Podcasts about PTO

Podcast Episode 97

Iedere zaterdag selecteert de redactie van Met het Oog op Morgen de mooiste gesprekken van de afgelopen week, gebundeld in een podcast van ongeveer een half uur. Mocht je iets gemist hebben, dan kun je het hoogstwaarschijnlijk in deze podcast terugluisteren. Oncoloog Yes van der Wouw en ervaringsdeskundige Warnyta Minnaard praten in deze podcast over de mysterieuze ziekte PTO, Primaire tumor onbekend. Een doorbraak in de wetenschap. Chirurgen in New York hebben met succes een varkensnier getransplanteerd bij een mens. Dat bespreken we met bio-ethicus Nienke de Graeff en met Niels Geijsen, hoogleraar ontwikkelingsbiologie en regeneratieve geneeskunde. Ook Milou Gevers was te gast in het Oog. Haar documentaire 'Waarom bleef je niet voor mij?' won deze week de Golden Medal bij de Student Academy Awards in Los Angeles. In haar film praat ze met kinderen die een ouder verloren aan zelfmoord. Verder hoor je Floor Eimers. Ze vertelt over de Alexandra Radiusprijs, die ze onlangs heeft ontvangen, en haar hoofdrol in de reprise-voorstelling van Mata Hari.

Richard Seymour joins PTO to talk about the uptick in the UK's Covid-19 cases and death toll, and why the government scaled back public health regulations so dramatically. We also talked about his recent articles on the supply chain and fuel crisis - both in the UK and abroad - and how they portend a future of climate related disruption. Become a £5 PTO patron to get access to this episode and all other episodes of PTO Extra: https://www.patreon.com/poltheoryother

The biggest Ironman race of the year is here and no it isn't Kona! This weekend we will see a stacked field race in Sacramento. Some of the biggest names in the sport will be lining up on what is tipped to be a fast race. The biggest draw of this event is Jan Frodeno trying to reclaim his #1 ranking fro Gustav Iden who is making his ironman debut! Add in Lionel Sanders and the race is not one to be missed! We also look at problems coming out of the Dutch Triathlon Federation, short course athletes looking to go long and discuss all the action from Mallorca over the weekend. For more information about MX Endurance: http://www.mxendurance.com To watch this podcast as a video visit: https://bit.ly/3vzSss2  To sign up as a podcast member and get a whole bunch of benefits head to www.mxendurance.com/podcast    Apply for the MX Endurance Race Team: https://www.mxendurance.com/race-team    Or check MX Endurance out on Social Media:  Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TeamMaccax/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mxendurance  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mxendurance    For any questions, comments or suggestions send us an email at podcast@mxendurance.com  You can follow James at https://www.instagram.com/bale.james85    You can follow Tim at https://www.instagram.com/tford14    If you want the down low on the PTO then sign up for their mailing list: http://bit.ly/PTOMXEndurance 

Richard Seymour joins PTO to talk about his recent articles on the supply chain and fuel crisis - both in the UK and abroad - and how they portend a future of climate related disruption. We also talked about the significant uptick in the UK's Covid-19 cases and death toll, and why the government scaled back public health regulations so dramatically.

We all need time for R&R. And some organizations have adopted policies that would allow people to take as much time as they need. On this week's #ThoughtfulThursdays episode, we discuss the ways leaders can ensure their people actually take the time they need.https://link.chtbl.com/workcheck?sid=podcast.hackingyourleadershipText us your leadership questions! +1(213)444-5381YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/HackingYourLeadershipPodcast/featuredPatreon Account: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=22174142#Leadership #HackingYourLeadership #StarkEngagementConsulting #LifeOfLozolozo@lifeoflozo.comchris@starkengagement.com

Are you looking for ways to boost your team's productivity while also improving your work-life balance? Jason Berkowitz was working as a personal trainer in NYC when he discovered SEO and decided to become a freelancer. He grew his business and started hiring and building his team to create a legit agency, Break The Web. Now that he has a team, he has been implementing a few ways to boost productivity and morale. In this conversation, he talks about the key roles he hired to start growing his agency, why offering unlimited PTO has worked for his team, and how a special summer schedule allows the team longer weekends 3 Golden Nuggets On growing his agency. Jason found success learning about SEO practices and how to help people implement them in their websites. However, freelancers have to take care of different aspects of the business like admin, selling, project management, execution, client management. Some people are comfortable with that, but he wanted to delegate certain aspects of the business to increase his income. For this, the first strategic hire was an account manager, which was the first step to start building a legit agency. This way, he didn't have to spend so much time speaking with clients, relaying information, and setting expectations and could focus on other aspects of the growing business. On unlimited PTO. More and more people are deciding to offer employees unlimited PTO. It is an ongoing debate and, in his particular case, Jason decided to do this at his agency. The main reason has to do with fairness. “If I wanted to take unlimited vacations, it was only fair to allow that as well in the team culture,” he says. But there was also the matter of allowing people to enjoy their time off and see how that affected the way they enjoyed work. There are still rules, it is based on performance, employees have to put in requests for PTO at least 10 business days beforehand, and it can be approved or denied. But it has been a success at his agency. Boosting his team's productivity. Other than offering unlimited PTO, another strategy introduced this year at the agency to boost the team's morale was working half-day Fridays in the month of June. It was a way of letting them enjoy their summer weekends, but it actually ended up improving team productivity from Monday to Thursday. Work was being executed much faster and more efficiently. It also helped Jason maintain a better work-life balance. Overall, it was a success for this team and something that they may continue to do every year. Sponsors and Resources Wix: Today's episode is sponsored by the Wix Partner Program. Being a Wix Partner is ideal for freelancers and digital agencies that design and develop websites for their clients. Check out Wix.com/Partners to learn more and become a member of the community for free. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Growing Your Agency, Work-Life Balance, and Boosting Your Team's Productivity Jason Swenk: [00:00:00] What's up, agency owners? Jason Swenk here and I have another amazing guest and, uh, his name is Jason. He's also from New York. So don't get confused. He's probably better looking than me, but, uh, we're going to talk about growing his agency, life balance, and a lot of cool stuff. So, uh, I'm excited to have him on. So let's go ahead and get into the episode. Hey, Jason. Welcome to the show. Jason Berkowitz: [00:00:29] Hi! Thank you so much for having me, Jason. It's a pleasure and, yeah, best name ever. Jason Swenk: [00:00:34] I know. I was like, don't get confused. You're the newer and better version of me, I guess. But tell us who you are and what do you do? Jason Berkowitz: [00:00:42] I am the founder of the search marketing agency Break The Web, and we specialize primarily in SEO and paid search. We help in-house marketing teams, integrate SEO, which is always nuanced and confusing and annoying, into their existing marketing practices. So it's seamless all around. Jason Swenk: [00:01:00] Very cool. And so how did you get into this space? Jason Berkowitz: [00:01:03] It was probably by accident. I used to be a personal trainer, way back when in New York City. And I was tired of working for a gym and basically working off the leads that they gave me, which were new membership signups. And I had the idea of what if I can get people to come to me? Is there a demand? So of course people are going to Google typing in personal trainer NYC. Saw the acronym, SEO started implementing it on my website at the time. And then I was like, screw personal training. Uh, this SEO stuff is fun. Of course, SEO was way different back then anyway, but it was kind of a paradigm shift. That's where the journey started. I worked as a freelancer for a while, but that's where it started. Jason Swenk: [00:01:39] How long ago was that? Jason Berkowitz: [00:01:42] Around 2009, 2010 is where I started actually getting into the practices of SEO what's involved? What does everything mean? What's the methodology? So about a decade now. Jason Swenk: [00:01:53] Very cool. I remember when you could get right for any term by just putting that keyword in the background at the same color. So I might be dating myself on that one, but that was a really… Jason Berkowitz: [00:02:04] The good old days. Oh yeah. One among the many different things that would work really well and really fast back then. Jason Swenk: [00:02:13] What made you decide to go from a freelancer to hiring people? Jason Berkowitz: [00:02:18] Yeah, I think I wanted to have a certain income. The problem with being a freelancer is that you're managing everything. When it comes to admin, selling, project management, execution, client management. All these different aspects. And some people are comfortable with that, but I felt like I needed to delegate certain aspects if I wanted to increase my own personal income. So then I started bringing on VAs to help with some of the smaller things. And then before you know it I'm like, wait, I can let go of this one thing too and not have to worry about it? And I can let go of this one other piece? Then before you know it, you just look up, you're like, oh shit, we're a boutique agent. Jason Swenk: [00:02:59] Yeah, it's exciting to let go of the stuff that you don't necessarily want to do anymore or have to do. And then other people actually start doing, you know, a better job. And I'm always curious, who was the first hire? Not the person's name or well, please list out their social security number. I'm just kidding. What was the role? What was the first role that you hired? Jason Berkowitz: [00:03:23] The first unofficial, non US-based was a VA in the Philippines. That was to help with link building as one of the big, uh, time-consuming aspects related to SEO. The first US in which we officially, you know, start with like, hey, we're going to be legit and grow a real agency was an account manager. I found myself just taking a lot of time speaking with clients and trying to relay information, setting expectations. So the account manager was our first hire. Jason Swenk: [00:03:51] Awesome. There's always a debate around kind of PTO. Well, there's more and more people now kind of giving unlimited PTO. Why did you go to that? Jason Berkowitz: [00:04:04] I think if I wanted to take unlimited vacations, if it made sense or just take off when I wanted to take off, it was only fair to allow that as well in the team culture. I think just people are going to enjoy work if they could also enjoy pleasure. And if you restrict them by X amount of time that they have for that pleasure, they may not enjoy work as much. So if they just needed an extra three or four days on a certification or an extra trip. Or maybe they were capped out throughout the year for the amount of days, that just gives them a bad taste in their mouth. So we'd rather if you're doing great work, if things are looking good and we won't be set back, if you take an extra couple of days off by all means, go for it. We just care about the output more. Jason Swenk: [00:04:48] Yeah. Some people are always concerned about can people take advantage of it? Like, have you ever had anybody try to take advantage of it? Jason Berkowitz: [00:04:55] No. They still have to put in requests for PTO at least 10 business days beforehand. And they still could get approved and denied. I don't believe I can recall offhand recently I have denied someone. But we do have it in our knowledge base internally and our SLP is that it is based on performance. So yeah, technically, if you want to go ahead and request. One thing we'll be looking at is how much time they've taken off previously, a culmination of hours. But also the performance and the output overall, as well as what things might look like around the time period in which you plan to take off. But yeah, I don't think I've ever denied someone and no one hasn't taken advantage yet. Surprisingly, I find what might be, if you do have, for example, two weeks or 80 hours of paid time off towards the end of the year, people want it. So then you've got people taking off just for the health taken off and they may just sit on their couch. Jason Swenk: [00:05:53] When you're an agency partner with Wix, you unlock an entire digital ecosystem for creating, managing, and growing your agency. Get the full coding and design freedom to create anything your clients need, along with the tools to manage and collaborate with your team seamlessly from anywhere. And when it comes to growing your agency, you can get matched with new leads every day and earn revenue share for every website you guys create. They're backed by the Wix industry leading security and site performance. You'll also have a dedicated account manager on standby 24/7, so you can reach your goals and start setting new ones. See for yourself, head over to wix.com/partners. And re-imagine what your agency can accomplish. Yeah. You know, we had that in the very beginning of our agency where everyone, like, we would say, hey, it doesn't rollover. You got to use it or lose it. And then they wouldn't use it until the very end. Then literally right when all the clients want all the work they're like, I'm taking time off. And it really screwed us majorly and it was pretty hard, cause sometimes we had to deny it. I do like how you have, hey, we have unlimited PTO. But you have to put in like, and you're a lot nicer than I would have been about 10 days. I'd have been like, at least give me a month. Or like, if, if there's emergency, like your parents need you or something or kids or something like that, obviously go. But if it was like, hey, I forgot to tell you about my Hawaii vacation. I'm gone for two weeks and it's happening next week. I'd be like, well, you might not want to come back. Jason Berkowitz: [00:07:37] Yeah. You know, I know we were just talking about New Yorkers and whether New Yorkers are mean. And I guess that's, you're in New York attitude right there. Jason Swenk: [00:07:45] Yeah. Well, I think I was telling people, I was like, and I could say this cause I was like, yeah, cause we're brutally honest and a lot of people do take that as mean. But you definitely know where you stand with the New Yorker. There's no beating around the bush. Jason Berkowitz: [00:08:02] No sugarcoating. No. Jason Swenk: [00:08:04] Is there any other interesting things that you guys do around making your team happy? Uh, you know, incentivizing them or anything like. Jason Berkowitz: [00:08:14] Yeah, we tested out in the month of June as the intro to summer half-day Fridays. And everyone loved it. So it's just half the time you normally would be estimated for that hourly output of the day. I loved it. So I was happy with it. And after interviewing every team member, they loved it too. And I think it's something we might do recurring every June, maybe even possibly thinking about just doing four-day workweeks, the month of June. Just to see and everyone loved it because they were able to take, they didn't need to put in for PTO or maybe half day PTO on that day. Uh, which was nice. And just having a longer weekend as the summer rolls in, especially after the last year and a half or so. It was nice to boost morale a little bit. Jason Swenk: [00:08:55] Yeah, I see more and more people doing that. And actually, if you think about it's probably should do it for the rest of the year, honestly, half day on Fridays, or maybe even one a month be like Fridays are completely off. I've seen some of our mastermind members actually do it on Monday because everybody hates Mondays and… right? And it's a little bit easier, but a lot of times on Friday afternoon, people are just messing around. I remember walking around the office, like they're not getting shit done. Uh, you might as well, hey, here's the benefit. Go home. But, uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's definitely pretty interesting. Jason Berkowitz: [00:09:31] Yeah. I dunno if I will be able to do Mondays. I feel like Monday is like the first half that they are catching up from what you might've missed over the weekend. But good for them. I appreciate it. Jason Swenk: [00:09:40] Yeah, well, they were just like, and how I do my schedule now is I don't do any meetings on Monday, even though I'll work Monday. And then I take off Fridays. I never work on Fridays. And just by doing that, it just eases you into that, that week. And it's amazing how much more you get accomplished in the shorter week, rather than just sitting around. Because I remember seeing some employees, they were just sitting around and they like, like looking at the clock. Jason Berkowitz: [00:10:12] Yeah. Well that's was one of the things we noticed with the half-day Fridays is that productivity during the week, Monday to Thursday was actually up. Deliverables and stuff were executed much earlier. According to like our time tracker, which I don't know how they gauge productivity, I guess, user movement on the mouse and stuff. Uh, productivity went up and everyone was saying that like, yeah, I was actually getting stuff done quite quicker and sooner and probably more efficiently. Jason Swenk: [00:10:34] Yeah, exactly. Awesome. Well, Jason, this has been amazing. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you think would benefit the audience listening in? Jason Berkowitz: [00:10:42] I don't think offhand. Um, maybe where to find us in case you're curious about learning more about Break The Web, always a shameless promo, uh, breaktheweb.agency. Jason Swenk: [00:10:50] Awesome. Well, what's a website people can go in and check you guys out? Jason Berkowitz: [00:10:54] Yeah, breaktheweb.agency or you can just Google "break the web." Jason Swenk: [00:10:57] Awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show. And you guys go check out their website. If you guys enjoyed this and you want to be around other amazing agency owners that could really help you scale faster and share what's working with you. So, uh, we all can grow together. I want you guys to go to the digitalagencyelite.com. This is our exclusive mastermind. That's only for a select few and not everyone gets in. So go to digitalagencyelite.com. And until next time have a Swenk day.

