels and led cultural change across organisations through the design and development of award-winning programmes and services. Through her work, she has empowered thousands of people to reconnect with their authentic selves and transform their lives creating synergistic outcomes from collective shifts in mindset to social impact.  Enjoy!  In this episode Peter and Teresa Clark discuss:   00:40 - Thank you so much for listening and for subscribing! 01:00 - Intro and welcome Teresa Clark 01:24 - What gave you the idea to start a career in mental health? 02:45 - On masking strains and normalizing dishonesty in the workplace  03:48 - How are companies beginning to take mental health seriously enough to implement change? [versus the bottom line] 05:00 - Are companies really making fundamental shifts? How and to what extent? 06:31 - On Google's big bad goof-up 08:22 - “Don't Be Evil” -Google 09:00 - What do you do once inside a company; how does consulting work best? Definition of reticent 10:10 - Breaking the stigma takes courage and intentional, comprehensive systems of support, time, training, positive reinforcement and encouragement, inclusive of leadership. 12:58 - How can people find more about you?  Web:  www.thewellnessrevolution.co.uk Socials:  @thewellnessrevolution_ on INSTA  @ThewellnessR on Twitter 13:23 - When HR and Business Leaders allow certain foundations for our people to flourish, our business will flourish. It's a natural thing. And it's been proven. Ref: Deloitte article Deloitte study: Mental Health and Employers: The Case for Investment – Pandemic and Beyond 14:40 - The Boy With the Faster Brain is out very soon!! 15:14 - Faster Than Normal Podcast info & credits. Guys, as always thanks so much for subscribing! Faster Than Normal is for YOU! We want to know what you'd like to hear! Do you have a cool friend with a great story? We'd love to learn about, and from them. I'm www.petershankman.com and you can reach out anytime via email at peter@shankman.com or @petershankman on all of the socials. You can also find us at @FasterNormal on all of the socials. It really helps when you drop us a review on iTunes and of course, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already! As you know, the more reviews we get, the more people we can reach. Help us to show the world that ADHD is a gift, not a curse!    — TRANSCRIPT via Descript and then corrected.. somewhat:  [00:00:40] Peter: Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of Faster Than Normal. My name is Peter Shankman. I'm your host. I will guide you through this journey today where we talk about A D H D in the workplace and all neurodiversity really in mental health in the place for a change. We're talking Teresa Clark. And Teresa Clark is the founder I believe, of the Wellness Revolution. She's based in London, England, and her job is to help company culture, enhance employee experience, and unleash the potential of the people who work for said companies. They are a pioneering culture and employee wellbeing company built for businesses of the future. They support forward-thinking organizations to create cultures of happiness fueled by passion, purpose, and creativity. So welcome, good to have.  [00:01:19] Teresa: Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.  [00:01:22] Peter: So let's dive in. What gave you the idea to start a company focusing on business mental health?  [00:01:29] Teresa: So I, my career is in, um, working for the N H S. I've worked in mental health for about 12 years, and it was during my time when I worked for, um, a big mental health trust in North London when I was working actually in a hospital. And, um, I started to kind of look around and just see, we had a really high turnover of staff and the nature of the work was very intense because I worked in forensics, which is, um, a part of type of mental. Services, which when people commit offenses, they go into hospital as opposed to prison. So as you can imagine, you, you are, you know, experiencing quite a lot of sad cases. It's the works quite heavy. But even so, um, we just had this huge turnaround of staff and as I was there longer and longer, I realized that we weren't looking after our own people's mental health and that the workloads were huge. People were really stressed out if somebody came and said that they were experiencing. their own issues. It wasn't treated very well. In fact, there was a kind of real fear culture that nobody would've said that. Um, and they would've just gone off work with, you know, explained it underneath another sickness. But it was actually to do with that. And what was happening, which was really, really sad, was that was actually affecting patient care. So I started to sort of think, wow, if this is happening in a mental health trust, what's happening in the real world? And I started to kind of look at my family and friends and acquaintances and kind of see that, you know, we all struggle with something. Some of us might talk about it, others might not. But you know, mental health is just the same as physical health. And I just started to, to sort of think about how many toxic work cultures there are in the. and that we really need to do something about it because we spend 90,000 hours of work in our lifetime. And that is a long time to be stuck somewhere where you feel miserable and the, and the outcomes of that in terms of your own physical and mental health, but also the ripple effect that it has on your family, your friends, uh, and just sort of society at large, really. So I thought if we can really shift the workplace to be somewhere where. It actually lays the foundations for people to reach their potential, you know, optimal wellbeing. You know what a, what a different world we would live in. Sounds very idealistic, but I really do believe that we can do it.  [00:03:48] Peter: So my first question is this. How are companies reacting to this? Because companies, you know, at least in the US, companies don't particularly like spending money on anything that doesn't help their bottom line, obviously. Mental health and mental wellbeing in the workplace does help the bottom line, but that's a hard explanation to give. I've been there. So how are, how are companies, uh, reacting to that first and foremost?  [00:04:06] Teresa: Yeah, great question and you're right. I think there's still some attitudes that we need to change around wellbeing as a fluffy topic and that it's a nice to have but not actually imperative to your business success. But the good thing is there's, you know, the, the bodies of evidence of studies and case studies. Just, uh, continuing to rise and really, really being able to show that r roi, I call it return on happiness, to show the difference between a company that does foster, you know, positive experience for their employees and emo, um, employee wellbeing compared to one that doesn't or that does it surface level. So it's really about kind of presenting the figures, you know, talking to the people who are making the big decisions, because that's another thing that I think is really important. You know, getting the C-suite and people in leadership roles really involved so that it's not just a bottom up, it's a, you know, a top down and a bottom up approach. And that does really work. It's still, you know, it's still difficult. I think there are a lot of companies out there that are doing what, what's sort of known as like wellbeing, washing, similar. What people do on pride and things like that is sort of saying that they do it, but. You know, doing the opposite. [00:05:16] Peter: Well, I mean, that's my, that was my next question. You know, the, we are, we're all familiar with, you know, uh, what are they doing for mental health? Oh, they're allowing wacky tie days on Friday. You know, it, it, it's, it's, you know, or free sandwiches does not equate to mental health and mental, mental, uh, caring. And so I think that, that one of the big. Um, issues that I've seen is that companies say, this sounds like a great idea, but then again, it's that question of actually getting 'em to commit because there's no, you know, the ROI isn't immediately seen.  [00:05:45] Teresa: Yes. Yeah. And I think what we are seeing now because of this, is we are seeing kind of mass exodus at companies where people are, are leaving, you know, the great resignation or we wanna call it the great awakening. Either way, people are looking for a very different experience, particularly Gen Z. And millennials. And so if a company doesn't start to do these things, it's, you know, when you look to, to, to start a new company, if your company doesn't have a flexible working policy that doesn't have some sort of ea and that doesn't kind of offer some kind of wellbeing provision, it's gonna make you think twice about whether you take their offer because money's not everything, as we all know. And again, the research shows that people would rather take a pay cut to have those things and go and work for an organization that doesn't have that now. It's pretty shocking at what the kind of world is like at the moment, because I don't know if you'd, you'd seen that, you know, Google's laid off a load of staff just now,  [00:06:39] Peter: including their, including the director of mental health and wellbeing. Yes, I saw that.  [00:06:43] Teresa: So that's, you know, really, really scary considering that some, the company like Google is doing that. It's just,  [00:06:49] Peter: that's also really telling, because if a company is big and as, as supposedly forward thinking as Google doesn't give a shit, why should any other company.  [00:06:56] Teresa: Well, yes, it's true, but I'm, I I think it's also a very, very bad move for Google because they're losing their credibility as an employer. Like their, their employee brand is really suffering because it's not just about the businesses, it's about the people that work there and, and we, people that work that have as much sort of say in terms of, you know, whether they wanna work at an organization like that or whether they want to go and work for Microsoft. You have all of those benefits. So it's a about, you know, the companies really need to think about what their brand reputation is because that does, you know, in a marketplace it's gonna get more and more difficult now for, you know, jobs for everybody. That's something that everybody's gonna be looking at. Yeah. And how much money does it cost? I was gonna say, how much money does it cost to, to recruit somebody? Especially for a company like Google, you're probably thinking, you know, it's in the grands isn't it? So you don't wanna be not being able to retain your staff, cuz that's just gonna cost you more and more. So it'll be interesting to see the data on that bad decision and how that's gonna infect Google because it is gonna really affect them. I. .  [00:08:01] Peter: Well, I think that's really the question, you know, is it we, and we'll have to wait and see on that. But I, I mean, I agree with you. I just, I feel like, you know, and, and this is maybe the, the New York City cynic and me, I just feel like companies that try, uh, you know, oh, we're gonna care, wanna care, you know, Google's, I mean, do you remember who Google's original motto, company motto was? Back in like the, the, the early two thousands?  [00:08:20] Teresa: No, I don't think I do. [00:08:22] Peter: It was literally don't be evil. Oh wow. Yeah, that was their, that was their corporate motto, their corporate culture motto. And, and they publicized it and they talked about it and they go, we're gonna be the good company. Because back then Microsoft and, you know, Yahoo, were the bad companies and. All of a sudden, you know, here they are laying off their, their, their, their vice president of, of, of mental health and wellbeing. So I, I, I think that companies talk a lot of, talk a great game and I wanna do this. And I think it's a lot harder to sell that story, um, in the real world because at the end of the day, you know, they're, they're shareholders are looking at the next quarter and not the next quarter centuries, which is, which is obviously a much bigger problem. Talk. What are you doing into, in terms of once you get into a company, you know, are you, are you listening? Are you holding sessions? How, how does this whole process work? Because, um, I remember the one time I did work for a company back in the nineties, I worked for America Online, and they had someone in-house who actually, uh, was a mental health, and this is, this is again the mid nineties, so that was pretty impressive that they were that forward thinking. And they had someone where you could just go in, you could say, Hey, you know, having a bad day, not having a good time, having a mental health day. And again, before any of this was, was popular. So, so how does it work from a consulting point of view? [00:09:29] Teresa: Yeah. So what we do is we kind of go in and we just really get to understand the organization. We look at the values, we look at how the values are being lived. We look at the kind of main challenges around the people. We look at what they're doing really well, what they could do better, and then we speak to, um, the employees and we kind of find out anonymously what they're thinking. Cause I think. , that's a big thing. You know, companies have a lot of in-house surveys and things like that, but people are quite reticent to be honest. Completely, because there's kind of like a lot of fear about, you know, will I, right, will I be looked at differently if I say that I've got a mental health condition or that I'm struggling, or, you know what? How does my culture support mental health and wellbeing as it is now. So we kinda understand the energy of the organization, what's going on, what's going on that can't be seen, and then we kind of present that to, um, the C-suite or the people team, and we sort of talk about. , you know, what we can do to support them, what they wanna focus on first. Cuz sometimes you go in and there's quite a lot of things that they didn't realize are going on. So it's almost, you know, too much of a big job to do everything all in one go. So it's like, where do we start first? So that can be things like helping them to set up like wellbeing champions so that they're embedding wellbeing more regularly within their culture because it's gotta be kind of a movement that goes forward. We do a lot of workshops and webinars, training. Taking like a design thinking approach to the employee experience. So thinking about when you have new starters, like what's their experience like, how do we deal with, um, you know, when somebody comes to us with a problem, how do we make more space in our teams so that we are having more interaction socially? Because a lot of companies we work with now become completely remote. So you have to be really intentional about that employee experience. You know, as a brand, like how do we want our employees, what are our team rituals? How do we embed wellbeing so that it's not something that we're having to deal with when it reaches crisis point, that we've kind of creating a culture where people can come and talk about things. So we are supporting each other. So when we have a team meeting, somebody says, we do a check-in and someone says, I'm having a bit of a bad day today. , we are normalizing it cuz you and I both know as well, people that have ADHD you know, sometimes we are, we are having a terrible day, sometimes we're having a great day. But sometimes it's difficult to say that you are without, you know, fear of being judged because you don't wanna seem like you can't do the job or that, you know, they can't trust you. So there's so many things around that. So what we do is we try to really help, well, not we try, we do help the organizations to, to really look at that and then just getting some defining, um, ways of approaching that as an organization and as teams and as individuals. And we do, um, some really cool offsites and sort of revolutionary retreats where we look. Kind of issues are within leadership, and then we create kind of like a two day conference, which is much more based on sort of like human potential and like how we can be the best leaders and really kind of like changing the mindset in more of a kind of intense short way, which, which are really successful. Um, and we do panel talks like loads of things. We, we, what we do as an organization is we just try to be really innovative and approach mental health in a very different way than, uh, the sort of traditional sort of pathology of it.  [00:12:58] Peter: Awesome. I love it. Well, the website is called the wellness revolution.co.uk and you can find everyone there, you can find the whole team there. And it is really great to have you on the podcast. I appreciate you taking the time. It is. With any luck, this is sort of the start of, you know, more and more people understanding that, that there is something here and that we have. Uh, pay attention. We can't just let this go, right, Teresa?  [00:13:23] Teresa: Oh, definitely. And I wanted to, to give you a, a, a really interesting stat actually. Yeah, please. For those leaders out there that, um, are still kind of struggling to see the, the real kind of returns on it. D Deloitte did a report here recently, I think it was last year actually, so it could do with renewing now. But they said that for every pound that's spent, and obviously I know it's in pounds, not dollars for every pound that's spent on wellbeing and mental health interventions, company receives up to six pounds back in returns on reduced absenteeism, reduced presenteeism, reduce, and um, higher retention rates. So there really is like such a business case and I think what we're gonna see from now on, as well as obviously with things being so uncertain with economic kind of unrest, is that this is the main, you know, people are our highest value assets if we think about it like, So if we look after our people and they're, we are supporting their mental health cause we're still kind of suffering the fallout from Covid, you know, psychologically. that's still very much kind of impacting people in different ways. If we really do sort of, you know, give those foundations for our people to flourish, our business will flourish. It's a natural thing. So just, yeah. I hope that's kind of stuck into some people's heads and that they'll really start to look at it differently. [00:14:40] Peter: I love it. I love it. Teresa, this is great. Thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it.  [00:14:45] Teresa: Oh, it's my pleasure.  [00:14:46] Peter: Guys, as always, you know the drill Faster Than Normal is for you. We wanna know what you want to hear. Shoot us a note, let us know. And, uh, the children's book is coming out, should be out in about a month. The title is The Boy With the Faster Brain, so we are really excited for that. Stay tuned for more on that next week and we will see you next week. A D H D in all forms of neurodiversity are gift not a curse. Pay attention to your mental health. It is just as important, if not more so than your physical health. We'll see you soon. Thanks for listening!  — Credits: You've been listening to the Faster Than Normal podcast. We're available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google play and of course at www.FasterThanNormal.com I'm your host, Peter Shankman and you can find me at shankman.com and @petershankman on all of the socials. If you like what you've heard, why not head over to your favorite podcast platform of choice and leave us a review, come more people who leave positive reviews, the more the podcast has shown, and the more people we can help understand that ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Opening and closing themes were composed and produced by Steven Byrom who also produces this podcast, and the opening introduction was recorded by Bernie Wagenblast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week! 

Nik's Social Media Channel ADHDVision is a global movement aimed at improving well-being, productivity and overall life quality for people with attention deficit disorder (ADHD). With over 150 Million views in just under 2 years Nik has rapidly created a community of over 1.8 million people who follow him and are inspired by his work to live their BEST life with their brain. He is currently running an international inner circle of ADHD business owners and is on a mission to make the knowledge around creating and thriving as a business owner with ADHD more accessible. Enjoy!  In this episode Peter and Nik Hobrecker discuss:   00:40 - Thank you so much for listening and for subscribing! 00:47 - Intro and welcome Nik Hobrecker! 01:47 - Tell us your story; when were you diagnosed? 02:41 - It all was kind of like an ‘explainer bomb' 03:30 - You live in an especially beautiful part of Thailand. How do you stay productive? Ref: Faster Than Normal book 05:00 - On rejection sensitivity and living in a ‘vacation destination'. 06:30 - What have you been learning from your new Mastermind group; how best to lead? 07:30 - Ref: Perfectionism, decision paralysis, imposter syndrome 08:14 - How many people do you have in your group? 08:45 - What are some of the things you've learned by running this group? 09:49 - What would you tell an entrepreneur who's just been diagnosed; next steps, etc? 14:40 - How can people find more about you?  Socials: @ADHDVision:  YouTube  INSTA  TikTok  Twitter This was great- thank you Nik! 11:37 - Drumroll please:  I have a new book coming out mid-February! The title is…. 12:21 - Faster Than Normal Podcast info & credits. Guys, as always thanks so much for subscribing! Faster Than Normal is for YOU! We want to know what you'd like to hear! Do you have a cool friend with a great story? We'd love to learn about, and from them. I'm www.petershankman.com and you can reach out anytime via email at peter@shankman.com or @petershankman on all of the socials. You can also find us at @FasterNormal on all of the socials. It really helps when you drop us a review on iTunes and of course, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already! As you know, the more reviews we get, the more people we can reach. Help us to show the world that ADHD is a gift, not a curse!  — TRANSCRIPT via Descript and then corrected.. somewhat: [00:00:39] Peter: Hello everyone. Good morning and welcome to another episode of Faster Than Normal. My name is Peter Shankman. I wanna say how many words I could say all in one breath. Good to have you guys. It is a pleasure to see you all again. Talk to you all again. It is wonderful to be back, pretty much back weekly. Now we have a bunch of episodes in the can, so things are good. Let's take a trip today. Let's take a trip. All the way over to Asia, into Thailand, where we're gonna meet up with Nick Hobrecker. Nick has a really cool backstory and I'll let him tell you, but all what all you need to know is he runs a social media channel called A D H D Vision with over 150 million views. Atta aimed at improving wellbeing, productivity, overall life quality for people with A D H D. Sounds like someone you know. He's created a community of over 1.8 million people who follow him and are inspired by his work to live their best life with their brain. He's running an international circle of ADHD business owners again. Sounds like someone you know. Nick, welcome to the podcast. Good to have you,  [00:01:35] Nik: Peter. Lovely to be here. Thank you for having me, my friend.  [00:01:38] Peter: It's great to, great to have you. It's great to find someone on the other side of the world doing the same thing. Tell us your story. How are you diagnosed? How'd you figure it out? Um, how old are you? What's, what's the, what's everything? .  [00:01:48] Nik: Yeah man. So first of all, I'm from Germany, so, um, the whole notion of ADHD, uh, is still arriving there as we speak. Um, I got diagnosed in college, so quite late. I was about 21. If my memory serves me correctly, probably won't, but about 21. And, um, I was studying entrepreneurship in college. It was my fourth, fifth semester and, you know, classical story, mind blown. My whole life has explained itself to me all in a flash. And that's when I started creating content. I was active on YouTube way before then, you know, I was making funny videos on some random games. You know, Roone Scape League of Legends was always a passion of mine. And then I found a way to channel that passion into something helpful for people, which, um, you know, has now gained me that, uh, the amount of followers and, and the views that, that you just mentioned. I'm very grateful for it. I'm really, really happy to be able to reach the people that I do. And, um, Yeah. It's just, you know, showing people what my journey has been and trying my best to, to educate, uh, them so they don't have to say, have the same mistakes and go through the same struggles that I did. [00:02:51] Peter: Yeah, it is, it is a wake up call when you figure out exactly what's going on and how you can use that to your advantage, isn't it?  [00:03:00] Nik: It is, it's, it's huge. Um, you know, I keep going back to the same thing, saying the same thing, but it always, for me it's just, it's like an explainer bomb, right? All of a sudden, you know Exactly, um, who you are, why you do the things you do, and why you've been different your whole life. And, um, yeah, wanted to give that, that knowledge and that awareness to more people, because for me, it was a game changer. Ever since then, my, my life completely turned.  [00:03:27] Peter: Tell me about, uh, an average day for you. Cause right now you're in, you're in Poquette, Thailand, which is one of the most beautiful places in the world. It's, it's a favorite place of mine. I've been there many, many times and I don't necessarily know how productive I'd be living in a place like Phuket Thailand. So tell us what you're doing to, to sort of stay productive and how are, how are you surviving that?  [00:03:46] Nik: Man, let me, let me tell you, it's . It's a constant struggle, but, uh, there are a few routines in place, um, you know, occasional fun routines that I use to, to, uh, to stay on top of everything. So I do also wanna mention Peter, I, you know, your book Faster Than Normal helped me, um, a lot when I got diagnosed and it was actually part of my inspiration to go out and use my brain for, um, for its benefits. And, uh, what you mentioned in your book, uh, has stayed true, you know, pretty much ever since I've read it, which is just exercising, right, um, exercising in the morning, not just doing something for the dopamine for that reward chemical at the end, but doing something because you enjoy it. I really enjoy running. , right. Um, so every morning I try to do my run. I, I try to do my, my ab exercises. Um, I've got a gym just around the corner. Accessibility is everything, right? If the gym is around the corner, the motivation hurdle is a lot less steep. So that helps me. And other than that, you know what? Thailand is beautiful and the nature just also gives you that energy, right? There's been different studies, I think, on A D H D and nature and how can I help you focus. We've got a beautiful garden, outback, um, and you know, sometimes it's just great to to, to tank up the creativity that, that I need for from my videos. [00:04:59] Peter: That's awesome. So it's, I mean, it's a beautiful, there's no question it's a beautiful location. Um, how is it working there in an environment that, that doesn't necessarily lend itself to work, per se? I mean, tell us what you're doing. Like, you know, what do you do to get sort of like a dopamine hit in the middle of the day. Are you gonna go out and run on the beach or are you gonna go for a swim or, you know, tell me about that.  [00:05:18] Nik: What I like to do is just do something different to what I usually do. So it's just novelty. Novelty for me, gives me that dopamine kick, gives me that creative spark that I need to create new and and meaningful content. So, uh, for me it's just all about exploring this, this beautiful place. You know, we've, we've done so many different trips. I'm here with two of my very good high school friends who are also, you know, we like to call ourselves digital nomads, right? So we travel the world don't really have one specific place that we stay. And we just like to explore this, this beautiful island. I mean, you yourself, I think you've been here, Peter, right? It's, it's beautiful. You have um, this amazing culture shock of just, by the way, people are amazingly nice here. Yeah. Which is very nice for rejection sensitivity, cuz you never get rejected. Everybody's so nice to you, you know? Yeah. Um, on the one hand, on the other hand, you've got these, these beautiful beaches, these um, these amazing, I mean, we went to this huge statue of like a big Buddha. Um, it was a bit of a steep climb, but we went up there and inside this Buddha, they were actually meditating. Meditation has been a huge remedy for me and my A D H D right? Mindfulness. Um, and even though it's a struggle, um, sitting there in a big Buddha meditating with monks, I never knew I had a bucket list until that. You know what I mean? So that was, that was crazy.  [00:06:33] Peter: That's very cool. Tell me about, um, let's, let's flip gears a little bit to the business side of things. Tell me about what you're doing in terms of, so you run a mastermind or, or a, a group. Yeah. Um, all focused, adhd. Are people coming to you with, are you finding that people coming to you from an ADHD standpoint with all the same problems? Um, you know, the lack of focus, the ability is everything different?  [00:06:52] Nik: I mean, look, this mastermind that I'm now creating, right? We are in the very early stages. You know, it's, um, there's a lot of things that we still need to get right, but um, it's an experiment and we're testing things out, um, to see what's gonna give everybody the most value in the long term. Um, and what I've found, and the reason for creating this mastermind for ADHD Entrepreneurs in the first place is, you know, A D H D is often put on a pedestal when it comes to entrepreneurship, which it should be. We are great entrepreneurs, right? Five times more likely to start a business, et cetera. But, um, you know, we really talk about the struggles that do come with owning a business and having a D H D, right? Perfectionism, uh, decision paralysis, imposter syndrome. , all these different things that, that mass up into this, uh, big, you know, ball of, well, what the hell do I do now? Right? And that's where the inception of the group came from to have a support system. Right? One family that supports one another that gets one another, right? I think as business owners, Peter, you're probably gonna relate to this, is just as ADHD business owners, we often don't feel like the other people get it. You. 95% of people usually don't. And having a circle of like-minded people who get each other, um, and who can network with each other all at the same time, um, so far has been proving incredibly valuable.  [00:08:14] Peter: Awesome. Uh, how many people do you have in the group? [00:08:16] Nik: Right now? We've got 13. I wanna keep it really small because this is, you know, we're starting out. It's, it's an experiment. I wanna get everybody's feedback. I wanna make this the most kick ass group. Um, there, there is. And, um, you know, to do that, uh, we gotta dig down in the trenches and I wanna, you know, I've got feedback calls lined up with everybody. Um, and it's more like that we're creating this group together rather than just me, you know, spearheading it. [00:08:38] Peter: Yep. That's awesome. That's awesome. What, what have you learned, um, about yourself from running a group like that? Because, I mean, I know that when I ran, when I run mine, one of the things I learned consistently, consistently, consistently over and over again is that I'm, that any problem I think I can have, right? Any problem I think that I, I'm probably the only person in the world that has this, there's no one else with, is not everyone has the same issues. Um, we just don't talk about 'em a lot. Right. So when you get into a group and you start doing that, it changes everything. So what are some of the things that you've learned? [00:09:04] Nik: I mean, yeah, it's just, it's just exactly what you said. So I'm, I'm very fortunate to be in the position of being, um, you know, a bystander to listen to these amazing, vulnerable stories that do get shared. Um, and, you know, these are all very successful business owners that we have in this group. And you know what a lot of them talk about is, you know, problems like not really being understood, right. Wanting to people please everybody, even though it's your business. And, you know, certain things like that where you just, you. And you're like, damn, that's been, that's exactly been my experience. I just haven't been able to verbalize it. And just hearing that from people feeling at home is, I mean, I don't think there's any, um, any higher value than, than that.  [00:09:48] Peter: Yeah, no question about it. What would you tell an entrepreneur who's just gotten diagnosed and who has all these questions and, and, and really doesn't know what the next step is?  [00:09:58] Nik: Well, um, it's a great question. I don't think I can answer that in like one or two sentences, but the first thing that I would wanna tell them is that you've got a unique set of strengths that work for you, and you should use those strengths, get better at those strengths, right? Build your strengths, but. Try to outsource your weaknesses rather than like, try your best and like force yourself like, oh, I really have to do these financial, uh, statements right now. Like, no, get a virtual assistant for that. Right? You know, like there are certain things that your brain is just not meant to be doing. If you are an entrepreneur, of course, if you don't have the money, you're gonna have to stick through it. But, you know, virtual assistants are quite affordable nowadays, especially online. I know. Oh, totally. Um, I'm sure Peter, I don't know if, if you have, uh, I mean, how many virtual assistants do you have? Do you have one , two? [00:10:44] Peter: I've, I've been fortunate. I've had the same assistant going on 15 years now. And she was originally, she originally started with me and then she moved, uh, went and got married. Uh, so she lives in Massachusetts now, but still works for me. Wow.  [00:10:54] Nik: Well, fif 15 years. That is, um, that is awesome.  [00:10:56] Peter: She saved my life. She saves my life on a, on a regular basis.  [00:10:59] Nik: Yeah. Yeah, I hear that. I hear that. I've got one now. You know, we've been together, been together. Sounds, sounds odd, but you know, it's been 3, 4, 5 months. Um, and, um, yeah, she's, she's also been a lifesaver. So, I mean, but to get back to your question, that's what I would say. Focus on your strengths, outsource your weaknesses.  [00:11:14] Peter: Awesome. I love it. Guys, thank you so much for listening. I really, Nick, thank you so much for taking the time. How can people find you?  [00:11:21] Nik: Um, just at ADHDVision on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, you'll find me. Um, I'll be very happy to, uh, share some content with you. [00:11:31] Peter: I love it guys. Check Nik out. And as always, if you like what you hear, leave us a note. And I told you some good news last week. I'm gonna repeat it again this week. There is a children's book coming out and I can share the name with you now. It is called The Boy with the Faster Brain. And it is, you know, the first question I get every time I say that first question is, oh, is it autobiography? Well, yeah, kind of. But I think you're gonna like it. I think you're gonna enjoy reading it, and it should be coming out mid-February, so I will have a lot more info on that soon. It is gonna be for your kids, anywhere from ages 8 to. 14. It's gonna be a lot of fun, so stay tuned for that. As always, thank you for listening. Thanks to our guest. If you know a guest you think should be on as cool as Nik, shoot us a note, peter@shankman.com or at Peter Shankman, all the socials or @ FasterNormal . We will see you guys next week. As always, thank you for listening. Stay strong. Bye. We'll see you next week. — Credits: You've been listening to the Faster Than Normal podcast. We're available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google play and of course at www.FasterThanNormal.com I'm your host, Peter Shankman and you can find me at shankman.com and @petershankman on all of the socials. If you like what you've heard, why not head over to your favorite podcast platform of choice and leave us a review, come more people who leave positive reviews, the more the podcast has shown, and the more people we can help understand that ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Opening and closing themes were composed and produced by Steven Byrom who also produces this podcast, and the opening introduction was recorded by Bernie Wagenblast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week! 

Nathan Minns is the founder of Green Light Improv, a professional training company that cultivates resilience, enhances creativity, and improves communication, all while inspiring connection through improv comedy. Beginning as an actor in 2015, Nathan soon realized that his acting training was positively affecting other work skills, from creativity and confidence, to communication and decision-making. Ultimately, the change he saw in himself led him to create Green Light Improv in 2019. Green Light Improv inspires connection through improv comedy. The company doesn't teach improv comedy, but instead uses improv comedy as a tool to teach other work and life skills. In 2022, Nathan quit his job and is now working full-time to spread applied improv training. An Ohio State University graduate, Nathan has previously spent most of his career in the startup ecosystem as an employee and a 3x founder. How does this all work with his ADHD? Can Improv Comedy work via your ADHD too? Enjoy!  In this episode Peter and Nathan Minns discuss:   00:40 - Thank you so much for listening and for subscribing! 01:01 - Intro and welcome Nathan Minns! 02:50 - So Improv is a cult right? What got you into it? What got you excited? 05:51 - Can improv positively affect your mental health? Focusing on 2 things tandem? 07:10 - What is the reason people with neurodiverse brains are drawn to the improv community? 07:50 - How do you feel on stage? Why do you continue to practice improv? 08:30 - What kinds of folks are you working with; what all is your  Green Light Improv company doing? 09:45 - Can you share an example you've experienced in where a new client ‘gets it' for the first time, as you did? 12:40 - Is it about the 8 people you're in a room with, or the eventual audience? 13:48 - Neurodiverse brains. Conversation engineering and management. Improv is a team sport. 14:48 - How can people find more about you?  Web:  https://greenlightimprov.com  Personal: https://nathanminns.com Socials:  @ linkedin.com/in/minns on LinkedIN and via YouTube 15:06 - We should talk about improv as a tool and subject again- than you Nathan!!  Guys, as always thanks so much for subscribing! Faster Than Normal is for YOU! We want to know what you'd like to hear! Do you have a cool friend with a great story? We'd love to learn about, and from them. I'm www.petershankman.com and you can reach out anytime via email at peter@shankman.com or @petershankman on all of the socials. You can also find us at @FasterNormal on all of the socials. It really helps when you drop us a review on iTunes and of course, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already! As you know, the more reviews we get, the more people we can reach. Help us to show the world that ADHD is a gift, not a curse!  15:49 - Faster Than Normal Podcast info & credits. — TRANSCRIPT via Descript and then corrected.. somewhat: [00:00:40] Peter: Hey everyone. Peter Shankman is with you today. Welcome to another episode of Faster Than Normal, the podcast where we talk about ADD, ADHD, Autism, Executive Function Disorder, anything and everything having to do with the neurodiverse brain, we here look at all of those things as gifts, not as curses, and we're thrilled that you're here. I am joined today by someone who I've been talking about improv both in my books and on the podcast and in my courses and things like that. As something that you kind of have to do. And why do I say that? Because improv allows you to focus on improving yourself from the inside out. An ex-girlfriend who used to do improv all the time, and I never really got it. And one day she invited me. She said, just come take class. And look, I was a drama major growing up. I went high school, the whole thing. I took this class and the simple act of having to think inside your own head in real time, massively, massively opened up my brain. and I was a fan, have been a fan ever since. So we're talking to Nathan Minns, who's the founder of https://greenlightimprov.com , a professional training company that cultivates resilience, enhances creativity, and improves communication, all while inspiring connection through improv comedy. He began as an actor in 2015, and he soon realized his Actor training was positively affecting other work skills from creativity and confidence to communications, decision making, things like that. So that's where he created Green Light Improv in 2019. It inspires connection through improv comedy. The company doesn't teach Improv. , but rather uses improv as a tool to other work and life skills. That actually, uh, resonates with me because I think that when I, when I talk to companies, when I go and speak to companies, I like to do a little improv just to get them to sort of break down those barriers that are inherent in business and inherent, I think in our brain. You know, a lot of companies, Nathan, um, more than ever before are focusing on, uh, employee mental health and employee mental wellbeing. And I think that, that you might just be at the right place at the right time type thing. That, so welcome to the podcast. First.  [00:02:44] Nathan: Thank you for having me. I loved your podcast for a long time, so I'm happy to be here. [00:02:49] Peter: So improv. So, you know, look, I, before I started going and started becoming a fan of it, I always assumed improv was kind of a cult. Um, you had to go, you had to bring 10 friends, you had to buy two drinks, you know, the usual, right? Yeah. And I was quickly disabused of that theory, uh, my first time there. So what got you into it? What got you excited? .  [00:03:08] Nathan: Well, I started performing in 2015 and I saw my first improv show in 2016, and when I saw the show; they were just, their brains were working so fast. I knew that it was something that I wanted to do too. So I went out and auditioned for these two groups that I saw perform, and I felt like I was doing incredibly well. I was making everyone in the room laugh and I was having a blast. And the only small hiccup that came was that it seemed like I was the only person that thought I was doing well. Because, yeah, I didn't get in, so I did not get into either group and I said, okay, I know this is something I wanna do. I've seen improv, I've done theater. So I took a step back. I started taking some classes and trying to put in the work to be able to get up to that level. Then I went back later, I auditioned again, and I did so much better. And in the end, the exact same thing happened. Really? In total? Yeah. In total. I auditioned across the two groups seven times before I got into an improv group.  [00:04:17] Peter: Wow. But you got into it.  [00:04:19] Nathan: I did . I did get into one. Um, but I, I realized there that many people, like what you were describing, see improv as this thing that they would never be able to do. And it's a learnable skill. It's something that you can figure out how to do. There's training to be able to learn it. And I was very naturally bad at it, but I like to think I'm a little bit better these days than when I first started.  [00:04:47] Peter: I love that. Naturally bad at some. Well, being naturally bad at something is the first step to kind of eventually being good at something, right? Yeah, exactly. Tell me about, um, you, you mentioned the, the brain working faster. Everyone's brain working faster in improv. You know, the thing about A D H D is that we're constantly, our brains are constantly working faster and, and while we're thinking one thing, we're making a joke about something else and we're thinking about something else, and you know, like four different things at the same time. And I found that the only place where that doesn't, two places where that doesn't really work well. One is in a relationship, um, when you're not entirely focused on the person. And yeah. The second one I've just discovered recently is in boxing because I'll be thinking, I'll, I'll, I'll be focusing on my punches, I'll be throwing, I'll doing it, and then something clicks in my brain and half a second later I'm four tangents away, uh, you know, wondering whether or not, um, beavers fall in love. And yeah. Next, next thing I know, I've just gotten rocked with a, with a hard right to the head, so that is, uh, something I'm focusing on, but, but talk about from an ADHD perspective or from mental health perspective. Talk about how improv can positively affect that. [00:06:00] Nathan: Yeah. I, I find that improv is one of the only places that I have gone into that community where the traits of A D H D are often rewarded. So when I'm on stage, I feel very comfortable. I feel everyone's watching me. Of course, I'm performing. But there's something about that heightened feeling that makes me very focused. And also in improv, we have to be fully present in the moment. And I think the stress, almost stress of being on stage helps that helps us to stay focused. And while we're being fully present on stage, we have to be able to come up with a lot of creative ideas very quickly. And discern which ones are good, which ones aren't worth pursuing. And I find that my ADHD is very helpful in allowing me to come up with a lot of different ideas and see what works. So I feel like it is a incredible community where it is the highest percentage of people with ADHD that I have ever been a part of any group.  [00:07:10] Peter: Interesting. Why do you think and and do you think the reason people with neurodiverse brains are drawn to it is because of the speed, is because of the quickness, is because it's, you know, it's, it's like that perfect place for a brain, for brains like ours.  [00:07:22] Nathan: Yeah, I think that it's, it's rewarded. Some of those quick thinking skills are rewarded where it may not be rewarded in the corporate sphere, where we often do more monotonous kind of tasks in 80, in, in improv. we're doing a lot of different things and we have to come up with a lot of different ideas. So I definitely think that, um, that's a, that's a solid reason why we're drawn to improv.  [00:07:51] Peter: Interesting. Tell me about how you're feeling when you're on stage. I mean, are you getting. . You know, when I get off the stage after a keynote, I'm, I'm just a wash with dopamine. Right. Do you have that same sort of feeling? Is that, is that one of the reasons you, you keep doing it?  [00:08:03] Nathan: Yeah. It, it's an incredible high being on stage. I now feel more comfortable on stage when I don't know what I'm about to say next . And in improv than when I'm in a play, or I'm doing a keynote, something like that. I feel very comfortable. Um, when I just, I don't have a script and I can just float along with it. I find I'm incredibly focused. Yeah. [00:08:29] Peter: That's very cool. Um, Where do you, uh, see it taking you? I mean, you're, you're working, what kind of companies and, and groups of people are you working with now in, in the company? And tell us about what the company's doing.  [00:08:42] Nathan: Yeah, so I'm 24 right now and I started the company in 2019 in my senior year of college at Ohio State. And I found, at the very beginning that I found that working with colleges and universities, uh, worked very well. That has stayed something that's pretty consistent working with a lot of colleges, uh, university programs. Now we're expanding into more of the corporate sphere, small business sphere, non-university, university sphere. Um, I see it growing into a place where we can have, uh, a variety of facilitators doing this work at, at the same time, we can have the basis of the curriculum too, but I think that improv can be used for so many different things that we can start to have different branches from, uh, a law school, a social worker school and, and any other, any other groups that we think can really benefit from this kind of training.  [00:09:44] Peter: Very, very cool. Talk about one of your, uh, talk about someone who came in with sort of that same attitude I did the first time. Oh, this is, this is bs, whatever. And talk about that moment when they sort of got it and you saw, you saw the change. [00:09:59] Nathan: So I saw, I went into one group. There were 40 people, and I started my initial talk. It's about, usually the workshops are about 10 minutes of me talking at the beginning. And then the entire rest of the workshop is exercise debrief. And in the exercise we're doing paired exercises for about half the time and groups of four to six for the rest of the time. So I start this 10 minute talk of just what is improv? How are we going to use it today? Why are we doing this? And about 30 seconds into this talk, someone raises their hands, think, okay, this, this isn't typically a time when people raise their hands, . Um, I said, Oh, ok- , what would you like to say? And there was this woman, she was probably around 60 or 70, and she said, Nathan, I just wanna let you know that we are all introverts and we're gonna hate this. Ha ha. And I was like, I appreciate your honesty,., thank you for telling me that. It's nice to see where, where our starting point is. And in that workshop I knew; okay, this might be a tougher audience than my typical workshop, but as we started getting going, I told her, let's just give it 10 minutes. Just give it a little bit of time and we'll see what happens. Within 30 minutes maybe, she was volunteering in front of the entire group, which isn't a thing we force anyone. , but we just, I asked would anyone like to share or represent the group? And she started, started doing it because I, I think they realized that this isn't an activity that's only for extroverts or, um, only for people who like to speak up all the time. Um, this is an, an activity that we, anyone can do, we can use it for, for any group. Yeah. And they can do something and have fun and get something out of it.  [00:12:07] Peter: You know what always interests me, the the introvert concept is interesting because a lot of people with neurodiverse brains are what you might call the most introverted extrovert you'll ever meet. In the respect that, you know, I love being on stage, I love speaking. I love doing that because it's me to many. Yeah. Right. But if it's me to a few, like at dinner party or whatever, I hate everything about that. Hmm. Right. You know, I, I, I, I love being on stage talking to thousands of people, or I love one-on-one, you know, having dinner with a friend or whatever. But the concept of, of, uh, you know, sitting with her in a room with eight people where we all have to make small talk. , you know, I'll be in the second bedroom playing with the cat. And so I think that one of the keys about improv is that it is a small group of people talking to each other, but in essence talking to an audience. [00:12:52] Nathan: Yeah. And in improv it is very much a conversation with the audience, not in the way that we actually expect the audience to talk to us through the performance. But when we're, because in improv, just so we're all on the same page, it is often when five to six actors get on stage, they ask for a single word, and they use that word to inspire a variety of scenes that have never been done before. Never been written before, and will likely never be done again. So something that that we find is that we have to create all of those scenes live and we can use what the audience is giving us all, whenever they laugh, we can say, okay, that is a, a button that we just pressed. Right. That something was funny there. Let's dig into that.  [00:13:42] Peter: That's really smart because you're, you're listening to the audience and you're, you're, you're letting them give you the cues not even realizing they're doing it.  [00:13:48] Nathan: Exactly. Yeah. It, we're not performing in a vacuum. We're not writing in a vacuum, so it's a nice way to, to have a conversation on that kind of scale. [00:13:57] Peter: It's interesting cause that's what people who understand their neurodiverse brands tend to do is they, they tend to, uh, engineer the conversation in the respect that I can go in and start talking about something with someone knowing full well that I'm leading them, uh, down a path that I want to go to get to somewhere I wanna talk about, but making it seem like it's their idea. [00:14:16] Nathan: Yeah. And, and in improv, you know, we, we all have, I have a ton of ideas when I'm on stage, my scene partner has a ton of ideas and that's where the connection happens. Because in improv we're not doing just what I'm thinking. We're not doing just what they're thinking. The ideas very much meld together, and that's much of the basis of how we use it for connecting and trust building. Because improv is a team sport. It's not like standup where it's just you on stage. You win and lose as a team.  [00:14:53] Peter: Totally. How can people find out more about, about you and about, uh, Green Light Improv?  [00:14:58] Nathan: You can go to https://greenlightimprov.com [00:15:02] Peter: I love it. I love it. Nathan, thank you so much for taking the time today to be on Faster Than Normal. Really appreciate it. Improv, I think, is the subject that we, we should touch on again. Um, I think, I think it, it, it is an underrated tool for those with Neurodiverse brains; so I really appreciate you being here, man. We'll have you back. For sure.  [00:15:17] Nathan: Thank you for having me! [00:15:18] Peter: Guys, as always, we wanna hear what you think! Shoot me an email, peter @shankman.com. Let me know about a guest that you think might be great on the show. Uh, we'd love to know. You could follow us on all the socials and I'm gonna give you all a little, uh, piece of secret news that haven't really announced yet. Children's book .Coming in February. I'll leave it at that. Thanks for listening. We'll see you guys next week here on Faster Than Normal.  Credits: You've been listening to the Faster Than Normal podcast. We're available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google play and of course at www.FasterThanNormal.com I'm your host, Peter Shankman and you can find me at shankman.com and @petershankman on all of the socials. If you like what you've heard, why not head over to your favorite podcast platform of choice and leave us a review, come more people who leave positive reviews, the more the podcast has shown, and the more people we can help understand that ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Opening and closing themes were composed and produced by Steven Byrom who also produces this podcast, and the opening introduction was recorded by Bernie Wagenblast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week! 

Some quick updates:* I have an essay in progress. Will hopefully get it to you in the next couple of weeks* Stand up comedy is coming along. My first “big show” is on Tuesday. If you are in Seattle feel free to stop by at Club Comedy.* If anyone is interested in learning how to edit these podcasts and is willing and able to do fast turn-arounds, just reply to the email and let me know. It's not hard and it's kind of fun with the software I am using, but it is something I am ready to get off my plate.Quick Take aways:* Here is the article we talk about in the podcast (free link): With New EVs Arriving, Brand Loyalty Goes Out the Window* Here is the book Peter mentions: How Brands Grow* Too long/didn't listen: EVs have not changed the rules of loyaltyFull TranscriptEdward: Peter, now that electric vehicles are around brand loyalty doesn't matter anymore. It's all the Wild West. That's what the Wall Street Journal is selling.Peter: Oh man, I've heard this song before . It's the same old tuned men whether it was gonna be the internet, oh, that's gonna change everything. Or social media or covid. It's gonna totally upset the rules of loyalty. Yeah, those rules are pretty locked in and I'm willing to say same story here.Edward: So what are those rules of loyalty? What are the rules that the Wall Street Journals claiming are garbage now? Or are they just missing the entire.Peter: It all depends on how we define the rules. Where I'm coming from it coming forward it is from the top down. If we just look at actual behavior and just look at the choices that people make over time and how often they switch around and what they switch around from in two, there's some very regular patterns to that.And we could talk about it, but all if you go a level deeper and say, what are they thinking? How are they making these decisions? Sure. Maybe the psychology's a little bit different, but from a business standpoint, that's all cheap talk. All we really care about is what are people doing?And in that regard it's no different than people rolling a dye to say, which, which of these different items am we gonna buy?Edward: What they're, so let me quote from the actual article. It says that basically in the past, whenever someone bought a Ford vehicle, 58% of the time it was a Ford vehicle. Now, when they're buying the Ford Electric vehicle, 66% of the time, it's not a Ford vehicle. So there's significantly more people switching to Ford to buy the electric vehicle than we're switching to Ford to buy the non Ford vehicle.Peter: Yeah. First of all, we don't even know if it's significant or not, but second of all, it's cuz the set itself is changing. The number of electric vehicles out there is really different. It, no that's just nonsense. It's cherry picked, rubbish.Yeah. The way it's interesting that we talk about cars cuz the people who first set out these rules that I'm referring to and I know you know it well. There was a guy in London called Andrew Berg and his heir Byron Sharp at the University of South Australia.They basically say that it's you have your die. I have my die. And what drives our choices is, It's just as if random, and it's remarkable how well that story works. The do sleigh model as we call it. And there's no reason to believe it'll be any different here. Do you think So?Edward: You say it's random, but that's not entirely true. It's weighted random, right? Because if I have, if I bought, if my last car was like a Subaru Forester I think when I go buy to buy my next car, I'm more likely to buy a Subaru Forester than amped. Whatever the average of all the other market shares are. I assumePeter: you are so right about that.It's, yeah. It's not that we're all rolling a six-sided equally way to die. In fact, it's not like we're all rolling the same dye that, that there's gonna be this distribution of dice and even that is gonna be well described by again, a. Jewish lay distribution. Look that word up. And yeah, you, but you have your die.And the important point is that your die doesn't change very much over time. So whether it is covid or internet or EVs, you're rolling pretty much the same die. And there's just so much randomness around the choices that you make that it appears that there are some patterns, but there's really.Much to it. The only thing that could be going on here is that we might sometimes. what these like guys like to call a structured submarket. So it could be that though that that just as gasoline split off into leaded and unleaded, then people would move into one corner of it. Maybe we'll see something like that.But it's not some kind of fundamental change in the way that people make decisions.Edward: So again, I go back to. We're talking about, there's no, like the brand loyalty is not a thing, but brand loyalty in that example is right. There's something to, even if it's not oh, I love my Subaru Forester.It's the fact that. That I had a Subaru Forester before, I'm more comfortable. I'm the type of person who would buy a Subaru Forester the first time, which means I'm probably still the type of person who's gonna buy it a second time. Plus the fact that now that I'm used to using it, right? So I'm the, and I know it works and I know it.Presumably it operated the way I wanted it to operate. And so when I go to buy my next car, my default choice is the same car I had before. Now it could change, but the default choice is there, and that's a form of brand loyalty.Peter: But, so there, there's two pieces to brand loyalty and you described them really well.One is just that you just have this natural propensity for whatever reason, to buy some things more than others. That part Absolutely. Positively. And that's why your die might be, a little bit weighted more towards the Subaru Forester. And mine might be weighed a little bit more towards, I don't know, a Tesla or something.Edward: And is that the selection effect? The fact that I bought a Subaru Forester means that, I'm probably the type of person who buys Subaru forests.Peter: Exactly. Yeah. Cuz then the second piece to it, which is the part I take issue with is this idea of lock in this idea that my propensities get shaped by my behavior over time.There's not much evidence to that. Again, if you're a supervisor person Yeah. Then you're gonna lean towards it more than most people would. But your propensity to do it isn't gonna get higher over time. It's pretty. Maybe, but it's gonna pretty much stay at that same level no matter how many times you, you roll that die or buy a car, that's the big piece of it.We don't see that kind of lock in. We don't see that kind of learning. We don't see all of that romantic stuff that we like to talk about where the customers learn to love us and we learn to serve them better. There's not much to thatEdward: really. But I feel like. Say I'm doing, let's switch to a new category.Let's say I'm doing laundry. Let's say I moved to a new country, so now I have no brand loyalty at all. The first time I go in I, I look at the shelf and I pick one effectively at random, and I take that home and it works. I feel like the next time I go to the store to buy laundry, I'm gonna go and buy that same one.Just cause I know No, it works. Rather than trying to gamble on something that I don't know that.Peter: First of all, what you said effectively at random, there's gonna be a lot of influences on it. It could be the brand name. It could be where it's located on the shelf. It could be the colors, it could be stuff that you heard about, but you haven't even thought about, seeing ads for it on the subway or hearing people talk about it.So there's a lot of influences there that. Things look random, but they're not. And those messages, one way or another got through to you. So it might be less about the actual experience you had with the product and more about the, some of that implicit prior exposure you had to it, that's gonna drive those choices that you make.That's, that, that's the real important point.Edward: Sure. And so I, so you say, Hey, the, whatever those influences were the first. They're gonna influence me the second time, but doesn't, the fact that I used it and it worked influenced me like I feel like it does. I feel like. Once I have a chocolate bar that I like, I'm more likely to buy that chocolate bar again.Even if it was, let's say it was gifted to me. Let's say someone gave it to me rather than me choosing it. Once I have something that I know works, it feels like why wouldn't I stick with what worksPeter: well? Because of all, you might, you just might have a propensity to, to stay with that chocolate bar, but there's all kinds of reasons why it might be just variety seeking, that let's just try something different.I like this thing, but, ,Edward: that may, maybe that makes sense for chocolate bars, but I. For cleaning my clothes. You know what, let's just .Peter: But, but it could be a situational thing that, oh, my mother-in-law is staying with us this week. And, and she only likes certain kinds of things.And so there could be things that, that might be perfectly rational. Why you're switching around. But to, to me, as an outside observer, I'm just looking at that sequence of choices. And man, oh man, it looks an awful lot. , rolls of the dice. Now to be fair I mentioned all this work by Aaron Bergen Sharp, and they basically said, you have your dye, and it never changes.Now, I myself have written a bunch of papers that show that, that model's a pretty good first pass. But every now and again, people. Do throw the old die away and do start with a new one. So I don't rule out the idea of changes, what we technically call non-stationary. But the times that you do that tend to be relatively infrequent and they tend to be dare I say, random.It's not like necessary because of a pandemic or a or change in the macro economy. It's just, there's just something in your life that. Be related to anything anyone else is doing that just causes you to shift your preferences. And it doesn't happen that often.Edward: What about sampling? So say I'm a I'm a loyal, I don't know, strawberry jam eater, and I'm doing it all the time. Not because I'm loyal, but because I have a propensity to eat Strawberry Jam. And then I go into the grocery store and they give me a sample of, I don't know, grape. , does that have no influence on the chance of me eating crypto jelly?Peter: I did say that in, in fact, I'd say it's stuff like that. It's sampling, it's word of mouth. It's seeing a Super Bowl ad that sometimes we'll have people switch around a bit. It could be just a change in which things are on which shelf in this store. And and that's why to, again, to me as an outside observer, I see some switching around again there.Perfectly good reason. It's cuz someone, forced that grape jelly on me. But it makes it seem like that you are rolling a die. And so yeah, a lot of these influences will will have some impact on it. But to the outside observers, it looks pretty random and it looks relatively steady over time.Edward: But if, again, if I outside observer, if I'm the marketer who's running the sampling program, , I r I go and start sampling a bunch of these jams stuff. Can I expect that my jam sales are gonna increase and that the people who switch over to start buying that grape jelly are more likely to buy grape gel in the future? Like the impact is more than just the next purchase, but it might be like a series of purchases after that.Peter: This starts where it gets really interesting. So again, a lot of this. Great. Work by Aaron Berg and Sharp. And Byron Sharp has this book that I'm sure some of your listeners would know called How Brands Grow. And they talk about a thing called Double Jeopardy, which again, I know you know Ed, which basically says if you can get more people to buy it, if you could increase the penetration, the footprint, just the overall number of people who tried The Thing at least once. That in and of itself is gonna be associated with higher degrees of loyalty. So yeah, your point is pretty good. You get more people to buy it, they're gonna tend to buy it more often. They're gonna appear to be slightly more locked in having a slightly higher propensity to buy it. It's really counterintuitive, this idea of. Double jeopardy. But it's really powerful. It's pretty much universal. And it's something you should expect to see instead of it being the exception.Edward: Yeah. So then looping back to the wall Street Journal Electric car article sounds like they're doing the right thing by introducing the electric cars, they're getting people, so Ford introduces an electric car and it's getting people who didn't buy Ford before to be more likely to buy them now.So it's a customer acquisition play it brings and it brings 'em into the Ford fold. And then once they're in there, Ford's market share increases because they now have more customers they acquired with a electric vehicle. And then once that happens, the double jeopardy kicks in and they should. Those people who have bought those four vehicles the first time, more likely to keep buying them in the future.Peter: So you will see some of that. Absolutely. The big key is how to get that wonderful cycle going. And in other words, how do you do the acquisition? And again, going back to the great work of Aaron Bergen Sharp and others, you can't just lean on one attribute. You can't say, this is the coolest, newest electric vehicle. You gotta. Broadly appealing. You gotta really punch up a number of different attributes that, yeah, it's gonna save the environment. But you know what? It's all, it's also fun to drive and it's very safe and and your friends will like you better. So you don't lean too heavily. Don't nichey yourself.You want to make yourself broadly appealing and that's gonna bring in more people and just, implicitly get them to do to. Or to roll your side of the die a little bit more often. It, it really is amazing how counterintuitive that he did. Double jeopardy is, but you just see it it's funny to see a lot of companies stumbling upon it as if it's something new and unexpected, it's been there all the time.Edward: And what's neat about this is it does hint at that, the next paragraph in the article talks about how these people buying these $70,000 new electric vehicles it what says they're, I dunno if this is actually true, but this is what the journalist is saying. They're as likely to own a $30,000 Subaru Outback as they are to buy, as they are to have previously owned a $100,000 Porsche 9 1 1 sports car. And whether that's true or not, the idea that we should make these vehicles to appeal. Everyone rather than just some sub-segment. Sounds like a step in the right direction for the marketers anyway.Peter: Yeah, it, and it goes against the grain of so much of what we've taught and learned in the marketing 1 0 1 s. We just figure out what your distinctive attribute is and hammer that and find people who care about that instead. We're trying to say, not so much be all things to all people, but a step more in that direction.Edward: Great. Anything else to add, Peter?Peter: We just want people to appreciate that this is the way the world works, whether it's electric vehicles, whether it's soup, whether it's hotels we expect to see these kinds of patterns. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com

Happy new year! Expect fewer posts this year. I will keep going with this podcast, but I am shifting my time commitment to (1) get the book over the line. No more excuses; and (2) Work on developing “business comedy”. I will write more about #2 at some point, but for now enjoy the podcast, and be happy if you weren't flying Southwest the last few weeks!Full TranscriptEdward: Peter, how were the holidays?Peter: Wow. It seems like a million years ago, doesn't it? It's amazing. We had that kind of one day after New Year's adjusting and then boom. But it was great. I went down to Antarctica and it was amazing. Super fun, super interesting. What about yourself?Edward: We tortured ourselves by taking our four little children to Guatemala and Belize.Peter: Wow, that's bold. That's bold.Edward: But I think the nice thing is both of us missed the travel meltdown that happened. I think we both got out before everything started falling apart across America.Peter: It was amazing actually being down in Antarctica. where it's kind of warmer and more pleasant than it was in most parts of the us. What a mess that wasEdward: Go to Antarctica for the heat .Peter: Well, it was summer and, I think unfortunately the repercussions of that are still rippling through and it's gonna be a while before that all settles down.Edward: It's interesting. We were flying on Alaska and there's now a direct flight between Seattle and Belize City. and there were three flights before ours, and they're a limited number of flights now that go back and forth. Like they're only every couple of days. And the three flights before ours were all canceled, so we're on the edge of our seats and whether we were gonna get back on time.Peter: And between all the cancellations that were happening earlier in the summer for different kinds of reasons, staffing, and now all of the kind of Southwest mess, which is more kind of operational issues, we have a very different feeling in the stomach when we pull up to the airport these days.Edward: One of the news this week, southwest Airlines had a big, big mess up where every, all the airlines kind of had trouble, but I think Southwest had the most at one point, I think they'd canceled half their flights. It was like a huge, huge, huge.Peter: Yeah. And I guess, if you read, some of the, articles and blogs about it, it seems like it was, it was inevitable, right? That they've been on a bit of a downward spiral in recent years and letting go of some of the operational aspects that would've never happened back in the old days. But, it's a shame it had to hit. Abruptly, and it's such an inconvenient time.Edward: Well, that's what's gonna happen, right? When you run really lean, if everything's going well, it's not a problem. It's when things start to go wrong, all of a sudden they can go really, really wrong because that's when things break.Peter: Exactly. And of course, the lessons to be learned are, How not to let them break, but also how to, how to recover from it. And I still think there's a lot of lingering questions about that.Edward: I think the Wall Street Journal was just publishing earlier this week about how Southwest is now saying, sorry. They're admitting their failures. They're offering, they said 25,000 frequent flyer points so that passengers hit by the travel meltdown. What do you think of that? Like, what is the value. The passengers who are getting that treatment to get them to come back? Or is it the signaling to non passengers that, Hey, we really.Peter: It's very interesting. My, initial reactions be really, really fun to, to talk through, was not a positive one. About that move. Couple of reasons. Number one, devalues the point. It's like, we're just gonna throw some stuff at you. You spent all this time trying to get people to value points and earn and get status and all the great things you can do. But just to use it as a way just throwing stuff at you, it kind of makes you wonder about the value of that currency and what it really means to Southwest. So there's one reaction. What, do you think about that?Edward: I think they claimed in that same article they said, those 25,000 points is worth $300, which would, which you put each point at worth more than a penny, maybe it's $300 if you do it absolutely perfectly in how you use it. But I think most people value these points at less than a penny. But you're saying that the fact they're giving points at all rather than giving people the $300, in either future travel or $300 in cash, the fact they're doing it in points, what degrades the value of the point .Peter: I think it does, maybe less from a fungibility standpoint, but from a psychological one, we try to associate these points with good things and aspirations and bonuses and like, wow, look at all things we can do with it. But here we're framing it or they're framing it as, this is a way that we're covering our ass and, and making up for a problem. And, I think it taints the idea of, of what these points are all about.Edward: I'm just thinking, when I was traveling, I stayed at,, back before Marriott bought them. I was staying at Starwood Hotels and they offered points for all sorts of things, but that was their go-to for both good things for, Hey, do these things we want you to do and we'll give you bonus points., get our credit card, we'll give you bonus points, stay in our hotels, get more points. But they would also use them for when things went wrong. And I remember times where like, Hey, they messed up my hotel room. Or there was really loud noise at night. Or they had, the pool wasn't working. And in those cases when you said, Hey, you guys made a mistake, their go-to thing was, well, here's some points. And I don't think I felt bad about that. I felt, I think I felt good about that.Peter: = I think it's different. I think it's a very different situation because, I've of course been in many of those situations myself, but, when it happens on an ad hoc basis like that, it's like, look at me, you know, I was a good negotiator. Look at what I got out of them. So at that point, it seems like a bonus. , I got something that other people might not have gotten. Whereas in this case it's a blanket offer, so it's not so no one's gonna feel like that they got something that they earned it, they're being treated all the same, and it's just sort of being thrown at them. It's not the outcome of some kind of, negotiation or something like that. So I think it's the points are framed very differently.Edward: Should they have done it below the line? . So instead of announcing that the Wall Street Journal they were doing it, should they have just approached each individual independently and said, Hey, we felt really bad. What happened to you specifically? Here's 25,000 points to make up for.Peter: And maybe vary the amount of points based on what people paid for the ticket or just how much inconvenience they were. Something like that. I think if they tried to make it a little bit more personal instead of just, again, sweeping it under the rug. Here you go, people, here's your points. Now shut up and let's keep going. I think that it might have just felt a little different.Edward: Who's to say they're not doing that? Maybe, they led out with the top line saying, Hey, it's 25,000 points to everybody. Here's the Wall Street Journal article. But maybe below the line they're saying, Hey, we're giving 25,000 points to everybody. But for you, We're gonna give you 30 or we're gonna give you 40 because of what happened to you and we wanna make so special.Peter: Or maybe it opens up that negotiation where people will go back to 'em and say, 25 isn't enough. I deserve more. In which case they would feel a little better about those incremental points that they were able to negotiate for. One of the other things that I find interesting about it, and this just kinda shows our age over here a little bit, is that Southwest, unlike the other airlines, hasn't been as, Has dependent on the loyalty program. They haven't called attention to it quite as much, and for years and years and years, they actively resisted having one. They always said that, look, we're just giving you a good deal. We're gonna treat you really well. We don't need to sweeten it in the way that some of these other big evil and personal airlines do. I kind of admired that about them, but then eventually they caved in. Everyone has to have it, butEdward: now they're so much money and a credit card.Peter: They have to do it, and that's fine. It's inevitable they would, but now they're calling even more attention to the program. And again, they're doing it in a way that has nothing to do with loyalty, that has nothing to do with that good feeling. It's just another currency. And it, takes, something special out of it and makes you start thinking about Southwest in a slightly more, I don't know, commoditized way .Edward: Have you looked at cohorts like this? So, like either an airline or something similar where something really bad happens. The people who experience that really bad thing, do you see what happens to their lifetime value? Does it drop significantly?Peter: I love that. I I love that. I can't believe that you raised that before I did. We do that all the time. In fact, the most obvious example being covid. But plenty of others, you know, we'll, we'll find cases where there's some kind of either competitive entry or the company engaging in some kind of other big strategic change. Not so much the first thing to do, but maybe the most telling thing to do is to say, , what's the nature of those customers, of the customers acquired during that time and how do they compare, you know, better or worse to, to others? I think that's a really great analysis to do and ends up being, I think, much more telling about the impact of that intervention than just a lot of the kind of day-to-day moment to moment. Nonsense on social media. So it's a great analysis. Now let's press pause on that and pick it up, a year from now and it would be great if Southwest would divulge some of that data.Edward: To me there's, three effects. There's one which is Southwest did this big mess up. It's in the news. How is that gonna affect my future travel with Southwest? Like how many times was I going to travel with Southwest? I wasn't affected by it, but I heard about it. Is that gonna drive down my future likelihood to fly Southwest then? Then number two is the people who were actually affected by it. They were traveling on Southwest, they released somewhat loyal to Southwest and that they bought one ticket. How is that going to affect their future travel with Southwest and is it gonna be more so than how my, I'm affected? You can even break that down even further by. People who, people who that was their first flight with Southwest. That's their only experiences with those Southwest. Versus a frequent traveler. And then number three is what effect did the intervention have? And I think the problem with this is that, Number two and number three, we can't separate because they're giving it to everybody. Now, if they've done it below the line, they could have just given it to like 90% of the people and 10%, 10% get nothing. You're screwed, buddy. Just so they can measure the effect of whether their intervention paid out.Peter: I love that. I love that. Or at least to communicate it differently to different people. Some people it could be a more positive message like, Hey, you get a free vacation on us. Or with other people it might be a, oops, we screwed up. You know, we feel bad. So that there still could be ways that they could try to get some insight from it. I suspect they're not, I suspect they're gonna try to make it as blanket and generic and, just get it out there and forget about this thing, which of course raises another problem which is they, giving points away isn't addressing the problem. all the operational issues that have been creeping up on them. The last thing they want is to throw a bunch of points at people and to see issues like this keep recurring, even if it's not quite as severe and public as what happened a couple of weeks ago. They're gonna still have operational concerns. And this whole points thing, the fact that weren't even talking about it, might call even more attention to future problems they have.Edward: Have you seen any examples like that? Like what should Southwest expect? What should it do to propensity to fly for people like me that weren't, didn't experience it? What should it do to the propensity to fly to the, for the people who got hit?Peter: Maybe The Thing to do, you gotta give some points or money or do something. But maybe it should be more communications around here's what we're doing to fix the problems. You know, here are the new people we're gonna hire and the new systems we're gonna integrate, and the new processes that we're gonna have to try to keep people alert. Again, I haven't stayed that close attention to this, but, I'd rather hear about the issues and how they're addressing them, rather than trying to just, throw points at people and pretend it's all better.Edward: I imagine this what the investors would care about more than anything else.Peter: Sure. And ultimately that might be what matters most, cuz there's no doubt they took a big hit here and I think people are gonna be looking at 'em skeptically for a while now. They need to earn people's trust back and again, it's not clear that 25 k points, closes the chapter here.Edward: They need a new, what's their tagline? Like, flying the Friendly Skies. Is that Southwest?Peter: No, that's, United.Edward: Oh my gosh. What's Southwest tagline?Peter: Oh, geez. , we should know our airlines better here. You're look, looking it up.Edward: Lofas. Nothing to hides. That's transparency. That's their, oh my gosh. That's terrible. .Peter: Yes, exactly. And, and here they're, they're trying to hide a lot, . And again, it's not very evil. It's not a conspiracy, but they're not being transparent. They're not addressing the issues. At least through this one tactic,Edward: they can do the new tagline. We will try harder. We'll do better.Peter: and we'll throw some points at you if it doesn't work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com

