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Alright, we've got some Good News…God is Dead! But does he know he's dead? This week is PART ONE with the wonderful PETER ROLLINS and we're talking Death of God theology; belief, knowledge, and Faith. We get into Christian Atheism, Peter's Church of the Contradiction, and why Nothing Lives, Nothing Binds, & Nothing Saves. What does Bigfoot have to do with ontological incompleteness & Slavoj Žižek's work on Quantum Physics? Why is Atheism not Atheist enough? Big thanks to all of you over the years who have asked us to have a chat with Peter… To hear more with Peter head over to our PATREON for PART TWO next week and access to our discord, all our other patreon episodes, interviews and SHORT SESSIONS! See you in Paris! Ž&...

Join us as Pastor Tommy starts with 1st Peter To connect with us visit our website: https://www.midtownvineyardchurch.com/ You can find our church on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MidtownVineyard You can find our church on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/midtownvineyard/ Download the ChurchCenter app to keep update with our events : https://churchcenter.com/setup

Peter Warmka is a Keynote Speaker, Author, Cybersecurity/Insider Threat Consultant, Founder of Counterintelligence Institute, and a retired senior intelligence officer with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) where he specialized in clandestine HUMINT (human intelligence) collection. He was on previously to talk about his book “Confessions of a CIA Spy” and now he's here to promote his new book “Why Are You Messing With Me? - Senior Survival Guide on Fraud, Privacy, and Security". 00:00 Introduction 00:19 Our Guest 02:06 ChatGPT and Generative Ai: How they're used 06:14 Evil ChatGPT 07:16 How do we remain secure with Ai? 12:18 Why you shouldn't be giving out your SSN 13:35 Sim Swapping Case 16:26 U.A.E Voice Cloning Case 23:07 What measurements does the CIA take? 25:55 Facial recognition 27:03 Educating the Public 29:38 Why are you messing with me? - Senior survival guide 43:28 More about Peter --------------------------------------------------------------------- To learn more about Dark Rhino Security visit https://www.darkrhinosecurity.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Links Mentioned: $24M AT&T Sim Swapping Case: https://blockworks.co/news/att-crypto-sim-swap-lawsuit Voice Cloning U.A.E Case: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/10/14/huge-bank-fraud-uses-deep-fake-voice-tech-to-steal-millions/?sh=4e5cb5507559 Peters Books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Peter-Warmka/author/B08QZ8C7S6?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SOCIAL MEDIA: Stay connected with us on our social media pages where we'll give you snippets, alerts for new podcasts, and even behind the scenes of our studio! Instagram: @securityconfidential and @OfficialDarkRhinoSecurity Facebook: @Dark-Rhino-Security-Inc Twitter: @darkrhinosec LinkedIn: @dark-rhino-security Youtube: @Dark Rhino Security ​ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- #darkrhinosecurity #securityconfidential #cybersecurity #cyberpodcast #ai #artificialintelligence #securitypodcast #cybernews #technews #techsoftware #informationtechnology #infosec #cybersecurityforbeginners #technewstoday

Peter Evans is an advisor, consultant, and speaker to legacy families, family offices, and multigenerational enterprises all around the world. Peter creates the opportunities where affluent families have the greatest chance of flourishing. Peter is also part of a legacy family himself; he is a 5th generation member of a 7th generation American enterprise established in 1885. Peter married into this family and was astounded by the welcoming and inclusive nature of his wife's large family. The family enterprise is now a holding company with over 500 shareholders, all of whom are family members. Of particular interest are the Family Summits held annually, which are designed to re-engage family members, partake in family traditions and rituals, discuss philanthropy and reset for the year ahead. Peter shares his experience of what it was like to join a well-established legacy family and how he has used this unique experience to pivot his career and help other legacy families flourish. Standout Quotes: * "We can't really plan significantly for longer than 5-10 years, you just learn that along the way, things change; the world changes" - [Peter] * "I'm really interested in making sure that the family's values are aligned with their actions" - [Peter] * "To have some sort of formal way of telling stories, I think, is critical" - [Peter] * "The most important thing you'll do are these rituals" - [Peter] * "If we have the privilege of having wealth and means, we have an obligation to give back" - [Peter] Key Takeaways: * Peter is the 5th generation member of a 7th generation American enterprise established in 1885. He is an adviser, consultant, and speaker to legacy families, family offices, and multigenerational enterprises globally. He became a part of the family when he married his wife and was included. * The company began as a group of lumber companies started by two brothers who liquidated everything after 45 years to invest with their partner, Friedrich Weyerhäuser in 1901. Peter's family had continued to be involved with the business as it expanded, although there were no male heirs in the second generation, till the 3rd generation. The family later started a private trust company in 1964, at which point they became the 3rd largest retailer of building materials in the US. * Today with diversification, they are now a holding company with over 500 shareholders, all of whom are family members. Peter's children are already involved with the family business actively and eagerly look forward to partaking in the annual family meetings. * The Family Summit: This annual family meeting usually runs over 3-5 days, on the same weekend every year, with activities like the coming-of-age ritual and elders' ritual, Olympic games, business meetings, philanthropy group meetings, and talks by guest speakers. The goal is to make it so interesting that people want to come back. * Planning Never Stops; the family forms a long-range planning committee every 5 years to have a clean slate to think through everything. A pattern of liquidating a significant resource once every 20 years was also observed; this 'Generational Harvest' would provide liquidity to each shareholder, giving them the freedom to make their own investments. * The family investments today are largely in Real Estate, like residence halls or low-income housing units, all intentionally inclined towards 'doing well by doing good' which is a value the family holds. * Peter left his role as president of the family enterprise in 2003 and has since then helped other family enterprises manage their multigenerational interests. He believes families with vast amounts of capital can make decisions that affect millions of