It's National Chocolate Cupcake Day, and Antonio and Iyube enjoyed a cupcake on air to celebrate. Bo from Store 2588 in North Versailles, Pennsylvania, celebrated a choco-lot as today's Associate Caller of the Day. Mercedes from Store 5828 in Pueblo, Colorado, called and gave a big shoutout to her coworkers during inventory, and Tiffany at Store 1261 in Fayetteville, North Carolina, called to give a shoutout to the team at her store for all of their hard work. One thing not getting a shoutout from Antonio and Iyube today is math, as they both agreed this was their worst subject in school. Our Social Media Highlights of the Day included a post from Store Manager Robert at Store 1599 in Overland Park, Kansas, who gave a shoutout to his team for all their hard work while he's been out on PTO and said he's excited to be back with everyone. We hope you tune in on this Motivational Monday for more great shoutouts.

Today on Hindsight Hacking we have an incredible treat for you all.  A wellness & mindset coach focusing on preventing burnout and overcoming stress through sustainable and realistic wellness habits, mindfulness and breathwork for overworked professionals.  Marina Kirik is who we are talking about today and she did not disappoint. She was formerly an overworked, over stressed corporate employee - having to overcome anxiety and chronic stress while living in the insanely fast pace of New York City and working for the fastest growing startup at the time. Stress used to be part of her every day and affected her deeply - her body, mindset and relationships. Working in the corporate world can take a toll on all of us and Marina was no stranger to working on the weekend to prove her worth, rushing to happy hour at the end of the day to relieve some of the stress, and rolling over unused PTO again and again. Then it clicked and over the past 5 years she changed her lifestyle around to first heal through tools such as yoga, mindfulness, and healthy nutrition. The tools she works with are a result of her Integrative Nutrition Health Coaching certification, Yoga Teacher and Meditation trainings, Personal Trainer certification, and countless courses, books and resources on health and wellness which she weaves together to create a 360 degree view of health for my clients. Her primary focus is supporting individuals through her 3 month 1:1 coaching program valued at $2997. The first month is focused on healing the body through healthy nutrition, better rest, and supportive self care habits. Month two is focused on mental well-being and processing the years of stored stress we often carry with us. The third month is focused on emotional regulation, working through triggers, and experiencing more peace and less reactivity. She is also in the process of creating new low cost options: Online meditation course, and a 2 month stress reset online program. This is such a great conversation and I cannot wait for you to hear it! Connect with Marina: http://www.sumofallpositive.comhttp://www.instagram.com/sumofallpositive Connect with Cory and Ron: Head over to Https://profitswithpodcasts.com to find out more about how your can easily launch and monetize a podcast. Or maybe you would like to learn more by jumping on a call with the guys?  Just book a time that works for you! https://calendly.com/hindsighthacking/connect?back=1&month=2020-11 And you can find Cory and Ron on a few social channels!https://follow.coolhttps://www.facebook.com/coryecarter Or you just want to check out their websites:Https://gethhm.comHttps://impactorsmastermind.com 

Just when you think the battle in California can't get better Lionel Sanders has announced he will be throwing his hat in the ring in Sacramento! This week we discuss what impact Lionel will have on the race and the extra attention he will bring. We also discuss Flora Duffy being celebrated in Bermuda, what the changes to the Iron Man World Championships will mean for next year and the saga of Magnus Ditlev! For more information about MX Endurance: http://www.mxendurance.com   To sign up as a podcast member and get a whole bunch of benefits head to www.mxendurance.com/podcast    Apply for the MX Endurance Race Team: https://www.mxendurance.com/race-team    Or check MX Endurance out on Social Media:  Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TeamMaccax/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mxendurance  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mxendurance    For any questions, comments or suggestions send us an email at podcast@mxendurance.com      You can follow James at https://www.instagram.com/bale.james85    You can follow Tim at https://www.instagram.com/tford14    If you want the down low on the PTO then sign up for their mailing list: http://bit.ly/PTOMXEndurance 

It was a crazy weekend in sports Texas forgot how to play football, The Colts decided to play rock paper scissors, and the Chargers defense decided to take some PTO. What do all of these have in common.. other than we're going to get into them absolutely nothing. That's beside the point our special guest will show you what the point is let's go!!!!! Ignance in Baseball Big Trust!! Ignant Squid Games --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/ignant-university/support

We're back after a short break, and we'll be bringing you weekly interviews for a couple more months as we finish out the season before the new year. This week we're talking to the 5th place finisher at 70.3 Worlds, Canadian Jackson Laundry. Jackson had a horrific crash at Worlds in Nice two years ago, shattering his scapula, took six months to get back, and then COVID hit. He tells us all about why he almost quit the sport six years ago, what he's done to take things to this next level, and how he's getting ready for his first ever Ironman this weekend in Mallorca—and then getting married the weekend after. (Yes, we discuss how this could go wrong.) Jackson and host, Kelly O'Mara, also chat about the tachycardia they both have and the experience of having your heart rate go nuts while exercising—but a warning: both of them have seen extensive doctors for tests and diagnosis, if you're experiencing any issues, go to a doctor. We'll have that whole chat with Jackson after a debrief about the latest triathlon news with Laura Siddall. Sid is back for Sid Talks: the great Kona v. St. George debate, the races to keep your eye on at the end of the year here, and the year-end PTO rankings. This week's episode is brought to you by Muc-Off, the world's fastest race lube.

- VW Productivity Lags Behind Tesla- Battery Production in China Soars- GM Sees Dealers as Advantage in EV Race- Concern Over Raw Material Supply for EV Batteries in Europe- Tesla Signs Nickel Supply Deal- Bringing AI to the Shop Floor- Honda Shows Off New Jet Concept- ZF Creates All-In-One Solution for Commercial Vehicle PTOs

- VW Productivity Lags Behind Tesla - Battery Production in China Soars - GM Sees Dealers as Advantage in EV Race - Concern Over Raw Material Supply for EV Batteries in Europe - Tesla Signs Nickel Supply Deal - Bringing AI to the Shop Floor - Honda Shows Off New Jet Concept - ZF Creates All-In-One Solution for Commercial Vehicle PTOs

The 2021-22 NHL season is upon us! NHP takes a look at how the New York Islanders closed out the preseason in an overtime loss against the New York Rangers, the waiver/roster moves made in the last few days, and the new contracts handed out and filed by general manager Lou Lamoriello. Some notable Islanders players and prospects are headed to Bridgeport, how soon will some return? Erik Gustafsson was released from his PTO with the Islanders, was this the right move? What happened? Zdeno Chara and Zach Parise contracts have been revealed. The Islanders 23-man roster is finalized, or is it? Did the islanders accidentally leak their inaugural UBS Arena patch? Opening night vs. the Carolina Hurricanes preview. James and Jon's three must step up players, and their 2021-22 season projections. If you want 20% off + free shipping with Manscaped, go to Manscaped.com and use promo code NHP20 at checkout. #ad #manscapedpod. If you want to participate using the DraftKings Sportsbook app NOW, use promo code THPN and bet JUST ONE DOLLAR on any NFL game and win A HUNDRED DOLLARS in free bets if either team scores a point. Presented by The Hockey Podcast Network. Read James' work at thefourthperiod.com & Jon's work at thehockeywriters.com. Follow us on Twitter: @nassaumenhockey @jamesnicholsNYI @jonzella

Andy Beckett joins PTO to talk about the recent Conservative and Labour Party conferences and whether the supply chain and fuel crises might finally undermine support for Boris Johnson's government. We also chatted about why Keir Starmer seems to have made so little effort to make political capital out of the government's current difficulties.

Jeff and Elliotte discuss Bobby Ryan release from his PTO with the Detroit Red Wings, head coach Jon Cooper signing an extension with the Tampa Bay Lightning, what he's brought to the organization and his relationship with players (0:16). Then, they chat about the Vancouver Canucks trading Olli Juolevi to the Florida Panthers (10:00). Finally, […]

Dan Rogers is the CEO and Founder of Point to Point Transportation. In the 90s, Dan was working in the restaurant industry as a Burrito Roller. Eventually, he decided to work as a Salesperson for a Moving company for 6 years. In 2002, he bought the moving company from its owner and it became Point to Point Transportation. From being an ordinary moving company, Dan shifted Point to Point towards Corporate events, which proved to be a great success for the company. However, in 2020, the COVID19 pandemic became a huge blow to the transportation industry and Dan had to lay off 93% of their people. Currently, Dan is focusing on his new consulting business called Sales Sidekick, which helps companies level up their sales system. This Episode is Sponsored By: LinkedIn Jobs has made it easier to get candidates worth interviewing faster, and it's free. Create a free job post in minutes with LinkedIn Jobs to reach your network and beyond to the world's largest professional network of over 750 million people. Focus on candidates with skill and experience you need. Post your job for free at: millionaire-interviews.com/linkedin-jobs   Direct mail reinvented for the digital world by Postie. Postie has transformed direct mail by adding all the digital marketing capabilities found in channels like Facebook, Google, and YouTube. Postie allows you to run direct mail like a digital marketer, it is a one stop shop that does it all for you – build audiences, set up campaigns with ab test, approve creative, and track results in real time. Hurry and get your free Postie demo today by visiting: millionaire-interviews.com/postie   Justworks makes it easier for you to start, run, and grow a business. With Justworks, employees can onboard themselves in minutes with simple software that makes a great first impression. It provides access to national large group health insurance plans and handles payroll and PTO requests all in one platform. Plus, it comes with Justworks expert 24/7 support for you and your team. Find out how Justworks can help your business by going to: millionaire-interviews.com/justworks   When it comes to your next business read, you have options. You could pick up that trendy, buzzworthy business book or you could learn the timeless, buzzword free, lessons of a straightforward modern classic. I'm talking about Good Profit by Charles Cook, a CEO with real world track record of decade upon decade of actual exponential business growth. If you want the lessons from someone who has actually done it? Start by visiting: millionaire-interviews.com/goodprofitbook   Al in Texas listened to Ep 165: Charles Bonfiglio interview, which became his most favorite episode. He became a Patreon member because he wanted to listened to the second part of the Charles Bonfiglio interview. If you want to hear more interviews, become a Patreon member by going to: millionaire-interviews.com/patreon   Richard in Missouri listened to our first Patreon Group Call, which got him intrigued with some of our members. You can also be a part of our Group Call and One-on-One Calls by joining our Patreon community, just sign up at: millionaire-interviews.com/patreon       Want to Support the Show? Well we'd love for you to join our Patreon Group!  What's in it for you?  Well you'll instantly get a scheduled call from Austin, where he'll help you with your current or future business... Sign-Up Now at millionaire-interviews.com/patreon.

Domaine du Vieux Telegraphe "La Crau" Chateauneuf-du-Pape In this episode, Becky is off on PTO, so out of respect for her absence, Rob and Scott drink an everyday, ordinary, and basic grocery store wine in the 2003 Domaine du Vieux Telegraphe "La Crau" from the budget region of Chateauneuf-du-Pape in France.  So come join us!  

