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Travis L. Adkins, deputy assistant administrator for Africa at USAID and lecturer of African and security studies at the Walsh School of Foreign Service and in the Prisons and Justice Initiative at Georgetown University, and Brenda Gayle Plummer, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, led a conversation on race in America and international relations. FASKIANOS: Welcome to the first session of the CFR Fall 2021 Academic Webinar Series. I'm Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach at CFR. Today's meeting is on the record, and the video and transcript will be available on our website CFR.org/academic if you would like to share it with your colleagues or classmates. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We're delighted to have Travis Adkins and Brenda Gayle Plummer with us to discuss race in America and international relations. Travis Adkins is deputy assistant administrator in the Bureau of Africa at USAID, and lecturer of African and security studies at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, and in the Prisons and Justice Initiative at Georgetown University. As an international development leader, he has two decades of experience working in governance, civil society, and refugee and migration affairs in over fifty nations throughout Africa and the Middle East. Mr. Adkins was a CFR international affairs fellow and is a CFR member. Dr. Brenda Gayle Plummer is a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research includes race and gender, international relations, and civil rights. Dr. Plummer has taught Afro-American history throughout her twenty years of experience in higher education. Previously she taught at Fisk University, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Minnesota. And from 2001 to 2005, Dr. Plummer served on the Historical Advisory Committee of the U.S. Department of State. So, thank you both for being with us today. We appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts with us. Travis, I thought we could begin with you to talk about the ways in which you've seen race relations in America influence U.S. foreign policy. ADKINS: Sure. Thank you so much, Irina. And welcome to everyone. Thank you for joining. The first thing I would say is that America's long history of violence, exclusion, and barbarism towards Black people and indigenous people and Asian communities and immigrant communities in the United States have worked to give the lie to the notion of who we say we are in terms of freedom, in terms of democracy, in terms of the respect for human rights. And these are the core messages that we seek to project in our foreign policy. And we've not been able to resolve those contradictions because we have refused to face this history, right? And we can't countenance a historical narrative in which we are not the heroes, not the good guys, not on the right side of history. And the challenge that we've had is that we've seen that play out in so many ugly ways domestically. But it also has resonance and relevance in our foreign policy, because what it ends up doing is essentially producing a foreign policy of platitudes and contradictory posturing on the issues of human rights, on the issues of racial justice, on the issues of democratic governance when the world can see not only this history but this present reality of racial discrimination, of police brutality, of efforts to suppress the political participation of specific groups of people inside of America. They can see children in cages at the Southern border. They can see anti-Asian hate taking place in our nation, and they can hear those messages resounding, sometimes from our White House, sometimes from our Senate, sometimes from our Congress and other halls of power throughout the United States. And that works against the message of who we say we are, which is really who we want to be. But the thing that we, I think, lose out on is pretending that where we want to be is actually where we are. And I think back a couple weeks ago Secretary Blinken came out saying to diplomats in the State Department that it was okay for them to admit America's flaws and failings in their diplomatic engagements with other countries. But I would—I do applaud that. But I also think that saying that we would admit it to the rest of the world—the rest of the world already knows. And who we would have to need to focus on admitting it to is ourselves, because we have not faced this national shame of ours as it relates to the historical and the present reality of White supremacy, of racialized violence and hatred and exclusion in our immigration policy, in our education policy, in our law and customs and cultural mores that have helped to produce ongoing violence and hatred of this nature in which our history is steeped. I think the other part of that is that we lose the opportunity to then share that message with the rest of the world. And so, what I like to say is that our real history is better than the story that we tell. So instead of us framing ourselves and our foreign policy as a nation who fell from the heavens to the top of a mountain, it's a more powerful story to say that we climbed up out of a valley and are still climbing up out of a valley of trying to create and produce and cultivate a multiracial, multiethnic democracy with respect for all, and that that is and has been a struggle. And I think that that message is much more powerful. And what it does is it creates healing for us at home, but it also begins to take away this kind of Achilles' heel that many of our adversaries have used historically—the Soviet Union, now Russia, China, Iran—this notion that democracy and freedom and the moral posturing of America is all for naught if you just look at what they do at home. Who are they to preach to you about these things when they themselves have the same challenges? And so I think that we would strengthen ourselves if we could look at this in that way. And I would just close by saying that we often speak of the civil rights movement and the movement for decolonization in the world, and specifically in Africa where I mostly work, speak of them in the past tense. But I would argue that both of them are movements and histories that are continuously unfolding, that are not resolved, and that haven't brought themselves to peaceful kinds of conclusions. And this is why when George Floyd is killed on camera, choked for nine minutes and loses his life, that you see reverberations all over the world, people pushing back because they are suffering from the same in their countries, and they are following after anti-Asian hate protestors and advocates, Black Lives Matter advocates and protestors, people who are saying to the world this is unacceptable. And so even in that way, you see the linked fates that people share. And so I think that the more we begin to face who we are at home, the more we begin to heal these wounds and relate better in the foreign policy arena, because I think that it is a long held fallacy that these things are separate, right? A nation's foreign policy is only an extension of its beliefs, its policies and its aspirations and its desires from home going out into the world. So I will stop there. And thank you for the question. FASKIANOS: Thank you very much. Dr. Plummer, over to you. PLUMMER: Well, your question is a very good one. It is also a very book-length question. I'll try to address that. First of all, I would like to say that I find Mr. Adkins' statement quite eloquent and can't think of anything I disagree with in what he has said. There are a couple of things that we might consider as well. I think there are several issues embedded in this question of the relationship between race relations in the United States and it's policies toward other countries. One of them is, I think there's a difference between what policymakers intend and how American policy is perceived. There is also the question of precisely who is making and carrying out U.S. foreign policy. Now there was a time when that question I think could be very readily answered. But we're now in an age where we have enhanced roles for the military and the intelligence community. We have private contractors executing American objectives overseas. And this really places a different spin on things, somewhat different from what we observe when we look at this only through a strictly historical lens. I think we also need to spend some time thinking about the precise relationship between race and racism and what we might call colonial, more of imperialist practices. You might look, for example, at what is the relationship between the essentially colonial status of places like Puerto Rico and the Marianas and the—how those particular people from those places are perceived and treated within both the insular context and the domestic context. Clearly, everybody on the planet is shaped to a large degree by the culture and the society that they live in, that they grew up in, right? And so it is probably no mystery from the standpoint of attitudes that certain kinds of people domestically may translate into similar views of people overseas. But I think one of the things we might want to think about is how our institutions, as well as prejudices, influence what takes place. People like to talk, for example, about the similarities between the evacuation of Saigon and the evacuation of Kabul and wonder what is it called when you do the same thing over and over again and expect different results? We might want to think about what is it, institutionally, which creates these kinds of repetitions, creates situations in which diplomats are forced to apologize and explain continually about race and other conflictual issues in American society. We might also think about what you perhaps could call a racialization process. Do we create categories of pariahs in response to national emergencies? Do we create immigrants from countries south of the United States as enemies because we don't have a comprehensive and logical way of dealing with immigration? Do we create enemies out of Muslims because of our roles in the Middle East and, you know, the activities and actions of other states? There's some historical presence for this—the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, for example. So it seems to me that in addressing I think, you know, some of this very rich question, there are a number of ways and facets that we might want to look at and discuss more fully. FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you very much. And now we're going to go to all of you for questions and comments. So you can either ask your question by raising your hand, click on the raised hand icon and I will call on you, or else you can write your question in the Q&A box. And if you choose to write your question—although we'd prefer to hear your voice—please include your affiliation. And when I call on you, please let us know who you are and your institution. So the first question, the first raised hand I see is from Stanley Gacek. Q: Yes, thank you very much. Thank you very much, Professor Plummer and Mr. Adkins, for a very, very compelling presentation. My name is Stanley Gacek. I'm the senior advisor for global strategies at the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, representing 1.3 million working women and men in the United States and Canada in the retail, wholesale, food production, healthcare, and services industries. Practically all of our members are on the frontlines of the pandemic. I also served as deputy director and interim director of the ILO mission in Brazil in 2011 to 2016. And my question is this. I wonder if the speakers would also acknowledge that an issue for the United States in terms of its credibility with regard to racial justice, human rights, and of course labor rights, is a rather paltry record of the United States in terms of ratifying international instruments and adhering to international fora with regard to all of these issues. One example which comes to mind in my area is ILO Convention 111 against discrimination in employment and profession, which could—actually has gone through a certain due diligence process in former administrations and was agreed to by business and labor in the United States but still the United States has failed to ratify. I just wondered if you might comment more generally about how that affects our credibility in terms of advocating for racial justice, human rights, and labor rights throughout the world. Thank you very much. FASKIANOS: Who can address that, would like to address that? PLUMMER: Well, I have very little immediate knowledge of this, and I have to say that labor issues and labor rights have been kind of a missing element in terms of being heavily publicized and addressed. I think it has something to do with the fact that over the course of the decades the United States has been less responsive to the United Nations, to international organizations in general. But in terms of the specifics, you know, precisely what has fallen by the wayside, I, you know, personally don't have, you know, knowledge about that. ADKINS: And I would just say more generally, not to speak specifically in terms of labor, where I'm also not an expert, but there is, of course, a long history of the U.S. seeking to avoid these kinds of issues in the international arena writ large as Dr. Plummer was just referring to. I just finished a book by Carol Anderson called Eyes Off the Prize, which is a whole study of this and the ways in which the U.S. government worked through the United Nations to prevent the internationalization of the civil rights movement which many—Malcom X and Martin Luther King, Fannie Lou Hamer, and others—sought to frame it in the context of human rights and raise it into an international specter, and that was something that the U.S. government did not want to happen. And of course, we know that part of the genius of the civil rights movement writ large was this tactic of civil disobedience, not just to push against a law that we didn't like to see in effect but actually to create a scene that would create international media attention which would show to the world what these various communities were suffering inside of America, to try to create pressure outside of our borders for the cause of freedom and justice and democracy. And so there is that long history there which you've touched on with your question. Thank you for that. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to go next to Mojubaolu Olufunke Okome. Q: Good afternoon and thank you for your presentation. I just wonder about U.S. foreign policy, how it lines up with the domestic politics, you know, in terms of race relations, because if one was to believe U.S. propaganda, you know, this country is doing good in the world, it's the country to emulate. But you know, the events of—well, I guess the George Floyd case brought into graphic relief what most astute observers of the U.S. know, that race relations of the U.S. do not line up very well with the constitutional aspirations of the U.S. So what's going to change now, you know? And then there's also this pandemic and the way which race and class is showing us about the real serious inequalities in the U.S. So what's going to change in terms of lessons learned? And then moving forward, is also multilateralism going to come back into U.S. foreign policy in some way? That's it. PLUMMER: I think—I'm getting kind of an echo here. I don't know if other people are. I don't think anyone is—you know, who is thinking about this seriously doubts that the United States is in a crisis at the moment—a crisis of legitimacy not only abroad but also domestically. We have a situation in which an ostensibly developed country has large pockets, geographic pockets where there are, you know, 30, 40, 50 percent poverty rates. We have people who are essentially mired in superstition, you know, with regard to, you know, matters of health and science. And you know, I don't think anyone is, you know—is, you know—who is, you know, thinking about this with any degree of gravity is not concerned about the situation. Once again, I think we're talking here about institutions, about how we can avoid this sort of repetitive and cyclical behavior. But one thing I want to say about George Floyd is that this is a phenomenon that is not only unique to the United States. One of the reasons why George Floyd became an international cause célèbre is because people in other countries also were experiencing racism. There—other countries had issues with regard to immigration. And so really looking at a situation in which I think is—you know, transcends the domestic, but it also transcends, you know, simply looking at the United States as, you know, the sort of target of criticism. FASKIANOS: Do you want to add anything, Travis, or do you want to—should we go to the next question? ADKINS: Go on to the next question. Thank you. FASKIANOS: OK, thank you. Let's go to Shaarik Zafar with Georgetown, and our prior questioner was with Brooklyn—teachers at Brooklyn College. Q: Hey, there. This is Shaarik Zafar. I was formerly the special counsel for post-9/11 national origin discrimination in the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division—sorry, that's a mouthful—and then most recently during the Obama years I was a special representative to Muslim communities. So this—I first applaud the presentation. These issues are very near and dear to me. I think it's clear, you know, we have to own up and acknowledge our shortcomings. And I think, you know, I was really sad to hear that we actually worked against highlighting what I think is really an example of American exceptionalism, which is our civil rights movement and our civil rights community. When I was at State during the Obama years, we had a very modest program where we brought together U.S. civil rights leaders and connected them with European civil rights leaders. And the idea wasn't that we had it all figured out but rather that, you know, in some respects the United States has made some advances when it comes to civil rights organizing and civil society development in that respect—and perhaps more so than other countries. I was just thinking, I would love to get the panelists' thoughts on ways that we can continue to collaborate and—you know, on a civil society level between civil rights organizations in the United States and abroad and the way the U.S. government should actually support that—even if it means highlighting our shortcomings—but as a way to, you know, invest in these types of linkages and partnerships to not only highlight our shortcomings but look for ways that we could, you know, actually come to solutions that need to be, I think, fostered globally. Thanks so much. ADKINS: You know, the first thing I would say, Shaarik—thanks for your question—I thought it was interesting, this idea of framing the civil rights movement as a kind of example of American exceptionalism. And I think there's a way in which I would relate to that in the sense that folks did, at least nominally or notionally, have certain kinds of freedom of speech, certain kinds of rights to assembly. But even those were challenged, of course, when we see the violence and the assassinations and all of the machinations of the government against those who were leaders or participants in that movement. And so in that sense, perhaps I would agree. I might push back, though, in terms of American exceptionalism as it relates to civil rights, because these people were actually advocating against the U.S. government, who actually did not want them to have the rights that they were promised under the Constitution. Of course, many of us would not be free or able to speak up without the 13th and 14th and 15th Amendments. And so there's a sense in which we celebrate them, but there's also a sense in which they are actually indictments of the original Constitution which did not consider any of those things to be necessary elements of our society. In terms of civil society and where the U.S. government is engaged, I think that, you know, sometimes when we deal with these problems that are foreign policy related, you know, sometimes the answer is at home. Sometimes the answer is not, you know, a white paper from some high-level think tank. It's not something that starts ten thousand miles away from where we are, because I don't think that we would have the kind of standing and credibility that we would need to say that we believe in and support and give voice and our backing to civil society movements abroad if we don't do the same thing at home. And so everything that we want to do somewhere else, we ought to ask ourselves the question of whether or not we've thought about doing it at home. And I don't mean to suggest—because certainly no nation is perfect, and every nation has its flaws. But certainly, we would be called to the mat for the ways in which we are either acknowledging or refusing to acknowledge that we have, you know, these same—these same challenges. And so I think there still remains a lot of work to be done there in terms of how we engage on this. And you have seen the State Department come out and be more outspoken. You've seen the Biden administration putting these issues more out front. You have now seen the Black Lives Matter flag flying over U.S. embassies in different parts of the world. And some people might view that as co-optation of a movement that is actually advocating against the government for those rights and those respects and that safety and security that people believe that they are not receiving. And others might see it as a way to say, look, our nation is embracing civil society and civic protests in our nation as an example that the countries in which those embassies are in should be more open to doing the same kinds of things. And so it's a great question. I think it remains to be seen how we move forward on that—on that score. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to go next to Molly Cole. Q: Hi. My name is Molly Cole. I am a grad student of global affairs at New York University. I was just curious sort of what y'all thought about what the consequences of foreign policy on punishment systems and institutions as it pertains to race relations in the United States would be, also in tandem with sort of this strive for global inclusivity and equity and just sort of, I guess, hitting those two ideas against each other. ADKINS: Can you clarify the ideals for us, Molly? So one sounded like it was about maybe mass incarceration or the death penalty or things of that nature? You're talking about punitive systems of justice? And then the other seemed to be more about diversity, equity, and inclusion in the foreign policy space? But I don't want to put words in your mouth. I just want to make sure I understand the question. Q: You hit the nail on the head. ADKINS: OK. Do you want to go ahead, Dr. Plummer? PLUMMER: Oh. Well, again, a great question but, you know, one of, you know, it's—could write a book to answer. (Laughs.) Well, if you're talking about the sort of international regime of incarceration—is that what you were referring to? Q: Yes, essentially. So when we're—when we're considering, you know, these punitive systems, I'm thinking in terms of, you know, the death penalty, mass incarceration, private prisons, sort of this culmination of us trying to come up with these ideals, but doing it sort of on our own, while also combatting, you know, what the nation is calling for, what the globe is calling for. PLUMMER: Yeah. I think this sort of pertains to what I had mentioned earlier about just, you know, who is making and carrying out U.S. foreign policy, or domestic policy for that matter. There's a whole question of the state and, you know, what parts of the state are involved in this whole question of incarceration and are involved in the whole question of the death penalty. One of the things that we are aware of is that prisons have—some of the prisons are actually not being operated by civil authorities. They're operated by private entities. We saw this again in—you know, particularly in Afghanistan, where a lot of functions which normally, you know, are carried out by civil authorities are carried out by private authorities. And so this really puts a whole different perspective on the question or the relationship of citizens to the state and, you know, to any other particular group of citizens to the state. So I think that, you know, one of the problem areas then is to tease out what in fact are the obligations and privileges of government, and how do they differ from and how are they distinguished from the private sector. Q: Thank you. ADKINS: And I would just add quickly on this notion of hypocrisy and saying one thing and doing another, there was an interesting anecdote around this when President Obama visited Senegal. And he was delivering a fairly tough message about the treatment of members of the LGBT+ community in Senegal. And President Macky Sall got up essentially after President Obama and was essentially saying that, you know, we kind of appreciate this tough love lecture, but I would remind you, you know, that Senegal doesn't have the death penalty, right? And so on one hand we're actually saying something that has a grounding. Of course, people of all human stripes can have dignity, and have respect and be protected. But he is then hitting back and saying, hey, wait a minute, you kill people who break laws in your own country. And we don't have the death penalty. So who should actually be the arbiter of how is the correct way – or, what is the correct way to be? On the second part of your question, quickly, Molly, especially as it relates to the kind of diversity, equity, and inclusion piece, this is why also there has been a big push to look in our State Department, to look at USAID, to look at the face that America presents to the world. And all too often that face has been male, that face has been White. And that gives a certain perception of America, but it also means that we lose the tremendous treasure and talent of people who have language skills, who come from communities in which their own perspective on the world actually is a talent that they have. Specifically, because many of those communities—whether they've immigrated or come to America by different means—are also from groups who've been marginalized, who've been oppressed, who have a certain frame and a lens with which to engage with other nations in the world, either in terms of partnership, either in terms of deterrence. And so we lose out in many ways because we haven't done a great job in that—in that matter. FASKIANOS: I'm going to take a written question from Morton Holbrook, who's at Kentucky Wesleyan College. His question is: How should the United States respond to international criticism to the U.S.'s racial discrimination? And how will that affect the relationship between the U.S. and the international community? PLUMMER: Well, the United States, I think, has—(laughs)—no choice but to acknowledge this. Historically this has been a problem that when pressed on this issue in the past the response was always, well, you know, we know this is a problem and we're working on it. And the most egregious examples of racism are the responsibility of people who are either at the margins of society or who represent some sort of relic past that is rapidly disappearing, right? That was the message about the South, right? OK, the South is, you know, rapidly developing and so soon these vestiges of violent racism will be over. Well, again, the reason why that doesn't work anymore—(laughs)—is because we're always projecting this future, right, that—you know, it's always being projected further and further into the future. And we're never there yet. And it seems to me, again, that this is a problem of institutions. This is a problem of the embeddedness of racism in American life, and a refusal on the part of so many Americans to acknowledge that racism is real, and that it exists. And you know, I think we see many examples of this. I'm thinking of one instance where a George Floyd commemorative mural was painted on a sidewalk and some folks came along with some paint and painted over it, because they said it wasn't a racism corner, you know, while engaged in a racist act. So, you know, there really needs to be, I think, on a very fundamental level, some education—(laughs)—you know, in this country on the issue of race and racism. The question is, you know, who is—who will be leaders, right? Who will undertake this kind of mission? ADKINS: One thing I would say, quickly, on that, Irina, just an anecdote as well that also relates to really in some ways the last question about who our representatives are and what perspective they bring. Several years ago, I was on a trip—a congressional delegation to Egypt. And I was with several members of the CBC. And we met with President Sisi. And they were giving him a fairly rough go of it over his treatment of protesters who were protesting at that time in Tahrir Square, many of whom had been killed, maimed, abused, jailed. And he listened to them kind of haranguing him. And at the end of that speech that they were giving to him he said basically: I understand your points. And I hear your perspective. But he said, can I ask you a question? They said, sure, Mr. President. We welcome you to ask questions. And he said, what about Ferguson? And the day that he said that Ferguson was on fire with surplus military equipment in the streets of America, with, you know, tear gas and armed military-appearing soldiers in the streets of America who were seen, at least optically, to be doing the same thing, right? Not as many people were killed, certainly, but the point is you have this same problem. However, if that had been a different delegation, he might have scored a point in their verbal jousting. But President Sisi had the misfortune of saying this to two-dozen 70-plus-year-old Black people. And no one in America would know better than they what that is like. And so what they ended up replying to him by saying, exactly. No one knows this better than we do. And this is exactly why we're telling you that you shouldn't do it. Not because our country doesn't have that history, but because we do have that history and it has damaged us, and it will damage you. Which takes on a completely different tone in our foreign relations than if it was simply a lecture, and that we were placing ourselves above the nations of the world rather than among them. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to go to Ashantee Smith. Q: Hello. Can you guys hear me? ADKINS: We can. FASKIANOS: Yes. Q: OK, perfect. Hi. My name is Ashantee Smith. I am a grad student at Winston-Salem State University. In regards to some of the responses that you guys gave earlier, it gave me a question. And I wanted to know how you guys were putting the correlation between racism and immigration. PLUMMER: Well, yeah. The United States has a history of racialized responses to immigrants, including historically to White immigrants. Back in the day the Irish, for example, were considered to be, you know, something less than White. We know, however, that society—American society has since, you know, incorporated Europeans into the category of Whiteness, and not done so for immigrants from Latin America, Asia, and Africa, who remain racialized, who are perceived as being, in some respects by some people, unassimilable. We also have a phenomenon of the racialization of Muslims, the creation of outcast groups that are subjected to, you know, extremes of surveillance or exclusion or discrimination. So immigration is very much embedded in this, is a question of an original vision of the United States, you know, and you can see this in the writings of many of the founding fathers, as essentially a White country in which others, you know, are in varying degrees of second-class citizens or not citizens at all. So this is, I think, an example of something that we have inherited historically that continues to, you know, be an issue for us in the present. Yeah. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to go next to Pearl Robinson. Q: Hello. I am just so thrilled to see the two panelists here. I want—I actually raised my hand when you were talking about the labor rights issue. And I'm at Tufts University. And I'm currently working on an intellectual biography about Ralph Bunche. And I actually ran over here from the U.N. archives where I was actually reading about these issues. (Laughs.) And I wanted to just say that the discussion we're having now, it's sort of disjointed because we're dealing with lots of erasures, things that are overlooked, and they are not enough Carol Andersons and Brenda Gayle Plummer professors out there putting these things in press. But even more importantly, they are not sufficiently in our curriculum. So people who study international relations and people who do international relations don't know most of these things. So my quick point I just wanted to say was during World War II when Ralph Bunche was working for the OSS military intelligence, his archives are full of it, he went and he was interviewing our allies at their missions and embassies in the U.S.—the French, the British—asking them: What are your labor relations policies in your colonial territories? And this was considered important military information for the United States, as we were going to be—as Africa was an important field of operation. When you get to actually setting up the U.N., I was struck in a way I hadn't, because I hadn't read archives this way. (Laughs.) But I'm looking at conversations between Bunche and Hammarskjöld, and they're restructuring the organization of the United States—of the United Nations. And there are two big issues that are determining their response to the restructuring—the Cold War as well as decolonization. And I actually think that those two issues remain—they're structuring that conversation we're having right now. And they—we say the Cold War is over, but I love this phrase, of the racialization of the current enemies or people we think of as enemies. So I actually do think that this is a really good program we're having where we're trying to have the conversation. But the dis-junctures, and the silences, and the difficulties of responding I think speak volumes. The last thing I will say, very quickly, that incident about the discussion with President Sisi that Mr. Adkins—that needs to be canned. That needs to be somehow made available as an example that can be replicated and expanded and broadened for people to use in teaching. ADKINS: Well, I always listen when my teacher is talking to me, Dr. Robinson. Thank you for sharing that. And I'm working on it, I promise you. (Laughter.) FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to go next to—we have lots of questions and raised hands, and we're not going to get to all of you. So I apologize right now. (Laughs.) We'll do the best we can. Jill Humphries. Q: Hello. My name is Jill Humphries. And I'm an adjunct assistant professor in the Africa Studies Program at the University of Toledo, and have been doing Africa-based work, I'm proud to say, for about thirty-three years, starting at the age twenty-two, and have used Dr. Plummer's work in my dissertation. And hello, fellow ICAPer (sp). So my question is this: There's an assumption that I believe we're operating in. And that is race and racism is somehow aberrant to the founding of this country, right? So we know that Saidiya Hartman and Frank Wilderson, the Afropessimist, make the argument that it is clearly key that it is fundamental to the development of our institutions. And so my question is this: You know, the—in the domestic scene the sort of abolitions clearly state that unless we fundamentally transform our norms and values, which impact, of course, our institutions, then we will continue to have the exact outcomes that are expected. The killing of George Floyd and the continuing, I think, need to kill Black bodies is essential to this country. And so my question is, in the context of foreign relations, international relations, are we also looking at the way in which, number one, it is not aberrant that racism is a constituent element in the development of our foreign policy and our institutions? And that unless we fundamentally first state it, acknowledge it, and then perhaps explore the way in which we dismantle, right—dismantle those norms and values that then impact these institutions, that we're going to continue to have the same outcomes, right? So for example, when Samantha Powers visited Ethiopia, if you've been following that whole narrative, there was a major backlash by the Ethiopian diaspora—major. My colleagues and friends, like, I've had intense conversations, right, around that. Same thing about the belief about Susan, former—Susan Rice's role, right, in continuing to influence our foreign policy, particularly towards the Horn of Africa. So my question is: What does that look like, both theoretically, conceptually? But more importantly for me, because I'm a practitioner on the ground, what does that look like in practice? And that's where I think Professor Adkins, working for USAID, could really kind of talk about. Thank you. ADKINS: Thank you. Yeah, you know, I think it goes back to Dr. Robinson's question a moment ago. And that is the first the acknowledgement and the calling out and the putting into relief and contrast the context in which we're operating, especially when we think about not even USAID specifically, but the industry of development—aid and development assistance kind of writ large. Because essentially what we have is a historical continuum that starts with the colonial masters and the colonial subjects. And then that because what is called, or framed, as the first world and the third world, right? And then that becomes the developing world and the developed world. Then that becomes the global north and the global south. All of which suggests that one is above, and one is below. That one is a kind of earthly heaven, the other kind of earthly hell. That one possessed the knowledge and enlightenment to lead people into civilization, and the other needs redemption, needs to be saved, needs to be taught the way to govern themselves, right? That this kind of Western notion of remaking yourself in the world, that your language, that your system of government, that your way of thinking and religious and belief and economics should be the predominant one in the world. And so I think, to me, what you're saying suggests the ways in which we should question that. And this is where you start to hear conversations about decolonizing aid, about questioning how we presume to be leaders in the world in various aspects, of which we may not actually be producing sound results ourselves. And thinking again about this notion of placing ourselves among nations rather than above nations in the ways in which we relate and engage. And I think that it's one of the reasons that we continue to have challenges in the realm of development assistance, in the realm of our diplomacy and foreign policy. Because, again, there is a pushback against that kind of thinking, which is rooted in a deep history that contains much violence and many types of economic and diplomatic pressures to create and sustain the set of power relations which keeps one group of people in one condition and one in another. And so it's a huge question. And how to bring that kind of lofty thinking down to the granular level I think is something that we will have to continue to work on every day. I certainly don't have the answer, but I'm certainly answering—asking, I should say—the questions. PLUMMER: I think I might also think about how is in charge. And this is—you know, it goes back to something we talked about before, when U.S. foreign policy is no longer exclusively rooted in the State Department? So in terms of, you know, who represents the United States abroad and in what ways, and how is that representation perceived, we're really looking at, you know, a lot of different actors. And we're also looking at, you know, changes in the way that the U.S. government itself is perceiving its role, both at home and abroad. And one of the questions was previously asked about the system of incarceration speaks to that, because we have to ask ourselves what are—what are—what are the proper roles and responsibilities and burdens of the state, the government and, you know, what is leased out—(laughs)—in some ways, for profit to private concerns? So I think that, you know, some of this is about, you know, a sense of mission that I don't see out there, that I think will in some respects have to be restored and reinvented. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to go next to Erez Manela. Q: Thank you very much for this really terrific and important panel. My name is Erez Manela. I teach the history of U.S. foreign relations at Harvard. And my question actually—I don't know if Irina planned this—but it follows on directly from the previous question. Because I kept on wondering during this panel what—I mean, the focus that we've had here, the topic that's been defined, is the way in which domestic race relations, domestic racism, have shaped U.S. foreign policy. But of course, U.S. foreign policy has been shaped—as the previous questioner noted—has been shaped directly by racism and perceptions of racial hierarchy for—well, since the very beginning. And Professor Adkins spoke very eloquently about it. And of course, Professor Plummer has written eloquently about that, including in her books on Haiti and international relations. But I guess I'm wondering if you could speak more about the specifics about the history that needs to be recognized in that realm, and then—and this is maybe self-interested—whether you have any recommendations, in the way that you recommended Carol Anderson's really terrific book—for reading that we can read ourselves or give our students to read, that would really drive that point home, the influence of racism, race perceptions, race hierarchies themselves on—directly on the conduct of U.S. foreign relations historically. PLUMMER: Well, Professor Manela, I appreciate your own work on Wilson. And you know, that in some respects—that would be a book that I'd recommend. (Laughs.) Might also think about Mary Dudziak's work on Cold War civil rights, and her law review article, Desegregation as a Cold War Imperative, which, you know, directly addresses these questions. Again, what I would like to see is some work that will—perhaps not necessarily a historical perspective—but will address this whole question of the sort of growing, I don't know what you'd call it, multiplicity or multivariant character of American policymaking, you know, as we—as we go forward, you know, past the Cold War era. There's an interesting item by a man named Andrew Friedman, who wrote a book called Covert Capital. I think the subtitle is something like Landscapes of Power, in which we discussed the rise of Northern Virginia as what he sees as the true capital of, you know, parts of the U.S. government, in being a center for the military and for intelligence community. And their shaping of that environment at home, as well as their influence in shaping U.S. policy abroad. So, you know, there's a lot of room for work on these—on these issues. ADKINS: And I would also just follow up—and thank you for the question—and add another book that I just finished. Daniel Immerwahr, from Northwestern University, How to Hide an Empire, which deals in many ways with U.S. foreign policy and the way in which it is explicitly racialized and ways in which that goes understudied in our—in our policy circles, and certainly in the world of education. FASKIANOS: I'm going to try to squeeze in one last question. And I apologize again for not getting to everybody's question. We'll go to Garvey Goulbourne as our final question. Q: Yes. Hi. Can you hear me? FASKIANOS: We can. Q: Yeah. My name's Garvey Goulbourne. I'm a student at the University of Virginia, actually studying abroad this semester in Rabat, Morocco. And my question to you both is: What mechanisms do we have to orient the narratives that our foreign policy leaders are brought up with? Thinking particularly of American exceptionalism and how we kind of place ourselves on a pedestal, whether they be foreign affairs schools or various institutions at different levels of American education, what tools do we have to address the foundations of American perspectives of themselves and our nation in relation to the rest of the world, particularly the global south? FASKIANOS: Who wants to go first? An easy question, of course, to close with. PLUMMER: Go ahead, Mr. Adkins. ADKINS: Sure, sure. Thank you for your question, Garvey. And congratulations on the move out to Morocco. Great to see you there. I think the first thing I would say, of course, is our tools, as far as I am concerned, relate certainly to education. And it's one of the reasons that I am in the classroom. But I know what that fight is like, because even education is taken over by these notions of White supremacy, by these notions of singular historical narratives. And this is why there's been such a push against the 1619 Project of the New York Times, why there is this kind of silly season around the misunderstood origins and contexts of critical race theory. There is this battle over who gets to tell the story of what America is, because it is more than—but it is more than one thing, obviously, to a multiplicity of people. And so I am kind of remiss—or, not remiss. There's no way for me to elucidate for you now a series of tools that will resolve these problems, because these are challenges that people have been wrestling with before our mothers' mothers were born. And so we only are continuing that fight from where we sit. And certainly, in the classrooms that I am in, whether they are in prisons or on campuses, we are always digging into the origin of these themes. And the main frame through which I teach is not just for students to understand this history for their health, but for them to understand this history as a lens through which to view the current world and all of the events and challenges that we find ourselves facing, to see if we can come up with new ways to address them. PLUMMER: Well, one of the things that Mr. Goulbourne could do, since he is in Morocco, is to make use of his own insights in his conversations with Moroccans. So, you know, there is still a role, you know, for individual actors to play some part in attempting to make some changes. FASKIANOS: Well, with that we unfortunately have to close this conversation. It was very rich. Thank you, Travis Adkins and Brenda Gayle Plummer or sharing your insights and analysis with us. We really appreciate it. To all of you, for your questions and comments. Again, I'm sorry we couldn't get to all of you. You can follow Travis Adkins @travisladkins, and that's on Twitter. And our next Academic Webinar will be on Wednesday September 29, at 1:00 p.m. (ET) with Thomas Graham, who is a fellow at CFR. And we'll talk about Putin's Russia. So in the meantime, I encourage you to follow us at @CFR_Academic, visit CFR.org, Thinkglobalhealth.org, and ForeignAffairs.com for new research and analysis on global issues. So thank you all again and we look forward to continuing the conversation. ADKINS: Take care, everyone. Thank you. (END)