Essay and Briefing production has been low the last few weeks as I have been spending more time on building a GPT-3 powered comedy writing tool (and writing “business comedy” with the tool). If you have not checked out ChatGPT in the last two weeks, you should really do so. It is much slower now than when it launched, but still mind blowing. If it is too slow you can just use the GPT Playground, which is powered by the same back-end. GPT itself moved from 3.0 to 3.5 right around when chat launched. 3.5 is very impressive (it can rhyme now!). Spend some time playing around! It's not often that the most interesting, most advanced cutting edge technology can be in your hands this early (and practically free).Marketing BS is on vacation the next two weeks. In early January I will be back with another podcast episode (moving to Fridays), and hopefully some more text. Have a great holiday!Full TranscriptEdward: Were you a Westworld fan, Pete?Peter: That first episode in the first season was one of the most awesome pieces of television I ever saw. I was hooked with the first season and maybe watched one or two more episodes. That was it. How about you?Edward: One or two of the first season, or finished the first season and then one or two of the season?Peter: Finished the first season, that was, must watch tv. And then in my view, it jumped the shark very quickly after that. In fact, when I saw that news that H B O is gonna give up on it I thought they were just killing the program, but I didn't realize they were actually killing the, getting rid of the catalog too. That, that's crazy.Edward: Is this the first example of hbo? So HBO has pulled stuff from their catalog before, like they, they pulled some Sesame Street episodes people were upset with, but is this the first time they're pulling their own content from...Peter: It's the first I know of and indeed, the Sesame Street thing is different because that's not their content, but for them to have stuff that, that should be uniquely associated with them and still does, and on catalog basis, we'll have some value for them to say, nah, we don't need this anymore. It does have me scratch in my head.Edward: So there's no actual cost for them, whether they put it on the platform or not. There's no cost. But what there is an opportunity cost, and I think that opportunity cost has really been ignored in the past. And now they're saying, Hey, we can take this product that we have and instead of using it on our own platform, we can turn around and sell to some, sell to Netflix, sell to Amazon, have someone else owed it exclusively instead of...Peter: But it does make you wonder, like sometimes you'll sell content outright and say, here, it's yours now. Or sometimes you'll just license content. Or access. You think about lots of examples where, I don't know where Verizon will let Comcast use Verizon's phone services as a private label kind of play. So they're not giving up on it, but they're saying, Hey, we can have other access points to it as well. I just wonder if, maybe providing broader access rather than giving up on their own access makes sense.Edward: HBO has done that before, they kept Sopranos on their system, but they offered Sopranos to Amazon as well. So you can go on Amazon Prime and watch Old Seasons of the Sopranos. But what was happening there is it was non-exclusive. It was still available at hbo, but also available at Amazon. I think what's happening here is that there is a higher value in a piece of content that's exclusively available someplace else, and HBO's gonna try to realize that with Westworld.Peter: So you think it's an opportunity play for them that they'll make more money by auctioning it off to the highest bid. you don't think a kind of a cost cutting moveEdward: No, I don't think there's any cost. The cost to have more video on your platform is as close to zero as it comes. The storage cost is you're storing it anyway. And I think this and the streaming cost, if they're not streaming, that they're streaming something else, or they're streaming a competitor and you don't want your customers to do that. That's how you churn your customers. And so there's no actual cost for them to have it on there. There's an opportunity cost where they can go to Amazon Prime and Amazon Prime may pay, I don't know, 10 million to stream Westworld or 30 million if they get the exclusive rights to it.Peter: It's all about exclusivity. But again it's interesting how sometimes, people do put a premium on it and other times they say, nah, come on we don't care what door you come through.Edward: I think what's interesting is that all these streaming services are effectively competing with each other, but they're finding ways that they need to cooperate at the same time. And so you can go on Amazon. Amazon Prime is competing against HBO and Disney Plus and so on, but you can also buy HBO and buy Disney Plus when you're on the Amazon Prime platform. If you go on Hulu that's owned by Disney, you can buy HBO on through Hulu and so they're both, what's that word? Where you're competing and your friends at the same time?Peter: Frenemies.Edward: Frenemies. They're frenemies.Peter: Yeah. And that whole thing about the these kind of affiliate acquisition things that are going on just as you described that the companies getting some kickback from the content providers for selling subscriptions to it, that's something that we as consumers don't really understand a lot of money, a lot. Here it is company like, I dunno, Comcast will pay a bunch of money to get access to the HBO content, so get paid every time they bring subscribers in. It's weird how it goes both ways.Edward: I've tried to dig into that and I don't know what they actually pay. So when you buy HBO through Amazon, you pay your $15 a month, Amazon gets paid for that. I don't know if Amazon's getting a lump sum for getting the new subscriber, or they're getting like $5 a month for one subscriber. As far as I can tell, that data has not been shared publicly anywhere.Peter: The data's not shared. And again, I think very few consumers are aware that these things go on. So when a company starts calling attention to it, like Verizon is now doing, you want, maybe you want to elaborate on that a little.Edward: So Verizon, that is they offered a new deal yesterday. I believe that if you go and use their marketplace, I didn't even know Verizon had a marketplace. Like it never would've occurred to me to go and buy my HBO through Verizon. I have a Verizon phone, but that's not how, if I wanted to buy hbo, I'd probably do it through. Go to hbo.com or maybe I'd pull up my Amazon fire television and buy it. I don't think I'd open my Verizon app on my Verizon phone to go and buy hbo, but that's what they want me to do. And if I go buy HBO through my Verizon app, the. Verizon's gonna give me Netflix for free for a year. So they must be making something from that .Peter: Oh, clearly they are. And you gotta wonder what the play is there that maybe if they can be your gateway to more and more services, then you'll consider adding others and see them as a bonafide, app store in a way, even though we're, blissfully unaware of it. Maybe that's what they're thinking.Edward: I assume that once I subscribe to HBO through the Verizon store, I'm not, I'm still using the HBO app to watch my shows. I'm not going through the Verizon app to get the HBO stuff, which I think is what happens on Hulu. I can buy HBO through Hulu and now all of my HBO stuff is available right inside my Hulu app.Peter: So in a way they're trying to build a walled garden of sorts. But it's not so much financial considerations or even exclusive access, it's just that one, once you're seeing it through gateway, you're just not gonna switch. And then while you are using that gateway, you might access other things through it. Very different than, the traditional approach that apple's taking.Edward: It's customer acquisition, right? So if Verizon can get me to go buy my HBO through the Verizon app, and now all of a sudden I'm getting Netflix through the Verizon app, I've, they've now acquired me as a customer and getting that second, the second or third purchase, when I decided to go buy Paramount, maybe instead of going to paramount.com. My natural inclination, at least my on the margin, I'm more likely to go buy that through the Verizon app now as well.Peter: That's the bet they're placing. It'll be interesting to see if people feel any kind of loyalty to one Gateway or another. And what would drive that? Is it the brand? Is it the the interface that lets you access it? It's funny that we always talk about content being king, but now it's at least the presumption is that being the gateway to content might be the king. Not a lot of evidence for.Edward: It feels like in the real world, we see this all the time, clearly, like I don't buy my tide from Proctor and Gamble. P and g might have a direct to consumer tide business, but it would never occur to me to go to p and g or tide.com to go buy Tide. Instead, I either buy it through Amazon or I. Go to my local grocery store, my local Walmart, and pick up the tide. And it feels like in the digital world, the competition is like a drive away versus in the digital world, competition is a click away and it seems a lot easier switch from one storefront to another.Peter: Exactly. And what's interesting about it I don't know about you, but I have zero loyalty to any of them. I don't look at any of the, these interfaces and say, that's a good one. If anything, especially when you're doing it through the television, you're trying to spell out names of programs by using arrow buttons. Just horrible. So it's I don't think they've done a good job of, the customer experience of being content retailers in that regard.Edward: But I think there's something to be... there is a friction for leaving somewhere. So if you are on your Amazon Prime TV or on your Roku tv and you decide, I wanna watch deadwood on hbo. One way you could do it is go to your phone or your computer, sign up for hbo and then go and link it to your Amazon Fire television. Or the other way is you go on Amazon Fire Television and say, hbo, click here, sign up. I'll bet there's a lot of people who do that ladder rather than the former.Peter: And in the case of Verizon is that a presumption that people would be consuming the content on their mobile device because it's not clear that the Verizon gateway would help you with your home television?Edward: No. I'm a bit of a loss for the Verizon model, although, yeah if the Verizon, if presumably Verizon has, I didn't even know Verizon had a store, but they had a store and you could buy other things through that store. You could imagine a lot of these guys have these discount stores. You can imagine that you go on Verizon and buy your, I dunno, your AirPods through Apple at a $10 discount if you buy it through the Verizon store. And so if you get, if you start getting used to doing that, the reason to go, the reason to buy through the Amazon Fire television is because it's convenient and it's right in front of you and you're already using it. The reason to buy through the Verizon store is there has to be something else. There has to be the convenience is not there, so they better compete on price or something else.Peter: I think it's Apple envy I think that folks just have this feeling if we build it, they will come. That we can build the same kind of walled garden that Apple has. If they could do it, why can't we? And just makes you wonder a, is it is it that easy to do? And b well, you look at what some of the pressures apple's facing, is that even the right way to go? If you can.Edward: That's the other big news we've had this week is that, the EU is now gonna force Apple to have competing app stores. So up until now they've had a monopoly. If you wanna buy something through your phone, you have to buy it through. Apple. Now there's gonna be an, in theory, there can be other stores, but again, we're gonna have that same problem of why would you, as a consumer, why would you go to one of these other stores? Unless they're competing on price or they're not gonna, it's unlikely this other stores gonna have as better a better experience than Apple. So they better just offer things at lower prices.Peter: It's another example where regulators are stepping in trying to do things that, in theory is in the consumer's best interest. But you go back to G D P R, the whole data protection thing. There, it's, great idea in theory, but now every time you're dealing with the European firm, just all the accept this, click on that. It's, it ends up being a worse experience. You know what just take my data, but leave me. And I think it's the same thing here that they'll have a million stores. You won't know which one is which, and in the end, you're just gonna end up just choosing to go to the regular Apple one and, and paying more and getting less. But it's the one you know and you're comfortable with.Edward: The one thing the law is doing so I think that this, again, I'm with you, especially eu, they've made so many poor choices and there's some pretty terrible stuff in this recent law. But one thing that I think it's doing right is it's. Companies to basically circumvent Apple payment rules. So right now, like I can't buy a book through my Kindle app because Apple is gonna require 30% payment from Amazon. Amazon's not making 30% margin when they sell the book. And so the result is it's just lock out completely and I need to go. Into my browser, go into app Amazon, buy the book, and then push it to Kindle. And not only can I not buy through the Kindle app, Amazon can't even tell me in the Kindle app how to buy a book and use this new law is going to fix that. It's going to allow people to go and make in-app pur purchases by clicking off their app. They can tell people that they can go to their website to buy. They, it's still not gonna be a seamless solution, but at least the customer communication's gonna be a lot.Peter: Here's one thing I'm curious to get your take on it. Where I think where the EU stepping in is gonna be a tremendous benefit for consumers, and that's the cables connections to your Apple devices. Pushing people to, u s, BBC or some kind of standard instead of having their own proprietary thing. I don't see any downsides to that. Curious to get your take.Edward: Oh, really? So I think this is a huge mistake. We've come to, we've come to our point of disagreement. So USB cables have improved dramatically over the last 20 years. What EU is going to do is say, Hey, going forward, you have to use this technology this way. They're basically saying that we have now mastered the USB cable and there's no further technological advancements possible until we as bureaucrats decide to change the law.Peter: Oh, I wasn't aware of that. I was just thinking of them telling Apple that they gotta get in line with everyone else, but they're telling everyone, everybody has to get in line.Edward: This is the new, this is the new standard, and the new standard for USB cables is this, and it's not changing.Peter: Oh, ah yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's that's thrown out the baby with the bathwater. That's a shame. . Yeah, because you can imagine if governments had stepped in, just how bad the technology would be today. If technology didn't decide that in a market-based way. Wow. Yeah.Edward: All right. Hey. I think we've been all over the map today. I think just I think to wrap it up, to talk a little bit about traditional retail and how, if not just these, all these streaming stores, but actual physical retailer, they've always been in this place. The stores are selling Tide, whereas, HBO is selling movies. But you also have private label stuff that you're selling on your own. And so you are in constant competition with the person supplying all of your product. 90% of your products are being supplied somewhere and you're competing with all of them while you're selling them at the same time. And I think what we're seeing. The streaming world is as it's getting more developed, it's becoming more and more similar. To what we've seen in retail for the last a hundred years.Peter: And it's great. It's great as long as we can let you know, market forces determine winners and losers. And you we're seeing quite a bit of that happening in the streaming space. It'll look different a year from now, but hopefully better both from a consumer standpoint and from a ability to make money standpoint. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com

Last week I published the first chapter of Peter's new book. This week I interview Peter on the book, who should read it, what the conclusions are, how it is different from his last two books, and why he is like George Lucas.If you are interested in buying the book, you can do that on Amazon, but this week it is 40% off if you buy direct from the University of Pennsylvania press. Use the code “HOLIDAY22-FM”Full transcript below.Main Takeaways:I fed the full transcript into ChatGPT and asked it for the main take-aways from the podcast. I then probed it for more, but it could not come up with anything else. I THINK that it only “heard” the first part of the podcast and ignored the rest. But here is what the AI thinks are the take-aways:Peter's third book, titled "The Customer Base Audit," is a prequel to his other books on customer centricity. The book focuses on providing insights into customer data and is considered a foundational work. Peter believes that if the book were released first, it would not have had the same impact as it does as a prequel to his other books. He believes that starting with the "sexy stuff" and then diving into the details is a better way to grab readers' attention and get them to care about the subject matter.Full Transcript:Edward: All right, Peter. We're back. We're back.Peter: It's always good to talk to you. Ed. What are we gonna talk about this week?Edward: We're gonna talk about your book.Peter: We're talking about my book. Love it.Edward: I know there's a heck of a lot going on in the world, but we're gonna take a break from fraud and we're gonna take a break from Elon Musk. We're gonna take a break from ai. We're gonna talk about your book.Peter: We promise not to mention any of those things.Edward: We told the audience that we're gonna do it. We did an excerpt from your book last week in the newsletter. So if you those listening who have not seen that, you should go back and check that out. And now we're gonna talk to the man himself. It's interesting, Peter, this is your third book, correct? I got the number right?Peter: It's crazy, but true. Yes.Edward: Okay. And so my concern always for like big thinkers when they're writing multiple books, is that the first book. The Thing that they've worked their whole career on. It's like the first Beatles album. They've worked on it for the last 20 years of their lives, and they get it down and now two years later, they have to get another album out and they just, okay, let's see what else we can get out. And the sophomore albums tend to be weaker than the first, I feel like with big thinkers like like Clay and Christensen when he releases innovators Dilemma. Earth Shattering book blows our minds on how to think about strategy. And then he proceeds to release four more books after that, that are frankly derivatives of innovators dilemma. Are you being derivative, Peter? What's going on?Peter: Actually it's a great question. Cuz this book actually comes first, and I mean that literally and figuratively that, if you look at the, of course the book is called the Customer Base Audit, but the subtitle is the first step on the journey to customer centricity. And literally it goes back to a conversation that I had with one of my co-authors, Bruce Hardy, back in 2004 long before I had any inkling of the other work that I would then write on customer centricity. So this stuff is actually much closer to the work that I really do for a living day to day with customer data and so on. Those other books are more of the the so what, like what do we do with the these insights. But this is the book that gives the insights. This is the book that if you were to read the first two and say, wait a minute, how would I know that this stuff is true? Prove it to me. This book does that.Edward: So is This is like George Lucas making Star Wars. So after he is made that then he can go back and make the movie he really cares about,Peter: It is the prequel to the other stuff. And again, in some ways it is foundational. In some ways it's really quite different. But I don't think anybody, I'm not saying everyone will like the book, but no one's gonna read it and say it's.Edward: Okay. And so which I guess if someone's coming to you for the first time, then do they read this book first as a prequel? Do they jump to the prequel? Or is it like, Hey, watch Star Wars first, enjoy that, and then read the next book to understand where that, where that song came from?Peter: Know, That's beautiful metaphor. And I actually agree with that. See, here's The Thing. I've been doing this kind of work forever. Even since, you were an MBA student 20 years ago and, 20 years before that. And for the most part, with some exceptions, like you people would ignore me saying it's all just quanti and who cares? So what, so I wrote the other books to basically say, pay attention. This stuff matters. You should care your business depends on it. And that's a great way to grab people's attention and get them to lean in and say, oh whoa, how do we do this stuff? This is the book that begins that, how do we do this stuff if we release this one first? People would've read it and said I guess that's nice, but so what? So it's nice to lead with the so what to lead with the sexy stuff and then have people roll up their sleeves and want to dive into the details.Edward: Got it. So the first book is customer centricity.Peter: Focus on the right customers for strategic advantage.Edward: And that, so that book is the why, right? This is how. Not. Not the how, but the why to do it. Why customer centric? So both the what and the how. Which is what and the why.Peter: Yeah, exactly. What are we talking about and why do we care?Edward: Cause people, I think back then, I remember talking to you and a lot of people think things like, oh, customer-centricity just means doing whatever all your customers want. Which is, that book says, no, that's not what it is. Let's redefine what customer centricity.Peter: That's right. And again, it's gotten a lot of people to pay attention and say, wait a minute, we should be doing that. Or, wait a minute, we've been thinking along those lines, but we thought we were alone. So let's start at the C level to get people to really care and to, care about, everything from incentives and organizational structure and corporate culture and stuff that I know nothing about. And then it's gonna charge the the. Quine nerdy people to to do their thing at the service of customer centricity.Edward: Got it. So number one is, Hey, yeah, buy in. We know what customer centricity is now and we think we want to do it.Peter: Yep.Edward: The second book is the Customer Centricity Playbook. Is that like the project plan to actually implement customer centricity?Peter: Exactly. It's the how do we do it. Yep.Edward: Got it. And so now we've gone full circle. Now we're back to the prequel, which is the customer based audit, which is the new book. And so that's about. I guess not. I was gonna say how, but it is it howPeter: it's first steps? It's step one of the how, which is get your data in order. Okay. Don't take our word for it. Look at your data. Let's not even run any models or forecast or lifetime value or any of that stuff, just given the data that you. Look at it the right way. And you'll notice that not all customers are created equal. And you'll get all kinds of insights about how customers change over time. Stuff that you know, I, and you to a large extent take for granted. But for most companies it's sometimes news they don't know about and sometimes it's the polar opposite of what they think they'll see when they look at their customers.Edward: Who should read which book first?Peter: See, it depends who you are. That's right. So if, so again if you're c level, as much as I'd like them to dive right into the audit I recognize its place, it would be start with books one and two again, just to be motivated to wanna lean in further. If you are someone who plays around with data, you're a data scientist or maybe you're someone in the CFO's office where you're comfortable with numbers you're, you're interested in accountability and rigor marketing often lacks. Then maybe you start with the audit and maybe after you see the patterns, then you start to say, what does this mean? What do we do about it? And that leads to books one and two. So it really does vary about, who you are and where you are in the org chart.Edward: Got it. So it, it feels like if you're the CMO and you have the authority to like make this happen, you should probably read the other two books. Probably read the first book. Read customer centricity. If you haven't been bought in on the whole thing, that's gonna get you bought, that's gonna get you bought in or you're gonna reject it, but at least you'll know what you're rejecting and so on. If you're not in the marketing department, so if you're not in the marketing department at all, if you're in the finance department, you could be as bought in as you are on customer centricity, but you're not gonna be. The marketing department to do what you want it to do instead, read the customer based audit. Now you can go and , it's right in the title. You can go and audit the marketing organization to to see what's going on with your customers. And you can provide that information just generally to the organization. And hopefully that causes things to move.Peter: That is exactly right. And really. That's a really big part of our motivation for doing this. A lot of the work that I've been doing recently, as has been this idea of customer based corporate valuation. Let's basically show the finance people that we can be their friend. We can be their partner by basically projecting revenue and free cash flow accurately and diagnostically. And again, this would be the first. Towards that. Cuz doing that requires models, projections, forecasts and sometimes people will be skeptical about that. How do we know you can forecast it? If we can look at the raw data, simple, just simple data summaries as we say in the book, unashamedly descriptive and see some of these patterns. Daring us in the face about the differences across customers and all that then it just makes you more curious, more willing to start taking that next step and forecasting things out. So this is the starting point for all that.Edward: It's more than just the numbers though. It's also how you interpret those numbers. Cause I feel like if you just come up like a chart and these are the numbers, that's one thing. But if you pull up the chart in the numbers and they look in a certain way, and you could, and you know what that means when they look that way? Then that's a lot more powerful than just having the chartered numbers.Peter: So let's talk about that. It's a really great point because yeah, just charts and numbers, eh but on the other hand, if we over interpret, if we start, getting too colorful with the interpretations and start bringing in things like you, Demographics and personality, character no. For us that next level down would be instead of just looking at overall sales, let's break it down into, were you active or not? How often do you buy, how much did you spend when you did? So let's come up with a, simple but powerful decomposition of sales and start looking at those separate drivers.And here we are, it's holiday season and every company is out there acquiring a bunch of really bad customers. Why are they bad? Is it cuz they're not gonna stick around or they're not gonna buy often or they're only gonna buy when things are on sale? It's really good to know that stuff. And then you could bring in the marketing messaging and all the targeting and all that stuff to basically, Either take advantage of or combat some of those next level patterns.Edward: So I remember even back when I was a student of yours, we talked about, you talked about how you use this the, when you go and do these analyses, these datas you see the same patterns everywhere, whether it's a long before eCommerce came around and then eCommerce companies, church attendance going to on cruise ships. It just didn't seem to matter what you were doing. You kept seeing the same patterns. I assume that's still the case.Peter: That's it and that's why doing it in this audit manner, that sounds so formal. And that's exactly the point that instead of just making it up as we go along, which is all too often what happens on marketing because we expect certain patterns to be relatively persistent, that we should be doing basically the same kinds of analyses on a persistent basis every quarter, every year, whether there's a crisis or not, whether there's a new product being launched or whatever. Let's look at things the same way, anticipating that those basically same patterns are gonna be there. And if there are differences, that's when it gets interesting. And that's when we get,Edward: So let's talk about that. So if the patterns are gonna be the same all the time, you do the audit and you almost know what your answer's gonna be before you start, because hey, this is just, it's almost like a. Let's go and measure. I remember we do these science experiments when I was a physics major in undergrad, and you do the science experiments and at the end of the day, you knew what the answer was going to be before you started because physics is what it is. And if it was wrong, you were more likely that you did the experiment wrong. Then gravity is different than it was last week. And if that's the case here where it's, hey, these are almost laws of nature, that you're gonna see these same patterns over and over again. But what are the differences in the audit? What's the gravity's not changing? What are the variables that change from one audit to the next?Peter: I love it. So we can take the, the two most obvious metaphors. One would be a financial audit. Again, you do your required financial audit from one quarter, one year to the next. And 99% of things haven't changed. But it's, the little bit of stuff that has changed is what makes the audit interesting and valuable. It's those discrepancies. Those variances, and then, Understand what happened and what we need to do about it. Same thing here. The basic patterns are gonna be the same but the, there's gonna be some nuanced differences for from one period to another. So just like we look for those variances in the financial order. The other great example would be your. Your annual medical checkup. just an audit of a sort and you want nothing to change. , you want it to be exactly the same from one year to the next. That's good. But there's always gonna be some kind of variance. And once again, we're gonna wanna understand what that means. I think it's a absolutely perfect analogy for why we do this and what we expect to see from it.Edward: And so can we get specific, are there examples that you can be like, okay, here's an audit. Or even a specific company, whether it's disguised example or not, of we did this audit, here's. The second audit, here's the third audit, here's what changed, or here's what we saw. Here's what surprised us to the, even the first audit. Let's start there. You do a company, you do a first audit. What are the surprises that you saw in a specific example?Peter: Yeah. One of them, as I alluded to before, and again, you and I have talked about endless times, is the holiday season is those customers who we acquire in q4. And again, I've gone on and on about this for years, about how those customers be acquired during that season aren't so good. And sure. Boom, we do this, you using real data set from a real company. And not only is it plain as day when you see it, but it's nice to then be able to go that next level down and say, again, as it purchased, frequency or spend or whatever. So we'll just see differences across, say, Cohorts of customers might be due to holidays, might be due to new product launch competition. Who knows what. You'll very often you will see those kinds of cross. They're slight, but they're persistent and they're important cuz it might be the case that you've overfished your waters. There are no new customers left to acquire. You're only getting crappy ones. So if you start seeing. These cohort level changes, it might tell you that your company is, your customer base is going over Cliff. So it's it's really good in that way. And the other part would be to tie it back to action, to tie it back to products. So let's, instead of just looking at which products we sell the most, let's look at our products through the lens of what's the quality of customers who buy. And to give us real guidance about what kinds of products we should be producing, developing, promoting and it's just, it's a whole different way of looking at product development, but through the appropriate lens.Edward: Got it. So the customers that bought Product A tend to churn out fast product customers that with their first purchase of Product B tend to last a long time. Therefore, we can afford to lose money when we sell Product B, but we can't lose money when we sell product a.Peter: Exactly. And I've been saying stuff like that and, General hand wavy terms for years. But it's really great to actually not only demonstrate that it's true, but to be a little bit more specific, a little bit more guided about it. Say, here's how you look at the data to see those differences and again, what they mean. And then of course, the back end is. Audit to action, what do we do about it? And that's where our third coauthor, Michael Ross comes in. Cause I'm like Hardy and me, he's a real world guy and he's been basically doing this kind of thing, again, not a formal audit like we're proposing but informal bits and pieces of it. And then talking about the, so what he's been doing that for years. And all we're trying to do is to make it a little bit more formal, make it a little bit more standardized. And I think the subsequent actions will be easierEdward: great. Excellent. So that's the first audit. So now you've done that and you've found all those low hanging fruit and you've made the changes but now you recommend what an audit every year, every quarter. How often?Peter: Yeah. It depends on the cadence of the company. For a lot of, I don't know, say a packaged goods company or a restaurant chain. Yeah. Quarterly would probably make sense. If you're selling mattresses, then probably yearly is more than enough. Really. It's not much different than how often you should be doing a financial audit. It just depends how how turbulent the company or the the ecosystem is. Could be a lot of different factors. You know what, I love that question cuz it implies we are gonna do it regularly. , you know how often I like that as opposed to should we do it at all?Edward: That is my next question, which is, okay, so going to the specific examples, we've done the audit once we've cleared up all the low hanging fruit. Now is there an example of a company who's done that and then when they do their second or third audit, they find something new and different because of some sort of.Peter: Oh yeah. Inevitably that's gonna happen. Again, it might be small. You of hope it's small, you kinda hope there's nothing. But the, but unlike physics, the world is constantly changing. There's all these forces on us, and in many cases we don't recognize the nature of the impact of that change until it's like too late and it's really showing up on the bottom line. The audit's kind of a, an early warning system about that. So again, it's fine if nothing's going on, that's good status quo, stay right on course. But when you see those little changes, then you're gonna wanna pursue them because those little things can become big.Edward: You talked about this kind of like being at the same cadence as financial statements is there any company that's sharing, is any publicly traded company that's sharing these as a financial statements or even, I guess a private company that's sharing it in board meetings privately that are doing these on a regular basis and sharing them public?Peter: We are starting to see it. And through my company, theta, there's been a couple of companies publicly traded, big, dry and publicly traded companies who have said that we want to start disclosing some of these metrics. We wanna know which ones we should disclose. We want to know what, caveats and guidance we can offer as a result of it. And then basically educate our investors and analysts to understand what that metric means and how it, it shines. A better light on just how healthy our company is. There, there's one that's about to start doing it I think in their next quarterly filings in in probably in February. And it's been really gratifying to see that again, though, I gotta admit, those companies are still exceptions and we want it to be more rural, that more companies will be doing this thing just on their own without needing us read the book and. Do it and that companies are doing it voluntarily just for, the right reasons instead of doing it because they're in trouble or they're defending against something.Edward: It almost feels more and more like this book should be targeted at finance rather than marketing. I, what I was writing my figuring out who my target audience was for, even for the newsletter, for marketing bs. And I often thought, you know what? I'm saying marketers are doing stuff wrong and people don't like to be told they're doing it wrong. When I get brought in to help out companies, it's almost always the CEO who's bringing me in or the investor bringing me in, not the cmo. If the CMO either is you know what? I'm comfortable with what Ed's doing, I don't need his help, or he's, they're like, you know what? I don't like what he's doing. Please don't help me. And so it's usually the CEO or the CFO that's bringing me in. And so I almost thought about, hey, marketing BS and having a tagline of marketing for finance people. I don't quite go that far, but this almost feels like it's that far. It almost feels like you should be going on finance podcasts and telling them all, start doing this audit, your freaking marketing team.Peter: Yeah, it's no doubt, and of course we're not doing out there to trash CMOs but you do have to acknowledge that the CEOs and CFOs do have more power and. In many cases are skeptical about, all what those customer experience campaigns or The Thing or the or, a lot of the other customer experience campaigns. What all that is buying them. This is a way to hold marketing accountable to basically say let's see, in the audit, can we see that we're getting a different mix of customers, that they're doing more stuff with us. So again, it's a very regular, accountable, rigorous way to demonstrate the impact of those marketing actions. We hope that the C'S will embrace it as well because they really are moving the needle. This would be the best way to demonstrate it, as opposed to, brand favorability, indices or customer satisfaction. Not that there's anything wrong with that stuff but the audit on these more financial metrics are kind of closer to the bottom line and therefore closer to the hearts and minds of the people who matter most.Edward: You know what I think this would be great for is a new cmo. If I'm going into a new business one of my philosophies when I started a new company is the first most important thing is getting all your metrics in order and get all your reporting done and getting that all set up. And then, and only then do you create five or six initiatives that we go after this stuff for. And then figure out if you have the team to do it, and then go and figure out your team. But this feels it's like a standardized way to go in and be like, no matter what your company is, use this format to go and get all your metrics set up. Cuz chances are when you come in, they aren't gonna be set up this way. And you need the, if you get them set up this way, you'll understand the business a lot more and you'll be able to track whether your initiatives and your team are gonna be. Moving things in the right direction.Peter: Amen. I like to give you a specific example of that. I know you like specifics. One of my favorite people who's been doing this, even if you haven't called it an audit for quite some time, is Zachary Anderson who runs all data analytics for NatWest Bank over in the uk, but in his previous gig in the same role at Electronic Arts, the gaming company, that's what he was tasked to do by the ceo, Andrew Wilson said, Zach, I want you to give me the four or five metrics that I should care. And I'm going to tie my compensation like for the next year or two to those metrics. And it was wonderful to see, first of all a CEO kind of going out on a loom like that and trusting marketing type metrics. Giving this kind of marching orders to not just one person but the entire organization and then saying some wonderful results emerge from it. So we wanna see that kind of thing happen. And once again, The metrics shouldn't be cherry picked by the CEO or any one person in the company. We should agree in advance should be a standard set of metrics, standard set of analyses that would apply to pretty much any company. And again, that's what the audit's all about.Edward: That's great. And so I think what we should do is in February when this company you think is gonna release their financial statements with this format, we should definitely dedicate an episode just to walking through those statements.Peter: I would love to do that. And of course, this is the kind of thing we're doing informally all the time. Big shout out to my former PhD student and co-founder, Dan McCarthy who really we talk about customer race, corporate evaluation. He's the man he invented as part of his dissertation and every time he sees companies talking about different kinds of customer metrics, like just last week he was talking about clear. Wonderful company and they put out some really interesting metrics and it was just really great to see Dan tear them apart in a positive way to say what it all means and what this, what light this sheds on the company that we wouldn't have known otherwise. And so then there's a lot of examples like that. And again, We just want that to become part of just the, a regular process and not this kind of one off thing that occasionally happens.Edward: That's good. Hey let's start here. So instead of just talking about Elon's latest adventures, let's when companies release earnings that have this information, or Dan releases one of his deep dives, let's make sure we talk about it on here and we can be the the heart bringers of.Peter: This is the right place to talk about Ed. Cuz not only do you appreciate and understand this stuff, but you do a great job of putting it in the right context to know where it all fits in. It's not just metrics for the fun of it. And I think it's important to get that full picture.Edward: That's right. Come here for your marketing news and your Star Wars metaphors. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com

Melissa Finkelstein is a New Jersey- based author, lawyer, and proud mom of three. Melissa has been writing and rhyming since she could form words. After graduating from Fordham Law, she began her career as a litigator in Manhattan. Because rhyming has always been her passion, she created a custom poetry business, Designer Rhymes so she could maintain that creative outlet. Once she had her son (7), and twin daughters (4), each with unique personalities and needs, the stars aligned for Melissa to publish her first children's book. Picky the Panda and the Tickly Tail is the first book in a series of three to come from author Melissa Finkelstein. Picky the Panda is a heartwarming story about a highly sensitive panda, which shares lessons of embracing sensory differences, practicing empathy, and recharging when overwhelmed. Picky the Panda was inspired by Melissa's daughter Skylar who has sensory processing disorder. Picky the Panda is now available on Amazon and in select children's bookstores. Enjoy!  In this episode Peter and Melissa discuss:   01:20 - Thank you so much for listening and for subscribing! 01:39 - Intro and welcome Melissa Finkelstein! 02:48 - So from Law to Children's books; tell us your story! 05:40 - Isn't it amazing what kids teach us. Are you finding that people are familiar with the topics in your book? 06:57 - What led to getting your daughter diagnosed? 09:30 - How old is she now and have all of your children read the book? 10:15 - Do you think that she's beginning to, (or will), benefit some from advances in awareness, research, etc? 11:18 - What's been the reaction and feedback to your book outside of the family? 12:00 - Is the book being used to explain to your daughter's classmates about Sensory Processing Disorder? 13:30 - On possessing supercharged senses 14:25 - How can people find more about you? Web: Everywhere fine books are sold Socials:  @melissafinkelsteinbooks on INSTA 14:45 - Thank you Melissa! 15:02 - Guys, as always thanks so much for subscribing! Faster Than Normal is for YOU! We want to know what you'd like to hear! Do you have a cool friend with a great story? We'd love to learn about, and from them. I'm www.petershankman.com and you can reach out anytime via email at peter@shankman.com or @petershankman on all of the socials. You can also find us at @FasterNormal on all of the socials. It really helps when you drop us a review on iTunes and of course, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already! As you know, the more reviews we get, the more people we can reach. Help us to show the world that ADHD is a gift, not a curse!  15:41 - Faster Than Normal Podcast info & credits. — TRANSCRIPT via Descript and then corrected.. somewhat: [00:00:34] Peter: Hey everyone, how's it going? My name is Peter Shankman and this is Faster Than Normal. I wanted to see if you expected me to say it, try to shake things up a little bit. Okay. It is a Thursday here in a very cold New York City. We have to say a fond farewell to fall, which lasted about. Two and a half days, and we are most certainly into winter. It's about 34 degrees outside right now, sunny, but cold as hell. So I am inside with a sleeping dog and with Melissa Finkelstein. She's actually in New Jersey, but we are talking today because Melissa is a New Jersey based author, lawyer, and proud mom of three. She's been writing and rhyming since she could form words. Her words, not mine. After graduating from Fordham Law, she began her career as a litigator in Manhattan. She created a custom poetry business called Designer Rhymes. So here she is as a litigator. Did you, I, I gotta ask you later, remind me to ask you if you actually rhymed during court cases. Cause that would've been awesome. Mm-hmm. . But why are we talking to her today? We're talking to her. She has a son who's seven and twin daughters who are four. They each have unique personality and needs. That's where she decided to publish her first book called her first Children's book called Picky the Panda and the Tickly Tale. It's a first book in a series of three and Picky The Panda is a heartwarming story about a highly sensitive panda who shares lessons of embracing sensory diff differences, practicing empathy and recharging when overwhelmed, and I think we can all relate to that Picky The Panda- on Amazon and everywhere you get children's books. Welcome Melissa. Good to have you.  [00:02:15] Melissa: Good morning. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for that intro [00:02:18] Peter: And just in case you ever think that nothing good comes out of divorce. Melissa came to me through my ex, let me get this right, my ex sister-in-law.  [00:02:32] Melissa: That's right.  [00:02:33] Peter: My ex-step sister-in-law. Right. [00:02:34] Melissa: I think you're stuck with her. I think she's just your sister-in-law still.  [00:02:37] Peter: Yeah. My sister-in-law, she reached out to me and said, you know, hey, have a guest for you. I'm like, I didn't even know you knew I had a podcast. So good to know . Anyway, it is great to meet you, Melissa. Thank you for taking the time. So from law to children's books, tell us your story!  [00:02:52] Melissa: Sure. So I've always been a writer and a rhymer, um, as I said, and that's really been my passion and that's kinda how I wound up in law. Um, I thought, you know, I'm really good at writing. I'm good at. Reading and problem solving. My skill sets seem to fit. I'm gonna go be a lawyer. It sounds pretty fancy and you know, I can have all this success and, um, I did have some fun and, you know, some fulfillment doing it, but I really missed like the joy and the whimsy of my childhood, to be honest. Um, so I toyed with the idea. Maybe I would be a preschool teacher. I know that couldn't be more opposite from being a litigator in Manhattan, but I really just wanted to use my creativity. My fun, you know, happy go lucky personality and doing like corporate insecurities litigation really didn't bring me that kind of joy. Um, as you might expect. And, you know, my life was all about disputes and I, I'm all about making peace. I'm like, what am I doing? Why am I fighting for a living? So this, this isn't bringing me joy anymore. Um, so all along, as you mentioned, while I was litigating, I had my little side gig, which just really was. You know, a passion project and bringing me happiness and it was creating custom poems for people for, you know, milestone occasions and that kind of thing. And I loved making others happy through my words. And so once I had my kids, I thought, you know, this is perfect. They're all so different. You know, they're, they learned so much from children's books and I think this would be a great outlet for me to use my words and. You know, I, I'm starting a series of three books, each of which are inspired by my three kids. So they're like my little muses at this point. Um, and in doing so, I'm focusing on what, you know, one of their biggest personality, um, pieces or struggles or challenges are to, you know, try to reach children like them. And in doing so, I wrote and published my first book, Picky The Panda and the Tickly Tale as you mentioned. And it is inspired by my little girl, Skyler, who has sensory processing disorder. And I didn't realize that by sharing her story, um, you know, I actually have become kind of a sensory processing disorder advocate and someone who is working. My butt off at this point to bring awareness to this condition and to what children like Skyler and um, like so many of your listeners might be experiencing. And that has been one of the most beautiful things to come from pivoting into my role as a children's book author.  [00:05:22] Peter: It's interesting because, you know, I mean, first of all, I had some nursery school teachers who definitely could have been litigators, but, but that's neither here nor there. Um, , it's interesting, you know, you made that switch. Kids do that. They, they, they have this uncanny ability to take whatever you think is your thing and just completely flip it on its head. Um, the concept of sensory processing disorder much like ADD, a ADHD executive function disorder. Not a lot is known. And so bringing, I, I'm assuming one of the reasons you wrote the book was to bring awareness to sensory process. Absolut, what are you finding, um, when you tell people about it, what percentage would you say understand, oh yeah, of course. I've heard of that. Or, or, you know, is it, I mean, are you, are you, is it a constant battle with the teachers? Is it, how, how, how are you finding that to be? [00:06:14] Melissa: It's becoming a much more wide spread. Um, you know, thing that people are aware of right now, but I think really the book shares this Panda's experience as being a highly sensitive, um, individual and what she goes through. And I think people are really relating to her experience more than they may have known or been aware of a diagnosis or a condition, um, called sensory processing disorder. So that's really been beneficial to me. Um, so yeah, I would say. I, I don't know. It's a smaller percentage than I would like for people to be aware of because it is a very real condition and you know, a very intense experience for those who go through it.  [00:06:57] Peter: How did you discover that your, how did you get your d daughter diagnosed? What was, what was sort of the key takeaways that, that made you say, Hey, we should look into this?  [00:07:06] Melissa: So she was in, so she's a twin. I'll start with that. So, um, I was constantly seeing her right next to her twin sister, and, you know, all kids are different obviously. So she was having a very different experience as a baby, a child than her twin sister was. So I think that helped make it more apparent to me that she was going through something and she was in an obvious discomfort and, um, just kind of unsettled a lot of the time. And, you know, I knew there wasn't anything medical going on with her because she, she was doing okay medically, we were bringing her to the pediatrician. Everything was fine, but I could just tell that she was uncomfortable. And my son at the time was in occupational therapy for a different issue that was going on. Um, and so I brought Skylar when she was one years old to this pediatric occupational therapist. Who I've come to know and trust and had her assessor and right away she said, this is something sensory going on. And to be honest, I was a doubter at first. Um, I didn't really know very much about sensory processing disorder or sensory sensitivity or any of that. And, um, I can tell you later that I've come to realize that I actually have a lot of sensory challenges myself, which I've learned through my daughter. So anyway, this pediatric, uh, occupational therapist evaluated her and right away she knew it was something sensory. Um, I watched the evaluation and I was like, you know, I don't know. I'm not really seeing it because she was, um, exposing to her to certain sensory, tactile, um, you know, things like sand and foam and, you know, different manipulatives that she could touch, and I thought she was fine. I'm like, you know, I see her getting her hands messy. But all along there were these little cues that were going on that she was able to pick up on. So just for one example, she showed me that while Skylar was, you know, digging into these Orbis, which are these like liquidy beads that children can play with, she was actually salivating and had like, Drool coming out of her mouth while she was doing it because her sensory system was just so overloaded, um, that while she was willing to do it, her system actually couldn't handle it. So that's just one example of how, you know, we came to be aware of it and then, you know, all the cues and clues just sort of lined up after that. And occupational therapy has been one of our greatest tools for her so far,  [00:09:22] Peter: I'm sure. How old is she now?  [00:09:24] Melissa: She's almost five. Okay.  [00:09:26] Peter: And has she, has she. Do you read the book to her? [00:09:30] Melissa: Yes. Yes. I, all my children have read the book and they love it. And my other two children wanna know when theirs are coming out and they are in the works. ,  [00:09:39] Peter: One of the things that I've discovered, um, uh, about sort of, ADD & ADHD when you're talking to kids about it, and so I'm assuming the same thing is, is truly is, it's all about how it's framed When I was growing. Um, you know, a ADD didn't exist. What existed was sit down, you disrupt in the class disease. And, and so I, kids our age, um, if they eventually got diagnosed had also had to overcome the stigma of 30, 40 years of being told they're broken. are you seeing with kids your daughter's age because of advances in research? Advances in, uh, awareness? They're not going through the whole concept of you're broken, they're not gonna have to heal from that. They can start looking at what they have as, you know, a difference as opposed to being broken.  [00:10:36] Melissa: Yeah, I really hope that's the case, and I agree with what you said. Um, and one of the purposes of this book is to frame heighten sensitivity or. Sensory challenges as a gift. And I know that that's something that you like to speak about, um, in terms of adhd and I absolutely agree with that. Um, so in terms of heightened sensitivity, you know, yes, it can present struggles and challenges, but it can also be your greatest gift. It can be, you know, the way you use your imagination and can be creative the way you are compassionate and empathetic and can show love. So it can really be a strength. And that's one of the things that I'm hoping to share with children who may feel like Skylar, um, as term in terms of their sensitivity,  [00:11:18] Peter: What's been the reaction or the, what's been the feedback to the book or the reaction to the book, um, outside of your family?  [00:11:25] Melissa: Oh, it's been wonderful. I've been hearing from so many families saying, you know, we have a little picky at home. Um, you know, my daughter like, wants to read it every day. She feels like Pickalina so it, that's been the best part of this. When I set out to become an author, I just wanted to use my words to make children and families happy and, you know, provide them with a good bedtime story. I actually didn't have these higher goals of, you know, bringing such awareness. and acceptance to children with differences, but like that has become the greatest gift. And the thing that I'm most proud of and most excited about in my journey so far. [00:12:01] Peter: Is the book being used, um, as sort of a way to explain to your daughter's, classmates about the different, because I imagine that much like ad although ADHD manifests in different ways, I imagine that sensory processing disorder must manifest itself in some ways that would make the kids go, what the heck's that all about? [00:12:20] Melissa: Absolutely. So there's a page in the book where Picky the Panda um, has become so overwhelmed that she's feeling dysregulated and she's hiding under the table in her classroom, and she is rocking and crying because she is so overwhelmed and her body feels such big feelings. And the students. Who are her animal friends gather around her and they yell Picky. It's ok because you know, they're just trying to be kind and they're like, come outta the table, everything's great. But for her, everything's not great at that moment. So that, you know, that doesn't work for Picky and it takes different strategies to get her to be able to recharge and calm her body down. So I think, you know, empathy and understanding and realizing that we are all different is definitely one of the biggest messages. So, yes, to make children, um, and classmates who encounter kids like Skyler or who have other differences to be accepting and empathetic.  [00:13:12] Peter: I like the concept of supercharged senses in the book because, you know, adhd, I consider it a superpower and I try to frame it as a superpower. So the concept of supercharged senses sort of seems very similar in the respect that you just have to, you know, if, if when I talk about adhd, I talk about the fact that. You know, most people are given Honda Accords for brains and we're given Lamborghini's, and so that's great, but you have to learn how to drive it, or you're gonna crash into a tree. You know, anyone could drive a Honda. You need training to drive a Lamborghini. And so I'm assuming it's the same premise with supercharged senses. I really love that term.  [00:13:46] Melissa: Yeah, thank you. And absolutely, I agree with that. Something we have to learn to adapt to and adjust to. But like I said, it, and like you always say, um, it can really be seen as one of our biggest gifts. Very cool. So my daughter can, she's, you know, the first one to smell something stinky or she can see something a mile away. She can hear that train coming, you know, 10 stops away. So, you know, she really does have supercharged senses, but it also can lead her to feel very overwhelmed and heightened at certain times. [00:14:15] Peter: Very cool. How can, so I'm assuming, yeah, it's available on Amazon, it's available everywhere. Um, how can people connect with you? Are you on Instagram? Are you on Facebook?  [00:14:24] Melissa: Yes. So I am on Instagram at Melissa Finkelstein books. Um, and that is a great place to follow me. I'll have information about Picky the Panda um, sensory processing awareness and about my forthcoming books, um, the next of which will be out in early 2023.  [00:14:42] Peter: Very, very cool. Melissa, thank you so much for taking time to be on Fast Than Normal today. I really, really appreciate it.  [00:14:47] Melissa: Thank you so much. It's been wonderful.  [00:14:49] Peter: Awesome guys. Check out the book. It is a lot of fun. Picky, I love, I love, I love the title Picky, the Panda and the Tickly Tale, talking about sensory processing disorder as supercharged senses. I love it. We back next week with another interview. This is Faster Than Normal. God, talk.. I mean fast- talk about fast, right? The entire year it's, it's almost Thanksgiving here next week in New York, it's gonna be Thanksgiving and I have absolutely no idea how that happened. And it's Christmas and it's New Year's and yeah, it's essentially summer already next year. So I dunno how we got there. But we will see you next week with another interview. Thank you so much for listening. Remember that neurodiversity is a gift, not a curse. And we are all on this train together. Talk to you guys soon. Stay tuned. Credits: You've been listening to the Faster Than Normal podcast. We're available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google play and of course at www.FasterThanNormal.com I'm your host, Peter Shankman and you can find me at shankman.com and @petershankman on all of the socials. If you like what you've heard, why not head over to your favorite podcast platform of choice and leave us a review, come more people who leave positive reviews, the more the podcast has shown, and the more people we can help understand that ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Opening and closing themes were composed and produced by Steven Byrom who also produces this podcast, and the opening introduction was recorded by Bernie Wagenblast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week!

Today's episode further explores topics discussed in this week's essay. In the preamble to that essay I said that there would be no content next week. I am going to reverse that. Next week will be an excerpt from Peter Fader's new book. Stay tuned!Full Transcript:Peter: Ed, I love your piece on strategy versus tactics at Disney, Twitter and Dominion Cards. I love the way that you're weaving together a narrative that's taking three of the super hot, interesting topics and a fourth one that most people don't know about.Edward: It's funny, the whole Dominion Cards thing. I've been, I started playing this card game back in 2011. I went to the national Championships in 2012. And I just really enjoy it. It's like the only game I can think of where you actually need to figure out a strategy at the beginning of every game. I've been sitting on this idea of dominion cards as a way to talk about strategy versus tactics for many, many years now. And I've never felt really found the right kind of hook to put it in. And then when this thing happened at Disney on Sunday, I was like, aha, the hook is here. It's time to pull this out of the filing cabinet.Peter: Love it. Well, as a, reader of the column and as someone who thinks about these issues, there's kind of two natural questions that just has to be asked. I wanna get your take on it. So, first. How do you define or where do you draw the line between strategy and tactics?Edward: I think strategy is figuring out what you should be doing and it's trying to figure out what the end point is of where you're going for, and tactics is all the stuff that gets you there. Strategy can be done a bit in isolation. You can go back into your ivory tower and think about what the dynamics are coming out with your strategy and then tactics are going to be very much based on what's happening on the ground. What's happening at any given moment, how the competition is reacting, how economics is changing what type of people you have on your team and any given moment. Those are all tactical decisions like that a consultant is not going to be able to help you with unless he's actually there on the ground.Peter: So I always have a hard time with it, to be honest. Maybe this is just me being narrow minded or something. It's not just the next move is it the next three or four moves. Be specific about strategy versus tactics in chess, and then let's branch out to these other real world stories.Edward: I'm not an expert in chess. I'm actually teaching my kids how to play now, I'm learning along with them. But I think in chess there is a correct strategy. I think strategy in chess is things like control the center of the board would be a strategy. Be willing to sacrifice your piece in order to gain position in the board, or, move your pieces in such a way that you're able to castle fairly early in the game. Those would all be strategies, things that you're working towards over a longer period of time. Tactics are, given what my opponent has just done, what should I do next? And tactics can, you can look far into the future for tactics. There's nothing that stops you from looking nine moves ahead to the right tactic would be in that particular situation. But I think strategy stays in chess at least. I think strategy stays the same. There are correct strategies into chess and there are incorrect strategies in chess. Whereas tactics are gonna change every given game depending on what your opponent does.Peter: So let's take that, and again, it's still little fuzzy. I mean, you're being more specific, but still, and I'm not gonna press you on exactly where one begins and ends, but Disney. Disney. Disney. Disney. It seems like the narrative as you said is Iger had the strategy. Chapek's job is to come in and execute on it. Few missteps here and there. Expand on that beyond what you've said in the piece about that trade offering strategy and tactics.Edward: I think most people are agreed, even the disgruntled shareholders, is that Iger's strategy was the correct one or is the correct one, which is that the cable bundle is getting hammered and Disney in the past basically had a huge amount of leverage over the cable providers and was able to extract large amounts of money from the cable providers by the fact that they had this differentiated content both the traditional Disney content, but also the sports they had with ESPN. And that was a great place for Disney to be and it still is, frankly, they still extract a huge amount of money from the cable providers, but that is not the future. Clearly we see more and more people, especially young people cutting the cord, not going with cable television and moving into streaming. And it was really a question of when did Disney need to move in that direction and how long could they keep their pound of flesh from the cable companies and hold onto that as long as possible? So the strategy then becomes let's move on. Let's go direct to consumer and scale up our Disney Plus product. There's tactical problems in doing that because, Disney bought Fox, which came with 20th Century Fox, which allowed them to add a whole ton of more content to get like the breadth required to win in a streaming war. They got control over Hulu, but they didn't get full ownership of Hulu. And so Comcast still owns a chunk of Hulu in the US which makes all sorts of challenges for Disney on a tactical level on how to actually get to the place where they wanna be. But I think the strategy is clear. It's we wanna get to the point where we are owning that direct to consumer relationship. We are monetizing through a subscription product. We are monetizing through additional add-ons that people can do on top of that. And we are monetizing through our vast aray of merchandising, theme parks, cruise ships, and everything else to allow people to spend more and more and more with us. That strategy is still where they're going the last two big things Iger did before he left, were launching Disney Plus and buying Fox,Peter: LEt's be clear that Chappek isn't against any of those things. Strategically as you've pointed it out, he's on the same page. It's all just tactics not being quite the same as what Iger might have done or might now do.Edward: And even on tactics, I'm not sure, if you look at the things that have hurt the stock price and where Chap has taken ahead, like first of all, Disney Plus has grown faster than they ever thought they would. He over delivered on that. Whether that was his doing or the, the fact is the metric is much better than anyone expected, but there were mistakes along the way. He has fought. There's been lots of fights with the creative side of the organization. Chapek comes from the theme park side. He came into the CEO role and then immediately Covid hit and the theme parks all went to zero. So he was forced to figure out how to do Disney plus where all their revenues coming from for the foreseeable future. Now things have flipped and the theme parks are just minting money. They're doing really, really, really well. But he's pissed off a lot of people by raising prices dramatically. But again, I'm not sure what Iger would've done differently in that case because the demand for the theme parks has has gone way, way, way up. So in the short term, you can't go and build more theme parks. So supplies is what it is. And so you're left with two choices. Either you are raising prices or you are giving a poor consumer experience, either because the parks are just packed full, and they're just unpleasant, or you're turning away people at the door who have booked a vacation. And so none of those options seem great, and of those options, it feels like raising prices was probably the one that Iger would've done as well.Peter: Exactly. So here's the big question. I agree completely with that. It might be that how things play out now tactically and strategically would be the same regardless of which Bob is at the helm, but just having Iger just seems to have this warm glow that will just make the same tactics, not only more palatable but downright genius because they're coming from Iger instead of Chapek. What do you think?Edward: I think that's absolutely right. They're in such a tough spot right now. There's so much going on and it's super, super, super risky what they're trying to do. I think everyone knows that there's really no choice but to go down this path. But also everyone knows that it's a really hard path to go down. And so not only do you need to have the right strategy, which I think people think that is true. You need to have the right tactics, which frankly I don't think Chapek, if he messed up on tactics, it was on a marginal basis. But where there was a bigger mess up was a bunch of execution of those tactics. And so things like the Black Widow movie early on in the pandemic, they decided to take that out of the theaters and put it onto Disney plus. And I think that was a very rational tactical thing to do given the situation they're in. But in execution, Chapek got into a big fight with Scarlette Johansen, who really came down hard, sued Disney. They hurt their relationship with her. Now. Disney ends up hurting their reputation as a good place to go and work if you're a top tier creative. In the short term, maybe they make a little bit more money on the movie, but in the long run they damage the relationship with the very people that are creating the product that they need to excel with.Peter: Fair point. All right, let's pivot from DS to SBF and FTX. There you say that, or at least you're quoting SBF saying strategy was fine. The tactics were at fault. You don't really mean that, you're just saying that's what he said, but you think otherwise.Edward: I'm no financial expert, but I've been following it as closely as I can and it sure looks to me like there was all sorts of... So Fbf owned two companies. He had ftx, but he also had the trading arm, Alameda Research. And there was money traded back and forth between those two organizations. And what I understand is. So imagine if FTX had, I'm making up a number, 10 million tokens and they're sitting on them and those things are worth whatever someone's willing to pay for them and Alameda comes on and says, Hey, I'll buy one of your tokens for a thousand dollars. So now all of a sudden the stock value of those tokens is a thousand dollars times 10 million, which is a huge amount of money they're sitting on. And then they basically end up using that valuation as collateral to do all sorts of loans and leverage to go and do other things with their money. FTX then takes in a bunch of customer deposits and then loans those customer deposits over to Alameda. Alameda then is then sitting on a bunch of these tokens that they're using as collateral against the borrowing of that real money that people put into ftx. Alameda then loses a bunch of that money and it all comes tumbling down when they realize that their collateral is not worth anything. It's all made up collateral. That's my understanding of what happened. Nothing like that has happened exactly before, but things like that have happened before. It's effectively fraud. It's fraud and theft. SBF, however, went on and interviewed Kelsey Piper over at Vox, and his argument was hey, we were doing was great. We were doing all sorts of awesome things, but our record keeping was terrible. We just made a bunch of like rookie terrible, incompetent mistakes. The new CEO who came in to run the company, Is backing SPF up in that yeah, this whole thing is a mess. That everything here is. What was his quote? I quote, I quoted him on my piece. He said, never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here. And this is from the guy who also oversaw the bankruptcy of Enron.So it was a mess. They clearly, clearly, clearly were tactically incompetent and SBF is claiming that they didn't know they were stealing all these funds. It's entirely possible that he's right because they seemed like they didn't really know anything that was going on. And there was no financial backups and no guardrails for anything. But generally the overall strategy was built on a house of cards to begin with. So whether their tactics were correct or not maybe it wouldn't have collapsed as badly if they had great tactics, but it was gonna collapse one way or other.Peter: In this case, it's not strategy versus tactics, as you say in the title of the piece, it's and. They're doing bad and both, and it's hard to, pin the blame on one type of decision or another.Edward: The hard part of writing this piece was that given the fact that their strategy was so unethical and terrible and their tactics were so incompetent, how did they manage to get as big as they did so that they caused this disaster to happen.Peter: It's crazy. But but then speaking of which, it takes us to our third character of the week, Elon Musk. Now, you and I had a conversation a couple weeks back. We were saying generally positive things about verification, badges and just the possibilities of getting the business model right. And of course it's too early to tell for sure. But, these couple of weeks since that conversation, well, things have gone differently.Edward: Specifically the thing that we talked about, which was the Twitter blue, $8 a month to get certified.Peter: Verified.Edward: Verified. Verified. And what happened was that the verification process was effectively just having a credit card. So it wasn't like they matched. Your name that you put on Twitter with the name on your credit card or check the address, or had you send a a driver's license with the verification, it was a matter of pay the $8 and you can name yourself whatever you want. In terms of. Strategic idea, allowing people to pay $8 to get certified seems like a very valid idea and a very, I don't know if it's, it is the right strategy, but arguably, at least we argued a couple of podcasts ago, is that it was a good strategy. In execution what that allowed them to do because they didn't create any of those guardrails, they didn't have any verification process beyond paying the $8 is people impersonated all sorts of companies. They impersonated Elon Musk, they impersonated giant companies and had them say ridiculous things with a certification check next to them, and it became a big joke. And so an example of potentially a good strategy with very weak tactical execution.Peter: And what about the broader issues? The way he's running the company, day to day tactics, strategy, whatever it is, it's not good, but what, which basket would you put it in?Edward: I think there's an overlap. First of all, part of it seems like he's kind of changing his strategy on the fly. He's going back and forth and changing what his strategy is, but I think in general, his thesis going into the company was that this company was mismanaged. We need to eliminate a large number of people at the company and replace them with other people. We need to change the culture of this place from one of working from 10:00 AM until 3:00 PM to one where you're working from 7:00 AM until midnight and coming in on the weekends and turning into a hard driving startup type culture with a much smaller team that's much more dedicated and highly compensated. And it feels like that's his strategy. And he wants to go to create a company that ships product really quickly, makes mistakes, fixes them, and keeps going. That is something that I think most owners of most businesses would want for their companies. The challenge becomes how do you get there from here? And that's where there's been lots of flailing and failing. That doesn't mean the whole process is gonna fail, but there's been lots of mistakes made in that process of getting from A to B. In a situation we're getting from A to A to B is gonna be hard no matter what, even if you did it perfect.Peter: So what's your longer term prognosis? Do you think that he'll get this strategy right and line up the tactics appropriately?Edward: I don't know. It's so hard to know. I think the strategy is right. The question is whether the company will survive the process of getting them there. They're burning through cash. As an example, they laid off a bunch of people via email that work in Europe, and you can't actually do that. It's illegal to do that in Europe, so all those people that they fired in Europe actually aren't fired, they turned off their salaries. They're not making any money anymore, but all those people have a class action lawsuit that's going to go against Twitter and there's going to be a huge fine. That type of stuff matters in a situation where it, if they succeed, it's gonna be by the skin of their teeth. They're the Amazon in 2001 where we need to keep doing everything right and working our butts off to keep this plane flying over the treetops so that we can take off and circle the planet. But before we can circle the planet, we need to get over these trees. If they get over the trees, I think there's a good argument. Twitter's a fantastic, unique product that can do all sorts of incredible things and far more than the old team was doing. But he still has to get over the trees and that's where it's a lot unclear.Peter: Yeah. So it takes us to kind of the bottom line, as you say, and I don't think anyone would disagree. Strategy becomes far more urgent in rapidly changing environments. Who could argue with that yet at the same time, in rapidly changing environments. We start rearranging deck chairs, which is far more tactical.Edward: I think when things are going smoothly, when things are not changing, strategy frankly doesn't matter very much. Tactics matter a little bit, and execution matters a lot. When you're in a place where things are changing rapidly and you need to get to someplace new, all of a sudden strategy matters a lot. But that doesn't mean that tactics and execution matter less. They still matter a lot too. It just becomes like everything matters. It's becomes so easy to fail. You only need one chin in the chain to break and you're not gonna get there.Peter: And I think all three of these cases show that interplay. So again, it's not strategy versus tactics, but focusing on the and, getting to sync up properly and, easier said than done. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com

“Increasing human freedom and economic freedom around the world is just a mission that I'm really passionate about,” says Peter Smith, Founder and CEO of Blockchain.com. That mission has remained at the heart of Blockchain since its inception in 2009. When still a graduate student at the London School of Economics, Peter became interested in the intersection of economy and technology, long before they were attached at the hip as they are now. Today, digital money is the greatest example of this intersection, and the Internet is the world's largest GDP.  One major misunderstanding that persists is how long it takes to adopt new technology. Success requires being in it for the long haul, and Peter says that too many entrepreneurs want too much too soon. He shares examples of companies that have finally found major success, but only after years of struggle and even ridicule.  Being a CEO comes with a great deal of responsibility, stress and fluctuation. Hear Peter discuss the best approach to dealing with it all, and why all entrepreneurs have something wrong with them.  Quotes: “It's actually a common misconception that people don't know about the image of Bitcoin, which is that there was a 10-year plus period of attempts to create digital cash.” (7:24-7:40 | Peter) “It's really important to us that we build tools that enable people to hold their assets themselves, but their own key. And you know, this is our original slogan, be your own bank.” (12:56-13:05 | Peter) “One of the things I miss most about early crypto, was that it was not a business. It was a mission.” (16:19-16:25 | Peter)  “When I got into crypto, it wasn't it wasn't to make money. It was like, wow, if we pull this off, really cool. We can build a financial system that lives on the internet that anyone can be part of, and I can honestly look back and say, I spent my early adult life doing that, no matter how it works out. It's like a regret minimization framework. I could spend the next five years reinventing some enterprise SAAS tool, which is probably more likely to be successful, especially in 2000, and exit a lot faster. It's really hard to exit crypto businesses. But when I look back on that life, I'm not going to be proud of that.” (19:45-20:40 | Peter) “You have to be very rooted in reality as a founder. And I think anytime you're not, anytime you're too optimistic, you're just waiting to get lucky. That's a very dangerous mode to be in. But you also have to realize as a founder that not everything is under your control.”  (33:14-33:29 | Peter) Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandellTikTok: @brendandell39 Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926    Connect with Peter Smith:Website: Blockchain.comTwitter: @justonemorepeterFacebook:@justonemorepeterInstagram:@justonemorepeter Please don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe to Billion Dollar Tech on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Use code Brendan30 for 30% off your annual membership with RiverSide.fm  Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