lives and works to ensure that these families act in accordance with their values. "I can hold a mirror up to you so that you can begin to see yourself, your family system, and your footprint in the world; the other thing I can do is open the window so that you can look out into the world and see how other families made choices during different transitions" * Peter's most satisfying work is sitting with family members and watching the interactions; his work is focused on helping build bridges in communication and relationships. His role is a position between being a business consultant, priest, and therapist all of which require a deep level of trust and respect. At its core, his work is about relationships. * Peter's role as a 'Personne de confiance': This is a confidential advisor based on their trust, respect, and honesty. The way to get into that role is to come into the family that needs help, taking time to build trust and confidence. Very often Peter has to model a way of doing things like chairing a meeting, inclusion, and effective decision-making while keeping in mind that the goal is to pass on the mantle of leadership. Most of the time, the G2 generation is the one that reaches out to him, however, in some cases when the patriarchs are comfortable giving up authority, this spurs the G2 to take up the mantle and learn how to hand over to G3. Sometimes, the G2 has even already made the transition in their lifetime, adapting to the values and culture while the G3 grows up having a completely different experience. * Storytelling is critical in documenting family history. Peter uses this both in his family enterprise and while working with others. His family works with a full-time archivist who helps research the lives of people such that detailed questions can be asked and stories can be told more deeply. It also offers an opportunity to share lessons from the failures, trials, and tribulations of family members. * While still active in his family he was always open to learning from other families and when he left his role, he wanted to be involved in creating the consciousness in families that they can impact the world. Based on Peter's background, he has the experience which gets him into those family spaces after which he starts work. * From Peter's experience, when it comes to cultural mindsets like having female leaders, and diversity, there is a lot more openness in the US than in most other places. Although he tries to encourage such views, some cultures are just not ready for it. However, families of significant or multigenerational wealth are naturally global these days, hence it is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid influence from other cultures. * Family Rituals are the most important way to bring the family together continuously over the years because they help young people feel acknowledged. Peter's family has a children's program packed with several activities that keep them eager to return. After the age of 14, they can start going to business meetings. These activities help the family familiarize themselves with teenagers and create a more welcoming environment in the business meetings. * It is necessary to identify who is family and the kinds of roles available to different members. Each family does this differently, but Peter's family has selected the option of Inclusion. * Building Family Governance starts with having a reliable cadence of meetings quarterly, as well as major annual gatherings; this goes hand and hand with excellent communication. The next step would be to memorialize family values and have a direction and then this can be the foundation of a constitution. The constitution is a living document and should be examined and changed as required. * Peter also uses the concept of the "5 Capitals" within his family and the families he works with. * Philanthropy is another tool Peter has been familiar with. It is fun to watch families come together to figure out ways to give back based on their different interests and drives. * Very often, families look at their business as heirlooms which begs the question "Is the business an heirloom or an investment?" Sometimes it is hard to sell a business because it's been our identity for years; thus, selling is easy if the business is only an investment but if it functions as an heirloom then it may not be advisable. In some situations, the business is on the spectrum in-between, which means only certain objects or aspects may be more valued as an heirloom. Mike's family takes pictures yearly on the same spot on a piece of land which over time has taken up the role of an heirloom too. * From Peter to his children: "This is your life, do what you love and do it often. If you don't like something, change it; if you don't like your job, move on. If you don't have enough time, stop watching TV. If you're looking for the love of your life, stop, they'll be waiting for you when you start doing the things you love. Stop overanalyzing; life is simple. All emotions are beautiful, when you eat, appreciate every last bite. Open your mind, arms, and heart to new things and people; we are united in our differences. Ask the next person you see what their passion is, and share your inspiring dream with them. Travel often; getting lost will help you find yourself. Some opportunities only come once so seize them. Life is about the people you meet and the things you create with them, so go out and start creating. Life is short, live your dream and share your passion." Episode Timeline: * [00:52] About today's guest, Peter Evans. * [02:44] Peter shares his family history. * [07:10] What makes your annual family meetings appealing to the younger generation? * [12:28] Does a value system guide the investment making decisions? * [14:00] Peter's work helping other family enterprises. * [18:40] Peters role as a 'Personne de confiance'. * [24:22] Family Storytelling as a tool in Peter's work with family enterprises. * [29:08] Was it your experience with your own family that led you to work with other families? * [31:39] What are some of the differences in culture that showed up during your work with different families across the world? * [34:50] How important is it to have traditions that bring the family together? * [38:41] Who is a Family member? * [39:17] Building blocks of Family Governance. * [44:10] Philanthropy in the family enterprise. * [46:16] How shared experiences come into family meetings. * [48:14] What is the role of Heirlooms in the family enterprise? * [50:47] Peter's letter to his kids. For more episodes go to BusinessOfFamily.net (https://www.businessoffamily.net/) Sign up for The Business of Family Newsletter (https://www.businessoffamily.net/newsletter) Follow Mike on Twitter @MikeBoyd (https://twitter.com/MikeBoyd) If you feel it's appropriate, I'd so appreciate you taking 30 seconds to Leave a Review on iTunes (http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1525326745), I receive a notification of each review. Thank you! Special Guest: Peter Evans.