CALLUM MILLWARD: (00:19:17) We chat to Callum about his work with The Cupcake Cartel and how they're evolving to meet the changing landscape of triathlon racing. Memberships for 2022 now open at https://www.cupcakecartel.org/2022 HOT PROPERTY INTERVIEW: TAYLOR REID (00:39:04) We chat to Canadian pro triathlete Taylor Reid about his racing, his plans going forward and his relationship with FORM goggles. ONE STEP AHEAD: (01:11:15) Food additives. LINKS: More about MitoQ at https://www.mitoq.com/ Training Peaks discount at https://www.fitter.co.nz/about-radio More about INFINIT Nutrition at http://www.infinitnutrition.com/ 10% off INFINIT Nutrition at https://www.fitter.co.nz/about-radio More about Taylor Reid at http://www.taylor-reid.com/ FORM Goggles at https://www.formswim.com/ Clash Endurance Races at https://www.clash-usa.com/ More about the PTO at https://protriathletes.org/ More about the Cupcake Cartel at https://www.cupcakecartel.org/ Link to Challenge Wanaka voting at challenge-family.com/awards CONTACT US: Learn more about us at http://www.fitter.co.nz        Mikki Williden can be found at https://mikkiwilliden.com/

It's that time of year again! We are receiving a TON of questions about adding benefits to your group practice for your team members, and there are several factors that play in to adding benefits in successfully. Julie's talking through the 5 most common benefits added to group practices and which benefits could be a great fit for your business!*Disclaimer: We always recommend consulting with an employment attorney to make sure you are meeting all requirements of your state before implementing benefits for your employees.Episode Highlights:Continuing EducationThis is usually the first added benefit for many group practices.There are typically not a lot of restrictions for implementing.Continuing Education doesn't have to be expensive and can be capped at whatever amount you are comfortable with!Paid Time OffIt's easier to combine vacation and sick time into one category, but you can differentiate between the hours if you would like.Some states do require you to offer a certain amount of leave time based on an employee's status.Typically, you will see a set number of hours per year for each employee, or there can be an accrual based on the number of hours the employee has worked.RetirementThe cost to the employer is at a minimum the cost of managing the plan.There is usually an employer match, that isn't required, but is definitely a nice benefit for your team.Offering retirement benefits is a great recruiting tool and retention bonus.Health/Dental/Vision InsuranceThis can be an expensive benefit to add so a lot of times, smaller group practices don't tend to offer this up front.In most cases, you are not required to offer insurance to your part-time employees, but we still recommend consulting with any employment attorney.Short-Term/Long-Term Disability InsuranceThis is the least common benefit that we see in group practices. It still adds great value to your practice, but it is more common to see PTO or medical insurance.There are some states that still require employers to offer short and long term disability options to this employees so always consult with your attorney.Short term usually covers your employee for about 3-6 months, with a typical waiting period of about 14 days (all plans can vary). Long term usually can cover your employee from 2 years to a lifetime, with a waiting period of usually 3-6 months (again, plans can vary).Links & Resources:GreenOak AccountingTherapy For Your Money Podcast

Macca is back to talk us through one of the most anticipated races this year, Jan Frodeno v Gustav Iden later this month in California. Will Jan reclaim his world number 1 ranking? Will he break the official Ironman world record? Will he prove that he is still the benchmark of long distance racing? Or will we see the dawn of a new era with Gustav Iden proving why he is the world number 1?  It will be a big ask at his first ever IM distance event but whatever happens it is sure to be a race you won't want to miss! For more information about MX Endurance: http://www.mxendurance.com   To sign up as a podcast member and get a whole bunch of benefits head to www.mxendurance.com/podcast    Apply to be a 2022 MX Endurance Ambassador: https://mxendurance.com/APPLY   Or check MX Endurance out on Social Media:  Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TeamMaccax/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mxendurance  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mxendurance    For any questions, comments or suggestions send us an email at podcast@mxendurance.com      You can follow James at https://www.instagram.com/bale.james85    You can follow Tim at https://www.instagram.com/tford14    If you want the down low on the PTO then sign up for their mailing list: http://bit.ly/PTOMXEndurance   

James and Jon did their homework starting the All or Nothing: Toronto Maple Leafs Docuseries (00:00). Preseason is coming to a close with just two games left before the regular season. NHP sums up their thoughts on the New York Islanders captain, Anders Lee, returning to in-game action (22:00), the top-6 forwards that are likely headed into the regular season (23:15), Barry Trotz's thoughts on the Isles first line (25:05), Oliver Wahlstrom's subpar training camp (30:40), is Erik Gustafsson close to winning a contract on his PTO (35:55)? Chara and Dobson working well together (47:45), Matt Martin nearing a return to health (51:33), and Semyon Varlamov's questionable status for the start of the season (52:15). PLUS, NHP takes a trip around the rink to discuss an ongoing issue in the UHL (58:33), Robin Lehner's comments via Twitter (1:04:18), and the Jack Eichel situation may finally have a conclusion. This and more in episode 80. If you want 20% off + free shipping with Manscaped, go to Manscaped.com and use promo code NHP20 at checkout. #ad #manscapedpod. If you want to participate using the DraftKings Sportsbook app NOW, use promo code THPN and throw down one dollar on any hockey game, and win A HUNDRED DOLLARS IN FREE BETS if either team scores a goal. Presented by The Hockey Podcast Network. Read James' work at thefourthperiod.com & Jon's work at thehockeywriters.com. Follow us on Twitter: @nassaumenhockey @jamesnicholsNYI @jonzella

The Ducks FINALLY did something about their defense by signing... Ben Hutton to a PTO? JD explains why that might not be the worst move the Ducks could make right now. Plus, which players are still in camp, who will be the four starting centers for the Ducks? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How are you handling parental leave? In the past, employers often relied on state or federal benefits when offering parental leave to employees. Now, many industries are going above and beyond. On this episode of POPS!, Zenefits Senior HR Advisor Lora Patterson breaks down the ways you can utilize state and federal benefits, and how you might consider using them to bolster your own benefits for your employees. Additional Resources: Order your copy of our book People Operations: Zenefits.com/pops-book Follow the podcast  On this episode, you'll hear:  [01:22] The state and federal leave benefits available to new parents [03:12] What to consider if you have employees in different states [04:20] Who should be eligible? [05:42] How are you going to sustain operations while employees are on leave? [08:10] Can employees use PTO while on parental leave? [09:41] How should employees request leave?

Amia Srinivasan joins PTO to talk about her new book, The Right to Sex. We spoke about whether it's legitimate to interrogate our sexual desires and to think about how desire is shaped by patriarchy, racism, capitalism, and heteronormativity. We also talked about why Amia takes the case of so-called incels as the way into discussing those questions. Finally, we considered the anti-pornography critique of Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, and whether their work can be generative in spite of its obvious drawbacks and failings.

Does anyone else feel like motherhood has become an unrealistic juggling act even more than normal over the last several years?Honestly, between school and sports, Pinterest parties, PTO, snack, field trips, and trying to actually manage work and home, and then adding a pandemic on top of that, it's no wonder we are all losing our minds!Today, we are talking all about the struggles that come along with modern day parenting. And while the list of expectations seems to be never-ending, the reality is that at the end of the day, we get to choose how we do this parenting thing. And we get to say “no” to things that are no longer serving us and our families.If you're feeling completely overwhelmed, we get it, but it's time to take a step back and reprioritize what gets to fit in your life. If you need some encouragement on how to get there, this episode is a great place to start. It's true, this motherhood journey is chaotic, but it doesn't have to be miserable. Moms are what make the world go round, so it's time we start taking our worlds back!Episode Highlights: Brad raves about his drink choice of the night and it might just tempt you to start drinking non-alcoholic beer. ;)The challenges parents are facing today.Why the juggling act of parenting is a lot more than it used to be.Michelle and Brad discuss what they think life might look like with baby Smith #3.The importance of getting honest with yourself and finding balanceLinks Mentioned in Episode/Find More on The Whole Smiths:Use the Code GETWELLTHY on Amazon for 20% off ZoupZoup InstagramLOVEVERY Order my new cookbook HERE!IG: @thewholesmithsIG: @getwellthypodcasthttps://www.thewholesmiths.com/

Podcast Episode 95

Well, you commit to something. Something that helps keep a very manageable amount of your energy directed toward making a difference. I'll also share how I came to be secretary of the PTO--and why I'm so glad I did, despite the meetings.

No you did not misread, that is not a typo! The new PTO rankings are out and Jan Frodeno and Daniela Ryf have lost their spot at the top of the rankings. We talk all about the changes to the world rankings and what might happen for the rest of the year. We also look at the action from Ironman Chattanooga where there was domination from Joe Skipper and Skye Moench. We wrap up all the action for the 2021 Super League Triathlon Championship Series and talk about the changes to some World Championship events. For more information about MX Endurance: http://www.mxendurance.com   To sign up as a podcast member and get a whole bunch of benefits head to www.mxendurance.com/podcast    Sign up for our women's specific training program: https://www.mxendurance.com/membership/womens-group-training-plan    Or check MX Endurance out on Social Media:  Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TeamMaccax/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mxendurance  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mxendurance    For any questions, comments or suggestions send us an email at podcast@mxendurance.com      You can follow James at https://www.instagram.com/bale.james85    You can follow Tim at https://www.instagram.com/tford14    If you want the down low on the PTO then sign up for their mailing list: http://bit.ly/PTOMXEndurance 

Awadd's IG videos make Valdez self-conscious of his yellow teeth.  Drab admits he misses Valdez when he's on vacation, but vows to audit his PTO in 2022.  Everyone plays armchair Psychiatrist and analyzes EB's hatred of his personal success and readiness to die.  Plus, Adam's attempt to be funny at the end of the show could cause awkwardness next time he sees Lurch. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