I have been exploring a new AI tool that is allowing transcript creation while I edit the episodes. It's not perfect, but it's pretty great for those who prefer reading to listening. I plan on including transcripts of all episodes going forward.Also: Apologizes that yesterday's essay did NOT have more than 1-second of audio. I am still working through these tools. The audio should be live on that post now (I chose not to re-send it to your email) In This EpisodeFader and Nevraumont discuss Elon Musk's plan for charging $8/month for a blue checkmark (plus other benefits). What metrics should they use to know if it's working? Can subscription revenue compete with advertising revenue? What are the different types of Twitter users?Keep it Simple,Edward Full TranscriptEdward: So, Peter, do you have a blue check mark?Peter: I do. I'm so fortunate. Of course the question is how long will I keep it and what will I have to pay to do so, and what benefits will I get associated with it?Edward: How did you get it? Was there a process you went through? Did the school help you do it?Peter: No, it was actually through my previous company, Zodiac the one, we sold to Nike. That at that point the CEO said, You know, we ought to get blue check marks just to give us more credibility. It was a pretty simple application process, but you know, a lot of people who have been trying to go through it, who are at least as qualified as I am. It seems like there is, or at least was, something pretty arbitrary about it, but hey, I'm one of the lucky ones. ,Edward: You're part of the in group. When I was at General Assembly, the, my head of PR came to me like basically on day one on the job, and she's like, We need to get you a blue check mark.And I had to go and change my Twitter account was linked to my Gmail address and I had to switch it to my general assembly email address, and then she went to town and did her PR stuff to try. Get the blue check mark, but it never happened. Two years of trying it and never got the check, I even as a CMO of general assembly I was not renowned enough to get the check.Peter: That's exactly my experience cuz I think you honestly, in a position like that, deserved it more than me. I think maybe the professor thing helps, but there's plenty of professors with the big followings and great content who don't have it either.So maybe that's what the, All the musk nonsense will actually bring some order, some predictability to who gets a check or who gets which kind of check cuz there really should be more than one of them.Edward: There kind of is. So I guess for those who... I imagine all of our listeners know what's going on right now, but just a really quick summary is that Elon, there was a rumor that went out. Was it Vanity Fair or The Verge? It was the Verge last weekend that talked about how all the blue check marks are gonna have to pay 20 bucks a month just to keep it. And then yesterday we're recording this on Wednesday, yesterday, on Tuesday, Elon came out and said, No, it's gonna be $8 a month.And it includes not just the blue check mark, but a bunch of other kind of benefits, if you will. And then on top of that, really red down people like Joe Biden for example, will get a, not a blue check mark, but like an. A descriptor underneath them that says that they're authentic and real. Which was the original purpose of the blue check mark to begin.Peter: Right, right, right. Yeah. Really a validation, not just a status symbol. But if you look at some of the benefits that they're talking about, some of those benefits make sense for creators. Some of the benefits make sense for readers, and I think it's important not to mash the two together.That's why they really should be a different kind of subscription based on what you're using. Twitter.Edward: I guess so, so big part of this, it's interesting. The last essay I wrote for for marketing BS couple of weeks ago was all about paying for status. And this, it feels initially like this is paying for status and a lot of that's what it is, right?So you pay to get the blue check marks right now are primarily a status tool, although I know you have some features that us non-black marks don't have. But going forward this is going to replace that blue check mark you are paying for the status. But the benefits you get seem to be around production.So if you, the tweets that you produce are more likely to be seen by other people you're, you get listed first in the mentions. You get move to the top of the replies. And so there's a bunch of features like that. So you, the stuff that you produce is more likely to be seen, I don't think.And that makes sense. Yeah. And that's good for everybody in some ways too because it kills the spambots or if you're a spambot, you're not going. Verified, you're not gonna get the blue check. And so all the spam bot stuff gets pushed to the bottom. But so does everybody. So do all the non blue check mark.People get pushed to the.Peter: Now for me personally I, yeah, I'd pay something to keep the blue check, but I'd also pay something to improve my reading experience. I would love to have more control over the timeline. I'd like to get inside some of the curation algorithms and, tweak them to, to, to my benefit.To me that that's more important as a Twitter consumer than a Twitter.Edward: And, but now, so those benefits though, should, are those benefits that they should be charging for, because every social media platform has that, which is, hey, we want to show people the content that engages them, that they would enjoy.Why if you're able to do that, if you're able to show people better content, they're gonna use your platform more, and you're gonna make more money on ads, at what point would you be like, Hey, you know what? We could make this person's experience better, but we're gonna put that behind a paywall and we're gonna give them a worst experience.That just, it feels like that's not The Thing you want to be charging for.Peter: That's a big philosophical question, but you're right. That, that this is how everybody does it. So presuming that a Twitter's gonna follow that mold, the most obvious one of all is if I pay a reader subscription.Don't show me any ads, right? Just like with Spotify, give me, gimme the ad free version or maybe have, a new Netflix one where it's a lower price with some reader control but some minimal number of ads. So there should be something about that. But also if I'm gonna pay that I wanna have complete control over whether things are in chronological order or whether I want to trust their recommendations I'd.Do my own curation like that.Edward: That's fair. But you can do that now. It's Twitter's ability to produce things and new product features have been very slow. But right now I think your default is a algorithmic feed. But it's fairly simple to change that to a chronological feat if you want to. I don't think many people do but it, but the ability is,Peter: I find that it still does chronology in a weird way and sometimes then jumps back a few hours in time and maybe it's just me, I don't know.But they, they definitely can and should clean that up. But like I said, there, there should be different kinds of features for different kinds of users that would involve different kinds of subscriptions. And of course there'd be the grand subscription that would give. Everything for a super power user who's creating and consuming, get all those features.Some, bundled price.Edward: Nice. And so right now, I was I guess the question on everyone's mind right now are the screaming and shouting people on Twitter are talking about the fact that hey, the, like Steven King for example the writer. Went and posted something about how he's, there's no way he's gonna pay for this because Twitter should be paying him.And in some ways he's right. Because if you look at right now the new Blue Check mark program is gonna be, the benefits are not for the readers. I guess the little bit they think he said something about half the normal ads that you would normally see, but majority of the benefits are, hey, the status benefit and a bunch of production benefits, like your content gets seen more often.So it's producers that are gonna be charged for this, but at the same time, isn't it the producers that create the value for everybody else?Peter: Of course that's true with all social media platforms. I don't think Twitter's any different in this regard. And I think a lot of people are making noise about it.Because of who is in charge now. I think it's just a visceral reaction. Oh, it's Elon Musk. I think if Twitter had announced changes like this at another time, a lot of folks, I'm not gonna speak for Stephen King or some of the other celebrities would say yeah, it's about time that, that I get those extra boosts that I deserve.And you know, what, eight bucks a month I'm paying more money than that for a lot of other content subscriptions that are used far less.Edward: Fair enough. How what do you think, how, what percentage of Twitter's revenue then, if this, assuming this thing works and it's successful at all, like, how much revenue can you get from this subscription product versus the advertising model?Peter: It's a great question. It goes right into my strike zone, which is we could look at the next year o over the short run. They're so reliant on advertising that there's no way that they could come close to matching it with subscription revenue. But in terms of long run customer lifetime value, if they start to ratchet down the ads and focus on bonafide benefits to creators and readers through a different well calibrated subscription services. You give 'em a couple years and they could completely flip it and make it almost entirely subscription based. And that's the direction they should be moving in. Not only would that be steadier income, you'd have a better sense of who's doing what you'd have much better metrics to use for internal and external guidance. Right now, everything they're doing with monthly active users and daily active users doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It's not easily tied to, to revenue so that they can really improve the stream of revenue, but also the predictability the understanding of it. And that's great.Edward: So your prediction is, call it in three years, the majority, more than 50% of the revenue comes from subscriptionsPeter: If they play their cards right, and it's real hard. To be pro Elon. It's just unpopular position to take, but it's...Edward: low status. It's low status these days,Peter: ...and so I'm gonna avoid the personalities and I'm gonna avoid endorsing or critiquing some of the statements you've made. But just if you just look purely at the business decisions and the urgency that he's bringing to it, it's about.Edward: The only other social network I can think of that has this both model where you can use the network for free or you can pay to get effectively a blue check is LinkedIn. Like LinkedIn, you can become an in member or something like that.Peter: Yep, yep.Edward: But I don't think LinkedIn makes much money off the in members, do they? It's not significant, is it?Peter: I don't know. I don't know if they break that out, but I know I'm paying my $300 a year to, to get some of those benefits and so on. I don't use them all that much.But but sometimes it's really really valuable whether it's for some of the companies I'm running or the books I'm writing. I do it without batting an eye. Now granted, it is covered under my university, research and teaching budget. But I do it with without even thinking. And that's, I'm paying I think a good bit more money than I'd be paying for Twitter, which I use a lot more than LinkedIn.Edward: Yeah, fair enough. What, so what do you use the LinkedIn one for? So you're paying for the premium, like I've paid for it from time to time, mainly for recruiting purposes. What are you using it for?Peter: So a part of it is to have a little bit more control to both the get a better sense of who's looking at my profile. To have more control about being the block who sees mine being able to send, not that I do a ton of these InMail messages, but again, just sometimes I do want to do a bunch of that.I run a separate group and to have a little bit more control over there as well. So it's a bunch of little things. Again, any one of the things, the most important things I get out of LinkedIn would be far less significant than the benefits that I'd seek from Twitter. But I still do it anyway. I don't have a problem doing, so it's just matter of finding the right price point.In LinkedIn's case, they have a bunch of different tiers. I'm not even sure which what I have, and that's the direction Twitter will go as well.Edward: That's interesting. You're gonna pay for the Twitter check, and you're gonna expense it through your department?Peter: That's a good question. Whether I, I could do that or I guess so. I mean it's in some sense no different than LinkedIn and I certainly spent a lot of time talking about my research, my teaching, the books that I'm writing on behalf of Wharton, including a new one that just came out this week, The Customer Base Audit.Edward: So we should talk about That should be our topic next week. Next week our discussion gonna be your book.Peter: I'd love to do that, but right now it's Blue Checks instead of Blue books. So yeah I think I would do that and I would encourage others to do the same.Edward: That's an interesting point too. You got your blue check because of your work with your last company, you're gonna be able to pay for this next check with the expense it, I imagine the CEO of every company in America is gonna expense this and then the executive team and all the PR people. Right now it feels like the blue check marks are disproportionately journalists and authors, but is in the new blue check mark world become people that can expense it will just take over.Peter: And of course then there'll be a hierarchy of checks and there'll be clear criteria beyond money about what it takes to achieve one. You can't just purely pay for blue check. You have tweet enough. You have to show some credibility that there was. That application that you and I have both tried to fill out. And so if you start making it aspirational that in order to move up to, the next check you have to tweet a certain number of times, you have to engage and, do other things that are beneficial to the Twitter community. If we make it incentive compatible for people to, to lean in and participate, that's great. It's good for everyone.Edward: That's interesting. So you're saying $8 a month is not gonna be enough, $8 is what it costs, but you still have to, You have to jump through some hoops in order to be allowed to pay the money.Peter: That's right. Exactly. You have to, again, establish your credentials and you have to participate enough to really earn it.Edward: It goes back to the, what I talked about a few weeks ago, which is here you're paying for status, but if it's only dollars, then there's no actual status involved.So it has to be, you have to do a bunch of stuff. You have to be legitimate, and then you can pay for the status levels. It's, I did some math this morning. So right now if every single blue check mark on Twitter starts paying for it. And no, no one else does. Only the blue check marks pay for it, it's pretty minimal revenue. It's something like 50 million per year on a business right now is doing what, 4.5 billion? And so if that's all it does is he ends up milking the blue check marks. It feels like this is a bunch of noise for nothing. And so it only really works if he gets a significant percentage of the base.I think it was something like, If 10% of the base start doing it, it gets can't remember what the exact number was, like half a million dollars or something like that. He has to get a pretty high number in order for it to be significant against his advertising, at least at this price point.Peter: And that's exactly why it's a multi-year initiative. It, it's not gonna happen overnight. And again, with all these haters out there, whatever he tries to do, people are gonna declare it to be a failure a few months from now. But it is a behavioral change on the part of people to actually not only seek out the status and pay for it, but to change their Twitter habits to.Be a better member of the community. So I think as he changes, not just check marks and basic functions, but as he changes the nature of the way that, that people use Twitter I think people will start to see more and more value, more and more urgency to start doing it. Instead of feeling that that he's holding a gun to their head.Edward: What metrics should he be looking at? So he goes and pulls the trigger on this and some people sign up for it and some people stop using Twitter. What numbers should he be looking at to know whether or not this is going in the right direction of whether this is trending to the place where three years from now it's gonna be the majority of his?Peter: It starts to become the things that we really can measure and manage effectively, customer retention. So we can say, how many new people have signed up for a particular status? Of all the people who signed up last year how many of them have retained it? Things that are very easy to measure.You think about all these lawsuits, obviously the big one that more or less forced them to buy the company. There was another one last year that I was actually an expert witness on Twitter's behalf about measuring daily active users and monthly active users. It'll be great to move away from that to metrics that are harder to argue about and are more directly related to the health of the business.Edward: And measuring the growth of this thing is easy, right? So you can, How many people signed up and are paying $8 a month? What's your arr? How much revenue are you making on this new product? How many people are signing up per month? How many are churning out and canceling after one month? That feels like the upside, the revenue side is easy to measure. The downside of "Hey, because this is there, I'm Steven King and I'm gonna stop producing content on Twitter'" how does he know how much damage he's causing because of this?Peter: That's a great question, and of course we'll never know for sure from what people are saying. You have to run the experiment. You have to try it. Again, maybe with multiple tiers. I think Musk, I think to his credit, look, the fact that the rumor started at 20 and now he's saying eight. I think he's finding out what the market will bear. Both in terms of price and in terms of what features and functionality needs to offer.I think they're gonna find a pretty comfortable middle ground where serious producers will be compelled to stay with it, but will feel that it's worth their while.Edward: But what's, the metric? does he take number of tweets written by non-paying customers and track that on a day to day basis. Is he doing like an individual customer level model where he takes all his producers, everyone who's producing tweets and tracks them over time and. Use, almost like almost treats like a tweet, like a transaction to try to measure if someone's, if a transactor, a transactor, a producer is churning off rather than buying a product.Peter: I would love to see that. And if we think about that kind of behavior we see very commonly in, in different kinds of settings, like even for a lot of different non-profits. A museum will look to see how many people are going to the museum and how that relates to whether they renew their their membership. Companies are doing that kind of thing all the time. Again I've seen some of the insides at Twitter and they have not managed that well. They've had a lot of really ad hoc measures, some of which have been around spent, time spent on the timeline tweets post and so on. But they haven't come to agreement on it and partially cuz these measures they've looked at haven't been directly tied to revenue, which is engaging with.Edward: But it's interesting though, cause there's two parts of it. There's the producers and for them, whether they look at ads or not is almost not relevant. It's whether not they creating compelling enough content that's keeping other people engaged on Twitter? Because where the revenue's coming from is all those people who are just reading the tweets and seeing the ad spending to me it's being a daily active user and a monthly active user and time spent on site. That's the metric that's determining how well they can monetize is not?Peter: And, but I love the way a company like Spotify is doing this sort of thing. And now again, we can't call them necessarily a paragon of business success just in terms of raw profitability, but I think there's a lot of respect for what they do and how they do it in these terms, having the advertising based model, the subscription based model.And they know that when they're bringing a new artist on board they will look to see. Not only how often that music is listened to or downloaded, but the value of the customers who engage with it. And so they can actually start to put a price tag on an artist based on the value they're bringing to the platform. Of course, that's something that, that's negotiated, but they're doing it in a data driven way. No reason why Twitter can't be doing very similar kind of thing.Edward: Got it. So yeah, so they can put up like, Hey what, how much value is is Donald Trump bringing to our platform? How much value is Taylor Swift bringing to the platform in terms of driving other people to engage in that content and keep them on the site longer so that they can sell the ads?Peter: And staying with the Spotify or even Sirius XM model, there might be cases where it makes sense to pay someone, especially as other micro blogging platforms arise. And we hear a lot of talk about them, usually for political reasons. Sure. We might have bidding wars about about content creators. That would be a very healthy ecosystem, and at that point, they really have to deliver meaningful value to the creators and the consumers.Edward: It's interesting. Spotify is doing the reverse right now, and so everyone's getting paid to be like all the music, all the musicians, all the, every time a song is played, the musicians are paid, but they're allowing musicians to basically bid to have their songs played more often on playlists and so on. And effectively the musicians don't have to pay themselves, but they're basically bidding in lower. Lower royalties. "Hey I'll take a lower royalty in exchange for being played more often". And I think it's almost like Twitter's doing the reverse of that. If everyone's gonna need, everyone's gonna need to pay. But now, once I know the lifetime value, once I know that Taylor Swift is worth a lot, I can go and take that $8 that she's paying and I can discount that to her.Peter: Love it. I love it. Now, of course, Spotify has it much, much tougher. It's a much more competitive market and dealing with all those royalty issues dealing with the music industry. Oh the cost, the complexities, the limitations. Twitter has it easy. They really do, at least right now. And yet they still can't, punch their way out of a paper bag. I think if they really start to look at some of these other business models and practices and emulate the good ones, the ones that they can really capitalize effectively, I think the skies might be very blue for Twitter. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com

Hey guys! Peter Shankman the host of Faster Than Normal here. I wanna invite you to something! I am hosting a Mastermind with 12 amazing speakers who are gonna be talking about everything from ADHD to mental health, from entrepreneurship, to just living your life better. It's gonna be on November 10th, It's gonna be virtual from anywhere in the world. Incredible, incredible speakers. The leading fitness trainer in Canada for all things. Me! A whole bunch of speakers- Scott Carney, who wrote the book which is to all about how he goes and takes ice showers every day. It's gonna be 12 amazing speakers, the CBS Early Shows' Jennifer Hartstein, really, really great people. And I'd like you to join us. Check out the link below in the show notes at ShankMinds 2022 and we will see you there. And a matter of fact, look for the discount code in the show notes as well, that'll take a hundred bucks off the cost. We'll see you soon! https://shankman.lpages.co/shankminds-virtual-2022/  DISCOUNT CODE:  SMFriends22 We're visiting again today with Aron Croft who's made some changes since our last visit on Episode 240, “The Un-Squeaky Wheel: How Inattentive ADHD Goes Under the Radar w/ Aron Croft” including developing a new way to help the community; enjoy! In his own words: Aron Croft has always been obsessed with one question: “Why can't we get ourselves to do tasks that we WANT to do”?  That question was on his mind as he dropped out of college twice, failed out of his first 7 jobs and ended up broke, divorced, and earning minimum wage at 33. After an adult diagnosis of Inattentive ADHD and an M.S. in Coaching Psychology, he decided to abandon neurotypical productivity, and his life changed. He built a successful Fortune 500 career followed by a six-figure coaching business with over 125,000 followers. In his coaching business, he teaches ADHD'ers his contrarian 8% Productivity Habit, which helps them complete their top tasks in 2 hours a day and  never feel behind again. His work has been featured by  ADDitude Magazine, the Attention Deficit Disorder Association, and dozens of top ADHD outlets. To watch a 30 minute training on the 8% Productivity Habit, visit freeadhdtraining.com.  In this episode Peter and Aron discuss:   01:20 - Thank you so much for listening and for subscribing! 01:29 - Intro and welcome back Aron Croft!! 02:40 - Tell us what you've been doing since the last time you were on the show? Ref: 8percent Productivity Habit Method 03:20 - What is living in the country like for someone with a faster brain? 04:12 - Is spending time daily in the out-of-doors helping? 05:25 - How have you grown in this environment within the last couple of years? 07:01 - On embracing ‘measured' change 08:11 - Aron explains his 8percent Productivity Habit 08:47 - “motivation, willpower, and discipline” These may only be neurotypical confines! 09:23 - There are other ways to win!! 09:53 - How do professional Boxers become so fast? 11:16 - On willpower and habits. Skateboarding can strengthen you! 14:13 - How can people find more about you? Web: hiddenADHD.com ALSO  freeadhdtraining.com Socials: @aroncroft on Twitter  @HiddenADHD on Facebook  INSTA  YouTube and hidden_adhd on TikTok 15:07 - Guys, as always thanks so much for subscribing! Do you have a cool friend with a great story? We'd love to hear. I'm www.petershankman.com and you can reach out anytime via email at peter@shankman.com or @petershankman on all of the socials. You can also find us at @FasterNormal on all of the socials. It really helps when you drop us a review on iTunes and of course, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already! As you know, the more reviews we get, the more people we can reach. Help us to show the world that ADHD is a gift, not a curse!  15:30 - Faster Than Normal Podcast info & credits — TRANSCRIPT via Descript and then corrected.. somewhat:  Hey guys. Peter Shankman the host of Faster Than Normal here. I wanna invite you to something! I am hosting a Mastermind with 12 amazing speakers who are gonna be talking about everything from ADHD to mental health, from entrepreneurship, to just living your life better. It's gonna be on November 10th, It's gonna be virtual from anywhere in the world. Incredible, incredible speakers. The leading fitness trainer in Canada for all things. Me! A whole bunch of speakers- Scott Carney, who wrote the book which is to all about how he goes and takes ice showers every day. It's gonna be 12 amazing speakers, the CBS Early Shows' Jennifer Hartstein, really, really great people. And I'd like you to join us. Check out the link below in the show notes at ShankMinds 2022 and we will see you there. And a matter of fact, look for the discount code in the show notes as well, that'll take a hundred bucks off the cost. We'll see you soon! https://shankman.lpages.co/shankminds-virtual-2022/ —   [00:01:23] Peter: Hey everyone. Peter Shankman, another episode of Faster Than Normal. Thrilled to have you here. Welcome aboard. We gotta repeat guest today Aron Croft was here by a year or so ago, and since then he told me that after he, he heard hisself on this episode, he's had to upend his entire life and he moved to a farm. And like, I don't know, I've got 10 acres of land and a chainsaw or something. I'll let him tell you more about that. But Aron Croft has is he was a great guest last time we have him back, and he's always been obsessed with one question, which says, Why can't we get ourselves to do the tasks we wanna do? He dropped outta college twice. He failed his first seven jobs. He ended up broke divorce earning minimum wage, days 33. Then he got diagnosed and then he got an MS in coaching psychology, and he took his neurotypical productivity. His life changed. He built a Fortune 500 career, followed by a six figure coaching business. He teaches ADHD 'ers his contrarian. 8% productivity hat. We'll talk about that. He's at free ADHD training.com and welcome back Aron good to have you, man. [00:02:21] Aron: Thank you, Peter. This is, this podcast is always the most challenging one for me to be a guest on because it's like, it's so hard to be efficient and, and get everything done that you and I want to talk about in your episode. Cap.  [00:02:37] Peter: All right, so let's let you start it. Tell us about yourself. Tell us what you've been doing since the last time you had you on.  [00:02:42] Aron: Yeah, I mean, pretty much just buying 10 acres in a chainsaw. Uh, that's, that's pretty much it, that's taken up most of the last 12 months. Um, what have I been up to really, uh, formalizing, Um, my 8% productivity habit method. Which is really just about how do we get our top task done in just two hours a day. Like, we're not gonna suddenly become sort of full of motivation, willpower, and discipline. Like we've been trying that our whole lives and how do we do that so that we can just stop feeling behind? And, um, that's really what I've been focused on and working with hundreds of ADHDers and, um, now we're just, you know, expanding it out to more. [00:03:20] Peter: Very, very cool. And tell me that I wanna, I wanna talk about living in the middle of nowhere or on 10 acres or whatever. What's that like for someone with a faster brain? [00:03:28] Aron: Uh, it's so delightful because, you know, I can just, my brain is going a mile a minute all the time. It's so exhausting. I would love freedom and a break from it sometimes, but like when I go out, like we've got trails on the property and it's just, we're surrounded by just trees and nature and when I just, when I get outside, Um, it just quiets everything down, um, in nature. And so, yeah. So it's just been, it's been absolutely delightful. Um, and there's also like some mindless tasks like cutting, you know, cutting down branches with a chainsaw on the weekend. Like, I don't need to think. And it's very nice for me to not give myself like, cognitive tasks every once in a while. [00:04:10] Peter: Yep. Are you enjoying, So is there, is there, would you say you're getting more outdoor time than you used? And and is that helping? [00:04:20] Aron: I, you know, honestly I'd say that I'm getting about, I'm getting a little bit more outdoor time, Not a ton more, but the outdoor time absolutely helps. Like I, I mean, part of the reason we made the move is cause I was living in downtown Chicago and all I would do to leave the apartment was just go and walk in nature. And there was this cool nature path near us. So I'd say that I'm, I'm only getting a little more time in nature, but the other thing I really like is, um, space. Uh, so like you can't see it cuz it's off camera, but like, I literally commandeered the entire big, like what room would be a family room in our basement. I put up a 16 foot long whiteboard of just wallpaper, that's whiteboard wallpaper. Um, I mean, I've got like a studio set up with camera and lights and a nice microphone, and I've just got my shit everywhere. Like on the pasted it on the walls, the post it notes galore! I just love the ability to spread out and try to untangle this like super messy brain. [00:05:21] Peter: Very cool. And what would you tell people that you've learned? How have you grown in the past couple years? [00:05:27] Aron: I'd say, I'd say two things. So, um, one is just this idea of like, stop, like, like I, I, I've given up trying to be neurotypical. Um, and you know, that might sound obvious, but I work with a lot of ADHDers and they're still trying to be like what their parents and their peers and their teachers told them to be. And so one is just the freedom to give that up, um, and all the like self-compassion and acceptance that comes with it. And then on the flip side of that, right, and you know this in business, right? Is once I gave that up, um, And I was like, You know what? I'm not gonna be like, So you and I are a little bit different. Like I, I just have the inattentive ADHD symptoms. I wish I had some of the hyperactivity energy stuff, but like, like, I'm like a delicate flower. I burn out after like a few hours of like, I. Of like thinking work. And so I was like, Okay, instead of just saying that, that's like a weakness. How can I just build a productivity system around, around that? And um, so just doing those things and kind of embracing my limitations, quote unquote, has like, turned me into way more powerful than I've ever been.  [00:06:43] Peter: It sounds like it might have. Um, It's interesting. I, I know a lot of people with adhd, they, they change is difficult; , Right? They get into a routine, they get into a habit, and then change becomes sort of a, a, a fear, right? You embrace it.  [00:07:01] Aron: Um, I embrace, I embrace measured change. Okay. Um, because Right. It's, that's important. That's an important distinction. It is. Right. But like, but it, it's like so many things we don't realize that we're actually trying to. For two variables. And we're really looking for balance, right? We want, we want no change, but we also want lots of novelty and variety, right? And so we're, we're kind of, we kind of need to find that right balance. You know, I find so many people with their, uh, Productivity. They're like, I wanna get all my top tasks done. But I also don't wanna be forced into like Right. Having to do it. And I wanna like feel like doing them. Like I don't want it to be painful. And it's sort of like, okay, like if we can make explicit those like trade offs that we're trying to make, we can find a solution. That's the, that sounded theoretical. I feel like I'm just dabbling. Sorry, Peter.  [00:07:53] Peter: No, no, it makes sense. So with that, tell me about the, uh, the 8% productivity habit.  [00:07:58] Aron: Yeah, I know cuz clearly I'm obsessed with it. But , uh, I'm excited to have somebody to talk to about it that isn't my wife. Well, she's excited that I have someone you know today to talk to about it. Um, yeah, I mean, so it was really just, This concept. So the 8% is simply that like 8% of a 24 hour day is two hours. And I was like, All right. If I could just build a productivity habit, that meant that I could get away basically with just doing hard tasks for two hours a day, and then the rest of the day I can kind of just slack off and like wing it. Um, like if I could build something that would be effective, man, that would just give me so much freedom. And, um, so I tried to build it, and then the first phase of it is abandon neurotypical productivity. So all of us have been raised on this like diet of motivation, willpower, and discipline. And like you, Whoever wins is the one who wants it the most. And that's fine if your motivation pathways and willpower pathways work, you know, neurotypically. But for us, or at least for the inattentive, ADHD symptoms that I tend to work with with my students, um, it doesn't translate to action. And so we're left with, we're left with this really unfair conundrum. We either don't take action. Or we have a secret sauce, which helps us take action, which is we just flood ourselves with adrenaline, stress and anxiety, and suddenly we can do a bunch of hard tasks. Right? But it's like so mentally and physically and emotionally training, [00:09:33] Peter: I believe that. It's interesting because it puts us back into that premise of imposters, right? If we're trying to do things in sort of like that one way that's supposed to be done right? You know, like what you said about, about going out and, and, and you know, the person who wins, the person wants the most, there are other ways to win .  [00:09:55] Aron: Amen. My brother. Thank you.  [00:09:56] Peter: You know, I, I, I find that, Well, even this morning I was, I was in a boxing class and I was training. It was one trainer who was training two of us, and we'd each do drills, uh, alternate on drills. And I was watching him, you know, so like 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off. And on my 30 seconds off, I'm supposed to be shadow boxing. And of course I wound up watching this guy. This guy is about. 10 years more experienced boxing than I do. And his punches were so fast, like, so fast, and, and it was like a blur. And I'm just staring at him. And of course the trainer's like, Yo, you wanna actually do something or you wanna just watch? I'm like, Okay, yeah, sorry, but I need to figure out how he got that fast. And he goes, he's trained, He's constantly repeating the motion and doing it over and over again and building those muscles and growing and. You know, so I, I hear what you're saying. It's, it's in that, in that regard. I'm sure he does want it, but I'm sure he is also lost a ton of fights. He doesn't want it the most, he's just doing it every day because it's something that makes him happy and excites him, and he is also getting better at it by default. [00:10:55] Aron: I love, I love that you said that because, um, so like, because I. And just, I'm, I'm just like on like, honestly, like, I'm literally like the most like unproductive person at my core. Um, and I just have like almost no motivational, willpower discipline. So the work around though is kind of, is what you were saying though, that I discovered. It was like, if I just build something in a habit, then it kind of happens without really any motivational will power discipline. Right. And so, It's been this like side door to like sneak into like productivity, uh, without kind of the traditional things is it sounds like you've got some, uh, interest in habits as well. [00:11:42] Peter: Well, I've always found that, you know, I always, because for ADHD I would always gravitate back in school. I always gravitated toward the things I doing because I enjoyed doing them and I. Specifically, One time I got off, I, I was up, I would always ride my bike, and then one time, one year I get into skateboarding, right? And I, I would skateboard, skateboard, skateboard for like a year and a half, two years, everywhere. I went to skateboard. Skateboard. And then one day case got back on my bike. And I was shocked at how much stronger my legs were. It wasn't that I'd been working out my legs, it's that I'd been skateboarding, I was working out my legs, but it didn't occur to me as that, Right. The things that you love to do are the things you naturally get better at because you're doing 'em so much because you love them. The the downside for ADHD is sometimes you have to do things you don't love and you still have to do them.  [00:12:27] Aron: Well, and so the, the upside, so I agree with you and the upside is, um, so look, I believe, and, and again, all with the caveat that a lot of the things I'm talking about are limited to people that have the inattentive symptoms or combined adhd, Right? Um, but. You know, the cool part is that I believe so many people, and this is entrepreneurs, this is working professionals I've talked to, like, we're looking for something that would have like the biggest bang for our buck. Um, kind of like on the entrepreneur where they're like, I don't want to just trade dollars for hours. Like, Right, or hours for dollars. Like, I want something that's scalable and like, I want, I want like leverage effectively is what? You know, working professionals and stuff are saying. And um, the cool part is that I found is. A lot of productivity stuff focuses on like overhauling your life, right? Like you're gonna write down all your to-do lists and write down goals in every area, and then you're gonna time box your schedule and you know you're gonna do all these things. You're gonna make this color coded thing. And the reality is that there's a lead domino in there, which is if you just push this one piece, all these other productivity things fit, which is the piece that you just mentioned, which is. We don't suck at all productivity. We're great at like fire alarm tasks. Exactly. We're even decent at like busy tasks. And the reason we're decent at them is because the area that we suck and that if we improve is the lead domino that knocks all the other dominoes down is in doing tough tasks. And if we can get, build a habit of doing tough tasks every day, suddenly they don't feel tough and our comfort zone expands.  [00:14:13] Peter: Yep, a hundred percent. Tell us how we could find you.  [00:14:17] Aron: Well, you could just drive out to Michigan and look for a house.  [00:14:22] Peter: Quit being a smart ass Aron, how can we find you? .  [14:13 - How can people find more about you? Web: hiddenADHD.com ALSO  freeadhdtraining.com Socials: @aroncroft on Twitter  @HiddenADHD on Facebook  INSTA  YouTube and hidden_adhd on TikTok ] [00:14:24] Aron: All right. Alright. Um, I would say, I would say just go to free adhd training.com. I literally was like, How could I come up with the easiest to remember URL in the history of URLs? Not that help a reporter out.com isn't also memorable . But anyway, free adhd training.com and uh, I go into like a full training. It's free on the 8% productivity habit, what it is, how you can do it, um, and really break it all down with like pretty graphics and all the, my pretty bald head and all these fun things. [00:14:57] Peter: Always love having you, Aron bald head and all. It was a pleasure. Enjoy your home, enjoy your 10 acres and your, your chainsaw. We'll have you back again.  [00:15:06] Aron: All right, brother. Appreciate it! [00:15:07] Peter: Guys, as always, we wanna know what you're hearing and we wanna know what you're seeing. If you have a guest that you think might be great, shoot us a note. Peter@shankman.com. Let us know, Tweet us, post us, Facebook us, whatever. If you like what you heard, leave us review. Thanks to Steven Byrom @stevenbyrom our awesome producer. We'll back next week, another episode. Stay healthy, stay strait on keep going on the path that is yours, and yours alone, and we'll talk to you. Bye  Credits: You've been listening to the Faster Than Normal podcast. We're available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google play and of course at www.FasterThanNormal.com I'm your host, Peter Shankman and you can find me at shankman.com and @petershankman on all of the socials. If you like what you've heard, why not head over to your favorite podcast platform of choice and leave us a review, come more people who leave positive reviews, the more the podcast has shown, and the more people we can help understand that ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Opening and closing themes were composed and produced by Steven Byrom who also produces this podcast, and the opening introduction was recorded by Bernie Wagenblast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week!

Hey guys. Peter Shankman the host of Faster Than Normal here. I wanna invite you to something! I am hosting a Mastermind with 12 amazing speakers who are gonna be talking about everything from ADHD to mental health, from entrepreneurship, to just living your life better. It's gonna be on November 10th, It's gonna be virtual from anywhere in the world. Incredible, incredible speakers. The leading fitness trainer in Canada for all things. Me! A whole bunch of speakers- Scott Carney, who wrote the book which is to all about how he goes and takes ice showers every day. It's gonna be 12 amazing speakers, the CBS Early Shows' Jennifer Hartstein, really, really great people. And I'd like you to join us. Check out the link below in the show notes at ShankMinds 2022 and we will see you there. And a matter of fact, look for the discount code in the show notes as well, that'll take a hundred bucks off the cost. We'll see you soon! https://shankman.lpages.co/shankminds-virtual-2022/  DISCOUNT CODE:  SMFriends22 -- Southern California-born and bred Maitland Ward has quickly become one of the biggest stars in adult entertainment, after an-already successful career as an American model, actress and cosplay personality. After finding fame in the ‘90s on CBS soap The Bold and the Beautiful and smash ABC sitcom Boy Meets World, as well as a plum role in 2004's cult classic White Chicks, Ward decided to shake things up with racy social media content, sexy cosplay and appearing at fan conventions before making the leap into the adult film industry in 2019. The statuesque (5'10”) all-natural redhead is unique in that not only is she beautiful and built for the adult biz, Ward's talent as an actress means she can also carry dramatic and comedic scenes with ease. Her playful energy, professionalism and open sexuality earned her an exclusive performance contract with Vixen Media Group and the famous face of the brand's blockbuster studio, Deeper. In 2020, Ward won three AVN Awards for Best Supporting Actress, Best Three-Way Sex Scene-G/G/B for her work in Deeper feature Drive and Favorite Camming Cosplayer. She also won three XBIZ Awards for Crossover Star of the Year, Best Actress-Feature Movie and Best Sex Scene-Feature Movie, also for Drive.  In 2021 she scored two AVN Awards as well: Best Leading Actress for Deeper's Muse, as well as Best Boy/Girl Sex Scene for Higher Power, plus two XBIZ Awards for Best Acting-Lead and Best Sex Scene-Feature for Muse, and in 2022 she took home two XBIZ trophies for Best Acting-Lead for Muse 2 and Performer of the Year.  Ward's recent mainstream endeavors include starring and co-producing a TV series, The Big Time, taking on a lead role in psychological thriller Just for You and releasing an eye-popping no-holds-barred memoir about her wild life in the entertainment biz, Rated X: How Porn Liberated Me from Hollywood.    ——    In this episode Peter and Maitland discuss:     00:40 - Thank you so much for listening and for subscribing! 01:00 - Intro and welcome Maitland Ward!  IMDB bio 01:38 - So you're here in NYC promoting Rated X; let's talk about that! 02:00 - Despite all of your success at such a young age, you were not happy. Why? 04:00 - A lot of positive things have happened in the culture of Hollywood and beyond 04:45 - On hiding who you are, and why. A note on fear. 05:25 - When did you first realize, then decide you needed a change? 06:15 - About getting married an moving to NYC 06:50 - On figuring out that you're different 07:18 - Peter on how he explained to his father how he was quitting his day job 08:08 - When did you decide to make the switch from ‘mainstream to ‘adult' film? How did your peers react? 09:15 - About double standards 09:45 - Peter on breaking stereotypes for New Frontier Media at The Wall Street Journal 10:55 - How did it go when you started dipping your feet more into rated R, rated X Art? 12:28 - On building a fanbase in real time 14:00 - About her first full length feature and how that evolved  15:00 - How do you deal with the haters, how do you not focus on the bad reviews, trolls, etc? 15:55 - A tip about fan mail of any sort 16:55 - What's next for you? 17:35 - My how things have changed in twenty years, or even thirty! 18:52 - What do you do to get out of your head, to clear and re-center? 19:54 - Do you have any rituals or habits that must happen every day or else? 20:21 - How can people find more about you? Web: https://onlyfans.com/maitlandward Socials:  @MaitlandWard on Twitter  INSTA  FB  and @Maitlandtoks on TikTok Shout out to Brian at BSG Public Relations! @bsgpr on Twitter 20:57 - Guys, as always thanks so much for subscribing! Do you have a cool friend with a great story? We'd love to hear. I'm www.petershankman.com and you can reach out anytime via email at peter@shankman.com or @petershankman on all of the socials. You can also find us at @FasterNormal on all of the socials. It really helps when you drop us a review on iTunes and of course, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already! As you know, the more reviews we get, the more people we can reach. Help us to show the world that ADHD is a gift, not a curse!  21:21 - Faster Than Normal Podcast info & credits  — TRANSCRIPT via Descript and then corrected.. somewhat:  [00:00:41] Peter: So Maitland, thank you for taking the time. I know you're on a busy schedule with your book tour in New York here. [00:00:46] Maitland: Yes. Thank you so much for having me. [00:00:47] Peter: How is New York, uh, treating you so far?  [00:00:49] Maitland: It's, it's been great. It's been a whirlwind, like, meeting with everybody and like, you know, just doing all of the, the. publicity, I guess you would say. It's, it's kind of like a machine. So I, I'm really having good time, but it's been very busy. I hope to have a little more like downtime to, to little freedom to go explore. More freedom. [00:01:03] Peter: Yeah. We're, we're a good city. We're coming back. You know, Covid was a bit here, but I did not, I could have least how many people are here now.  [00:01:11] Maitland: Yeah. It's definitely came back. Cause I had come, uh, to film something like a, I guess it was a little over a year ago, and, It was pretty bad. Yeah. Things were shut down.  [00:01:20] Peter: Still in, I'm at the point my daughter's, my daughter's class, like half the kids and their parents like went to their second and third homes and all that. Right now they're all back. I'm like, I'm like you. I kind of feel like you should pay an extra 50% tax on everything because you went down, left your most right. You left us right. But yeah, we're coming back. It's nice to see the city getting, getting back into form. We're, we're a good place. Um, so you're, you're here promoting burning rated X. Yes. Let's, so let's talk about that. So you have. The majority of people in Delta Entertainment, you have backstory, you have a history. You came, um, in mainstream media, right? Yes. You started Boy Me World. Yes. And, and of course White. It's one of my favorites because my friend Marlon's in it. That's so cool. And, and you know, you, but you weren't happy.  [00:01:59] Maitland: Yeah, it was an interesting thing because I started acting very young, uh, like 16 years old. I was on a soap opera and, uh, it was, it was a whirlwind experience at the time, but I really felt like I had to be a certain way all the time in Hollywood. Like I had to be a good girl. I had to, you know, be straighten narrow, like really, you know, be nice. That was a big thing. Be nice, and it, I think that was a dangerous thing for a Woman to be taught, like make them like you be nice. So, um, so I was, but I felt like I was always denying certain parts of myself to. You know, accommodate other people and, and Hollywood, you know, I got very lucky early on that I got a lot of jobs and, and high profile jobs. Uh, especially like when I got Boy Meets World and I was, I really wanted to like please everybody at Disney and the producers and everything. And I, um, but it was weird because on the show I was this sort of, not a sex object, but she was very, The U undertones were sexual, I guess. Right. And she was always the one dancing around in lingerie.   [00:03:08] Peter: And like you spoke about that, teasing the boys,you mentioned that in the, both the concept and your articles, the concept that, you know, Yeah. Here's Disney. Right. You know, pure, pure bread, Disney. Yeah. Um, the, the, the likes of which we all all know who comes from Disney. Everyone. Everyone. Wonderful and happy. And then, Yet they were putting you in situations that today, I think if we looked at them under the eye of 2022, right. We  [00:03:24] Maitland: question. Oh, absolutely. Like, like I say in the book, how I had to go up to the producer's office to try on lingerie for my lingerie scenes. So, and like not just once. I mean, there was 20 people in there, whatever, a big group. Mostly men. Uh, pretty much all men except for maybe one or, um, and then I would have to try on all of it and like, and I thought that this was my job to do this, and I never, at the time, I didn't even 0cConceptualize that it was a weird thing or it was ski or it was anything wrong with it. But then today you look at that, if that happened today and it went on the internet or anything, people would be fired for it Yeah.  [00:04:00] Peter: . Yeah. And I think that, you know, in a lot of ways, everyone, everyone complains about cancel culture and complains that, that were too high strung. But a lot of things, positive changes have, have resulted from not only people like you speaking out, but you know, all the way back to the Weinstein and, and things like that. Yeah. But at, at the time that you were doing it again, you were under. Let's just be a good girl. Let's just do the nice thing. Yeah. I didn't wanna, like, was it, was there a fear there that if you, if you acted the way you wanted to or if you acted the way you were, the way you thought you were supposed to, you'd be gone?  [00:04:29] Maitland: Yes, definitely. Oh yeah, always. I had very much anxiety about that kind of stuff, like very much anxiety that I wouldn't do the right thing, I wouldn't be the right way, or I wasn't good enough for the situation and I.  You know imposter syndrome. Yeah. May, Yeah, maybe. Yeah. . Yeah, I guess. But it was like, yeah, cuz I had to like kind of be this persona that I can't see all the time. I was not who I was like there, but in certain parts of myself, especially my sexuality and everything. And I had to hide like, Things that, you know, how I wanted to be exact cause I thought it was wrong or bad, or, you know, weird or, or they would judge me and come down on me. [00:05:07] Peter: Fear is a great motivator. Not necessarily in a good way, but fear is a, you know, I don't wanna lose my job, I'm gonna conform despite what it's doing to your mental health. Yeah. Right, right. So as you moved on and as you had different roles and, and at, at some. Was there a, I guess was there a moment where you just said, F this?  [00:05:28] Maitland: I mean, was it, was it, did it come all at once or how did it, And it's  interesting. Back at the time, I didn't think that it was having an effect on me in my mental health. Like I didn't conceptualize that. I thought it was just like there's something wrong with me that I. Wasn't doing things the right way, but, and looking back, writing the book, I really saw that in certain situations. Yeah. Um, so yeah, it was a long time, a long journey like finding myself, and it's interesting because of all, you know, pitfalls and disappointments that I had after I had a lot of success, like after white chicks and all that, when I was really typecast and things dried up and Hollywood would, they still wanted to keep me in the box that they had put me as a, like this good girl character, this, but they didn't wanna cast me cuz I was already a typecast character. Right. So, but they still wanted me there for like, whenever they needed a certain purpose for me, like a little episodic work or something like that. Um, so that became frustrating. So then I, I actually, that's when I moved to New York for a while. I got married and moved to New York. Okay. And it was kind of like a, it was a breath of fresh air to kind of get away from the Hollywood machine. I've heard that. Yeah. Because it was like, cuz when you're there you're just so caught up. Like, Oh, what, Who's going to this party? Right? What's this audition? Did you get that one? Like, did you book this one? And, uh, so, so getting away, I really like started to really discover myself and I started writing a lot and erotic writing. And I started really discovering my sexuality and stuff of, I guess not discovering it all the way Admitting it Okay. Is more of a thing because I think I knew all along that I, I, I just thought I was different and I thought I, like I say, I, I was a bad girl maybe inside , but, but I realized, you know, I'm not bad. It's kind of funny. My husband helped me realize that really. and he was very encouraging of me to explore this path that I really wanted to explore.  [00:07:17] Peter: I imagine so. I mean, I remember, and I, I guess I can't really equate much to it, but I've always imagined the, the day that I told my parents, I, I, I had one job in my life. I worked for, for America Online back in the nineties when, when a was the internet, right? Yeah. And I came back to New York and realized, They let us work anyway we wanted, which is why I did so well. My ADHD flourished cuz I was able to do, Oh, you wanna work at two in the morning? Great. As long as you get it done. Yeah. Yeah. Then I come back to New York and start working for a magazine and, and we have 8:00 AM meetings and 9:30 AM meetings and 10:00 AM editorial boards. And I'm like, What? This is Russia? And it, I, I quit within two. Yeah. And I remember telling my Dad, um, I'm gonna start my own PR firm and if it fails, and I actually said when it fails, when it fails, oh I'll get another. Cause I was so, who the hell am I to do anything, you know, entrepreneurial. And that was like 24 years ago. And I remember that was the scariest conversation I ever had have because I said, You know, I might need you to help pay my rent for a month or I might need what I didn't thank God, but you know, I got lucky and, and things were in. But tell us about the mindset when you decided you're gonna make this switch. You're gonna go from mainstream to adult, which to be, let's be fair, adult is kind of at this point, 2022, putting mainstream. Anyway, [00:08:20] Maitland: that's why it's so weird to say both things and I know we have to differentiate kind of, but, But it is weird that we have to differentiate.    [00:08:25] Peter: Right? So tell me about, Because you, you wrote a really interesting piece that I really enjoyed about your interaction with Elizabeth Berkeley. Oh, yes, I was Right. So tell us about that. [00:08:33] Maitland:  First, It was a very quick interaction. Yeah, but it was an interesting one. I, it was right after like the news broke that I was, Doing this big porn film and stuff. And I was in the industry and everything and I was, you know, walking out of the Whole Foods. And I saw her off to the side and she looks at me like, you know, our white eyes and they got wider. And I was like, and she had, I, I don't know, I think it was her husband at the time. I don't know if there's still, I don't know the situation. It was a man with her. Right. Um, and she, she just looks at and she turns to him and like whispers something like this and he looks, and it was such a weird like, situation to have them be like, Look at me like some sort of a, you know, beast down in the wild. [00:09:11] Peter: I'm sorry. And let's just, let's just be clear, this is Nomi Malone looking at you , right? This is the girl who, who went from Saved by the Bell, then Showgirls. So I'm, I'm not sure what she's actually looking at, where she comes off looking at you, everybody. So that really kinda pissed me off when I read that. The hell is she looking at you? [00:09:25] Maitland:  But it's a weird thing because once you go- when it's deemed adult, Right. It's different, right? Like in Hollywood films like now on like streaming shows and stuff, they go so close to it, of course.   [00:09:39] Peter: But, but they didn't go all the way. In 2003, um, I, I represented a company called New Frontier Media and, uh, New out of Denver, Ca, Boulder, Colorado, and New Frontier was the, this back in for porn was free, right? Yeah. Right. And, and, and they were the largest distributor of adult paperview on cable. Mm-hmm. . And I would go, I had my, I worked for them for four years and I took their stock price from like 99 to $10 because I forced my way into the Wall Street Journal and Forbes and Fortune. Mm-hmm. explaining, you know, I have a company who I'm repping, who is kicking the ass, their biggest competitor with Playboy. Yeah. By a factor of 10 x. Like, Oh, we great. They're adult. Oh, we can't touch that. I'm like, Why the hell not, not? It's so explaining when, and I got through and, and I remember getting New Frontier Media on the cover of Forbes was like, like the highlight. If that's my epi half right now. Yeah. The first porn company on Forbes. But, you know, but it was, it was the concept of, look, you, you, you're, it's one of those things that you're. Um, secretly. Yeah. Right. You're not gonna admit to it, but meanwhile, look at how much money is being driven. Yes. You know, let's, let's, let's look at something like Euphoria. Um, great show, but not really about the acting per se. Yeah. You know, there's, there's things we're looking at on that show that we know exactly what we're looking. Go onto Reddit. You're not gonna find, uh, uh, um, uh, reviews of the acting. You're gonna find one thing on your, you know, about your for. And so, so that being said though, it's a lot easier to say that then is to sort of tell us about, like, tell us about the day or whatever. [00:10:56] Maitland: It was, the moment where, All right, I'm doing this and, and  here we go. You know what, it wasn't like one certain moment. I mean it uh, it was cuz I started like exploring stuff on my social media sexy pictures and stuff. And this was along the time, by the time Girl Meet's World has spin enough appointments coming around, right? So there was a lot of attention and social media was really starting to really boom, like Instagram, especially in like Snapchat. And uh, so I started getting followers for like doing my sexy cosplay that I loved doing and doing bikini shots and all that stuff. Uh, but then I'd eventually. They started like taking down photos. Right. Actually, cuz a lot of people would complain for no reason to like these like fundamentalist types that watch, of course that are obsessed with like boy meets world being wholesome and wholesome and good and stuff. And uh, actually a lot of porn girls though suffer from people just, [00:11:46] Peter: Oh, of course for that question. [00:11:49] Maitland: Just taking their, I mean, look at the Visa MasterCard scenario. They had match  ridiculous. Um, so I kind of, my, my fans were like, Well, why don't you just sell content? And I didn't know what content was really at the time. I mean, I kind of heard of it, so I, but I said, Well, maybe, And I said, I'll start, I'll start a Patreon account, right? It's, you know, they patrons of your art. And I was gonna do like Playboy-esque type photos. I, I started the page and I, I didn't even like, Um, announced it. I just like did it one night and I said, ah, close it. Then the next morning there was like 20 people in there and then so I announced it and by the end of the week there was like 2,800 people. I was like, What? They're gonna buy my nudes, a create content.  [00:12:23] Peter: Holy shit! [00:12:24] Maitland: I know. And it was just like, then it kind of evolved from there. Cause I, I had been exploring like my sexuality and my writing and everything like that, so I was like, Oh, maybe I'll do. Girl, girl stuff then, and let's do this. And my fans responded and it was kinda like they were watch, they really were watching my journey along the way. Yeah. Like in real time. Um, and so then I, then I was like, What? You know, my husband and I had a big moment about when we said we're gonna have me do something with guys. So I, but I was so lucky. I found two guys in the porn industry who've been there so long, they were so professional. And they really like taught me along the way, like how would to do, this was a year and like almost a year and a half period before I got like a call from Vixon to do. Right. The black scene that went crazy viral. I might, might have been of, been , but it, but then I didn't even announce that to the press. It was all kind of just a internet moment.  [00:13:21] Peter: Oh, well by that moment you'd built, you'd built the audience.  [00:13:22] Maitland: Yes, but when I did. That's why everybody thinks I made this announcement. I just was saying I'm going to porn right now when I did the film drive for deeper.com. Mm-hmm. , which is Vic, one of Vic's brands. Um, but it was because I, the black team just blew up that, on that same day, Caden Cross, who, who is amazing performer and director in, in her own right, but she had started the brand deeper, right? Not very long before she had just, they just acquired the brand like four months or launched four months before, but she was doing her first feature. For it and, um, she lost her co-star on. The day my black scene came out. Oh wow. So, but she thought she'd have to quit the movie cuz you know, there's not a lot of people who can handle a lot of dialogue fast. And so, um, she went to Vixen and said, I think we're done with, we're not able to do it this year. And then they said, talk to Maitland. She just blew up and she can act. And then, so that really was, we did that and I decided, you know what, I'm really proud of this. I'm proud of the trailer, I'm proud of the whole thing of the feature, cuz full length features complete, you know, dialogue story. It was, um, so I did announce it to the press. That's went insane. And that's when everybody thought, Oh, she just made the switch all of of a sudden. It's always a backstory. Yeah. It's kind of like when people say, Oh my God, like they have a starring rule in something suddenly and they're like, You just showed up my imdb, but it's  [00:14:44] Peter: 30 years. [00:14:45] Maitland: I know I've been here forever.  [00:14:47] Peter: The everyone's like, You last company, you started this, sold it three years. It was 17 years of crap.  [00:14:51] Maitland: Yeah, no, that's what I mean.  [00:14:53] Peter: There's so much prep involved and so much time. Let me ask you this. One of the things that we touched on, and this is what I think my listeners can really relate to mm-hmm. um, being as out there as you. Right. Whether, whether it's it's on, uh, in Hollywood or, or in adult, there is a, how do you edit that out? How do you deal with the haters? How do you deal with the bad reviews? A lot of, when you're ADHD or ADHD or any sort of neurodiverse, yeah, be imposter syndrome is huge, but also, The premise that, I mean, I'll give a keynote to 10,000 people. Mm-hmm. , right? 9,999 of them will love it. There's one guy who didn't stand up for the standing ovation. That's all that I'm gonna think about for the next two weeks.  [00:15:27] Maitland:  I know. You know, what do you do? I used to be a lot more like that. Um, like I would get very, like, especially when I started doing sexier photos, like on Instagram stuff, I'd get those, like fundamentalist haters and stuff. I got very perked by it. I guess , that's the word. Um, but now I kind of. I don't embrace it. There's always like one or two trolls that just wants to attack you. Right? But I was actually told something early on when I was on the soap opera that the fan mail that we get, and I remembered this, like I really came to play with the trolls. No matter if it's good or bad, you're making an impact. If they didn't care, they wouldn't even be there. So it's, if you're not getting any attention or any feedback from people, that's cuz think about to be a troll, you have to be pretty investing.  [00:16:14] Peter: Exactly.  [00:16:15] Maitland: You watch people getting fired up about something, you're, you're making this connection. [00:16:18] Peter: Sounds like all the people who, who, when Nike came out to support Gay Rights, uh, everyone burned their Nike clothing. Okay. So yeah, just spend the a hundred bucks on sneakers and burn. Okay, cool. Cause you know, it's not like Maggie didn't make any money from that. That's true. That's true. But no, I, I, I've always said, if, if you don't have haters, you're not doing enough to change the status quo. [00:16:33] Maitland: That's, that's exactly good. That's, that's a perfect statement really. [00:16:37] Peter: So you just sort of put it outta your head. You're like, They're there, but  [00:16:40] Maitland: I try to, it means that I'm doing something. I mean, you know what always is kind of like, of course sounds the back. It's, Yeah, I don't like it, but, you know, but I try to, Yeah. Put it out my. And I do have some wonderful fans who will attack them, like nice backers. I don't even do all the work.  [00:16:52] Peter: There you go. Yeah. So  [00:16:54] Maitland: what's. You know what? I don't know. And, you know, well I really would like to sell the book rights and stuff cuz I, I think there's really potential there and we're working on that. And it's funny because ever since I have been in the Adult industry, I've actually had more opportunities, like people in mainstream coming to me and stuff. Like I shot a sitcom pilot last year. I'm like, yeah. So, uh,  [00:17:15] Peter: It's, it's, well, I think it's good timing for you also. I think that those barriers have definitely back from when I was repping in 2003, like it's definitely changed. [00:17:21] Maitland:  It's so changed and I really think it's because people have grown up with it on the internet. Yeah. Not grown up, but you know, when they get in there maybe.  [00:17:28] Peter: So, yeah, I remember. No, I, Believe me, I remember there was a bodega, um, on the corner where, where near, I grew up in the corner, I think it was 91st and Amsterdam with an owner who did not care what you bought or what you looked at, whether it was- that's funny- Beer or nudie mags. And I, you know, like the majority of kids in my, in my grade, like 86 to 90 in high school, 85 or whatever. I think we pretty much all found it through that mess, through that pod.  [00:17:50] Maitland: That's true. Yes. I know. I think kids today, they go online. [00:17:53] Peter: You don't have no idea how hard it was. [00:17:55] Maitland:  They just go online and that's so funny. But seriously, people in their twenties and thirties now, they're like, They're so open to it. And especially women. I am so surprised by the women that come up to me and they're like, This is so cool. I'm so glad you're doing this and making this change. And I, I think they feel like they can talk to me cuz I'm, I'm in, I was in their living rooms. Yeah. And I feel a little like a bridge or something between like, they can ask me questions. And people can feel a little safer talking to me about things they're curious about in the adult industry and stuff. But they all, Everybody watches it ?   [00:18:26] Peter: No. No question about it. But they, Yeah, I could tell you, I mean, I remember when I was wrapping the company had access to all their data and I could tell you what states and what cities and what towns in those states. Yeah. Um, spent the most money. Oh really? Uh, it was, yes. You know, little spoiler. It was always a red state. Yeah. Always. A And it was like the hardest portion of course. And then the hardest core stuff. Another the one- oh, this is terrible! Right. Then they go right home. They spend a hundred bucks. Exactly. Um, that's, So tell us what you do Last, last couple questions to keep this brief. Tell us what you do to get out of your head. So do you exercise? Do you, what is your thing when you, when you're like, Oh my God, I gotta, I'm, I'm, I'm gone. See an hour, see in two hours. See you here. What do you..  [00:19:03] Maitland: I actually trained to be a yoga teacher. Oh wow. I'd never taught, but I did it for myself. And that was actually after I came back from New York and I was really, that helped me discover a lot for myself too, to really like, get like out my head and really like, you know, meditate, I guess, and like do the practice. So I do do that. I really like to do that. I like to play with my dogs and stuff; most, the most innocent fun. I think that they just don't care. They just, they like, no matter what is going on in the world, they're just happy to be with you. And I think that's, Yeah. So I think I do, I like to do that, but um, and I like to, I like to read a lot and I like to, um, you know, I listen to music and watch them try to like, and not distract myself, but like, just to calm and relax. Yeah. Because yeah, sometimes I get stressed out with everything going on and stuff, so I really need to like, Just mellow down. [00:19:53] Peter:  Do you have any rituals or, um, habits that absolutely must happen every single day?  [00:19:59] Maitland: No, I don't think so. Not every single day. I mean, does coffee count ?  [00:20:04] Peter: Yeah, coffee counts.   [00:20:05] Maitland: Okay. Coffee's right up there with exercise. Sure. Why not? Yeah. And like exercise. Yes and no. I don't always get to do that, but I, but I do. But, um, yeah, I think coffee, coffee's my ritual. .  [00:20:17] Peter: I think coffee is a perfect way to end anything. So, So definitely this interview, Maitland Ward. Thank you so much. Um, tell us how people can find you? Web: https://onlyfans.com/maitlandward Socials:  @MaitlandWard on Twitter  INSTA  FB  and @Maitlandtoks on TikTok [00:20:23] Maitland:  Oh, on all of the social media is Maitland Ward, except I do have a TikTok now which I just started,  [00:20:29] Peter: listen, it's, I'm like the only person that, that Asia's not following their, you know, stealing their, oh my gosh, stealing their files. [00:20:34] Maitland: I, I'm so good at it yet, but we're It's MaitlandTok, because somebody had my name,  [00:20:40] Peter: Ah, someone took your name, you. You can probably fight and get that back if you want. [00:20:41] Maitland:  Yeah, I actually am working on that, but Awesome. Um, but yeah, it's funny. So yeah. But everywhere else is my name.    [00:20:52] Peter: Folks, the book is called. “Rated X: How Porn Liberated Me from Hollywood”. This is a wonderful, wonderful interview. Thank you so much, Maitland Ward for taking the time! Guys, as always, thanks for listening. We appreciate you being here. This one went a little longer. Normally we cap at 20 minutes because you know, #ADHD but we went a few minutes longer and I think that's awesome. And wanna give big shout out to Maitland Ward and to, Brian Scott Gross putting us together. Brian runs the amazing PR firm, uh, BSG Public Relations He's pretty awesome. He lives out in California. A really short guy though, but really nice guy, . And anyway, , thrilled that you took the time, and really, really grateful guys. We'll see you again next week. Thank you for listening. Talk to you soon. Credits: You've been listening to the Faster Than Normal podcast. We're available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google play and of course at www.FasterThanNormal.com I'm your host, Peter Shankman and you can find me at shankman.com and @petershankman on all of the socials. If you like what you've heard, why not head over to your favorite podcast platform of choice and leave us a review, come more people who leave positive reviews, the more the podcast has shown, and the more people we can help understand that ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Opening and closing themes were composed and produced by Steven Byrom who also produces this podcast, and the opening introduction was recorded by Bernie Wagenblast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week!