Your body robs Peter To pay Paul Questions Answered: -How would you define compensation? -Does your body start creating abnormal structures to support bad posture? -Can you several areas of your body compensating all at once and what's the result? -What can people do to reverse these issues and is it a long process?

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.  

Alexandra Tachalova (Linkedin or Twitter) is the organizer of the Digital Olympus conference and she does one thing in life. Generates backlinks. So if you want more backlinks, you should listen to what she has to say. This is her presentation from the DMSS 2019 in Bali, check out her presentation below. Smart link building how to stop following best practices and start getting links from Alexandra Tachalova   Podcast transcript Alexandra Tachalova: So when I was the very first time doing link building, I spent the first three or four months painting those features and well, I believe I did notice one or two links. Peter: This is Time4Marketing, the marketing podcast that will tell you everything you've missed when you didn't attend the marketing conference. Hello, and welcome to the Time4Marketing marketing podcast, the podcast that invites the best marketing conference speakers to come and sum up their presentations in five minutes. It's 2020 Happy New Year to everyone. My name is still Peter and I'll still be your host for this podcast episode. If you would like to know more what is going on on the podcast, you could visit the time4marketing.com website when you have forum where you could subscribe to our email newsletter or just subscribe to this podcast. If you want to talk to me, you can find me on my web page, seos.si. Enough about me. I hope you're having a wonderful new year. With me today is Alexandra Tachalova. Alex, hello and welcome. Alexandra: Hello, Peter. Thanks for having me. Such a pleasure and honor being here today. Peter: Alex, I'm very glad that you are here with us. Where are you located? Alexandra: I'm based in Saint Petersburg, which is not in Florida, but in Russia. Well, we are based on the same continent with you, not really far away from you. Peter: True, true. But Russia sounds very cold. Is it unbelievably cold right now? Alexandra: No, it's not unbelievably cold. We are going to have a Christmas and New Year without snow. Right now it’s +3 +4 five. Yes, just rainy. Peter: Alex, you are the founder of the Digital Olympus Conference. Tell us a bit more about the conference and tell us a bit more what you do in your everyday job life. Alexandra: Well, first of all, let's chat a little bit about the Digital Olympus Conference. That's going to happen on the sixth of April in Kraków, which is based in Poland. We have very, I think inspiring lineup. We have Aleyda Solis, Michal speakers, Lukasz Zelezny, Fernando Angulo, Leonardo Saroni from Booking, Judith 'deCabbit' and many, many other quite well-known experts. We are a very affordable conference because the cost, our POS is less than 100 that. That's more or less about this Olympus Conference and hope to see you guys maybe-- by the way, you don't even need to go to our conference. You could also join us online because we do a free live stream. Even if you can't come personally, then you have an option to join us just online. When talking about what I do besides Digital Olympus, I do link building. I have a quite small agency and it's just under the same brand, under Digital Olympus. Well, actually we built links mostly for B2B clients. That's what I think I know very well and that's my areas of expertise. That's the reason why I'm talking about link building quite a lot and write about link building covers intellectually. Did write a post for the MOZ Blog about the economics of link building. I highly recommend checking it out. Get tons of positive feedback. People were writing to me across different channels and they really love this stuff because not a lot of experts sharing it, the real cost of link building and why like different options cost different- costs differently. Yes, that's a good one, I think. Let me add one more thing about my personal life. If you go to any of my social media channels, you'll find me and my horse. I'm really into horse-riding, in particular dressage. That may be my second fashion after digital marketing. Peter: To go to your presentation, you spoke-- Well, you speak at a lot of different events. But I contacted you because you spoke at the DMSS in Bali in 2019 with-- Alexandra: That was my excuse to go to Bali. [laughter] Peter: That is a lot of people's excuse to go to Bali. It’s business. I can write it off on business expenses. Your presentation title was How to Stop Following the Best Practices and Start Getting Links. Alex, here are your five minutes for your presentation. Alexandra: I was talking about how exactly we built links here at Digital Olympus, what we do. First of all, we don’t follow any best practices. If you go to, just you know, to Google on quite well-known digital marketing blog, you'll find tons of- they're sharing how to do link building like 66 best link building strategy that you need to do today or tomorrow. Don't do that because they are quite useless being honest. The reason behind it that they're overused. Also, well, I have something more to share here besides like, they are useless because we've already tried them and they don't work but besides me there are some data. For instance, some time ago, Brian Dean teamed up with Pitchbox, which is an outreach tool and they analyzed thousands of email outreach pitches. Well, they found out that their average response rate is quite low, in fact, below 9%. That's the reason why I think doing link building by following those strategies is not the right way to go because, let's imagine if you sent 100 emails, you might get only one or two links because the response rates while any link builder know that response rate doesn't equal to getting a link. What I suggest doing-- First of all, what we don't do, definitely we don't send mass emails because they have a quite poor response rate. Instead of these, I would recommend going to people that are already aware about your brands, so with whom you've already established a relationship. The reason behind it that they're much more responsive and eager to communicate with you, so your emails won’t be ignored. Plus they know you, they trust you so you could try to get a link from them. But for sure it's not just because you are so good and your content is so good, you need to give them something back or visit it because people understand the value of links. My recommendations will be, well, if you want to work with though then do it like really do link building. That's actually the most beneficial way of doing it because if you partner up with a company that doing link building on a scale, so they’re also investing in this process, then you could build much more links because they know