TRIGGER WARNING: Domestic Violence, Abuse, Interpersonal Safety 01:26 - Eva's Superpower: ADHD and Hyperfocus * Workplace Accommodation * At-Will Employment (https://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/at-will-employment-overview.aspx) 08:19 - Design for Safety (https://abookapart.com/products/design-for-safety) * Tech Used For Interpersonal Harm * Might vs When * Eva Penzey Moog | Designing Against Domestic Violence (https://vimeo.com/373462514) * Weaponizing Technology 12:45 - What Engineers Need to Know * Control/Shared Accounts * Surveillance * Location Data 15:02 - Expanding Our Understanding of What “User” Means * “User as an abstraction.” 20:43 - Parallels with Security * Personas / Archetypes * Adding Layers of Friction * Ongoing Arms Race 22:23 - Spreading Awareness Across Teams Focused on Feature Delivery * Safety Designers as a Specialized Role? * Generalists vs Specialists; Literacy vs Fluency * This Book Is For Everyone: Engineers, Designers, Product Managers, etc. 31:38 - Thinking Beyond The User * Constituency * Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need By Sasha Costanza-Chock (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/design-justice) 35:25 - Traditional Design Thinking Protects White Supremacy * We Prioritize The Safety of Marginalized People Over the Comfort of Unmarginalized People * How Design Thinking Protects White Supremacy (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-design-thinking-protects-white-supremacy-tickets-168123071633) (Workshop) * Kim Crayton (https://www.kimcrayton.com/): Intention Without Strategy is Chaos * Sitting with Discomfort 40:21 - Putting Ergonomics, Safety, and Security Behind Paywalls * “Ergonomics is the marriage of design and ethics.” * The History of Seatbelts (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEQ6AojkEeo) * Government Regulation * Worker Organizing 45:58 - Tech Workers and Privilege * Overpaid/Underpaid Reflections: Mandy: Inclusive and accessible technology includes people experiencing domestic abuse. Damien: If a product can be used for harm, it will be. Coraline: How systems are weaponized against marginalized and vulnerable folks. The internet is good for connecting people with shared experiences but we're breaking into smaller and smaller groups. Are we propping up systems by taking a narrow view based on our own experiences? Eva: Who didn't teach you about this? It's our job to keep ourselves safe in tech. Tech companies need to take more responsibility for user safety. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Transcript: MANDY: Welcome to Greater Than Code, Episode number 252. My name is Mandy Moore and today, I'm here with Damien Burke. DAMIEN: Hi, and I am here with Coraline Ada Ehmke. CORALINE: Wow. I actually showed up for once. [laughs] I'm very happy to be with y'all today and I'm very excited about the guest that we have today. Her name is Eva PenzeyMoog and Eva is a principal designer at 8th Light and the author of Design for Safety. Before joining the tech field, she worked in the non-profit space and volunteered as a domestic violence educator and rape crisis counselor. At 8th Light, she specializes in user experience design as well as education and consulting in the realm of digital safety design. Her work brings together her expertise in domestic violence and technology, helping technologists understand how their creations facilitate interpersonal harm and how to prevent it through intentionally prioritizing the most vulnerable users. Eva, I'm so happy to have you here today. Hi! EVA: Hi, thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. CORALINE: So if I recall correctly and it has been a while so Mandy, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we open with the same question that we've been opening with for 251 other episodes and Eva, that is, what is your superpower and how did you discover, or develop it? EVA: Yeah, so my superpower is my ADHD, actually [chuckles] and specifically my ability to hyperfocus and I didn't really acquire and start to until the age of 25, which is when I was diagnosed. For people who don't know, hyperfocus is basically exactly what it sounds like. It's a state of very intense focus that people with ADHD will sometimes go into. It's not something you really have control over, it's not something you can just turn on, or off, and it isn't necessarily good, or bad. But for me, I'm really lucky because it often gets triggered when I start to code. So as I was starting to learn code and then I switched over to focusing on design and frontend like CSS and SAAS. But as I was learning that stuff, it gets triggered all the time. So I can sit down and code and oftentimes, hours have gone past and so long as I don't like miss any meetings or forget to eat, it's totally a superpower. CORALINE: That's amazing. I've talked about before, I live with bipolar disorder and I tend to stay in a low-grade manic state as my resting place and I experience very similar things with that hyper focus and just losing hours on a task and sometimes, it's very positive and I get a lot done and sometimes, I'm like, “What the hell did I do?” [chuckles] EVA: Right. CORALINE: But I think it's great that—I've been talking to some other folks with ADHD, with bipolar—the judo moves we can do takes something that really negatively affects us in a lot of ways and finding a way to turn it around, like you said, and use it as a superpower. Those are the strategies we develop when we live with things like this and I'm always happy when people have figured out how to get something good out of that. EVA: Yeah, totally and realizing that you have this thing that happens. Because I'm sure it's been happening my whole life, but I didn't recognize it, or understand it and then just being able to name it and see that it's happening is so powerful. And then to be like, “Oh, I can maybe do certain things to try to get into it,” or just being aware that it's a thing it's like very powerful. CORALINE: I'm kind of curious, Eva, if you don't mind us talking about ADHD for a little while? EVA: Sure. Yeah. CORALINE: Okay. I have a friend who is – actually, a couple of friends who were very recently diagnosed with ADHD and they had so much trouble in the traditional tech were workplace, especially working for companies that have productivity metrics like lines of code, or number of commits, or something like that. It was really difficult for both of these friends to operate in an environment where you're expected to have very consistent output day over day and not having accommodation, or not having the ability to design their work in such a way that maximizes the positives of how they work and minimizes the negatives of how they work. Is that something you've struggled with as well? EVA: Yeah, and that's so unfortunate that your friends because like I said, I feel like it is a superpower and most workplaces, they should be trying to harness it and understand that, you can have really, really awesome employees with ADHD. If you set them up for success, they can be so successful. But it is something – so I've only ever worked at 8th Light actually, when I was interviewing, over 5 years ago now, and started doing, trying to find my first job in tech, after doing a bootcamp, I interviewed at a couple different places and none of them felt super great. But obviously, I was just really eager to get my first job. But then I went into 8th Light and 8th Light was one of the places where I really, really did want to work there and was really excited for the interview. But when I got to the office, it was very quiet and there was an open workspace, but people were working very quietly and there were like lots of rooms. I got into that and I was like, “Oh, thank God” like, this is exactly the space I need. I can't handle too much activity. I can't handle offices where they're actually playing music; that type of thing is my nightmare and I don't actually like wearing headphones all day like that. That's not just a easy fix for me and for a lot of people with ADHD. So I felt like right away, now I want to work here even more and I've been really lucky that it's been a really good setup for someone like me to work and I have gotten some accommodations which has been good. I feel like if you don't give accommodations, they're breaking the law, they need to do that. DAMIEN: This is really, really validating because I've had similar experiences of that. Even just this morning where I was in the code and I had no idea how much time was going by and I had no awareness of anything else. That's possible because of the environment I have that I work in. Whereas, previous jobs I've had with bullpens and just open office plans, I was in incredibly miserable there and I didn't understand how people could get any work done in those environments. So just this understanding of how people are different; in what environments some people thrive in and other environments other people thrive in. EVA: Yeah. So have you always worked from home, or has this been a pandemic thing? DAMIEN: This has been probably about 10 years. Yeah. [laughs] I went home and never left. [laughs] EVA: Nice. [chuckles] CORALINE: I've done something very similar. I started working from home, I think in 2015 and not for a great reason, but I found the exact same thing that you're talking about. Like I am very sensitive to my environment. I use music to control my mood and like you, Eva, I hate headphones. So I do wonder, you mentioned accommodations and the legal perspective on that. In Illinois where – Eva, you live in Illinois, too. Are you local for 8th Light? EVA: Yeah. I live in Chicago. CORALINE: We have that will employment and it's really easy to discriminate against folks on multiple axes rather than providing our accommodations. Without will employment, they can just let you go and you have no proof that it was because they're ableist, or racist or transphobic, or whatever. EVA: Oh, yeah. That's so rough. Pritzker's got to get on that. Our governor. [chuckles] CORALINE: So do you want to tell us a little bit about the book that you just wrote? I understand a lot of people are finding a lot of value in it and really opening their eyes to a lot of maybe issues they weren't aware of. EVA: Yeah. So my book, Design for Safety, came out in early August and it's been really great to see people's reactions to it. I got my first formal book review, which was really cool and it was overall very positive, which has been very exciting. I'm hopeful that it is helping people understand that this is a thing because it's different, I feel like than a lot of other problems. Someone else explained this to me recently and I had this light bulb moment that I'm not providing a solution to a problem that people know that they have this problem, like how their tech is used for interpersonal harm and now I have a solution like, here's this book that's going to tell you how to fix it. It's more that people don't even know that this is a problem. So I'm educating on that as well as trying to give some of the solutions on how to fix it. It has been a lot of people just saying like, “I had no idea about any of this. It's been so eye-opening and now I'm going to think about it more and do these different things.” So that's been really great to see that just people's awareness is going up, basically. MANDY: I really like on the website, the sentence that there's a pullout quote, or I'm not sure if it's even a pullout quote, but it says, “If abuse is possible, it's only a matter of time until it happens. There's no might, so let's build better, safer digital products from the start.” I like that. EVA: Yeah, thanks. I was very intentional and well, this goes back to when I was doing a conference talk. Before I wrote the book, I did a conference talk called Designing Against Domestic Violence and I thought a lot about the type of language should I use; should I say might happen, or should I say will happen? I eventually settled on it's going to happen even if it hasn't happened yet, or oftentimes, I think we just don't know that it's happened. People who have gone through domestic violence, some of then we'll talk openly about it. But most people just don't, which makes sense. It's this really intense, personal thing to go through and there's so much judgment and survivors get blamed for all these things. So it makes sense that people don't want to talk that much about it. I ended up thinking we just need to say that it will happen. DAMIEN: That's amazing. So I really want to know everything about this book. [chuckles] but to start with, you said the book is designing for safety and you witnessed this a little bit with domestic violence, violence and abuse. Can you talk about safe from what sort of things you mean when you say safety there? EVA: Yeah, for sure because I know safety is a big word that can mean a lot of different things. But the way that I'm talking about it in my work is in terms of interpersonal safety. So it's like how is someone who has a relationship with you in an interpersonal way going to use technology, weaponized technology, in a way that was not meant to be used? We aren't designing tech with these use cases in mind, but how is it ultimately going to be weaponized for some type of abuse? Domestic violence is really the emphasis and my big focus and was mentioned in the intro, some background in domestic violence space. But there's also issues with child abuse and elder abuse, especially in terms of surveillance of those groups as well as surveillance of workers is another thing that came up a lot as I was researching that I didn't get as much into in the book. But it's basically anytime there's an interpersonal relationship and someone has access to you in this personal way where you're not just an anonymous stranger, how is tech going to be used to exert some form of control, or abuse over that person? DAMIEN: Wow, that is a very important subject. So I'm an engineer who doesn't have a lot of knowledge about interpersonal violence, domestic abuse, anything of that nature and I know you've written a whole book [laughs] and we only have an hour, or so here, but what are the first things that people, or engineers need to know about this? EVA: Yeah, so I think the first thing is to understand that this is a problem and that it's happening and to go through some different examples of how this happens, which is what the first couple chapters of the book are all about. It's different forms of this interpersonal abuse via technology in the form of shared accounts is a really big one and this question of who has control and nebulous issues of control. There's also surveillance is a really big one and then location data as well. So I guess, I don't want to say like, “Oh, just read the book,” but learning a little bit about the different – there's so many different examples of how this works. Just to start to build that mental model of how this happens like, someone taking advantage of certain affordances within a shared bank account software, or someone using an internet of things device to gaslight someone, or torment them. There's so many different examples. Location data shows up in all sorts of really sneaky in terms of stalking. It's not purely putting a tracker on someone's car, or even like Google Map and sharing your location is a more straightforward thing. But there's also, it shows up in other ways like, a grocery store app that has a timestamp and location. You can learn someone's grocery shopping habits and maybe you're estranged from this person, or they've left you because you're abusive, but they don't know that their stuff is showing up in this app and their location data. So it shows up in all sorts of different ways. This is a very long way to answer your question, but I think the first thing is to start to understand how this stuff works so that you're just aware of it and then from there, I have a whole chapter about how to implement a practice of designing for safety at your company. It is a little more design focused, but I think engineers can absolutely be doing this work, too. Even if it's just like quick research on how are any product with any type of message feature is going to be used for abuse and there's lots of literature out there. So just looking at some articles, thinking about ways that aren't covered already, that just having a brainstorm about what are some new ways this might be used for abuse and then thinking about how to prevent them. CORALINE: One of the things that I was thinking about after reading your book, Eva, is at a metal level, or zooming out a bit. I think a lot of the ways that we design software, we have this idealized and homogenous notion of a user. I think that in a lot of cases, especially if you're working on a project that's like more, or less one of those scratch your own itch problems, you tend to think of yourself as the user. It's great to have that empathy for the end user, but what we don't have, I don't think as a field, is an understanding that user is an abstraction and it is a useful abstraction. But sometimes you need to zoom down a little bit and understand the different ways that people want to use the software and will use the software and what makes them different from this average idealized user. That was one of the things that really struck me, especially from the process you were describing, is expanding our understanding of what user means and anticipating the different use cases with hostile users, with actively abusive users, and I think thinking of abstraction is super helpful, but I feel like sometimes we need to zoom down and think differently about really who the people are and what their circumstances might be. EVA: Yeah. Oh man, I just wrote down what you said, user is an abstraction. That's such a good way to think about it that I haven't heard before, but you're absolutely right that it's encapsulating such a big group of people. Even if for a small product, something that's not like Twitter that's open to billions of people, even something that's a subscription, or something that's going to have a smaller user base. There's going to be such a diverse, different group within there and to just think of the term user as a catchall is definitely problematic. Sorry, I'm just processing that user is an abstraction, that term because we use it so much as designers, definitely. CORALINE: Yeah. EVA: And anyone in tech is always using this term, but problematizing that term in a new way is really interesting to me. And I think my other thought about this is that we talk a lot about needing to think about more than just happy path and I feel like even that, at least in my experience, has been other things that are also very important where it's like, let's think about someone who has a crappy Wi-Fi connection, or someone who's low vision. Like there are all these other very important things to think about in terms of accessibility and inclusivity. I think I see what I'm doing as just adding another group into the mix of let's think about people who are currently surviving domestic violence, which is maybe a little bit harder to bring up than those other two that I mentioned because it's just so dark and it's something that we just don't want to have to think about, or talk about during work. It's just such a bummer, but it is really important to have this new group added when we're thinking about inclusive and accessible tech. DAMIEN: There's a really great parallel here, I think with security minded design and research. Again, that's another user who is not behaving in the happy path. That's not behaving the way your normal users are behaving and you have to design your system in such a way to be resilient to that. So I love this user as an abstraction, then breaking it down into all these ways and then also, there's a huge value to diversity in your team with this sort of thing. CORALINE: Absolutely. DAMIEN: You can understand the very different types of users having people on the team who can understand blackhat users who are going to be trying to use your servers to mine Bitcoin, or [laughs] blind users, low vision users, or colorblind users, for goodness' sake. And then in addition to that, people again, who are experiencing domestic violence, other to terms of other forms of interpersonal abuse and just being able to understand all those users and their experiences with the things you're building and designing. EVA: Yeah, definitely those are all really good points. Just going back to what you said about the parallels with security is something I've actually been thinking about that a lot, because I think there are lots of parallels to that, or useful things about how security professionals think about their work and operate. Especially the big one for me right now is thinking about a security professional. They're never going to be like, “Okay, we did it. Our system is secure. We're done. We have arrived.” That's not a thing and I feel like it's very similar with designing for safety, or even inclusion. There's just, you're never – I feel like we've had a mental model of “I can think about these things, I can check these boxes, and now, my product is inclusive, or my product is accessible.” I feel like we should be thinking more like security professionals where there's always going to be more things like, we always have to be vigilant about what's the next way that someone's going to misuse tech, or the group that's going to be identified that we've totally left out and is being harmed in some way. So I think that's just a useful shift that I'm thinking a lot about. CORALINE: And Damien, I'm so glad you brought up the parallels with security. I was actually going there as well. One of the things that I've been thinking about from an ethical source perspective is insecurity that, I think two tools that would be super useful. First of all, personas and secondly—I guess, three things—understanding that safety can be a matter of adding layers of friction to disincentivize abusive behavior and like you said, recognizing this is an ongoing arms race. Every new feature that you design opens up some kind of attack, or abuse factor and if you're not planning for that from the outset, you're going to be caught later when harm has been done. EVA: Yeah, absolutely. Since you brought up personas, there is something in the process that I created that's a similar tool where I call them archetypes because they're a little different from personas. But it's identifying who is the abuser in this scenario, who is the survivor, and what are their goals and that's basically it, we don't need to get into anything else. I don't think, but just articulating those things and then even having a little printout, kind of similar to the idea with personas like, oh, you can print them out for your sales team, or whoever it is to keep these people in mind. A similar idea of just having them printed out an on your wall so that it's something that you're thinking about like, “Oh, we have this new feature. We probably need to think about how is this abuser person that we've identified who would want to use our product to find the location data of their former partner,” whatever it is. CORALINE: Yeah. EVA: Use this. CORALINE: From a mechanical perspective, Eva, one of the one of the challenges I had at GitHub when I was working on community and safety is that the other engineers and the other groups were creating so many new features. I felt like the knowledge about how feature can be abused, or like you said, will be abused wasn't spread very effectively throughout, especially a large software organization, and it fell on a small team of folks who frankly were not consulted. A feature would go out and we'd be like, “Holy crap, you can't do that because of this, this, and this.” So do you have any do you have any thoughts? I know you said print it out, or put it on the wall, but do you have any thoughts for how to spread that awareness and that mode of thinking across teams who frankly may be very, very focused just on feature delivery and will see any consideration like that as slowing them down, or having negative impact on “productivity”? EVA: Yes. I have many thoughts. [chuckles] So this is bringing up something for me that I've struggled with and thought about is should there be specialized teams in this area? I feel like yes, we want people with special knowledge and experts and that's really important, but also, I feel like the ideal scenario is that it's just everyone's job. CORALINE: Yeah. EVA: Those teams were already doing things and it wasn't seen as “Oh, Coraline's team is going to come in and now we have to consult with those people,” or whatever because it's not our job, it's their job. CORALINE: Yeah. EVA: Which this isn't a very maybe satisfying answer to your question because I feel like it involves a huge shift in the way that we think about this stuff, but it is something I've thought about in terms of should I call myself a safety designer? Is that something I want to do? Do I want this to be like a specialized role? Maybe is that a goal where people start to see that? Because there are people who specialize in inclusive design, or accessible design. But then the downside of that is does that just give someone else even more leeway to be like, “Not my job, I don't have to worry about this. And then we have the problems, like what you just described. I don't know, I feel like it's such a big shift that needs to happen. CORALINE: Yeah. One of the models I've been thinking about and I was thinking of this in terms of generalists versus specialists is generalists, or to map that to domain that we're talking about now, the other engineers in your group, or in your company. I feel like there has to be a balance between specialization and general knowledge. The way I describe that is everyone should have literacy on a particular topic and the basic vocabulary for it and a general knowledge of the concepts augmented by a specialist who has fluency. So kind of a dynamic relationship between literacy and fluency. Do you have any thoughts on that? EVA: I love that. I'm literally writing that down. A generalist with literacy and a specialist with fluency is such a good way to think about it because I feel like I do say this. I don't want people who read my book, or see my talk to think like, “Oh, I have to be like her, I have to learn all this stuff. I have to really dig into domestic violence works and what it means and laws.” I don't want people to feel like they have to do that because it's just such a dark, heartbreaking thing to have to think and read about every day and I don't think that's a realistic goal. But I think being a generalist with literacy is realistic augmented by specialist with fluency; I'm just like basically repeating what you just said. [chuckles] But that's just a really brilliant way to think about it. DAMIEN: That pattern actually really matches something that I learned from another Greater Than Code guest. I'm sorry, I can't remember their name right now. I believe we were talking about inclusivity and what they said was like, “It's not the expert's job to make the product, or the company inclusive. [chuckles] It's the expert job to support – it's everybody's job to make it inclusive. It's the expert's job to be an expert and to support them.” We also use again, a metaphor from security. We don't have security experts whose job it is to make your app secure, we have security experts whose job it is to support everybody in keeping your app secure. CORALINE: Yeah. DAMIEN: So I feel like that this matches really well. The job of the person with this expertise is to support, to educate, to guide not because they can't do all the work together all themselves, like Coraline said. There's just too many features being added for [laughs] for some team somewhere to go, “Oh no, this is fine,” or “That's not fine.” EVA: Yeah, totally, and I feel like that just brought up something for me, Damien, about the speed at which we work, too many features being added, not enough time to actually do this work, and how—this is getting at just way bigger critique of tech in general. DAMIEN: Yeah. EVA: But it's okay to slow down once in a while. I feel like just the urgency thing causes so many problems outside of just what we're talking about. But this is another big one that I feel like it's okay to spend an afternoon thinking through what are the ways this is going to be not inclusive, or unsafe and that's totally fine. But I fall into it, too where I'm like, “I want to deliver things quickly for my client,” or if I'm doing so internal for a flight, I want to get done quickly. I don't want to hold people up. So it is a really hard thing to break out of. CORALINE: It seems to me, Eva, that this kind of knowledge, or this kind of literacy, or this kind of making it part of the process can fall solely on engineers. Because in a lot of places, we have of product managers who are setting deadlines for us. How do you communicate to them why this work is so important when they may only see it as like, “Well, you're getting in the way of us hitting a release date and we have a press release ready,” or “We want our debut this feature at a particular time, or place”? MANDY: And now we want to take a quick time out to recognize one of our sponsors: Kaspersky Labs: Rarely does a day pass where a ransomware attack, data breach, or state sponsored espionage hits the news. It's hard to keep up, or know if you're protected. Don't worry, Kaspersky's got you covered. Each week, their team discusses the latest news and trends that you may have missed during the week on the Transatlantic Cable Podcast mixing in humor, facts and experts from around the world. The Transatlantic Cable Podcast can be found on Apple Podcasts & Spotify, go check it out! EVA: Yeah, totally. So I think ideally, this comes from everyone. My book is called Design for Safety, but I really hope that people are reading it, who are also engineers and who are also project managers—basically anyone who has a say in how the product is actually going to function, I think should be doing this work. But specifically, if you have a project manager who is rushing everyone and saying, “We don't have time for this,” I do have a couple different strategies in my book about this, where it's like we can use statistics to talk about that this is a thing that is impacting a lot of our users. It's 1 in 3 women, 1 and 4 men in the US have experienced severe physical, domestic violence and that's just severe physical, domestic violence. There's so much domestic violence that doesn't have a physical component to it so that could be like a third of our user base. So bringing stuff up like that to try to get some buy-in, but then also my process, I have little time estimate. CORALINE: Yeah. EVA: So saying like, “We want to do research; it's going to be 6 hours.” “We want to do a brainstorm; it's going to be 2 hours.” Giving people very specific things that they can say yes to is always going to be better than just an open-ended, “We want to design for safety.” CORALINE: Yeah. EVA: And someone being like, “I don't know what that means, but we have a deadline.” Saying like, “We're going to do a brainstorm to identify ways that our product will be used for harm. We want to do it next week and we want to spend 4 hours on it” is going to be a lot better. DAMIEN: And I want to call out how important and useful the language you use there was you said because when you find something, when you do that brainstorm, or whatever analysis process, you go like, “Oh, here's the way our products will be used for harm.” Because if you say to a product manager, “Here's a way our product might be used for harm,” they go, “Well, okay.” [laughs] “Might not be.” [laughs] If you say, “Here's a way our product will be used for harm.” Well, now that leaves a lot less of wiggle room. EVA: Hmm, yeah. That's a really good point that I actually hadn't thought about. I think the other thing is there's tangible outcomes from something like that brainstorm, or these different activities that I have outlined. You can actually show the person, like, “Here's what we did. Here's what we came up with,” which isn't necessarily – I wish we didn't have to always do that; always have some type of very explicit outcome from everything we do. But I do think that's a reality that we have that this process kind of helps with. CORALINE: I want to go back to the user thing. Again, one of the things that we're thinking about our ethical source is thinking beyond the user and thinking about not just who is using the technology that we're creating, but the people that the technology we're creating is being used on. EVA: Yes. That's such a good point. I'm actually curious, have you come up with a term for that type of user? Like nonuser? CORALINE: I have not yet, but that's a great call out. Language is so important so, yeah. EVA: Yeah. I don't know that it exists and I've seen nonuser, but I don't know that that's agreed upon. DAMIEN: I've gotten as far, the best I've come up with is constituency. CORALINE: That is very interesting, Damien because one of the things we're developing is a governance tool. The W3C, when they were working on the HTML standard—this was a couple of years ago, I think—they mentioned something called a priority of constituent and this was very much from a standards body perspective, but it was one sentence and I think it is such a powerful sentence. Just for their example, they said, “In times of conflict, we prioritize end users over developers, over browser manufacturers, over spec writers, over technical purity.” [laughter] EVA: Wow. CORALINE: That's one sentence, but writing that down, I think can really help cut through a lot of a lot of the noise and a lot of the gray area maybe that's the most encountered. It's so simple and you can do it in a single sentence. So absolutely, the notion of constituencies and being explicit about whose safety, convenience, or what have you you're optimizing for. EVA: Yeah. That's really important and I have two thoughts. One is that this comes up a lot in the surveillance space where it's like, what sort of rights, or priority should we be giving someone who is walking on the sidewalk in front of a house that has a Ring camera that's facing out to capture the porch, but is ultimately capturing the sidewalk in the street? What are the rights of that person, that nonuser, who has not agreed to be filmed and isn't part of this product's ecosystem, but is still being impacted by it? It's something I think about a lot, especially there's so many in my neighborhood I see. Since I wrote the book, I see the Ring cameras everywhere, including in places where they're not really to be like on the outside of someone's gate, just facing the sidewalk. It's like, you're not even recording your own property at that point. It's just the gate, or it's just the sidewalk, I mean, which I feel is very problematic. You also said that it's important to explicitly call out who you're prioritizing and that's something – I read this book called Design Justice by Sasha Costanza-Chock, which was very lifechanging and it's just such a good book. It's a little more theoretical. She explicitly says it's not a guide, but she talks about this, about how it's really important to, if you are going to choose not to be inclusive, or safe, or justice focused, whatever it is, you need to explicitly say, “We are choosing to prioritize the comfort of this group over the safety of this group. CORALINE: Yeah. EVA: Or whatever it is. Like, you need to actually just spell that out and be upfront about it. DAMIEN: Yeah. It reminds me of, I think I learned this from Marla Compton. Although, I don't know if she originated it. I guess, she probably didn't, but the phrase she taught me was, “We prioritize the safety of marginalized people over the comfort of non-marginalized people.” It's such a powerful statement. CORALINE: It really is. DAMIEN: Yeah, and just making that explicit like, “These are the tradeoffs and these are where we side on them.” CORALINE: Yeah. EVA: Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's such a good one. I did this workshop recently, it's called How Traditional Design Thinking Protects White Supremacy, but they talked a lot about how feeling entitled to comfort is just such a white supremacist thing and I feel shows up in different forms of oppression as well like men's comfort, et cetera. But that's something I've been thinking about a lot is the feeling of a right to comfort and how that also includes a right to not have to have any type of conflict and a fear of conflict. How these things all play together and how it's all part of white supremacy and how it shows up in our culture, in our workplaces. It was a great workshop. I would highly recommend it because it's also been a lifechanging thing as I digest all of the different things from it. DAMIEN: It's so powerful to name that as comfort. CORALINE: Yeah. DAMIEN: Like, this is what we're protecting. We're protecting these people's comfort [chuckles] and this is what it will cost. CORALINE: I think about what Kim Crayton said for a year is, “Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.” EVA: Yeah, that's such a good one. I love her. CORALINE: Yeah. EVA: I quoted her in my book about, oh, I forget what it is. It's something about not having strategy is chaos. CORALINE: Oh my God. EVA: Like, the need for strategy. CORALINE: I learned so much from her from that one statement. That was literally lifechanging for me. That was literally lifechanging for me because I always had a negative feeling about strategy, like strategy is coercive, or insincere. And then another friend of mine I was talking to about it said strategy is good when it's not a zero-sum game. EVA: Mm. CORALINE: I think we maybe we can think about personal safety and abuse factors in that way. EVA: Yeah, definitely. I think the full quote is “Intention without strategy is chaos.” CORALINE: Yeah, that. EVA: That has been very definitely influential for me and as I feel like a big part of the reason, that idea is why I wrote my book and did my conference talk is because I was feeling frustrated with – it's a lot easier to raise awareness about an issue than it is to have actual strategies for fixing it. I felt like I would always get really fired up reading something, or listening to a talk and be like, “Yeah, this is such a huge problem. We need to fix it,” and then didn't have a takeaway, or anything that I could really do at work other than just being told to think about this, or consider this, which I'm like, “When do I do that?” CORALINE: And what does that look like? EVA: Yeah, you can't think about all of the different things we need to think about from 9:00 to 5:00 while we're at work every day. We need a strategy to do that, which is why I like made these different activities that I have in my process. But going back to this white supremacy and design workshop that I did, I also learned in there about how some other ways that white supremacy shows up is having an action bias and a sense of urgency. CORALINE: Yeah. EVA: And how a lot of that can come from people, especially white people, not being able to like sit with discomfort when we're faced with really uncomfortable topics and a desire to jump into action before we fully understand the problem and have internalized it. So now I'm feeling like I need to backtrack a little bit and be like, “Yes, provide action.” But also, it is good to do deep learning. I think we need both, but I feel like a lot of people, it's one, or the other. Let's do a ton of learning, or let's jump right into action. I have always been a jump right into action person and now I'm realizing it's okay to take a beat and do some deep learning and to sit with all the discomfort of the heavy topic. CORALINE: A friend of mine gave me a concept that I like a lot. He has a definition of ergonomics that is the marriage of design and ethics. When I use the term ergonomics in that sense, what I mean is how easy is it to do a particular action. One of the things that I see quite a bit—something, I think is a terrible consequence of the web, frankly—is putting ergonomics behind paywalls and asking people who use our software to yield some degree of agency, or digital autonomy, or security in exchange for features. EVA: Hmm. So interesting. CORALINE: So I'm curious maybe how you would frame designing for safety, some of the other axes of oppression that we discussed on the show today, from the perspective of the ethical aspect of our design decisions. What workflows are we optimizing for? What workflows are we putting behind a paywall, or in exchange for okay, you're signing up. The [inaudible] says you're buying into surveillance capitalism and you just simply have to do that if you want an email account, if you want a Twitter account, what have you. EVA: Yeah. I do feel like there is a bit of an issue with putting safety and security sometimes behind a paywall where you can literally pay more to not get advertised to, for example. CORALINE: Yeah. EVA: Which it's like, I get that products have to charge money and it's like we shouldn't – the flipside of that is well, we can't just work for free. I see that a lot with journalism when people are criticizing paywalls and it's like well, but journalists have to get paid. They can't work for free just like everyone else. But I do feel that with things like being able to opt out of advertising and I feel like there are other things. Nothing's coming in right now, but different ways that you can ease some of the crappier parts of tech, if you have enough money, to buy into the paid versions of things is definitely problematic. Who are we keeping out when we do that and who are we saying doesn't deserve this privacy and the safety? What should just be standard? The seatbelt; I'm obsessed with the history of the seatbelts. CORALINE: [chuckles] I still have the [inaudible] that's been going around. EVA: Yeah. CORALINE: It's amazing. EVA: I've talked about this in many different places, but the seatbelt used to be something that you had to pay extra for. In today's dollars, it would've been like 300 extra dollars when you bought a car to get seat belts and only 2% of the people, in 1956 when they were introduced, actually paid for them and probably even less were actually using them. And then there was a revolution in the auto industry led by activists and everyday people. It definitely not come from the auto industry; they had to be forced into these different things. But now seat belts, the government basically, they passed a law and they said, “You have to just include seat belts as a standard feature.” I think about that a lot in tech. The things now that we're making people pay for, should some of those just be standard features and how are we going to get there? Probably government regulation after a lot of activism and everyday people rallying against these different things with big tech. But I think we're going to get there with a lot of things and we're going to see a lot of seatbelts, so to speak, become just standard features and not something you have to pay for. CORALINE: And I wonder, you mentioned government regulation; I have literally zero faith in government doing anything effective in the online world at all because our government is powered by 65-year-old white men that are rich and there's no incentive for them to care about this even if they did have the basic literacy about how this stuff works. It seems to me one of the things that we've been seeing really emphasize is, especially during in post lockdown, is worker organizing and I wonder if there's a strategy here for empowering the engineers, who frankly, we are being treated rockstars right now. I hate that term rockstar, but we're overpaid, we're pampered—a lot of folks, obviously, not everyone. So can we leverage our power? Can we leverage the privilege of being in such an in-demand profession to affect change in organizations that have no financial incentive to think about stuff like this at all? EVA: Yeah. So many things I want to respond to. Definitely, I think worker power is like such a strong point in all of this and I feel like we are the ones leading out on this. A lot of it is coming from people who work in tech and understand the issues. Like, writing, speaking, and doing these different things to help everyday people who don't work in tech understand like, “Hey, actually, here's why Facebook is really terrible.” A lot of that is coming from people in tech, even former Facebook employees even. CORALINE: Yeah. EVA: Which is different, I think from the paradigm shift we had with the auto industry. I don't know, I would have to look, but I'm pretty sure is not coming from car designers and engineers weren't helping lead that charge the way that we are. But I also want to respond to something you said about tech workers being overpaid and pampered, which yes, I agree with you. But I also think there are privileges that everyone should have and that no one should of and I feel like everyone deserves to be well paid, to be comfortable and have all these perks, and whatnot. I had a career in nonprofit before this so I have so much internalized just baggage about and guilt around feeling with my pay, my benefits, and all these things. The work I do now, compared to the work I was doing in the nonprofit, which was helping kids who were basically on a road to dropping out before graduating high school, which was really important work and I made so much less money and worked so much harder. But I feel like everyone deserves to be as well paid as we are and it is possible. CORALINE: Yes. EVA: So I just wanted to kind of throw that out there as well that we – [chuckles] I feel like I'm trying to just absolve myself from being a well-paid tech worker. But I do think we deserve this and also, everyone else deserves similar treatment. CORALINE: Absolutely. DAMIEN: Yeah. I feel the same way, especially—to take an example within a tech company—as an engineer, I get paid a lot more than customer service people. CORALINE: Yeah. DAMIEN: And that doesn't mean I'm overpaid, [chuckles] it means they're underpaid. CORALINE: Yeah. DAMIEN: A lot. [laughs] CORALINE: Yeah. EVA: Yeah, and I feel like this whole conversation, honestly, this is a freaking tactic. This is what the people at the top, this is how they want us to feel; pitting us against each other, feeling like it's not that – the sales people, that's normal and we're overpaid. It's like, no, actually we're paid a livable amount where we can live comfortably and they're exploited even more than we are. That's how I'm trying to think about things because I do feel like this other way of looking at it is just absolutely a tactic of, I don't know, the 1%, whatever you want to call them. The company leaders definitely don't want us to feel like we're – they would rather us feel that we're overpaid and pampered than just compensated for the labor we do in a fair way, MANDY: Have us feel the shame and guilt around it, too. Before I was in tech, I went from welfare to making a reasonable standard of living in a year and sometimes, I still feel guilty about it. It's a heck of a feeling. EVA: Yeah, and I feel like that didn't just come out of nowhere. We've been taught that we should feel guilty for just surviving. I don't know. Because I think even in tech, it's a lot of people there's still so many issues with burnout, with—I don't know about you all, my body sometimes just hurts from not moving enough during – like, there's still all these like different things that could be better. But the feeling that we should feel guilty for having some comfort and decent pay, I think that's definitely a strategy that has come from these different powerful groups. It didn't just come out of nowhere. CORALINE: I appreciate y'all pushing back on that. I guess, I'm speaking from an emotional place. Eva, you went from nonprofit and the tech. In April, I went from tech and the nonprofit and personally, I took a 30% pay cut and – [overtalk] EVA: Oh, wow. CORALINE: It just really made very visible and very personal seeing what we value as a society and what we don't value as a society. I'm still comfortable; I still have a living wage and everything. But look at what happened during the lockdown with “frontline workers.' They're heroes, but we don't want to pay them more than minimum wage. So I definitely agree with what you're saying about other people being underpaid and I definitely hear what you're saying about that guilt, but guilt is a form of discomfort. What are you going to do with that? What are you going to do with the privileges and the power that we have as a result of the way we're treated in this industry? I feel like that's the more important thing and what do you do with it? Are you giving back? Are you giving back in a substantive way, or are you giving back to assuage your guilt? It's nuanced. As y'all are pointing out, it is nuanced. EVA: Yeah. It's very complicated, but I feel like agitating for those—sorry, Damien, I think you said support people—getting paid more, that's something we can agitate for. I know someone, I'll call her an online friend of mine in the infertility space, which I'm very involved in as I go through my journey. I hate that word, but I've made all these online friends who are going through it and one of them is a paralegal and she is obviously hoping, although it's not going well, to get pregnant. But she was looking into the parental benefits and realized that the lawyers where she works had, I think it's 18 weeks fully paid off and then everyone else got this weird piecemeal of 6 weeks paid off, then there's FMLA, and then there's PTO, and all this stuff that amounted to a lot less, and you had to like use all of your PTO and all these different things. She actually was able to—with some of the lawyers help, I believe—get that policy change that it was just the same for everyone because it was like, “I didn't go to law school. So therefore, I don't need as much time with my newborn? How does that make sense?” CORALINE: [chuckles] Yeah. EVA: So I feel there is a lot of potential to have more equality in our companies, especially as the most powerful people often in the companies, to push for that change to happen. CORALINE: Yeah. EVA: There needs to be a lot of solidarity, I think, between these different types of workers. CORALINE: Yeah, and that's a great example of that. MANDY: Well, this has been an absolutely fantastic conversation and I feel so privileged just to be sitting here kicking back and just taking in the back and forth between the rest of you. I wrote down a bunch of a things, but one of the biggest takeaways that I have had from this episode, and especially if you've been listening to the show the past couple episodes, we've been talking about a lot of accessibility things. Eva, you said something that was mind-blowing for me and it shouldn't be mind-blowing, but it was because I was like, didn't even ever think of that and what the hell is wrong with me for not even ever thinking about that? but inclusive and accessible includes people experiencing domestic abuse. It's not something – I guess, because as what you said, people don't talk about it. So just keeping that in mind was pretty pertinent to me. I also liked what Coraline said about specialization and then the general knowledge and literacy versus fluency. That was really good as well. So it's been an awesome conversation. Thank you. Damien, what do you have? DAMIEN: Oh, well, this has been really awesome and I want to of first thank Eva for being our guest here and for the work you do and this book. The thing that's going to be sticking with me, I'll be reflecting on for a while, is this sentence both well, if the product can be used for harm, it will be, which is not only a really powerful thing to keep in mind when designing and building a thing, but also, a powerful sentence that is really useful in communicating these issues. So thank you very much for that. CORALINE: One of the things that and actually Eva, this was a reaction I had when I first read your book is, I think a lot of us, a growing number of us, have at least an awareness, if not a personal experience, with how systems are weaponized against marginalized, or vulnerable folks. So I think it's really important that in your book, you focus very specifically on a particular domain of abuse, abuse of power and loss of agency and loss of privacy, loss of physical safety. One of the things I've been thinking about a lot is how the internet has been really good for connecting people with shared experiences and creating communities around the shared experiences. But I do worry that we're breaking into smaller and smaller and smaller groups and I see that. I don't know if it's intentional, but it certainly is a way, I think that we're propping up, that we're being coerced into propping up these systems by taking a narrow view based on our own experiences. I don't see that as a criticism. What I see it as is an opportunity to connect with other folks who experience that same kind of systemic damage in collaborating and trying to understand the different challenges that we all face. But recognizing that a lot of it is based frankly, white supremacy. We used to talk about patriarchy; I think the thinking broadly has evolved beyond that. But I would love to see your publisher start putting books together on different particular axes, but also, looking at ways that we can bridge the differences between these different experiences of intentional, or unintentional harm. So that's something that I think I'm going to think about. EVA: Nice. I can't give any spoilers, but I do think my publisher might have something in the works that it's getting at some of this stuff. Wonderful. EVA: Which is exciting. CORALINE: Yeah. EVA: Yeah, okay. Man, those are all so good. My reflection, I'm just thinking a lot about our conversation about the way that people in tech might feel like we're overpaid, or pampered and how that feels like an intentional thing that has come from somewhere and things like that don't just – it always comes from somewhere. I'm thinking Mandy, about what you said in your reflection. You said, “What's wrong with me for not thinking about this?” I always feel like when I hear people say things like that, it's like well, when were you – I think more who didn't teach you about this? Why wasn't this part of your education as you were learning to code and before you joined the industry? I feel like that's more where the blame lies than with individuals, but yeah. Something I was thinking about earlier today, before we started recording, is that this idea of user safety, that it's like our job to keep ourselves safe on tech and there's so many resources out there, different articles, and different things. I've been thinking similarly about that, but that's a marketing campaign. That's something that the leaders of big tech done to intentionally shift responsibility from themselves and onto the end user. We're expected to be legal experts, read these agreements, and understand every single thing about a product that no one uses every single feature, but we're expected to understand it. If we don't and something goes wrong, either interpersonal harm, what I do, or with like oh, someone guessed your password or whatever it was, it's your fault instead of it being the tech company's responsibility. I feel like that's another thing that I'm thinking like that didn't come from nowhere, that came from somewhere. CORALINE: Yeah. EVA: It feels like a very intentional strategy that big tech has used to blame us for when things go wrong. Not to say that we get to be absolved of everything, people have responsibilities and whatnot, but I feel like a lot of times it's like this comes from somewhere and I'm trying to think more about that kind of stuff. This conversation was really awesome for helping me process some of those and expand my thoughts a little bit more. So thank you all, this was just really awesome. DAMIEN: Thank you. Thank you for being here. MANDY: Thank you for coming. CORALINE: Yeah. So happy to talk to you, Eva. EVA: Yeah. You, too. MANDY: All right, everyone. Well, with that, we will wrap up and I will put a plug in for our Slack community. You can join us and Eva will get an invitation as well to come visit us in Slack and keep these conversations going. Our website to do that is patreon.com/greaterthancode. Patreon is a subscription-based thing that if you want to you can pledge to support the show. However, if you DM any one of us and you want to be let in and you cannot afford, or just simply don't want to, monetarily support, we will let you in for free. So just reach out to one of the panelists and we'll get you in there. So with that, I will say thank you again. Thank you, everybody and we'll see you next week! Special Guest: Eva PenzeyMoog.