 Learn why you just can't do everything on your own especially in your business Find out more about the value of emotions and relationships with customers as a business Discover how the price isn't as important anymore once you've developed a great and understanding customer service system Resources/Links: Wanting to Learn More on How to Improve and Grow Your Business Through the Magic of Customer Service? Find out the Why's, the How's, and the What's of Customer Service: ultimateCXexperience.info/freeyellowbook Summary Have you been putting aside your customer service systems and prioritizing other parts of your business instead? Are you constantly struggling with making valuable and deep connections and relationships with your clients? Do you want to know more about why doing everything on your own isn't the best and right way on growing your business? Dr. David Moffet and Jayne Bandy are respected speakers and writers on customer service systems and processes. They coach private SME clients on how to improve their businesses by focusing on customer retention and providing World Class customer service. In this episode, David Moffet shares his insights on why customer service systems are very crucial in business and in increasing profit. He also talks about how asking for help and guidance is one of the stepping stones to becoming successful and growing your business. Check out these episode highlights: 01:28 - David's ideal client: “My ideal client is any small business ranging, in turnover, from 3 million to 50 million with between 5 and 50 or 60 employees, and they want to grow their business.” 02:00 - Problem David helps solve: “Well, the problem I solve is that these businesses want to increase their revenue. They want to increase their top line. They want to increase their bottom line.” 02:50 - Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to David: “Well, I think the easiest way to identify that you've got a problem is that your sales are either dropping, or they're stagnating. Every business should grow year after year after year. That's a given if you want to survive or just keep up with inflation.” 04:01 - Common mistakes that people make before they find David's solutions: “I think I see plenty of mistakes all the time. But I think one of the most common mistakes I see is business owners trying to do everything on their own. And that's just an error that just compounds upon itself.” 05:18 - David's Valuable Free Action (VFA): “Well, I think they need to reflect. Yeah, sometimes people are just too busy chopping wood to stop and sharpen the saw. You know, they need to reflect and stop micromanaging, as I said, you know and start delegating.” 06:13 - David's Valuable Free Resource (VFR): Get a FREE PDF Copy of David's Best-Selling Book: ultimateCXexperience.info/freeyellowbook 07:13 - Q: You're a dentist. How can you help my business? A: Customer service is in my blood. It's always been in my blood. Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode: “If you've got a great business, price becomes irrelevant. They won't care what your competitors charge because they get such great value and great relationships from dealing with you.” -David MoffetClick To Tweet Transcript (Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast) Tom Poland 00:09 Welcome, everyone, to another edition of Marketing the Invisible. My name is Tom Poland beaming out to you from little Castaways Beach here in Queensland, Australia, joined today by another Australian, David Moffett. Good day, sir. A very warm welcome. Where are you- where are you based? David Moffet 00:22 Hey, Tom! Thanks for having me. I'm based in Burrawang, New South Wales,