more people, they write to more blogs. But you need to return them links back. That's where we are coming to an indirect link exchange. You need to contribute to other blogs but not to build links because it's very expensive. Well, for sure you could do this, but it's much more like, it makes much more sense to do it, to return things back to people that could also generate links, so you are doing indirect links exchange. Well, for sure not only links can be cured as something available for people, someone or connection the rest of others with hype or like, for instance, your clients. If you are checking your circles. What you do, you check your clients, your social media followers, your partners as well. Anyone who basically knows your brand and their whereabouts, your existence. Well, if you talk about liners, they might want to, something like your specs, they might want to, so you send them your secs and get a link. Well, for sure don't do like the majority of people do like sending here is what like-- send an email, how does it look like? For instance, I deliver this awesome blog post and I've been following you for ages and then the reason why you need to give me a link back, well, quite stupid. They don't owe you a thing so don't do that. Instead of these, what I would recommend doing, first of all, connect with them and do something valuable for them. For instance, like link back to them, sending soundtracks. Only after these, ask whether there is any chance to link back to your awesome, insightful blog posts. That's very much it. The last tip will be, if you want to find people that write across various blogs within your niche, most probably they're doing link building because that's the reason why they write to different blogs. On a regular basis go to BuzzSumo experts, the list of contributors because at BuzzSumo allows you on the most popular blogs and then search via those author names inside BuzzSumo. Going back to BuzzSumo and see whether they write across different blogs or only write on this one article. Your goal is to find those that write across a quite big number of blogs like me. For instance, I write on different blogs like Moz, Search Engine Journal, co-marketing [unintelligible 00:10:50] excel, and et cetera. That's very much it. Peter: Okay, excellent. Alex, how important do you feel are links still in SEO and even more, are they getting more important or less in the last years? Alexandra: I think they're like, there should be one more guy here that-- there will be a very interesting conversation because I'm sure, yes, for sure I say links, the main reason why sites are ranking at the top of Google results and then we need an opponent here, someone who is really- truly believe that technical SEO on-site is so then the reason why sites are ranking. The thing here that I know how to build links and I see that when we build links to our clients' websites, the clients pager they grow. I see how it works. Then the reason why I believe that links are really important. However, I don't really do technical SEO so I don't see any correlations between technical SEO. I'm not observing them because I don't do that. Each time I just meet people that do technical SEO they are like sharing, "No, you don't need links, you only need to just to nail your calls or whatever it is." There are one more very important thing that everyone should remember. If you have a small website, I mean it's not a big e-commerce brand, you don't have tons of pages. I don't think nailing your technical off-site SEO would help you like really change your situation, especially if we are talking about highly competitive niches like IT, well, digital marketing or something like that. You could do whatever you want with your website. Make it very fast, make it very, very beautiful in terms of your course but unless you have links, it's not going to work. Peter: Especially business to business websites are usually in such a way that it's small content. Alexandra: Yes, just because your competitors are doing this. The problem with all those things that related to links, if people around you within your niche heavily invest in link building, then Google sees it and reacts on those additional forces that are impacting the SERPs. Then the problem is, well, imagine no one would be doing link building and then I could imagine that links won't be so important because Google will be looking at other factors. Since we have links and links are the core of Google [unintelligible 00:13:56] still because they are recommendations. We are recommending something like in real life. When I recommend something and I'm a trustworthy source because, for instance, I recommend something because I really know I think the digital marketing, I am a trustworthy-- people believe me. That's the same with links. When you are a trustworthy website and do you say like, "Okay, I linked to this website," you basically say that the website that you're linking to is also trustworthy and that's how Google overlays things. Peter: Probably links are going to be important for always. Another question-- Alexandra: I think so. yes. Peter: If I'm a company and now what is the distinction, when should I decide to find someone from the outside to help me with my link building and when should I do it by myself inhouse? Is the size of the website, the criteria or-- When should I look for someone to help me with my link building? Alexandra: When it comes to digital marketing, well, I'm a big believer that you need to try it on own. When I have a potential client that tell me, "Look we might hire you or might not because we are right now considering doing it on our own." I say like, "Look do it on your own because you see how it's hard, first of all then if you see how it's hard, then you might see a value in my services." You just try it, you see that it's very hard because it's very hard, you barely-- Even if you do guest blogging, it's very expensive so you would just spend the very few months just trying to pitch something to someone and receive a lot of no most probably. The thing with link building or when I think you need to outsource these types of things, well first of all, when you want to do it faster. You hire an agency. Because the main reason why people hire an agency like us or agencies like another like other guys because they've already established those relationships so they want it just to capitalize on what we've already done. Starting from the very first month, we could build up to 30 links per client. We've already know people so we just simply sent emails and they said, "Okay, we'll do this." They need to do everything from scratch. When I was the very first time during link building, I spend the first three or four-month painting those features. I believe I do notice one or two links so if you linked that was all I was very frustrated and I was like why? Because you need to spend around two, three years establishing those