Lo nuevo en @ViaPodcast: Estudio muestra el efecto atractivo del audio digital y los anuncios en el cerebro humano. Hindenburg ofrece dos seminarios web gratuitos (uno en español) con motivo del #internationalpodcastday. El alcance de los pódcast creció un 21 % entre 2020 y 2021. Captivate lanza un nuevo reproductor de pódcast incrustable. Wondery anuncia servicio de suscripción de pódcast para niños. Empresa francesa inicia un servicio gratuito que evalúa la calidad sonora de un pódcast. Creadores se quejan de que Clubhouse no les cumplió lo prometido. Angela Monroy, consultora de storytelling y marketing y directora de estrategia digital en Merakiu será la invitada a nuestra sala en Clubhouse: «Las tendencias del podcasting». Dialogaremos sobre las noticias compartidas esta semana en Via Podcast. ¡Este próximo viernes 1 de octubre! 10:00 AM Méx, Col, Perú, 11:00 AM EST Miami, Pto. Rico, Chile, 12:00 PM Arg. y a las 17 horas de España. Pódcast recomendado 
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Ines Schwerdtner and Adrian Daub join PTO to talk through the Bundestag election. We talked about the election results and the partial revival of the SPD. We also talked about the permutations of possible governing coalitions, and the unusual extent of the red scare tactics deployed by the CDU and the other parties of the right against Die Linke and the SPD. Finally, we chatted about the legacy of Angela Merkel and why Germany's longest serving chancellor since Helmut Kohl is so admired by liberals abroad and whether her reputation for competence and fairness is deserved.