Its National Festival of Learning Have a Go Month 2021 Month Festival of Learning is the biggest celebration of lifelong learning in England. Dave Chapelle Here in London from the 12-21 October born 24th August 1973 We have an interview with Roy Hamilton and our question for the week Q:You find out the person you have been dating is transgender should they have told you beforehand? Join in on the conversation at: Radio station: https://allflavasradio.com Here at “ALL FLAVAS RADIO” we provide a variety of musical genres, breaking news, current affairs and live interviews from around the world. ” Yes a new community to radio!” Why Not? We were tired of the way in which radio stations structure their shows and decided to recruit DJ's and Presenters from around the world to schedule live shows, reaching a global audience and bringing different cultures together. Presenters Natasha John-Baptiste AKA @wimbo77 https://www.instagram.com/wimbo77/ https://www.onethingabouthistory.com@naturally_lele https://www.instagram.com/naturally_l... --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/onethingabouthistory/message

投稿者　　：　松 ご紹介曲　：　Instant Vintage / Raphael Saadiq リリース　：　2002年 ・Youtube https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKmKRe55Zlei6_fDseNL133CNDV3BfRGr ・Spotify https://open.spotify.com/album/2Dfk3iSj303wZD28aXq5ov?si=kS86AF5eRyiCq9eARBCgow&dl_branch=1 今日は僕の大好きなアーティスト、ラファエル・サディークについて書きます。 前回書いたディアンジェロのアルバムの編曲にも関わっている方です、前回記事もよろしければ是非！ https://note.com/oilspot/n/n0a9d6f843a04 ------------ 本記事は最後まで無料で読めますが、もし気に入っていただけた場合は 記事を購入するか、ご希望の金額でサポート（投げ銭）していただく事も可能です。 支援していただいた金額は全てOILSPOTの活動資金といたします！ なお、記事の末尾にはホームページへのリンク（活動の詳細）やPodcast、Spotify等へのリンク（当記事のラジオ版）も掲載しているので、是非最後までご確認ください！ ------------ ●生い立ちとグループでの活動 サディークは1966年CAのオークランド生まれ、14人兄弟の中で2番目に若い兄弟だったそう.。 家庭環境は詳しく調べられませんでしたが、分かったのはいくつかの悲しい体験があったこと。 ７歳の時に兄弟が殺害されたり、他２人はオーバードーズによって死んでしまったり、妹を交通事故でなくしたり。。 そんな悲劇も乗り越えて音楽活動をしているということを知るだけでも、聴き方が変わってきますよね。 そんな彼が楽器を弾き始めたのは６歳で、幼き頃から相当な才能人だったそう。 周りからみるみる認められてきた彼のデビューは、「ニュー・クラシック・ソウル」なるシーンの火付け役ともいえる Tony! Toni! Tone!（トニー・トニー・トニー）から始まりました。 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpY_ElM4CYk New Jack Swing（初期のEXILEのような系統）が好きな人はマストで抑えるべきグループです！ 続いて結成したのは、En Vogueのドーン・ロビンソンとア・トライブ・コールド・クエスト（ATCQ）のアリを迎えた混成ユニット、Lucy Pearl（ルーシー・パール）でした。 アコーティスティックかつアップテンポな「Don't Mess with My Man」や、Snoop　Dogg&Qテイップを迎えた「You」などがヒットしました。 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwHTV570nBg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OgPkAWGIDE またソロでリリースした曲ももちろん見逃せません。 インパクトのあるジャケット写真が印象的な1stアルバム「Instant Vintage」は、サディークの繊細な歌声とグルーヴが最高に気持ちいい名盤。 2ndアルバム「Ray Ray」は比較的ノりやすい曲が多めで、４作目「Stone Rollin'」（2011）は60-70年代ソウルのニオイがする、どちらもフルで聴く価値のある 素晴らしい作品です！ ※３作目「The Way I See It」（2008）はサブスクで視聴できないので割愛します。 ●個人的ベストソング そんな彼のリリースアルバムのうち、特に好きなのはやはりファーストアルバム。 その中でも特に好きな曲のリンク（３曲）を貼っておきます。 ・Still Ray https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ham_4dBWn-s スロービートとピアノ音がメインで構成されるシンプルな曲ですが、とっても上質で気持ちよくノれる曲。 若干怪しげな雰囲気もまた最高です。 ・Excuse Me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c240zPOPODM こちらは少し明るい雰囲気もある、まさしくネオ・ソウルの良さが詰まった曲。 ディアンジェロの楽曲に多い「陰」の印象から「陽」へ見事に昇華させています。 ・Different Times ft. T-Boz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YmF9YxNv_A TLCのメンバーである女性シンガー・Tボズを迎えた気持ちのいい一作。 Youtubeにライブ映像などもありますが、音の重なりがとっても綺麗な隠れた名曲だと思います！ 是非サディークへの入り口にしてみてください！ それでは。 ●OILSPOT 各種リンク ↓OILSPOT HP https://oilspot.localinfo.jp/ ↓音声（ラジオ）で聴きたい方はこちらから！ ・Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/jp/podcast/work-life-music-radio/id1529000429 ・Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/7IFRnQoRD2tgZ5zzJkje90?si=ExjB1laeTyuOsYvlsYX-Jw