relationships and then everything is easy. The second situation when you need an agency when you need very specific links. You've already a well-known company-- well, you don't need average links, you need very specific links to very specific pages. For instance, category or it might be even commercial pages. Then you could try to go to a link building agency and ask them whether they could help you. Because you have such clients from an enterprise sector, They are very well known company but they want to run better by some of their category pages because that's their commercial pages, that's where all the revenue stream is coming. Yes, in some cases, you could do this. The best thing about email, personalized email outreach is that you could even build links to those pages as well. Not for each and every company but if you are talking about well-known and if you know, people, you could do this. Actually, we have a few clients for whom we are building links to commercial pages. Peter: Excellent. All right, I think that's it. Alex, if people would like to contact you or talk to you more about link building, where can people find you? Alexandra: That might be LinkedIn but please, if you want to connect with me on LinkedIn, write down a short message. I have already 200 connections that are pending. I just want to be sure that I'm not going to skip your connection request. Just write down something like, "I heard you on podcast something like this and then the reason I'd love to connect, I just greatly appreciate it." Or you can just go straight to Twitter which allows you to connect with me directly by following me and asking me question there without sending any super tracklist to connect. [chuckles] Peter: All right. Thank you for being on the podcast. I'll add all of the links about the stuff that- Alexandra: Thank you, Peter: -talked about in the show. I will also add your presentation into the show notes so if people want to go deeper into the content, they can- Alexandra: Awesome. Peter: -do that. One more thing, do you have future conferences lined up? Where can people find you if they want to see you speaking live? Alex: I think the biggest one that I have in my calendar is BrightonSEO in April, so if you'll be around- If you plan to come to BrightonSEO hope to see you there and for sure I'll be speaking about link building, which is a quite hot topic right now. It's on the rise. If you are based closer to me in Eastern Europe then SEO zraz in Bratislava, right? I think so in Bratislava, will be in February and so well, our own conference. I won't be speaking there, but I'll be there and so well, I'll be just taking care of technical things at Digital Olympus and if you're based somewhere in Poland, hope to see you at our own event. Peter: All right. There's a lot of opportunities. Okay. Alex, thank you very much for being on the podcast. It was great talking to you and hope to see you around. Alex: Hope to see you, Peter. Thank you very much for having me. And have a lovely Christmas.  

  My first guest is ex-proprietary day trader Peter To, who now trades independently. I first found Peter through the Chat With Traders podcast and his amazing blog which can be found at ptotrading.blogspot.com.   In this podcast we talk about:   A recent study which asserts that consistent day trading profits are near-impossible. Trading with "the world's worst prop firm" during Hurricane Sandy Peter's thoughts on high-frequency trading's affect on the markets he trades Why 1990s prop trading was the golden era of trading. How traders can develop techniques outside of 'vanilla' technical trading strategies Is shorting parabolic penny stocks a 'crowded trade?' Modelling market behavior to refine your trading edge How Twitter has become a digital prop desk Updates on two trades Peter has blogged about   Links mentioned:   Day Trading for a Living Study? Peter's blog Peter's twitter Peter's CETC Trade: Being stuck short a stock and still being charge borrow fees Peter's great post on why he thought buying the dip in the S&P in December 2018 was a home-run trade Peter's interview with Chat With Traders Peter's favorite trading book: Dark Pools - The Rise of Machine Traders and the Rigging of the US Stock Market  Investment disclaimer

Before day trading equities, Peter To played a lot of online poker and did fairly well for himself. He then dabbled in markets as an investor, but was soon attracted to OTC stocks after discovering a strange inefficiency… In this episode we spend quite a bit of time talking about Peter’s prop trading experience, both the good and the bad. Trading nihilism and doing everything you supposedly shouldn’t do, why Peter accepts he’s not a “cold blooded assassin” and does trade with the influence of emotion. Plus, we briefly touch on Bitcoin and exchange hacks towards the end too. Peter also writes about many of these subjects on his blog, which you can read here. -- Sponsored by TradeStation.com – A fully-licensed online broker and trading technology provider (who have won a ridiculous amount of awards!)

Kelly interviews Peter Weinstock, Partner, Hunton & Williams, Dallas Office. They talk about bank M&A deals and minority shareholder actions to gain control of bank management. Peter Weinstock’s practice focuses on corporate and regulatory representation of financial institutions. He is Practice Group Leader of the Financial Institutions Section and has counseled institutions on more than 150 M&A transactions, as well as provided representation on securities offerings and capital planning.   Kelly Coughlin is CEO of BankBosun, a management consulting firm helping bank C-Level Officers navigate risk and discover reward. He is the host of the syndicated audio podcast, BankBosun.com. Kelly brings over 25 years of experience with companies like PWC, Lloyds Bank, and Merrill Lynch. On the podcast Kelly interviews key executives in the banking ecosystem to provide bank C-Suite officers, risk management, technology, and investment ideas and solutions to help them navigate risks and discover rewards. And now your host, Kelly Coughlin. Kelly: Hi, this is Kelly Coughln from the BankBosun. Hope everybody’s doing fine. I’m going to do an interview today with a deal guy. He’s with a law firm in Dallas, Texas. We’re going to talk about the types of deals that are getting done. Are they P&A deals? Are they stock deals? There are distressed deals out there, there are strategic ones, and what is he saying in terms of M&A activity in the banking sector. With that, we’ll get Peter Weinstock on the phone, from Hunton & Williams. Let’s talk about deals, Peter. I have kind of a basic question on general trends. In bad banking economies, it seems that we have a lot of P&A deals, where I think the seller is normally the FDIC, correct? Peter: Right. Kelly: We must have had a lot of those in 2008, 2009, possibly up to 2010. Peter: Yeah, I agree. For really almost a four, four and a half year