John Simpson is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Patra. An innovator and entrepreneur, John founded Patra in 2005 and has grown the company to more than 3,200 employees worldwide. In 2017, Patra landed in the top third of Inc Magazine's fastest growing companies. John understands the importance of efficient internal systems to support the complicated needs of a service organization. As an entrepreneur, he knows that it's vital for a business leader to have total trust in any partner. John has spent more than 20 years leading technology-focused companies, and previously founded CyberBills, an innovative web banking technology company. This Episode is Sponsored By: Justworks makes it easier for you to start, run, and grow a business. With Justworks, employees can onboard themselves in minutes with simple software that makes a great first impression. It provides access to national large group health insurance plans and handles payroll and PTO requests all in one platform. Plus, it comes with Justworks expert 24/7 support for you and your team. Find out how Justworks can help your business by going to: millionaire-interviews.com/justworks At CapBeast.com, you can put anything you want on any kind of hat you like, it's easy and affordable to get exactly what you want. With CapBeast.com, you can create custom embroidered snapbacks, dad hats, baseball hats, and beanies from brands like New Era, 47 Brand, Champion, Nike, and more. Visit: millionaire-interviews.com/capbeast and enter promo code – Millionaire to get 20% off your first order. LinkedIn Jobs has made it easier to get candidates worth interviewing faster, and it's free. Create a free job post in minutes with LinkedIn Jobs to reach your network and beyond to the world's largest professional network of over 750 million people. Focus on candidates with skill and experience you need. Post your job for free at: millionaire-interviews.com/linkedin-jobs When it comes to your next business read, you have options. You could pick up that trendy, buzzworthy business book or you could learn the timeless, buzzword free, lessons of a straightforward modern classic. I'm talking about Good Profit by Charles Cook, a CEO with a real world track record of decade upon decade of actual exponential business growth. If you want lessons from someone who has actually done it? Start by visiting: millionaire-interviews.com/goodprofitbook Carole in Singapore became a Patreon member because she liked Austin's interview style and she has the opportunity to have her one-on-one call to learn valuable business ideas. Sign up and become a Patreon member today, go to: millionaire-interviews.com/patreon Justin in Texas has listened to a couple of the Patreon Group Calls, which gave him tons of valuable nuggets of information that he can use. He plans to join our Group Calls to engage with other entrepreneurs and acquire more business information. Join our Group Call by visiting: millionaire-interviews.com/patreon   Want to Support the Show? Well we'd love for you to join our Patreon Group!  What's in it for you?  Well you'll instantly get a scheduled call from Austin, where he'll help you with your current or future business... Sign-Up Now at millionaire-interviews.com/patreon.