The best decade for Indian equities ironically was the 1980s, and if we look back at the 1980s the Sensex compounded by around 30%-35% -- that's the best decadal return the Sensex has ever given and that predates the 1991 reforms, Saurabh Mukherjea is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Marcellus Investment Managers said in a D-Street Talk podcast with Moneycontrol. Mukherjea, author of Coffee Can Investing as well as Unusual Billionaires with decades of experience in the capital market says that the real hallmark of great wealth generators is not stock not the bottom line, but a derivative of bottom line which incorporates working capital cycle and asset turns which is called free cash flow. Edited Excerpts - Q) As we step into the second half of 2021 what are your views on markets? The Nifty50 rallied 13% in the first half, do you think the momentum will continue? A) Much as we enjoy the bull market I have to be honest, we don't really look at the broader market. Our approach in Marcellus is pretty oblivious to broader market circumstances, whether it's a panic like January, February, March last year, or this healthier market circumstance you're pointing to. We have seen over the last seven-eight months, superb fundamentals across our PMS schemes which are seeing earnings growth. In some cases, earnings growth is pushing towards 40% mark in the companies in which we have invested. Remember, these are not small companies, and almost all our investee companies are dominant market leaders. Earnings growth is very healthy over the last seven, eight, nine months. In the period starting January to March this year, many of our portfolio companies have delivered 40%-50% kind of earnings growth. But, even more impressively, were the free cash flow generation come through. Free cash flow is calculated after taking CapEx into account, and after taking your working capital load into account. Even in our smaller cap portfolios, we are seeing almost 80%-90% jumps in the free cash flow. So what does it mean? Well, it points to the fact that well-run companies in India Inc. are in very good health, and they're in the pink of their health. And, as COVID destroys the informal sector, well run India Inc. companies are in a superb position to grab the market share and consolidate position which will lead to the creation of shareholder wealth in the coming years. My reckoning is generally strong well run companies are in an outstanding position today, compared to say where they were two, three, four years ago. Q) The year 2021 also marks 30 years of reforms for India. What is your take on that? For the market, it never looked back – do you feel that the current reform process are equally strong and will take the economy to new highs? A) I am not sure if listeners will make that much money by agonizing about reforms because the best decade for Indian equities ironically was the 1980s. If you look back at the 1980s the Sensex compounded by around 30%-35%. That's the best decadal return the Sensex has ever given and that predates the 1991 reforms. So, there isn't that much of a relationship contrary to the popular perception that somehow economic reform creates shareholder wealth -- or there isn't that much relationship either in India or indeed in the Western world, between economic reform and broader markets. The notion that the broader bull market conditions is what you need to create wealth is also something that people need to challenge and question. If we look at the last decade there were been plenty of issues around say DeMon, GST, COVID, Yes Bank, DHFL, as well as ILFS. In spite of that, in the last decade, $1 trillion of wealth has been created in the Indian stock market, but 80% of that has been created by 16 companies. So, just 16 companies accounted for 80% of the wealth in the Indian market. The last decade for the average investor in the NIFTY or typical sort of investor who invests in an assortment of stocks would have been an unspectacular decade 10%-11% compounding. But if you're a discerning investor and you locked yourself into a dozen or so of these 15 giant wealth creators, you would have compounded your wealth close to 25% over the last decade. So broader aggregates, economic reform, broader macro aggregates were not very useful for making money. One needs to go stock specific, and one needs to understand the changes in the structure of the economy and benefit from that. Q) Well, there's a lot of craze on tech focused startup. So are you also planning to start something around it? A) No, as I said, we are fairly oblivious to whatever is the flavor of the day, or what is the current market sentiment. I have never quite understood why people get so excited about IPOs and the latest theme (Tech based IPO). I'm sure, if you remember, 10 years ago, everybody wanted to invest in infrastructure stocks and you know how that ended. I remember the turn of the century 1999-2000, I wasn't living in India, but I used to keep reading that Indians are going berserk investing in IT services stocks, we also know how that ended. Our job remains to consistently identify clean companies, selling essential products and services to India's 140 crore people, and doing so through dominant franchises which have little or no competition. And, if they happen to be in the tech sector, brilliant, we love it. But, we have no great reason to believe that they are in the tech sector disproportionately. There's a couple of tech companies that meet that criteria, clean, essential, dominant. But, there's only a couple of tech companies that meet that criteria. There are plenty of companies outside the tech sector, some in the specialty chemical sector, some in the pharma sector, some in FMCG, some in financial services, who meet our criteria and we invest in them and compound our balances well that around historically fighting the last four years it around 25% per annum. Q) You have highlighted the emphasis of Free Cash Flows in one of your blogs. Help our listeners understand the relationship between Free Cash flows and earnings growth? A) I think this is an important subject that you raised one that is close to our hearts. When most people read newspaper headlines, or they read the media coverage, they see a certain company that has grabbed so much market share, its volumes are growing much – the focus here is on the top-line growth. But, top-line creation doesn't necessarily create wealth, whether you look at the airline sector, or you look at the telecom sector or at the metals and mining sector. In all of these sectors, we have companies whose top lines or volumes have grown at a solid rate in the last 20 years, but they have not been able to create a great deal of wealth. Why? Because they haven't had the pricing power to protect their margins. So, investors should look at one level more, and scan through profit margin. If the top-line is vanity, the bottom line is sanity. The ability to grow your profits, over a five, 10, 15 year periods is the sign of a good company. But there's one more layer to it. Often what happens is that as companies grow bigger, they lose their discipline in terms of controlling efficiency in the shop floor in terms of assets, inspecting their machines harder and harder. They lose their efficiency in terms of managing the working capital cycle, which is paying your suppliers later, collecting monies from customers quickly, and keeping your inventories at a minimum. So what we find as the real hallmark, the real hallmark of great wealth generators is not stock not bottom line, but a derivative of bottom line which incorporates working capital cycle and asset turns which is called free cash flow. Free cash flow is nothing but the operating profit, less whatever you had to set aside for working capital, less whatever you've spent on CapEx. So, if your CapEx load is low, your working capital incremental working capitals requirements are low, then your free cash flows tend to be very healthy. Typically in India champion franchises example, Titan, Pidilite, Asian Paints, Page Industries, Relaxo all these champion franchises over the last five years, 10 years, 20 years have grown free cash flows at around 25% per annum. These are all investee companies of us, which is why I know the numbers so well. To summarize, the top line is vanity, the bottom line is sanity, and cash flow is reality. And, that's why I keep telling people to focus on cash flow, not the newspapers headlines and not even profitability. Q) You have talked extensively about polarization in the Indian stock market where wealth creation by Nifty companies is being driven by fewer and fewer companies that account for 80% of the wealth creation in the stock market. What is leading to polarization and how should investors approach it? A) So, what's happening in India is very similar to what happened in America in their corresponding state of development. As the country got networked which includes sea, railways, the telegraph, a modern road network. In India, the same is happening over the last 10-15 years and I suspect we've got 10-15 years more to go of networking the country using broadband, low-cost airlines, a more extensive highway network, and so on. But, you can see very visibly how the consolidation of the country is creating one or two giant companies in every sector, and those giants are scooping up the entire sector's profits. If the sector is large, say banking, or IT services and the sector dominator is becoming a national leviathan, I call it a giant monster who accounts for the bulk of the country's profits. Now, let's start with market cap and then we go to fundamentals. In the decade ending December 2010, around 27 companies accounted for 80% of the wealth creation in the stock market. In the decade ending December 2020, barely 16 companies, 16 accounted for 80% of the wealth creation in the country. So as you've nicely put it, wealth creation has got polarized into the hands of very few companies. Now, why has that happened? 10 years ago around 2010, the top 20 profit generators in India account was around a third of India's profits. Today at the end of FY21 the top 20 profit generators in India accounts for 90%, 95% of India's profits. So the profit share of the elite top 20 firms quadrupled in the last decade. The top 20 have pulled further and further away from the less of the market, which is why it explains why they're driving the bulk of the stock market wealth. 10 years or so ago, the top 20 franchises would have accounted for 30%, 35% of the country's free cash flow. In the year ending March ‘21, the top 20 franchises accounted for around 60% of India's free cash flow. So free cash flows are getting concentrated into the hands of 20 companies, profits are getting concentrated into the hands of 20 companies. Wealth creation, therefore, is getting concentrated into the hands of 20 companies. And what that means for your listeners today is -- if they are building portfolios, where they're buying several PMS, several mutual funds, severally AIS doing some direct punting on the market might not be that effective. Unfortunately, that's not going to be a very effective way to create wealth, because wealth in India in the next decade will be created by at most a dozen and a half companies more likely a dozen or so companies. And, that concentrated nature of wealth creation will actually make wealth creation a very different prospect from investing in the broader indices in the stock market. Q) Do you plan to introduce new products in the forthcoming future? You launched a new SIP program recently, please take us through that and what are the benefits? A) So we've watched and admired from a distance the outstanding work done by the mutual fund industry in making investment buying friendly and making investment investor-friendly. I think the SIP program that the mutual fund industry launched has been a great success. I wish them continued success to the SIP program. What we felt that just like a SIP in the mutual fund context is useful for investors, why shouldn't we do a SIP in the PMS industry, because after all, the benefits are very similar. Namely, if you are a salaried person like I am and your income comes in every month at a relatively regular rate, and you're able to set aside say 10% 20% of your income, you can then keep investing in the PMS at an ongoing rate, provided of course you can need the minimum requirement of Rs 50 lakhs. Secondly, by doing so, by consistently investing by what's called dollar-cost averaging, you're consistently dripping money into your SIP, you're being able to neutralize the highs and lows of the stock market. The third benefit you get is that you're able to turn savings into investment. You're able to turn investing into the stock market into a habit rather than something which you have to do after deep contemplation at the end of every financial year. So the benefits of SIP for people who are earning regular income is great, because they don't really suddenly come upon a certain large sum of money, they're constantly getting fresh funds and they can put that in a PMS SIP just like they do with the mutual fund SIP. (Tune into the podcast for more) Disclaimer: The views and investment tips expressed by experts on Moneycontrol.com are their own and not those of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions.