period, there were more deals sold by the FDIC than there were private sector M&A transactions. Kelly: Then today, better economy, better banking environment, we don’t see many of those, correct? Peter: Very few. Kelly: Would you say that the number of P&A deals is a leading indicator, lagging indicator of economic conditions of banks in general? Peter: Yeah, it’s certainly a lagging indicator, just like capital as a protection is a lagging indicator because what tends to happen is asset quality issues or concentration levels or interest rate risk, some of those other factors, the metrics indicating those issues are becoming problematic kick in long before capital starts declining and capital starts declining generally long before or moderately before problem banks are looking to sell or the FDIC takes over. The number of P&A transactions, which again, we’re down to very few, are more reflective of the fact that the economy seemed to turn sometime in 2012 and we’ve had now three full years of, even though it’s not a great recovery, we’ve had some recovery. Kelly: How many P&A deals have we seen in three years? Peter: I think we’re only up to two so far this year, where we were, in 2009 through 2011, we were having dozens and in one of those years over one hundred bank deals. Kelly: The two this year, are they in, say, oil patch regions that are struggling economically or somewhere else? Peter: That’s an outstanding question because the answer is, it’s not. That’s not to say that the oil patch or the commodity price areas are not under stress. Certainly, the ag economy is under some stress, but again, it gets back to your first question about lagging indicators. The banks that are failing now are banks that have been circling around the drain for a long time now. They’ve been shrinking to maintain capital ratios, but they can’t get recapitalized because of the legacy assets that they have from the downturn, so we still have a significant number of banks that are undercapitalized and unless something happens, they could fail because they have elevated problem asset levels and those problem asset levels are what would bring them down. At December 31 there were 78 banks that were still somewhere undercapitalized or only adequately capitalized, which is down from, at one point, the problem bank list was over 600, but the 78 institutions that are adequately capitalized or worst, as of year end, are ones that are suffering from the last downturn, rather than the next one. Kelly: All right, you mentioned 78 that are undercapitalized. What’s the metric that you use? Peter: These are banks that are not well capitalized, so they’re adequately capitalized or lower, which is they have to have a leverage ratio of 5% in order to be well capitalized. Then you have the Basel III metrics. Right now, you’re talking about a total risk-based capital ratio of under 10% and total leverage ratio of under 5% to be adequately capitalized or, in that case, undercapitalized. It’s not an incredibly high bar that they’re not able to chin, so these 78, you would think that they would be able to recapitalize themselves, but the big challenge that they have is their elevated asset quality levels. Kelly: You have these 78 banks. Are brokers out there, investment bankers out there trying to get them to sell? You guys probably don’t do that. Lawyers don’t hustle for business like that, I don’t think, right? You’re not making cold calls? Peter: We’re purist, man. We would never do such a thing. I’m sure that all 78 of them have been shaking the trees and have talked to anyone and everyone who they think could be an avenue for capital and for addressing their problems, but at some point, if you’ve got capital of 5 million but you have problem assets of 15 or 20 million, at some point the numbers don’t make sense for an investor and that’s why these institutions are still on the list, some of them. Kelly: Let’s talk about the good side of the market, not the problem areas. Let’s say last year, you being a proxy for the market, how many deals were related to distressed banks and how many were for strategic acquisition reasons or market expansion? Peter: I would tell you the vast majority of them were strategic and few were problem bank acquisitions. What I mean by strategic isn’t necessarily that the seller was in great shape and they sold for a very high price. What we’re seeing is a number of sellers are kind of giving up the ghost because in this interest rate environment, with anemic loan demand, very competitive loan pricing, there are sellers that look at their compliance costs and their IT costs and their personnel costs and they’re saying, “We’re not big enough to do a deal. We’re not big enough to survive on our own and make our shareholders a fair return, so we need to look at doing something else.” The something else is not necessarily selling for cash and going on down the road. One of the biggest trend lines we’ve seen in the last two, three years, is the willingness of sellers to take illiquid stock, stock from a privately owned financial institution. Kelly: In the acquiring company. Peter: To take illiquid stock from an acquiring company, that’s another community bank like they may be, sellers are much more willing to do that than they ever have been before in my 30+ year career. I think the biggest driver of that is that on the operational standpoint, the challenges of being a bank are such that skill matters and then on the shareholder valuation standpoint, I think they recognize that this may not be the greatest pricing time to sell out, so they look at doing some kind of strategic combination to be part of a bigger, more profitable organization, even though the stock is illiquid. Kelly: Let’s say, in those situations where you’ve got a reasonably healthy bank, they see that if they don’t do something they might be in part of the 78 again, but they might go down that way, so they’re proactive. As a part of that, they have to lock up some of their good producers, right? Their good credit officers and those things. One of the thing we do in our business is help with non-qualified plan benefits to try to use that as a way to lock in good senior management. Do you see much of that going on as part of the deal criteria? Peter: It surprises me that more banks that are potential sales candidates don’t do more. In community bank America, it almost doesn’t matter how big you are, you’re a potential target. I’ll give you an example. One of my clients is a $5 billion bank in California and they merged with an $8 billion bank in December, they announced it. The reason is because our client, that’s $5 billion, felt that they needed to get bigger in order to compete. The $8 billion bank felt like they needed to be bigger to compete, so now they’re going to be $13 billion. If you’re not an $8 or a $5 billion bank, if you’re smaller than that, you might say to yourself, I don’t need to be bigger to survive, but my efficiency