Lo nuevo en la newsletter de @ViaPodcast: Razones por las que Spotify es el principal directorio de pódcast. Investigación confirma la diferencia entre escuchar radio y pódcast. Twitter sigue desarrollando su función de grabación de “Espacios” (Spaces). Spotify prueba en beta el reproductor de audio “Car Thing”. Twitter añadirá Bitcoin para pagar a creadores. Clubhouse añade nueva función para fomentar conversaciones privadas con amigos. Pódcast sobre el arte se convierte en un programa de Radio Nacional. Angela Monroy, consultora de storytelling y marketing y directora de estrategia digital en Merakiu será la invitada a nuestra sala en Clubhouse: «Las tendencias del podcasting». Dialogaremos sobre las noticias compartidas esta semana en Via Podcast. ¡Este próximo viernes 1 de octubre! 10:00 AM Méx, Col, Perú, 11:00 AM EST Miami, Pto. Rico, Chile, 12:00 PM Arg. y a las 17 horas de España. Pódcast recomendado Informe Z. Este es un pódcast que cuenta la historia de una niña que encuentra, abandonado en el bosque, un perro de apenas dos meses. Después, el animal que está infectado con un agente biológico, ataca a un niño. Llegan los militares y lo declaran en cuarentena. La misión no es contener el virus, sino aparentar que jamás ha existido. Informe Z, fue escrito y narrado por Teo Rodríguez y la actriz Gloria March interpreta a la madre de la niña. Support this podcast

Do you want to create a machine that ensures agency growth? David Butler was working as a special ed teacher when he decided to try his luck in the real estate business. He later created an agency looking to reinvent himself during the 2009 financial crisis. With Jason's help, he was able to grow and ultimately sell his business. David now enjoys a new lifestyle and focuses on his family. He joined Jason on the podcast to talk about how he implemented the "Netflix model" to prevent client cancellations, how he streamlined the company's hiring process to put the right people on the right roles, and how making a white label agreement with a larger company was the key to really grow his agency. 3 Golden Nuggets Creating a machine. Once David started to see his agency grow organically from his first apartment management company client, he implemented the “Netflix model” where he charges a very competitive fee to make sure the agency won't lose customers. How did he keep it profitable? “I figured property managers would be so busy they wouldn't utilize us all the time,” he says, “But they would still need us.” Of course, he made sure to estimate how many clients they could handle. Streamlining the hiring process. Being a big believer on the principle of hiring your weaknesses, David hired a local company to take care of the customer service and clients are continually amazed by how quickly they get a call back. He also believes in the importance of putting the right people on the right positions and made sure to create a hiring process that would eliminate unfit candidates. “It's stupidly simple,” he told Jason. The big change. The Netflix model failed when it came to hiring a highly paid sales team. This is when he started considering a white label agreement with a larger company. It was not easy, the entire process took about two years. However, this company had 350 sales agents and this was the key to the growth. Now, his agency was taking 100-200 new clients each month and he could continue to focus on hiring the right people. Gusto: Today's episode is sponsored by Gusto, an all-in-one people platform for payroll, benefits, HR where you can unify your data. Gusto automatically applies your payroll taxes and directly deposits your team's paychecks, freeing you up to work on your business. Head over to gusto.com/agency to enjoy an exclusive offer for podcast listeners. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM White Label Your Sales Team to Create a Machine and Streamline Your Hiring Process Jason: [00:00:00] What's up, everybody? Jason Swenk here. And I got one of my friends that ran an amazing agency for a number of different years. Now he went from being a special ed teacher to owning apartments, to owning an agency, to selling it. And now he's financially free and just travels and does what he does and has a ball doing it. And today we're going to talk about his journey. So possibly you can learn a couple of little nuggets from him and do the same thing. So let's go ahead and get into the show. Hey, David. Welcome to the show. David: [00:00:38] Hey, Jason. Good to see you. Jason: [00:00:39] Yeah, man. I'm excited to have you on and uh, and tell your story. So, you have a pretty fascinating story that always amazed me and everyone else that heard it. So, and I'm not going to give you justice on telling it. So tell us kind of who you are and tell us a little bit about that trajectory from special ed teacher, apartment, to owning an agency and then selling it. David: [00:01:02] Gosh, I'll try to keep it into a nutshell. I was a high school special ed teacher for about 10 years and coaching high school sports and then a good friend of mine gave me the, um, the really famous old infomercial Carleton Sheets… Uh, how to buy real estate with no money down. And, uh, I listened to it on cassette tape in my car as I drove to work and I use the basis of that to buy my first house in England of all places. And it was a real, uh, let's just say fixer-upper. And, uh, so we fixed that up and we sold it, I was teaching special ed there. Came back to the US and bought my second house and bought another three houses with that and a fourplex. And I was still teaching high school. Then my buddy said, hey, think you got some skills here. Let me introduce you to some people. So I got a couple of angel investors together and, uh, we start buying apartments in 2004 or five. Bought apartments for about three years, all in Arizona. Bought a few thousand apartments. And that's where I, through the process of buying and owning and asset managing the apartments I kind of... Well, and then the 2008, uh, downfall, right? 2009. You know, we were doing amazing until then and then, uh, everything crashed. I distinctly remember 2009 with my friend who got me into everything. He was like, man, I'm really sorry I got you into all this. As we were talking about our loan workouts and stuff. And I said, yeah, I said, I got to make some other lemonade, man, because this lemonade isn't working for me. That's when I looked around and I just really kind of discovered… Websites were kind of new for apartment buildings back then. Not everyone had them. And so I started getting into the technology world of apartments and that industry of managing and operating and operational of apartments. And I was like, I kept on asking our, um, my own property managers and stuff to manage our social media. And, uh, they would just never do it, right? Like they couldn't do it. They're too busy to do it. I was like, I got to hire someone to do this for me, right? And so I looked around. I looked at other agencies and you know, they were going to charge me like a couple thousand dollars a month or something to manage the social media for my parcel. That's like nuts, right? Like I can do this for better and cheaper. So that's how I started my first marketing agency, right? Like, I didn't know anything about owning an agency or anything. I just started to do it myself. Jason: [00:03:49] Yeah. And talk about how it progressed. And I loved what you used to charge. And I used to kind of get onto you. But obviously, I mean, I literally would try to make an example out of you of how little you actually charged, and then you were a volumes game. So talk a little bit about that. David: [00:04:07] Yeah. So I had one employee and we were running the social media, you know, Facebook mainly for my six apartment communities. And the property management company that had about a hundred apartment communities under their management said, hey, can you start doing this for our other clients? And so that's how it kind of started to organically grow. Was, you know, then we went from like, you know, 10 clients to 20 to 30, 40, and I just said, you know what? I'm just going to make it so cheap that people will sign up and they'll just never cancel. That really was the play. It was just straight-up Netflix type of play, right? It's just like, so we charge $99 a month, right? It was just classic. Under the hundred. So that anytime anyone would think about canceling they'd be like, wait, the property manager would be like, wait a minute… That means I gotta do it, then? Like for 99 bucks, they probably paid out of their own paycheck for us to do it for them, right? Just so they wouldn't get in trouble with the owners and their bosses for not keeping it up to date, right? So that was the play. I mean, it was just a straight-up $99 play. Yeah. Jason: [00:05:23] Yeah. And I remember just being like David, if you could just raise the prices and then obviously, you know, you're like, dude, we're a factory, we're a machine. We just have all this. And, and now knowing you like, it would be stupid for someone to cancel, which is such the opposite. That's why I wanted to have you on like talk to you about like... What was that mentality around it? Because there's a lot of people listening that may be in the same boat of going I want it to be like, I'd never want to lose a client because it'd be stupid. But I also want it to be like, I want to create a factory like this machine. So how did you make sure that it was profitable? And how did you create this machine? Because you had a lot of people too. David: [00:06:06] Boy, that's a good question. I mean, again is kind of based on the Netflix kind of play, right? I knew that property managers in that were just so overwhelmed that they probably wouldn't utilize us as much as they thought they would, but they still needed us. And so I knew some people would, it's just like Netflix. There's probably some people that binge Netflix, you know, a hundred hours a month. And there's probably people that don't watch one hour a month, right? But the people that don't watch one hour a month don't ever cancel because they just want it there. So when they do want to watch it, right? So it was like that. I mean, I never went to business school and never got an MBA, you know, any of that stuff. So, I mean, it was really kind of back of the napkin, just like, hey, how many hours, how many clients do you think someone can manage? Like, it was really, you know, it was not fancy and the, hey, is this profitable or not? It was just like, yeah, I think I can make it work. Jason: [00:07:09] What were some of the things that helped you build the agency and get it to a level where… in a little bit, we'll talk about, you know, the process of selling it and what's life like now. But what were some of the things that helped you along the way? Like from the different people that you've hired on the management team that kind of stuff. David: [00:07:28] Yeah. So I would say there's a few, really big things. One was, uh, I've been a member of Entrumpeneurs organization for since, uh, 2007 and being a part of that organization has been life changing, right? Being around the other entrepreneurs and learning from their mistakes and learning to build on my strengths versus tackling my weaknesses. That's been like... Hire out your weaknesses, do what you're good at and hire out the weaknesses. Like if they only taught that in school, right? I think that was a key. And then also one of the foundational pieces of my company was building what we did around Wow Customer Service. So the Zappos model, also a Ruby receptionists, a local company. We amaze people by answering the phone when it rang, like with a live person. And we responded to emails like… Our customer service, our ticketing. We would respond within 20 minutes, right? And in the apartment industry, that was just unheard of in the vendor piece. Like you would send out an email to people's customer service and not hear back for a week. And so people would hear back from us within 10, 20, maybe five minutes, right? And they would like, when they called, like, they'd get a live person. Like they were just amazed. And we were actually hopeful. We hired people that love to help people. Like it was stupidly simple. Jason: [00:09:10] It's kind of like, like, you know, people ask, I think like Walt Disney was like, how do you get people to smile all the time? He's like, well, I hired people that were happy and smiled all the time. Like we didn't train them to do that. We just… we did it. David: [00:09:25] Yeah. I became a huge believer in the Jim Collins, you know, get the right people on the bus and put the right people in the right seats. I really, really focused on streamlining our hiring process. And my key to hiring was we hired recent college grads with degrees in journalism and communications and media, and we screen the heck out of them on writing, right? We made them write and write and write like the initial application had like 10 questions that they had to write answers to. And because the job entailed a lot of writing on the behalf of clients, I knew the clients wanted people that could write in like full sentences and spell and… again, really simple stuff. But that screening process of screening out the people that would, you know, write like two word answers and, and their punctuation and like, and then, you know… Young college graduates that were just hungry for their first job and wanted to be involved in the field that kind of, I think they had to learn a little bit in the hard way that there's not a lot of paid jobs in journalism, and it's very hard to make it on your own as a blogger. I mean, hard to make a living, right? I'm sure some people do but most people, uh, have a difficult time. So the hiring piece was another piece. Yeah. For sure. Jason: [00:10:56] Taking care of your employees has never been more important than right now. And while paydays are great, running payroll is a major pain, calculating taxes, deductions compliance. None of it's easy. Unless of course you have Gusto. Gusto is a simple online payroll and benefits built for your small business. Gusto automatically applies your payroll taxes and directly deposits your team's paychecks, freeing you up to work on your business. Plus, with Gusto's help, you can offer benefits like 401k's health insurance, workers' comp, and a lot more. And because you're a smart agency masterclass listener, you're going to get three months free. Once you run your first payroll, go to gusto.com/agency. That's gusto.com/agency for three free months. Awesome. And then let's talk about the selling process. How did that come to fruition? Because you sold to one of your big clients and a lot of people don't realize that, that you could do that. And it's also kind of dangerous sometimes too. David: [00:12:13] Right. Right, it's definitely walking the tight rope. So what was interesting was I built a company up to, I think about four or five, 600 clients. And we built our systems and that, and what I realized was at $99, it was not, where it was not profitable was it was not profitable to hire a highly paid sales team. And I would say out of all the things that I failed at, that's what I failed miserably at was whenever I tried to hire a salesperson and get them to perform. And just make what I'm paying that, like, it was just like, it never worked, right? So the big change there was, you know, I'm a big Costco shopper and Kirkland Signature and this and that. And then with entrepreneurs organization, I was like, hey, I think there's something to this white label thing. I think that might even been learning some from you. And I partnered with a larger company to do a white label agreement with them, which took probably gosh, maybe two years to put together and formalize and all the, you know, it was a big company and all the legal and this and that. But that was the key to the growth was because they had 350 sales agents around the country that I didn't have to pay for. That was the biggest thing, right? And I still got to charge them what I charge my regular clients on the wholesale side. And so my profit margin was still there, but that's where the magic happened, right? I mean, we started adding a hundred, 200 clients a month and all I could do was focus on hiring great people and increasing our systems and scalability and everything. And we got to a couple thousand clients with them. We're about 65 employees about at that time, right? Just like you said, it was a factory. And, um, that was when they came to me and just said, hey, we're, you know, we're interested in buying your company. And I said, well, that's not really why I built it, but I said, sure, I'll listen. And I also knew that if they didn't buy me that, you know, they were probably going to recreate it or do something else. Like you said it's a dangerous spot to be in when you're… That's the whole piece is when you, right? When your client concentration goes to 60 and 70% of your clients come from one source, you know, you live by the sword, you die by the sword, right? Jason: [00:15:00] I've known people where they've done this, where they'll outsource to an agency. And they'll become 90% of their business and say, I want to buy you. And they'll say, if you say, no, we'll just go away. And then you're like, crap. Now that didn't happen to you. You're the lucky one. But, uh, walk us through the process of like, so they say, okay, well, here's what we're thinking. All this kind of stuff. A lot of people are thinking, how long did it take in order to come to a deal? In the due diligence phase, maybe to, you know, the, the term sheet and all that kind of good stuff. David: [00:15:41] Oh boy. You know, when you're dealing with a bigger, bigger company. That has a board and everything from them saying, hey, we're interested to actually getting serious. You know, I think was probably three to five months probably? Which that gave me enough time to kind of like, kind of get my head around the process and start talking to people. And I hired an M&A consultant at that point to kind of represent me. And I think that was, looking back, that was a huge piece of it because it took me out of being the direct guy. And so when we did get to term, he, and on into due diligence, he got to be the middleman and he got to be the, you know, he got to be the bad cop and I get to be the good cop. Because the other piece was, they were still my client, right? So if everything fell out, I still needed to have a good relationship with the company, right? And so it kind of allowed us to play that good cop, bad cop piece. But I think it was probably, you know, 10 months or so. But the piece that made that go a lot quicker was, you know, they were a majority concentration in my company. And so they kind of knew the backend financials and due diligence kind of, because they knew all the moving pieces of that. And so that took a lot of the uncertainty out from their side, I think, and helped move it faster than normal. Jason: [00:17:20] Very cool. And it's always a kiss of death. I always tell everybody going until the check is deposited and the paper is signed. Sometimes people go, oh, well, my life's going to change and I can kind of kick back and, and kind of relax. Did you just go, hey, if this happens great. If not, I'm good. David: [00:17:42] I've been through some big real estate deals before. So I think that helped. But the other piece is I knew I needed to make it to the finish line for this to happen. Because if it fell apart, like you said, they were gonna be the 1600 pound grill and take some drastic measures against me, that would not have ended up well, right? I mean, is this classic North Korea, right? Like you don't want to be the first person to push the button and send the missile. So you're just kind of waiting and you're just your head down, making everything perform, you know, they're looking at your metrics, like crazy as you're getting ready to close, and you're just trying to. And you're trying to keep your team together, right? I think that's the other piece in the sale piece is... So who do you tell, when do you tell them? Who knows? Right? Jason: [00:18:38] And when did you do that? When did you start telling people. David: [00:18:40] So when I sold real estate apart, big apartment buildings what I learned was to not tell people. When you tell people for whatever reason, I think it's just human psychology, they tend to jump ship. I mean, they're just like, oh, this boat is sinking or not going to my direction. I'm going to go look for it or something else. And you start losing key people left and right. So I learned not to do that. I only told one person in my company, which was my CFO, because I had to, because I relied on her for all the financials and there's just no way that I could keep it from her. So she was my inside person up until we needed to negotiate key employee contracts for the upper management team. Because that's… in a acquisition, they want to secure all your top-level management to make sure they come over on the transition. And so that was a big piece was… I mean, part of that sale processes is that you have to tell people, tell the executive management team at the last minute what's going on and get them to sign employment agreements with the new company, to make sure that there's going to be a smooth transition there. And a lot of times that's a key piece to closing the deal, right? Because at the very end, if all your top-level management walks off the job and the company… I mean, if you're selling a service company, right? I mean, that's what you're selling is the people and the processes. You lose a lot of that, and you could be subject to a whole renegotiation at that point. So that's a really stressful time. And then also you got to make sure that those people don't recognize the leverage they have in that situation and over leverage their position and to extracting what they would like to extract from you during it, right? So that's really stressful point. Jason: [00:20:44] Yeah. I remember going through that as well, and that is not fun. And am in the same vote of going only tell when you need to. Uh, because yeah, when, when we made the announcement, some people don't like change and they just, for whatever reason, they don't like change, even if it's going to be better for them. Because that's how I judge, when we sold it, I was like, look, same type of culture. Not much is going to change. They're going to have a little bit more resources. I think it actually is better for everyone. And a lot of people advanced, but there were some people that were like, nope, I like the mom and pop mentality, even though we were kind of the middle, you know, we were not small. But, um, they still like, you know, kind of the, they can come to me for anything and they knew everyone, so… It makes some things. So what's life like now for you after selling? Because I see your Facebook, you're just traveling around the world. David: [00:21:45] Yeah, it's been kind of interesting. Uh, I volunteer, I'm the president of the PTO at my kid's high school now. Really involved with my kids' lives. You know, I got a freshman, a university and a sophomore in high school and a seventh grader. And so a lot of focus has turned to them. I try to really provide a lot of really unique, fun travel experiences for them. That's my go-to thing is I just love travel and stuff. I mean, with the pandemic, it's been kind of a bummer. But at the same time, I've kind of rediscovered, you know, traveling in the United States to national parks and hiking and river rafting. We rafted the grand canyon this last year. Due to the pandemic, they had openings, right? When's that ever happened? So taking advantage of that lemonade piece, right? Taking advantage of what life gives you when it does and figuring out what that is and going with it. Jason: [00:22:42] That's awesome. So, well, I'm so happy for you to see, where, where you started and where you ended up. It's very well-deserved with, with all the hard work. So congratulations for that. David: [00:22:53] Thanks. Thanks. And I got to put a plug in here too, with you, Jason. Because gosh, we met at, uh… What was a social media…? Jason: [00:23:02] On the aircraft carrier. David: [00:23:04] On the aircraft carrier. And we were in line for the virtual ride and we just started a conversation, right. So I was like, who are you? Who are you? And what do you do? And we started the conversation and I hired you as a consultant, uh, over the last couple of years of the company, you know, it was just really, really helpful to have you and your experience in selling your agency in the background to be able to bounce things off of and ideas and like, hey, this is happening now. Like kind of, you know, or things with employees or just that. Your experience with the agency, uh, selling your agency and being able to, um, have your guidance in that was a big key, I think those last couple of years. So, uh, I don't think I've ever really gotten a chance to thank you formally for that. So thank you for that. I appreciate it. Jason: [00:24:01] Well, it was my pleasure, you know, I just wanted to be the resource I wish I had, right? So, that's all we can do is keep paying it forward and that kind of stuff. So well, thanks so much for coming on the show. It was, it was awesome having you. Can't wait to have you come out to Durango and be ski bums together and go explore because I love the experiences too. So awesome. Well, if you guys enjoyed this episode, what I want you to guys do is share it out with your fellow agency owners. I would help them out and help us out. And if you want to be surrounded by amazing agency owners and you want our help to really kind of see the things you might not be able to see, so you can navigate and get to the places where, you know, uh, have the opportunities to do what David has had, I want to invite all of you to go digitalagencyelite.com. This is our exclusive community and mastermind, and it's just amazing people. So go to digitalagencyelite.com and until next time have a Swenk day.