Our guest this week is Pam Allyn. Pam and Erica have a conversation about literacy and how to encourage a love of literacy with our students. Pam is an author of 26 books for educators. A few of her books include, “Every Child a Super Reader'', & “Your Child's Writing Life: How to Inspire Confidence, Creativity and Skill at Every Age”. Pam is also the founder of LitWorld and Senior Vice President of Innovation at Schoolastic Education. You can also watch a vidcast of this show here: https://youtu.be/RwkbRpqxGF0 QUESTIONS: Q: You've done a lot of work incorporating social emotional learning into literacy. Can you tell us about that work and what led you to it? Q: How do we build an inclusive environment that feels safe and empowering to all of our students? Q: You mentioned student agency; how would you advise we build student agency? Q: How do we help parents and teachers instill a love of literacy with our students? Q: What is one piece of advice you would like to share with our Douglas County Community? Hosted by Erica Mason Director / Curriculum Instruction & Professional Growth Douglas County School District You can listen to this and future episodes by subscribing to Growing Together through your favorite podcast platform, such as Apple, Spotify and Google Podcasts.

Our guest this week is Tina Boogren. Tina and Erica have an in-depth conversation about self care for students and educators. Tina is the Author of "Becoming a Reflective Teacher. Tina is also an instructional coach and a consultant with the Marzano Research Lab. You can watch a vidcast of this episode here: https://youtu.be/Eb2oY3f6hhg QUESTIONS: Q: What is the biggest need right now for educators? Q: Educators have been challenged to expand their capacity to meet the needs of hybrid learning. How do we establish boundaries, to take better care of ourselves? Q: You talk about making healthy choices, how do we navigate this current landscape to make better choices. Q: How do our educators better manage their workload so that our students can be successful? Q: How do we also help our students with self care? Q: With vaccines rolling out, many restrictions are being lifted. We talk about revitalizing and refreshing for next year even though we won’t be completely back to normal. What do you think next year’s transition will look like? Q: What message would you like our students, our parents, our educators to walk away with today? Hosted by Erica Mason Director / Curriculum Instruction & Professional Growth Douglas County School District You can listen to this and future episodes by subscribing to Growing Together through your favorite podcast platform, such as Apple, Spotify and Google Podcasts.

Charlotte Athletic Director Mike Hill is the latest guest to join Travis Smith on the Higher Ed Athletics podcast. Hill started the conversation profiling UNC-Charlotte and his thought process behind leaving Florida for the Charlotte AD job. The rest of the conversation dives into the importance of branding and relationships with administrators at the other universities in the UNC system. Below is a list of the questions: Q: Can you tell us about UNC-Charlotte as an institution? Because I don't think many people understand how big the university is. Q: After 25 years at the University of Florida you became the AD at UNC-Charlotte. At what point did you know that you wanted to pursue an AD opening because I’m always fascinated in career crossroad stories. Q: You entered the job as your predecessor was retiring after three decades leading the department. How does a new AD in that situation best approach the staff and eventually implement the vision you have for the department when change might be difficult for some? Q: Coming from Florida to Charlotte there’s a difference in staff resources and probably a smaller alumni donor base due to it being a younger institution. Do the same strategies in marketing, fundraising and revenue generation apply to a Group of 5 institution, or is there a different blueprint to being successful? Q: UNC-Charlotte decided to brand athletics as Charlotte including adding a “CLT” logo mark. What was the strategy behind the decision? Q: Can you walk me through the steps and considerations you all made in the rebranding process and what you learned as the new AD? Q: Could you ever see a day in college athletics where a branch campus athletic department gets a better apparel contract or additional buying power in equipment purchases through being associated with the flagship campus athletic department? Q: What are some other ways maybe a flagship and its branch athletic departments could share resources to help it thrive? Or maybe they shouldn’t crossover?

Our guest this week is Dave Burgess. Dave is the New York Times Best Selling Author of "Teach Like a Pirate". Dave specializes in teaching hard-to-reach, hard-to-motivate students with techniques that incorporate showmanship and creativity. You can watch the vidcast of this show, here: https://youtu.be/UWHDb1kksRw QUESTIONS: Q: How are you coping with the pandemic and everything that is going on right now in education? Q: You talk about helping teachers find their passion and empowering students. How do we help our teachers find their passion? Q: There is a lot of pressure on teachers, parents and students right now. How do we make a connection to social emotional learning and health and wellbeing during this time? Q: How do we make sure students are prepared for the next grade level while also keeping them engaged and passionate as well? Q: Tell us about what you’ve seen work as we dig into all of these new things with Ed Tech? Q: We’ve heard from our Teachers and Leaders that it’s challenging right now to have professional discourse and come together around learning and collaborating. What advice do you have and what have you seen that is working? Q: What is one piece of advice you would like to share with our teachers? Hosted by Erica Mason Director / Curriculum Instruction & Professional Growth Douglas County School District

Full Worship Gathering Password for Recording: i%0inABrScripture: John 10:1-16, 13:1-5, 21:15-17, Eph. 2:18 & 4:11Discussion Questions: Q: How does viewing yourself as a sheep & Jesus as a shepherd help you understand yourself, Him & your relationship with Him better?Q: Has your life & relationship with Jesus reflected a healthy sheep/shepherd relationship?Q: You are a sheep among sheep. You need the love & grace of a Good Shepherd as much as anyone else. How does that help you grow in compassion and understanding for those around you? Q: Has God given you the gift of being a shepherd? How can you learn more about it & how to live that out well?Q: If you don’t have the gift of being a shepherd, how can you still live out Jesus’ call to love others well?Q: How can you utilize loving “shepherding” that is available around you?Q: What kind of “predators, thieves, bad shepherds” do you see around you & in the world?