ratio sure as heck would improve if we got bigger. I would tell you that almost every bank is a candidate to be sold, they’re a candidate to buy and they’re a candidate to be sold. KPMG did a survey in 2014 and it indicated that over 50% of the banks thought they would engage in an acquisition, but 3% of banks thought they would sell. The numbers wound up in 2015 being something like 4.4% of all the banks sold. Every bank out there, it seems, is thinking about doing an acquisition, but every bank and community bank America is a potential candidate. A long way around to your question is because the banks are all potential merger candidates, then they really should look at putting in place protections for their employees and really locking them up, but when they’re doing that, they also need to think about not hurting shareholder value. The way you could hurt shareholder value is you provide some kind of agreement, let’s say a change in control agreement, that provides on a change in control the employee gets paid if they leave the bank. Now we hurt shareholder value because the buyer knows that they could lose that person because there’s an incentive for that person to leave. Really, it takes somebody like you to think through not just how to protect the person, not just how to lock them up, but also to do it in a way where it creates or at least preserves shareholder value because the buyer is not looking at that contract and saying that that contract harms me because I’m going to lose a valuable producer. Your question is a good one and I would even go further and I’d say what exists gets paid. If people want agreements to be in place, they need to put them in place because if they exist they’ll get paid, where if you wait until a potential acquisition, then what’s going to happen is the acquirer is going to say, “You can do that, but if you do that it comes out of the shareholder’s purchase price,” and I don’t think you want to be negotiating those types of agreements with another person with their elbows on the table. Kelly: I’ve got a lot of experience in other financial sectors like financial advisors and broker dealers and the common theme with them is you’ve got much more highly paid execs, but the notion that the assets go down in the elevator every day. It’s more or less the same thing with many banks and not locking them up one way or another in an acquisition, it always kind of surprises me. Let’s talk about surprises in an acquisition landmines. It seems to me that when we’re talking about banks that are not a huge footprint, a community bank that’s got 1 to 15 branches, isn’t it a fair statement to say that more of the acquirers or interested acquirers are going to be a current competitor of that bank and doesn’t that always present a bit of a due diligence challenge or problem, where you’re going to release sensitive, confidential information to your competitor? Peter: That is absolutely correct that that’s a possibility. The reason for that is because most financial institution mergers are driven by cost savings. Where do you get the most cost savings? In a market deal or an adjoining market deal. It is very likely the party that can pay the most is going to be an existing competitor. That absolutely presents challenges in terms of protecting your employees and your confidential information. Obviously you’re going to negotiate the heck out of the non-disclosure agreement, if that’s likely buyer, if you’re the seller. The other thing is you’re probably going to want to hold back on when you deliver information until there is an agreement on all of the relevant terms and then the due diligence becomes more in the way of confirming diligence than it does in terms of setting the price. You’ll release some key information, including whether there’s a termination fee as a result of the transaction on your data processing agreement, changing control agreements with employees, give all of that pricing type information, but you might hold back the loan review and the customer review until the deal is essentially set. Kelly: The customer name is withheld until the deal is a little more mature. Peter: We’ve also done it where you redact the customer names, but in an in-market deal it doesn’t take a lot of information for the buyer to know who that player is. Kelly: Yeah, right. Back to my other question that we started on. Surprises? Peter: I’d say the biggest surprise to buyers is that the seller’s compliance issues could infect them. I’ll give you an example. When MB Financial was acquiring Cole Taylor, Cole Taylor had a major compliance issue and the transaction was held up for about a year, while the regulators got comfortable with the resolution of that compliance issue. Similarly there have been a number of red-lining cases and BSA cases where the compliance issues of the target have held up the deal. I think that’s a surprise for a number of buyers because if you’re engaged in a potential transaction, you’re locked into that transaction. You’ve agreed to try to get that deal closed. If you wind up with an extended regulatory approval time period, that could prevent you, preclude you from going after a deal that becomes available six months, a year later that might be a better deal for you. Similarly for sellers, even in cash deal, if there’s a surprise that the buyer’s compliance issues can be such a hold up and what we’ve seen is we’ve seen AML, BSA, KYC issues that have held up approval of deals for two or three years in UDAP and some other consumer compliance issues that similarly have held up deals. As a seller, you have to perform some reverse due diligence, some extensive reverse due diligence on the buyer, even in the transaction that’s a cash deal. For a lot of sellers, that’s a surprise to them. Kelly: Do regulators hold up the deal or does the buyer intentionally hold that up? Peter: Generally it’s the regulators because from the buyer standpoint, they become aware of the issue and they adopt a plan of remediation for the issue. It’s one thing for a private sector party to get a handle on an issue and have a plan of remediation and feel good that they can implement it. It’s a whole other thing for an agent, say, to get their arms around it in a time frame that seems reasonable. The Federal Reserve has two analysts in Washington who handle compliance issues with regard to applications. Kelly: The buyer would just haircut the valuation. At the end of the day it’s a contingent liability, right? They would just haircut the valuation on it. Peter: If it’s a known risk and it’s one that they have presumably priced in. If it’s not a known risk and they become aware of it, then they may go back to the seller and say, “We’ve got all of these costs related to it, we need to reduce the price,” or if it’s significant enough, they could decide to walk the transaction. Kelly: In terms of surprises, known compliance issues and I suppose the ‘know what you don’t know,’ whatever that term is. You know those issues, it’s the unknown compliance regulatory issues. Any ideas on pre-detecting, early detection of those things? Peter: That’s really you just have to engage in some pretty thorough diligence of the other party to really understand where the risk areas are. Kelly: I suppose you look at their internal controls and their timely filings or substantiation and all of those things on the control structure. Peter: You do. Something that I like looking at as a starting point for diligence is nowadays banks have to do risk assessments. Seemingly a banker can’t walk out doing a five-page risk assessment. Those risk assessments are the other party’s self-confessing, if you will, where they see their own challenges or concerns. The beauty of that for the other party is that gives them a roadmap of things to look at in diligence. Kelly: I was director of risk management for asset management subsidiaries of Lloyd’s Bank out of London, and this was many, many years ago. Regulatory issues and compliance back then just didn’t quite get the importance. They actually did in the UK, but things have ramped up in the US quite a bit, that it’s probably more on par with what it was with the British banks back then. Peter: If you parachuted back, if you were Mr. Peabody and you got in the Wayback Machine and went back to 2000 and you had a full-time, dedicated BSA officer, and how many banks had full-time, dedicated compliance offer and how many banks had a full-time, dedicated risk officer, and how many banks had a full-time, dedicated IT person, and you compare those numbers to the way they are now, it’s just shocking. The bigger the acquisition, the more you want to look at areas that you might not want to spend the money on if you’re a smaller institution. In a bigger deal, you absolutely want to evaluate IT exposures and make sure that there have not been or in place potential breaches. Kelly: Why don’t you give us parting thoughts you’d like to give. Speak to both buyers and sellers. Peter: One thing we’re seeing for banks that may not want to be a seller is there is a lot more activism. We had six private banks in the fourth quarter that had proxy sites, tender offers. One even had a TRO, a temporary restraining order, filed against them. That’s continued in the first quarter of 2016. One thing is to put in place protections and recognize that your risks can be from your existing shareholder base or people who buy in. The world’s awash in money and people out there know if they could buy stock of a bank at eight-tenths of book or book and then wrestle control of the board and get control, then the bank on the sale might be worth book and a quarter or book and a half, book seven, where they could potentially even more than double their money, buy the stock and flipping it in a control situation. We’re seeing activism creeping down into the community bank, into the private bank sector, and that’s something clearly you want to watch. Kelly: You’re not talking political and social activism. You’re talking about business acquisition, venture capital, investment activism. Peter: Absolutely. We’re talking shareholder activism. Then just another thing that we’ve seen on the buyer’s side is buyers tend to be most focused targets who are of sale who sent them books. We talked about some of the compliance challenges of the application process. Just because somebody sends you a book and the book says, “We’re for sale,” doesn’t mean that they’re the greatest candidate for you to buy. What you want to be careful about is being locked up on a deal in the regulatory process that is somebody who doesn’t really move the needle for you. It’s got something that obviously is worthwhile, but maybe it’s really not consistent with your strategic focus. We’ve seen potential buyers almost shift their strategic focus just because an investment banker sends them a book on a potential target. Kelly: Two good points. I always like to finish with two things: Your favorite quote and the stupidest thing you’ve either said or done in your business life. Peter: There are a lot of the latter. Upon the former, I like the Warren Buffet quote, which it really resonates when you’re talking about shareholder activism. He said, “I prefer to manage my business for the shareholders who want to stay in and not the ones who want to get out.” I may be paraphrasing it, but that’s the thought. I like that quote a lot because that’s actually directors of the bank. Those are the people they have a duty to. The second one is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my career? Kelly: Yes. Peter: One thing that I learned a long time ago not to do is something that’s emotionally gratifying because in business it almost always is a bad decision. Early on in my career I would get testy with regulators and that’s never a good strategy. Gray hair and maybe even the loss of hair and some experience, I’ve learned the wisdom of working together with regulators a lot more than trying to beat them up. Kelly: Can you recall one that you said something to? Peter: I remember when I was a third-year lawyer, I went to a meeting with the Federal Reserve and I’m not exactly sure what I said at the point, but this person with the Federal Reserve got up and it wasn’t quite Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe on the table, but he was animated. Kelly: All right, Peter. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time. I wish you the best. We want to thank you for listening to the syndicated audio program, BankBosun.com The audio content is produced by Kelly Coughlin, Chief Executive Officer of BankBosun, LLC; and syndicated by Seth Greene, Market Domination LLC, with the help of Kevin Boyle. Video content is produced by The Guildmaster Studio, Keenan Bobson Boyle. The voice introduction is me, Karim Kronfli. The program is hosted by Kelly Coughlin. If you like this program, please tell us. If you don’t, please tell us how we can improve it. Now, some disclaimers. Kelly is licensed with the Minnesota State Board of Accountancy as a Certified Public Accountant. Kelly provides bank owned life insurance portfolio and nonqualified benefit services to banks across the United States. The views expressed here are solely those of Kelly Coughlin and his guests in their private capacity and do not in any other way represent the views of any other agent, principal, employer, employee, vendor or supplier of Kelly Coughlin.

Christopher joins us this week.A little BSing.Fact or Crap: 1 a piece for Dan and Chris, 2 right for John.Mail Bag:One from Peter: To pee or not to pee.Term limit tangent.One from Al: A blonde joke. No Obama slam.Two from Mark:1) Jury orders lawyer to pay $4.5 million to gay University of Michigan student.2) Peoria mom: United Airlines failed at unaccompanied minor service.United Airlines tangent.The Rest of the Show:1) Paul Ryan, really?2) Is Obama going to replace Biden?3) Football, Yeehaw!