On this week's episode we're recapping the second week of the NFL Season, where we had INT's, Comebacks, the return of the Packers and everyone once again surviving week 2 of the survivor pool. The Toronto Blue Jays are making a run at the postseason, while Vladdy is chasing down a Triple Crown. Hosk has lots of stuff to talk about including the opening of NHL training camps, PTO's and new contract for Elvis and Krill, WWE Extreme Rules PPV goes this weekend and Survivor is returning for their 41st season and we draft players for the show in our first ever Survivor fantasy draft. To close the show Jones takes us through another segment of The Grill where we answer some questions about who will win the Vezina trophy, Bigger playmaker Mahomes or McDavid and who will be the last remaining undefeated team in the NFL. Get yourself a pair of MeUndies and receive 20% off your first order by following the link - http://getcomfy.in/v/intosportsandstuff Visit TeePublic for all your Into Sports and Stuff Merchandise Needs - http://tee.pub/lic/intosportsandstuff Follow us on Twitter: @IntoSportsStuff Follow us on Instagram: @IntoSportsandStuff

Week one of Rink Wide is in the books and it lines up with Day 2 of Canucks training camp. Andrew Wadden and Jeff Paterson go through the day to talk about what Jeff saw out in Abbotsford.Patrick Johnston of Post Media joined Wadden and JPat and he started off talking Klimovich. Sticking with the Russian speaking players there, PJ talked about the comprehension the players have of the English language. You can tell that Podkolzin has a good understanding of the language and that he put work in the offseason. He talks about where Podkolzin is in his development and that there is a difference between an NHL player and an NHL star. It's not a surprise that he is fitting in after playing two seasons in the 2nd best league in the world, PJ tells the guys. Patrick went into what he thought of Olli Juolevi and his performance and how disappointing it is so far. Questions if we could actually see him start on the NHL roster. Talked about how many games we could see Juolevi actually play this year. PJ addressed the curious case of the whereabouts of Travis Hamonic. From one player not here, to another, the guys talk about when we might see Brandon Sutter back. Talked about Chiasson and if the PTO he signed could lead to a spot on the roster. Andrew and Jeff finished off the show by breaking down how Pettersson and Hughes contracts could be divided between what the Canucks have left in their salary cap. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What a weekend of racing! This week we look at all the action from 70.3 World Championships and the domination of Lucy Charles-Barclay and Gustav Iden. We talk about the incredible performance of Lauren Parker in the Para-Tri division. We then turn to the incredible action from Super League Jersey and the excitement and controversy from the men's and women's races. We run through WTCS Hamburg and discuss who we have heard is Lionel Sanders' new coach!   For more information about MX Endurance: http://www.mxendurance.com   To sign up as a podcast member and get a whole bunch of benefits head to www.mxendurance.com/podcast    Claim your free Off-Season Strength Training Plan: https://mxendurance.com/free-plan   Or check MX Endurance out on Social Media:  Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TeamMaccax/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mxendurance  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mxendurance    For any questions, comments or suggestions send us an email at podcast@mxendurance.com      You can follow James at https://www.instagram.com/bale.james85    You can follow Tim at https://www.instagram.com/tford14    If you want the down low on the PTO then sign up for their mailing list: http://bit.ly/PTOMXEndurance 

Robert Thomas and the Blues end the drama, with the youngster signing a two-year, $2.8 million AAV deal. But why is his deal so similar to Jordan Kyrou's when the two have taken vastly different paths over the last couple seasons? Tom Franklin answers that, plus a look at where Robert Thomas...and PTO invitee James Neal fit in a Blues lineup that still has depth to spare. Can Neal still be the "Real Deal"? Welcome to the debut episode of Fresh Toast! Short-form videos for you to devour when you start your day! Let us know what you think of this concept! FOLLOW THE TOASTED TAVERN! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ToastedTavernSTL/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/ToastedTavern Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/toastedtavernstl/ FOLLOW TOASTED ST. LOUIS! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ToastedStLouis Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/ToastedStLouis Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/toastedstlouis Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/toastedstlouis --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/toasted-st-louis/support

The title is a bit misleading since Dave and Veronica get into a bit more than just that! Jonathan Drouin spoke about his hiatus from the team with Chantal Desjardins and Renaud Lavoie, the Habs announced their Respect and Consent Action Plan, the rookies faced off twice against the Baby Sens, there's a PTO coming to the main training camp on Wednesday, and more! (Including some Emmy Talk and other streaming goodies).

Rick discusses chillen with his twin brother after 18 months, the Toronto Blue Jays, Sabres and Leafs game in the Hammer and signings with PTO's See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Rick discusses chillen with his twin brother after 18 months, the Toronto Blue Jays, Sabres and Leafs game in the Hammer and signings with PTO's See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

TJ and The Grumpy Old Man talk about the New York Islanders signing Zdeno Chara. We also cover the addition of Erik Gustafsson on a PTO contract! TJ and the Grumpy Old Man talk about the Islanders' offseason grades as training camp and the start of the regular season nears. Make sure to check out TJ and The Grumpy Old Man's general sports podcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCotIBUwJ8aL4GegP7I0lpMA #NHL #isles #NewYorkIslanders #islanders #islandershockey #THPN #hockey

Paul Rogers and David Brophy join PTO to talk about AUKUS, the new security pact between Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. We spoke about the significance of Australia acquiring nuclear powered submarines through the deal, the fallout from the cancellation of Australia's prior deal with France, and finally we discuss how the deal will be perceived in Beijing amid rising tensions between the US and China.

It's 70.3 World Championships and we are joined this week by UK superstar, Joe Skipper. We do a deep dive into what you can expect to see this weekend. We also drop in a sneaky interview between Chris McCormack and Vincent Luis about who they think you need to watch out for too. We also talk about sub7sub8 with Joe, what he thought about the drafting at IM Switzerland, his thoughts on the Collins Cup and why he thinks he can beat Jan Frodeno.  To find out more about Joe Skipper head to: https://www.instagram.com/notanotheraveragejoe  To find out more about Vincent Luis head to: https://www.instagram.com/vincentluistri  For more information about MX Endurance: http://www.mxendurance.com   To sign up as a podcast member and get a whole bunch of benefits head to www.mxendurance.com/podcast    Claim your free Off-Season Strength Training Plan: https://mxendurance.com/free-plan   Or check MX Endurance out on Social Media:  Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TeamMaccax/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mxendurance  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mxendurance    For any questions, comments or suggestions send us an email at podcast@mxendurance.com      You can follow James at https://www.instagram.com/bale.james85    You can follow Tim at https://www.instagram.com/tford14    If you want the down low on the PTO then sign up for their mailing list: http://bit.ly/PTOMXEndurance 

Click here for your free copy of People Operations: Automate HR, Design a Great Employee Experience, and Unleash Your Workforce. The pandemic has thrown a barrage of challenges at those of us in talent teams and as it nears its end, there are still so many variables at play. Today we are joined by Kevin Marasco, the chief marketing officer of Zenefits, a company known for streamlining onboarding, benefits, payroll, and PTO. Kevin is also the author of People Operations: Automate HR, Design a Great Employee Experience, and Unleash Your Workforce. Today Kevin sheds light on some of the many challenges that talent teams have faced as a result of the pandemic. While people are now trying to get “back to work” or find some sort of a normal or familiar operating rhythm, we have to accept that things will never go back to how they were and find ways to integrate new workflows, new operating rhythms, and new policies. We also discuss how these challenges are further impacted by the talent crisis and the Great Resignation, as well as the potential impacts of the gig economy. Kevin explains how at this present time, companies are re-evaluating their strategy when it comes to work in general with regard to who does the work, who can do the work, where they work, and when they work. Tune in to find out what the 80-20 rule is and how HR people can utilize technology to automate the essentials and optimize their roles to be the most impactful toward their companies.    Key Points From This Episode:   Some background into what Zenefits does. Kevin sheds some light on some of the challenges that people teams and people leaders have faced during the pandemic. The challenges of going “back to work” in light of all of the temporary and permanent changes of the pandemic.  How these challenges are further impacted by the talent crisis and the Great Resignation. The potential impacts of the gig economy on HR and talent positions.  How every company has to re-evaluate its strategy when it comes to work in general. The technology Kevin uses to do his research to understand the pain points of those in HR.   How through his research Kevin has come to see a whole new side of this career. How HR people can optimize their roles and be the most impactful toward their companies? The 80-20 rule and the importance of automating less important tasks with technology.  How this information is broken down in Kevin's new book People Operations.   Tweetables:   “I think every company has to re-evaluate their strategy when it comes to work in general, right? That's who does the work, who can do the work — because I think that's shifted and is continuing to evolve — where they work, and when they work?” — Kevin Marasco [0:07:42]   “For people leaders [the gig economy] offers them new opportunities. They can engage in work for companies in ways that they haven't before, but moreover, I think you can re-evaluate how we're building companies.” — Kevin Marasco [0:09:33]   “I think about the 80-20 rule and it is about focusing on the 20 percent that's going to drive 80 percent of value. That is where you get this forced multiplier effect and that starts with ‘Okay, take this stuff that has to be done and automate it.'” — Kevin Marasco [0:16:17]   “It's kind of like automating the essentials then frees us up to focus more time on systemic programs that will have a bigger impact for the organization.” — Kevin Marasco [0:17:22]   “Let the robots have part of your job, embrace them. Picture them as like a personalized assistant that's going to help you and free you up to do work that you are going to be more passionate about, that's going to add more value to the business.” — Kevin Marasco [0:18:20]   Links Mentioned in Today's Episode:   Kevin Marasco Zenefits People Operations Hired Talk Talent to Me

This is how we make life work when we make it through summer and kids are back to school!  Sure, we have bumps and bruises but we made it y'all.  Join us as we discuss all things surviving this time of year! How do we untangle all the noise between PTO, sports, fees, schedules, meals, etc.? Communication in household is a huge plus...but how?? Having a weekly sit down to communicate all the things Central home calendar Organization within the home How do we budget this time of year? Work in reverse with lists/priorities Seek out resources such as Platos Closet, Poshmark, Five Below, DH Gate and MORE! What IG accounts do we love for this?   Have a LOOSE menu to help the weeks flow... 4 Dinners...can kids take one night over? School lunches and accounts So many great things to think about to help us feel we ended the day well throughout all the noise!  Fave Face: Macabeet Faver Fashion: Oofos Sandals Fave Foods: Individually packed items (BabyBel, Guac, Hummus, Peanut Butter, Ranch)