In this, the very first show of 2021, Dean, Chris and Mads talk about their experiences playing December's game club game Exile on the BBC Micro. Thanks to all of our Patreon’s who made this episode possible. William E Rimmer Ninjixel TJ Andy Hudson Ricardo Engel Adrian Nelson Alastair Barr Straight2Video RoseTintedSpectrum Matthew W James Bentley Wiedo Belochkin Tony Parkinson Gaz H Mal Woods Zach Glanz Richard Rogers Cane and Rinse LamptonWorm Salvio Calabrese Mitsoyama Rhys Wynne Clint Humphrey MARK BYLUND Paul Ashton Chris Rowe Jon Sheppard Laurent Giroud Martin Stephenson Aaron Maupin Jim-OrbitsIT Jon Veal Thomas scoffham Andy Marsh Patrick Fürst Laurens Andrew Gilmour Stephen Stuttard Matt Sullivan Magnus Esbjörner Darren Coles Garry Heather Edward Fitzpatrick Nick Lees Blake Brett   Q and A with Peter Irvin. Q: Where did the concept of the game come from? Was it influenced by earlier videogames? A: The concept for Exile started as just the idea of a man with a jetpack exploring an underground cavern system, having to solve problems to progress, fighting off hostiles. It wasn’t influenced by other games, more from TV/film - like Star Trek, Blakes 7, Forbidden Planet. Q: Was the game built around the plot or did the mechanics of the game come first? A: The mechanics came first and we kept adding stuff to the game engine until we knew what the limits were and how far we could go with the resources available. The plot crystallised over time, after we worked out what could be achieved, then we had to populate the map to match and make a playable game. Major way points were decided, like the Rune Door and Triax’s lab, and the scattering of other puzzles, equipment and encounters designed to get the player equipped to pass through these way points. However we sometimes had “we could add this cool thing” moments and had to include that - like the digital speech on the large RAM BBC micro version. Q: Nowadays, there is infinite memory to craft a story and provide lots of context for the game. That was not possible for you. How early did you develop the idea of a novella? A: To include a novella was decided quite late in the day. Yes, it was a way to help explain the game back story better but it was also a way to add perceived value to the game, and reduce piracy - the thinking being that people would pay more and pirates would think they were missing out on important stuff if they did’t have the full package, though I’m not convinced by that. Q: How much of what you and Jeremy learned from Thrust did you carry forward into Exile? A: With Thrust, Jeremy showed that implementing physics well - gravity, thrusting, multi-body mechanics - was actually rewarding for the player; it was pleasing just to fly around. We were both interested in physics so that had to be a big part of Exile, and a lot of time was spent getting the physics engine right - all the acceleration rates, gravity, impacts, wind forces, floating, etc work in balance and to feel ok but coded with very little memory. Q: Were there any interesting alien life forms that you prototyped but had to cut? A: There were a few but the details are lost to me by the passing of time. Most memorable now was a dog - which was to be the player’s faithful companion, helping out as best he could. He was included from the beginning as it came over from an unfinished game I was doing before Exile called “Wizard’s Walk” - a wizard travelling down a long pretty cave populated by hazards. The dog used too much RAM for its graphics in Exile - it needed extra frames due to walking up diagonals. It also had to be indestructible, and manage to get around the map as well as the player or the game wouldn’t work, so it ended up being removed and we put in Fluffy which was small alien bundle of pixels and trivial code to control. Q: Some game reviews show screenshots that are clearly from a different game map. Were review copies sent out that were radically different or were these more likely pictures from earlier prototype builds? A: I don’t recall any wrong maps being reviewed. Perhaps on the Amiga version? The BBC Micro Exile game map was generated by a tiny algorithm to produce the straight tunnels, a scattering of caverns, some individual tiles and areas that could be hand-defined (like for the top ship, the top underground base, Triax’s lab, various doors, etc. The map code was fixed in stone at a very early stage because changing it would have meant repopulating the entire game. Q: The manual quite bluntly tells players that it’s a game which requires thought. Where you worried that people wouldn’t “get it”? A: Exile was hard to play in parts and required people to use their brains in some places to solve the natural puzzles. That wasn’t the way games were back then - most were short duration entertainment requiring little thought. We designed Exile as the sort of game we wanted to play, hoped others would accept it, but knew if they got stuck they could ask their friends or get advice from one of the games magazines. It isn’t a “levels game” where you just shoot your way through and collect stars, it was more like a movie - one big adventure. It was also more difficult than it should have been partly due to the limitations and efficiencies of the physics engine and shared general purpose code between many creatures. Many people didn’t complete Exile, or even get as far as the excitement of destroying the maggot machine, the earthquake and the flooding caverns, but I like to think they still got value for money. It’s hard to balance a game for all abilities when the resources are so tight and trying not to allow dead ends in progress were the player to have inadvertently wasted all the required resources to overcome upcoming obstacles, but in retrospect perhaps some things should have been easier. Q: The purple, vertical blast door near the start has a gap at the top which can be flown through, with enough time and patience. Did you know about it when the game shipped, but decided it wasn't a big enough game-breaker to fix? A: There were many such collision “features” - a side effect of a general purpose physics engine with limited resources to prevent special cases. Anyway, quantum tunnelling happens in physics, so surely that’s fine! Q: Are there any (other) bugs in the game which you look back on now and think “ah, if only we could patch it!”? A: There were many of what I call “features” rather than bugs in Exile and I think we knew about most of the ways things could go wrong but had no spare RAM to fix. My favourite one was, with your back to a vertical door, holding something, suddenly turning around while thrusting forward and do a throw - the thrown object can usually be made to appear on the other side of the door to you. Sometimes you could use a similar system to get yourself through! There were so many things to balance - like the relationship between the speed of a firer, the speed and dimensions of bullets and the thickness of doors, otherwise they could tunnel through the door or bullets hit the firer. Q: Did it bother you that the published solutions made use of physics/engine glitches to get the coronium rocks out of the eastern area, instead of the 'correct' solution which involves creating additional coronium by luring slimes through a piece of solid rock, converting them to yellow balls, then passing them through the underwater structure containing red blobs to the west of the windy shaft? A: No, I’m not really bothered about players making use of things they found. Exile is about exploration and experiment, so finding shortcuts, even if relying on “features” is still in that spirit. We wanted several ways to do many of the puzzles anyway, and the eastern tunnels were meant to be a natural area uncorrupted yet by Triax, where the player could experiment to discover the tools they would need in the western caves. This probably didn’t come across to the player. Also some of the puzzles were a bit contrived I suppose - nevertheless rewarding if you solved them. Q: Which version of the game do you consider definitive? A: The BBC micro version was the most definitive. It was the first and a genuine struggle to make happen at all, and I believe took that platform to its limits. I hated the Electron version - there was no way to avoid having a border of white noise (ie code) around the game view - buyers must have been so forgiving. Q: We are aware of the tragic circumstances around Jeremy’s death. Was a sequel planned before he died? A: From fading memory, I think we were still working on bits and pieces with the original game - like an Amiga CD 32 console game, and we had tried to get publishers interested in a Sega Mega Drive version but the console market was very controlled, with publishers taking few risks on unconventional product due to the costs of making the expensive ROM cartridges. You almost had to have a working game already on the platform to be considered seriously and with development systems hard to come we didn’t have the funds to make that happen ourselves. There were some explorations into making use of the code for a new game but nothing solid. Q: You had a version of the game planned for iOS and Android back in 2010. Are we correct to assume that that project has been discontinued? A: No, it is my intention that this should still happen. It’s difficult to know how non-retro it would need to be to have any measure of success against todays effects-driven offerings, though computer gaming is a broad church. Q: If the mobile project had gone ahead, would there have been any fundamental changes to the game? A: The first release would be very familiar, but enhanced in details, the plot cleaned up - more obvious - and easier to play. The control system on a touch screen can’t depend on the zillion keys that Exile required either! I don’t think it should stray too far from the original fundamentally as the audience would include fans of the originals; but sequels could go much further.  

 Discover how to convert your email list to loyal and engaged customers by constructing a killer email sequence Learn how to make an email sequence that would bring in sales and customers to your business Find out the do’s and don’ts of proper emailing in order to attract more customers into your business Resources/Links: Check out Shawn’s Website: https://autoklose.com/ Summary Are you sure you’re writing the right email for your customers? Are they really reading your emails or are they just stuck in their spam folders not wanting to be opened? Shawn Finder, at the age of 24, entered the entrepreneurial world after competing as one of Canada’s top-ranked tennis players. He founded ExchangeLeads in 2013 which helps B2B companies build quality lists for outreaching new prospects. This was followed by his new venture Autoklose in 2017 that combines both sales engagement and list building all-in-one platform. In this episode, Shawn shares his insights on how to make sure your email is getting the attention it needs by making sure it is concise, precise, and with a little bit of spice! He also shares how to construct the right email in order to avoid your customer’s spam folder (where your email will never be seen by your customer). Check out these episode highlights: 01:43 - Shawn’s ideal client: “So our ideal client would be small business owners or sales management who have a sales team. So, they would be our ideal clients, and obviously, sometimes we have national sales managers who would also sign up for the platform.” 02:00 - Problem Shawn helps solve: “Well, I mean, I would say we save salespeople hours a week in prospecting, by automating a lot of the tedious tasks they do on a daily basis. And we all know that one thing that people in salespeople hate doing is follow up so we automate that process for them.” 02:42 - Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Shawn: “Yeah, so I would say when a sales manager looks at their sales team and realizes there's a lack of follow up, so they're not following up their leads, they're sending one email, and they're thinking, "Okay, that person's not a concern." instead of sending 4,5,6 emails.” 04:00 - Common mistakes that people make before they find Shawn’s solution: “I mean, I think when some of the common mistakes I think is, you know, the emails people write are way too 'salesy'. You got to really focus on trying to drive that pain point or that challenge of that prospect in that email. And one of the biggest common mistakes is, is it doing- being way too ‘salesy’?” 04:57 - Shawn’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): “So the one thing I would say is in your email, your subject line, try and keep it to two to three words. And the reason why you want to do that is most people are reading up subject line on their mobile device, and they're only seeing three words. So, if you're writing eight words subject lines, they're not going to be able to see it.” 06:13 - Shawn’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): Check out Shawn’s Website: https://autoklose.com/ 07:24 - Q: You have a sales engagement tool but what happens if people don't have data to put into the tool? How would that work? A: So, we actually allow you to upload your own data from what you have, and if you don't have your own data, but you still love the software, and you want to automate your outreach, we can actually provide you data all over the world. Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode: “The emails people write are way too ‘salesy’. You got to really focus on trying to drive that pain point or that challenge of that prospect in that email.” -Shawn FinderClick To Tweet Transcript (Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast) Tom Poland 00:10 Hello, everyone,