André Brisson, P. Eng., is the host of The Impulsive Thinker Podcast, the podcast for the high-achieving ADHD entrepreneur. Andre owns an entrepreneurial consulting engineering company and recently started Tactical Breakthroughs where he is developing the ADHDTransformation Journey program. Diagnosed late in life with severe ADHD and mild Asperger's(ASD), the mechanisms and systems he created to overcome his undiagnosed ADHD havehelped him succeed. He credits his undiagnosed ADHD as key to his success and a factor in restricting success. Since discovering how to turn his ADHD into a strength, people havesought him out for help with using their ADHD as a strength to drive success. André Brisson has a special ability is devouring and learning complex information and simplifying for others to solve complex problems. Like most entrepreneurs, André has started multiple companies, the two of which failed for various reasons. Learning from those failures, André now operates three very successful companies, including a self-managing entrepreneurial engineering firm specializing in niche markets that require unique training, experience, and impulsive instinct to try new things. Enjoy! In this episode Peter and Andre discuss:   00:45 - Thank you so much for listening and for subscribing! 00:48 - Welcome Andre Brisson! 02:40 - What is your success key for imparting complex information to the neurotypical? Ref: Ringette 04:15 - Simplifying the complex 05:06 - On the differences between informing and teaching 05:30 - When did you get diagnosed and what brought all that about? 06:02 - On inventing a “character” for yourself to be perceived as “not abnormal”. 07:00 - On then importance of being unique  07:45 - You said you were beginning to scare your kids- can you go into details on that? Ref: emotional dysregulation 09:55 - Have you ever bought anything strictly on impulse? Tell us in the comments! ;-) 11:00 - Parenting with ADHD/mild Asperger's prior to a diagnosis 12:20 - So when you got diagnosed, what was the treatment plan? Ref: DBT, CBT Executive Function What is Time Blindness? 13:36 - On learning your strengths and maintaining, managing and delegating what's not best for you. Aka Peter's “life rules” 15:15 - A bit more on delegating and staying in the lane, on the road. 16:38 - How can people find more about you? Email:  andre@andreb.ca André Brisson Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andre.brisson.1447/ LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrebrisson/ Twitter: @fatrol Website: www.andreb.ca Objective Engineering Inc. Website: www.objectiveeng.ca Tactical Breakthroughs Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TacticalBTs LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tactical-breakthroughs/ Twitter: @tacticalbts Website: www.tacticalbts.com The Impulsive Thinker Podcast Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/impulsivethinkerpodcast LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/company/impulsive-thinker-podcast/ Twitter: @impulsivthinker Website: www.theimpulsivethinker.com 16:51 - Andre, thank you so much!  Ref: Faster Than Normal the book! 17:75 - Thank you. Guys, as always thanks so much for subscribing! Do you have a cool friend with a great story? We'd love to hear. I'm www.petershankman.com and you can reach out anytime via email at peter@shankman.com or @petershankman on all of the socials. You can also find us at @FasterNormal on all of the socials. It really helps when you drop us a review on iTunes and of course, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already! As you know, the more reviews we get, the more people we can reach. Help us to show the world that ADHD is a gift, not a curse!  19:08 - Faster Than Normal Podcast info & credits  — TRANSCRIPT via Descript and then corrected.. somewhat: [00:00:38] Hey everyone, Peter. Shankman welcome to the episode of Faster Than Normal. I'm thrilled that you're here. It is great to have you again, we have a fun guest today. I'm gonna start with his tagline because his tagline pretty much says everything ;it's simplifying your complexities, which I think is just the best description I've ever heard of someone who works with people with A D D ADHD, people who are. ADHD. I love that. It's just so clear. Andre, Brisson and I, I screwed it up. I tried my was really hard to get. That was good. Was good's the host of the Impulsive Thinker podcast, very similar to FTN. Podcast for high achieving ADHD entrepreneurs. He owns an entrepreneur consulting engineering company, and recently started another company called Tactical Breakthroughs where he's developing an ADHD transformation journey program. He was diagnosed later in life with severe ADHD and mild Asperger's and the mechanisms and systems he created much like the stuff I did to overcome his undiagnosed ADHD have helped him succeed and he credits his undiagnosed as a key to his success and a factor in restricting success as well. So that's ING to discover, um, Since discovering how to turn his ADHD into a strength people have out for help using their ADHD as well. You talk in your bio about how you have special ability for taking complex information and simplifying for others and first thought, when I heard that was something that happened with me. And I think my mom, like five years ago when she got a new iPhone and she was having a problem doing like four things. And so I just went over there. The their, my parents' apartment. And I'm like, here, gimme the phone done. Dun dun dun. She's like, great, but I didn't learn how to do it. Right. Right. And I realized I'm terrible at taking complex information that I understand and teaching people how to understand it. I just want to do it and get it done. That's an ADHD thing. So let's, let's start there. What is, what is your sort of success key there where you actually have the ability and the, the patience or whatever it is to take that information and simplify it down so other people can learn it as opposed to just doing it for them.  [00:02:55] Andre: Well, the, to me, that's the key difference is I don't do it for them. I've always helped people understand, break down something complex into simple steps or layman terms so that they can act on it. And then they can think about it differently to act on it at a future time. Um, like for example, and on in Canada here, we have Ringette. It's a, it's a, it's a sport on ice for women. So basically they got a rubber ring with a spear, their stick. And I, I referee then I was in an evaluator and, uh, an officially evaluator. So what I actually did was I always asked them what's. The rule, like usually you guys say this occurred, this occurred that I call it right or not. So I go by and says, what's the rule. The rule says this. And then we break down the steps of what occurred and apply the actual rule to those steps. So I step it out for people so that they can understand it. And if you don't understand the first way, I tackle it at a different angle until they get it. And what I'm trying to teach them is stepping out the thought process to come with their own conclusions, with the facts that they know they already had. And didn't realize it. Okay.  [00:04:04] Peter: That makes sense. Yeah, it does. It does. It's interesting. Cause that, that takes patience and, and that's one of the few things that most people with ADHD simply don't have anywhere near half of. [00:04:15] Andre: Mm-hmm yeah. The thing is a lot of times I can simplify that complex information. So someone understands it and so that they can act on it and I can make it real. So usually I, I I'm able to connect something that's in their life or someone else's life or mine. And that's what I do a lot on the podcast is this is a snare that happened. It kind of happened to me. And then people, once you make it real people seem to click with it better.  [00:04:39] Peter: Yeah. Makes sense. And, and yeah, I mean, that's, that's a, a, you know, my keynote speaking trait, you tell stories that people have people who relate to and all of a sudden, it's not some guy on stage talking about something foreign, it's something. Oh yeah. I get that.  [00:04:51] Andre: Yeah. I. I had a chat today with two different people. We, I kind of, I blurted this out and I thought it was pretty smart now to think about it now, but I think there's a difference between informing to understand versus educating, to teach. So if, and for me, I was talking about advocacy as you know, I, I stopped educating people. I just tried to inform people so they can understand adult ADHD and the differences.  [00:05:17] Peter: That makes a lot of sense. I think that also the more informed they are, the more they feel like they can have a handle on it, as opposed to. I guess educating. Yeah. Yeah. They might not necessarily get, no. That makes sense. Tell us about, um, your background. You said you were late, you were late, uh, diagnosed how late?  [00:05:36] Andre: Uh, about four years ago when I was 44. Oh, wow. Um, and then that was a, that was all because of a life Tempest. As I've been calling had three perfect storms collide at once. Um, got into a bad business partnership. I got bored with my first company once it got successful. So I S sabatoged that. Things weren't going well at home. And my Sy symptoms overtook me and controlled me for a couple of years to the point where my kids are just looking at me scared. And I said, I gotta get help. Huh. And got the diagnosis. I went actually to get the diagnosis to prove it wasn't ADHD. Cause I thought there was something worse, wrong with me. Because that diagnosis, like it was too simple of a solution to explain my last 44 years and develop a character that I became so I can fit in and not be looked as abnormal. And then, so I got really good at playing this character. Now I'm learning how to be me and to differentiate the two, because it almost became, you know, I almost, I brainwashed myself to believe that that was the person I was or shouldn't be. [00:06:38] Peter: No, I get that. I mean, it's, it's, you know, fitting in and not being, uh, you know, and not sort of ever really fitting in with the crowd or with, with, uh, any group in, in school, you know, and that takes a toll. I don't think, I think we're just starting to realize what kind of toll that takes on people, um, and how much, uh, that that's re you know, those early forming, forming years are really responsible for sort of right. The kinda stuff you deal with.  [00:07:03] Andre: And then I was overlooked because I was doing well in school. Like I'm also gifted. Um, and so since you're successful and you're doing well in school, you can't have it. You're just not doing what you're supposed to. You're not trying to hard enough for, you know, stop being unique. That was my favorite word. You're too unique to be part of this and I've always fought the right to be unique. And I always thought we should all, we're all different. I understood why we were always trained to say we're everyone's alike, but we're not. We're all unique. [00:07:35] Peter: So what, when you get, I'm curious, you mentioned something, you said, um, you said you had symptoms that were starting to, uh, that were starting to scare your kids. Ex can you go into detail on that?  [00:07:47] Andre: Oh, emotional dysregulation times 2 million. Um, it didn't take much to spark me off. And then all I would do was I'd just be screaming at them for something silly. And when I started being cognizant of a screaming at them, for being silly, my brain was actually saying, Hey buddy, you're overreacting here. You should stop. And then I got the other part of my brain going, eh, forget it. Let's keep going. I'm already into it. Um, so when I saw those look in their eyes, it gave me a. It scared me cuz I saw myself. Um, there when I was a child and that's when I said no, no more, no more. So I went and got help. So the emotional dysregulation definitely took over, um, and enforced, uh, and then my impulsivity and the no filter uh, aspect of my brain having no filter, just my impulsivity, my ver my words would just come out and I just started not caring anymore. And that's when I said that, that, that the symptoms took over, um, impulsive bias, impulsive business partnerships, knowing that it was not going to be good. Um, and for me, I realized with time, since my diagnosis, I have a fear of being idle and when I get bored, that's when I could become dangerous. And that's when, so my physical hyperactivity, even at, as an adult kicks in, if I'm bored and then what happened was with my other company, once the startup phase was done and we're successful in maintaining success and having good gradual growth, I was bored. The, the entertainment, the interest was gone. So I created chaos. Impulsively trying this, trying that in muscle dysregulation, continuing. Um, and, and then just going on with the inattention, not caring, I had a really great point and it just escaped me. It'll come back to that's yeah. [00:09:46] Peter: I mean, that's that happens all the time. You, you go down the route, press rabbit, home, like, wait, my original point was like five feet away from that. Yeah. Um, I think that probably, I think every episode [00:09:55] Andre: and the impulsivity of buying stuff. You know, spending sling money, losing cash flow, all that type of stuff. That was it.  [00:10:03] Peter: It's interesting. I've never, I, I, I, I understand that. And I get that. I I'm fortunate. I don't think it ever, I never went down that rabbit hole too much, but I've certainly made impulse. I mean, you know, mm-hmm, virtually everything I've ever bought in my life has been impulse by, I, I do you wind up doing research on the product you bought after you bought it? [00:10:22] Andre: um, No. I usually do all the research ahead of time. So I know what I'm buying is good is just deciding to do it. Like the one was, Hey, we got a bunch of cash in the bank account. Um, I've been looking at building a server. This is quite a few years ago getting a server for the office. We got a big team, so I'm just gonna blow 40 grand right now, rather on a finance plan. Um, cuz at the same time I didn't care. Um, which was part of it, which was the interest part. Um, but the other thing too Peter. I think that I think a lot of people are getting diagnosed later in life. And for me, I never realized this about two years ago was. It really started to take control. My symptoms. When I had kids, when they disrupted my, my rhythm at home, my routine at home, that was my calm down time. When I got home, I could rejuvenate and now having being stuck, cuz you're scheduled being disrupted all the time. Cuz kids just want to be with you. They just wanna last minute try different things and no, no, I like, I just sat down, I'm ready to do a bunch of stuff and now you're disrupting me. So that's when I think it started to steamroll the effects of these symptoms.  [00:11:35] Peter: I totally totally get that. It's it's a, having a kid. I got diagnosed before I had my daughter, but it was Def it's definitely a, um, you know, you sort of, you get this vibe where it's like, okay, uh, dinner's over, you know, I have an hour till I have to put her to bed, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna sit down and breathe and just whatever. And then it's like, dad play with me. And of course I, I will, but it took a while to sort of, uh, be able to focus entirely. Right, right. And  [00:12:01] Andre: not oh, huge. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then you feel shitty as a, as a parent, cuz you can't give your full attention or you're always thinking, how can I get outta this? I , how can go back to what I was doing exactly. Cause I need to get that done. I gotta get it done. What's going on? Right?  [00:12:14] Peter: No question about it. So when, so when you got diagnosed, what, what was the, uh, what was the treatment plan? Was it medication? Was it, . [00:12:22] Andre: We, uh, tried medication, uh, I think I'm part of that 20% that doesn't work well. Um, but I think the, some of the medication I was on at that time, I needed it just to settle and almost had stopped my brain for a while so I can just catch my breath and take everything in. And then, um, Slowly got off of it. Um, but for me, the big thing is I just hyper-focused for a good year and a half on learning everything I could about ADHD interesting and simplifying it. And that's why I tell people like educating yourself the effects and then is huge. And then I was part of therapy group therapy. Now I'm just finishing up my dialectal behavioral therapy. I've done cognitive behavioral therapy, ah, even the group therapy on how to have fun. But it was a neurotypical direction, but anyways, um, a lot of talking with similar people helped. And then for me to simplify ADHD down to, I think it's its core, it's an executive functioning dysfunction and time blindness. Those two affects the, the, the, the DSM symptoms of inattention hyperactivity, impulsivity, and inattention. Um, that made a lot of sense to me. And then at the same time, shortly before my ADHD diagnosis, I got diagnosed with type two diabetes. And that's when I realized I can't get rid of it. Like I diabetes, I can't get rid of it. Nothing I can do can cure it, but I can manage it and extend my life. And that's what I saw with ADHD. .Manage the symptoms so I can work well. And I had a mantra my whole time for a long time saying your strengths can become your weaknesses. And when I put that together with my ADHD symptoms, as long as I can manage my symptoms, That's how, why I succeed as an entrepreneur and those are my strengths, but if I let them go be overutilized or underutilized and then become my strengths. And that's when I say ADHD can become a disorder, is when they're impeding your day to day. [00:14:23] Peter: I agree. I, I think it's another way of saying, you're saying the same thing that I say a different way, which is, you know, you have to have. These life rules that you can't deviate from because you know, you, your brain works a certain way. And so you put these right pro processes into place that allow you to utilize it to your best ability. Mm-hmm . And if you, if you deviate from that, you're gonna go off the road.  [00:14:42] Andre: Right. And, and then the other thing I discovered too, so for, I don't know, I can't do math. I'm an engineer. I need a calculator here. Um, so about a good 20 years, all I did was read all the self-help books. I've taken almost every assessment out there to identify strengths, but my therapist actually said you were doing all that to find out what was wrong with you to concentrate on what's not good enough to build on. So with my diagnosis, I took there's three good tools that I use that really identifies my talents and strengths. And. Take those. And I help people with these assessments too, to understand what's your unique strength and talent. So if we could just stay in those abilities, Then it's easy to hyperfocus and you're having a lot of fun and you're not, and don't waste your time on things you're not good at and you don't like doing that. So as an entrepreneur, it's handy, you, you got staff, you can have people, you delegate a lot of those, but I help people understand what their unique talents and strengths are, where they should be spending their time, where they can get a lot of energy and enjoyment every day, be creative and then have a team around you that just take care of the stuff you don't like. [00:15:50] Peter: That's a hundred percent given you, have you have someone or people to do the stuff that you're terrible at? I mean, that's, you know, for 14 years now, I've had, I've had my assistant, it's a game changer.  [00:16:00] Andre: Yep. Like we got a minimal limited brain mental brain, uh, energy, right. Every day. And I think ADHD, we just have a really good ability to effectively use it to run all day, or we have a really great efficient way to inefficiently use our mental energy and at the end of the day, it, so if we're starting to do things we don't like to do all day, then we're really, really burnt out at the end of the day. But if we can stay in that lane, man, you can do that seven days straight and not get, get tired. [00:16:29] Peter: It's a great way to put it. It's a great way to close too. I wanna keep us to our 20 minute mark. Uh, tell us how people could find you?  [00:16:36] Andre: Uh, you can find me at, uh, Andre, Andre, b.ca I'll take anyone's email. Um, but you can find me on LinkedIn. Our tactical bts.com is another source.  [00:16:47] Peter: We'll put all the, all the, all your links that you gave us. We'll put 'em in the, uh, in the podcast notes. Andre, thank you so much for taking the time. This was really, really informative. We're definitely gonna have you back, uh, at some point in the near future.  [00:16:57] Andre: Well, I appreciate you having me, Peter. And, um, like I said, like, I don't think I said this, but, uh, yet till now, um, you're Faster Than Normal book. I actually bought it five years ago, thinking it was one how I can work faster. then I bought it again, uh, and read it. And then I found the other book, but I think I really liked your aspect too, that, you know, it's not a disorder. It's our, it's a, it's a very unique ability of doing things and to not thinking as a negative. And, and make it work. And I really, a lot of stuff in there I re not reflected it hit me. I can, I understand exactly what was in there. And it was also comforting to know what I created in the past. Unknowingly. I was on the right track. So I thought it was a really good book and I do recommend it to a lot of people. [00:17:45] Peter: Thank you, man. That's a really, really kind of you. Guys as always, Faster Than Normal, We wanna hear what you're thinking. We wanna hear of any guests you might wanna hear from,  shoot us a, a email Peter@shankman.com. We're on all the socials. You know, our, our handles by now. Thank you for listening. We will see again next week with another guest, we appreciate you and know that ADHD and all forms of neurodiversity are gifts, not curses! We'll see you next week! [00:19:08]Credits: You've been listening to the Faster Than Normal podcast. We're available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google play and of course at www.FasterThanNormal.com I'm your host, Peter Shankman and you can find me at shankman.com and @petershankman on all of the socials. If you like what you've heard, why not head over to your favorite podcast platform of choice and leave us a review, come more people who leave positive reviews, the more the podcast has shown, and the more people we can help understand that ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Opening and closing themes were composed and produced by Steven Byrom who also produces this podcast, and the opening introduction was recorded by Bernie Wagenblast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week!

Gili Malinsky is a lead work reporter at CNBC where she covers labor and employment law, U.S. work trends, and mental health. She has contributed to outlets including The New York Times, NBC News, MTV News, the Village Voice, and many others. She's also a playwright, having written a parody of the D.A.R.E. program called “The Drugstoppers” and, most recently, written and performed a monologue called “This is My First ADHD Support Group” at the New York Theater Festival. The monologue is loosely based on her experience getting let go and fired many times before discovering she has ADHD. She's planning to expand it into a full-length play also touching on anxiety and depression. Gili is an Aquarius, thank you for asking. This is another good and fun one, enjoy!  In this episode Peter and Gili discuss:   00:45 - Thank you so much for listening and for subscribing! 00:46 - Live again from the flop house… 01:21 - Welcome Gili Malinsky! 02:22 - Welcome fellow BU Alumn! When did you get diagnosed? 03:06 - Our stories are a little similar; what was it like for you growing up? 05:01 - What if we had known we had ADHD during college? 05:28 - Would Peter change anything about his life prior to his ADHD diagnosis? 06:16 - Would Gili change anything? How about her work experiences? 08:21 - Gili's first ADHD epiphany about work, (via therapy) 09:20 - On finding her condition actually has a name; not alone in this! 09:45 - A note on self-forgiveness 10:38 - Peter's “leftover pizza concept” 11:44 - Once diagnosed, what changed, what were you able to do, how do you keep on track? 13:30: Ref: Books!  Smart But Stuck -Thomas E. Brown and Driven To Distraction -Edward M. Hallowell [Dr. Hallowell was Peter's first ever guest on FTN, you can hear his interview HERE!] 13:55  Ref: Peak Mind -Amishi Jha 14:36 -How do you handle deadlines? 15:49 - Talk about Imposter Syndrome? 16:55 - How can people find more about you?  On the Web: https://www.cnbc.com/gili-malinsky-bio/ Socials: @Malinskid on Twitter & INSTA 17:42 - Thank you. Guys, as always thanks so much for subscribing! Do you have a cool friend with a great story? We'd love to hear. I'm www.petershankman.com and you can reach out anytime via email at peter@shankman.com or @petershankman on all of the socials. You can also find us at @FasterNormal on all of the socials. It really helps when you drop us a review on iTunes and of course, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already! As you know, the more reviews we get, the more people we can reach. Help us to show the world that ADHD is a gift, not a curse!  19:08 - Faster Than Normal Podcast info & credits  TRANSCRIPT via Descript and then corrected.. somewhat: [00:00:36] Peter: Peter Shankman yo, yo, what's up everyone. Peter Shankman here from Faster Than Normal . Another episode. I am thrilled to have you with me. I am doing this again from the flop house. Reason I began started telling you about the flop house with my apartment. I had the massive water issue and, and it's finally being renovated. Uh, so I, in New York, you can't just move your stuff to another room. You actually have to move it out of your apartment. So a bunch of men came and they packed up everything I owned ever in my life, and they took it to some storage unit in Queens. I threw an air tag into a couple of boxes and I, I, I look at the air tag and remember, like, I used to have a Peloton and I used to have a bed and I used to have all this stuff. And now I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm on a couch in a one bedroom down in . Battery park city. And it's, it's a little odd. Either way life goes on as, as does Faster Than Normal! Welcome to the stage today, Gili and I probably, I probably just pronounced that wrong, even though she told me 10 seconds ago ahead pronounce so welcome to a ADD, Malinsky who is a lead. Did I pronounce it wrong? Gili Malinsky is a lead work reporter at CNBC. All right, so we're talking about some business press today. She covers labor and employment law, US work trends and . Mental health. She contributes to outlets, including New York times, NBC news, MTV, the Village Voice, and many others. She's also a playwright. She's written the parody of the dare program, which I love because D.A.R.E did more to introduce me to drugs than ever keep me off of it. And that's called The Drugstoppers . And most recently she wrote and performed a monologue called This Is My First ADHD support group at the New York Theater Festival. I love that the monologue is based loose on her experience, getting, let, go and fired many times before discovering she had ADHD welcome to my world. She's planning to expand into a full length play. Also touching an anxiety and depression. Love that. And I love that she puts . She ends her bio with Gili's an Aquarius. Thank you for asking. welcome to FTN you're awesome. I love you already. [00:02:19] Gili: Oh, thank you so much. Yaaaay! [00:02:22] Peter: So I just also share with both Terriers, you went to Boston University, you graduated mm-hmm um, uh, 94 0 4, 14 years after me. Yeah. So, whatever . So you went to BU when did you get diagnosed? You get diagnosed at school or after school? After school? [00:02:36] Gili: No, I got diagnosed when I was 33. So I got diagnosed three years ago in that 2019. Yeah.  [00:02:41] Peter: That was about the same age as me. Um, yeah. Wow. But what was it like for you? Cause for me, everyone listened to this podcast knows I, I was. Had the social acuity of a turnip and, and, you know, barely passed by the skin of my teeth. I mean, I was at BU in the college and general studies with literally a D plus average until I got into, uh, college communications where it's like, oh, I Al I have to do is write? Okay. Here. And, you know, went to A's, but it was, it was brutal. I was on academic probation for like four years. How did you, what, what was your story like growing up? Tell us.  [00:03:07] Gili: Sure. So I, uh, I'm the listed three grew up just that's out of Boston in a town called Newton. My brother was diagnosed with ADHD when he was pretty young. I think he was like, it must have been when he was in middle school. Um, so it was sort of always like in the background as just. Something that we knew was in the family, but I, I didn't really get too deep into it. I don't think that he and I even really talked about it until the last few years. And, um, I was always like a, you know, pretty good student was always genuinely interested in school, kind of a big nerd, really liked learning things and was always really engaged, um, by what we were doing. So. I think, and, and I learned fast, you know, even if I wasn't necessarily always paying attention, like it just, I had a good enough brain to soak up the information and I was super engaged, uh, that I just like did pretty well in school. At BU I think, I mean, definitely the stakes got higher. There was a lot more work to do. I, I don't think that, um, The concept of working harder, really computed for me. Whereas like I did pretty again, I did pretty well in high school and I think that like I did all my assignments and stuff. I mean, there were certainly things that I did very, very last minute, which, you know, our people know all about. Um, but, um, at school at when I got to BU I think like suddenly they were like really piling on the work and I, how to get myself to do like. More work to be more planned about doing the work to not leave everything to the last second, I think was really beyond me. And then I was so far, you know, so far away from my diagnosis, but it certainly wouldn't have occurred to me that something was, you know, quote unquote wrong at that point. So I think I, I was like to be honest again, because I was genuinely interested in everything and, um, you know, curious to learn, I, I. Probably like a A's, B's some C's it wasn't as good as in high school, but it was, I wasn't a terrible student. I, I could have done better though. Like had I known, had I known, um, I definitely could have done better, but, uh, [00:04:55] Peter: I think that's the that's isn't isn't that though the, the catch phrase of anyone, with ADHD early lives I could done better. Had I known.  [00:05:01] Gili: Yeah, totally. And I it's so interesting because like now having reported on ADHD and adults with it, like I've, I've heard of this, this thing of sort of, um, the depression that the diagnosis sets on, because there's this looking back and thinking like how much better you could have done, how much more you could have achieved off until this point? I will say I did not experience that personally, but yes. Thinking back, like I know I could have done better.  [00:05:24] Peter: Um, you know, it's interesting. Go ahead. Go ahead. No, no, no, please. Yeah. What's interesting about that is I was, I was about to comment that neither have, I, I haven't either. Um, I am very much of the belief and look, maybe this is just something I've been telling myself to, to, to, to, you know, get through it. But I am of the belief that. All the crap that I had to put up with in high school, in college, almost failing out, having very few friends, being that awkward. I am a, I, I, everyone says, what would you go back and change? I wouldn't change a thing. Yeah. Cause I'm like the believe that everything that, that I got everything, I survived, everything. I learned how to do everything that brought me to this moment to is, is what got me to where I am right now. All that. I mean, it was a nightmare. I wouldn't wish some of those days coming home and just crying myself sleep from weeks on end. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, but yeah, I, I believed that I wouldn't be anywhere near whatever level of success I've reached in my life had it not been for ADHD.  [00:06:16] Gili: Totally. Yeah. That resonates so much. Uh, yeah. And which I, and that actually like brings me to, um, the sort of work world, which is really where I started getting into trouble. Um, because I also yeah. Went through a lot of hardship when I came to that. So, so yeah, I think, um, went to school for journalism, kind of always knew that that the very least I wanted to start my career as a writer there. Um, you know, don't see an end insight right now, really love being a journalist, but, um, yes, I've definitely been dabbling with other things, but, um, I started, you know, I was like freelancing for a lot of these publications. Some of them you read in my bio and then, um, started getting staff, writing gigs at, you know, major media outlets. Um, and I kept fucking up, like, so, you know, I, uh, was just getting super overwhelmed. They were giving me these like very straightforward tasks and it was just like, my brain could not handle them. It could not organize them, you know, could not help me like do them in methodical ways. It would. So much information all at once. And like, all I could do was just sit in my computer and stare at my email or look at YouTube. Like it was just, it was so, too much, too much all at once. Um, you know, I would miss a lot of deadlines and, uh, you know, I would like prefer to do the easier tasks and the harder ones that were really like the crux of the job anyway. Um, and so, um, I ended up getting let go. You know, and it's, oh, there's, you know, you get, let go for lots of reasons, but, but certainly like looking back, I know that that played into it, um, because I can see the fuckups that I made along the way, you know, this happened time and time again. And like you said, like it, you know, It's really heartbreaking. I think like we live in this very individualistic society that tells us if something like that happens, it's only your fault. Um, you know, and if it keeps happening then, like, what is the, what is the conclusion that I can come to? Like other than that I'm a fuck up myself, you know, that something is deeply broken and wrong with me. Yeah. Um, and so, yeah, it was very miserable. I was broke, um, and I felt like an idiot and I, I, I hated myself. Um, and then I think after the, I don't remember what, how many times this happened before I finally, uh, was talking to my therapist and was telling her that I have this like motivation thing at work, or like four or five months into a job. Like I just lose all motivation and it's I want the job. I always want the job, but I'm just like sitting there. Like trying to force myself, trying to, will myself to do the work. And like, everything is slower. And I I'm like going home and reading productivity hack articles and like nothing works. Um, and she was like, you know, that could be ADHD. Like, have you been tested for that? Uh, and I said, no, uh, I haven't, my brother has it. Uh, but no, I that's. That's something that it, you know, I've gotten tested for. Um, and I did. And lo and behold, I have it.  [00:09:03] Peter: nice to put a name to everything that you've experienced  [00:09:05] Gili: Well, that's the thing, is that like, for me having a name, like even before I was officially diagnosed just that morning when she said that I might have it, like I cried the rest of the morning because it was. Oh like, yes, exactly. This has a name. If this is what it is, it has a name. Um, I'm not crazy. There is something about me because you know, you can see the people around you are functioning differently, that they're processing information differently from you and that you just can't get yourself to work in the same way. And suddenly it was like, oh, I'm not crazy. Like, there really is something in my brain that is making it difficult for me to, to perform in the, you know, in the same way that they are. And also like maybe I can actually forgive myself. Like that was the big thing for me. I think like it was less looking back and being really upset at everything you could have done and more like, oh, like maybe I don't have to have this growing anger inside of me, this growing self hatred. And I can kind of just start to let that go. [00:10:02] Peter: It's funny. I, I, I, I, I try to, I make light of that. Sometimes I make light of the fact that what you said specifically about how you are, uh, you know, other people do things and don't seem to have the same problems that you do, and you're watching them do these things. And I think that I've always had that and it's always been frustra, even knowing what I have and knowing that the things I do. Work. Right. Like, you know, I get up at four in the morning to exercise before my day mm-hmm so I have the Dopamine I needed, but every once in, so while I'm like, God damn it, why do I have to do that? Why do people do, why can people sleep in until six or seven, then just go to work and be on. And, you know, but I always make a joke out of it. I talk about, you know, I call it the leftover pizza concept that, that, that. Other people, they work a full day. They come home. They, I don't wanna cook 'em so they order a pizza. They eat order pizza. They have two slices. They put the rest of in the fridge. That's leftover pizza. Yeah. Never had leftover pizza in my fucking life. that's that's that's not a thing. I order a pizza. I eat the pizza. Yeah. And you know, for me, it's the same thing with alcohol, right. So I'm very aware. I quit for several years. I'm very aware of how I drank. I mm-hmm, maybe, maybe a few times a year in very specific conditions with very specific people. Um, because it's not one. Right. And so every once in a while I get a little frustrated, you know, how come they get to do this in I and I don't. Mm. Um, but then I think about it, I'm like, well, they also don't have the faster brain goodness. Right. They, you know, they haven't started and sold three companies by 40. They haven't mm-hmm , you know, done things like that. So, so, so, so ya try to find the benefit, but yeah, every once in a while, it's, it's very, very frustrating, but let's talk for a second because. Once you got diagnosed, right? Mm-hmm I I'm sure that you've been putting things into play. Same way. I did. Same way. Almost everyone does. You've been putting things into play subconsciously to allow yourself to get through, to, to work, to get on deadline and things like that. Once you got diagnosed here, you are on a high pressure job with deadlines mm-hmm um, once you got diagnosed, what changed and what were you able to do? Cuz obviously you're you let's see CNBC, they haven't fired you today and said, you're, you know, you can't do this. So tell us about the kind of things I think this will interest the audience. Tell us about the kinda things you put into play. What are your tips and tricks to make sure you don't go down the wrong road. I mean, for Christ sake, you have to do, you know, half your job is research, right? Mm-hmm half your job is there's a, how do you not wind up eight hours later on Wikipedia looking up Roman sewage canals, having nothing to do with your original story.  [00:12:10] Gili: Wow. That was that's like Tuesday. No, um, no, totally. um, no, no, no, totally. Um, so yeah, it's a great question. I mean, for me, I think the biggest thing was I just started learning about it immediately and like equipping myself with knowledge. And so I started reading. I read, um, there's one called smart, but stuck. Um, which I read and then, uh, driven to distraction is another one I read recently. And one thing that these things did for that these books did for me is by, is like, I, I was reading stories of other people who have this neurological disorder as well, and seeing myself in them and feeling again, like less alone and more okay. Um, and so I think. Again, that, that anger and that self hatred that I think in and of itself was a distraction kind of started to dissipate and created space for me to be able to focus better. Um, but that was the first thing is I just kind of started learning about what this is. Um, I think I kind of messed around a little bit with Adderall. Like I was like trying, I tried a little bit, but, but I think, you know, I was. The psychiatrist I said, said I have mild ADHD, you know, whatever that means. So, so I don't know if it was because the Adderall doses that I tried, like didn't really work for me or whatever it was, but I decided that I was gonna just try to make do without them, without that, you know, without medication mm-hmm . Um, but, um, yeah, I mean, so have always worked out but have started, um, but started doing it first thing in the morning. Um, I, I was, yeah, I was like, have always kind of messed around with doing it sometimes throughout the day, but that has always been part of my routine. Um, and definitely find that that's an amazing release first thing in the morning. Um, I, as of the last six months, I've also been doing some mindfulness meditation for like 12 minutes when I first wake up, I read, um, this book called peak mind, um, by, um, a researcher and professor in Miami at university of Miami. I mean, Amishi Jha and she, the whole book is about the attention system in the brain. Um, you know, and she touches on ADHD and of course, like there's no real fix for this brain, but there are, there are methods to, um, sharpen, I guess, some components of it. What meditation for me has helped with has just been, um, to have a growing awareness of where my mind is. And so maybe I can't stop it from going, you know, in a trillion directions, basically every 30 seconds. But at the very least I have more of an awareness of where it is and I. I can reel it back to what it needs to be doing. Like that's just something that, you know, that's a skill that has really helped me.  [00:14:35] Peter: No question. What do you, um, how are, how do you handle deadlines?  [00:14:39] Gili: It's yeah, also such a great question. Cause I have them every day. Part of it is the, you know, the, so I actually got hired at CNBC about four months after I got diagnosed. Um, and so at that point I had already sort of started the process of like learning what this isn't. How do I work with the brain that I have, um, It just worked out that I was in a really supportive system. And so my, you know, shout out to Kelly Grant, Esther Bloom, um, Jenna Goudreau , these are my editors and now Hannah Howard, they're, they're very, um, supportive. They're very open. They're very welcoming, you know, and. You know, having that external motivation is extremely helpful in, and getting me to continue to be motivated to get my work done. But I think what happened by nature too, is like the longer you do something, the better at it, you get. Right? And so I have learned, you know, by being in this environment where I'm super supported. To do my job very quickly, you know, to be a better writer to say, this is good enough, you know? Good enough is, that's what I have. So yeah. Good enough is super helpful for deadlines. Um, cause it's easy to be a perfectionist, like what you want is to give them the best, but it doesn't matter. Good enough is like that will just have to suffice. Um, yeah. I don't know. Does that answer? I can think of other things.  [00:15:49] Peter: Yeah. Perfectly last, last question. Yeah. Talk about imposter syndrome.  [00:15:53] Gili: No.  Imposter syndrome, you talk about, about syndrome, huh? imposter syndrome. Um,  [00:15:59] Peter: Hmm. Do you have it, does it affect you? How do you do? Hmm,  [00:16:03] Gili: I mean, sure. Of course. Like I see lots of people around me, you know, at a level of success that I would love that I would love to be at. Um, but. I, you know, I have been blessed with a very big ego [00:16:16] Peter: Haaah! Spectacular!  [00:16:20] Gili: No, I think, um, I think to be honest with you, like, um, yeah, I, I come from a very supportive environment. My parents are, are super loving and supportive. And so I think that I do have some level of like self confidence. Um, That has really helped, like push me through, even in the moments where I was really failing. Um, I mean, I, I get jealous of people. Of course I do, but, but I somehow I think my Ambi, my ambition, um, you know, and just my, like my hunger to, to, to create, um, has just, you know, pushed me through even whatever insecurities I might have had.  [00:16:54] Peter: Awesome. I love it. I love it. Yeah. Wow. This has been amazing. Um, how could people find you tell, tell us where you are, uh, Gil, where, where you go, what your Instagrams are, uh, whatever, your favorite type of pizza, whatever. [00:17:07] Gili: Oh, favorite type of pizza? Uh, well, I. I mean, I like French fries better than pizza. I will just say I'm a French fries person, even more than a pizza person. So you'll  [00:17:13] Peter: and we're done here guys. Thanks for listening. It's been a pleasure. We'll talk.  [00:17:18] Gili: sorry. I like pizza, but French fries would like too much ketchup. That's my go to junk food. I love it. I love it. People can find me on Twitter and Instagram, um, at Molin kids. So M a L I N S K I D. That's my handle.  [00:17:33] Peter: Yeah, a L L I I'm. I'm just putting it in for the M a L I M [00:17:37] Gili: M a L I N. S K I D so my last name is Malinski gotcha. And my, yeah, my handles in Alinski. Yeah. I, I post like all my articles and all my stuff on this, so  [00:17:46] Peter: very cool. Guys what a pleasure. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time. This was a great interview. Um, thank you. It gives people hope. I mean, I, I remember, um, My, you know, again, being a diagnosed I remember in college, I had a photo photojournalism professor who told me that I'd never make it. I should probably go to something boring like accounting. Said I'd never make it as a journalist. And, uh, when, when I was the first ever, uh, digital journalist to cover the democratic Republican conventions in 1996, I photocopied my press pass, uh, and sent him, sent it to him and said, kind of doing terribly .Hope you're well. That was a nice, that was a nice feeling. [00:18:21] Gili: Um, a nice little FU.  [00:18:22] Peter: Indeed really. You probably know the journal, the professor too. Isn't comp. Really appreciate you being here. We will have you back. Most definitely. This was a pleasure. We'll definitely have you back.  [00:18:32] Gili: Thank you so much. This was delightful. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Peter.  [00:18:35] Peter: Awesome stuff. Most definitely [00:19:08]Credits: You've been listening to the Faster Than Normal podcast. We're available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google play and of course at www.FasterThanNormal.com I'm your host, Peter Shankman and you can find me at shankman.com and @petershankman on all of the socials. If you like what you've heard, why not head over to your favorite podcast platform of choice and leave us a review, come more people who leave positive reviews, the more the podcast has shown, and the more people we can help understand that ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Opening and closing themes were composed and produced by Steven Byrom who also produces this podcast, and the opening introduction was recorded by Bernie Wagenblast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week!

Today we're catching up with Peter en route to Northern Italy where he and his girlfriend Gabriella have recently spent a few days away. We're allowed a candid peek into their serious relationship, and of course how ADHD plays it's part too. This is a good and fun one, enjoy! [Editors note]: It is not lost on their sound engineer that G&P are so ‘in the moment' that the windows of their vehicle remain down during the entirety of this recording. We'd like to say thank you for excusing the wind tunnel background ;-)  In this episode Peter and Gabriella discuss:   00:45 - Thank you so much for listening and for subscribing! 01:00 - Welcome to my wonderful girlfriend Gabriella Ribeiro! 01:44 - So why don't you tell us where we are, where we're heading, and what we just survived? 02:15 - Would you say it's more the journey or the destination? 04:00 - Why do you think my brain is doing what it's doing since we've been together; the good and the bad? 05:20 - The ADHD trouble w/ wanting the grandest of the very best, always for those you love 06:00 - We hate making mistakes and we assimilate to our surroundings in funny ways.. 08:00 - When you have ADHD you're your own worst critic, but by waaay much more than most.  09:00 - You can scroll to hear Gabriella's episode about Iceland's Evolving Seven Wonders here!  Ref: Gabby's photo @theexplorateur on INSTA 10:54 - So, [jokingly], is there anything good about dating someone with ADHD? 11:31 - A little about dopamine hits 12:00 - There is no accurate nor perfect matchmaking system for those of us with ADHD 13:33 - Some honest, important information for you about relationships, dear listener. 15:04 - One of Gabriella's greatest, if not most important moments with Peter 15:54 - One of the problems with ADHD that we're trying really, really hard to change is… 17:00 - How not to break-up in the Frankfurt airport 17:40 - A short story on ‘using your words' 19:26 - Gabby, what advice do you have for anyone listening to this podcast who's dating or about to date some with ADHD? 20:45 - How can people find more about you?  On the Web: The X8 Podcast also https://www.gabbyribeiro.com/about Socials: @theexplorateur on INSTA and Twitter and aka Explorateur Journeys on FB Buy her book “I'm Just Saying...: Real advice for real girls in a real world. From a real Mom” on Amazon  21:15 - Where are we going anyway? En route to Monterosso 21:16 - On trust 21:41 - Thank you! Guys, as always, we are here for you and we love the responses and the notes that we get from you so please continue to do that! Tell us who you want to hear on the podcast, we'd love to know.  Leave us a review on any of the places you get your podcasts, and if you ever need our help I'm www.petershankman.com and you can reach out anytime via peter@shankman.com or @petershankman on all of the socials. You can also find us at @FasterNormal on all of the socials. It really helps when you drop us a review on iTunes and of course, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already! As you know, the more reviews we get, the more people we can reach. Help us to show the world that ADHD is a gift, not a curse!  22:27 - Faster Than Normal Podcast info & credits — TRANSCRIPT via Descript and then corrected.. somewhat:  Hello everyone Peter Shankman and welcome to another episode of Faster Than Normal. This one is interesting. I am recording this live from, um, a car, uh, in, uh, just outside Milan Italy, where I landed about feels like about three hours ago cause we. Uh, for two hours through immigration? No, it wasn't two hours felt like it, but, um, I wanted to have, I, I wanted this interview for a while. This is gonna be an interview with me and my wonderful girlfriend, Gabriella Ribeiro um, Gabby and I have been together now about three years. And, um, I don't know why I have no idea why she, why she continues to, to, to, to stay with me. Um, but she has, she has watched and, and, and in some cases, been a victim of my ADHD for the longest time and, um, I'm very fortunate that she's still here, but I thought it'd be interesting to talk to her and ask her no holds barred, sort of what it's like to, um, uh, love someone with the level of, of, of ADHD that I have. So Gabby welcome.  [00:01:42] Gabriella: Thank you. Good to be here.  [00:01:44] Peter: So why don't you tell us where we are and, and where we're heading and, and what we just survived?  [00:01:49] Gabriella: Oh, we survived a minor line, but to you, it was a big deal. And I understand  [00:01:53] Peter: it wasn't a minor line. It wasn't, it wasn't so much, that was a line. It was a line that kept, uh, we we'd be waiting in line. And then for some reason, 20 people would pass us cuz they were directed by someone else to go there. That's the part that frustrated me. [00:02:07] Gabriella: I understand that, but we pushed our way through. So actually we're going hiking for two days in Italy and that's kind of what we do, you know, we, we go on these short trips and that I think is, is what helps ground you. To talk about ADHD? I think that's one of the core things that I notice about you is that even though we're always on the move, you feel most grounded when we are actually are en route.  [00:02:26] Peter: I think a lot of that has to do with, well, the airplane, obviously being on a plane, you know, the, the, the place where you're most confined is really the most freeing for a lot of people. I think the, one of the things that you and I have in common is that we both enjoy the journey. The journey is the destination. As much as the destination is. You know, eight hours on a flight to, to Italy for two days of hiking. Most people think it's crazy, but it's perfect for us. It, it keeps us, uh, not only grounded, but it, it, it resets us. It resets us, resets our brain. Now that being said, travel, uh, is a huge part of your life. It's what you do for a living as well. Um, but it's also, you know, a huge part of what we do and we, how much we enjoy it and, and really, um, embrace, uh, the world as our playground. For lack of a better word. Now, there are times I think, and she's she has, she's laughing her ass off about this, but there are times when, when, um, for whatever reason, the, the, uh, travel goes awry or we wind up in certain situations. And I think one of the things that I've learned most from you is I don't have to control everything. You know, everyone I've traveled with previously, I, I was in charge, right. I was telling where we're going here, we're going this, we're doing that. And what I've learned is that when you're with someone who actually also knows what they're doing, it's okay to relinquish control. And I, I love that you're just, you're just it hysterics over here, cuz I'm sure you're thinking of many of those stories. So, so, you know, sh shared not only some of the funny stories, but also, um, sort of why you think my brain works the way it does when, when I sort of in the past have had that need to sort of take control for good or for bad. [00:04:08] Gabriella: Well, I think you've allowed yourself, like, you know, to, to enjoy and to be happy. I think, you know, and that's, that's a huge part and I think you've allowed, you've seen what can happen when somebody, when you trust somebody, maybe that's what it is. Maybe you trust me, maybe you trust, I don't know, expertise in, in what I do for a living, that kind of thing, but that's a huge thing. And I think that, you know, maybe it's part of your ADHD, but I don't think you trust easily. I think it takes a while. It took a while maybe for us to, and I think when you start to see things unfold the right way and you actually let yourself enjoy them, even if you didn't control them, you start to see things in a different way. That's what I think. But I think also one of the things I love most about you is that you always want things to be perfect for me. And sometimes things just, it, it's not even that they will be perfect for me, but in your eyes, they're not the perfect that you envision, whether we're getting lost in an airport or you're leading me out of security and back in, cause you're insisting, you know, one way and I actually know the other, but I don't fight with you. I just kind of let you do your thing. But I, I think it's, I think that's part of, of the way that your head works is that, you know, you, you have this design in your head and you want it to be like that, but you want it to be like that for me, most importantly, which is amazing, but I think it's, um, you know, sometimes. Have to just let things be, you know, there's air perfect.  [00:05:24] Peter: There's definitely an ADHD factor there in that we do. When you have ADHD, you want the grandest of grand, right? You want that, you know, and that, and that's one of the biggest problems is, is, you know, a random Tuesday could be the most incredible experience you've ever had when someone, you know, something shows up at your home or whatever, but it, it also. Um, it, it, you have to fight that sort of how to let other people take control sometimes .The incident she's referring to, we were in Frankfurt airport and, um, I was totally sure I knew the way to get to the lounge, uh, waiting for our connection. And it turns out I took us out of security. Then we had another 45 minute, wait to get back into security. And then I was just angry, but the irony was, I was angry at myself, right. I was angry at myself because I screwed up and I made the mistake and I hate that. Right. And, and of course I took it out on you. Um, but you know, it was one of those that was a learning moment for me. Like today we spent 45 minutes in line trying to get through immigration. And I just didn't say anything. I let you control it. I let you direct it. And we were there and eventually I wound up cursing at a cop, I think, in, in Italian, but, or Spanish, Spanish, whatever. Japanese, but that's one of the interesting things is also is that when you do travel with someone who's ADHD, they wanna immerse themselves in every aspect of where they are. Um, but their brains don't work as fast. So it is not uncommon to to see me go into a country and start speaking a completely different language than what is in the country. True. [00:06:48] Gabriella: Uh, true. And I think it's, it's part of like, I think you wanna impress me, you know, so you've got like a. A few like core words that you use no matter where we go, like in Iceland, you'll say Ola , you know, and that's, that's perfectly fine. But I think one of the, you know, I would say, you know, you said you wanted like no holds barred. One of the most frustrating things I think is when you get something wrong and we all do right. Cuz I get things wrong all the time, but you get really mad at me when you get something wrong. And I you've said that that's an ADHD thing. I don't know. I think we, you know, it's, it's been a, I. wouldn't say a challenge, but you know, it's something I've had to understand about you. I've had to come to understand. And I think it's, it's okay. You know, we all deal with it in different ways, but I noticed that that is a recurring, recurring thing. [00:07:33] Peter: Like I've been working on it. [00:07:34] Gabriella: You have been, that's what I'm saying, you know, you definitely have, but I do see, you know, it's, I, I see yourself frustration and something that is, is totally okay. On my side.  [00:07:46] Peter: One of the interesting things, I mean, there's a reason for that .When you're, when you are ADHD, you know, you do, like you said earlier, you're doing everything to be perfect. And when things aren't perfect because of something I've done, right. Because of a mistake I've made, I am my own worst critic by everyone is, but when you're heavy ADHD, you're your own worst critic by a fact of a million. Right. So you're sitting there and I'm like, okay. The one thing I had to do, I managed to screw up and I've ruined the whole, in my mind, the whole vacation's ruined, [00:08:09] Gabriella: but it's really not. [00:08:11] Peter: I, well, it's obviously not, but you know, in my mind, I didn't get this one thing right, now we have to wait 45 minutes to go through security again, I'm the worst. I'm terrible. She's gonna leave me. This whole thing. Right. And, and, and I think to. compensate or to make up for that. I just get angry. And, and unfortunately the person I direct the anger at is, is the person closest to me, which would be you. Um, it's obviously not, I'm obviously not angry at you for my mistake, you know, , I do remember thinking, uh, as we're waiting online to go back into security and in Frankfurt a couple years ago, I'm like, why didn't she stop me? This is totally her fault. Why didn't she stop? Totally. And, and the thing was you tried to, but then I'm like, no, I know where we're going. So you didn't really have a choice in the matter. Um, you know, and it's, I think it's also the, the, there is that aspect of wanting to impress the person that you love. Um, and when it doesn't work for whatever reason. Um, you, you, you, you, the ADHD sort of takes over, um, I'm remembering Iceland. Um, we had a chance to see the Northern lights you have understand in Iceland, they wake you up at one in the morning with like some alarm, like, like, like the Nazi's are coming to like steal the silver and, and, and you, they wake you up in the middle of the night and, and you have to rush out, get your clothes on, rush outside to see the Northern lights which prolly only last for like 12 seconds. And so I, I brought all my camera gear and everything like that, and I go outside and I, I can't get, I get nothing. I get absolutely just black images of, of black skies, nothing. Gab Pulls out our iPhone, like click and gets this, this like national geographic quality photo. I was so pissed it sucked. Tell, tell me how I handled it.  [00:09:42] Gabriella: You didn't handle it well, but it's okay. You know, I, I know you now. But again, you, you got really mad at me. You said, oh Gab, how nice, lovely shot on your iPhone 12? Or like, something like that. I don't know what the snarky voice and that's okay. Cuz, but I think also part of maybe it's the ADHD, but I think I've been seeing you definitely change on this is that sometimes you just have to get away from the phone. You know, use the phone a lot. I, I know that that's also part of, of being with you. You're on the phone a lot. Um, a lot of, you know, looking down, I think sometimes you have to let go of things and just enjoy, you know, like we did that. We went to South Africa speaking to travel and you were so in the moment and it was wonderful. You put down the phone, you were stopping taking pictures and watching lions and things like that. Sometimes you have to not always capture it, you know? So I think some of our best moments happen totally off of social media.  [00:10:36] Peter: What's something that... And by the way, I went out a couple hours later and tried to get their Northern lights again and totally failed again. Um,  [00:10:44] Gabriella: oh, and it got mad at me again. Yeah.  [00:10:46] Peter: what, you know, everyone's listening to this, like my God, why is she with him? And I, so, so that being said, tell, say, say a good thing about dating someone with ADHD.  [00:10:54] Gabriella: You asked, I just told you, I think you are so attentive. You want the world for me, you support me. You will give me opportunities. And I think that what I love about you is that you're just so creative. And I, I grew up with a prankster dad, right? So you spend your days. . Like either pranking me or, you know, you, you won't let one single day go by without making me smile or laugh. You send me things you think of me. And I think that's, that's maybe that's part of your focus too, is I love that you are so much focused on the relationship and you want it to work. And I, I love that about you. [00:11:31] Peter: Well, there's part of, part of ADHD is, is the constant quest for dopamine, right? And, and getting you to laugh or anyone to laugh and specifically the person you love; getting them to laugh is a dopamine hit. I'll get. dopamine and serotonin adrenaline out of that. And so, so as much as I enjoy doing it for you, cause I know you enjoy it. It's, it's a rush for me as well. Um, you know, the, the, one of the first things I remember one of the first pranks I ever played on you is I put, I put a roach on your suitcase. Yeah. Uh, at the airport. I don't know where we're going, but mal uh, Maldives, I put a, I put a roach your on your suitcase and, and I just re you know, you don't realize it's such a high, right. Watching you, no.  [00:12:10] Gabriella: oh yeah.. It's total high.  [00:12:11] Peter: You, you hated it. But, you know, [00:12:12] Gabriella: I loved, I loved it actually. And I said, Peter, you make me lose my shit every day. and that is, I would say one of the main reasons why I'm with you. [00:12:21] Peter: I mean, it's, it's not easy dating someone with ADHD without question and look, I mean, at the end of the day, your ADHD can only, only be blamed for so much. You have to take control of, of, of what you're doing. And I think I've, I've, I've been working on doing that. You know, my social acuity was never as strong to begin with, so I I've learned a lot, uh, from you and with you, but there's definitely, um, I couldn't, I don't think I could be with someone who couldn't accept a practical joke or something like that, just simply for the, the chemical high that gives me. Right. Makes me a better person. I mean, I, I prank you. I'm cracking up for the next six hours. And, and I'm the happiest person in the world, which is what you want. You wanna be with someone like that. So you definitely, you know, when you're looking to see who you're gonna date and your ADHD, think about the person who will understand, uh, the way your brain works and understand that, you know, they're not putting a roach in your bag or a rub. It was a rubber Roach, by the way, I should mention that not putting a rubber Roach in your bag to, uh, to annoy you or to bother you, but because they know if, if they. can make you laugh that's, that's happiness for them as well. It's, it's no different than when I was a kid and I would, I would speak out in class and make the kids laugh and, you know, get in trouble for it. I was trying to get dopamine to learn.  [00:13:33] Gabriella: I think when you date someone with ADHD, you also have to embrace that. There's certain things that, that they need to do. And you've always told me this, I need this. I need X in order to do Y and you've always been very straight up in the, you know, and since the beginning, I need to exercise in order to feel okay to get on a plane. I need to have a half hour to myself playing a game before I can go out to dinner or, you know, whatever it is and you have structure. And I think it's important that to have a, a partner, I would say, you know, from my vantage point and what you need to, to allow that, you know, and not to make too many demands on things and just say, okay, you know, yes, I know he needs this, or yes, we're we're out, but he needs to step away from a crowd for a half an hour. That's okay. You know, and I think, um, it's understanding all of that and embracing it that helps make a relationship successful.  [00:14:24] Peter: Think, I mean, I, I like to think there's, you know, the, the, the positives outweigh the negatives in that regard. Um,  [00:14:31] Gabriella: Absolutely!  [00:14:31] Peter: That, you know, we have, when we're together, we do have a blast, we have fun and, and we do support each other. I've always wanted a partner who would support me and who I could support as well. Um, you know, in life that's super couple as it were, um, that I think we are. Um, but yeah, I mean, I don't, I don't necessarily wish, uh, me on anyone. I think that know . I think that, that, you know, it takes a special person to understand someone with, with the kind of brain that, that, that faster than normal people have. [00:15:04] Gabriella: Well, one of my greatest moments with you and I'll show I'm gonna out you. Cause it was just so beautiful is that you, we were, I think we were in London. We went to go see a musical. We went to go see Back to The Future to and something happened where I think you, you, you took my watch charger overnight and I really needed to charge my watch, but you took it and you tried to convince me that my watch was already charged, which it wasn't, but you needed your watch chargeed, so that's fine. And then you sort of got on your knees the next day and said, why are you with me? I'm I'm ridiculous. I'm I'm this, like, you were beating yourself up so much, but to me it was just like, we share things. So it was, it was okay, but you, you always are questioning. And I, I, you know, just me to you, I wish that you wouldn't because to me, I think you're perfect and we're perfect. And we, we find our quirks. I think we find the, the beauty in our quirks. I have them too.  [00:15:54] Peter: One of the problems with ADHD is, and I'm hoping this is one of the things I'm trying to change with the podcast, with the book and everything and my activism is that, um, people with ADHD are told they're broken for years for their entire life. And it's when you come across someone who doesn't see you as broken, but sees you as, um, special and not like short but special, but special. Like, you know, as in, as in wow, this, this guy is really amazing. Um, it's hard to believe that. Right. And, and you're sure that every day you're gonna do something, you know, that is going to, they're just gonna be like, this is ridiculous. He's not special. He's a moron. What the hell am I with him for? Right. And, and despite your protestations, no, I I'm having fun with you. I'm enjoy that. It's, it's hard to, um, sometimes it's very hard to believe that, Or to allow yourself to believe that. And, and that's one of things, you know, the constant, my, my, my, my constant, why are you with me type thing, isn't like a, a ploy for sympathy or a ploy for, for a compliment. But rather it's, it's a real question, you know, it's, it's like, you know,  [00:16:59] Gabriella: I saw that, that day. I know [00:17:00] Peter: you've seen it many times. I mean, you've seen it, uh, you know, when we were waiting. To go back at the airport after I took us outta security, stuff like that, you know, it's like my God, why? And of course, because I'm mad at myself, cuz I know this is the moment you're totally gonna leave me. Right.  [00:17:13] Gabriella: I Yeah, in the middle of the Frankfurt airport,  [00:17:14] Peter: I wanted getting mad at you. Yes. Right? The, the classic favorite airport story ends with us finally getting back in and going to the lounge. And we had just gotten off a, a red eye flight to, to Europe. So we're waiting for a connection and we go to the lounge and, and they have showers and the, the woman looks at us. And she was so angry. She goes, do you want a, a suite, a shower suite for the both of you? And I go, I want my own suite . I took my own shower suite because I was so angry at myself and couldn't, and couldn't, uh, I had a, had a friend once who, who worked with, um, uh, high functioning, autistic children and like very young, like 2, 3, 4 years old. And her job was, she spent an entire year in school with them, trying to teach them to explain how they feel instead of hitting, instead of getting angry. And she tells this great story about, um, towards the end of the year, a kid was obviously upset and obviously angry at something. And she spent like five minutes saying, okay, Andrew, use your words, use your words. How do you feel? How . Are you feeling? What is the, what is the action that you're feeling right now? And he looked at her and he got really red in the face and he goes, I'm happy. right. And it's, it's literally how I feel. Sometimes it's like, I mean, like I'm so angry and I'm so happy that you're still with me.  [00:18:19] Gabriella: That is so you, but I think one of the things you don't notice so much about yourself is how, just how funny you make everything. And I think I'm just so I'm grateful because I that's, the person I needed is that every single thing is funny, no matter what, like we always find the humor and things. And I, I, I don't, I don't think that's an ADHD thing, um, necessarily, but I think, um, you know, I think the world should know if they haven't noticed that about you already. [00:18:45] Peter: It definitely comes from.  [00:18:46] Gabriella: You make everything fun.  [00:18:47] Peter: It definitely comes from our families and our, you know, I mean, my dad was, was all about using humor to deflect everything growing up and, and, and so was, I, you know, it's  [00:18:54] Gabriella: no, but you embrace it now. It's not as much of a deflection I, that I, I love when you, like, we were just laughing in this car right now until we were crying. Cuz you know, we rolled up and we're in Italy. So you should, you know, the driver's here and you should say chow and Peter goes Ola!! Like with the, with. The biggest sense of pride. Like the barrel chested, Ola, you know,  [00:19:11] Peter: but that's, that's classic. That's classic me, like, okay, I'm in Italy, let's for some reason speak Spanish and you know, but on the flip side, I once convinced you that I understood Japanese and got you going for like 20 minutes. Um, and you were totally convinced. I, I understood Japanese. So in the end, um, what do you want people are, who, who listen to this podcast? A lot of them are in relationships with people at ADHD and they, they they're frustrated. They don't understand, you know, why is this happening? What, what advice would you give someone who's who is either dating or about to date someone they with ADHD you're about take that plunge. What would you say to them?  [00:19:42] Gabriella: You have to open your mind and you have to talk, like, I think one of the things that saves us is that we talk about everything good or bad. And I think you have to be willing just, just like, you know, none, none of us are perfect. Right. And we all have, you have things that you have to adapt to about me that you necessarily don't like what you deal with. Um, you know, and I think that it's, it's a question of not getting so frustrated because what you think the person is doing is on the surface this is not what you believe it to be. Like. There are so many times where I see Peter frustrated, for example, and I immediately think it's me, he's got a problem with me. He's doing something, you know, whatever. And I think it's the understanding that you have to wrap your head around. It's not always about you and in a relationship that's really important. So you have to get to the core and also figure out what it is that helps them get through the day and embrace it, allow it, um, I hate that word, but you know what I mean? It just to let it be, yeah. And not get. so worried all the time that it's, that it's a reflection on you because that person needs to do that in order to be the best them for you. [00:20:44] Peter: Definitely. How can people find you? Cause you have actually a really interesting life apart from me, uh, even more so, even more interesting than, than just when you're with me. So how can people find you? What's your, what do you wanna get me Instagram or what.   [[ On the Web: The X8 Podcast also https://www.gabbyribeiro.com/about Socials: @theexplorateur on INSTA and Twitter Buy her book “I'm Just Saying...: Real advice for real girls in a real world. From a real mom” on Amazon ]] [00:20:54] Gabriella: Sure. I'm the @theexplorateur on Instagram um, I do a little bit of everything in tourism, but I,  [00:20:59] Peter: we host a podcast together as well.  [00:21:01] Gabriella: We do! Called the X8 and we'll be back in the fall with that.  [00:21:03] Peter: So that's a travel and a podcast where we travel around the world to beautiful locations and, and, and report on them. But awesome. Gabby, thank you so much. I mean, what the hell is she, you gonna do? We're in a car at 9:30' in the morning in the middle of Italy , trying, you know, driving to where are we going?  [00:21:15] Gabriella: uh, we're going to Monterosso  [00:21:16] Peter: Awesome! That's the other weird thing is that I have never been in a relationship before where I don't sometimes know, I don't know where we're going. Like there are two types people in the world. There's people who like plan everything out. And the people who wake up in the morning go, oh, what's the name of the hotel? Or, you know what airline? And, and it's, it's very strange to, to, to, to relinquish that control, but I'm starting to enjoy it. I'm starting to, I'm starting to like it. And, uh, at the end of the day, I'm I still have the, I still have the control over the airline. So that's, that's my thing. She can, Gabby can handle all the hotels. Guys thank you for listening, Gab thank you for taking the time to do this. Um, I'm at Peter, Shankman all the socials. As you guys know, we're at faster normal, um, you can file Instagram, Twitter everywhere. If you like what you hear, uh, drop us a review. If you have guests that you think might benefit from being on the podcast, let us know. We have a big shout out to Steven Byrom, our producer, who is gonna be so angry at me because I'm just recording the string in an iPhone 20 minutes of car sound. He's gonna have to delete, uh, he's gonna, he's gonna be, he's gonna be it's he's it's not gonna be good. He's gonna need therapy from this stuff! Steven, we love you. Thank you. [Love you too man! Hope this was at least legible!]  Opening, uh, words performed by Bernie Bernie Wagenblast. Opening and closing theme composed by Steven Byrom, [he says thank you too], and we will see you guys next week with another interview. Thank you so much for listening. Stay safe. Stay well Credits: You've been listening to the Faster Than Normal podcast. We're available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google play and of course at www.FasterThanNormal.com I'm your host, Peter Shankman and you can find me at shankman.com and @petershankman on all of the socials. If you like what you've heard, why not head over to your favorite podcast platform of choice and leave us a review, come more people who leave positive reviews, the more the podcast has shown, and the more people we can help understand that ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Opening and closing themes were composed and produced by Steven Byrom who also produces this podcast, and the opening introduction was recorded by Bernie Wagenblast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week!

Max: Hello. Welcome back to the Recruitment Hackers Podcast. I'm your host, Max Armbruster. And, today I'm delighted to welcome Peter Weddle, who is the CEO for the Association for Talent Acquisition Solution, also known as TAtech, which you can find on TAtech.org. Peter has been leading this association which gathers vendors, practitioners, and who is a real futurist as well. He has written some books on what the future holds for humanity and how to prepare our future generations for the impending rise of the machines. So, I'm excited to talk to him about some of the trends that are shaping this year and perhaps how to prepare not for the next year, but for our next generation of recruiter, how our recruiters are gonna look like, and what they're gonna do 20 years from now? We'll have a bit of a discussion on that. Peter, thank you so much for joining.Peter: It's great to be here, Max. Thanks for having me.Max: It's a pleasure. And, always love your newsletter. I love your content. So, maybe we'll start with that. What is TAtech? And, how can people get plugged in?Peter: TAtech is the trade association for the global talent technology industry. So, that means that our members span the spectrum from job boards and aggregators and job distribution companies to conversational AI solutions, programmatic ad buying platforms, recruitment advertising agencies, marketing companies. Basically, any company that uses technology to design, develop and deliver a talent acquisition product or service for employers.Max: Okay! So, there's a lot to unfold there. But we're talking about basically the cutting edge of talent acquisition. And, I… you're based in Chicago right?Peter: Actually, we're based in Stamford, Connecticut.Max: In Connecticut. All right. Great. And the…but with a membership that is global. But, I think a lot of the investment is coming out of the U.S. right? That's really the hub of the TAtech industry.Peter: Well, we do a number of things as a trade association but we're probably best known for our conferences. We certainly do one in called TAtech North America, but we also do one in Europe called TAtech Europe. And, that's for the whole EMEA region. And, I think it's safe to say that, yeah, there's a lot of investment, probably more money flowing into talent acquisition technologies and products than H.R. products largely. But, that's not only true in the U.S. now, it's increasingly true across Europe, particularly in the U.K. There's a lot of really fascinating developments of new companies springing up in Europe and in U.K.Max: Yeah! Absolutely. I think actually that when it comes to recruitment, recruitment has more domestic localized elements. And so, you know, a lot of the leaders have come from Europe or from different parts of the world and then from India, and then they eventually make it to the U.S., which is the biggest market. So, it's quite an international community, I would say. But the capital certainly seems to be coming out of the U.S. in majority.Peter: Well, we're very fortunate that we, as you mentioned earlier, we do have a global member base. So, we have the advantage of being able to look at not only new developments, but also where the current trendsetters in the industry are going into the future. And, we can look across all of those trends globally because, you know, the fact of the matter is that increasingly we have a global workforce. So, companies may be based in the U.S., but they're hiring all over the world and vice versa. Companies in India are hiring in North America and so forth. So I think it's important to recognize that, you know, geography is still important, but geographical barriers are not.Max: They're coming down. Yeah. And, increasingly now there are some behaviors that are… I mean, whether you're in India or in the US or in France, you are witnessing how fast the world is moving,how fast things are becoming, the consumerization of just about everything. And so, that's going to affect, of course, the recruitment because the way consumers behave globally is pushing recruitment in the same direction, you know, in all corners of the world. So, yeah, it's a good fine balance between these local and global trends. But before we talk about the future and those…or about those trends, Peter, how did you…how does someone end up being the CEO of the TAtech? How did you end up in recruitment to begin with in talent acquisition?Peter: Well, I was a partner in the Hay Group, so I… my roots are in the H.R. field. But, I got the entrepreneurial bug and bought a company called Job Bank USA in the early 90's. This was pre-internet but we were arguably one of the largest companies to use computers to match people in jobs. And, about five years later, I sold that firm and fell into a gig writing a bi-weekly column for the Wall Street Journal about this new thing called the Internet and in particular the employment space online. And, I bought that basically until Murdoch bought or I did that until Murdoch bought Dow Jones. So, I got to go over the shoulders, meet and interact with all of the early players in online talent acquisition. And, by 2007, it just seemed to me that the industry had matured to the point where it needed a trade association and an organization to help set standards, to help identify best practices, to make sure that customers, employers were getting what they paid for those kinds of things. So, we launched TAtech in 2007, and the first thing we did was create a code of ethics because we believe, you know, that technology needs to serve the individuals that are using it, not the other way around. So, we really focused on that first. Since then, we've developed a whole range of products to help our members do something that is very simple, make more money at the bottom line.Max: I admit to you and to our audience, I have not read the code of ethics yet but I'm going to do that as soon as our conversation is over. And, I am on board because I have read all of Asimov's work and I know that we have to set the rules early in the game before the machines take over. So, I am on board and yeah, it's amazing how far we've gone in those 20 years where…Well, 15 years you've been running the association, and to think where we were in 2007, right? Where it was basically the first SaaS companies like Taleo going IPO and success factors and early days of ATS. Do you…are you as excited today as you were back then about where this industry is going after all these years?Peter: I think it's fair to say I'm more excited. You know, Kurzweil, the head of engineering at Google, has said that we will see 10,000 years of progress in the next 100 years because the pace of technology, technological invention, and innovation is accelerating. And I think, you know, it's hard to wake up on any given day, walk into the office and not find something new. So, our challenge as a species is to learn how to leverage the advantages of this technology, this development, and also preserve some space for our species so that we, you know, lead fulfilling lives.  Max: Mm hmm. Then, there are some concerns with the pace of technology being such that people can't keep up, that the jobs that are more menial and that do not require, you know, too much thinking. The non-thinking jobs are gonna disappear and be replaced by mechanical robots and yeah, I mean, there's perhaps a concern about whether there'll be jobs for all of humanity. And, I think you addressed that in the past in some of your book. I forgot the title. Perhaps you could reminded me what the title of that book was?Peter: It's Circa 2118. So, it was written in 2018. And, what I was trying to do was to forecast the impact of technology in general but especially artificial intelligence 100 years later. So, 2118, Circa 2118 is the title of the book.Max: And, to predict 100 years ahead is an impossible task, I think. But, you show, I mean, in 2018, we felt pretty confident there'd be no more truck drivers by now. They're still around. But certainly by 2100 that jobs should be replaced or automated, right? You would think… Can you make some predictions on what the job of a recruiter might be, you know, 10-20 years from now? You know, how that might be chopped off or changed and morphed into something else?Peter: Well, if you don't mind, I'd like to begin with where we are now, because I think you said earlier and it's exactly true. We humans, all professions, including the recruiting profession, may well have surpassed our gulp rate in terms of taking all this new technology on board and using it effectively. And, I think one of the reasons that we are struggling is because we only address half the issue. You know, we are increasingly good consumers when it comes to buying tech products. We do our homework, we talk to our peers and experts in the field. We get a sense of, you know, what are the top two or three options similar to what we do when we buy a car and then we go out and we make a purchase. But unfortunately, that's where things end.And with technology, particularly today's state of the art, that's when the challenge actually begins, because integration or implementation is the single most important and difficult part of buying a new tech product. And most recruiting teams today don't have the priority. They don't have the leadership attention, they don't have the budget, and they don't have the staff to really implement these tools effectively. And when that doesn't happen, you know, you get first of all, you get the recruiters who are upset because the product doesn't work as advertised. Sometimes it destabilizes the other products in the tech stack, and that makes their job even harder. You upset the IT department because you're complicating their lives. I mean, it just kind of cascades into this really unpleasant and oftentimes disappointing situation.So, you know, I think that one of the priorities for the recruiting profession in the near term has to be how to get better at, how to acquire the skills and knowledge of technology implementation. Yeah! You want to be a good consumer about buying the stuff, but you also want to be a good implementer as well.Max: Mm hmm. Yeah. I obviously completely understand the pain you're describing I mean, basically, the harder it is at the beginning, the better I sleep at night because it means that they understand the magnitude of the challenge, because there's a lot of change management that comes with it. And, it just changes people the way people work.So, right now, we're in the middle of eliminating a lot of the first human interaction, which is the phone interview where you call a candidate and you do a first phone screen. My company is focused on eliminating that piece for the majority of the volume, and we're making progress. So, I feel like it's certainly…we're moving the needle. What are some of the other tasks besides that first phone screen that do you think are gonna disappear, you know, in the next 20 years? If you agree with my premise that phone screening will disappear.Peter: Well, I think that we will, for the next 20 years, so for all four generations that are in the workforce currently, and maybe even Gen Z coming on board because we still have some baby boomers in the workforce for all of the extant generations in the workforce, we will continue to see hybrid kinds of interactions.But for the kids and grandkids of the generations in the workforce today, I think they face a very, very different future. And, I think that recruiting is one of the fields where it's likely to be completely automated. It's not to say that what the humans are…human recruiters do isn't important. In fact, sometimes the most important tasks get automated. But, I think the fact of the matter is that technology, you know, I mean, right now, the way the paradigm is set up, you have…it's a bipolar distribution.You either believe that technology, we stick our heads in the sand, technology is going to go away. There are just some things that humans do that machines cannot be taught to do. And, then there's the other extreme, which is terminators. And my God, they're going to destroy the human race.There is a third way or a third path, and that is that we want to apply technology everywhere we can. And, at the same time, think about what kind of world that's gonna create. What are we going to do for the humans who will find themselves not only unemployed, but unable to be reemployed because there just aren't enough jobs to go around? And we need to begin thinking about that now, because it's going to cause a huge structural shift in society, in education, in the way that you and I spend our days. Well, not you and I, but certainly kids and grandkids can spend their days. Yeah!Max: Yeah! The people who are the superstars now and who are driving, you know, the content and the media industry are gamers and, you know, sort of virtual characters with avatars rather than 3D faces. And so, you know, will we need to…Will recruitment still be human-led? You're saying machines will do a better job at selecting who is right for the job.Peter: Well, what I'm saying is two things. First of all, as more and more jobs in the enterprise, let's just talk about recruiting. As more and more of the jobs in the enterprise, not just blue-collar jobs, you know, robots on assembly lines, but increasingly we're seeing machines take over huge swaths of the professional workforce. As that happens, there will be less need for recruiters because there will be no human showing those jobs. So, demand will go down. And, you know, we already have examples of machines being evaluated by humans as being more empathetic, more understanding than their human counterparts.There's a machine at a retired living community in France that goes around and attends to the people who live there. And that machine gets higher marks than the human attendance because it's there 24 hours a day. It always responds. It's been taught how to be empathetic in a way that the people appreciate, and that's a very rudimentary example of where we are going.So I think, you know, I don't know about you, but I think the prospect of losing employment, not work, that's different. Losing the requirement for paid employment to have a meaningful life is a good prospect. But it means we need to think about, you know, a basic income for all people. I mean, these are the kinds of things that we kind of shovel under the rug and we don't talk about very much. But ultimately, if we really care about the future, we're going to bequeath to our kids and grandkids. We should be thinking about that stuff now because it is virtually inevitable that we're going to get to that point.Max: I think you've taken us a little bit further than 20 years ahead, that we still have a couple of decades of, you know, filling jobs with actual humans but…Peter: Well, and that's why I begin with, you know, let's worry about using the technology where we have today effectively. Let's implement it well, let's buy it well. Let's implement it well. Absolutely. And today's recruiters have nothing to worry about. They are not going to be replaced by a machine. So, yes, that's why I called my book Circa 2118. We are that's way down the road.But today, you know, I think the other challenge that we have for people in recruiting is just being aware of what's out there. You know, it's very hard. If you'd go to an H.R. conference, the vast majority of the exhibitors are going to be H.R. Technology companies. They're much bigger, the much better funded. And frankly, H.R. pays much more attention to them. And talent technology is sort of relegated to second class status. It's sort of shoved off in the corners. And in my view, that puts the cart before the horse because, you know, you can't manage the human resources you don't have.So, the number one priority should be to buy talent technology and getting those people in the door, the talent that you need for the jobs that you have, and then worry about having the H.R. technology to manage them and develop them effectively.Max: Amen. More money for the industry. I have to get behind that. But, I would say that I imagine a world, you know, many years from now maybe there won't be companies employing humans to drive trucks or to, you know, to build machines or even to provide health care services. But, they'll be a new breed of services that will arise that will require the inventiveness and creativity and the ability to multitask and the human sensitivity and almost, you know, sort of the soul, the soulfulness of a human to do to create and deliver them. And, they'll be a perhaps recruitment software to help those tribes build themselves. But I cannot …for the life of me imagine what kind of services they will be providing. I hope we'll still be busy. That's all I'm saying.Peter: Oh, I think we'll be very busy. But you know, I've written a book since Circa 2118 called The Neonaissance. It's a play on the term renaissance. Renaissance was a look backward. It was returning to the glory days of Rome and Greece. The Neonaissance looks forward. And, what it's all about is in a world where we've done two things. We've solved what humans need to do or can do or should do in a world where technology does almost everything for them. And we solve the climate crisis.If we can address those two issues, then we are in a period called a new birth of humankind, which is how do we create fulfillment for humans, which is the one attribute that no machine and no animal can aspire to. How do we create fulfillment for humans in a world where you don't have to work for a living? Excuse me, you don't have to be employed for a living. And, you know, I think that's the future we have. I mean, I think it's gonna be a tough road getting there, but it's going to be a very exciting and fulfilling future. And, I believe in it so strongly that I'm giving that book away.So, if people want…if you listeners want to get that book, again it's called The Neonaissance. It's on a website called onestoryforall.com. You can download the book for free. It's probably more than you've ever read several hundred pages, but at the end of the day, it says, yeah, we've got a tough road ahead of us for the next period of time with getting agreement about how we're going to solve global warming, how we're going to solve the impact of technology on the workplace and workforce. But, once we get through those challenges and that's the good thing, that's the thing one thing that humans are really good at, solving challenges. Then, we have this new period the Neonaissance to look forward to.Max: I think humans are also pretty good at competing with each other And so, hopefully that does not end up in a nuclear war or in destroying all of our available resources and that we can compete on with paintbrushes or with other ends and create an artistic future.  But, I want to come back to Earth for 2 seconds and to our listeners who are in the recruitment space. And, I always ask this question, Peter. Think back to a time when you hired somebody and you made a hiring mistake. And walk us back through this mistake without giving names necessarily, but telling the audience, telling me what we can learn from that mistake and how can we avoid a similar one being made in the future?Peter: Well, I'm living, breathing proof of the findings from a University of Michigan research study done a number of years ago. But it found that hiring managers are only 4% better than flipping a coin when it comes to picking the best person for a job opening. They get it right 54% of the time. And the reason they have such a miserable track record, it's because they don't hire the person who will perform best in the job. They tend to hire the people they like the best, the person who interviews the best and so forth.  And that's the mistake I made. I hired a person that I really connected with during the interview process. I had almost a visceral reaction at this person and I were really of two identical minds, and I was really swayed by the fact that I had this strong reaction to, you know, his outlook, his vision, his way of looking at the world. And, what I didn't do is pay enough attention to his skill set and to the kinds of talent he would bring to the job. He was great, you know, was a great guy and a great, you know, individual in the workforce. He just wasn't the right guy for the job I was trying to fill. And, I should have paid closer attention to what the job actually required because what I ended up doing was putting him in a position where he could not succeed and that was unfair to him, as well as unfair to the organization that I was representing.Max:  And it makes you wonder almost whether if you'd like someone, if you could answer in the affirmative the question: Would you hang out with this person outside of work? Maybe that's a red flag, you know, like, maybe you shouldn't be the one making that decision, that hiring decision. Because if this person is likable enough to you that you would want to see them outside of work, and how could you be unbiased?Peter: Well, I know I'm going to get some pushback from the people who say, hey, you know, you want to have…you want to hire people who have sort of the same cultural mindset. And that's true. But in my opinion, that has to come second. First is, can the person do the job and perform at his or her peak? And then are there cultural fit with the organization? And, I reverse those.Max: So, you're saying the right order would be… First, can you do the job and then maybe afterwards? Yeah, the cultural fit. Somebody just gave me on this show told me that it should be going the other way. You should first establish culture fit because if you have technical fit first, you're gonna completely ignore…If for some jobs where it's very difficult to get technical fit, job fit, then you'll be too skewed to ignore the cultural misalignment. So, I guess it depends on the ratio. Like if it's very, very hard to get an engineer and they fill the job, you know, they fill the job description perfectly, then you'll, you'll look past the cultural misfit.Peter: Well, there's plenty of research that shows that would be a fatal mistake, because that person is ultimately going to end up either underperforming or leave, you know, within the first 90 days of being in the organization because they don't like it there for a whole host of reasons. But at the end of the day, I think no matter how tough it is to fill a job, you know, cultural fit is important. And, I think when somebody says, well, just focus on skills and because that's a hard job to fill, you know, kind of let the candidate slide on culture. I think what they're really saying is our recruiting process and practices are substandard and we are not adequately sourcing for this particular opening. So, I don't… I mean, look, there are plenty of… no matter how difficult the job is, there are plenty of applicants out there. Are they tough to find? In some cases, absolutely. But that doesn't mean they aren't there.Max: Yeah! You can expand the search, especially these days, is when you don't have to hire in your vicinity for a lot of these specialized jobs.Peter: Exactly.Max: Now, I would end our discussion now, but since I'm talking to a technologist and we are talking about cultural fit, which is very hard one to nail down. What are some of the technologies that you've come across that you think are gonna change the way we establish culture fit? You know, what do you think works these days for matching a talent with a particular company culture?Peter: I don't know that I have a good answer for that…Max: …Maybe that's a question for ten years from now.Peter: Well, yeah, I'm sure there are some technology products out there that help recruiters assess cultural fit, and I suspect that they are very helpful. I have found that cultural fit is a challenge in two respects, no matter what the products are. The first is, in some cases, not many cases, but at least in some cases, organizations don't have a good handle on what their culture really is. They have a culture. They have a good fit or a good fix on what they aspire to be in terms of culture. You know what the CEO says they're all about. But in terms of the genuine, authentic culture of the organization, they are too often clueless. And, that comes to the fore when you look at the distance between an employer brand and an employer's reputation based on review sites and so forth. That's where you see that play out.The other is that when you introduce technology, not all technologies, but at least some technologies, you're going to change culture or you're going to at least disrupt culture. And, you need to think through how to deal with the change in things as simple as practices and procedures, but also, you know, in sort of the role of the recruiter. I mean, we've been talking about that a whole lot. And, as technology gets introduced, recruiter roles will change and adapt over time. And, you need to think about that in advance rather than after the fact.Max: Mm hmm. Now, what is the culture you want to prepare for five years from now when your industry will be completely different? And how do you know what kind of… what's the composition of your team then? Of course, everybody who went fully remote has probably gone towards hiring more introverts, for example. And, I don't know if they did that precisely or it kind of happened organically, but probably a common trend.Peter: Really? I had not heard that. And I would have thought exactly the opposite. You know, I'm an introvert and getting in front of a camera and talking to someone that I'm having a hard time reading their body language with, it just makes it that much more intimidating. An extrovert, I think, would flourish on Zoom. We introverts kind of cringe into the background.Max: Well, I don't ask my engineers to switch on their cameras.Peter: There we go.Max: All right. Well, thanks a lot, Peter. And again, TAtech.org and the website again, the URL for downloading your latest piece of fiction.Peter: Well, fiction, in fact, it's got 180 footnotes. So, it's not as if it's not well researched. But the name of the book is The Neonaissance and it's at onestoryforall.com.Max: All right, onestoryforall.com. Thanks, Peter. Thanks for coming on.Peter: Thanks for having me, Max. Appreciate it.Max: And that was Peter Weddle from TAtech.org, reminding us that technology doesn't deliver on all of its promises in the short run unless we're very tight on implementation. But it usually goes way beyond our imagination over longer periods of time. And it's time to prepare for new generations and to think about the role of technology in an ethical context and in the future of mankind context. So, obviously I really enjoyed this chat. I hope you did too, and that you'll go check out his books and TAtech.org to become members of the association. Thanks for listening.

Full Text of ReadingsSolemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles Lectionary: 590, 591All podcast readings are produced by the USCCB and are from the Catholic Lectionary, based on the New American Bible and approved for use in the United States _______________________________________The Saint of the day is Saints Peter and PaulPeter (d. 64?) Saint Mark ends the first half of his Gospel with a triumphant climax. He has recorded doubt, misunderstanding, and the opposition of many to Jesus. Now Peter makes his great confession of faith: “You are the Messiah” (Mark 8:29b). It was one of the many glorious moments in Peter's life, beginning with the day he was called from his nets along the Sea of Galilee to become a fisher of men for Jesus. The New Testament clearly shows Peter as the leader of the apostles, chosen by Jesus to have a special relationship with him. With James and John he was privileged to witness the Transfiguration, the raising of a dead child to life, and the agony in Gethsemane. His mother-in-law was cured by Jesus. He was sent with John to prepare for the last Passover before Jesus' death. His name is first on every list of apostles. And to Peter only did Jesus say, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:17b-19). But the Gospels prove their own trustworthiness by the unflattering details they include about Peter. He clearly had no public relations person. It is a great comfort for ordinary mortals to know that Peter also has his human weakness, even in the presence of Jesus. He generously gave up all things, yet he can ask in childish self-regard, “What are we going to get for all this?” (see Matthew 19:27). He receives the full force of Christ's anger when he objects to the idea of a suffering Messiah: “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do” (Matthew 16:23b). Peter is willing to accept Jesus' doctrine of forgiveness, but suggests a limit of seven times. He walks on the water in faith, but sinks in doubt. He refuses to let Jesus wash his feet, then wants his whole body cleansed. He swears at the Last Supper that he will never deny Jesus, and then swears to a servant maid that he has never known the man. He loyally resists the first attempt to arrest Jesus by cutting off Malchus' ear, but in the end he runs away with the others. In the depth of his sorrow, Jesus looks on him and forgives him, and he goes out and sheds bitter tears. The Risen Jesus told Peter to feed his lambs and his sheep (John 21:15-17). Paul (d. 64?) If the most well-known preacher today suddenly began preaching that the United States should adopt Marxism and not rely on the Constitution, the angry reaction would help us understand Paul's life when he started preaching that Christ alone can save us. He had been the most pharisaic of Pharisees, the most legalistic of Mosaic lawyers. Now he suddenly appears to other Jews as a heretical welcomer of Gentiles, a traitor and apostate. Paul's central conviction was simple and absolute: Only God can save humanity. No human effort—even the most scrupulous observance of law—can create a human good which we can bring to God as reparation for sin and payment for grace. To be saved from itself, from sin, from the devil, and from death, humanity must open itself completely to the saving power of Jesus. Paul never lost his love for his Jewish family, though he carried on a lifelong debate with them about the uselessness of the Law without Christ. He reminded the Gentiles that they were grafted on the parent stock of the Jews, who were still God's chosen people, the children of the promise. Reflection We would probably go to confession to Peter sooner than to any of the other apostles. He is perhaps a more striking example of the simple fact of holiness. Jesus says to us as he said, in effect, to Peter: “It is not you who have chosen me, but I who have chosen you. Peter, it is not human wisdom that makes it possible for you to believe, but my Father's revelation. I, not you, build my Church.” Paul's experience of the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus was the driving force that made him one of the most zealous, dynamic, and courageous ambassadors of Christ the Church has ever had. But persecution, humiliation, and weakness became his day-by-day carrying of the cross, material for further transformation. The dying Christ was in him; the living Christ was his life. Saint Paul is the Patron Saint of: Greece Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

 Dr. Luisa Sanz is a psychiatrist with over 25 years of experience working mainly with young people. She is immensely passionate about her work, and at the root of all she does, is the drive to help others through understanding, acceptance, compassion, respect and love. Such passion and devotion are unquestionably the results of having two brothers with schizophrenia and living its consequences from the age of 7. Being originally from Madrid, Spain, she moved to England at the age of 26 to specialize in Psychiatry and still lives there. Throughout her professional career, Dr. Sanz has actively contributed to developing services, improving the provision of care for individuals with ADHD/ASD and their families, including developing pathways to optimize diagnosis and treatment. Her special interest has always been in neurodevelopmental disorders, particularly ADHD but also ASD, and this is where she's mainly focussed her work. During her recent career break working as a regional Clinical Director for Mental Health services in the National Health Service, Dr. Sanz founded Mind Yr Life for the purpose of eradicating the stigma around Mental Health (MH). Mind Yr Life does so by, firstly, sharing credible information on MH conditions/illnesses, secondly, having open and honest conversations about personal experiences with MH problems and, thirdly, adopting an attitude towards a) acceptance and love, b) humbleness with an open mind, and c) staying grateful and positive. Today we're talking about her organization and the path that lead her here. Enjoy! In this episode Peter and Luisa Sanz discuss:   1:12 - Intro and welcome Luisa!  2:17 - So what pushed you towards focusing your work towards ADHD, ADD, ASD? 3:20 - Talk about some of the challenges you went up against; how attitudes towards the neurodiverse and the environment there was prior to, and after your time at NHS? 5:30 - What have you noticed in terms of changing the conversation/ breaking the stigma? 7:22 - How to break stigma? 8:53 - Tell us about your organization Mind Yr Life! 10:00 - We don't exactly have a blood test for all things neurodiverse, do we 10:50 - Dr. Sanz on her family's experiences with mental health 11:20 - A bad attitude and ignorance are usually contagious  12:17 - When people don't know about mental health illnesses, or about most things for that matter they may feel fearful or threatened; and often times they try and put a person down because that makes them feel more in control, more secured. So.. there is a lot of work to be done!  12:54: How can people find more about you and what you're doing?  On the Web: www.MindYrLife.com Socials: @MindYrLifeMYL on Twitter  Facebook @mind.yr.life on INSTA and Luisa Sanz on YouTube 16:00 - Thank you Luisa! Guys, as always, we are here for you and we love the responses and the notes that we get from you so please continue to do that! Tell us who you want to hear on the podcast, we'd love to know.  Leave us a review on any of the places you get your podcasts, and if you ever need our help I'm www.petershankman.com and you can reach out anytime via peter@shankman.com or @petershankman on all of the socials. You can also find us at @FasterNormal on all of the socials. It really helps when you drop us a review on iTunes and of course, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already! As you know, the more reviews we get, the more people we can reach. Help us to show the world that ADHD is a gift, not a curse!  16:30 - Faster Than Normal Podcast info & credits — TRANSCRIPT:    [00:00:38] Peter: Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to another episode of Faster Than Normal. My name is Peter Shankman. This is the number one podcast on ADD and ADHD and I'm thrilled that you joined us today. We have an unusual guest well all of our guests are a little unusual. This one is unusual, cause she's actually a Doctor. As you know, we have people from all over the world who join us at Faster Than Normal from, from professors to rockstar actual rockstars. Remember we had the band Shinedown. We've had politicians, we've had CEOs. We've had regular ordinary folk and occasionally every once in a while, we've brought in an actual doctor and today is one of those days.  Please welcome Dr. Luisa Sanz who is a psychiatrist with over 25 years of experience working mainly with young people, incredibly passionately. Her drive is to help others through understanding acceptance, compassion, respect, and love. She's originally from Madrid. She moved to England at the age of 26, specialized in psychiatry, still lives there throughout her professional career. She's contributed to developing services, improving the provision of care for individuals with a ADHD and ASD and their families, including developing pathways to optimize diagnosis and treatment. She spent good number of years as a regional clinical director for mental health services in the national health service, she also founded something called Mind Yr Life for the purpose of eradicating a stigma around mental health mind your life does so by sharing credible information on mental health conditions and illnesses. And by having open honest conversations about personal experiences with mental health problems, and thirdly adopting an attitude towards acceptance and love humbleness and open mind and staying grateful and positive. Well, we are grateful and positively thrilled that you joined us today. Dr. Sanz thank you! So for taking the time.  [00:02:10] Dr.Sanz: Oh my pleasure. Thank you to you for inviting me! [00:02:14] Peter: So, what pushed you towards focusing on ADHD and ASD  [00:02:20] Dr.Sanz: I believe that when I first went into specializing in psychiatry, initially I went into adult psychiatry, but I found it a little bit overwhelming because I, I have two brothers who had schizophrenia, and there was too much of the same outside and inside, you know, outside at work and inside at home. So I decided to specialize in children and adolescent, and I thought that I could possibly intervene early life. Uh, of these, of these people and make a bigger difference. And, uh, without a question of doubt, ADHD is the most common condition in mental health altogether, but much more in children and adolescents. So being such a common condition, I was just driven towards, um, to, you know, to, to these, these, these conditions.  [00:03:11] Peter: Interesting. And what was the attitude before you joined, um, national, uh, health service? I'm assuming you spent a lot of time focusing on changing the environment and changing the conversation. How was the attitude before you joined and, and, and can you cite, uh, sort of some of the challenges you went up against, uh, in changing that conversation?  [00:03:32] Dr.Sanz: Yeah. Uh, I think Peter that, uh, for me, because, because I grew up with mental illness at home, you know, through my brothers, I think I, from, from day one, when I became a psychiatrist, I was different in a way to many of the psychiatrists. Because I had believed mental illness from, you know, very, very close in the household. Uh, so my, my approach was different and I, from the very beginning, I always empathize the empathize, the, the, uh, you know, with patients and, and, and, and felt, felt them closer in my heart. And, uh, and you know, the conversations that I always had were, were around. Being more compassionate and, and definitely, definitely not judging, not making assumptions and just accepting people for who they are. Um, in, in with ADHD. I, I, I always believe everything happens the, the way it's meant to. And I was meant to specialize in, in know, neurodevelopmental disorders, ADHD in particular, because, um, more than anything ADHD. I realize that, you know, precisely we can't judge, we can't make assumptions because most of the times those are wrong and people with ADHD my daughter, Peter has ADHD, but people with ADHD are so incredibly creative, charismatic, uh, you know, gifted and, and because of, of others judging and criticizing, we tend to. You know, hinder all those talents and, and, and beautiful, beautiful personalities. So, um, you know, you, your question was how, how have I tried to change those conversations? How have they changed? I suppose that from, from where I stand, my conversations have always been similar. The response I've had is different because for people that know me now, they know they know the type of conversations they can have with me. [00:05:30] Peter: What have you noticed in terms of changing the conversation? I, I kind of feel sometimes, and I I'm gonna continue to do it, you know, until my last breath, but I sometimes feel like it's like emptying the ocean with a, trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon. Right. It's it's, you know, for every person that we talk to and explain. That, uh, different does not equal bad or that, or that, you know, this is not a disability per se. Uh, we come across schools or, or doctors, whatever who, who treat this exactly as such as a disability. And, and when you're seven years old and you're diagnosed with ADHD, uh, and you're told the first thing you're told, the first thing your parents are told is that you are less than everyone else. That's a hard stigma to shape.  [00:06:10] Dr.Sanz: It, it is aweful and, and the conversations have changed because when I first started, you know, working in ADHD 20 odd years ago, um, the, I had to speak to professionals, to doctors about the fact that. It was a genetic condition. It wasn't about bad parenting. It wasn't about children just being awkward and difficult and naughty. And that those conversations were with professionals. I still occasionally have one of those conversations with a doctor, with a teacher, but not as often more often, uh, than not now people accept that it is a condition, that it is a genetic, uh, inherited, uh, condition. But generally people don't understand how it shows and how it really, uh, what it really means. And again, this, this very wrong assumptions about, you know, when people, don't people with ADHD, don't do certain things. This is still this assumption that they've just been awkward and oppositional, whereas, you know, they don't see what really is happening. In the brain in the executive, you know, function in the, in the brain and in the neuropathways pathways of the brain. So those conversations are still going on and will continue to go on for a very long time. But Peter, that is about stigma and that is about. You know, uh, you know, how, you know, lack of understanding because there's two aspects to the conversations. One is the lack of understanding of what it really means. And the other is, uh, seeing it as a, as you very well defined it as a disability, as a, as a, uh, people are less for having ADHD. So it's, it is both things. 1. People don't understand the actual signs and symptoms and how it really presents. And two then is, you know, very stigmatized and is very derogatory the way it's spoken about. [00:08:11] Peter: It's interesting because you know, other diseases, for lack of a better word, other conditions, you know, they, they don't seem. I guess they don't see it as stigmatized. Right. You know, you don't, you don't look at, um, I mean, mental health as a whole, it has always been stigmatized, but you know, you're never gonna tell someone with cancer. Oh, just pull yourself up by your bull straps or just pay attention more. Right. And yet when the condition is unseen, uh, like ADHD or any foreign mental health, it, it, it it's always seemed like it's much easier to, um, I don't wanna say mock it, but much easier to sort of dismiss it. Right. Which is, I think very, very frustrating for millions of people. Talk to us about, um, uh, Mind your life. I'd love to know a little bit about, uh, this, uh, organization you founded  [00:09:01] Dr.Sanz: well it's, uh, I'm, I'm incredibly passionate about it because the, the purpose, the reason why I created my new life was precisely to eradicate the stigma. And you very well just mentioned Peter, that, um, you know, with mental health, we, at this moment in time, we can't get away. You know, the stigma that is attached to it. And you're absolutely right with other physical illnesses. You know, people are much more understanding, supportive and, and caring with mental health, uh, is very difficult to get that genuine attitude from, from people in general. And the reason comes from the lack of, uh, uh, research and, and investigations with cancer. You can get, you know, some, uh, radiology, uh, Investigation to prove, oh, here there's a tumor. And you can see it is in your livers in here or there, you can do some bood tests and say, yeah, you've got anemia. And this is, this is how it shows with mental health. We can't really, we don't have any x-rays any blood tests or any other physical. Investigation that we can prove what the reason, what, the reason which leads to people, just having opinions. You know, we, um, I sometimes have to laugh when, you know, I hear conversations I'm on the, you know, on, on the cafe, whatever people are making, you know, diagnosis about anxiety, depressions, schizophrenia, even. And I, I think, gosh, you know, most of the psychiatrists you know, that struggle to really, you know, with challenging presentations to get it right. Nevermind people in the streets, but, but we all think we know more than we do. So mind your life was founded because I, I am, you know, uh, very frustrated when I. See in general public, uh, making assumptions about people with mental health problems. And I lived it. I, you know, I was seven years old when my eldest brother became ill with, with the first signs of his schizophrenia. And, and I, we suffered as a family, the stigma we had to move, uh, house because the neighbors were really harsh and, you know, and then, and then I was a teenager when my second brother became ill. So even more of the same. And I, you know, I was, I was a young person thinking, gosh, you know, why, why? You know, public professional services are making life so hard for my brothers and for myself, there's no need for that. And unquestionably Peter. And this is where my heart is. We make people, we make, conditions much harder, much harder because of our, our attitude, because of the way we judge him, the way we, we assume. And, and, and I know my brother one, my eldest brother passed away last January. And, you know, I had beautiful conversations with him before he passed. And I asked him, you know, what, what he would, you know, want to tell people that have mental health problems and, you know, and his words were along the lines of, you know, we we've got each other, we understand what we go through. We just can't take it to heart, what people say and assume about us, because that would kill us. And, and it's really sad when, when people with mental health problems live lives like that. So Mind Yr Life was created to really try and influence people's attitude towards anyone with mental health problem. In fact, Towards anyone that is considered to be different. Um, because when we, when we don't know, we feel threatened and, and people don't know about mental health illnesses about mental conditions and, and they feel threatened because of the ignorance most times. And then they judge and they try and put them down because that makes them feel more in control, more secured. So, you know, there's, there's, there's a lot of work to be done there about eradicating the stigma. But, you know, we, we can, you know, we bit, bit by day by day, you know, we get there,  [00:12:54] Peter: no question about it, Dr. Sanz how can people find, uh, more about you and, and, and where can they go to get more?     On the Web: www.MindYrLife.com Socials: @MindYrLifeMYL on Twitter  Facebook @mind.yr.life on INSTA and Luisa Sanz on YouTube [00:13:00] Dr.Sanz: I thought of the name. And I thought, um, you know, that mind obviously is about caring and looking after, and, and mind is about mental health and, and your, your is spelled with a Y and an R because I thought it's about you. It's about us, but it's about your responsibility and every single one, taking responsibility over, over mental health, over attitude and, and, and changing. And, and life is about, you know, precisely about why, why we live these lives, how do we live it and how do we, you know, live it in a way that is that we, we achieve happiness. Um, so mind your life spell, as I said, with the Y and R um, you know, I've got in the website, there's, I'm, I'm, I'm doing lots of interviews to people that, you know, very willingly speak openly about their experiences with, with mental health. I like to think that I lead by example. And I, I have an interview where I speak about what my experience growing up was, you know, when with, with mental health problems at home and, and, and we do do interviews and we, you know, I I've recently, um, wrote a, a journal, which is a wellbeing guided journal to help people. Particularly people, you know, with, it's not specific for ADHD, but people with ADHD tend to need more guidance, more support, you know, a little bit of a prompt. And, and this journal is to change behaviors. You know, that sometimes you think, oh, I wish I, I could eat more healthy or I could do more exercise or I could make my bed every morning or, you know, so, so it it's to. It's to, uh, support people in making those changes. And the journal starts with giving lots of information about why consistency is important, how, how the brain works and how this consistency provides the, you know, the, the, the, what is needed for, for changing behaviors. So in mind your life, we have. As I said, you know, um, interviews to, uh, to learn more about what people really experience. We have videos that I've, I've uploaded that I do them myself for, for everyone. They're not for professionals they're for everyone that want to learn a little bit more about ADHD, there are three videos on ADHD. There are some on autistic spectrum condition and that there'll be more ?___? We, we, we upload information, informa educational videos. We've got these journal as well. And we do loads of the things, um, that we keep, you know, uploading on the website to, to try and, you know, first make sure that people with mental health problems don't feel that they are on their own because we are all on the same boat. And, and, and second to help those that really want to understand mental health conditions better and support those with mental health conditions in a, in a healthier manner. You know, uh, we've got the information available as well. Excellent.  [00:15:58] Peter: Well, Dr. Sounds thank you so much for taking the time. We really appreciate you coming on faster than normal. And, uh, we'll have you back again.  [00:16:04] Dr.Sanz: Oh, I, I love that Peter. Uh, I would love that. Thank you so much for having me today.  [00:16:10] Peter: Always guys, as always, we appreciate you listening. If you like what you heard, you could drop us a review. I know I say that every week. I really mean it this time…. —   Credits: You've been listening to the Faster Than Normal podcast. We're available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google play and of course at www.FasterThanNormal.com I'm your host, Peter Shankman and you can find me at shankman.com and @petershankman on all of the socials. If you like what you've heard, why not head over to your favorite podcast platform of choice and leave us a review, come more people who leave positive reviews, the more the podcast has shown, and the more people we can help understand that ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Opening and closing themes were composed and produced by Steven Byrom who also produces this podcast, and the opening introduction was recorded by Bernie Wagenblast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week!

Peter Fishman's resume has its fair share of disparate data points. “I was once considered the world's expert in video rental,” he explains. “This is essentially the world's worst skill.” He spent a decade as Chief Bacon officer of Bacon Hot Sauce, a company he co-founded with Dan Silverman. He even describes himself as a “failed” academic, despite earning a PhD in Economics from Berkeley. Fittingly, he eventually streamlined these career data points into Mozart Data, another company he co-founded, with Silverman. Mozart Data is an all-in-one modern data platform that allows anyone to—without the need for engineering resources–organize, centralize, and analyze their data. Even outside of the data space itself, knowing the statistics of consumers and investors is crucial to launching any successful enterprise. Fishman admits that the relationships and reputation that he and Silverman formed from all of their previous years in business helped them launch their platform with unusual speed, as their first customers were investing in 30 years of accumulated trust. On this episode of Billion Dollar Tech, you'll learn the value of a data pipeline, what major change in the data space has Peter excited, and the crucial difference between customers and friends. Quotes: “B2B companies were not developing like consumer companies. They would sell to a CIO and magically whatever the CIO decided, that's what the company had to adopt. (5:54-6:07 | Peter)  “You started to see that in the software space, you started to see teams that would make decisions about what software they were using to basically make themselves move quicker.” (6:27-6:37 | Peter)  “What has happened in enterprise or B2B in the last almost two decades has been this shift from exclusively a top-down sale from somebody with a fancy title making a decision on behalf of the whole company, to a more natural, bottom-up motion. What do you prefer and vote with your credit card.” (9:05-9:31 | Peter) “It's very hard to raise money without either a product, a vision, or traction. If you have all three of them, you're in the driver's seat.” (11:48-11:57 | Peter)  “The reality is 99.99% or entrepreneurs don't end up on a rocketship to Mars. They end up toiling for many years in a really challenging environment.” (15:03-15:17 | Peter)  “We were selling a product, not ourselves as a service, that said the buyers trusted our names. This is about 30 years of trust we had built with these three customers.” (17:58-18:12 | Peter)  “So you mentioned the word data pipeline. What's a data pipeline?'(25:54-26:00 | Brendan) “You have to understand some of the nuances of your data, what's generating your data. What's the mechanism?” (35:56-36:01 | Peter)    Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandellTikTok: @brendandell39 Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926    Connect with Peter Fishman:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petefishmanv Twitter: @peterfishman https://www.mozartdata.com/ Blog: https://www.mozartdata.com/blog Check out Peter Fishman's recommended resources:Moneyball by Michael Lewis: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780393324815 https://fivethirtyeight.com/https://www.linkedin.com/company/mozartdata Please don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe to Billion Dollar Tech on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Use code Brendan30 for 30% off your annual membership with RiverSide.fm  Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

After this, Jesus shewed himself again to the disciples at the sea of Tiberias. And he shewed himself after this manner. [2] There were together Simon Peter, and Thomas, who is called Didymus, and Nathanael, who was of Cana of Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. [3] Simon Peter saith to them: I go a fishing. They say to him: We also come with thee. And they went forth, and entered into the ship: and that night they caught nothing. [4] But when the morning was come, Jesus stood on the shore: yet the disciples knew not that it was Jesus. [5] Jesus therefore said to them: Children, have you any meat? They answered him: No. [6] He saith to them: Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and you shall find. They cast therefore; and now they were not able to draw it, for the multitude of fishes. [7] That disciple therefore whom Jesus loved, said to Peter: It is the Lord. Simon Peter, when he heard that it was the Lord, girt his coat about him, (for he was naked,) and cast himself into the sea. [8] But the other disciples came in the ship, (for they were not far from the land, but as it were two hundred cubits,) dragging the net with fishes. [9] As soon then as they came to land, they saw hot coals lying, and a fish laid thereon, and bread. [10] Jesus saith to them: Bring hither of the fishes which you have now caught. [11] Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land, full of great fishes, one hundred and fifty-three. And although there were so many, the net was not broken. [12] Jesus saith to them: Come, and dine. And none of them who were at meat, durst ask him: Who art thou? knowing that it was the Lord. [13] And Jesus cometh and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish in like manner. [14] This is now the third time that Jesus was manifested to his disciples, after he was risen from the dead. Introit: Matt 25:34 Then shall the king say to them that shall be on his right hand: Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Tunc dicet rex his qui a dextris ejus erunt : Venite benedicti Patris mei, possidete paratum vobis regnum a constitutione mundi :

Journey Through 2 Peter "It's Not Just Another Day" 2 Peter 3:10-18

What you'll learn in this episode: The process Atelier Zobel uses to fuse different metals together in innovative and beautiful ways How Peter has maintained Michael Zobel's legacy while modernizing and refining the Atelier's designs Why Peter is attracted to imperfect gems, and how he designs jewelry that highlights the beauty of imperfection Why passion and a willingness to push boundaries are necessary for aspiring jewelry designers About Peter Schmid Peter Schmid owns Atelier Zobel in Konstanz, Germany. Original owner Michael Zobel was a master craftsman who honed his skills and talent to create pieces that are arresting in their visual impact and remarkable in their goldsmithing and soldering technique. He combined metals in new, sensual, even erotic ways. The effect was electrifying. Working at his side was protégé Peter Schmid.  Like Zobel before him, Peter is both artist and craftsman, and he brings that special blend to every piece he creates. His chief inspiration is character: the character of place, the character of material, even the character of intent. Mountains and rivers inspire him. Precious stones inspire him. And the idea of what he is making inspires him, whether it's a ring or a brooch or a bracelet, or one that transforms into another. For Peter, every piece is about the interaction of visual elements with invisible inspiration. His work is revered worldwide for its attention to detail, its fusion of gold and silver, his gemstone settings, and the fluid movement all his pieces seem to share. Additional Resources: Website Instagram Photos: Jewelry from Peter Schmid:   Transcript: Peter Schmid might have become a corporate manager if he never walked past the window of Atelier Zobel in Konstanz, Germany. Peter was instantly mesmerized by the jewelry on display, and he made it his goal to leave business school and become an apprentice for Michael Zobel. After a few years of jewelry design school, that dream came true, and today Peter is the head of Atelier Zobel. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to share what advice he would give young jewelry designers who want to follow his path, why he loves using stones with imperfections, and how he has refined Atelier Zobel's designs and process. Read the episode transcript below. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. Today, my guest is Peter Schmid, head of the well-known firm Atelier Zobel in Konstanz, Germany. Although he didn't set out to become a metalsmith and jewelry designer, his work is shown all over the world. Today we'll hear all about his jewelry journey. Peter, welcome to the program. Peter: Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Sharon: Glad to have you. Tell us about your jewelry journey. They're all interesting, but this sounds like a very interesting one. Peter: Yeah, I don't know. When I started, I was basically thinking about what I was going to be in my professional career. I was thinking, “Well, I'll be an accountant or manager of something,” so I went to school. After that, I found out it's not actually exactly what I wanted to be, because I was always painting and interested in sculpting things and making things, but I never knew what to make; I just wanted to make something. So, a friend of my dad was like, “Well, why don't you become a goldsmith?” and I was like, “I don't know.” I looked at the jewelry of my mom and it didn't appeal so much. It's not what I wanted to do, the jewelry she had.  Then another friend was telling me about Konstanz, the town I'm now in, that there are so many goldsmiths here. It's a big tradition in Germany and in Konstanz especially. Then, I walked up to the window of Michael Zobel—this was in 1995—and I saw the window. It was amazing, with crazy decoration and big pieces in there. This is how jewelry should look like. It's an expression. It's an artful piece. It's a piece you wear for yourself and not for anybody else. It's a personal thing, and I think that got me more into this experience, what is jewelry and what to make out of it. Sharon: Were you always creative, or were you always painting and doing other things? Up to this point, were you doing things with your hands? Peter: Yes, I was always painting, but the paintings I did, I was playing with colors. It was a lot of just paint on the canvas and melting colors into each other. I was always fascinated by that. I didn't like my paintings that much, I have to say. I had an exhibition once here in Konstanz because people were pushing me into that, but I didn't feel like I was a painter. I didn't feel like this was my career or I was good enough for that, the play of color. Sharon: I'm jumping around now, but today do you feel like you're a jeweler? You didn't feel like you were a painter. Do you feel like you're a designer, a jeweler?  Peter: The designing for me is the pleasure of being free with my thoughts. I don't know if I'm a designer in the sense of designing. It's hard to say. Maybe I'm more an artist. But in the first place, that's the tradition here in Germany. How I learned metalsmithing and goldsmithing was basically traditional. It's more about the techniques and refining those techniques. It's also what our atelier still does. We're really working on the bench with the metal, melting them together and fusing them together. We basically use the metal as a paint as well as the stones and the color of the stones. I use this as a color palette, but with the skills of a goldsmith. It's nice to be able to do that and to use those traditions as well. Sharon: So, you combined everything, in a sense.  Peter: Yes. Sharon: So, you looked in the Michael Zobel window. Tell us why you saw this jewelry and said, “Oh my god, this is it.” What did you do from there? You became an apprentice, but how did that happen? Peter: I became an apprentice. I was very convinced that this was it. It never occurred to me that there is something else. What happened was I had a résumé made, and I walked into the shop and met Michael Zobel. I'm like, “I want to be your apprentice,” and he was like, “Well, you first have to go to school and learn the basic techniques of sewing and filing and soldering and all of this. This is what I need of somebody who comes to us. They need to know how to work with the tools.” I'm like, “O.K., sounds good to me.” So, I walked out again and applied to a school which offered a design course that was just a year longer than the regular school.  After that, I graduated as a jewelry designer as well as a theoretical goldsmith from that school. In Germany, you have to do both; you have to do school and learn with a master goldsmith. I did everything theoretically in school, learning how to file and do all the basics. I came back to him and said, “I'm done with my school and I want to apprentice with you.” He was like, “Well, I have an apprentice already.” For me, it was so clear that I was going to practice there. I never looked for anything else. I never thought of anything else, because that's the jewelry I wanted to make. Somehow I think he felt that I was really passionate about that, and he was like, “Well, I think this is the first and only year we're going to have two apprentices.” That was it, and he took me in as an apprentice. It was so interesting to learn, and yeah, it's different. You're on the lowest level when you start as an apprentice. You have to clean the workshop and supply basically all the other goldsmiths with whatever they need. If they need coffee, you have to go and run out for coffee. Sharon: Go get Starbucks, yes. Peter: Exactly, that's how it works. Sharon: So, you already had a career in a sense. You were on a different career path before you did this, right? Peter: Yes, I was in business school. I didn't really know what to do, but I felt like, “Well, business is always good. It sounds perfect.” My dad was also an entrepreneur and I felt like it was a good path, and I knew a lot about it already and how it is to work for yourself. Then in school, the whole time it was, “You're going to be manager of Zieman's and you're going to be manager of this and that company,” and I was like, “I don't want to be a manager of any company.” Sharon: When you decided to switch, did you meet resistance from family and friends? Like, “How are you going to make a living?” Peter: No, actually, everybody knew already. Sharon: They were happy you found something that made you happy. Peter: They were happy I finally realized that. Sharon: Wow, that's great! What is it about jewelry that attracted you when you saw it? They sound like statement pieces. Peter: There was a fusing of the work back then. Gold was not as expensive as it is today. There was a big cuff which was about, I don't know, like a Wonder Woman cuff, but all in gold with platinum on top of it. I looked at it and I was like, “This is so strong and mesmerizing,” because I didn't know how it was made, that the platinum on top was fused and it's all done by heat only. I could not believe how to make a piece like that. It was unbelievable. Sharon: I love that word, mesmerizing. That is really great word. I don't hear it too often, but it just drew you in. I'm not a maker—I've done some soldering and stuff, but when we look at your pieces with the gold on top of the—I don't even know what the other metal is. Peter: It's sterling silver. Sharon: Is it just heat that makes it stick together? Peter: Yeah, and magic I guess, but basically it's just heat. It's a heating process. We heat it up. It's like a granulation, which is also just heat to heat, and you granulate it. It's gold on top of sterling silver, and then we do gold with platinum on top or gold with gold on top. That works as well. Then there's sterling with palladium or sterling with platinum all together also. Sharon: That would be mesmerizing. Is this a technique that you learned outside of your schooling?  Peter: It is a tradition we have here in the studio and at Michael Zobel. When I came here as an apprentice, we already did a lot of the sterling with gold on top. I think Michael started that in the 80s, the first pieces, when I look back in our archive. Then, there were a lot of tryouts with different material on top, like copper and bronze. There was already a lot of trying of these things, and some worked out really well and some didn't so much. When I started working here, I learned all of these techniques to make jewelry in that way, with the fusing and basically painting on the piece.  At the beginning, I was just executing designs for Michael Zobel. Later I graduated as a goldsmith in the studio, and I worked here for a while as a goldsmith and in the shop, so I was in contact with the clients. I always liked to travel, and at one point we started traveling more in the U.S., building out more contacts there and doing shows in Baltimore. I think it was the late 90s when we were in Baltimore. It was fun, and I met Todd Reed. I met all these people. It was super fun. I had a great time, and for me, as a goldsmith, it was amazing to see all that. Michael liked to have somebody to travel with, so we built up that market together and it was nice.  At one point I took over the business, because I think he saw that I'm very passionate about it. I started to design my own pieces and work from there. It was very interesting to step forward into designing and making. I wasn't hired as a designer; I was hired as a goldsmith, but it was kind of a liquid transition to it. It's a flow. It went on. It's like a master and an apprentice, and then the apprentice becomes a master. It's quite an interesting way of moving on, with an atelier like that. Sharon: So, you were transitioning from being one of the hands-on people to translating your ideas, your vision into something that somebody else was making. Peter: Right. I became the head of the atelier later because Michael retired. I did my own work, and we moved on with a lot of the designs and the process. The fusing became more refined. I don't know how to describe it, but it became more textured on the surface. In the early days, we only had strong graphic designs. Now, they've become a bit more poetic because we do flowers and paisley, stuff like that. That wasn't possible before. It was interesting to work in the studio with the goldsmiths and push them into going forward in the making process and discovering new techniques in how we work. It was really cool.  That happened when I saw an exhibition of Japanese kimonos. Parts of them are stitched. There's stitching and printing on the kimonos, and they have these beautiful patterns. I thought, “It's amazing. I want to do something like that. I want to bring a pattern onto the surface of our jewelry.” We actually have been able to do that, to put a real pattern on it. The first pattern we figured out looked a bit like a koi pond. It's sterling silver as a base, and then we figured out how to print koi onto the figure in gold. We had golden koi printed on top. Sharon: It sounds beautiful. Peter: It was a beautiful piece with aquamarine, beautifully carved. There were aquamarine slices carved from the back on the surface, which was the water of the pond, and then the koi, which was a little reminiscent of the kimonos. Sharon: Wow, that sounds beautiful! You mentioned aquamarine. I know you have a real interest in gems. How did you develop that? Did you just start incorporating it, or was it already part of the atelier? Peter: It's interesting because now I love gems, but when I was in school—I don't blame the school, but when you learn about gems and have class about gemology, you look at these tiny little stones and they all look alike. I mean, one is blue and the other is red. O.K., this is tourmaline red and this is ruby red, but they all look alike. You have to use a microscope and all of that. I couldn't really grasp them as a piece of jewelry.  Now what I love about stones is the imperfection. I love a stone which is completely perfect; that's amazing, but I actually do like the imperfection in the stone. I feel like it's more personal. It's a unique stone and I'm always drawn to that one. I'm like, “This is off. The color is off,” and I want that. I want to have something that is not expected to be that color. Now I love stones and I use them as my color palette, but it was not so easy to get into gems. Sharon: Do your clients embrace the fact that you like the imperfections? Do they see it in the same way you do, that it gives the work personality, or are they like, “Oh, that's not a perfect stone”? Peter: No, I think they see what I do with it. For me, when I see this beautiful stone, it's not that it's sitting there as a flaw. It comes into a composition with the piece itself. I want to put it on a pedestal and show off that it's beautiful and that it has this imperfection. Sometimes, when there is an inclusion in the stone, for example, I repeat this inclusion onto the metal as an echo of the inclusion, so you really see the inclusion. I don't want to hide the inclusion; I want to show the inclusion. The cool part is the inclusion because that makes it real. A perfect stone could be synthetic, but nature is amazing, how that inclusion is in there. Hydroquartz or inner quartz is amazing, I think. They do great work with that. Sharon: You're probably surrounded by fabulous stones, both perfect and imperfect ones. Peter: Yes. Sharon: Tell us about your clientele. Is there a demographic of women of a certain age? Is it younger people? Is it men?  Peter: I don't know. Most clients, I think they like the jewelry because it is a personal piece. It's something you wear for yourself, and you don't have to show off with it. I mean, you show off; you get attraction with it. It's not something that hides. If you wear a piece of my work, you can definitely see it, and I think the clients appreciate it. They also like that people don't understand what it really is. It's an interesting piece.  I have one client, she never wore jewelry and then she came and was so in love. We had this exhibition on lucky charms. Lucky charms are usually these tiny things you wear around your wrist or your neck, but we made big ones. I made a really big brooch with a Buddha inside. There was an ancient Buddha about two or three hundred years ago inside, then rays of gold going away from that, and then rough diamonds as a frame, almost like a picture frame. It was a round brooch, and on top was a tourmaline cat's eye just to have this magical light, because the Buddha was in a triangle, sitting there in a niche. It's quite a big brooch, about 12 centimeters in diameter. The client came and she was like, “This is an amazing piece of art.” She didn't wear jewelry at all, but she bought the piece and she wears it all the time. When she doesn't wear it, she has it in a frame at home. I see her often in the city wearing it. Just like that, they go to a beer garden and she's wearing that piece around her neck, and it makes her feel good and lucky. It's amazing. Sharon: A different kind of lucky charm. If it makes her feel like she's lucky, that's half the battle. Do you do custom work? Do you do jewelry for men?  Peter: Yes, I do custom work. I love to do that. I love to explore special pieces with people when they tell me a story for what it is. We talk a little bit, and usually I get a sense of this person, if they like a big piece or a smaller piece. I'm not only making gigantic pieces. It has to fit to the person. The person has to be comfortable to wear it. It shouldn't be something which is wearing you; you should wear it. You should own it. That's what it should be, so I love to make custom pieces for people. Men are also super fun. I have a collection of Ashanti gold weights. They're from a tribe in Africa. Nowadays, I think it's in Ghana. The tribe of the Ashanti, they used to have these gold weights for trade back then. It was a different time, so they traded the gold with these little pronged weights. I think they're super interesting. Each one is different. I make a lot of men's jewelry with that, like a ring or a pendant, adding some rough diamonds to it and giving it an edge. Men tend to like the story around that. Also meteorite jewelry is often used for men. Sharon: I'm sorry, what kind of jewelry is used for men? Peter: Meteorite. Sharon: Oh, meteorite. Yes, that would be interesting. There's a masculine element to that.  Peter: Yeah, or opal. I love opals for men as well. Sharon: Who doesn't like opals? For those people just starting out, for the next person who knocks on your window and says, “This is really cool. I really want to do this,” what advice would you give them, besides make sure you know how to saw and all of that? That's important. Peter: It is important. Sharon: Oh, my gosh! It takes a lot of patience and you have to be very detail-oriented. You grew up with an entrepreneur as a father and you're an entrepreneur. What advice what you give somebody, besides that they have to have the foundational skills? What advice what you give somebody starting out? Peter: The first that comes to my mind is you have to be passionate about what you do. You must follow the passion in what you do and be true to that. I also think curiosity is important, to push it always a little bit. I think that's important to just push a little bit. I have a little story about pushing, because I have that in mind. When I was in school, we had pottery class and we had to make a flowerpot. You just have a flower in there. I started off making that flowerpot and I was like, “This is so boring. I can't even tell you how boring it is to make a tubular flowerpot out of clay.” Clay felt amazing for me, and so I started drifting off into clay. I ended up with—how do you call it, for watering flowers? Sharon: Like a watering can? Peter: Yeah, like a watering can out of clay. It was really amazing, and my teacher loved it because it was well-done and beautifully made. She had to take one point away from me because it was supposed to be a flowerpot, but it's always pushing a little bit, pushing the boundaries. I don't know; I love that. I think it's hard to stay within the parameters. I think passion is a good thing. Sharon: It's so important. It's clear that's what has driven you and continued the firm's success and made your jewelry so well-known. Peter, thank you so much for being with us today. Peter: My pleasure. That was fun. You can find us wherever you download your podcasts, and please rate us. Please join us next time, when our guest will be another jewelry industry professional who will share their experience and expertise. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.  

Full Text of ReadingsSolemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles Lectionary: 590, 591All podcast readings are produced by the USCCB and are from the Catholic Lectionary, based on the New American Bible and approved for use in the United States _______________________________________The Saint of the day is Saints Peter and PaulPeter (d. 64?) Saint Mark ends the first half of his Gospel with a triumphant climax. He has recorded doubt, misunderstanding, and the opposition of many to Jesus. Now Peter makes his great confession of faith: “You are the Messiah” (Mark 8:29b). It was one of the many glorious moments in Peter's life, beginning with the day he was called from his nets along the Sea of Galilee to become a fisher of men for Jesus. The New Testament clearly shows Peter as the leader of the apostles, chosen by Jesus to have a special relationship with him. With James and John he was privileged to witness the Transfiguration, the raising of a dead child to life, and the agony in Gethsemane. His mother-in-law was cured by Jesus. He was sent with John to prepare for the last Passover before Jesus' death. His name is first on every list of apostles. And to Peter only did Jesus say, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:17b-19). But the Gospels prove their own trustworthiness by the unflattering details they include about Peter. He clearly had no public relations person. It is a great comfort for ordinary mortals to know that Peter also has his human weakness, even in the presence of Jesus. He generously gave up all things, yet he can ask in childish self-regard, “What are we going to get for all this?” (see Matthew 19:27). He receives the full force of Christ's anger when he objects to the idea of a suffering Messiah: “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do” (Matthew 16:23b). Peter is willing to accept Jesus' doctrine of forgiveness, but suggests a limit of seven times. He walks on the water in faith, but sinks in doubt. He refuses to let Jesus wash his feet, then wants his whole body cleansed. He swears at the Last Supper that he will never deny Jesus, and then swears to a servant maid that he has never known the man. He loyally resists the first attempt to arrest Jesus by cutting off Malchus' ear, but in the end he runs away with the others. In the depth of his sorrow, Jesus looks on him and forgives him, and he goes out and sheds bitter tears. The Risen Jesus told Peter to feed his lambs and his sheep (John 21:15-17). Paul (d. 64?) If the most well-known preacher today suddenly began preaching that the United States should adopt Marxism and not rely on the Constitution, the angry reaction would help us understand Paul's life when he started preaching that Christ alone can save us. He had been the most pharisaic of Pharisees, the most legalistic of Mosaic lawyers. Now he suddenly appears to other Jews as a heretical welcomer of Gentiles, a traitor and apostate. Paul's central conviction was simple and absolute: Only God can save humanity. No human effort—even the most scrupulous observance of law—can create a human good which we can bring to God as reparation for sin and payment for grace. To be saved from itself, from sin, from the devil, and from death, humanity must open itself completely to the saving power of Jesus. Paul never lost his love for his Jewish family, though he carried on a lifelong debate with them about the uselessness of the Law without Christ. He reminded the Gentiles that they were grafted on the parent stock of the Jews, who were still God's chosen people, the children of the promise. Reflection We would probably go to confession to Peter sooner than to any of the other apostles. He is perhaps a more striking example of the simple fact of holiness. Jesus says to us as he said, in effect, to Peter: “It is not you who have chosen me, but I who have chosen you. Peter, it is not human wisdom that makes it possible for you to believe, but my Father's revelation. I, not you, build my Church.” Paul's experience of the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus was the driving force that made him one of the most zealous, dynamic, and courageous ambassadors of Christ the Church has ever had. But persecution, humiliation, and weakness became his day-by-day carrying of the cross, material for further transformation. The dying Christ was in him; the living Christ was his life. Saint Paul is the Patron Saint of: Greece Saint of the Day Copyright Franciscan Media

Another presentation from the Brighton SEO conference on a topic that is really new, but important for every website owner. Website accessibility is a hot topic because lawmakers all around the world are writing laws that require you to make your website accessible to people with different disabilities. Luckily, a lot of the things that you have to do will have a positive impact on your SEO. Lea is an SEO expert and understands the link between those two. You can find her on Linkedin, Twitter or on the company website. Here is the transcript of the recording: Hello, and welcome to the Time for Marketing podcast, the podcast that brings you the best marketing conference speakers and makes them sum up their presentation in five minutes. My name is Peter, and I'll be your podcast's host. This is episode number 37, and if this is your first time you're listening, please go back in the library and find the excellent guests that we had in the past, that I had in the past. There's some gold in there, because I try to find people who have evergreen content. There are excellent episodes back there. If you have other people that you can promote the podcast to, I'll be glad if you do that. I'm very glad that I have today's guest on the podcast. Lea, hello, and welcome to the podcast. Lea: Hi, thanks for having me. Peter: How is Lake Superior? Lea: It's gorgeous, as always, deep blue and angry. [laughs] Peter: Me and Lea, we talked before, and I'm very intrigued by the name of the lake at which she has the office. She was kind enough to show the lake view from her office. Lea, you are the SEO analyst at Aimclear in Minnesota US. What are you as a company, and what do you do there? Lea: We are a digital agency company, award-winning. We love our US search awards. We do everything from web development to paid and, of course, SEO, like I do. Then also with SEO, we roll in accessibility and work between the teams to make sure that we're checking things like contrast and all text and all the things from the ad side to the web dev side. Peter: For you personally, why SEO? Lea: SEO I fell in love with almost 20 years ago. I worked for a company that built websites for dealerships that sold power sports. I just really fell in love with the idea of helping those small business owners get found and sell product. When I figured out how to move the needle, it was really exciting. Then I started leading a team, and that's what we did. Then after that Aimclear was the next big challenge because I wanted to see what else I could do, so applied it and here I am. Peter: What do you do in Aimclear? What are the things that you do daily, and what are your favorite things to do? Lea: I do SEO. SEO. [laughs] I also work with accessibility to make sure that the stuff we put out is accessible to as many people as we can. That's what I spend most of my day doing. I really love it when we have a site that is not performing come in, and I get to take it by the reins and make it show up and help meet goals, sell stuff, find dealers, or find leads, and that sort of thing. Peter: Excellent. I invited you to the podcast because you had a presentation at Brighton SEO, probably my favorite marketing conference. The presentation was called Digital Accessibility and Compliance: Essential for Users and Good for SEO. Why accessibility? Lea: Why have I chosen to go down the accessibility route? Peter: Yes. Lea: Oh. Short story is, I had a really good friend that was diagnosed with ALS which is a neurodegenerative disorder that takes your ability to speak and use your arms and things like that. It's horrible. While we were helping her sell her house and move her mom into assisted living and then help her find a place to live, she'd stopped communicating with us. It was because things like Facebook's Messenger doesn't rotate, and things like, Twitter doesn't rotate. She couldn't communicate back and forth in the text messages the way we used to do it. I was really frustrated when I wasn't being communicated back to, and I was trying to help her with things, and then realize that it wasn't her, it was the software, or it was the phone, or whatever. For whatever reason, once it was mounted on her wheelchair and it was mounted at horizontal so that the fonts were big enough to read, literally things wouldn't rotate. That was the starting point. Then, from there, I realized how important SEO actually is to accessibility and how they are siblings. They're brother and sister, and you need one for the other, and vice versa. Peter: A lot of basics SEO stuff is actually also a lot of basic accessibility stuff, right? Lea: Yes. If you actually look at core web vitals, it's accessibility. If you go through the pieces of core web vitals and what they're asking us to do and how search console is notifying us, "Hey, this is too close together." These are accessibility elements right at their core. Google might call it something different, but that's what it is, and you can see it. Peter: Lea's presentation is going to get you to be in line with your local laws. It's going to help more people see you. It's going to help you be in line with Google. It's going to help you with web vitals and all of the updates that come. Whatever Lea says, has to be gold for you. Lea: I just want to open everybody's eyes because a lot SEOs thinks the elements aren't as important as they really, really are. Peter: With no further ado, here are your five minutes. Lea: My main goal is to change the perception so that SEOs and developers and designers and content creators start thinking that accessibility is about people, because a lot of times we get hung up on- they're not our customers, and that's not the truth, they have wallets, so they're your customers. We need to make sure that we're thinking about accessibility because if we're States side, we're talking about one in five people need accessibility when they're using the web. If you talking about the UK side, we're talking about 22%, which is a little bit more. There's one in five people need your site or need your app to be accessible, so that they can use it easily. Accessibility is really important because it bridges the gaps between physical disability like location, but also socioeconomic status, education, language, gender, and so many more things they can-- The list is endless. Accessibility, it focuses on people with disabilities or that have a disability, but it greatly benefits everybody around us, including our aging parents. It's really important that everybody thinks about accessibility as empowering users to use your stuff. Use your app, use your website. When we go through, and we talk about accessibility, and everybody's working to get their website to revolve around core web vitals and getting your site up to speed and making it fast and nimble, without considering accessibility, you're ignoring 10% to 15% of the global population, and in an age when we're all responsible for making money or hitting that bottom line, why would you just automatically cut off that many people? It doesn't make any sense. Since we're all in the process of meeting the core web vitals, and making sure that we don't miss any of those potential sales, because we're not ranking well, it's the same thing as working accessibility into your websites. There's basically five things to look at. If you haven't started a web accessibility site or information on your site, start by making yourself an accessibility statement and just owning up to the fact that you haven't gotten there. Make sure that you do some tests. Just try tabbing through your website and make sure you can do all the things on your website, like make a purchase, contact fuzz form, things like that. Whatever the main goals of your site or app are, see if you can do it with just having. Then, when you get down into that stuff, go use your site on your mobile. A lot of people test, test, test on their desktop, but they don't actually take their site outside and see if it's really easy to see during a sunny day, or make sure that everything's easy to click on and nothing's too small, or nothing like a pop-up as the X isn't off the screen. There's little things like that you can do. Probably the biggest thing is having people with disabilities at your table when you're making the plan. That is the biggest thing I need to advocate for because we as a group, SEOs, we don't know all the things that actually need to be done, and having people that need the assistive technology or need these elements put in place, having them at the table during the planning stage is imperative. Peter: That's it. Excellent. Lea: That's it. That's the big one. Those are the big things. Peter: How do we get people to our table, people that can tell us how they practically are using our website? I get the idea. You've done this a couple of times. What's the most practical way to do it? Lea: It literally depends on what your budget is. [laughs] As everything, right? You can hire within, hire people within to do testing and to work on your dev team, or work in your SEO team, you can do that. There are resources out there, there are companies out there that they have testing available, and it's beyond the computer. Anything that gives you a badge just because a computer tested it, said you're good to go, even the WAVE tool, which is created by the W3C, which is leading the charge and accessibility. Even if you have that, those badges really don't do anything if they don't have individual people testing in the background. Look into companies that offer accessibility testing with live humans that are going to go through your site. That'd be beautiful. Peter: When should we involve them? Should that be when we start thinking about new web page, when we start developing it, or graphics, wireframes? What is the best time to do that? Lea: Right at the beginning, because they're going to have tips for you to help you get started on the right foot, because you can go through the whole website and build it all out, and every website goes over timeline. It just does. There's always something like, "Oh, we forgot to tell you we needed a whole blog system," or, "Oh, we forgot this," or, "Oh, you know what? We really, really want it." We get those comments after things are already built, right? I can see you. Every SEO or dev person right now is calm faced, right? They all have had that experience. Having them at the beginning is really important because retrofitting rarely works. It gets really expensive, and at the end of the day, you most of the time end up scrapping the whole thing and starting over. Yes, start planning from the beginning and test, test, test all the way through. Peter: I feel that if I want to have a very accessible web page, I have to put aside all of the great ideas that my developer had, how we're going to have a unique website. I have to have the F structure and everything has to be squared, and colors have to be four different. How do you answer that? Lea: I'm not a dev, I'm definitely an SEO. I can read enough code to be dangerous and a lot of times be like, "It's broken somewhere right here." Our designers, they think about accessibility and color right from the beginning. When I see a design idea or the first mock-up, that's the first thing out of my mouth is, "Is it accessible, are all the contrasts?" Then I'll look at the colors and we'll test them because the math. A really good tip right off the bat is go look at your website. If you have gray font on a white background, people that have glasses have a hard time reading that on their mobile phone. Skipping gray font, gray font is font spam, and it isn't a good experience for anybody. Black is best. If you're doing a black background, white font is best. Make sure that that contrast is there so that it's very easy to read. From the beginning onward, you can still do really beautiful sites. Our designers and developers are doing really beautiful sites that are accessible, because we're starting at the beginning. Peter: Okay. Yes, probably start at the beginning is the same way. Linking accessibility to SEO. How does that work? Lea: Okay. Accessibility when you go through the W3's website. The W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium, right? They have the w3.org/wai. WAI, it stands for Web Accessibility Initiative. That part of the website takes you through everything. Accessibility is related to alt text, because if you have really great alt text that actually explains the image or the reason for the image, that also helps with search. We know that. We know that if you do alt text that images help. We know that Google is moving more and more and more towards image in the SERPs. Because we're doing more and more images in the SERPs, we need to make sure that those images are relevant to the content. You can do beautiful design elements, but then we just mark them as an alt. The things that would rank it would be make sense and ask yourself, "Are my users searching an image search for this content or for this information?" Then make sure that your alt text is relevant to what they were likely searching. That's one. Accessibility relates to SEO through headlines. A lot of people, there's a lot of websites out there, where they think that H1 is just to make big, pretty font, and so there's multiple H1s on the homepage. abc.go, the ABC News station's website, that entire homepage is nothing but H1s because it's just-- Peter: It's good for SEO. Lea: It's not. [laughs] It's not. It's really horrible for people that are going through and doing the use kit. My computer, I have set up to go headline to headline. People using their keyboard to navigate versus a mouse, because, say, they have low vision or no vision, then they will do Ctrl and H for next headline and they will pop through and listen to the headlines to get to the story they want to listen to or read. Those headlines, if they're in improper order, they're sending people all over. It doesn't make any sense and they're going to bounce off your site. Again, remember, it's one in five, need accessibility. You're really limiting the number of people to your site. Those are just a couple of the ways that it is related, but they're pretty big ways. Peter: Very important. I'm really happy when I get people talk about things that I haven't really thought about, talked about. Lea: Thought about? Yes. Peter: Yes, that word. Getting something new to the podcast is great. Lea, thank you very much for that. If people want to talk to you about accessibility or SEO, where can they find you? Lea: You can hop onto aimclear.com and reach out through the Contact Us form and they'll connect us. That's probably the easiest way. Otherwise, you can find me on Twitter, Lea Scudamore. Just no H on Lea, it's just L-E-A. Three letters, really easy. Peter: I'll add that into the show notes so people can find you there. Lea: Yes, so you can find me there, too. Peter: All right, excellent. Lea, thank you very much. Do you ever go and swim in the Lake Superior, and does that make you superior? Lea: It doesn't make me superior, but it is a great time. Peter: I'll do that once. Lea: Yes, please. Please come. Please come to Duluth and come hang out at the lake with us. Come in mid-to-late June, beginning of July, because we're still talking snow here right now. Peter: See, this is why I was yesterday at the Croatian seaside where we had 20 degrees Celsius. We were almost able to go to the sea, but in shorts and stuff. This is why we go to Croatia. Croatia is great. We're just rambling, I'm rambling. Lea, thank you very much to be in the podcast. Have a great Monday. Lea: You, too. Thank you so much. Peter: Bye-bye. Lea: Bye.

Pastor Cal continues the series CHOSEN A Journey Through 1 Peter "It's What's Inside that Counts"

This is a free two-part episode of Marketing BS. My guest today is Peter Fader, professor of marketing at the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania. Peter was one of my early marketing mentors and I loved this interview. This is Part 2 of the interview where we dive in deeper to the ramifications of Peter's signature research around “Buy until you Die”.You can subscribe to the podcast in your player of choice here: Apple, Sticher, TuneIn, Overcast , Spotify. Private Feed (for premium episodes).TranscriptEdward: This is part two of my interview with Professor Peter Fader. Today we're going to dive into signature research Buy Till you Die. Peter, can you start by explaining what this idea is?Peter: Yeah. That sounds really weird. Buy Till you Die. What's up with that? As we discussed briefly yesterday, it's not a model that I invented. In fact, I was actually against even trying it in the first place. The idea is that if you look at the way customers behave—it's not just customers—if you look at the way that repeated decision-makers make repeated decisions over time. I'll give you a wide range of examples as we go on. There's this remarkably consistent pattern. I'll stop short of calling it universal, but it's so robust, it's so common, that we should treat it that way. Yes, we should acknowledge exceptions, but they don't happen that often.The idea is this. Here's the analogy that I could tell, think about it in the case of a customer making repeat purchases of a particular brand or product. They're basically flipping two coins. Every day, you're going to flip coin number one, the buy coin. Will I buy this thing or not today? Simple as that, but they're also flipping the die coin. When that coin comes up heads, all that means is okay, fine, I'm still alive, I could flip the buy coin. It doesn't mean I will buy but it means I can at least contemplate it. But when that bad boy comes up tails, I'm gone, and I'm gone for good.That's why we call it Buy Till you Die. There's no coming back. There's no resuscitation. You just buy things for a while, and not necessarily at a very steady regular cadence, but you do have an underlying rate and undying propensity to buy things, let's say once a month.I don't know that you going to buy it once a month, but on average, you going to buy it about 12 times a year, but then something happens. I even no longer have a need for this particular product. I move away. You're no longer tracking me. Perhaps I really do die. I don't know, and then that rate, boom, drops to zero. It sounds really artificial. It sounds harsh. It sounds unrealistic, and I don't argue with any of that. I pushed back against it myself. When you put it up against actual data, and you allow these two coins to vary, it's remarkable how well it can capture, explain, and offer useful diagnostics about repeat purchasing behavior or, again, repeat decisions of almost any sort, and we'll dive into some of those almost bizarre examples.Edward: Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about, you said right at the beginning, there are some exceptions, but they're very rare. What would be an example of an exception where this doesn't apply to you?Peter: If you have some product or service where early on your customers either don't fully understand it, they can't use it as usefully as they can. Maybe some of the use cases for it don't emerge until later on, there might be some other complementary products or some changing behaviors. You might find people not just buying at the steady rate and dropping off, but there will be some cases—not just a person, but a whole cohort of people—will actually increase their purchasing for a while. That can happen, but it will level off and it will start to go down.Eventually, the Buy Till you Die will kick in, but sometimes it might take a while. If we started with that theory of going in, we might understate things is. There could be lots of other little twists there. I don't want to get too technical about it.For instance, it could be other changes in the marketplace itself, whether it's promotions that the company does, changes in competition, changes in the macroeconomy, that could make things a little bit less rigid than pure Buy Till you Die, and commercially, we can account for all of that. We have our basic core model, but then we can bring in some of these other situations and bells and whistles to make it just a bit more flexible, and sometimes it's very important to do that.Edward: Are there industries where it doesn't apply like church attendance or travel to Florida? Are there things where that radically different than just like purchasing all of Amazon or it doesn't work? What are those crazy things do?Peter: It's so funny that you mentioned church attendance because that is exactly the domain where this model was first dreamed up. I kid you not, Don Morrison who was a professor at Columbia at the time and then moved to UCLA. He's recently retired but is he just an interesting guy. He dreamed up this model literally while he was sitting in church in the Upper West Side in New York. He was looking at some empty pews and saying Mr. and Mrs. Smith, sit over there.They missed this week, but you know what, they're often sporadic about their attendance, so that's okay, but Mr. and Mrs. Jones, they usually sit over there and they never miss church. The fact that they're not here this week, gets me worried about it. I wonder if they're ever coming back. He actually dreamed up this model, and then did the math behind it in church, and then applied it to lots of other settings like that, whether it's nonprofits. Whether it's event attendance, all kinds of things, works really, really well there.Almost any setting where people are making repeated decisions to do something, whether there's a purchase involved or not. It might be watching a particular media like we've applied these models to Hulu. Whether it's visiting a website. Whether it is making a purchase. Whether it's posting social media content. It's just remarkable how well this simple model can characterize forecast behavior.Edward: Where is the resistance of the idea? You've been working on this stuff for decades, and yet I don't feel that it's like inundated the popular consciousness of business, even among experts in business and people who are the gurus of this stuff. Where's the resistance coming from?Peter: From lots of different sides, especially when we talk about marketing. Yesterday, we were talking about how I have this heightened respect for the finance people. Even though I'm a marketer, there's a lot of BS that goes on in marketing.When I bring these models forward, a lot of people will say, well, that might work well for company A, but our company is different, our practices are different, our customers are different, and besides, we're constantly being disrupted. We're constantly changing.Marketers will come up with all kinds of excuses not to have some formal, regular, predictable characterization of customer behavior. I can go to them and say, give me some data. I'll show you how well it works. I don't even, you know what, you only give me half the data. We'll hold out the other half, and we'll show you how well the forecasts work, and this is what I've been doing for decades, and they'll still push back.They'll say, okay, you know what, you can go talk to the nerds and analytics, but I have a business to run here. I need to focus on the brand. I need to focus on which celebrity we want for our Super Bowl ad, and they just don't want to be bothered with this technical stuff, but it wasn't till we commercialize it through Zodiac, which we spoke a little bit about yesterday.Especially now that we're starting to win over CFOs and other finance people who can see how well these models will help them do their job, and they are willing to trust models. They are willing to look at forecasts and not only accept, but look for regularities in the marketplace. That's been very, very, very helpful. Again, once the CFO accepts something, it makes it much easier to get the CMO on board as well, but sometimes they're still will be resistance. That's one of the reasons why I've been writing a lot besides founding the companies.One of the things that we haven't touched on is all of these kinds of books that I've been writing. All these books on customers' centricity, that are just basically a façade, a motivation, a Trojan horse, to get people to accept the models, to get people to care, to get people of want to run them, to get people to trust the outputs from them.Writing these books on customer centricity has also been very helpful, but again, sometimes companies will say, okay, okay, okay, I'm with you, how do we do this? Then we'll start to bring in the models, and then their eyes glaze over once again. It's hard. It's getting easier, but it's no guarantee.Edward: Can you give some examples of why it matters? Now I have these models, the models predict my future customer purchases far more accurately than anything before. My lifetime value of my customers could be different now. What does it actually change? Now I'm a CMO running my business, and I'm trying to figure out my next Super bowl ad. What is it going to change and what I'm actually doing on a day to day basis?Peter: Yeah. There are some enormous implications that pop right out of the models. One of them is summarized pretty well in the subtitle of my first book. The book is called Customer Centricity, which doesn't really mean anything, but the subtitle, Focus On The Right Customers For Strategic Advantage.There's really three messages there. Message number one is that not all customers are created equal, you better not talk about the customer, and you better not focus on the average customer because they're wildly different from each other. Thing number two is that the customers on the right tail of the distribution, they're not only more valuable than most of your customers, they're orders of magnitude more valuable. I mean, there's, wow, are they good? Wow, are they going to continue to be good? Thing number three is, there are ways that we can build our business around them. Let's really focus on those very, very valuable customers. Again, I'm talking about projected value. Not just historical value, although the two might line up with each other. Let's say what makes them different. How do they use and talk about our products differently from the average soso customers? What other services can we surround them with? How do we acquire more customers like them and what are we willing to pay to do so? If we can build our business around those really good customers, we can make more money in a sustainable, defendable, ethical way than just trying to play it right down the middle, saying, will our average customer find this product or message appealing? It's wildly different than the usual way that people go to market, but the models strongly support it. That's why I spent a lot of time racing, okay, you got the models fine, but let's really talk about these implications, and they really matter.It's been very gratifying to see a number of companies—I wish there were more—but a number of companies waking up smelling the lifetime value and starting to make decisions accordingly.Edward: Is that the opposite of what Byron Sharp would say? Because Byron Sharp says, I think that your loyalty is effectively a function of your market share, and the way to get more loyal customers is just to get more customers and some percentage will be loyal. As you get more market share, your loyalty increases, and your double jeopardy law applies. Do you argue against that or is it a supplement to that?Peter: It's a supplement. I'm glad you phrase it that way because pretty much everything that Byron Sharp, and of course, his original role model Andrew Ehrenberg said, 90% of that stuff is correct. Even there, it's going against the grain of conventional wisdom.I am just adding an extra layer on top of it. I agree with the notions that you just described, the double jeopardy law, the duplication of purchase law. If your listeners aren't familiar with it, and that means that they're not listening to you enough, because I know you do a good job of talking about it.Byron and company don't go quite far enough. I mean that in two ways. Number one, they assume that the models that they build, the fancy word for them would be the Dirichlet Multinomial Model. They assume that it's stationary. They assume that it's static. They assume that yes, there's the heterogeneity, but people don't change over time, and they do. They do in the way that we've been describing, Buy Till you Die, that there will be some non-stationary.There will be some worsening of customers, and it's important to capture that. When we add that extra layer in, it does not take away from double jeopardy, it just adds another light to it. Here's the other part is that, again, Byron and company acknowledge that customers are heterogeneous, but they refuse to acknowledge that some of those customers in the right tail are so, so, so, so, so good that if we put a little bit of extra attention on them, that we can do better than just trying to be everybody's best friend. All these things fit together, and I could get into lots more technical detail with it. Again, I believe everything that Byron says but he's leaving money on the table, by not allowing behavior change over time, and by not fully exploiting heterogeneity as much as I do. His points about, you still need to focus on mass marketing, and you still need to come up with products that are broadly appealing, I actually do believe all of that stuff. It's just that we want to put a disproportionate amount of attention for the care feeding and acquisition of those extra special customers.Edward: I think I've totally bought in on to the acquisition side of things. I think more acquisition is always great. My concern a little bit is about you have these customers who are really, really, really good customers for you already. To go and give them additional incentives to go and buy more, at a certain point, the really good customers are almost spending all their wallets within the category with you already. They're already super loyal. How do you shift them to become even more loyal? Am I missing the point?Peter: I got two words for you. First of all, and I never said the word incentives. That's your word, not mine. We got to find other ways to be crass about it, to squeeze more money out of them. Here are my two words, premium services. It's as simple as that.You think about something like a LinkedIn premium. At first, there was a lot of pushback about a lot of the features and functions of LinkedIn premium offered. Folks at LinkedIn were saying, well, man, most of our customers don't want that stuff. Why should we offer it?Well, the fact is, there are those right tail customers who are so good and use you so much, and use you so differently than everybody else. If we can come up with products and services that meet their fairly idiosyncratic needs and get them to pay for them, then we can make more money than just trying to sell them the same stuff over and over and over.I look at something like Twitter. I'm a big power user of Twitter. I know you are, too. There's no question that I would pay $10 a month for all kinds of features and functions that most people couldn't care less about, to edit my tweets, to have more control over my timeline, to have more visibility, and whatever. There's a whole bunch of things that power users would want to use, but companies like Twitter, Facebook, and so many others are just too chickenshit to go out there and make these premium services a priority.Jack Dorsey has made some noise about it recently but gets to it. That your heavy users want to pay more money, as long as they're getting good value for it. I think that's the key. It's not just giving them incentives. It's not giving them freebies, because you're right. They're going to buy from you anyway. It's getting to pay for more stuff that most customers wouldn't want.Edward: Is the opportunity more in a product than it is in marketing? It should be helping to product team more than the marketing team?Peter: It's a little bit of both. There's no doubt that we need to come up with products and services that are uniquely appealing to those customers will help us acquire more like them, but it is also in the messaging.Instead of just going to an ad agency and saying, hey, ad agency, come up with a fun ad. I look at what some companies doing in my favorite company on these lines would be EA, the game company, Electronic Arts. They will look at their most valuable customers every day, by the way. They're updating lifetime value for every single one of their multi-billion customers around the world. They'll look at the most valuable ones and say let's look at how they're playing a certain game. Whether it's Battlefield, Madden Football, or SimCity, and let's find out how our power users are using the game, talking about the game, what things they're doing in the game, and let's feature those kinds of aspects in our next set of ads.Let's change our messaging as well, to make other customers aware of some of these features and some of these uses because maybe they'll find that appealing, or maybe it will help us acquire new customers, who will then become power users themselves.There are ways to take some of these forward-looking metrics and models and use them in messaging as well, but you're right. It is more about either developing products and services or partnering with other firms. Maybe we won't even make any money on it, but if we can go to our best customers and say, we're going to surround you with all of these different sources of value, we're going to build a whole ecosystem for you. That's the way to lock them in and acquire more like them.Edward: Can we do most of that without your models? I imagine most marketers know who their best customers are, or they can find that out fairly simply without a great deal of math. And then once they know who their best customers are, they can then go and build products and services for them. They can go try to acquire more of those customers. At what point do they need to have a Buy Till you Die model to do that?Peter: It's an excellent point and the answer is yes. Let me elaborate. I'm so obsessed with these models, not only because of their practical value but even just because of their mathy elegance. That maybe I get into the model too much, and I used to really believe as I was writing the books and founding Zodiac that I can just give you the CLV magic wand, that money will just come raining down from the sky.You're right that the models are just a means to an end, and you can actually come up with some decent proxies for lifetime value. It might be based on historical value, it might be based on something like Net Promoter Score.There could be all kinds of proxies that aren't quite as accurate, aren't as predictive, aren't as precise as the models themselves, but they still do a pretty good job of sorting out who the good customers are from the not so good ones.The harder part is, first of all, just to look for that. It's just to say that's what we got to do is to sort our customers out. To develop the insights, the capabilities, the organization, the corporate culture, to allow us to do all the things that I was just talking about a minute ago. That's the hard part, and absolutely, you could get away with some imperfect proxies of lifetime value, as long as you have the capability to do all the other stuff that I mentioned before.You're right. You don't necessarily start with the models. You start with the mindset, you start with the tactics. You start with the organization and the messaging, and then once you're comfortable that you can do that, okay. Now let's bring the models in.Edward: To refine it and make it better. If you're a CMO, and you're looking to make initial steps to move in this direction, because, again, at any large organization, we know that trying to change radically is very difficult. What's the Trojan horse to get this thing started?Peter: Yes. I come in lots of different ways. I mentioned the books before, so let's start the sea level, and say the sky is falling, you're doomed to fail. It's going to be an utter catastrophe unless you repent and follow me. I'm overstating a little bit there, but this basically says there are fundamentally different strategies that you haven't thought about before. They're going to really celebrate the heterogeneity of your customers that can help you make more money. Let's start trying a big picture, like what are the limitations of traditional growth strategies? What are the windows to some of these new ones?There's all that and then there's the data. Again, I've glorified the models maybe too much. I'm in the process of writing my brand new book, with my partner in crime, Bruce Hardy, and yet a new partner in crime Michael Ross, interesting guys. This new book is going to be called The Customer Base Audit: The first step on the journey to customer's centricity. Before we have any models, before we have any forecasts, before we look forward at all, let's just look at our historical data, stuff that's right there at our fingertips. To understand a lot of these ideas that I've been talking about, about how customers differ from each other, about how they differ over time and about how they differ from each other and how they differ over time.Let's take a look back and just understand the basic patterns, but do so in a way that's both simple, but also very sea level motivating. Let's just get you to appreciate the goal that's in them their hills and to really motivate the strategies, the models, and all that thing.I'm coming at it every which way. Whether it's looking at historical data, whether it's writing books, whether it's focusing on finance, whether it's looking at other bizarre use cases of the models, I'm coming at it from every angle, eventually hoping that the message gets through and that the company says, you know what, let's try it out. Again, it's a long, long road ahead, but it's been working reasonably well over the last few years.Edward: When is that book going to be up here?Peter: Well, we're about halfway done with it. Actually, I just sent a revised proposal to my publisher, Wharton School Press. Sometimes, I'm going to guess, the middle of 2021, but then if any of your listeners are interested, I could probably send at least a sneak preview, a quick overview or even a sample table of contents, because we're really interested in these ideas, and the way that it really helped us build a bridge, from the big broad, almost qualitative strategies, to the technical forward-looking models to really complete the whole picture.I think is going to really make a difference, and this is, by the way, is the first place I've spoken about it. You're getting an exclusive, and I hope people find it appealing.Edward: I hope so too. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Peter. Before you go, can you talk to me about your quake book? What book really changed the way you thought about the world, and you can't use one of your own.Peter: I wish it was some mathy kind of thing, and there's no doubt that some of the books, papers, or journals that I've read as a professor have helped me out. But one book that makes me say whoa, and then I go back and read again and again and again, it's going to sound really strange, is Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut.I'm sure that a lot of your listeners might have seen that book years ago. Go back and read that book again. It's astonishing, just the creativity, just the mind-blowing alternative worlds that Vonnegut creates. I found that so inspirational, just in how I tried to think that there are no limits, and now I think that I can be just a wild creative guy and get away with it. Besides the literal story there, there are so many lifelong metaphors that are taken from that book. I'm going to sound really strange, but I can't recommend that one enough.Edward: Thank you, Peter. This has been fantastic. I would love to have you on again.Peter: It's always a pleasure talking to you and I look forward to the next opportunity. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com

This is a rare two-part set of free episodes of Marketing BS. My guest today is Peter Fader, professor of marketing at the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania. Peter was one of my early marketing mentors and I loved this interview. In Part 1 we talk about Peter's career as a marketing academic and how he came to his signature theories around how one understands the value of a company's customer base. Tomorrow we will dive deeper into those theories.You can subscribe to the podcast in your player of choice here: Apple, Sticher, TuneIn, Overcast , Spotify. Private Feed (for premium episodes).TranscriptEdward: This is Marketing BS. My guest today is Wharton Professor, Peter Fader. I consider Peter one of my founding mentors for helping me understand how marketing really works. His most important contribution to marketing, in my opinion, is that you can model future customer purchases by assuming that your customer base is made up of a heterogeneous group of customers—each with their own intrinsic purchase rate and churn rate. And that those same models can be used in radically different businesses and industries to create extremely accurate predictions. Most importantly, because these predictions are accurate, it should influence what your actual actions are to grow your business sustainably.Today, we're going to talk about Peter's career and his intellectual path to this important idea. Tomorrow we'll dive into the idea itself and how it can be used for marketers in practice.Peter, can you start by talking a little bit about how you first started exploring the idea of Buy ‘Til You Die?Peter: Sure thing, my pleasure to do so. It's funny because that characterizes my career. That's what I'm most famous for. But (A) it's not my idea, and (B) it didn't even come to me until long after I was a full professor here at Wharton.I've been building all kinds of different models of customer behavior. How many customers will we acquire, how long will they stay, how many purchases will they make, and all that sort of thing. All the time looking at different data sets, thinking about different business settings, and saying, what would be a story? What would be a model that could capture and then project that kind of behavior?Back in 2001—again, I had been a professor here for 14 years already—I was building a model to capture a phenomenon that we see all the time. They did a customer-slow-down as they gained tenure with the company. It's pretty universal. I built a bespoke model to capture that and it was good, it was fine. I got the thing published. But along the way, one of their viewers was saying, you want to benchmark your model against this Buy ‘Til You Die model. Something that was invented back in 1987. But it was really technical, it was really obscured, so I thought it was an unfair request.I went to the editor of the journal and said, don't make me do that. Don't make me benchmarking that old obscure thing. And the editor agreed that I didn't have to. But I wasn't sure he would. I actually did benchmark the models that I was developing against these older ones and found that the old ones were much, much better.It doesn't show up in that paper. I then decided to devote the rest of my life, or at least the next 18 plus years, to exploring that other model—Buy 'Til You Die. Why it's so good, different variations of it, different applications for it, different motivations, and different managerial stories around it. That's basically all I've been doing since then. Taking someone else's model and running with it, calling attention to it, and finding some reasonable success with it.Edward: When did you realize that it was close to a fundamental law and not something that just might explain some of the data some of the time?Peter: Because I took it and started applying it to lots of other data sets. Again, this was more out of curiosity than necessity. That's just what we do as scholars which is just try things out. I wasn't only looking at the breadth of applications, I was looking at the robustness even for any one application. The idea that we don't have to have a long data set, and even if we have a shorter and shorter data set, if there is missing data, or if we don't have the same inputs that we get pretty much the same results.It started convincing me that this is more than just a cute model. It started convincing me that this is actually reality. I know that it's not—and I'm going to lose all credibility with you and your listeners here—but I'd like to make an analogy between this. Brace yourself—the theory of relativity. We all view that the theory of relativity, E=mc2, and all that stuff, we treat it as if it's true. It's not. It's just a theory. It's just a model. But the thing is it's so robust and explained so many different phenomena, even phenomena that weren't observable 100 years ago when Einstein was putting these ideas out there. But we just keep seeing it “proven” over and over and over again that we just treat it as truth.Now, I don't want to say that these BTYD models have anywhere near the implications, the importance, the cosmic explanations as relativity. But I think they're similarly robust and people would just be better off viewing them as if they were true instead of spending so much time pushing back and saying why their situation is different, why the implications don't apply, and why the world is changing. Let's just accept it as truth and our life as managers would be much easier and much more successful.Edward: But I want to go back a little bit to the path that got you here. I have a theory that things people do when they're 12-14 years old affect them for their entire lives. Where were you passionate about at that age? How did those things affect your later career?Peter: Oh my goodness. Wow, a bunch of different things, all really nerdy. The one that was most normal would have been baseball. At that time—I'm embarrassed to admit this, you're getting all this bad stuff out of me, Ed—I was a huge Yankee fan. I've repented since then. I've seen the folly of my ways. I was really, really, really into baseball statistics. Unfortunately, this was before anyone had heard of Bill James, sabermetrics, or Moneyball. All of that stuff was still years, years later. But I was almost—I don't want to say—inventing some of those kinds of things but I was thinking very much along those lines. How can we take the game of baseball and break it down into its underlying components, understand those things, and really focus on the underlying story rather than just the overall observable statistics? I was obsessed over that as I still am today. The other thing is kind of weird. I've always had an obsession with dollar bills with interesting serial numbers. Mom would come back from the grocery store and I would immediately go through her dollar bills. I would say, this one on a 0-100 scale, this one gets a 60. This one, maybe a 40. This one here, that's a 95. I'm going to keep that one. I was just always obsessed with interesting numbers, interesting serial numbers.Finally, when the whole internet thing started, I bought the domain name coolnumbers.com, and still own it today. That's all that site does is you put in any 8-digit number like a dollar bill serial number and it will tell you on a 0-100 scale how cool it is on my own quirky, arbitrary, don't even try to figure out universal coolness index. It's surprisingly popular. There's a lot of other nerdy people out there, or at least with too much time on their hands. That's the kind of stuff that I was doing. Just looking for patterns in data, but without any particular purpose or societal benefit. I'm really lucky that I finally found some meaningful purpose.Edward: I'm glad that you're working for good and not evil because I think on the website, you can enter your Social Security numbers. I'm sure people are doing that every day as well.Peter: Well, right now you can only put on 8-digit numbers. I'm waiting for some kind of undergrad or someone else. Maybe one of your listeners with too much time on their hands to help me flesh out cool numbers. You could deal with, let's say, a Social Security number, a 9-digit zip code, or whatever else. I got the algorithms all worked out. I just need someone to do all the coding.But thank goodness, I haven't wasted that much more time on it over the last 20 years. I had better things to do.Edward: You went to college for mathematics, but then you did a Ph.D. in marketing. Why did you switch?Peter: It wasn't my choice. There are very few people who say, Mommy, I want to be a marketing professor. It doesn't come up on career day when you're in middle school. It's an interesting story by itself because I indeed was just a solid math major. All I liked doing was crunching numbers, playing around with integrals, and all that sort of stuff. I didn't know what I would do for a living. I figured either end up as an actuary—calculating risks for insurance companies, I'd go to Wall Street, or maybe I'd go work for the NSA and break codes or whatever else.I was exploring all of these different options until this one professor, this marketing professor, her name is Leigh McAlister. She's still very active today at the University of Texas now, not MIT where I first met her. She came to me one day back in 1982 and said, you ought to be a marketing professor. You ought to get your Ph.D. in marketing. I looked at her and said, you ought to get your head checked because I'm a math guy, I'm not going into marketing. But she laid out this vision—again, keep in mind this was 1982, that's like 500 years ago.Edward: That's before finance was even getting into mathematics, let alone marketing.Peter: But she laid out this picture of what marketing would become. She was exactly right. That there will come a day when we'll be able to tag and track individual customers, know what they're doing, and then get some sense of which message we should send to which customer at which time. We're going to need rock-solid math underneath all that to figure it out, to make these decisions, and to evaluate those decisions. I didn't believe her, but she was very persuasive and she forced me to get a Ph.D. She literally—I'm not exaggerating—forced me to take this job offer at Wharton. I had offers from lots of other good schools, but she said, “Wharton is the place for you. It will have the people, the resources, the culture to let you pursue your quantitative passions in this domain.” And here I am. Now, this is year 34 on the faculty, calling her up every 6 months or so, saying thank you, thank you, thank you. She did change my life by pushing me in a direction that, again, I would have never imagined, and even actively resisted at that time. But boy was she right on every one of these dimensions. My whole life is just paying it forward to her in every way possible.Edward: If you hadn't met her, where do you think you would have ended up?Peter: Either a Wall Street firm or again maybe an actuarial firm. I took the first bunch of exams that actuaries take. I did an internship with an insurance company. I could see that there was some alignment there, but at the same time, it's not an industry that lends itself to creativity.I want to come up with new models, new explanations, new stories, just new methods. Whereas in insurance, even on Wall Street, and most of these other domains, it's once you have the way of doing things. It's just shut up and do it. I would have ended up doing one of those kinds of things. Maybe I would have been happy, who knows? I like to make myself happy no matter what's going on.But nothing could make me happier than the path that I followed. To have the colleagues, the resources, the incentives to come up with new stuff, and then brilliant students, including people like yourself who have taken some of those ideas and run with them, whether in academic directions or in commercial directions. I've just been super lucky to ride their coattails academically and commercially to find success both ways.Edward: Long before Buy ‘Til You Die, your first significant research was into strategies in a generalized prisoner's dilemma. What exactly did you find?Peter: Wow. That's a blast from the past. My dissertation at MIT—very few people know this because I tend to focus on all these predictive models of customer behavior and so on. But my dissertation couldn't have been more different.Indeed, I was looking at the prisoner's dilemma. I'm assuming that many of your listeners are familiar with it already. If not, they can search for it. There's so much out there on it. There's a lot of people who have been trying to “solve the prisoner's dilemma,” coming up with strategies that would be very effective in this very simple two by two game. Do I take the temptation to rat out that person, cut-price, or do the nasty action; or will I be good?The problem with the basic prisoner's dilemma, as they just implied, is that it has two players—me against you, and only have two alternatives because each of us does the aggressive tactic or the kind of nice tactic. Solving it, in that case, is fine but not very practical because in the real world, there's going to be lots of other complications, and let's just focus on two of them.Number one, there's going to be multiple players out there. There's going to be three or more firms. In fact, just moving from two to three is a giant leap forward because all of a sudden, if person number three does the nasty thing, what do I do? Do I wait for you—the nice guy, or do I respond to the nasty one? It's very, very complicated and we start getting all confused because if I react to him, then you react to me, and you get into this downward spiral.Number two, there can be multiple alternatives. Not just do you do the thing or not, but it can be shades of gray. You can be setting prices or discounts or even oil output levels if you think about OPEC. The generalized prisoner's dilemma that I put forth had a continuous range of alternatives. It was a price-setting and three players. It generalized, it built upon all the basic ideas of the textbook, two by two prisoner's dilemma. But it added all kinds of interesting complications, yet it still lent itself to some surprisingly robust strategies. Strategies that I explored in my dissertation. We've seen an interesting range of examples in business, in sports, and in life itself, where some of these strategies do tend to play out and lead to effective outcomes.Edward: In addition to your research, you've co-founded a few companies. Talk to me about Zodiac and how that happened.Peter: This goes right back to something I was saying a few minutes ago, which is riding the coattails of brilliant students both in the academic direction as well as the commercial. It's building out this Buy ‘Til You Die model, and they're really good. They worked really well. But most of the time, I was either just working on academic stuff to try to come up with new tweaks of them or just going to companies and trying to give them the academic version saying, here you ought to use this. Here, this model is good for you. Here's the code. Here's the spreadsheet. Here's the technical note. Here are some case studies. But the problem is, companies either found it a little bit too academic, or the kinds of data they were looking at was just so messy, so complex, or so large that the academic versions just weren't quite right for them. Back in late 2014, I had a conversation with one of my brilliant undergraduates. He basically had some ideas to make the models much more practical—to be able to run faster, to be able to run just much more efficiently. Brought in a couple of other folks, and we founded this company. First, we called it CLV Metrics—Customer Lifetime Value Metrics—kind of a lame name. And then we decided, you know what, we're getting such good traction on it. Let's make it real. We brought in some venture capital money. We started hiring a whole team. We changed the name to Zodiac, and it was a wonderful success.We work with a wide variety of firms. Whether it's retailers, travel and hospitality, telcos, gaming, pharmaceuticals, or lots of different B2B applications and different kinds of services. Just applying this Buy ‘Til You Die model in a wide range of scenarios and finding all kinds of success, all kinds of interesting tactical-use cases—it was really great. But of course, talking in the past tense, because in 2018 one of our clients came along and said, we want it all, and that client was Nike. We sold to Nike in March 2018, which again, was a wonderful outcome by itself, but also a tremendous validation for the usefulness, not just the academic interest in this, but the commercial usefulness of the models.Edward: We're going to go more into the usefulness of it tomorrow on our second podcast. You later, though, founded another company called Theta Equity Partners and this was different from Zodiac, correct?Peter: Yes and no. On one hand, there's the no part which is, at the very core, this very similar set of models, this Buy ‘Til You Die model. But the motivation and the main use case couldn't be more different. Back in the Zodiac days, besides working with lots of different companies that I described before, one of our clients was a private equity firm. They weren't that interested in figuring out which message to send to which customer. All they wanted to do was to say, listen, can you come up with the projected value of each and every customer, add all that stuff up, and tell us that number because we're thinking of buying that digitally native women's cosmetics company.We figured the best way to judge its valuation isn't through the usual top-down multiple approach, but it's from the bottom-up—how many customers will we acquire, how long will they stay, how much will they spend. That's what we did—the idea of customer-based corporate valuation. After we sold Zodiac to Nike along with one of my Zodiac co-founders, Dan McCarthy, we co-founded Theta Equity Partners. That's all we're doing is customer-based corporate valuation, working with private equity firms, family offices. I'm working with a lot of companies directly just to help them understand, unlock, and fully leverage all of that customer value. It's less about the marketer. It's just less about the tactics. It's more about finance, valuation, corporate governance, big strategic decisions, and again, it's been great. The models work well. It's probably an even more receptive audience—the finance people than the marketing people. Once you go over the finance people, then it becomes very easy to win over the marketing people as well.Edward: It's interesting, 38 years or so after you left finance to go into marketing, you're right back where you started with finance.Peter: I have to admit, I feel like a fish out of water because it's not really my home. It's not my core domain. I've been learning a lot over these last couple of years and I have tremendous respect for the people in finance and more and more every day. I can bring them a tool that they don't have through these models and through these perspectives. But the ways that they deploy it, some of these are very clever, smart, resourceful things they do, you could see why they are the big dog in most organizations and why people respect, maybe even fear finance much more than they do marketing. Because my objective is to bring them together and to get marketing and finance on the same level using the same models for strategic as well as tactical purposes, and we'll talk more about that.Edward: Peter,what was the biggest failure point in your career? What's the biggest mistake that you made?Peter: There's a difference between failure and mistakes. Let me talk about one of each. Maybe the saddest moment in my career—the one night I literally cried myself to sleep—was losing the Napster case. As I've said many times now, I'm interested in a broad variety of applications. I spent a lot of time in the ‘90s and early 2000s working with or maybe fighting with the music industry—there are amazingly good patterns there. It's very predictable. It's one of the better sectors if you want to apply the models, but it's a sector where they don't apply the models.Long story short, I got caught up in the Napster case, the original Napster, an original file sharing service that changed everything. I was with the good guys. Napster is trying to make the case why that file sharing service is the greatest possible thing for the music industry and making that case why it's good and why it will bring in lots of money. I wrote this whole long statement, did all this research about it back in the glorious summer of 2000, but Judge Marilyn Hall Patel, she pretty much rejected everything I said. She basically said, the idea that file-sharing could be good for the industry is preposterous and any research that would draw such a conclusion must be gravely flawed. I think those are her exact words.Edward: Your conclusion was wrong regardless of your methods.Peter: Exactly right. In the end, it didn't really matter. The reason why Napster was shut down, it had nothing to do with whether it hurt or helped the industry. But the fact is, it was against the law. The law might be stupid, that's a whole other question, so it was shut down. But I took it personally. I felt that this was a true failure on my part. I let down the revolution. It wasn't a mistake. It's just that I was betting on the wrong horse.Edward: How'd that changed things? Did you change your strategies going forward because of that event?Peter: Not really. It just made me want to fight harder. It's actually interesting. I said, look, this is just wrong. We need to show the industry that they are making a terrible mistake. In the early 2000s, I spent a lot of time banging on the door of the music industry, saying, listen, let's go after this together. Let's do the research to show the circumstances under which file-sharing helps, hurts, or is neutral. Let's really understand it. Let's understand the business implications. Let's not just stop at music. Let's talk about TV, movies, publishing, and basically all areas of media and entertainment.I set up a Research Center at Wharton for the Wharton Media & Entertainment Initiative. That went nowhere. Then we got a donation to set up the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative, and that was very successful. That then morphed into the Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative, which continues to flourish today. I spent a lot of time expanding on it. One might say pivoting from the work in the music industry to try to make a difference with models and understanding of customer data. It's just that the music industry and entertainment, in general, weren't all that receptive. It's just a matter of shopping these ideas and methods around to find a more receptive audience, which we did find a lot of success with.Edward: Tell me about the iPhone.Peter: Yeah, that was a mistake. A little bit of arrogance on my part. I was big into the BlackBerry. I mean that was a transformative device. Wow. When the iPhone came along, I staked out. I went way out on a limb staking out exactly the wrong turf saying, this device will just never catch on. Look at just how different it is. Look at all the features of a BlackBerry that it lacks. I'm never shy about my opinions. Usually, they're based more on data than just pure hunches. This case, pure hunch, wrong hunch, and I basically said that this is going to go down in history as a colossal failure. And again, I wasn't shy about it.When the iPhone celebrated its 10th anniversary of just a ginormous success a couple of years ago, people went out and found some of these—the incredibly dumb things that I said as it was being launched. I'll admit it. I'm big enough to acknowledge my mistakes. That's far from the only one. But probably the one that I got in—I don't want to say trouble, there's no trouble there—the most s**t for and entirely well-deserved. Even though I'm still not a big fan of Apple—I literally have never owned a single Apple device. Again, not that I'm against them but I just like buttons. I like to press things, whatever. I've learned better than to bet against them.Edward: This has been fantastic. We're going to come back again tomorrow to talk more about Buy ‘Til You Die. Thank you so much.Peter: Sure thing. It's always good talking to you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com

Going From Teacher To Business Owner (with Ed Dudley, Jake Whiddon & Peter Liu)Visit our website: www.tefltraininginstitute.comSupport the show - buy me a coffeeMore about studying the Trinity Diploma in TESOL with RossMore from Ed DudleyMore from Jake WhiddonPeter Liu from Owl ABC on starting a start-upRoss: Peter, you started your own business a year and a half ago. Before you tell us about what it is, what made you want to start your own company?Peter Liu: My current co‑founder and I, we've been good friends for several years. He's also in education. He's got 15 some odd years of experience. We saw this trend of thousands of Chinese kids going abroad to study.There was a study done several years back that showed 25 percent of Chinese students going to an Ivy League school fail, 25 percent. When I read that statistic, that blew my mind.There's a gap in skills that Chinese students have, who are attending school abroad. There are tons and tons of services that help kids in China improve their English. They can help with their test‑taking of the IELs and the TOEFL. It only ever seems to go as far as your first day of university so you can get into school.How do you actually stay in and succeed? I've been working at this education technology startup. We built a whole bunch of fancy tech. I worked very closely with the product and the engineering teams. I had a little bit of experience building an online product.Ross: This is almost like working in a startup prepared you to start your own startup?Peter: Yeah, you could say that.Ross: Did that take some of the fear out of it, as well?Peter: It's that and also our product is not technically that challenging. We're not building a technology company. We're building a services company.Ross: How has what your company does changed from what you originally visioned, compared with now?Peter: The biggest change was our business model. Originally, we were focused on a B2C model, basically, selling our services and our content directly to consumers. We quickly found that we don't have the local knowledge of how to message, how to create marketing channels to reach these consumers.We made the decision to shift our focus to B2B, licensing our content and our teaching to other education companies so that they could do the heavy lifting of marketing directly to their students. They already have students who are, perhaps, learning English from them, but who need to build their critical thinking skills. That's where we come in.Ross: Can I ask you a question about money and stuff? Let me give you an analogy here. I remember once climbing a mountain. When you're climbing a high mountain, it's a little bit dangerous. You have a turnaround time. If we don't get to the top by four o'clock, we're going to turn around. Because if we're walking down in the dark, it's really, really dangerous.Do you have that with the business where you're like, "If we're not starting to make money, or if we're not able to break even within 12 months or two years, then I'm going to quit this and go back to teaching English." How does that work?Peter: It depends what scale company you're doing, and also how disciplined you are with finances.[laughter]Peter: Basically, how much money do you have in the bank, and how long can that sustain you? What is your burn rate? How much money are you spending?Ross: Cool. Can I ask you then what would you say if there's one thing I really wish I knew or I paid more attention to when I first started this, I should have done this. What do you think that would be?Peter: I'm a big proponent of the lean startup methodology which is, basically, applying the scientific method to operating a business. You form a hypothesis. You run tests to either validate or invalidate that hypothesis. Then you either proceed if you validate your hypothesis or you change course.I wish we'd applied that methodology a little bit more rigorously to the early stages of our product development, because of the business environment that we're operating in. We were very cautious in marketing, and putting ourselves out there, and putting our product out there.Ross: In case someone stole the idea.Peter: Precisely.Jake Whiddon on starting your own schoolRoss: Hi, Jake.Jake Whiddon: Hi, Ross.Ross: You started your own kids' school recently. You've been involved in TOEFL for about 15 years. What made you want to open your own school now at this point in your career?Jake: Honestly, I felt that I had worked for long enough for big companies. I wanted to have some control over the output of what I was doing. I felt I reached, not a ceiling, but a point where there was nowhere else I could go with what I personally wanted to do with education. That's the reason.Ross: Jake, how did you choose the people to go into business with? There's so many people you know, but why did you choose the people who work with you now?Jake: It's really interesting. For a long time, I'd always wanted to start a business with another one of your ex‑guests called Dave Welleble. I realized that we were too similar. We were very similar. What I had to do was find someone who could complement my skills. I've got some skills that come up with creative ideas in trying to have operations experience.I needed someone who knew how to network, do finances, work with people, and communicate better, and then that person came along. It's someone I'd worked with 10 years ago, and they just came out of the blue and said, "Hey, by the way, I'm actually looking for someone who can work together."I think the best decision was finding someone who I knew well but can complement the way they work. That old adage of never work with your friends, I don't think that that's true. I think that you should work with your friends.A point a friend was making to me the other day was, I met this person through working with him, not through being a friend. I knew I could work with him. I think that's worked really, really well.Ross: How did you go about getting an investor then, because, obviously, opening a school requires a lot of funds?Jake: You don't find people to invest in your school, they find you. There's a lot of people in China with a lot of money that they don't know how to spend. They need to spend it on something, whether it's a gym or a hairdresser, or something they want to do. For us, it was someone who knew they wanted to do something in education, but they didn't know how to.They came to us and said, "Can you guys do something with education for us?" Which is what I find most people say. On saying that, though, people are still looking for investors.The way it happens in China is you're just constantly networking. You never know why the person that you're talking to might be the person who can invest money in you one day. That's something to remember.Ross: What skills do you think you've learned in other parts of your career that helped you the most in running your own school?Jake: Well, none. No, I want to say none. No, I say that as a joke. It's amazing how little I knew. I mean, I ran five, four different schools as a [inaudible 08:20. I ran 12 schools as a regional manager. I ran 40 schools as a national manager. I controlled budgets of two million dollars. You know what? A lot of those skills didn't help me at all.What they helped me with was operations. They helped me with efficiency. They helped me with things, like knowing that you're using classrooms at the right efficiency. You're using teachers at the right amount. You're utilizing people in the right way.It didn't teach me how to run a business. With all the experience in the world, I have learned more in the last eight months of how much I didn't know.Ross: What have you had to learn when your started your business? Is there anything that you've never experienced before, or something that you felt, "Oh, this is something brand new to me, and I have to start learning"?Jake: I'm learning that without a big budget for marketing, for example, we can't go and afford a math/science and blanket. You have to think everything we're thinking. We have to flip it over and think about it from the bottom up. That's probably the first one. The other one is people don't want to work for a company that no one's heard of.People want to work for big name companies. Who wants to work for a place that has only one school? Lastly is how much relationships matter. The relationship you have obviously with the customer but also mainly with everyone around you, everyone. The Fire Department, the Visa Office, everyone you have to have a relationship with.You're constantly having to deal with each of these people. We talk about bureaucracy, but bureaucracy might be a good thing because, at least, it means there's some bureaucratic process. Here, it all comes back to relationships.Ross: Finally, Jake. What advice do you have for teachers thinking about starting their own school?Jake: Remember, that's my last advice. The industry is never as caught up as you are. Whatever you're thinking, the market is probably two steps behind you. The market needs to be educated to get to where you are first.Ross: Thanks, Jake. Bye‑bye.Jake: Bye, Ross.Ed Dudley on going freelanceRoss: Ed, you obviously started off as a teacher teaching full‑time. Do you want to tell us about how did you go from teaching full‑time to becoming now a freelance teacher trainer and author?Ed Dudley: You're right. I began teaching full‑time. Then very gradually, I began to be invited to speak at local conferences and to do, perhaps, weekend events for teachers in the local area. Then gradually I was invited to do more work, which involved going to another country for a few days to do some teacher training. I would balance that with my school work.I would rearrange my classes, or I would get colleagues to cover my classes in my absence, which was, again, a difficult balancing act. There was no masterplan there for me. I simply did it slowly and incrementally over time. The amount of teaching that I was doing gradually reduced. The amount of training and materials writing that I was doing gradually increased.Ross: There are a lot of teachers considering becoming a freelancer. Are there any tips or recommendation for this group of people?Ed: It has the potential to cause sleepless nights if you're going to suddenly do it cold turkey. I was in a position where I could try out freelance work, freelance life with a safety net. I tend to have the philosophy that if you focus on doing a good job on what's in front of you, then that will lead to good things in the future.I've always remembered that it's important to be aware of what your strengths are. If I'm asked or invited to do something that I don't think is aligned with my strengths, then I say "no" to that. It can be tough when you're a freelancer to say "no" to something.There's a lot of pressure on us to take every opportunity that comes our way. It is important not to bite off more than we can chew as well, and to make sure we do a good job by saying "yes" to the things that we're confident we can do well, and "no" to the things that we don't think we can do well.Ross: What do you think are the advantages of the freelance life?Ed: The key advantages, that if you have the mentality or you have the personality that can deal with the uncertainties of the freelance life.In other words, if you're not too freaked out by the fact that you're not quite sure what's going to be happening 12 months from now, then that gives you an awful amount of freedom. It gives you a chance to focus on your own professional development.I find that I'm able to do a lot more reading. I'm able to find time to plan my work with much more freedom and less frazzledness than when I was balancing my training work with my full‑time job. It gives you a chance also to make last minute decisions as well.Very often, you'll find that an opportunity comes up at very short notice to travel somewhere and do some work. You have this really exciting opportunity to go somewhere you've never been before, to work with people you've never met before. That's an incredibly stimulating and enjoyable way to work.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Peter: So, Jana, we were talking about academic life in different countries but how about daily life for students? Did students also have part-time jobs and where did they eat? Did they eat at home or in dorms or did they go out?Jana: Right. So my life in Prague was quite different because I was living with my parents but obviously I would go to university for the lectures or seminars and yeah, I think most of my classmates had part-time jobs or even full time jobs and they would study sort of in their free time and in the Czech Republic usually students go to university in their city so they stay at home with their parents but if they choose to go to a different city then they would stay at dormitory. So some of my classmates who were staying, who were living in dormitory, I felt like they had more social life than I do because that's where all their social events happen.Peter: Right.Jana: I have actually never lived in a dormitory so I don't know what it's like.Peter: How about student life in Sydney?Jana: Yeah, in Sydney...Todd: Actually can we have Spain.Peter: So how about student life in Spain?Jana: Yeah, I suppose again it depends on the students. Maybe local students and international students might have different lifestyles but I was living with a host family and they cooked for me once a week. That was really nice. Every Sunday we had a really nice meal but apart from that I would eat at the cafeteria or cook at home and I didn't have a part-time job but I think a lot of my classmates did. It wasn't so easy for international students to find work so...Peter: Really? So what was the typical lunch in Spain for you?Jana: Well, there weren't that many options at the university so basically what you can buy at the cafeteria is like a sandwich, kind of snack food so I would often bring my own lunch and heat it up in the microwave so that's what a lot of students did to save money too.Peter: OK. So you could actually cook at home and bring lunch?Jana: Yes. They had a cafeteria and like a diner where you can bring your own food as well.Peter: Oh, OK.Jana: So I thought that was quite convenient.Peter: Yeah, yeah. And then you moved to Sydney? How did that change things for you?Jana: Well, Sydney was a lot of fun. There are so many international students, so many different cultures and it's a big part of education actually. International education in Australia is a huge business as well.Peter: Really?Jana: So there are so many international students. In fact, in my class, I think there were maybe two Australians.Peter: Wow.Jana: And the rest were from all over the world.Peter: Hm. I also had a friend who studied as an international student at, in Sydney and he told me it's quite expensive for international students to live there. Is that true?Jana: That's right. One, you have to pay the tuition fees but also, depending on where you come from, you need to apply for a student visa and often one of the requirements is you need to show that you have enough funding for the whole course.Peter: Right.Jana: And the actual living costs might not be that high. It depends where you live. A lot of students share houses.Peter: Right.Jana: Or work part-time as well.Peter: So part-time work is allowed then?Jana: Yes. You can work up to twenty hours per week.Peter: OK.Jana: While on a student visa.Peter: Right. So you can have some income at least to support yourself?Jana: That's right, yeah, but a lot of the students study really hard so there isn't really much time for part-time work but yeah you need to try to juggle it somehow.Peter: Where did you live in Sydney and did you have a share mate or somewhere like that?Jana: Yeah, I lived in a share house with other students. It's a really common thing to do in Sydney because the rent is so expensive.Peter: Oh, really?Jana: So not only students but even working adults often share apartments. Yeah, I actually moved maybe five times while I was there.Peter: It sounds pretty hard actually.Jana: It was fun to try living in different areas and with different people.Peter: Great.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Peter: So, Jana, we were talking about academic life in different countries but how about daily life for students? Did students also have part-time jobs and where did they eat? Did they eat at home or in dorms or did they go out?Jana: Right. So my life in Prague was quite different because I was living with my parents but obviously I would go to university for the lectures or seminars and yeah, I think most of my classmates had part-time jobs or even full time jobs and they would study sort of in their free time and in the Czech Republic usually students go to university in their city so they stay at home with their parents but if they choose to go to a different city then they would stay at dormitory. So some of my classmates who were staying, who were living in dormitory, I felt like they had more social life than I do because that's where all their social events happen.Peter: Right.Jana: I have actually never lived in a dormitory so I don't know what it's like.Peter: How about student life in Sydney?Jana: Yeah, in Sydney...Todd: Actually can we have Spain.Peter: So how about student life in Spain?Jana: Yeah, I suppose again it depends on the students. Maybe local students and international students might have different lifestyles but I was living with a host family and they cooked for me once a week. That was really nice. Every Sunday we had a really nice meal but apart from that I would eat at the cafeteria or cook at home and I didn't have a part-time job but I think a lot of my classmates did. It wasn't so easy for international students to find work so...Peter: Really? So what was the typical lunch in Spain for you?Jana: Well, there weren't that many options at the university so basically what you can buy at the cafeteria is like a sandwich, kind of snack food so I would often bring my own lunch and heat it up in the microwave so that's what a lot of students did to save money too.Peter: OK. So you could actually cook at home and bring lunch?Jana: Yes. They had a cafeteria and like a diner where you can bring your own food as well.Peter: Oh, OK.Jana: So I thought that was quite convenient.Peter: Yeah, yeah. And then you moved to Sydney? How did that change things for you?Jana: Well, Sydney was a lot of fun. There are so many international students, so many different cultures and it's a big part of education actually. International education in Australia is a huge business as well.Peter: Really?Jana: So there are so many international students. In fact, in my class, I think there were maybe two Australians.Peter: Wow.Jana: And the rest were from all over the world.Peter: Hm. I also had a friend who studied as an international student at, in Sydney and he told me it's quite expensive for international students to live there. Is that true?Jana: That's right. One, you have to pay the tuition fees but also, depending on where you come from, you need to apply for a student visa and often one of the requirements is you need to show that you have enough funding for the whole course.Peter: Right.Jana: And the actual living costs might not be that high. It depends where you live. A lot of students share houses.Peter: Right.Jana: Or work part-time as well.Peter: So part-time work is allowed then?Jana: Yes. You can work up to twenty hours per week.Peter: OK.Jana: While on a student visa.Peter: Right. So you can have some income at least to support yourself?Jana: That's right, yeah, but a lot of the students study really hard so there isn't really much time for part-time work but yeah you need to try to juggle it somehow.Peter: Where did you live in Sydney and did you have a share mate or somewhere like that?Jana: Yeah, I lived in a share house with other students. It's a really common thing to do in Sydney because the rent is so expensive.Peter: Oh, really?Jana: So not only students but even working adults often share apartments. Yeah, I actually moved maybe five times while I was there.Peter: It sounds pretty hard actually.Jana: It was fun to try living in different areas and with different people.Peter: Great.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Peter: So, Jana, we were talking about academic life in different countries but how about daily life for students? Did students also have part-time jobs and where did they eat? Did they eat at home or in dorms or did they go out?Jana: Right. So my life in Prague was quite different because I was living with my parents but obviously I would go to university for the lectures or seminars and yeah, I think most of my classmates had part-time jobs or even full time jobs and they would study sort of in their free time and in the Czech Republic usually students go to university in their city so they stay at home with their parents but if they choose to go to a different city then they would stay at dormitory. So some of my classmates who were staying, who were living in dormitory, I felt like they had more social life than I do because that's where all their social events happen.Peter: Right.Jana: I have actually never lived in a dormitory so I don't know what it's like.Peter: How about student life in Sydney?Jana: Yeah, in Sydney...Todd: Actually can we have Spain.Peter: So how about student life in Spain?Jana: Yeah, I suppose again it depends on the students. Maybe local students and international students might have different lifestyles but I was living with a host family and they cooked for me once a week. That was really nice. Every Sunday we had a really nice meal but apart from that I would eat at the cafeteria or cook at home and I didn't have a part-time job but I think a lot of my classmates did. It wasn't so easy for international students to find work so...Peter: Really? So what was the typical lunch in Spain for you?Jana: Well, there weren't that many options at the university so basically what you can buy at the cafeteria is like a sandwich, kind of snack food so I would often bring my own lunch and heat it up in the microwave so that's what a lot of students did to save money too.Peter: OK. So you could actually cook at home and bring lunch?Jana: Yes. They had a cafeteria and like a diner where you can bring your own food as well.Peter: Oh, OK.Jana: So I thought that was quite convenient.Peter: Yeah, yeah. And then you moved to Sydney? How did that change things for you?Jana: Well, Sydney was a lot of fun. There are so many international students, so many different cultures and it's a big part of education actually. International education in Australia is a huge business as well.Peter: Really?Jana: So there are so many international students. In fact, in my class, I think there were maybe two Australians.Peter: Wow.Jana: And the rest were from all over the world.Peter: Hm. I also had a friend who studied as an international student at, in Sydney and he told me it's quite expensive for international students to live there. Is that true?Jana: That's right. One, you have to pay the tuition fees but also, depending on where you come from, you need to apply for a student visa and often one of the requirements is you need to show that you have enough funding for the whole course.Peter: Right.Jana: And the actual living costs might not be that high. It depends where you live. A lot of students share houses.Peter: Right.Jana: Or work part-time as well.Peter: So part-time work is allowed then?Jana: Yes. You can work up to twenty hours per week.Peter: OK.Jana: While on a student visa.Peter: Right. So you can have some income at least to support yourself?Jana: That's right, yeah, but a lot of the students study really hard so there isn't really much time for part-time work but yeah you need to try to juggle it somehow.Peter: Where did you live in Sydney and did you have a share mate or somewhere like that?Jana: Yeah, I lived in a share house with other students. It's a really common thing to do in Sydney because the rent is so expensive.Peter: Oh, really?Jana: So not only students but even working adults often share apartments. Yeah, I actually moved maybe five times while I was there.Peter: It sounds pretty hard actually.Jana: It was fun to try living in different areas and with different people.Peter: Great.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Jana: I didn't know you were into dancing.Peter: Well, yeah, just a little bit I guess. I used to go dancing quite a bit. I was part of this group of friends and we used to follow the rave scene in South Africa.Jana: Wow.Peter: And we used to actually go on these trance parties and there was a small dance or actually a music company that organized these events and they were all outdoor events and some of them would last a whole weekend so you would pack your camping gear and this dance would be or this trance party would be held outside, out in a forest or somewhere in the mountains or on a beach sometimes and these would sometimes last into the next day and the following day. People would come and go and the music would be non-stop basically.Jana: Wow, so would you go every week or...?Peter: No, not every week that's too much I think. It's too energy costing but it was so much fun really because it's just such a break from normal work routine and you get out into nature and it's just the music and it's just nature. If you wanted you know to take a break you could wander off and find a quiet spot to rest and be with friends and eat something and relax and sleep maybe and then wake up and slowly join the party again and just carry on. People of all walks of life would come and join. Like professional people that wanted to break out or people that are kind of part of the hippy scene. I guess it was still going in some ways so yeah they would just drift in and out. It was really a lot of fun.Jana: That sounds fun and what kind of music would they play?Peter: Mostly trance music so people that liked trance music would be, yeah, they would really go but the music, I don't know if you know trance music?Jana: Not really, not that familiar.Peter: It varies. There's a lot of, of course most of it's electronically based, so DJs would be able to control the tempo of the music and at some points the music would shift and change and like usually through the night there would be a different kind of phases of the music and DJs would take over and take over from each other so the music would change and the influences that they bring to the music would also change. Yeah, yeah, it's really, really good.Jana: It sounds really interesting. I've never been to that kind of party so it's very different.Peter: It was good. People would come, there would be little food stalls and some people would even bring their kids or whatever. It was very open, very friendly and people basically did what they wanted.Jana: So it's like a music festival.Peter: Yeah, I guess you could say that a little bit. Yeah, yeah.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Jana: I didn't know you were into dancing.Peter: Well, yeah, just a little bit I guess. I used to go dancing quite a bit. I was part of this group of friends and we used to follow the rave scene in South Africa.Jana: Wow.Peter: And we used to actually go on these trance parties and there was a small dance or actually a music company that organized these events and they were all outdoor events and some of them would last a whole weekend so you would pack your camping gear and this dance would be or this trance party would be held outside, out in a forest or somewhere in the mountains or on a beach sometimes and these would sometimes last into the next day and the following day. People would come and go and the music would be non-stop basically.Jana: Wow, so would you go every week or...?Peter: No, not every week that's too much I think. It's too energy costing but it was so much fun really because it's just such a break from normal work routine and you get out into nature and it's just the music and it's just nature. If you wanted you know to take a break you could wander off and find a quiet spot to rest and be with friends and eat something and relax and sleep maybe and then wake up and slowly join the party again and just carry on. People of all walks of life would come and join. Like professional people that wanted to break out or people that are kind of part of the hippy scene. I guess it was still going in some ways so yeah they would just drift in and out. It was really a lot of fun.Jana: That sounds fun and what kind of music would they play?Peter: Mostly trance music so people that liked trance music would be, yeah, they would really go but the music, I don't know if you know trance music?Jana: Not really, not that familiar.Peter: It varies. There's a lot of, of course most of it's electronically based, so DJs would be able to control the tempo of the music and at some points the music would shift and change and like usually through the night there would be a different kind of phases of the music and DJs would take over and take over from each other so the music would change and the influences that they bring to the music would also change. Yeah, yeah, it's really, really good.Jana: It sounds really interesting. I've never been to that kind of party so it's very different.Peter: It was good. People would come, there would be little food stalls and some people would even bring their kids or whatever. It was very open, very friendly and people basically did what they wanted.Jana: So it's like a music festival.Peter: Yeah, I guess you could say that a little bit. Yeah, yeah.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Jana: I didn't know you were into dancing.Peter: Well, yeah, just a little bit I guess. I used to go dancing quite a bit. I was part of this group of friends and we used to follow the rave scene in South Africa.Jana: Wow.Peter: And we used to actually go on these trance parties and there was a small dance or actually a music company that organized these events and they were all outdoor events and some of them would last a whole weekend so you would pack your camping gear and this dance would be or this trance party would be held outside, out in a forest or somewhere in the mountains or on a beach sometimes and these would sometimes last into the next day and the following day. People would come and go and the music would be non-stop basically.Jana: Wow, so would you go every week or...?Peter: No, not every week that's too much I think. It's too energy costing but it was so much fun really because it's just such a break from normal work routine and you get out into nature and it's just the music and it's just nature. If you wanted you know to take a break you could wander off and find a quiet spot to rest and be with friends and eat something and relax and sleep maybe and then wake up and slowly join the party again and just carry on. People of all walks of life would come and join. Like professional people that wanted to break out or people that are kind of part of the hippy scene. I guess it was still going in some ways so yeah they would just drift in and out. It was really a lot of fun.Jana: That sounds fun and what kind of music would they play?Peter: Mostly trance music so people that liked trance music would be, yeah, they would really go but the music, I don't know if you know trance music?Jana: Not really, not that familiar.Peter: It varies. There's a lot of, of course most of it's electronically based, so DJs would be able to control the tempo of the music and at some points the music would shift and change and like usually through the night there would be a different kind of phases of the music and DJs would take over and take over from each other so the music would change and the influences that they bring to the music would also change. Yeah, yeah, it's really, really good.Jana: It sounds really interesting. I've never been to that kind of party so it's very different.Peter: It was good. People would come, there would be little food stalls and some people would even bring their kids or whatever. It was very open, very friendly and people basically did what they wanted.Jana: So it's like a music festival.Peter: Yeah, I guess you could say that a little bit. Yeah, yeah.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Jana: Hey, Peter, are you interested in dancing by any chance?Peter: Yeah, I do. I like dancing. Why?Jana: That's great. Well there is a salsa class in Oita City tomorrow night and a few of us are going but it's mainly we have a group of girls, five girls, so we need some guys to come along so I was wondering if you would like to come?Peter: Sounds interesting but will I be the only guy?Jana: Oh no, there are other people who come along but because it's four of us from the university we thought it would be nice if we get some more people.Peter: OK. It sounds interesting. What kind of class is it, how does it work?Jana: Well it sort of varies but the teacher comes in once a month and teaches different styles, salsa or merengue, a different Latin dance. Have you ever tried?Peter: I've tried I guess in different places but never been taught before or I've never really been shown how to.Jana: So you would already be an expert?Peter: I don't know about that.Jana: Well don't worry, it's a really basic level but the teacher will show us some basic steps and then we'll practice in pairs and you dance with different people. It's quite a lot of fun.Peter: OK. What time does it start?Jana: It starts around six-thirty.Peter: And how long does it last for?Jana: Usually the class goes on for about an hour and there is free social dancing afterward so you can stay longer.Peter: OK.Jana: And practice, have a drink.Peter: It sounds quite nice. Do I have to wear anything special or have...?Jana: No, just whatever you're comfortable in. Some people wear or girls wear special shoes I guess but you don't have to worry, just something comfortable.Peter: So shoes, any shoes are fine?Jana: Any shoes, yeah, and shoes are fine.Peter: OK. It sounds pretty nice actually. So does it cost anything, do I have to prepare money?Jana: Yeah, it's ten dollars per lesson and you get a free drink with that.Peter: OK. Free drink, that sounds good. Where are you guys meeting, which station?Jana: We can meet at Oita station. It's only about a ten-minute walk from there so maybe we can meet around six-fifteen?Peter: OK. That's sounds fine. I'll give you a call sometime just to make sure.Jana: All right, great. See you then.Peter: All right, thanks.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Jana: Hey, Peter, are you interested in dancing by any chance?Peter: Yeah, I do. I like dancing. Why?Jana: That's great. Well there is a salsa class in Oita City tomorrow night and a few of us are going but it's mainly we have a group of girls, five girls, so we need some guys to come along so I was wondering if you would like to come?Peter: Sounds interesting but will I be the only guy?Jana: Oh no, there are other people who come along but because it's four of us from the university we thought it would be nice if we get some more people.Peter: OK. It sounds interesting. What kind of class is it, how does it work?Jana: Well it sort of varies but the teacher comes in once a month and teaches different styles, salsa or merengue, a different Latin dance. Have you ever tried?Peter: I've tried I guess in different places but never been taught before or I've never really been shown how to.Jana: So you would already be an expert?Peter: I don't know about that.Jana: Well don't worry, it's a really basic level but the teacher will show us some basic steps and then we'll practice in pairs and you dance with different people. It's quite a lot of fun.Peter: OK. What time does it start?Jana: It starts around six-thirty.Peter: And how long does it last for?Jana: Usually the class goes on for about an hour and there is free social dancing afterward so you can stay longer.Peter: OK.Jana: And practice, have a drink.Peter: It sounds quite nice. Do I have to wear anything special or have...?Jana: No, just whatever you're comfortable in. Some people wear or girls wear special shoes I guess but you don't have to worry, just something comfortable.Peter: So shoes, any shoes are fine?Jana: Any shoes, yeah, and shoes are fine.Peter: OK. It sounds pretty nice actually. So does it cost anything, do I have to prepare money?Jana: Yeah, it's ten dollars per lesson and you get a free drink with that.Peter: OK. Free drink, that sounds good. Where are you guys meeting, which station?Jana: We can meet at Oita station. It's only about a ten-minute walk from there so maybe we can meet around six-fifteen?Peter: OK. That's sounds fine. I'll give you a call sometime just to make sure.Jana: All right, great. See you then.Peter: All right, thanks.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Jana: Hey, Peter, are you interested in dancing by any chance?Peter: Yeah, I do. I like dancing. Why?Jana: That's great. Well there is a salsa class in Oita City tomorrow night and a few of us are going but it's mainly we have a group of girls, five girls, so we need some guys to come along so I was wondering if you would like to come?Peter: Sounds interesting but will I be the only guy?Jana: Oh no, there are other people who come along but because it's four of us from the university we thought it would be nice if we get some more people.Peter: OK. It sounds interesting. What kind of class is it, how does it work?Jana: Well it sort of varies but the teacher comes in once a month and teaches different styles, salsa or merengue, a different Latin dance. Have you ever tried?Peter: I've tried I guess in different places but never been taught before or I've never really been shown how to.Jana: So you would already be an expert?Peter: I don't know about that.Jana: Well don't worry, it's a really basic level but the teacher will show us some basic steps and then we'll practice in pairs and you dance with different people. It's quite a lot of fun.Peter: OK. What time does it start?Jana: It starts around six-thirty.Peter: And how long does it last for?Jana: Usually the class goes on for about an hour and there is free social dancing afterward so you can stay longer.Peter: OK.Jana: And practice, have a drink.Peter: It sounds quite nice. Do I have to wear anything special or have...?Jana: No, just whatever you're comfortable in. Some people wear or girls wear special shoes I guess but you don't have to worry, just something comfortable.Peter: So shoes, any shoes are fine?Jana: Any shoes, yeah, and shoes are fine.Peter: OK. It sounds pretty nice actually. So does it cost anything, do I have to prepare money?Jana: Yeah, it's ten dollars per lesson and you get a free drink with that.Peter: OK. Free drink, that sounds good. Where are you guys meeting, which station?Jana: We can meet at Oita station. It's only about a ten-minute walk from there so maybe we can meet around six-fifteen?Peter: OK. That's sounds fine. I'll give you a call sometime just to make sure.Jana: All right, great. See you then.Peter: All right, thanks.

What's the secret sauce that top growth marketers use to predict performance and develop their marketing plans and budgets? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Onna Head of Growth Peter Schroeder shares his process for building growth models, and how he uses them to predict future marketing and sales headcount needs, allocate budget, and more. Peter's approach to growth modeling can work for any type of company, from an early stage startup without a lot of marketing performance data, to a well established high growth company looking to take its performance to the next level.  Highlights from my conversation with Peter include: As head of growth for Onna, Peter focuses on the demand gen side of marketing (as opposed to the brand building side). Peter says that a focus on growth is particularly important at early stage companies where very often investors have high expectations regarding growth milestones. Onna is just this type of company. It is early stage, having just closed a Series A round of investment with funding from companies like Slack and Dropbox, and the growth goals are ambitious. When Peter thinks about growth modeling, he begins with the revenue number that the company is trying to hit, and then reverse engineers the funnel so that he can determine things like required budget and headcount. Peter's growth models are built as spreadsheets that reflect patterns in historical marketing data with regarding to channel performance, conversion rates and more. He says that while many startups say that they don't have enough data to build a growth model, he believes this is just an excuse and the small amount of data you do have coupled with anecdotal feedback from your sales team are enough to get started. Peter encourages marketers not to get too wrapped up in making the model perfect. He says to follow the 80/20 rule and spend no more than 20 percent of your time building the model and at least 80 percent of your time working on growth-oriented activities. Using his spreadsheet, Peter identifies the cost to acquire a customer by channel, and then he models out what the cost is at each stage of his funnel, by channel. While most marketers think that CAC will get lower over time, Peter says it is just the opposite and CAC will increase as your efforts saturate a particular channel. Peter says that the ket metric marketing should be measured on is marketing contributed revenue. He uses his growth model to report on that, and says that the model is a helpful tool to incorporate into leadership meetings and regular marketing checkins. Another way that Peter communicates about marketing success is by sharing his team's work internally. Resources from this episode: Visit the Onna website Follow Peter on Twitter Email Peter at peter@onna.com Listen to the podcast to learn more about Peter's approach to growth modeling, and how to build a growth model of your own. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth, and today my guest is Peter Schroeder, who is the head of growth at Onna. Welcome, Peter. Peter Schroeder (Guest): Thank you so much for having me. Happy to be here. Kathleen: Yeah. I am excited to talk to you, because I speak with a lot of marketers, and your title is head of growth. So maybe you could start out by talking a little bit about yourself and kind of your background and what led you to where you are today, as well as what Onna is, and then we can talk a little bit about what it means to be a head of growth. About Peter and Onna Peter: Yeah, absolutely. So what head of growth really means is, it focuses on the demand gen side of marketing. It's not as involved in brand-building and any of those other activities that don't directly result in pipeline generation for a business. So what the head of growth really does is, like I said, just focuses on all areas that would drive the business forward from a revenue perspective. So that's like a little bit of the differentiator. And I think that we're starting to see it more and more at early stage companies where you really need to focus on that revenue growth as opposed to like brand-building. Kathleen: Yeah, definitely. Those results are kind of where the rubber meets the road. Peter: Yeah, exactly. Kathleen: What has your career path been? How did you become a head of growth? Peter: Yeah, absolutely. So I've been in the software world for about eight years. I was in marketing roles and digital marketing roles. And I think that ever since I started early on in my career, it's always been demand gen focus. Whether it's paid media events, webinars, it's always been about things that directly impact the revenue side of the business. I think that brand is very much so a luxury that early stage companies just can't afford to focus on exclusively. I think a lot of our demand gen activities residually affect that brand. Making sure that we're going to market with a unified message, consistent branding, that's something we want to do on the demand gen side. So I think that branding will come, but it's just not a luxury that most companies have. Most early stage SaaS companies have that runway. They have those numbers that they need to be held accountable for. So that's really focusing on the demand gen side. So being a marketer at early stage software companies, I feel like it's just kind of comes with the territory. Kathleen: Yeah. I would say amen to all of that, but especially if it's a company that's venture-backed or that's looking for investment, those numbers are critical, and usually investors are watching them really closely, so I can see where your kind of role would be important. What does it mean to be a growth marketer? Kathleen: Now, when you come into a role such as head of growth, how do you approach that? I know we were going to talk about growth modeling, and I love this concept, because especially at early stage companies, I've been at some, and the question is always like, what can we expect in terms of growth? And what's it going to take to get like if we want to grow by 2X? And a lot of times, I think, marketers come into these roles and they sort of feel like it's like putting their finger up in the air and measuring where the wind is blowing, and they pull a number out of the blue and sometimes feel nervous about it. But you've really dug into a little bit more of a scientific approach to figuring out growth. Peter: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I can give you an example of where I'm at right now. So I'm at a company called Onna, which is a platform that centralizes data from your favorite apps, so think Slack, G Suite, anywhere where you get work done, to deliver a connected enterprise. So we're gathering all that data and we're supercharging it with machine learning and unified search to give you all that data in one place. This last year, to give you like a stage for the size of our company, we closed our series A with investments from Slack and Dropbox. And with that investment, we have really aggressive growth goals on the sales and marketing end. When you're getting funding from companies at that level, we have really big goals for 2020. So what that means for me is coming into the business and thinking, how can we hit those aggressive growth goals? And starting at the revenue number, what's the revenue number we have to hit? And then sort of reverse engineering that funnel to make sure that we have the funnel covered at all stages from a budget perspective, from a headcount perspective, just overall coverage on all ends. And what that means, for example, is we don't want to generate more pipeline than we have the headcount to be able to close from a sales perspective. So this is where a sales and marketing alignment gets really close, so working with sales to make sure we know when they're hiring people. For the marketing side, we know when we need to bring in what amount of pipeline to make sure we're able to close at an effective rate. Otherwise, from a marketing perspective, if we're under-generating pipeline, that's going to impact the sales department. On the flip side, if we're over-generating pipeline, things are going to slip through the cracks, because we don't have enough coverage from a headcount perspective to be able to sort of reign all that pipeline in. So when we think for like planning for a whole year. So for example, we want to grow 2 to 3X next year, which is really aggressive growth goals. That comes with a lot of hiring, a lot of pipeline generating. So we just want to make sure that we're scaling in unison to be able to support each other effectively. Kathleen: I am loving this topic, because I think this is something that so many marketers have had to grapple with. And I love that you talked about almost starting with the end in mind. The investors want you to reach X amount of revenue, and how do you back out what's needed to get there? Right? And especially that you talked about sales and marketing alignment, because obviously those are both really important parts of the puzzle. So knowing that that's what you have to do, where do you start? How do you break this up into manageable pieces? How to get started with growth modeling Peter: Yeah, definitely. So I don't know if you can start with somewhere manageable, but you kind of have to think about all stages of growth modeling to make sure you have all your bases covered. A lot of people just want to say, "Okay, we're going to do everything in everything." And that's just not possible, especially when you're smaller stage. You need to focus. You need to understand where you have the biggest opportunity to have an impact. You have to understand historical trends. Where did your early customers come from? Recognize those patterns. Try to map out, if you invest more money to try to amplify those channels, how does that impact it? So it's really like a full scope sort of understanding of how you want to grow your business. And I know that people will hate to hear this answer, but it starts in the spreadsheets. You have to get into the spreadsheets. You have to start mapping out your numbers. I know that early stage companies like to say, "We don't have enough data to back that." But I think that early data is really good early indicators. And like I said, I think just as a really good place to start is to start with that revenue number. Then based on historical trends, you can reverse it up from closed won. Then you can go up to opportunities. Then you can go up to SQLs, MQLs, leads, traffic, and you can understand the whole funnel. And then that at least gives you a sense of what you need to bring in from a lead perspective, and that gives you a place to start. Then once you have that lead number, you can break it up by channel based on what you've seen by channel. How much does it cost for you to acquire a lead at each channel? And then you just start laying out the whole framework, and it shows you how much you need to invest in each channel, what headcount you need to support that investment. And it helps you go back down that funnel and give you that coverage. Kathleen: Okay, so there's a lot there. Peter: Yeah, there's a lot there. I have a slide that I can give to you that you can put it in the show notes, but it kind of articulates from a funnel perspective what you have to look at and where you have to identify conversion rates to get those numbers to be able to map out your channels. Kathleen: Now, you said something that really caught my ear, which is that a lot of people in startups are going to say, "We don't have enough data." And that was running through my head as you said it. So you talked about even the early numbers are good and kind of interesting numbers, but there is a certain amount of data that's needed because when you talk about things like looking at performance by channel, et cetera, some early stage companies coming out of stealth are going to have really basically nothing, or they might have a pipeline but it's entirely from having an SDR on the team and dialing for dollars and not any inbound. And so how much data do you really need in order to do this? Like do you have to have a basic inbound pipeline up and running? Peter: I mean, it's a good question. I guess it depends on where your company has seen growth and if it has seen growth yet. Like you said, if it's coming right out of stealth mode, that's when you lean on your early employees, their experience, historical trends, market research, and you put together some baseline numbers to at least have something to measure against. If you're early-stage, you pull together the data that you have, and you start mapping out against it. But everyone should be able to at least pull something together. And I think that the use of this data, I also don't want to over-advocate for it, because I think that we can get stuck in analysis paralysis too. And our primary function as marketers are people who create, people who drive demand. So I think that when we think about the balance between this growth modeling and actually acting upon it, I like to use a simple 80-20 rule. We shouldn't spend more than like 20% of our time planning and building out these frameworks and building these models. It's like, at a certain stage, especially when you're early, do the best that you can. Have something to model against. Have something to show that you have actually thought about your growth goals and you're not just spending money to spend money. But at the end of the day, like you said, you could only have so much data. We all only have access to so much data. And at the end of the day, we need to execute on it. We need to be able to put our plan into action and put our plan into motion, so at the end of the year we're not pointing back to our growth model and being like, "Well, we didn't do any of that." We need to actually execute on these things that we put together. Kathleen: So I want to make sure I'm understanding you correctly. You come in and you're looking at historical information around conversion rates and volume at each level from traffic to lead all the way through to closing a deal. And I assume you're also looking at the growth of those numbers over time, in other words, how the conversion rate has changed over time? Peter: Yep. So conversion rates also paired with like unit economics. So by channel, how much are we acquiring customers for? What's the lifetime value of those customers? What's our payback period? So being also very conscious of the economics by channel. How to build a growth model Kathleen: Okay. And so let's say your revenue is at $5 million a year, and your investors come in and they say, "We want you at 50 million by the end of next year." Walk me through. How do you take that model and use it to answer that question? Peter: Yeah, that's a really good question. So that'd be 10X in growth, so --- Kathleen: We can make it 2X, if that's easier for the purpose of this. Peter: Sure. Let's go five to 10. That might be easier. So what you have to do is, you have to sort of dissect the pipeline from this last year. So how much revenue in the last year have you gained? Based on that revenue, what was your closed won percentage? Where was the pipeline coming from? And you'd have to identify where's the best opportunity to amplify that pipeline. Like, do we dissect our pipe and dissect our deal flow and find out that like 90% of our deals came through channel partnerships? Well, that means that we might have the biggest opportunity to go into those channel partnerships and amplify it with resources and money and going to events. So it's really identifying historic trends and pattern recognizing, and then coming up with hypotheses by channel that support our growth goals, and then kind of filling in the numbers to help support that so you have something to measure against. Kathleen: Okay. So let's use the example you came up with, like channel for example. Let's say we decide channel is the biggest opportunity because we see that a large volume of our customers are closing from there. If the hypothesis is that that's where we need to put our resources... You talked a little bit about using growth modeling to determine plans and budgets and that sort of thing. How do you translate that hypothesis into a concrete plan and a budget? Turning growth models into marketing plans and budgets Peter: Yeah, definitely. So I think at a high level, it starts with your revenue number and what you need to get there. So you need that. You need your cost to acquire customer by that channel. And then you can basically, based on what you need to do from that channel, based on your projections, you can divide it by your cost to acquire a customer, and you can basically fill out your funnel and recognize the cost at every stage of the funnel. You can associate a dollar amount to an MQL, an SQL, an opportunity, and a closed one. And it helps you understand at each stage of the funnel what you need to acquire a customer for. So let's say in that example, you do your math, you look at your cost to acquire a customer, you look at the number you need to get to, and you recognize that you need to acquire an MQL at a price of $1,500. Well, it helps you know when you go to that channel partnership event... Let's say you spend $100,000 to promote that event. You need to be able to acquire X amount of MQLs at $1,500 to have that event back out and to continue to support your growth goals. Kathleen: Okay. So it's more about the cost of acquisition than setting an arbitrary budget, for example. Peter: Yeah, exactly. It all comes back to, what is that cost to acquire a customer? And then you can compare it to your funnel metrics to identify dollar amounts at every stage of the funnel. Kathleen: And to what degree, when you build this model, are you baking in assumptions about becoming more efficient over time? In other words, especially with earlier startups, they might be spending a lot to acquire leads and customers. But presumably that number should come down over time with the volume, with efficiencies, with lots of lessons learned. How do you account for that? Peter: Well, it's interesting, because I think the classic assumption is that you do get more efficient by channels as you kind of do it longer. But it's kind of my mindset and philosophy to assume that channels get worse as we grow, because we saturate them more. Kathleen: Oh really? Peter: Yeah. Our goals get bigger. We have to assume that we will run out of runway in certain channels. At a certain point, we will sort of maximize them. So I think it's really important to think about as we scale and as we grow, as we throw more resources at different channels, as we have to ramp people, there's a lot of factors that come into... Like we talked about in our example, going from like five to 10 million, there's a lot of factors that go into building a growth team during that period and doing it in such an aggressive time period that we have to assume that we won't figure out things as quickly as we want to. And what that helps us do is it helps us sort of like protect ourselves. We'd rather over-plan and plan for the worst and then outperform and then go from five to 10 million in eight months instead of 12 months. We would rather do that if best case scenario comes to fruition than actually plan for best case scenario. Kathleen: So do you pair your... Call it your analysis of the conversion rates, of volume, et cetera. Do you pair that with a demand waterfall, then, where you kind of lay out where those new leads are going to come from by channel, by event, et cetera? How does that work together? Peter: Yep. So ideally you would pair up and have... I know I keep going back to spreadsheets, but at early-stage companies you just have these big, ugly spreadsheets- Kathleen: I mean, every good marketing nerd worth their salt loves the spreadsheets, so you're preaching to the choir here. Peter: True. These big, ugly spreadsheets that all just feed into your number. And it helps you lay out month by month, and add it up to quarter by quarter, and then total into a year where every single lead is coming from by channel and how that lead ultimately impacts revenue. So you have this big spreadsheet all the way month by month, from lead all the way to revenue, that is marketing-contributed and pairs up as well with sales headcount to make sure that there's enough salespeople to support that pipeline and that revenue that you're bringing in. So I don't have a really pretty way to scrape that together. Based on your business, if you're doing more outbound, if you're doing more inbound, it's something you kind of just hack together in the spreadsheets. But that's the way that I've always done it, and it seems to work to a certain extent. Eventually you have to automate that, but early on it's definitely a good way to build this out. What role does sales play in growth modeling? Kathleen: What part of this are you leaning on the head of sales for? Because obviously a lot of this data has to come from them, correct? Peter: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So they're responsible for that revenue number, and I would say that revenue number alone. Marketing should own the funnel all the way to the pipeline. And then once it gets to the pipeline, there's that sales and marketing handoff. And then sales is responsible for winning that business that we put in the pipe for them. So what they're really doing is, they're letting us know what's that conversion rate from pipeline to closed won, and what do they need to like support their sales goals based on the reps that they're bringing on, the quotas that they're putting in place. And those are probably the big things. Kathleen: It sounds like this really would form a great basis for a service-level agreement between marketing and sales, because it gives you some pretty concrete numbers and expectations. Have you used it for that before? Peter: Yeah. Yeah, so for our SLA, we don't think like too concrete in place from these numbers perspective. It's more so like, we think of sales and marketing as like almost one department. So it's not like we're going to hold a gun to your head for this. Based on this, it's like we're one department working this together, like we are generating leads for you to close. So I've never found SLAs too crucial, unless there's like a war between sales and marketing, which thankfully I've never had to deal with. It's always been really close, viewed as one department. Using growth modeling to determine headcount Kathleen: Yeah. So you talked about how you can use this to model out sales headcount, but how do you use it, or can you use it, to model out marketing headcount? Peter: Yeah, that's a good question. It's a lot harder, because it's not one-to-one. What you need to do, though, is you need to recognize based on your strategy that you have in place... Let's use the channel partnership example for one. If 90% of our pipeline is coming from those channel partnerships and we don't have anyone on marketing dedicated to that channel, someone needs to own that. If there's that much of our business relying on it, we can't just leave it up in the air. So then we have to look at our org chart, and we have to understand who contributes to that channel, who owns that channel, where can marketing contribute. And it helps paint a more clear picture than kind of just arbitrarily structuring your marketing department. It helps you align your headcount to the numbers a lot better. Another example is like early on when people put a lot of money into paid. No one really owns paid. It's just a lot of sort of cooks in the kitchen. You can look at that paid number and you can say, "We're spending X amount of money. Definitely warrants someone." And that helps you go to your leadership team, helps you really advocate for that internally, to get someone to manage that budget. I think whenever you see a significant part of your budget going in this growth modeling, it helps you really paint a clear picture that you need people there to support that and you need to grow your headcount. Kathleen: Yeah, it's funny. I've never met anybody who has a really good formula for figuring out marketing headcount increases over time. It's definitely more of a black box than sales headcount is for sure. Peter: Yeah, absolutely. And I think based on this growth modeling, if any of your numbers are falling behind from the growth modeling perspective, it's also something you can point back to if no one's owning it and say like, "I have an assumption that we can be X more effective or X more efficient if we bring in someone to to manage this budget. Right now it feels like we're kind of just burning money to put it in this channel." So it helps you build those arguments a little bit more. But it's definitely not as like one-to-one to sales. Like if we spend X on this person, we should get X out. Growth modeling in action Kathleen: Yeah. Now let's talk about once you've built your growth model, because you... Like all these great spreadsheets, you build it, and then what? So what does your cadence look like in terms of how frequently you're going back to that model over time, adjusting it, checking assumptions, et cetera? Peter: Yeah, so this growth model should feed into your overall overall marketing strategy, and it should be something that your team is measured against as a marketing department as a whole. Like where do you kind of stick your pin in the map, and what do you point out and say, "This is what marketing is going to do. This is what we're going to be held accountable towards"? So for me it's always been marketing contributed revenue. Like what do we actually drive at the end of the day? And I know that some people don't like doing that, because there's multi-touch attribution and all these other things with actually tracking and stuff. But I think it's so important, and I think it gives marketing a seat at the table, per se, from a revenue perspective, where we're saying we're actually driving revenue at the end of the day through marketing activities that we do. So I think it's something that at least I've always measured against monthly, quarterly, even weekly sometimes once you're getting close to the end of the quarter and really needing to push your marketing team to be like, "Where are we at? What did we say that we're going to do? Are we falling short? Are we on target? Are we running ahead?" But at the end of the day, the whole marketing team should be aligned to to those numbers as well to make sure that we're all on the same page and to make sure that we're supporting revenue-driving activities. Kathleen: Yeah. It seems like it would be a really good management tool for a marketing leader to just pull out in team meetings and use as a pulse check. Peter: Yeah, yeah. It's brought out at marketing check-ins, and it's also brought out at leadership meetings too. Like what does leadership care about? What do they want to hear about when you sit down for your weekly or biweekly or monthly or whatever your leadership team does? Those are the numbers that they care about. They don't want to hear about like, "Oh, we held a webinar, and it was fun." They want to see like, okay, how many leads did we bring in? How many of them came to the pipeline? What did that mean from a revenue perspective? They care about those really hard numbers that marketing in 2020 needs to be ready to talk about, like the actual revenue driving impact that we have. Building a growth-oriented marketing tech stack Kathleen: You talked about multi-touch attribution and being able to say what marketing's contribution was towards top-line revenue. What kind of a tech stack do you think you need to have in place in order to enable that? Peter: Yeah, I think it really depends on the size of your organization, because at Onna, we're selling enterprise deals, so we're very much at the stage where we can just go in, dissect the deal, manage it in a spreadsheet, and it's really low-touch, minimal effort. As opposed to if you're selling SMB and you're selling annual contracts of $50, and it's very self-serve, you need to have a robust attribution system in place to be able to measure that. So it's not something that I've had a ton of experience with, but from the people that I've talked to that do have to build out that attribution system, people have recommended Bizible, that it's a really good multi-touch attribution tool for them to use. But again, I just haven't had to get into that too much thankfully, which I'm happy about. Kathleen: Now can I ask what kind of tech stack you guys have that you're using? Peter: Yeah, so we use Pardot and Salesforce, and we also have a sales ops person on our team already, so they're able to... Like I said, sales and marketing is kind of the same for us, so our sales ops person's able they both to run reports, slice data for us, pull any numbers or data that we really need. Kathleen: That's awesome. And now how long have you been at Onna? Peter: So I've been at Onna for a few months now. Setting expectations for your growth model Kathleen: Okay. And this isn't the first time you've held this kind of a role. So I'm curious to know, expectation-wise, someone tries this for the first time... I feel like it would be like setting KPIs overall or like setting your professional development goals. It seems like one of those things that you would get better at over time. So what has your experience been with the first one or two times you build a model like this? How accurate do you think someone should expect to be out of the gate? Peter: Yeah, I think there's a few things. I think that, like you first said, you definitely get better. You have to start somewhere though. It's going to be iterations on iterations, and hopefully it becomes like your own personal playbook that you can sort of bring wherever you go and adjust no matter where you're at. But it all starts with actually doing that, starting somewhere and actually improving on it. I think the second thing is, you need a team and a leadership team that's okay with challenging and pushing each other and being candid with each other. Because the first time I did this, no one asked me to do this. No one said this is something that we needed. It's something that I felt that I needed to be able to support the decisions that I was making. And so I went to the CEO of my former company. I said, "Hey, this is something I've been working on. It's an MVP. It's lightweight. Please tear it apart and give me feedback and go back to the drawing board with it." And one, he was so happy that I took the initiative to do it. It's not anything he asked for, but it painted such a clear picture of what marketing's doing and why marketing exists. And he did. He tore it apart. He told me from a CEO and founder perspective what he wanted to see, what our board cared about, and what I should be focusing on to help build out the bones of this growth modeling foundation. So I think you'd definitely want that from a leader and you want that from a team. And I also get that not everyone has that team in place. So then I think it's about having a network and being able to go to peers and be able to go to other people you know to help build that out, if you're not in as like a secure place, that you need to go to your team with something a little bit more buttoned up than that MVP version. Kathleen: Yeah, that's a really good point. And I appreciate that you brought that up, because I think there probably are some marketers out there who are thinking like, "We don't have enough information, or, "I don't have a tech stack that can give this to me." But it sounds like, to me, what you're saying is, don't let that be something that stops you. If you don't have the data internally, you either know someone who has comparable data or you can Google it and find out what industry averages are. But it sounds like it's just worth starting with something and then iterating, and as you build data you can refine. Peter: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's important, saying again, if you're at a company where no one asked you to do this and you go build this growth model and you present it to them, it will be a big deal in their eyes. These are the things they want to see. These are the numbers that they care about. This is how you paint marketing in a light that that leadership and investors and everyone really wants to see. So if no one's asking you for it, I'd encourage people to build out these models and show the nitty gritty of what marketing does. Kathleen: Yeah. Yeah, that's great advice. And I think... What is it? The average head of marketing lasts 18 months these days. And so that is something that I'm sure is top of mind with lots of people who are listening, which is, how do I set myself up for success so that I beat the odds and last longer than 18 months? It's a depressing number. Peter: It is. And I think people fall into this trap of marketers not getting the credit they deserve for a few reasons. It's like marketers need to show what they do internally. If you don't showcase what you do, if you don't share what you do, people in product who are writing code all day are just going to be like, "Oh, marketing doesn't do anything." You need to showcase the things that you're doing and boast them proudly. Sharing your work is a very important thing. Like at Onna, whenever my team creates something, does something, we have like a marketing shares channel where we show everything that we do, so it allows us to showcase what we do. And we want to hold ourselves accountable. We want someone to call us out if something isn't up to our brand standards. If something doesn't look good, we want people to call us out on that, because we want to be better and we want to be held accountable. And the second thing is marketers that just sort of never execute and just move too slowly. We want to be known as a department that can get things, spin something up, spin up an MVP and be able to iterate. So that's another aspect, that we want to be known as a team that's on the ball, that's snappy to a reasonable amount. We don't want people to come to us and throw off what we're working on. My team operates in marketing sprints so we can protect ourselves from those things that come in. We have our priorities locked in for two weeks, but we can tell people and we can set the expectation but next sprint we'll put this in and we'll get back to you in like two to three weeks with something ready. Kathleen: Yeah, I love that marketing shares channel idea. It was funny. Months ago I interviewed Dave Gerhardt, who has been the VP of marketing at Drift. He's just left to take a new role. But he talked a lot about sharing your work, but it was sort of more internal within the marketing team. And I've done that now for a while. Ever since I first talked to him about it, I started implementing it, and it's been great. But what I haven't done is that next step, which is what you're talking about, and that's having marketing shared outside of the team with the rest of the company. And I love that, because you're right. I think a lot of people do think marketers are just sitting back there, as somebody once said, doing arts and crafts, right? And it's a lot more than that. And unfortunately a lot of the work we do does take some time before there's very publicly visible things to show for it. And so taking those pieces and sharing them out as they're ready, I think, can be very powerful. So I'm going to do that too. I'm going to copy your idea. Peter: Yeah, I really like it. And I think that I've heard from some people like, "Oh, my team's afraid to share things internally." And it makes me question like, how can you be afraid to share things internally but okay to share them externally?  Kathleen: Yeah, that's a bad sign. Peter: Yeah, that's a really bad sign. So it just promotes good work, good behavior, good actions. So I'm a big fan of it. Kathleen: Now, do you wait until those things are done? In other words, are you sharing drafts of things, or are you sharing completed, shipped work? Peter: To the whole team, we're sharing shipped work. We do have the internal marketing team sharing where we share early versions, early drafts, to make sure that we are buttoned up. But we're sharing to the whole team final products. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Great. That's awesome. I love it. Love this topic, and I will definitely put your slide in the show notes. Changing channels a little bit right now, I have two questions I always ask all of my guests. I'd love to know your thoughts on this. The first is, when you think about inbound marketing, is there a particular company or individual that you think is really killing it? Peter: Yeah, absolutely. I think Ryan Bonnici at G2, the CMO over there, he's doing amazing work. I think he built an incredible team over there from an inbound perspective. If you're not following him on Twitter, on Instagram, follow Ryan Bonnici of G2. He's like my favorite CMO in the world. If you're thinking about going to a marketing conference in 2020, check out the G2 Reach conference. I think that I went last year, which was the first year, and Brian's just doing incredible things out there for all marketers. I encourage everyone to watch him and see what he's doing. Kathleen: Yeah, he's incredibly creative. I interviewed him as well, so I will also put the link to my interview with Ryan in the show notes, because he talked about some really cool stuff that he did at HubSpot that he was rolling out at G2 Crowd as well, so that's a good one. He is super creative, and he moves fast also. Peter: And he's also just a really good person and really funny. He's just entertaining too. If you ever get the chance to talk to him or watch anything that he puts out there, he's genuine. He's thoughtful. He doesn't just talk about marketing, but he talks about like mindfulness, things like imposter syndrome for young marketers. Just overall great person, great marketer. I think he's doing it better than anyone. Kathleen: Yeah, agreed. All right, second question. Marketing changes really quickly. A lot of marketers I talk to feel like they're drinking out of a fire hose. How do you personally keep educated? Peter: Yeah, I think marketing is changing rapidly, but I think the fundamentals kind of stand the test of time. So I'm a big fan of reading marketing books depending on what I'm going through. Like one of the things I always fall back on is How to Win Friends and Influence people by Dale Carnegie. If you just understand empathy and you understand actually what makes people tick and what people want, that's where marketing starts. We're trying to influence people. We're trying to empathize with people and understand their problems and present them with value. I think things like Elad Gil's High Growth Handbook, it's a book that he wrote that just outlines anything that really anyone could go through at a SaaS company. And then depending on what your specialty is, like if you're in something like content or copywriting, reading, something like Ogilvy on Advertising, such a good copywriting book. So depending on what you're going through and what role you're in, there's so many books that have been written that tell you the foundations and the principles of what have been done, what you should be doing, and things that have already been tested. You don't have to go learn things on your own. These things have already been done, so learn about it and then put your own flavor on it based on what you're going through. Kathleen: I'm so excited that you mentioned a couple of specific books, because I love marketing books. I have a lot of them on the shelf here behind me, which you can't see if you're listening. But yeah, I have Ogilvy on Advertising, but I haven't read a couple of the other ones you mentioned. So my little trick for that is, I love to listen to them on Audible at like 1.5 speed. But then if it's a book that has a lot of meat to it, I'll get the hard copy and do that at the same time so that I can mark up the pages. It's a good way to get through things quickly without... Peter: Yeah. Yeah, I think audio books have been great, because you can just power through them on your commute. They've been great. But for the books that I really like, I do love having a physical book and highlighting it and writing in it. That's hard to beat. How to connect with Peter Kathleen: Yeah, 100%. Well, I love all of those suggestions, Peter. If somebody wants to learn more about Onna, or the topic of growth modeling, or they want to just reach out to you and connect, what's the best way for them to find you online? Peter: Yeah, people can follow me on Twitter @peterschroederr with two Rs. If you have any questions about this, any of this, just feel free to email me at peter@onna.com. Happy to talk to anyone anytime and help people out who are like going through this for the first time and and just walk them through this. Just as much as as growth modeling, I love that career modeling with people too, and building out their own careers and next steps and sort of where they want to go. So big fans of both topics. You know what to do next... Kathleen: That is incredibly generous of you to offer. Thank you so much. If you are listening, I will be putting the links in the show notes for those things, so head over there if you want to reach out to Peter. And if you did listen and you learned something new or you liked what you heard, please consider heading to Apple Podcasts and leaving the podcast a five star review. That helps us get found by new listeners, and I would really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Peter. I appreciate everything you shared with us today. Peter: Thank you so much for having me. I had a great time. Hope everyone enjoys it.  

Great intro to this week's sermon...Do we pretend to be humble or are we actually close to God? Right now you don't know what's going on in your heart...are you alone with God's word? God is telling you something.Time with God is so important, look at these scriptures; 2 Peter 1:12-21. 2 Corinthians 4, John 21:18-19, Jesus is telling Peter "It's worth it"

You can find Greg on Twitter or on Linkedin, here is his agency. Greg is the dude that knows about local SEO and if you have questions about it, you should talk to him.  One of the best sources for local SEO knowledge, as mentioned by Greg is 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors. The Dude's Guide to The Secret of Local Search Success in 2019 and Beyond from Greg Gifford Here is the transcript of the podcast: Greg: Google uses multiple algorithms so SEO is not equal across the board.[music]Peter: This is Time for Marketing. The marketing podcast that will tell you everything you've missed when you didn't attend the marketing conference.[music]Peter: Hello and welcome to the Time for Marketing podcast. The podcast that tells you everything that you have missed when you didn't go to your best and favorite marketing conference. My name is Peter and I'll be your host for today. This is episode number 26 that is airing on the 7th of October 2019. Before I introduce you to our today's guest, I have something to ask you.Could you take the time and open your slack, your Trello, whatever communication channel you have for your agency or for your company. The place where you send all of the interesting links that you read and could you just paste the link to this podcast and say, "I've learned something here." That'll be great. People should know about this podcast.Now, today, with us the big, the great, Greg Gifford. Greg, hello and welcome to the podcast.Greg: Hey, happy to be here. Thanks for having me.Peter: How are you doing up there in the hot state of Texas?Greg: Still hot, unfortunately. We're hoping that now that we're getting down into the 80s, maybe we'll start to get colder but you never know in Texas. It could be up in the hundreds again next week but we're good.Peter: All right. When you look outside your window, do you see cactuses? That's how I figure-- Greg: And tumbleweeds and we all ride horses to work. [laughs] Texas is massive. That's one of the funny things when talking to people from Europe about how big Texas is. We've got mountains, we've got deserts. Other than the fact that when I was in Sylvania it was a nicer part of the year and so everything was green but very similar looked with things. Texas is fairly flat compared to most of Europe. At least most of Texas is but the crazy thing is just the scale. I could get my car right now and drive 80 to 85 miles an hour and go west and it would take me 14 hours to get out of Texas.Peter: It's a completely different scale because if I would do that I'll be changing five different countries probably.Greg: Yes, it's pretty crazy.Peter: Greg, you are the vice president of Search at the Wikimotive Agency. Tell us a bit about your agency and more what do you do as the vice president of Search?Greg: I came on earlier this year with this agency. It's a small boutique agency and I came on because for the last, Jeez, years and years and years, I've been doing SEO exclusively for car dealers for probably 12 years and the place that I worked last time was approved by all of the car manufacturers. Not that that was a bad thing, but we had a very set SEO package that we had to offer which was great.We still got results and did well but I wanted to branch out and expand my reach and do some other things so I came to Wikimotive. They do have a lot of automotive clients but they've got clients outside of automotive and we're making some big pushes into some other verticals. I'm able to stretch my wings here and do some fun things outside of automotives.Peter: All right. What does that mean that the agency was approved by car manufacturers?Greg: It's a weird thing in the US that if you were a car dealer you-- Let's use Ford or BMW as an example. You have a set number of website providers that you're allowed to use that are manufacturer-approved. BMW will say, "You can use one of these four companies to do your website, you can use one of these four or five companies to do your PPC and you can use one of these four or five companies to do your SEO."For most of the manufacturers, you can choose to use a different company if you want but if you use the company that is approved by the manufacturer then the manufacturer will pay for it. There's a lot of benefit. The manufacturer will send all this co-op money out to dealers to use for various marketing things that they do. It works well for the dealerships because then they don't have to spend money on it. That's what the whole vendor-approved thing is. We were on the approved list for all of the major automotive [unintelligible 00:05:04].Peter: You are doing weekly video on your website, tell us a bit about that.Greg: We do a weekly video series called Tactical Tuesdays With Wiki where every Tuesday we do a short video. Most of the time there are three to five-minute videos on some digital marketing tactic. Every once in a while, though we will share a longer video. I just spoke at the Advanced Search Summit in Washington, D.C. a few weeks ago and so this week's video basically I did a re-recording of my presentation and did it with the slide. Now, we've shared that entire presentation but most the time it's short, quick, easy to digest tips about current things going on in Search or specific tips that will help you show up better.Peter: All right. If you've done a lot of SEO for automotive companies, that means local SEO was always a big part of what you do. Is that still a thing?Greg: Yes, very much so. That's what I'm known for. I speak at conferences all over the world about local SEO and teaching people here's what to do to show up better in local searches.Peter: This is also the presentation that I wanted to talk to you about. You spoke at the Advanced Search Summit in Washington, D.C. a couple of weeks ago. What the title of the presentation it's pretty long. The Dude's Guides to The Secret of Local Search Success in 2019 and Beyond. We will attach the presentation to the podcast show notes. I've checked the presentation, you like movies don't you?Greg: I do. I'm a movie man. I was actually a movie major in college so I wanted to go to Hollywood and make movies but clearly that didn't end up happening. I ended up getting into computers instead but I have a full sleeve on my right arm of movie portrait tattoos from various movies and then I'm almost finished getting a sleeve on my right leg of all stuff from the Goonies. I really, really love movies and every time I do presentations I always have a movie theme.Peter: Because as you say in one of the first slides bullet points are killing you, right?Greg: Yes, because I think this year I'll end up speaking at 27 or 28 conferences by the end of the year and I see a lot of presenters. A lot of times you see presenters at conferences that may have really great information but they're just incredibly boring to watch. The background of their slides is just white background and black text and they just have a whole bunch of bullet points on their slides and they're just standing there on the stage and read their bullet points. It's just not a very entertaining presentation to watch.Not that they have to be entertaining but it's just painful to sit there and watch somebody read their slides. I believe that bullet points kill kittens and I don't ever use bullet points in my presentations.Peter: All right. We had enough of chitchat. Greg, here are your five minutes to sum up your marketing conference presentation.Greg: One of the important things that people need to realize that I always like to talk about is that Google uses multiple algorithms. SEO is not equal across the board. It's important to understand with the business that you work with or the website that you're working with which algorithm is going to apply. If it's a business that has a physical location where customers come to that place of business to do business with the business or if it's a business that serves people in a particular area like a plumber or an electrician, then that website needs to be using the local SEO tactic so that you're including all of the additional things that matter to that local algorithm.There's overlap between Google's traditional algorithm and the local algorithm so doing traditional SEO will still give you some benefit but if you've got that physical location or you're serving in a particular area then local is what's going to provide the best results to what you're doing. It's really important to pay attention to various experts in local so that you can stay up to date especially in the UK and Europe where you guys are just starting to catch on and really have people talk at conferences about local SEO where I've been talking about conferences about local SEO for like 10 years in the States.It's just because I think people are really just now starting to understand, "My gosh, this can make a massive difference." You want to follow the right people on Twitter, you want to test your own stuff to make sure that you're doing things that actually work. There's a study that's conducted by a company called White Spark and then published on the Moz Blog. They're called The Local Search Ranking Factors.That's important to pay attention to because it gives a playbook of, "These are the signals that matter the most for showing up in these local searches." You can see from year to year, what's changed, what's become more important, what's become less important and really the things that matter the most are links and content and then your Google my business listing.Sure, links are important in regular SEO but the important thing with local SEO is you want to get local links. You want links from other businesses and other web sites that are in your particular geographic area because those are the links that Google's local algorithm is going to provide more weight to. The good thing about these local links, it doesn't matter if they're no-follow links, it doesn't matter if they don't have a lot of authority if you're using Moz, you're looking at the main authority or Majestic with Trust Flow.It doesn't matter what those authority metrics are because they're still going to count and provide value. Then definitely check through the slides that are going to be attached to the podcast here because there's a lot of different ideas that I run through of things that you can use to get these local links. With local content, it's really important that it's conversational content. Everything that's on your website should sound like something that you would say face to face to a customer that just walked through your front door.It's really helpful to read everything out loud because then you'll catch things that don't really sound conversational. Then with local SEO, you've probably heard about citations, that's basically directory listings where it's name, address, phone number listed on other websites. That used to be much more important so you can discount all the stuff that you'll read that says you have to get hundreds and hundreds of citations.Really, the only ones that matter now are the ones that potential customers might see so you want to do a google search for the name of your business and run through the first three pages of Google search results. Those are the only citation sites that you need to worry about. Then the final thing that I always want to make sure to push the point across is that Google My Business is absolutely important now. Your Google My Business listing is basically your new homepage so if someone's wanting to get your phone number they don't have to go to your website anymore.If someone wants to get your address they don't have to go to your website. If someone wants to see pictures or read reviews, they can get all of that right there in Google My Business. It's really important that you optimize your listing. Obviously, make sure you've claimed it, have the right categories chosen. The category that you choose and put in the primary slot actually carries a little bit more ranking value so you want to make sure you're strategic in which one you're putting there.Make sure you've got a local phone number listed and then make sure you're using the new features that have been released. We've got Google posts which is basically--we call it just free advertising. It's an image and some text that show up as a thumbnail in your profile that people can then click and it blows up bigger and they can see more text and a bigger image, that really helps you stand out from competitors. Lots of businesses aren't using them yet, it's a way to drive pre-site conversions.Then the most important thing is the new feature called Questions and Answers that shows up in the Google My Business profile. It's a community discussion feature where anyone in the community can ask a question and anyone in the community can answer the question for the business which is pretty scary because you don't really want other people answering questions that customers are intending for your business. It's important to monitor that and make sure that you're keeping an eye on when new questions pop in so that you can go and answer them.Then each question can get multiple answers, so the answer that shows as the primary answer to the question is the one that has the most upvotes. You've got to make sure that you're not just answering questions but making sure that your answers have the most upvotes so that you can control that first impression. I know I went through that really quickly, that was a whole lot to try to squeeze into just a few minutes but definitely check out the slides, there's tons and tons of really helpful information in there.Peter: This feels like we got another social network that we need to take care of, is that true?Greg: I wouldn't really call it a social network but a lot of people already pay attention to Google My Business because of the customer reviews. They know, "Hey, this is where people are going to leave us reviews, we need to go pay attention to the reviews, we need to ask for reviews, we need to answer those reviews." Now, it's almost like a new review section. Technically, you're not supposed to put reviews there but a lot of people do.Something else that we see really often is people think it's a messaging system and that it goes directly to the business because the general public doesn't realize that it's just a community discussion feature. We'll see questions all the time where people will say, "Hey, what's your phone number? I've got something I want to buy from you. I need to call you or I need your service, what's your phone number?"If you're not paying attention to that then you miss that sales opportunity or that service opportunity and even though the button that you have to click to ask that question is right next to the phone number in the Google My Business profile, it doesn't matter, people expect that it's messaging and you're paying attention. They're not going to take that extra step to go to your website and see your phone number because they think that if they put that in that's a message that pops up at the business somewhere.We see that a ton. We've now seen too that Google is starting to autosuggest answers. If you go into a Question and Answer section and say that you want to ask a question and you start typing in a question, if it's similar to another question that's been asked in the past then Google will auto-suggest the answer to that question so you don't even actually have to submit the question anymore. It's really important to go in and preload your questions. You could actually ask questions as the business. You want to go in and ask those questions. We call it setting up a pre-site FAQ page.Peter: Google My Business used to have a lot of spam and people using black hat tactics. Is 3 still this way? Do we still have to be careful what all the competition is going to do to us or is Google [inaudible 00:16:07] helping with that?Greg: Very much so. It's awful and you guys are lucky over there and your app it's nowhere near as bad as what it is here in the States, it is just spamtastic. There are just all kinds of people faking listings and creating lead-gen opportunities with fake businesses to try to sell leads to businesses and it's just awful. There is a form that you can go report fake listings on but they pop up just as quickly as you cancel them.I would expect that over in Europe, it's just going to continue to get worse and as everyone over there that's in the kind of shady or gray areas of business and they're trying to figure out ways to work, they're going start watching what we're doing here in the States and seeing how easy it is to fake stuff. I have friends that have local SEO agencies and most of what they do is just fight spam instead of-- You don't have to necessarily spend as much time optimizing your client site if you can get them to rank better by taking down all the cheaters that are spamming things.Peter: You said in your presentation that the local listings are not really as important, on the other hand, I've just saw weeks ago that SEMrush, the SEO tool, added the listings tool into their tool. Is it still going to be important? Should people use such tools or you think not?Greg: I think it's really going to become less and less important as far as the ranking algorithm goes. We won't have to worry so much about nap consistency in the future. I think what it really becomes and we're kind of moving in that direction already, it really just becomes what customers might see. You don't want to just concentrate on Google and say, "Hey, I'm on Google and it's correct." Let's say you have a business and that business moves and so you are now at a new address but you don't update any of your listing sites, then you may have all of these other listing sites that have your old address.Even though that might not matter for the ranking algorithm, it matters for your customer experience because someone may do a Google search and not pay attention to Google My Business and they may pull you up on another device. I was actually talking to a friend of mine the other day that had a guy coming to install something in his house and the guy said that it wasn't showing up on MapQuest and he said, "Just use Google because it's on Google." The guy said, "I don't even have Google on my phone."There are people out there that don't rely on Google and they may use MapQuest or they may use Yelp or they may use Apple maps or something else. It is important to pay attention to the citational location listing sites that are publicly visible which is why I said earlier, go through the top two or three pages of Google search results. Those ones that show up to the general public are probably always going to be important from a customer-facing standpoint even though they may not matter for the ranking algorithm.Peter: All right. All in all, if you are in Europe, there's Google My Business that you should start using and if you are in the US, start using it more and stop the spam that is out there.Greg: Definitely.Peter: Something or somewhere like that. All right Greg, thank you very much for your presentation, your summation of the presentation. What are your future plans for the conferences? Where can people see you and if not on the conferences, where can people find you?Greg: I am heading to PubCon in Las Vegas next week and the week after that I will be in London doing SearchLove London and then the first week of November I'm speaking at a conference called State of Search in Dallas. Later that week, I'm heading to Los Angeles to speak at UnGagged. The week after that I will be at SMX East in New York City.Those five or six conferences are the last of my conference schedule for the year. Also, if you're out in Europe and not able to pop over here, pop over to London to see me there. I have a Fundamentals of SEO training video on SEMrush on their academy section. If you go to the SEMrush Academy pages, there is an entire training course that's about, I think, three and a half, four hours long on SEO basics.If you're just getting started, or if you want a refresher on the basics, it's that SEO fundamentals course. Just last week, we released a new course that I did for them on keyword research. It's about an hour long. Over the next few months, I've got three other new courses coming out. The keyword research one just came out then we'll be doing one on link building, one on mobile SEO, and one on local SEO.Peter: A lot of you everywhere. Well, you're an important guy, so you should be there. Thank you very much for being on the podcast and sharing your local search knowledge. I'll see you around. Have a great day.[music].

Matthew publishes blog content and case studies on his personal website and on his company website. The case study that we talked about is published here with much more information and all the tiny details. You can also find Matthew on Linkedin or Twitter. You can also watch the whole presentation on YouTube Here is the transcript of the podcast: Matthew: One of the biggest wins we had was with the homepage where we deploy I think around 10,000 words of content. Peter: This is the time for marketing. The marketing podcast that will tell you everything you've missed when you didn't attend the marketing conference. Peter: Hello welcome to the time for marketing podcast the podcast that gives you all of the information that you have missed when you didn't attend your marketing conferences. Welcome to episode number 25 my name is Peter and I'll be your host for today before we go to our guests. I'm not going to tell you to subscribe to the podcast I'm going to tell you and ask you something else tomorrow when you go to work. Yes, I know you work with a lot of marketing people when they leave their cell phones on the table take them open their podcast app and subscribe them to my podcast, that's probably the easiest way to tell people to subscribe to the podcast thank you. All right and now let's go to the guests that we have this time hello Matthew Woodward how are you doing? Matthew: [laughs] Hey, thanks for having me on. I love your little tip there a very blackhat approach so to speak I think I might steal that one for myself of next conference [laughs] Peter: Well, people don't randomly talk about podcast and mention podcasts to other people that doesn't happen. We have to give them specific advice this is always a marketing thing be very specific on what people should do click here, subscribe other people to my podcast. Nice to have you here on the podcast, Matthew. Matthew: Thank you very much. Peter: Matthew people know you. You have a very known blog that is matthewwoodworth.codit.uk and you are also the director of search logistics. Tell me what are the fun things that you do in your line of work? Matthew: Well, my line of work all of it is fun from top to bottom. I've been doing SEO since before link-building existed and I've been following my passion ever since. The fun things I get to do every day is just nerd out on what I love doing and that is SEO and digital business and everything like that. Honestly, it doesn't matter if I'm doing like some like boring data entry tasks or planning a new promotion [laughs] I love it all. Peter: All right. I invited you to this podcast because you were in Barcelona, how is Barcelona? Matthew: Yes Barcelona a beautiful city. I don't usually like cities, but Barcelona was pretty cool. The Affiliate Summit Conference is one of my favorite conferences because it attracts such a wide variety of people rather than just SEO or just the ECOMAS guys and so forth. It's a great conference and I put together a great presentation for them which I'm hoping to boil down and share with you guys today. Peter: I feel that affiliate marketing is, similar to SEO, it has been pronounced dead a couple of times in the past. Matthew: Yes.[laughs] Peter: It's still there and it still works very well right? Matthew: Yes, as long as there are things to buy there'll be affiliates and as long as there are search engines to search they'll be SEOs. [laughs] Peter: All right let's not beat around the bush that's what we do. Let's go directly to your presentation, your presentation was a case study on how to increase your search traffic for 14 times? Matthew: Yes, we took search traffic from 2,700 a month to 38,000 in just eight months with an affiliate site in the health niche. Peter: All right. I think we have to take our five minutes so that you can explain to us how you did that so that we can repeat that for our own websites here you go. Matthew: Look SEO doesn't have to be complicated. One of the things I know as popular SEO blog owner is that people always like looking for the secret ingredient or the supersecret to SEO. The truth of the matter is it just doesn't exist. There isn't a super-secret to find, there isn't a super ingredient, there isn't that one thing that's going to push you over the edge. It just doesn't work like that. It's a combination of factors that will help to elevate your search traffic. The problem is most people are only focused on one of those factors which is building links. It's very easy to get lost in the technicalities and complications of SEO, but look it boils down really to a very, very simple three-step process. That is, first of all, take a look at technical SEO. You've got to build the structure of a solid and healthy website structure that not only Google loves, but people love as well. The second step is you've got to create content that actually helps people. It's actually, got to be relevant people actually want to engage with it. It's got to be the content that when people read it they want to share it. No one wants to link to a lemon and many people don't produce good enough content that's worthy of attracting links naturally it's a common mistake. The third step is link building and that just acquiring links from relevant websites. That is 10 times easy to do when you've taken care of content creation and your technical SEO and on-site experience. Those three pillars the healthy site structure, the content and the link building those three pillars if you pay attention to them and work them together have absolutely incredible effects. You don't need SEO to be complicated just take care of the basics and Google will reward you. The problem is many people don't want to take care of the basics. Honestly, that's all we did in this case study we 14 times search traffic in a highly competitive health niche and we only built 76 links. Over that period the site actually attracted around 350 links. Now the reason it was able to attract 280 links was that because we paid attention to site structure and content before we went out to do the link building. now if you had to budget for those additional 250 links in the health niche you'd probably have had to spend around a hundred to 150 dollars per link. Not only from an ROI perspective is taking care of your technical SEO and quality of content important. It's important for your users, it's important for Google your rankings your traffic and conversion everything relies on getting those three pillars right, but so many people are blindly obsessed with link building they can't see the woods for the trees and then they use all of their effort and all of their resources building links which they're not getting the maximum value from those links because they haven't taken care of the other core pillars and when you take care of all of them they all work together and it's the most cost-effective way of increasing your search traffic. Now the case study site and I've got a very detailed case study that drills down into all of the technical differences that we could simply not cover in five or ten minutes. If you want to check that out there's a full post on my blog along with a video that goes through all of the real nitty-gritty technical bits it leaves no stone unturned. We faced a common problem with this site that many people might face and when we were trying to rank it the search results were dominated by huge brands huge, huge, huge brands and that's quite scary when you're looking at it. What we noticed is the brands that were ranking specifically the pages that were ranking were only ranking out of the strength of the domains Authority. They were not ranking because of individual page level metrics like backlinks that men that if we focused on page-level metrics we had an opportunity. For example where a site like Holland and Barrett might be ranking number three, but with zero links to the page. Yes, if we build a page it's got 15 links to it we've beaten them on page-level metrics and that gives us an opportunity to compete in the search results. That was the common theme of this case study we were looking for search results where sites were purely ranking out on the main level metrics rather than page level and then we optimized all of the page level metrics in order to compete. Now the health niche is seriously, seriously competitive, but that approach allowed us to find lots of opportunities that once we approached it with that mindset and that's how we got the competitive advantage with the entire strategy that was really the foothold that allowed us to take control. Once we identified the opportunity, it was in just a case of looking at our competitors seeing what they were doing why they were doing it how they were doing it. We were looking at what they did that we liked, what we didn't like where they're using trust signals on the page was the content aligning to intent we really just did a very manual observation of the search results to see what we felt. Now, manual observation, the power of observation is one of the most underutilized skills you can have as a human being, like in general life. Not only in SEO but we can learn so much as by observing and in the SEO world, we're often distracted by big data and tools and analytics and all these other things that actually stops us from just using the computer between our ears. Quite often you can just look at a search result and just ask yourself questions, why is this ranking and look through the data and come up with your own observations rather than just looking at what a tool says. That's important to do because you really start to get a feel not just for the SEO of the niche, because every niche is different, but also who your competitors are. Why are they your competitors, what they do good, what they do bad? It becomes more of a business exercise and it's something that's lost on many SEOs and people skip over. Once we decided on our strategy, we observe the search results and we found our opportunities, then it was just a case of going and making sure we had build a solid site structure that Google loves and humans love. I drilled down more into that in the post be`cause it gets very technical and the issues this site had is unique to this site. We have issues with page speeds, site structure, duplicate content, had some issues with trust signals and a few other areas. Have a look at the full case study and see if your site suffers from any of those problems as well. If it does, you need to fix them. Once we've taken care of there was like seven or eight key issues that was preventing us from building a solid foundation that Google loves. Once we built that, it was then just a case of creating content. Now, we created the content of the back of the manual observation we've done in the search results. We've made a note of what was ranking, what we liked about it, what we didn't like about it and so forth. We went out and created content that matched that specifications. One of the biggest wins we had was with the home page where we deployed I think around 10,000 words of content. Sorry, the home page originally had 1,500 words of content on it. We increased that to nearly 11,000 words just by answering 20 of the most popular questions in the niche. The impact on that was the home page went from ranking for like a handful or keywords to over 11,000 different keywords just by adding about 10,000 words of content to the home page. We went out and we made sure all of the content we were creating for our target keywords is at least equal to or slightly better than our competitors. There's literally no reason to be ten-timesing your content, you've just got to match or better your competitors. Once that was in place, it was just a case of acquiring links from relevant sites and trust me, many, many people struggle link building, but link building is really, really, really easy when you've created content that people actually want to link to. It's a much easier sell when you picture, hey, look at this awesome post when it is actually awesome and that's a big part that many people will miss when they're so focused on link building. They can't see the woods for the trees and then they miss out on much bigger opportunities and end up spending a bunch more money than they need to, to acquire the same amount of links. Once we have taken care of on-site structure, technical SEO, the content and then the link building, those three basic pillars of SEO. We saw traffic grow from 2,700 per month to 38,000. That's a 14 time increase in 8 months in one of the most competitive niches on the planet. We did it solely by taking care of the every basic pillars of SEO, wasn't complicated and that's the biggest advantage that you often have in it in SEO. Just by using the power of manual observation and seeing where you can fit in with things rather than relying on tools and analysis and this and that and the other. Just look for those opportunities with your eyes and then make sure you do the basics right, because if you do the very basics right of any business whether it's SEO or offline business, whatever it is, if you do the very basics right, you always see success and that is very much the case with SEO. Peter: All right, thank you. A couple of very interesting things were mentioned, home page started ranking for giant number of keywords. Usually I would say that the home page, because it has to look nice and it doesn't really have as much content, it would usually rank for the brand keywords and more or less nothing else, but you switched that and wanted to get the home page ranked. How can be a home page competitive to 1,000 worded article from the competition? Matthew: The home page usually has the most weight in terms of SEO. It usually has the most authority and you're right, most people only use a home page to try and rank for brand terms. What we did was we just made a list of the most popular questions in the niche and answered them. In you know, when you clicked to expand the question and it reveals the answer? That on it's own attracted a bunch of long tail keywords that were all relevant to our niche and then also reinforce all of our topical relevance. That was just something that tried on that site and we have great, great, great success with that. Peter: All right, so it should be tried at other places too. Matthew: Yes, and I've just have to point it out, beyond just finding out what the top questions where and answering to them, there was no keyword research that went into it. There wasn't any like strategy or planning that went into it. It was just, okay, let's answer all of these super relevant questions on the home page and see what happens, and that's what we did. Peter: Very interesting, the tools got to compare yourself to the competition, Pop or Quora or others are really, really popular right now in SEO in the last couple of months. You're saying, use your brain and just see for yourself and you're going to understand your competition much better than using the tools. Matthew: Yes, I'm not saying don't use the tools, but the tools shouldn't be the first thing that you use. The first thing that you should do is use the computer between your ears, do the search yourself, look at the search results, manually review them both on a desktop and a mobile phone and get a feel for it. Often just by looking, you see opportunities and while everyone else is distracted with automation and tools, you can just observe. It's how I see most of my success in life, I just sit back and observe. Observe the people that are winning, observe the people that are losing. Why are they winning? Why are they losing? Why is this person doing that? Why do they making it? Just sit back and observe and if you apply that to the search results, I learn more just observing search results and doing random searches like best gaming laptop. I like watching how that search result has changed over the years. Two years ago you would've found a bunch of amazon affiliate sites there. Right now, there's not a single affiliate site there. Just that kind of observations tells you the direction that things are moving in. If you're building Amazon affiliate sites and you're not building businesses right now, well the search results are already telling you you're making the wrong decision. That's the power of observation, it's underutilized not just in SEO but in general life as well. Peter: Yes, and I had a boss once who every morning he wanted to type all of the costs and income for the different marketing channels into the spreadsheet himself. He went through the numbers every day himself with his own brain and understood and of course, now the company has grown to up 300 people. Matthew: Yes. That's- Peter: There is an idea of understanding, getting the deep understanding of the field is the additional benefit. Matthew: Yes, that's a very intelligent decision by him because he could just have someone else enter the numbers him read the data, but when you read the data you're not analyzing it in the same way as when you're actually in the got to doing it. Very smart move by your boss and I think there's a lesson there for all of the SEO community to take [laughs] Including myself actually. Peter: All right Matthew. I think we had a very nice summation of your presentation at the Affiliate World in Barcelona. As mentioned, we'll add links to your blog post with your video and to your short presentation to the show notes. Where can people find you, contact you and of course read stuff that you write on your blog? Matthew: Yes, the best way to read anything by me is to hit matthewwood.co.uk. There's a ton of content there that answers pretty much every SEO question you can ever think of. You'll also find a case study section and you'll find this case study, How We 14 Times Search Traffic. The case study includes all of the technical details that I wasn't able to include on the talk along with a video that steps you through the entire thing. I'm hoping that it's one of the best SEO videos you've ever seen, so leave me a comment and let me know if that's the case. Peter: All right, let everyone go and check that. Do you have any future conference plans already set up? Matthew: I'm going to be talking at Chiang Mai SEO in November and I got a couple of a potential bookings next year that we're just ironing out the details of [laugh] but Chiang Mai SEO will be next one, yes Peter: One more thing, when I went through our communication in Gmail, I searched for your name and then I found out when was the first time when I really met you but contact with you. It was probably last year. I think it was last year when you were having SEO Black Friday deals. Matthew: Oh yes. Yes. Peter: Black Friday is coming slowly. Are you having something similar this year too? Matthew: Yes. For the last five or six years, I've published a site, internetmarketing.blackfriday, which covers all of the Black Friday deals across the SEO and blogging niche. I think last year we had like a whole 120 different deals loaded and I think 11 of them were exclusive to us as well. That's something that I've been doing for quite a long time and we'll be doing it this year as well. Peter: All right. Excellent. I think that's it. Thank you very much for being on the podcast. It was extremely informational. Matthew: Yes. Perfect. Peter: Glad for having you here and have a great day. Matthew: Thank you very much. It's been great to be here.  

This episode features a conversation between Peter Van Valkenburgh - Director of Research at Coin Center, the leading non-profit focused on the policy issues facing cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin - and Muneeb Ali, CEO of Blockstack PBC. Peter and Muneeb discuss Coin Center’s mission and recent work, Facebook’s Libra Coin, the case for a true electronic cash, and more. 0:00:50 Peter's bio 0:01:09 Peter: "[Coin Center] was my first big job out of law school." 0:02:58 Muneeb: "You're OG now. When did Blockstack start sponsoring Coin Center?" 0:03:18 Peter: "Coin Center got its start in 2014. We got some really generous runway from a couple of donors who are just individuals who wanted to see a more adult advocacy organization in Washington, D.C. focused on this stuff." 0:04:56 Peter: "Coin Center is supposed to be an independent digital civil lIberties organization that goes and represents the underlying open technologies to Congress or to regulators." 0:06:08 Muneeb: "I simply say [the people at Coin Center]... actually understand this technology and they understand the regulations and the law, which is a rare combination. And they can be the right bridge between this technology and the various regulators or lawmakers." 0:06:29 Peter: "I think that's right. A lot of what we do I often think of as translation." 0:07:13 Peter: "More often than not we're explaining the law to lawyers in this space." 0:08:51 Peter: "There's no company - and all previous financial regulations - almost all - rely on finding a regulated entity and obligating that regulated entity to achieve the policy result that government wants." 0:09:37 Peter: "In the Bitcoin case, who's the issuer of the Bitcoin security?" 0:09:52 Peter: "Who in the Zcash space should be obligated for money laundering compliance?" 0:11:38 Muneeb: "One of my working theories is that Satoshi Nakamoto - whoever that person or group of individuals were - not only understood computer science, distributed systems, applied cryptography, and game theory, they actually knew securities regulation as well and that's why we don't know who is Satoshi Nakamoto." 0:12:42 Peter: "The policy objective that securities law seek to address are correcting the asymmetric information between issuers who are promising things to investors and the investors who've paid money to the investors." 0:13:51 Peter: "There are still the potential for information asymmetries. And I've sort of gotten into this debate with Angela Walch before about whether there's information asymmetries between software developers and the users of a software." 0:15:35 Muneeb: "Speaking of securities regulation I should just make a note here: we have a public filing with the SEC." 0:16:13 Peter: "From my perspective [Blockstack] has taken a really responsible and conservative approach to securities law compliance." 0:17:06 Peter: "I'm not a huge fan of the way we do investor protection in this country because it's very permissioned and it also excludes a lot of investors from participating." 0:18:58 Muneeb: "We actually had you host our Blockstack Summit in Berlin, and you interviewed Edward Snowden there. How was that experience? And has he been more active in the space? Or was that a one off thing?" 0:19:32 Peter: "That experience was awesome - it's still probably one of the craziest things I've ever done." 0:22:36 Peter: "I do think [Edward Snowden] has been quasi-active in the Zcash development community." 0:24:43 Peter: "He's worked on something really cool with the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which is if you have an old cell phone and want to turn it into an alarm system." 0:26:16 Muneeb: "Have you checked out any of the latest stuff that's been built on Blockstack?" 0:26:24 Peter: "I have a real interest in Graphite, which is the Google Docs type app." 0:27:05 Peter: "We've been looking for a long time for some sort of non-Google "Can't Be Evil" alternative to Google Docs." 0:29:29 Peter: "Network effects are a bitch, to put it a somewhat grotesque way. If you're talking about a communication system or a system where people pay each other, the systems that succeeded are not the ones that were best architected." 0:29:55 Peter: "Just look at all the attempts and failures at doing encrypted email." 0:30:16 Peter: "You're just going to default to the one everyone's on, even if it's not great for privacy." 0:32:32 Muneeb: "We're super excited to have [Neal Stephenson] at the 2019 Summit in San Francisco. I think Naval Ravikant is going to have a fireside chat." 0:33:40 Peter: "The Diamond Age describes Zcash." 0:36:01 Muneeb: "Coming back to this idea of decentralized applications - one model I have in my mind was when Linux was starting." 0:38:51 Peter: "Maybe decentralized apps will have their best success early on in those sort of niche enterprise / highly technical persons use-cases." 0:40:16 Peter: "Good luck getting a bunch of lawyers even to this day to group edit a Google Doc, let alone use Graphite." 0:40:24 Muneeb: "I think we knew that Linux won the server wars when even Microsoft started using Linux in their data centers." 0:40:32 Peter: "[Microsoft] has done a total 180, probably because they saw the writing on the wall as far as their consumer software business." 0:40:56 Muneeb: "What do you think of Facebook Libra?" 0:41:05 Peter: "I have a lot of thoughts about Facebook Libra. I should be careful about what I say because I don't want to be unfair." 0:41:30 Peter: "It's a really complicated system they're building that is still nonetheless permissioned. It's a permissioned blockchain." 0:42:29 Peter: "[Libra] is not an open blockchain. It's not a blockchain where anyone can add transactions to the ledger and independently verify the transactions." 0:43:15 Peter: "With Bitcoin, there's a lot of regulations that don't apply because it would be nonsensical to apply them because there isn't a centralized intermediary who you can trust to achieve the policy result you want." 0:43:32 Peter: "With Libra, that's not true at all. There are identified parties who you could trust to achieve the policy result you want." 0:43:56 Peter: "Even if you're an individual, you're not allowed to transact or interact economically with someone on the SDN list, like everyone in Iran." 0:44:42 Peter: "The Libra association is going to be this group of identified persons, which are really just corporations, including Facebook, Visa, and Mastercard. Whose laws are they going to comply with with respect to sanctions?" 0:45:21 Peter: "[Libra's] not censorship resistant cash. It's not really a cryptocurrency. It's just another payment rail. Why build it in such a complicated way?" 0:45:43 Peter: "Another thought is the whole reserve thing. So aside from being permissioned vs permissionless, Lbra is going to be asset-backed." 0:46:36 Peter: "If you are a company that has assets in a reserve, and people are trading - effectively - a pro-rata share of the value of those assets? That sounds like a security to me." 0:47:16 Peter: "And yet, I don't think there's plans to register Libra as a security because, frankly, if you did, it would be very useless as a currency, because it would only be allowed to be traded on securities exchanges." 0:48:09 Peter: "I've never seen such a rapid and aggressive response from members of Congress to a new tech project." 0:49:28 Muneeb: "Do you think the reaction from Washington is linked with some of the antitrust stuff as well?" 0:50:07 Peter: "Maybe they thought, 'This is us proving that we're investing in being less powerful'? Kind of like how they talk about WhatsApp a lot now." 0:51:03 Peter: "People in Congress ... are gonna say, 'This is Facebook, who some of us are already talking about anti-trust issues, and now they want to become the global reserve currency for all payments everywhere?" 0:51:40 Peter: "If any company is going to build a payments tool, they should build cryptocurrencies. I'm just disappointed they didn't basically fork Bitcoin or integrate it." 0:52:13 Muneeb: "That's what they say in the whitepaper, 'We're giving ourselves five years to figure out how to build an open system, but in the meanwhile - because of scalability - the only way to scale to a billion users is to use a closed system." 0:52:54 Peter: "I've heard a lot of people say that Move, the smart contract language [Facebook's] architected, is apparently extremely elegant." 0:53:17 Muneeb: "The motivation for Move is very similar to the smart contract language that we launched yesterday, Clarity." 0:54:38 Peter: "God knows that Solidity has had this particular issue where it's hard to know exactly what you just wrote in a smart contract until you launch it on Mainnet and someone breaks it in the DAO hack example." 0:55:44 Muneeb: "Ethereum is very interesting. They have a large community and kind of started everyone in the industry in a certain direction from a technology perspective. And I believe that most of those things were wrong." 0:57:05 Peter: "Maybe the network effects are just age-based, but it could also be this willingness to push stuff out there maybe before it's fully manicured or even fully compliant with the law." 0:57:51 Peter: "I should disclose that I'm a member of the Zcash Foundation's Board of Directors." 1:00:00 Muneeb: "I swear we're not doing this on purpose, but every decision we make ends up being the exact opposite of Ethereum." 1:04:13 Muneeb: "What's the biggest project you're spending your time on these days?" 1:05:50 Peter: "We were faced around a year and a half ago with, 'What's going to be a big issue in a year or two years? What do we need to start laying the groundwork on from a policy perspective now in order to have good policy outcomes later?'" 1:07:12 Peter: "Bitcoin, I think, ultimately needs to change and be more private and a lot of the privacy coins that we now see were originally proposed as amendments to the Bitcoin protocol." 1:08:38 Peter: "Any of the very public blockchains will ultimately need to find ways to obscure that transaction graph because, otherwise, we're gonna just be giving totalitarian states the best tool for mass surveillance that anyone's ever developed." 1:08:52 Peter: "So, with that in mind, we said 'What are the policy issues here?' And the big ones are anti money laundering law." 1:09:18 Peter: "Bank robbers use getaway cars. Even terrorists use encrypted messaging. This is just a reality, but that doesn't mean we should ban automobiles and encryption." 1:10:06 Peter: "We use the term 'electronic cash' because it's really like cash then. You can send it from one person to another, no one is in between, it's censorship resistant, and it doesn't leave a record." 1:10:23 Peter: "What if we get some sort of overbearing, overzealous response from policy makers that says we can't have these things anymore?" 1:11:51 Peter: "Most people have written about First Amendment issues here: ... if you're writing in computer code... it's still speech." 1:12:44 Peter: "What I don't think is a well enough explored area are the Fourth Amendment issues. The Fourth Amendment in the US says you need a warrant if you're a law enforcement and want to search somebody." 1:13:43 Peter: "Banks have been reporting our entire transaction history to governments whenever they ask, without a warrant, since 1970." 1:14:12 Peter: "The reason why that's constitutional in this context is because people willingingly hand over those records to banks during the regular course of business. ... You lose your reasonable expectation of privacy because your sharing it with a third-party." 1:15:09 Peter: "There's no reason for a developer to have all that private information about the users of their software. There's definitely a reason for a bank to have a bunch of information about the users of the bank." 1:15:48 Peter: "From a constitutional law standpoint... the only reason why it's okay for banks to bulk collect, surveil their users, and report that to government without a warrant, is that they have a reasonable business purpose to collect that information." 1:16:03 Peter: "There's no reasonable business purpose for an open source software developer to collect information about the users of their software - it just doesn't make sense." 1:16:29 Peter: "If it's interesting to your audience, I highly recommend you pick up our report. It's explained much more carefully and you don't need to be a lawyer or to have gone to law school to understand it." 1:17:33 Muneeb: "Where can people find you?" 1:17:37 Peter: "All our work at Coin Center is made public and made available at CoinCenter.org. And we rely on donations from people who are just excited about the technology and want to see good advocacy in DC." 1:18:18 Muneeb: "Blockstack is a supporter and we've been extremely happy with our involvement with Coin Center. They've been super helpful whenever we need them." 1:18:29 Muneeb: "Goodbyes." Peter Van Valkenburgh http://twitter.com/valkenburgh Muneeb Ali http://twitter.com/muneeb Zach Valenti http://twitter.com/zachvalenti See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What can we learn by Jesus final conversations after His resurrection, just before He went to be with His Father? The talk with Mary Magdalene? His giving proof to Thomas? Or that really, really awkward conversation he had with Peter? It didn't end with Jesus' death, it didn't end with resurrection. Find out how these conversations are significant, even to your walk with the Lord, on this episode of the Disciple Company Church. Don't miss it! And don't forget to like and share!!

Andrew and Peter explore the world of Thai magic and occultism. Talking about the importance of meta, self cultivation, personal growth and how they all relate to the intense practices of Thailands indigenous magic. Think about how much you've enjoyed the podcast and how many episodes you listened to, and consider if it is time to support the Patreon You can do so here. If you want more of this in your life you can subscribe by RSS , iTunes, Stitcher, or email. You can find Peter on FB here and at his website here Thanks for joining the conversation. Please share the podcast to help us grow and change the world.  Andrew You can book time with Andrew through his site here.  Transcript  ANDREW: [00:00:00] Welcome, everybody, to another installment of The Hermit's Lamp podcast. I am here today with Peter Jenx. And for those who don't know Peter Jenx, he is the author of a massive and intriguing tome, called Thai Occult. And it's really interesting to meet with somebody and talk with people who are involved in non-western [00:00:30] cultures and other ways of practicing magic that don't kind of come out of, you know, say, the Golden Dawn, or Wicca, or these other things, which are all lovely, but I think it's really interesting to get a dive into, you know, other kinds of worldviews and magic and all of those things. So really, that's why, you know, when Peter and I connected, I thought he'd be a great fit for being on the show. But for those who don't know you, Peter, who are you? PETER: And ... [00:01:00] Well, I'm an aging Englishman stuck in Chiang Mai at the moment. I've been here, been living in Thailand, since 2002, but first visited here in 1991. Which is kind of before its main economic explosion and everything else. And then, come from a musical background, working in music in Manchester, worked a lot with gigs, run rather interesting [00:01:30] night clubs in Manchester, and also been a practitioner of Tai Chi for like 20 years. So, I think everything's always pulled me East, which is why I really ... the first … on the first visit, I kind of knew I'd end up living here. It fits. ANDREW: Yeah, it's interesting how that works, right? You know, I was talking with somebody yesterday about, you know, I come from a Scottish background, [00:02:00] even though I was born and raised in Toronto, and they're like, “Oh, well, have you've been to Scotland?” And I'm like, “No, I haven't.” I mean, I'm curious, but I find I'm much more drawn to the East, you know? And I spent a bit of time in Thailand and a chunk of time in India, and you know, I was in China last year, and every time I return to the East, I always have this sense of ease that emerges that's quite different than what I experience, you know, living in Toronto. It's like, [00:02:30] that there are these places and cultures that are suited to our nature in ways that we might not even be able to explain or understand, you know? PETER: Well, I think it's working. I think at first when we come here, we are given space. And it's a space that we're not necessarily given in the West. Also, what I experienced when I first came here was a realization that what I'd always felt, regarding nature and regarding what [00:03:00] I perceive as magic in the West, was correct. It … Because here it is expressed in a much deeper way than it is in England, in particular. I don't know … And also, I think, you know, we need the strangeness to grow. Yeah, and sometimes part of any growth, as far as I'm concerned, is the process of change and [00:03:30] if you go to an alien culture, you are constantly challenged to change, and that can be astonishingly refreshing for us. And .... ANDREW: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I can see that, for sure, and also that that idea that, you know, I mean, there are other ways of looking at the world and nature, you know, I mean this … the word animism has been, you know, being kicked around a lot and sort of gained a lot of ground as sort of a word [00:04:00] for some of the kind of world view that we might be talking about. And you know, I think that that's, that's both part of it. You know, for me, going … they're going to other places, and you and my involvement in and initiation in Afro-Cuban Lukumí, there is this sort of world view at play where plants are alive and have energies and consciousness, and you know, there's this interconnectedness between everything that [00:04:30] isn't really common, even amongst magical practitioners, at least in my experience, kind of growing up. PETER: Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those … [sigh] You know, the funny thing is … Okay. I had to act like myself to do this book. I have not been able to read other but … other magical books at all. Otherwise, it would have kind of diluted or influenced what I was going to do. The whole time I've spent here has been really a time to learn how not to [00:05:00] think and influence what is around you, and if you do that, you gain the natural focus that comes with the occult practices of this land, and that allows the nature to come through. But I always perceived this as just the Thai occult. Everybody else calls it Thai animism. [laughing] So I'm just getting used to the fact that it is probably animism, but everybody … all the people I deal with [00:05:30] all refer to it as an occult practice, but as an animist practice, it dates back thousands of years and it is uninterrupted now, that's quite rare in the world, as far as I know. I haven't studied anything else in depth, deliberately. And because of that, the depth of what I've been able to write about and the depth of understanding that is available is really off the planet as far as I'm concerned, you know. ANDREW: Yeah. Yeah, [00:06:00] I mean, there's such a difference between, you know, living practices that date way back, you know, you know with the Buddha, Afro-Cuban Lukumí stuff in Orisha tradition, it's one of those things where … When we start talking about divination in those systems, often people are quite astounded, and I know I was really astounded at the kinds of things that are included in the wisdom and specificity and all of these kinds of things. And, [00:06:30] you know, it's … In the end, the explanation is simple. You've had a lot of very deep, intelligent, mystical people pondering the human condition and connecting to the spirit world for thousands of years and passing on that information and allowing it to accumulate. And it provides such a deep insight into human, you know, human nature and human problems because you [00:07:00] know, although the nature of the problems changes with modernity and, and so on, the nature of being human really doesn't, I don't think. PETER: Well, that actually depends on the culture, though, because if you look at the Thai system, the things that it offers are the things that people, because of this region require, right? So, you know, this has been a very dangerous region over the thousands of years, and [00:07:30] they've been lucky enough to have the influence of Buddhism, which always overrides ancient animist practices, so, things can … They can remain who they are, while attaining higher spirituality, if that makes sense.  And really because of, you know, the rough nature of the living in the wild, and the constant wars in the region, most of the things that they have worked out to offer, and create, for their devotees are [00:08:00] related to protection in many forms, impenetrable skin, invincibility, ways to bounce back black magic, ways to change your fate, ways to attract people, ways to become popular, ways to gain good fortune, and it's all about, at the core of it all, it's actually all about the person as well, because they're being given an advantage that [00:08:30] they've got to work with. So, it's not just abracadabra, like wham! Okay. Now you're popular. Yeah, they might give you the attribute of being popular. But if you're a bit of a twat it's not going to work. Right.  So everything that they create is all about the development of the person themselves, being given an advantage that they have to grow into, which is typical of what we were talking about earlier, whereby the constant process [00:09:00] of change is also, can be -- we go backwards sometimes, can be the process towards either becoming a better person or more magical or however you want to see it. Yeah? And throughout the thousands of years that they developed it here, they've discovered what is actually supernatural in nature, and they have their own versions of it. Which, how the hell did they discover that? I don't know, but you know, special people discover [00:09:30] special things. They discover what human products they can use for rather powerful spells, they discover all the plants independently, often, of other approaches. So, the odd time, I've shared a picture of a tree .... [ringing phone] ANDREW: Oh! Now the phone's going to ring, just let it finish. It's not gonna … [00:10:11] I think I can make it stop. All right. You know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to unplug the phone. How about that? Problem solved. PETER: [laughing] Yeah, that's easy. So, you need, you need, you need that stick I showed you earlier. ANDREW: I know right? You know, I do. Yeah, before we started, let's just continue. PETER: So I'll go back in … I'll let you edit that out later. I'll just go back into where it was. ANDREW: Yeah, perfect.  PETER: So like one time, I posted a picture of a particular tree that has, that produces a particular wood [00:10:41] that the Thais use in many magical amulets, called amudam. I mean there are legends, it's the tree that you'd climb to get out of hell, because it's impossible to climb, because of huge spikes on the trunk. And it was possibly … There was a fantastic discussion ensued, because it was also a magical wood in pretty much every other system that I was in contact with at that time through the Facebook page. And the incredulity [00:11:11] of that between everybody was really rather wonderful. You know, it kind of just pulled everybody together. And … ANDREW: That's animism, right? That's the tree telling you what it wants to do, right? You know, and  telling everybody like the same thing. It's like, hey, I can help you with this thing. You know, if you work with me, you know, and that's what's really profound about these things, I think. PETER: Yes, very much so. It's … And [00:11:41] the more kind of I've learned about things, you know, I just, we were discussing about a person earlier, about lightning, and how lightning can make things magical. And, you know, I was chatting with a particularly learned ajahm from a very old lineage called Ajahm [?], Ajahm Tiger. With the help of my partner, of course, and he was telling me, really, if a lightning strikes [00:12:11] a tree, its use depends on the effect of the lightning on the tree. Like, if it blows off the bark in the middle, that area is used for the handles of magical knives; if it strikes another area of the tree, it's used for something else. So, depending even on how a supernatural occurrence like a lightning strike hits something, it can produce all [00:12:41] sorts of different results. And they … At the time we were having this chat, it was really rather mind-blowing that people have spent generations upon generations studying the effects of these supernatural occurrences.  ANDREW: Well, and I think that … It's so foreign to people living in cities, you know, but I mean, when you start spending time in nature and start consistently spending time in nature, [00:13:11] you know, it really, it really can start to speak to you after a while, right? You know, I spent … There's a site where we used to go and do ceremonies, every month, for almost two years, and kind of towards the end of that time, I did a 10-day retreat by myself where I just hung out in the woods and fasted and did my own rituals and stuff like that. And the amount of things [00:13:41] that I learned from that land and from the plants and the kinds of things that got revealed to me ... and even just like sort of unexpected beautiful things, you know.  There was this cherry tree and you know, I knew it was a cherry tree, we'd seen the flowers, it was beautiful, and so on, but the thing that was amazing, because I was there all day, every day, for that period of time, when I [00:14:11] was there, the sap was coming out and so there were these little reddish golden amber blobs on the tree from the sap emerging, and the tree was in the west from where we ... where I usually was, and when I looked up, toward sunset, all of those were glowing like a stained glass window, right? And so there are these moments of profound beauty and profound transference of information, [00:14:41] and where those plants can speak to you, and if you're around them all the time, then … and you're paying attention, then you get to notice them, right? But ... PETER: Well, it's the attention. That's the thing.  ANDREW: Yeah.  PETER: And this is why, I think, in the modern world, governments are terrified of nature, because it calls people away from what they want to do, the people to do, you know, and to be a good little drone and all the other sayings that we [00:15:11] can come out with rather pithily. But, you know, it's ... and even the medical community is now turning around and saying look, you know, to fight depression, just go and walk in the hills, go and sit in the forest. You know, but this kind of … You know, I'm lucky enough to be of an age where it was more of an actual world at the time, and this is, you know, it makes me kind [00:15:41] of put my head in my hands that people are having to be reminded to do that. You know, and the beauty that is available, the wealth that is available is astonishing. Since we moved to Chiang Mai, me and my partner have been round looking at various, some of the interesting spiritual caves in this region. And you know how, if we have time when people visit, I might take them to one or two, but there's one that I've already decided, I [00:16:11] think there's only one or two people I'll take to that particular one. It's too wild. And if … You know, if we spend the time like you have, to be able to still the mind, and treat ourselves to a little bit of solitude, we start to see these things, you know. And maybe they become more special. ANDREW: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Well, and I also think that we really need to understand and [00:16:41] respect, you know, like if we're really going to going to go into the real wilderness, you know, or real spots in nature, you know, it's something quite different, right? You know, in … Again, in my tradition, the real woods, you know, like not just like a couple plants around your yard or the park but the actual forest is a place that's somewhat feared by practitioners, not in a ... that sounds wrong. It's a place [00:17:11] that's deeply respected because it's known to be a place of power, and because it's a place of power, it's also a place of danger. You know, and so you make offerings to make sure that you're protected while you're there. You make offerings, maybe when you leave, to make sure that nothing you didn't want comes with you, you know, you make … If you're going to take anything, then you make offerings to the plants that you're going to take from, you know, and you know, it's so rare for a lot of us to have contact [00:17:41] with that deep wilderness, you know, it's something completely foreign and it's astounding, right? PETER: Well, it's … Usually at least once or twice a month, I end up going off with an ajarn, often to graveyards for graveyard ceremonies. And … Which I'm starting to document more fully. And, you know, watching, the ajarn go into, I always [00:18:11] call it ajarn world. ANDREW: Yeah, and by … What's a good translation for ajarn? Is … practitioner? teacher? Yeah. PETER: Teacher … The ajarn is a higher teacher. Yeah, but it's more than that. Yeah. It's an occultist, really. And, and watching them deal with what is there, and become open to what is there ... And, you know, I asked Ajarn Su and I've also asked Ajarn Apichai. You know, [00:18:42] often they go there to choose a ghost to do a particular task, and, to which Ajarn Apichai would, you know, often say, “Well, we've come to this graveyard, because it's a graveyard where there are many soldiers and police.” So, I normally … He said he normally tries to choose a good-natured ghost, so they don't come home with you, even though he has strong protection. And the deal is made, you know, to [00:19:12] reward the spirit when the job is done. And he knows, he can tell, within five percent, really, how effective that particular spirit's going to be. And sometimes he will go back and repeat, or just say “No, it's worked.” You know? ANDREW: Mm-hmm. PETER: And then you go with Ajarn Su, and the same questions will be, you know, Ajarn likes to choose what are called Phi Thai Hong ghosts. And, which [00:19:42] are the ghosts of people who've died violently, before their time. And again, he said--some of them are really quite lovely--and you know, we were standing just in the graveyard, doing a love ritual, pulling a separated couple back together. And he's called, and he slaps on the side of the cremation pit. It's just two walls that focus the heat in to be [00:20:12] able to burn the body fully, in the open, in a thin, a bit of a wood, and he's calling ghosts. And you know, it was the time of year when leaves are on the floor--the leaves shed up here, some trees--and you could hear the ... something walking towards us, you know, from a particular direction.  So, he called that ghost over and came to a deal, and he said, “Oh, it's been successful and I'll come back in a [00:20:42] few days and bring the offering that I promised, and I will donate merit.” And merit is something we gain. It's a Buddhist, Thai Buddhist principle where we gain merit through good deeds, helping people. A basic form of it would be giving to charity, and, you know, these Phi Thai Hong ghosts need to collect merit to get out of hell. Eventually try and rise towards rebirth. [00:21:12] And Ajarn Su is very careful about the ghosts he chooses, only, he never forces them, he requests, he is very gentle. Otherwise, they can hurt you. Yeah. And then when we get back, both of the ajarns will always bless water, splash on feet, hands, top of head, back of neck, just to make sure nothing has been clingy, you know. So, I mean they all follow similar [00:21:42] patterns, where, you know, and if anything's taken, you request it to be taken and if you're going to work with anything, you're asking permission, and it's extremely similar all around the world except for the cultural differences. And the influences, like in this region, with Buddhism has been a particular influence. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. So, I have so many questions, so many questions! [laughs] I guess one of my, one of  [00:22:12] my questions, though, coming out of what you just talked about … We talked about … You mentioned somewhere along the way, changing your fate, right? And I'm really curious about the idea of fate as it as it exists in this practice, you know, can you ... Can you just answer that small question for us? Tell us what that's like. [chuckles] PETER: Okay. Well, the idea of fate is … Without, I don't study horusat, which is Thai astrology. [00:22:42] Okay, but what I would say is, that I think the Thai occult corresponds to people's state of mind. Yeah? And help to get people out of the state of mind to improve themselves again, as well as realigning their faith, there's a dual motion going on here. We are given a Qatar. We have to make offerings. We [00:23:12] have to take care of something. We have to structure our lives around it. We have to take the five precepts, which are the basic things. Don't kill anybody. Stop shagging around. Don't lie, you know, etcetera etcetera. And often, besides the help of something like Rahu, which, the Thai Rahu is not the same as the Indian one, but, we praise it in a different way, which really annoys the Indians. And we [00:23:42] gain his help now, if … to do that we have to order our lives around it. So, I think it's a dual road of choosing a better path, choosing the help of somebody who is smart enough and spiritual enough to help you, and then structuring your life in a different way, and the Rahu is considered to raise your general level of good fortune. ANDREW: And Rahu is [00:24:12] what exactly? PETER: Rahu is the god that eats the sun or the moon from Indian mythology. Yeah? He's the god of eclipses. In India, they do not praise him, they're trying to get rid of him. Hmm. Yeah. They think it's horrific that the Thai people praise Rahu but usually they often consider that a period of very bad fortune is sometimes, Rahu coming into somebody's lives and influencing it without being [00:24:42] asked to come in. So, by praising him, you're going to offer your foods, the correct foods, which always have to be black. They need the numbers of seven, nine, or 15, depending on the ajahm. Different black foods, usually on the four quarters of the moon, with the full moon being the most important. Normally, it's advised to wear the Rahu on the full moon when in which [00:25:12] case it kind of feels like he's bouncing around on your chest like going to a disco. He can't … he's extremely rewarding; many ajarns swear by Rahu, but he takes a lot of work. So, I think it's a dual, being very honest about this, I think it's a dual combination, whereby we get our shit together, and then the help offered by the Rahu offered by the ajarn, will start to improve the life. ANDREW: And when we're [00:25:42] talking about fate here, are we talking about … We can be a little simplistic too, maybe for the conversation. Are we talking about it as a sense of karma, like consequences for our actions, this life, other lives, or whatever? Are we talking about like a destiny or a thing that we're ... sort of came intact from somewhere or that we need to try and achieve maybe in our life. PETER: Well, we always [00:26:12] have influence. Actually, there's three forms of influence on the brain. Okay, there's three forms of influence we consider to be three forms of influence from life. One is an astrological influence. Astrology influences the person without any doubt at all. Yeah? The second one in Thai is the influence of ghosts. Yeah? And spirits directing your life without you knowing about it. And the third one is the influence of the mind and all the silly things that the mind does can [00:26:42] be destructive. Yeah? If you … Everybody goes through periods of bad fortune, but they can have very very different reasons. Sometimes even in the Thai practices, you know, we can have a real crash of fortunes, but I was just seeing it as, it's just a part of life, man. It can't be good all the time. Yeah? It's a readjustment of yourself and of your … the way you deal with yourself. I don't like to involve things [00:27:12] like karma. I'm very practical in that respect. It's about living an open and happy life and sometimes shit goes wrong. Yeah? Through bereavement and through everything else ... ANDREW: So, go ahead. PETER: And through bereavement and through everything else, but that period then we have to kind of realign ourselves. I think focusing in on what has actually caused the problem is one of the things that we need to get away from [00:27:42] and just deal with the fact that we're in the shit. Yeah? Yeah, so that also immediately stops all the stuff that goes around in the brain or at least helps with it. Yeah? So. ANDREW: Yeah. Yeah, in Lukumí divination we have kind of negativity, which we call Otonawa, which means … roughly means, that which you brought with you from heaven, and it's like, it's like, yeah, this is a thing that's, [00:28:12], you can't do anything about, maybe it's part of your destiny, maybe it's just come from, come to a place where the various forces in your life make this inevitable. But now you need to just, you know, appease it, ease it, support yourself, and get through it, and then, you know, but there's no making it go away, right? You know, like there's no perfect road, right? Where we never see these things.  PETER: Well there can't be, otherwise we get so spoiled that the smallest pebble on the road would become an absolute nightmare [00:28:42] if it got into our shoes. Right? You know, we need it. We need these things to happen in life, in my opinion. Otherwise, we don't have any understanding of what life is or can be about. ANDREW: And I also … I also think it's really interesting that ... the idea of easing the mind by stopping, asking why, and looking to explain it. You know, I think that that's a place where a lot of people ... you [00:29:12] know, I mean, I read cards for people, and you know, there are certainly folks who come in for card readings who are just like: “but why, why did this happen, why did this happen?” It's like, at a certain point, why does it matter? How about you do this to make it better, you know, and yeah, it's that practicality that I think is sometimes very unsatisfying to people in certain situations, you know? PETER: Well, it's a Western thing, you know? Our minds are way too busy. You know? I live, you know, one of the core elements of [00:29:42] Thai culture is samadhi, which is [? 29:45]  that is gained through Buddhism. It is an open and clear focus whereby we're trying to separate ourselves from the mind, so you end up in a position where you can watch your mind being a bastard. Yeah? Or being a bit barmy one day. Yeah? So, eventually when you actually … You know, but I always ask people what is watching the mind? Yeah? [00:30:13]  So in my opinion, what you are doing and what you are going to learn to do, is to find out who you are, which is not often what your mind is? You know, even in our … Even in our culture, we have sayings like, what does your stomach tell you? It's not the same as what does your mind tell you? They will say, what do you think? Yeah. So, one of the aims is to eventually secure yourselves and then when you get to that point, you can start to [00:30:43] see or feel astrological influences. You can have an idea about whether you're being influenced by something else. And you can watch your mind and attempt to behave and try and calm it down, so, it doesn't cause which as much trouble. Yeah? And all these are core practices within Buddhism and Eastern philosophies. ANDREW: Yeah. For sure. Yeah, that ability to step back [00:31:13] from what's going on in your head and basically be like, oh, take a look at that. My brain is … my brain is doing this thing in the same way that my stomach might be doing another thing in my … You know, my knee might be acting up or whatever. It's like, I'm not even those things, right, but sort of tuning down the emotions and the mind to kind of a place of somewhat lesser value or more specific value than the sort of overriding quality that we often associate with them. You [00:31:43] know, that's not easy, right? That's ... for a lot of people, especially Western people. PETER: You know, if you ever visit, an example of one of the wonderful things to do is to go and see someone like Ajarn Su, who was a monk for 18 years. So, this guy's got focus. Yeah? And recently, we went along with somebody who wanted a head tattoo. A head young [not sure if this is right? at 32:08] for metta. Yeah, for loving-kindness. Higher, the highest of the high Buddhist-style tattoos. You know, head tattoos [00:32:13] hurt. ANDREW: Yeah, I can imagine. PETER: This is done with a gun. Ajarn Su can only use a gun because he's got an arm that won't do as it's told, and, you know, the lad doing it had great difficulty controlling the screaming. And I was … I was helping out, being a bit of an assistant. And I was watching Ajarn, and he just went into his quiet place and not thought, but [00:32:43] no thinking, he was just chanting Qatar while he was doing the inside, while doing, while performing this tattoo, which took way longer than the recipient really wanted it to, and he pretty much screamed all the way through, so when we let … And then the worst thing was that if you have a tattoo with Ajarn Su, he will then give you his Yant Kru, which is, it gives … Everybody he gives tattoos to and it's a line [00:33:13] of script going along the front line at the bottom of the palm, and man, it's painful. Yeah? And as soon as, as soon as he said to me in Thai, “Oh, just hold his hand,” I thought, “Oh my God, he's really going to scream now.” And, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He did. He really let go. Yeah, and then when, and then when we left Ajarn, after about 10 minutes, the guy just lit up, and he got the sun inside his face. And [00:33:43] he actually said, “Wow, now I know why I've had it done. I wasn't so sure for the last half an hour,” and it looked amazing, and we were actually leaving. But then once we left, Ajarn's neighbors from across the road came over to see him to make sure everything was okay. [laughing] ANDREW: Right? PETER: And Ajarn is such a sweet man. He kept stopping and going, “so [00:34:13] soo,” which means, you know, “you have to fight a little bit,” but doing it in such a cute way, it was like an anime, you know. And watching him not be drawn into somebody else's pain, not be influenced by somebody who is having difficulty, and retaining his own presence was a lesson in itself. It was quite astonishing, it was an amazing 30 minutes.  ANDREW: It's [00:34:44] such a … I mean, I hear in that story what I would call a profound sense of compassion that doesn't match what we normally, you know, people might go to as a sense of compassion, which is, a sense of that deeper purpose of what's at hand, a loving acknowledgment of the struggle, and a commitment to the outcome that was what was meant to ... like what was agreed to, as opposed to an avoidance of a kind [00:35:14] of suffering for that person, right? PETER: Yep, that's exactly right. And also, when he finished the tattoo, Ajarn told him, instead of keeping the five precepts, he only has to keep one. He said, “But you keep this precept,” and when he told him the one, I'm not going to say which one it is, I'm not going to divulge anything about what he said, but he said, “How does he choose the most difficult [00:35:44] one he could possibly choose for me?” I said, “Oh, he always does that!”  ANDREW: Of course.  PETER: I said, “Otherwise what's the point?” And the guy just fell around laughing? You know, he said, “How does he know?” I said, “He's an ajarn, my friend.” ANDREW: Yeah. PETER: “He probably knew as soon as you walked in.” And it was again one of those comical moments when we realize how much we have to grow in the situation we are in. But the [00:36:14] levels of metta, loving-kindness and the beauty of what they are trying to do is, it's just breathtaking. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. So, I mean I guess, let me ask this question, and I imagine there might be a few different answers to it. But, how does, how does a person become an ajarn? PETER: In the usual route.  ANDREW: [chuckling] PETER: Okay, those … From what I can see at the moment, and this is going to change over time, as [00:36:44] the more time I spend with them, but basically everybody starts off as being some sort of devotee, using their amulets, learning the Qatar, becoming kind of known as somebody who makes an effort towards those spiritual practices. They might go off and do a few weeks, or a month, or even three months as a monk. Yeah? Which is all [00:37:14] set up within the community, and most times men will be a monk at some point in their life, for a short period of time, and then they may start helping the ahjan with rituals and helping the people who visit the samyat, which is the place of work. It's like his spiritual shop, his temple, yeah? And then, the [00:37:44] studying begins. Now the studying, we discovered, has actually got levels. And each level, it's a bit like going and getting different degrees. Each level has got what is called the khan kru associated with it and the khan kru is a construction of various objects. Like sometimes swords, sometimes flags, and [00:38:14] they're always quite different, a lot of betel nut, flowers. It depends on the lineage of the ajarn that's giving it and there are various levels of the khan kru, depending on what you study. So, the earlier levels tend to be directed towards satyam, the Thai traditional tattooing, after which you tend to learn about sunay sunay magic, which is the magic for attraction. [00:38:44] Eventually … I'm trying to remember the levels. It's something like the 8, 12, 27 but it ends up at 108. There's men. There's about eight different levels of the khan kru, and at each level you attain a certain understanding, but the khan kru is actually considered to be alive. It's considered to have life, and it helps you teach [00:39:14] you, and it can also knock you back if you're not studying enough, or being erudite enough, or not trying enough or you're just getting it wrong. Yeah? So, I … it's weighed like everything in this system. The book kind of introduces the subject of the khan kru, but the khan kru in itself could probably be a book on its own.  Ajarn Su holdes the khan kru 108, which [00:39:44] is the full witcha, which comes from a similar root word as Wiccan, by the way, the witcha is the knowledge, and a very famous monk called Kru Badung Dev, still alive, but he's bedridden and 105 and his witcha collection, his book collection is really quite something, it's off the planet and his knowledge to go along with it. When he was a monk, he had the khan kru 227, [00:40:15] which only monks can have, and then you go back to the 108, when you stop being a monk. So, often you're going to see … In Ajarn Su's samyat, there's one khan kru and it's a 108, everything, and there are a certain color to show that his teacher is still alive and they change the color when he dies.  In other samyat, you go and they'll have like five or six khan kru [00:40:45] for different subjects from different ajarns. Yeah, so you have some that stick to a certain lineage and some that go around collecting different witchas, almost like create their own lineage to start their own path, which then they can help other people along as well. It involves learning at least three scripts. It involves learning an enormous amount of Qatar, understanding the Qatar, [00:41:15] and it involves practices such as various meditational practices, like the 32 parts of the body practice for which you need a teacher but there's a brief outline in the book of it. We're about … we get to know our physical body by traveling around it. And it's split into 32 parts. There is also various meditational practices [00:41:45] towards cutting four elements within the body, but all these kind of roll along through the different levels of study. ANDREW: And so, is the title conferred by the teacher then at some point? Is that the …? PETER: The teacher decides when you move to the next level. To become an ajahm, you know, you can say, I could now turn around and say, “I'm ajarn, I'm [00:42:15] an ajarn,” but I'd be a bit of an idiot to do so, because it's really obvious that I'm not, right? Yeah. Yeah, in the same way as mastership in martial arts. You know, you always get … there's always a number of [pillocks? 42:26] who call themselves a master and they have to go through the very painful process of being beaten up by an eight-year-old at some point. You know what I mean? Yeah. Similar, you prove yourself by being good at your ajarn. ANDREW: That's interesting. I also … I'm also really fascinated by … I mean, we were talking about nature [00:42:45] earlier. Do the ajarns, like, are there any living, like do they practice in Bangkok in the center of town? Do they out in the woods? PETER: Yes, woods. Yeah. Yes. They did. There is … There are some remarkable magicians in Bangkok. Normally, they will deal with the things that people who live in the metropolis need, will help them with the promotion at work, will help them find a lover. Yeah, and [00:43:15] be more attractive, and there is those … One ajarn called Ajarn Weaver Ted [? at 21:32] who's now very famous. He's the first photograph in the book. And he's got very rich clientele, that he does spiritual work for, whatever that may entail. Yeah, some of it will be aggressive. Some of it will be protective. Some of it, you know … because in Thailand basically, [00:43:45] it's really the rich and the poor that use magic, not necessarily the middle classes. Yeah. And there's also people like Ajarn Samat, [43:57] who is one of the most remarkable satyan ajahms I've ever met. Man, he has it. He has it. Yeah? And for me, he's the best satyan ajarn in Bangkok, but he's difficult to see, he has a mostly retired clientele. His work is not beautiful. It's very old [00:44:15] style. It's very ancient witcha, but man, he has it, whoo! You know, so all these things are available for people who need it, finding the very traditional Thai ones will only be done by the Thai people, but then there are other ones who become famous outside the country as well. ANDREW: So, let me ask you this question then. So, where does where does morality fit in these kinds of practices, you know? PETER: [00:44:45] In what respect?  ANDREW: So, if someone's coming to have work done to bring a relationship back together, is that … is that seen as both people should be there and consent? Is it seen as one person who wants this to happen can do the work and that could work? You know we talked about defense and aggression and these other kinds of things. Is there a morality in [00:45:15] there? Or is that sort of purely a Western question and not even relevant? PETER: Well, it's, well, there's a morality in everything in life. It just depends on your personal standpoint. And, many ajarns nowadays, a lot of the really heavy stuff has gone back in the cupboard, because it's not needed anymore, yeah? So, but I'd say Ajarn Cau, who's a particularly lovely ajarn who I got along very well with in towards [00:45:46] Doi Saket, the mountains to the east. He only pulls lovers back together who were already married, and they have to prove it to him. Yeah, he will ask them for impossible things to get. You know, if they can, the skin off the bottom of his foot or her foot, depending on which partner wants the other partner to come back, and, and he will help them get back together, because that is an act of metta, he [00:46:16] is helping keep the couple together.  At the same time, he will basically attempt to get the person who is bringing the ... paying for the ritual to understand that all the ritual does is bring them back. It's not going to fix your relationship problems. So, if you turn around and be angry, it's not going to keep them there. This is not making a slave out of somebody, [00:46:46] yeah? So there isn't really anything aggressive within that. I mean, really, you know, people often ask the question: What is black magic in Thailand? You know, yes, then you get a different answer from everybody, but when they ask the same ajarn, the ajarn always said, well, you know attraction. He said, I might use part of somebody's skull for attraction. Esanay, [47:12] we call it, and he said, but it's just an air magic. It's not … it's [00:47:16] not black magic. He said, you're just attracting somebody, where's the harm in that? You're not kind of turning them into a slave. You're just attracting them. ANDREW: Right? If the work isn't … The work isn't geared towards removing people's free will. The work is geared towards providing opportunity, and that opportunity, especially sort of based on what you said in the earlier part of the conversation too, that opportunity is both access [00:47:46] to the opportunity of that thing and also the opportunity to grow as a person to embody that thing. PETER: Exactly.  ANDREW: Yeah.  PETER: Yeah. So, you know other people think the use of any human materials is black magic in itself, which I don't, I don't consider it to be. There's all sorts of … We'll not get into the Thai thoughts about death, because you know, everybody does … they're not … well, you know, it's just part of life. And generally, most … some ajarns [00:48:16] think that anything with human materials is black magic. Some ajarns only think that anything that is forceful is black magic, anything that is cursing is black magic, and they really try not to do it nowadays. ANDREW: Hmm. PETER: Yeah, they will do something called a kong ritual, which is a ritual. It's like a controlling ritual you do in the graveyard and it's to rebalance [00:48:46] some sort of relationship. A work relationship, your boss is being a bit of a bastard to you, etc. You'll bring a kong ritual just to slap him down a little bit, slap him down for a few months, let the relationship become better between you, and then it wears off. And they are extremely effective, these. But then, you know, you get people coming forward wanting people hurt or dead or [00:49:16] forced into bankruptcy or something serious and to be honest nowadays, yes, it can be done, but most ajarns will say no. And the only … And there's some very knowledgeable people about cursing in this city. Terrifyingly knowledgeable, but they just choose not to do it unless it's for the right reason. Yeah, because you know, they're bringing … They're forcing something, they're bringing something [00:49:46] difficult to themselves. Everybody nowadays is now trying to strike the correct balance. ANDREW: Hmm. And do you see that shift as coming out of a shift in cultural values, or is it a shift in the difference in the quality of life now versus in the past? PETER: It's both, you know, the government's also … 10 to 15 years ago, they started clamping [00:50:16] down, they started stopping people who had died violently being buried. Yeah? Originally …. Only anybody who died a difficult death, which basically reflects like a really bad karma was buried, everybody else was burnt, right? So, these ground … And they're exactly the people that the ajarns want to use the [00:50:47] products from, yeah? And they basically stopped doing that 10 to 15 years ago. So, slowly but surely, that source is being exhausted. You know, Thailand is becoming a very developed country, access to the human materials is becoming extremely difficult, and, you know, it's not as wild here as it used to be, people need more, less protection in many ways, more metta, [00:51:17] more senay, … Because now you know the times have changed. Gone are the days where they could just chop a corpse's head off and leave a watermelon. You know, now they believe that a better protection is to have so much metta that somebody doesn't want to hurt you anyway, is to be such a lovely person that attracts other people, it makes you difficult to attack, you know, so as cultures develop the way they use [00:51:47] their magical knowledge develops, which is actually the sign of any living form of magic, isn't it? ANDREW: Well, it reminds me of martial arts practice, right? You know, I mean, a lot of people start off in you know, something a little harder like karate or whatever, and you know, they want to fight and use their muscles and whatever, and as you, you know, hopefully as you age and get a little wiser, you know, you move to something more circular and more soft and you know, like, you know, nothing … Not that you can't, you know, throw [00:52:17] that punch if you need to but it's often more like, oh, I can just redirect this and just flow with things in a completely different manner and therefore I won't have that problem any more. PETER: Oh, I always recommend running away. It's fucking great for avoiding problems. ANDREW: Yeah, exactly, right? Exactly. [laughing]  ANDREW: Just don't be there in the first place, right? PETER: And also … Exactly, the greatest defense! I mean, this is not counting somebody who comes up being an absolute idiot. In which case, finish it and then run away. Yeah? I mean, [00:52:47] I've [? 52:49] done martial arts for about 20 years. But really, it should just be about happiness, physical comfort, you know, nothing more difficult to attack than somebody who's happy, you know, and that relates to what we were just saying about the magic as well. You know, it's … As soon as you're aggressive, it gives people something to hang onto. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. Well, and possibly puts you off balance, then, right? PETER: Well, [00:53:17] everything goes to your head.  ANDREW: Yeah. Mm-hmm. PETER: And if what you're trying to do is not to let it go, though, because that raises your center of balance as well, and you become slow and you tense. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. Yep.  PETER: So, it's all … they're very interrelated in many respects, actually, you know, and just retaining that open clear mind rather than being pulled by your emotions all the time, you know. It's … and in many ways, to get the martial arts, is one of them. Meditation [00:53:47] works. You know, what have you found works, Andrew, for you? ANDREW: Yeah, I mean meditation. I did martial arts for a long time. Martial arts was a good road for getting over being angry, to me. You know, I sort of worked through my anger there in an environment where I could sort of explore power dynamics very openly. And yeah, just, you know, returning, you know, returning my attention back always to like, I [00:54:17] don't know how to put it. So, there's you know, there's that transcendent sort of samadhi kind of loss of attachment to yourself and your daily life. You know, so that piece of it combined with just very practical cultivation of self and a sustainable life, right? Like just, what do I need? What do I need to do? Where am I showing up? Where do I feel I'm lacking? Why do I feel I'm lacking there? Is [00:54:47] there something I actually need and just, you know, kind of cycling through those different patterns of, I guess, growth-orientated questions. And, you know, it's … It does wonders for removing unhelpful hungers and, you know, and sort of recognizing the own … my own internal bullshit for what it is, which, then, allows me to show up more, right?  PETER: Well, there's nothing like … Yeah, there's nothing like a good bit of bullshit within ourselves as well, you know? There's [00:55:17] many things that we can pull on.  ANDREW: Yeah. PETER: You know, there's many, many, there's many advantages to these things, but it's just knowing what they are … ANDREW: Mm-hmm. Yep. PETER: … Is the difficult thing and not being led by them, you know, and I'm sure you'd agree that when we get, you know, when you get past the monkey mind, as they call it here.  ANDREW: Yeah.  PETER: You know the relation … Your relationship with time changes, your relationship with people changes.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm.  PETER: You know, the way you can [00:55:47] sit with people changes … ANDREW: Yeah.  PETER: The way, you know, the joy of life changes. ANDREW: And the way in which people receive you changes.  PETER: Completely.  ANDREW: Right? Because when you … When you show up and you're genuinely present with other people, they feel that, you know, and if you have, you know, if you want to call it metta, it's not really a word I would use, but you know, but you know, compassion or you know, those … That sort of openness to other people and seeing them for who they are without judgments or overt attachments. That's a [00:56:17] completely different dynamic, right? That goes to a completely different place than, you know, when you show up and you're just like, oh my God, I so need this or that or whatever from you. Right? PETER: Well, it's also, I mean, I'm very lucky to be able to go anywhere in Thailand, literally, anywhere. You know? My partner's family, we were there a few months ago, and I said, “oh, I'm gonna go to Surat Veree [? 56:43] because I want to photograph this particular shrine for the book.” And I said, “Where is the bus [00:56:47] go from, the minibus? She said, “Oh, from there.” And so, I've got up at like 4:00 o'clock, I got the 5 o'clock bus, I was there by 6, and the driver dropped me off as close as he could to the temple. Ten seconds later, a motorbike boy came up, took me to visit the temple. We had a quick bit of breakfast together, which I paid for, of course, it was very nice. Then I did the photographs, he waited for me, he drove me back. I jumped on the next mini bus which arrived seconds later, and I rode back up to Bangkok and back to [00:57:17] family home in about four hours, three and a half hours. And the response was, “How have you done that? How?” Yeah, I said, well, it just kind of happens. If you just connect to people, you know, he's not the driver of a minibus. He's a man who's having to get through a day and hopefully support his family, you know? He is not just a motorbike guy, he might be an older [00:57:47] man who's had a very interesting life, and you treat him with some respect. You know, if you look, you look people in the eye, you make those connections, you open your heart. ANDREW: Yeah. Well when I was in India, I wanted to go to Bodghaya, where the Buddha was enlightened? Or, I'm sorry, where the Buddha first preached the dharma, right? And, you know, and I went … So I wanted to go to these places, but there's [00:58:17] nothing there, right, there's just temples. It's just a city of temples and a few restaurants, things to support people, but nobody … I don't think people really live there or whatever and there's definitely no trains or whatever. So I arrived in the nearest city and--which wasn't that far away--but there was this huge strike there that day, and I was trying to find somebody who'd be willing to take me, 'cause I was only there for a day because I left it to sort of towards the end of my trip, [00:58:47] because I was trying to kind of hit a couple of important places, and two things happened, which remind me exactly of this conversation.  So, one was, I was walking down the street, and it was a long street with a big park and government building, I think, on the other side, and it was just this huge fence that ran along this massive park all the way along. There's no easy way there, no gates, you would have to climb it and it was all houses on the other side and all the houses were basically [00:59:17] attached and there's no roads or alleys or whatever.  And I'm like mid-block, and then I hear this huge ruckus and the people who are protesting are coming down the street, and there's this mob of people, with sticks and signs, and they're yelling and screaming and whatever, and I look at the crowd and I turn around and I look and there's this gentleman standing in his door, and I just look at him and I point at myself and I point inside his house and he's just like, yes, [00:59:47] like just, waved with his hands, like yes, come in my house [laughing], and so we go in his house. He closes the door. We wait for everybody to pass. And he had no English, you know, my Hindi is not particularly, you know, I knew a few things like hello, and thank you, and whatever, and we just waited in his house and stood there and looked at each other very pleasantly and peacefully and whatever. And then you know, when it was obvious that this, the sound had passed and the people were gone. He opened the door, and looked out, and then he gave me a pat on the back [01:00:17] and you know, sent me on my way.  And then a few minutes later, I ran into this guy who was driving a, like one of those cycle rickshaws, this really older gentleman, and I got … I just like looked at him and I'm like, “I want to go here,” and he's like, “sure!” And so, he took me and we rode this bicycle through the countryside and stopped at a couple farms and all these amazing things. And then, when we got there, on top of paying him for his time, I also bought him lunch. And we just [01:00:47] sat there. He also had, you know, basically no English and we just sat there eating together and looking at each other and smiling. And you know, there's such a connection that can happen when you're open to those things, and like I say, when you're going for a purpose and when you go in with a certain way, that road can just open for you, right? You know? PETER: It just happens … and it really happens because you're not thinking …  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. PETER: And by not thinking, you're taking away the barriers that people can come, [01:01:17] that generally stop people relating to you… ANDREW: Yeah, for sure.  PETER: You know, it's a remarkable period of time here, you know, but, especially this last few years, going through the process of doing all this work, because it just, it just happened. Just, it was just, doors kept opening and things kept telling me what to do next, and you [01:01:47] know, and then we got to the point where this, you know, we managed to finish this work. ANDREW: Yeah. PETER: And yeah, there were bits where it wasn't easy, but it's still found a way to be done.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. For sure.  PETER: And you know, it's … Even my partner sometimes says, “How have you done this?” [laughing] ANDREW: Mm-hmmm.  PETER: You know. “How have you done it?” Well it kind of just gave me the opportunity to do it and then it kind of did itself.  ANDREW: Yeah. They meet you [01:02:17] halfway. You know? Or more than halfway sometimes, right? Yeah.  PETER: Yeah, they do. And also, I've really been wanting, you know, I've kind of resisted it for the first, God, 20 years of coming here … ANDREW: Mm-hmm. PETER: Because that was apparent when I first came over.  ANDREW: Yeah. PETER: And kind of waited until I was ready to kind of do it. ANDREW: Yeah. PETER: You know, it's been quite old and extremely rewarding and rather wonderful. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. It's [01:02:47] fantastic. Well, I mean, maybe, we've been on the phone for a long time here. Maybe we should wrap this up, because I could talk to you all day. This is a wonderful conversation. So, first of all ... PETER: It'd be nice with a cup of tea and a biscuit, wouldn't it? [laughing] ANDREW: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Well, you know, I'll let you know when I'm going to be in Bangkok or Thailand, some time. And we'll make that happen. For people who want to check out this book, and you know, if this stuff really interests you, and you're, you know, you really should [01:03:17] check out the book. It's quite a, it's quite an amazing work. Where do people find you, and where do people find your book? PETER: I'm easy found in two places. One is on Facebook through the Thai Occult book page, and the easiest place to click on the book to get the Timeless editions would be through the Thai Occult.com, all one word.  ANDREW: Perfect.  PETER: I can't … And there's [01:03:47] two book pictures on the front cover, one from the Sak Yant book and then the new one on the Thai occult. Of the … to be honest, I'm very very very proud of the new one, the Sak Yant book and yes, we have some superb interviews with the guys, some of the makers in there, but having just produced something really good, I'd love to go back and rewrite it. ANDREW: Isn't [01:04:17] that always the way, right? Isn't that always the way? PETER: Though to be honest with you, I don't think I'm going to do … I don't think I'll be in that position, with the new one. I don't think I could have made a much better job, to be honest. There's always more, it's going to come up, but as a broad taste as a buffet of the Thai occult, I don't think … It'd be difficult to do a better job than this, in my opinion. ANDREW: Perfect. Well, go and check it out, and support [01:04:47] Peter's work and you know, thanks for being on, Peter and thanks to everybody, as always, for listening. PETER: It's been lovely. Thank you. 

Panel: Joe Eames John Papa Eric Dietrich Special Guest: Peter Mbanugo In this episode, the panel talks with Peter Mbanugo who is a software developer, tech writer, and maker of Hamoni Sync. He currently works with Field Intelligence, where he helps build logistic and supply chain apps. He also gets involved in design research and customer support for these products. He's also a contributor to Hoodie and a member of the Offline-First community. You can follow him on Twitter. Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement – Kendo UI 1:12 – Eric: You, Peter, write a really interesting article. How did you come to write that blog? Tell me about yourself. 1:29 – (Peter talks about his blog and his current projects.) 2:18 – Eric: Tell us about the blog! 2:25 – Peter: I talk about real-time synchronization and why you need it for data. You can use the websocket API and other applications. 3:29 – Panel: Let’s take a step back. It could be helpful to know: what problem were you trying to solve with real-time data? 4:14 – Panel: So multiple client browsers? You are editing in one browser and the data is showing up in the other? You mentioned websockets and others – could you talk about WHY you didn’t go with the other ones? 4:45 – (Peter answers the question.) 6:08 – Panel: So you created Hamoni Sync, and when did you start it? 6:20 – Peter: Yes, and I wrote it in March. I used real-time systems. 6:52 – Panel: What does it mean? 6:55 – (Peter answers.) 7:07 – Panel: Looks like it’s reasonably priced, too. 7:33 – Panel: Let me ask you this. How easy is it to get up and running using this on a Vue project?  7:45 – Peter. 8:34 – Panel: You have to install through your dashboard, then... 8:46 – Peter. 8:53 – Panel: You mentioned earlier that you shouldn’t websocket API right now? 9:04 – Peter:  Not all users would have a browser that would support that. 9:39 – Panel: Hamoni handles all of that for you, which is nice. So it has a simple API to use. You started in March – is this your fulltime job...or? 10:08 – Peter: I started a new job 2 months ago, so now it’s part-time. 10:20 – Panel: You can use with any JavaScript library? 10:24 – Peter. 10:31 – Panel: Why did you do a tutorial in Vue and not in Angular or React? 10:37 – Peter: I do have one in React, and then... 10:54 – Panel: How do you like Vue so far? 10:55 – Peter. 11:15- Panel: The simplicity of Vue and you can take an older app and you can switch it over and not worry about jQuery and just go from there. Angular one days and instead of Angular 2+ or 6 now – Vue is an easy upgrade transition for sure. 11:47 – Peter. 11:51 – Panel: Walk us through how an app would work with this? 12:09 – Peter: When you connect you... 12:40 – Panel: What server is the data going to? 12:46 – Peter. 12:51 – Peter: I have a cloud service. 13:00 – Panel: How do they still get performance if there are a lot of people on at the same time? 13:06 – Peter. 13:17 – Panel: It handles all of the scaling? 13:23 – (Panelist walks through the process.) 13:44 – Peter: No scaling issues, yet. 14:05 – Peter: I haven’t launched, yet, through Product Hunt. 14:20 – Peter: The plan is to do that next month or middle of next month? 14:33 – Panel: Maybe once this podcast launches – that’s cool. What other apps can use real-time? Like a chat room is obvious when they are learning with socket IO. Is this beyond Vue? 15:07 – Peter: Yeah, in general it could be used for real-time chat applications and... 15:21 – Panel: Stock market updates? 15:28 – Peter: Yes. No, not animals.  Maybe games for multi-player games. For chat room application. 18:45 – Panel: Demopuppy.com 19:11 – Advertisement – Get A Coder Job! 20:00 – Peter: Related to the blog we have covered it well. Why you would use real-time and the different ways you can do it with websocket. 20:23 – Panel: You are in Nigeria? 20:24 – Peter: Yes. 20:27 – Panel: How is Vue.js in Nigeria – do you have Meetups? 20:44 – Peter: I think the tech scene is doing quite well. Mainly Angular and others use other frameworks. 22:08 – Panel: Conference and asking for people to contribute? (Yes.) That sounds great for an active community. Getting hard jobs in tech is hard but maybe hard in specific places. 22:39 – Peter: It is great the great one for React b/c of the popularity in React. React or Angular; one of the two. 23:12 – Panel: If you know your stuff you are good to go? 23:19 – Peter: Yes. Microsoft’s .NET is quite stable. 23:37 – Panel: You are starting a startup is that common in Nigeria? 23:49 – Peter: The startup is small actually. 24:37 – Panel: Are you in the capitol? (Yes.) There is a misconception there that people think you have to be in the California or bay area, and you can see that it’s not true. You can create cool things no matter where you are! 25:08 – Peter: It’s great to see the diversity. 25:14 – Panel: I think it’s cool what you are doing. I am glad you wrote an article. What is HospitalRun? 25:42 – Peter: It’s a hospital management system to work offline first. To use them in remote areas where there is no connectivity. 27:08 – Panel: It’s an opensource project – Hospital.io. You are more the maintainer of the frontend right? 28:05 – Peter: Yes. 28:11 – Panel: A lot of hospitals are using this and need contributors and if you want to have a real difference check it out. What do you do as the maintainer are you reviewing code requests? 28:40 – Peter. 28:56 – Panel: Ember.js? 29:00 – Peter: No, I am being dumped into Ember into the deep-end. 29:20 – Panel: I think we are going to go to our picks now? How can 29:30 – Peter: Twitter and email. Check out the show notes! 29:50 – Panel: Picks! 29:58 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! DEVCHAT code. 30-day trial. Links: Vue React Angular JavaScript DevChat TV Can I Use Websocket? Demopuppy.com HospitalRun.io What are the best tools for automating social media growth? Peter Mbanugo’s Twitter Peter Mbanugo’s Email: p.mbanugo@yahoo.com Peter’s blogs Vue Mastery Hoodie Meetups Hamoni Sponsors: Fresh Books Cache Fly Kendo UI Get A Coder Job! Picks: Joe Dungeon and Dragons recordings coming soon on YouTube Blog - Good Bye Redux John Talk like a pirate day I Can Use Product Hunt Vue Mastery Peter Hoodie Vue Dev Tools Ego is the Enemy Eric Halt and Catch fire Vue.JS in Action

Panel: Joe Eames John Papa Eric Dietrich Special Guest: Peter Mbanugo In this episode, the panel talks with Peter Mbanugo who is a software developer, tech writer, and maker of Hamoni Sync. He currently works with Field Intelligence, where he helps build logistic and supply chain apps. He also gets involved in design research and customer support for these products. He's also a contributor to Hoodie and a member of the Offline-First community. You can follow him on Twitter. Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement – Kendo UI 1:12 – Eric: You, Peter, write a really interesting article. How did you come to write that blog? Tell me about yourself. 1:29 – (Peter talks about his blog and his current projects.) 2:18 – Eric: Tell us about the blog! 2:25 – Peter: I talk about real-time synchronization and why you need it for data. You can use the websocket API and other applications. 3:29 – Panel: Let’s take a step back. It could be helpful to know: what problem were you trying to solve with real-time data? 4:14 – Panel: So multiple client browsers? You are editing in one browser and the data is showing up in the other? You mentioned websockets and others – could you talk about WHY you didn’t go with the other ones? 4:45 – (Peter answers the question.) 6:08 – Panel: So you created Hamoni Sync, and when did you start it? 6:20 – Peter: Yes, and I wrote it in March. I used real-time systems. 6:52 – Panel: What does it mean? 6:55 – (Peter answers.) 7:07 – Panel: Looks like it’s reasonably priced, too. 7:33 – Panel: Let me ask you this. How easy is it to get up and running using this on a Vue project?  7:45 – Peter. 8:34 – Panel: You have to install through your dashboard, then... 8:46 – Peter. 8:53 – Panel: You mentioned earlier that you shouldn’t websocket API right now? 9:04 – Peter:  Not all users would have a browser that would support that. 9:39 – Panel: Hamoni handles all of that for you, which is nice. So it has a simple API to use. You started in March – is this your fulltime job...or? 10:08 – Peter: I started a new job 2 months ago, so now it’s part-time. 10:20 – Panel: You can use with any JavaScript library? 10:24 – Peter. 10:31 – Panel: Why did you do a tutorial in Vue and not in Angular or React? 10:37 – Peter: I do have one in React, and then... 10:54 – Panel: How do you like Vue so far? 10:55 – Peter. 11:15- Panel: The simplicity of Vue and you can take an older app and you can switch it over and not worry about jQuery and just go from there. Angular one days and instead of Angular 2+ or 6 now – Vue is an easy upgrade transition for sure. 11:47 – Peter. 11:51 – Panel: Walk us through how an app would work with this? 12:09 – Peter: When you connect you... 12:40 – Panel: What server is the data going to? 12:46 – Peter. 12:51 – Peter: I have a cloud service. 13:00 – Panel: How do they still get performance if there are a lot of people on at the same time? 13:06 – Peter. 13:17 – Panel: It handles all of the scaling? 13:23 – (Panelist walks through the process.) 13:44 – Peter: No scaling issues, yet. 14:05 – Peter: I haven’t launched, yet, through Product Hunt. 14:20 – Peter: The plan is to do that next month or middle of next month? 14:33 – Panel: Maybe once this podcast launches – that’s cool. What other apps can use real-time? Like a chat room is obvious when they are learning with socket IO. Is this beyond Vue? 15:07 – Peter: Yeah, in general it could be used for real-time chat applications and... 15:21 – Panel: Stock market updates? 15:28 – Peter: Yes. No, not animals.  Maybe games for multi-player games. For chat room application. 18:45 – Panel: Demopuppy.com 19:11 – Advertisement – Get A Coder Job! 20:00 – Peter: Related to the blog we have covered it well. Why you would use real-time and the different ways you can do it with websocket. 20:23 – Panel: You are in Nigeria? 20:24 – Peter: Yes. 20:27 – Panel: How is Vue.js in Nigeria – do you have Meetups? 20:44 – Peter: I think the tech scene is doing quite well. Mainly Angular and others use other frameworks. 22:08 – Panel: Conference and asking for people to contribute? (Yes.) That sounds great for an active community. Getting hard jobs in tech is hard but maybe hard in specific places. 22:39 – Peter: It is great the great one for React b/c of the popularity in React. React or Angular; one of the two. 23:12 – Panel: If you know your stuff you are good to go? 23:19 – Peter: Yes. Microsoft’s .NET is quite stable. 23:37 – Panel: You are starting a startup is that common in Nigeria? 23:49 – Peter: The startup is small actually. 24:37 – Panel: Are you in the capitol? (Yes.) There is a misconception there that people think you have to be in the California or bay area, and you can see that it’s not true. You can create cool things no matter where you are! 25:08 – Peter: It’s great to see the diversity. 25:14 – Panel: I think it’s cool what you are doing. I am glad you wrote an article. What is HospitalRun? 25:42 – Peter: It’s a hospital management system to work offline first. To use them in remote areas where there is no connectivity. 27:08 – Panel: It’s an opensource project – Hospital.io. You are more the maintainer of the frontend right? 28:05 – Peter: Yes. 28:11 – Panel: A lot of hospitals are using this and need contributors and if you want to have a real difference check it out. What do you do as the maintainer are you reviewing code requests? 28:40 – Peter. 28:56 – Panel: Ember.js? 29:00 – Peter: No, I am being dumped into Ember into the deep-end. 29:20 – Panel: I think we are going to go to our picks now? How can 29:30 – Peter: Twitter and email. Check out the show notes! 29:50 – Panel: Picks! 29:58 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! DEVCHAT code. 30-day trial. Links: Vue React Angular JavaScript DevChat TV Can I Use Websocket? Demopuppy.com HospitalRun.io What are the best tools for automating social media growth? Peter Mbanugo’s Twitter Peter Mbanugo’s Email: p.mbanugo@yahoo.com Peter’s blogs Vue Mastery Hoodie Meetups Hamoni Sponsors: Fresh Books Cache Fly Kendo UI Get A Coder Job! Picks: Joe Dungeon and Dragons recordings coming soon on YouTube Blog - Good Bye Redux John Talk like a pirate day I Can Use Product Hunt Vue Mastery Peter Hoodie Vue Dev Tools Ego is the Enemy Eric Halt and Catch fire Vue.JS in Action

Panel: Charles Max Wood Lucas Reis Justin Bennett Special Guests: Peter Mbanugo In this episode, the panel talks with guest speaker, Peter Mbanugo. Peter is a computer software specialist who works with Field Intelligence and writes technical articles for Progress Software and a few others. He studied at SMC University and currently resides in Nigeria. They talk about his creation, Hamoni Sync, and article, Real-time editable data grid in React. Also, other topics such as Offline-First, Speed Curve, Kendo UI are talked about, too. Check out today’s episode Show Topics: 1:30 – Chuck: Let’s talk about what you built and how it works. Topic: Real-time editable data grid in React. 1:40 – Peter: Real time editing. It allows you to edit and have the data go across the different devices. Synchronizing your applications. For the  2:47 – I saw that you built also the... 2:58 – Peter: Yes, I built that with Real-time. Most of the time I have to figure out how to build something to go across the channel, such as the message. Then I built the chats. Next month 4:33 – Justin: It says that it can go offline. That is challenging. How are you going about that? 4:51 – Peter answers the question. Peter: When you loose connections and when the network comes back on then it will try to publish anything to the server while offline. If you are trying to initialize the... 5:42 – Awesome. 5:45 – Peter continues his thoughts. 5:56 – Lucas: This is really interesting. Form something really simple to tackle this problem. I have gotten into so many problems. Congratulations on at least having the courage to try such a system. 6:35 – Justin: When you have someone interacting with one of these applications, lose connectivity, is the service handling this behind the scenes? 6:56 – Peter: Yes.  Peter goes into detail. 7:19 – Justin: Neat. That would be interesting to dig more into that. 7:35 – Lucas: I had a friend who sent me links and I was like WHOAH. It’s not an easy task. 7:57 – Peter: Yes, offline – I am learning each and everyday. There are different ways to go about it. Then I go write something about conflict free of different types. I thought that was the way to go. I didn’t want it to be something of the declines. 8:50 – Lucas: How did React work for you? 9:24 – Peter answers the question. 9:58 – Panelist: I was trying to synchronize the system. There are 2 types: Operational Transformations and CRDTs. It’s a really hard problem. 10:35 – Lucas: Now we have multiple devices and they can be far away from each other. Updates to send to the same server. I think that this is really complicated world. Even consider new techniques that we use in RI. You have a long in process. You need to react to them. Maybe dates that you cannot get. Hard problem we are solving now. 11:56 –Justin: Even interacting with applications that ... it has made our products that aren’t approachable if someone doesn’t have a good Internet connection. Synchronizing connections while offline. So you can have offline support. These are problems that we can resolve hopefully. 13:01 – Lucas: It affects everyone. Back in Brazil we had problems with connections, because it’s connections. Now I live in NY but the subway my connection is hurt. 13:40 – Peter: Yes, I agree. Peter talks about his connections being an issue while living in Africa. 14:52 – Justin: How does that affect your development workflow? 15:08 – Peter answers the question. 17:23 – Justin: Shout-out to the Chrome team. Tool called LIGHTHOUSE. It can test for accessibility, SEOs and etc. Good same defaults and trying to test Mobile First. When I was learning about performance I wasn’t thinking about the types of devices that people would use. The edits tab really helps think about those things. 18:41 – Digital Ocean’s Advertisement 19:18 – Justin: Any tools to help test your download speeds or anything authentication tools? 19:36 – Peter answers this question. 20:15 – Panelist asks the same question to Lucas. 20:22 – Lucas: interesting question. Even though the website was doing pretty well we were in the dark. We did a huge migration and it wasn’t clear about the performance. So my first mission here was start using a tool called SPEED CURVE. It only gets better. For a company who needs to acquire a tool SPEED CURVE is great. They have the LIGHTHOUSE measurements in their dashboards. So it can follow through time your scores and all of your analysis. These are the tools we use today. They have both synthetic and real user monitoring. So when we are measuring things on our Chrome it is a picture of your machine (biased picture) they make it both synthetic and film your page and compare through time. Analyze your assets. Some code on your application and collects statistics for each user. Relic I have used before, too. I do believe those tools are of great help. I am sure there are opensource initiatives, but I haven’t played 22:56 – Peter: Have you tried...? 23:07 – Lucas continues. LIGHTHOUSE. 23:56 – Justin: It gives great visualizations for people to see. SPEED CURVE. Where we are at – so they can see that – it’s powerful. 24:40 – Lucas: Interesting story we used SPEED CURVE. Real users and synthetic measurements; our website was getting slower and slower. We couldn’t figure it out. What is happening to our application? It turned out that the app more people were using it on the mobile. The real user speed was going up because they were using mobile. The share of mobile users and performance was getting better. You look at the overall average it was getting slower. Interesting lesson on how to look at data, interpret data and insights. It was really interesting. 26:21 – Peter. 26:25 – Lucas continues the previous conversation from 24:40. 27:00 – Justin: Taking the conversation back. It’s always a challenging problem because the implications are hard to use. What was your experience with React Table? What are the pros and cons? 27:40 – Peter: React Table is quite light. It is pretty good on data. I haven’t had much of a problem. It is okay to use. The other ones I haven’t tried them, yet. 28:08 – Justin: Same question to Charles and to Lucas. 28:21 – Lucas: I have never worked with big tables to render the massive data or tables that need to be edits and stuff like that. I don’t have experience with those components. Play here and there. It is interesting, because it is one of those components that are fighting the platform and it’s a good source of interesting solutions. 29:05 – Chuck: Kendo UI has one. I need something that his more barebones. AG Grid. 30:03 – Justin: React Windows. It optimizes long lists. It just renders what is in the current window. 30:22 – Ryan Vaughn. 30:28 – Justin: Cool library. 30:36 – Lucas: Use it as a learning tool. How do you all decide when to actually start using a library? As early as you can? Libraries to solve our problems? 31:19 – Peter: It depends on what I am doing. 31:53 – Fascinating question. Not one size fits all. It’s a balance between product deliverable needs and... There can be risks involved. Fine balance. I find myself doing a lot is I will default using a library first. Library that isn’t too large but what I need for that project. If there is a hairy feature I will use the library until my needs are met.  33:49 – Lucas adds his comments. Lucas: You want to differentiate yourself. I love GitHub. 35:36 – Question to Charles: I know you have tons of stuff going on. What’s your thought process? 35:53 – Chuck: If I can find stuff on the shelf I will pay for it. My time adds up much more quickly then what the dollars do. I will pay for something off the shelf. I only mess around for a while but if I can’t find something to help me then I will go and build something of my own. I got close with Zapier, but I got to the point that I wanted to put something together that I built my own thing through Ruby on Rails. Generally I will pay for it. 37:07 – Panelist: Yes, I don’t think we all don’t value our time and how expensive time is. 37:25 – Chuck: I own the business. My time is of value – it’s more important to me. It’s a trap that people fall into not to value their time. 38:11 – Lucas: We are not all working on what we SHOULD be working on. This isn’t going to bring business Productive time that we are using with stuff that is not our business or our main focus. Focus on the core product. Try to get the customers to have a better life. The mission of the company. The web community that started that most is the Ruby community. Having solutions and focusing on the problem. I think that JavaScript is now doing a better job of this. As we know it’s easy to fall into this trap and play with building blocks. 39:52 – Chuck: I have had a few people remind me that I am a DEVELOPER! 40:19 – Justin: The thing I have estimating is the difficulty of something. I can build it because I am a developer. Is it valuable for me? 41:10 – Lucas: The sunken costs sink in – I have done all this work and now look where I am at? 41:33 – Chuck: Anything else? 41:43 – Peter: Check out me through Twitter and the Dev blog. Message me anytime. 42:13 – Chuck: Picks! 42:18 – Advertisement. Links: Kendo UI Ruby on Rails Angular Get A Coder Job Redux Agile Real-time editable data grid in React Peter Mbanugo’s Twitter Peter Mbanguo’s LinkedIn Peter Mbanguo’s Dev.To Peter Mbanguo’s GitHub Peter Mbanguo’s WordPress Lucas Reis’ Email: lucasmreis@gmail.com Charles Max Wood’s Twitter Sponsors: Kendo UI Digital Ocean Get A Coder Job Picks: Charles Book: The ONE Thing Get A Coder Job – It will be out next week! T-Shirts & Mugs – Podcast Artwork - SWAG Kickstarter – Code Badge.Org Justin RC BLOG Podcast: Indie Hackers Indie Hackers Lucas Blog Post: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Turtle Peter Library – Opensource Masters of Skill – Podcast Book: Ego is the Enemy Book