THIS IS Q & A DICTATION DONE IN TWO PARTS. PART ONE READ SLOWLY FOR ACCURACY AND PART 2 IS READ SLIGHTLY FASTER THAN THE FIRST FOR SOME SPEEDBUILDING. PLEASE READ YOUR NOTES! THANKS FOR SUPPORTING AND DON'T FORGET TO HELP ME HELP YOU BY SUBSCRIBING . PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT PROVIDED BELOW. FROM THE BOOK OF LEGAL DICATION Q: [BY THE CHAIRMAIN] Your residence? A: 625 Ferry St, Boston Q: What is your age? A: Forty-one Q: You were the builder of this bridge? A: A portion of it Q: Please describe as fully as you can, your whole connection to it, in your own words. A: It is so long ago that I don't know whether I can remember all that you would like to hear, but the contract required me to build a truss to be placed upon the east side of the bridge, and I was to furnish the floor system. That was done in the spring or early summer of 1876. Q: Go on and describe more in detail what you did. Were you in business for yourself or were you representing a company? A: I was in business for myself. Q: Go on and tell us about the bridge; where the work was done, how the work was done, the character of the bridge, the nature of its construction. etc. Perhaps you had better begin, and state , in the first place, your experience as a builder. A: My first experience in building iron bridges was with the Detroit Bridge & Iron Works, Detroit Michigan. Q: [BY MR. O'BRIEN] What year? A: I think it was 1863; and my experience has been from then until--I am not sure this bridge wasn't the last I built. Since then I have acted occasionally as a consulting engineer. Q: [BY THE CHAIRMAIN] Do you have a scientific education? A: Yes, sir, at the Lawrence Scientific School, at Cambridge. Q: Full course? A: No, sir. Partial. Q: What was your course then? A: I was there one year only. Q: What year was that? A: I'm not sure but I think it was 1862-63. From there I went to St. Louis. Q: How long were you with St. Louis Bridge & Iron Company? A: Well, I don't recollect; but several years. Q: What were you doing there? A: I designed their bridges, proportioned them, and I made some portions of the drawings. Q: Did you do that all the time you were there? A: Yes, sir. Q: Do you remember any bridges you designed at that time? A: Well, there was one drawbridge across the Mississippi River, where the C.B. & Q railroad crosses, --Clinton on one side and Fulton on the other. Q: How long did that stand? A: It is standing now, I suppose. That was at that time the longest drawbridge, I think, in the world. Some have been built longer since. There were a great many on the Illinois Central and the C.B. & Q and other words through the Western states. Q: Did you build any bridges in Massachusetts when you were with the St. Louis Bridge & Iron Works? A: No, sir. Q: Then you left the St. Louis Bridge & Iron Works at what time? A: I don't recollect the date. Q: You were there about three years, you say? A: I said several; but I don't recollect how many years it was; I could not tell even approximately. Q: What did you do after you left there? SOURCE: LEGAL DICTATION --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/sandra-clay/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/sandra-clay/support

The phrase, gilding the lily, comes from a Shakespeare play, King John. The line in the play is actually, "to paint the lily." The quotation reads, in part, "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily / To throw a perfume on the violet. . .. / Is wasteful and ridiculous excess." What it means is simple: when you already have something beautiful, e.g., a lily, gold, a violet, don't attempt to make it more beautiful. All you do is risk ruining it. For a cross examiner, this is a golden rule - DON'T GILD THE LILY. In other words, once you've gotten the answer that you wanted or a good answer, leave it alone, don't attempt to make it better because you really just risk making it worse or ruining it. How? For example, you've gotten the witness the admit to describe the room in which he says a crime occurred that he personally observed incorrectly. Leave it alone. Instead, so many questioners in search of the "dunk" or in an effort to "make the point even clearer" ask further questions and clue the witness in that he made a mistake. For example, rather than leaving the wrong description alone, the lawyer follows up with more: Q: Now, you've described a room with a single bed right? A: I believe so. Q: You mean a narrow bed as opposed to a queen or a king, right? (now the witness is clued in because the lawyer is going back and trying to make this point again. Realizing that he made a mistake, he backtracks on the lawyer) A: Well, it might've been a queen or king size bed. I wasn't really paying attention that closely at that point because I was so startled by what I saw. The lawyer has gilded the lily. Rather than leave the answer alone, he tried to improve on it with more follow up only to ruin it. In Episode 17, I explore this phenomenon and encourage you all to stop, respect the good answer and don't gild the lily to make it better.

Q: How about advice or suggestions on coaching or leading up? Don’t think this topic has been discussed on the podcast. Examples always help! I enjoy what you’re covering. Keep it up! Q: Where have you seen the biggest change/impact from your leadership development focus at Be Hope? Q: I have an employee that has been identified as having leader potential… he seems to want to be at leader status but isn’t necessarily putting in the work to get there… I have offered him a variety of different opportunities but I don’t feel the initiative is there. You mentioned in one of the podcasts that if people keep denying the opportunities that you have presented to allow them to advance then you stop asking. The questions: 1. Do you tell people that if they continue to deny opportunities then you’re going to stop asking them to do things? Would this be a one on one taking point?
 2. Am I just offering the wrong opportunities?
 3. Is there some consideration I should make in changing the way I facilitate the opportunities? Q: Is there a leadership checklist? What I mean by that is if you feel like your team is doing well and you’re trusting their choices but you want to make sure that everyone else feels the same what do you do? I often do one on one meetings with each staff member usually at least quarterly and I always ask for feedback on my leadership and what I can do better and very rarely does anyone give me an answer…. and I don’t think that’s because I’m doing a fantastic job all the time. Our company is going to roll out some sort of 360 manager survey that all staff will receive so that will be helpful but without that what do you do? Q: You seem to have the ability to take in a lot of ideas and suggestions and quickly process them and get to the root concern, or the core ideas that needs to be addressed. How did you learn to do that? Q: What are you listening to and reading that excites you? Q: What should the church be doing differently to draw men out of isolation and into becoming the godly leaders they are designed to be at home, work, and the community?

The Wisconsin Vegetable Gardener Radio Show from March – Oct weekly Heard on Joy 1340 AM & 98.7 FM Milwaukee, WI Saturday mornings 7-8 AM CST https://tunein.com/radio/Joy-1340-s30042/ Heard on WAAM 1600 AM & 92.7 FM Ann Arbor, MI Sundays 7-8 AM EST https://tinyurl.com/p68cvft Heard on KDIZ 1570 AM Minneapolis, MN Saturdays 4-5 PM and replay Sundays 2-3 PM CST http://player.listenlive.co/57071 Heard on KFEQ 680 AM at 107.9 FM St. Joseph/Kansas City, MO Sundays 10-11 AM CST http://www.680kfeq.com/live-stream/ Heard on WRMN 1410 AM & 96.7 FM Elgin/Chicago, IL Sundays Noon-1 PM CST https://www.wrmn1410.com/ Heard on KYAH 540 AM Delta/Salt Lake City, UT Saturdays 1-2 PM MST Reply Sundays 9-10 PM MST https://www.yahradio540.com/listen-live/ Heard on KMET 1490 AM & 98.1 FM Banning, CA Tuesdays 9 - 10 AM PST April – Oct https://www.kmet1490am.com/ Heard on WCRN 830 AM Westborough/Boston, MA Saturdays 10-11 AM EST https://tunein.com/radio/WCRN-AM-830-Full-Service-Radio-s1112/ Heard on WOGO 680 AM & 103.1 FM Chippewa Falls, WI Sundays 9-10 AM CST https://www.christiannetcast.com/listen/player.asp?station=wogo-am Check out https://thewisconsinvegetablegardener.com/ Email your questions to Gardentalkradio@gmail.com Or call 24/7 leave your question at 1-800 927-SHOW In segment four Joey and Holly answer your garden questions. Q: We have a large property but I want to simplify some gardening and want to plant lettuce etc. in pots like you said. I have a large pot that is maybe 20” high or more and almost 2’ in diameter. My question is do I fill the whole pot with potting soil or do I put dirt in the bottom of the pot to save the potting soil? Also, I have had a compost tumbler for years but hardly ever use the compost. Does it have to be totally composted before using it? Maybe I could put the un-composted stuff in the bottom of that big pot? A: with the large container if it is 20 inches deep you can put filler in the bottom of it such as milk jugs or soda bottles but the lids on and sit them in the bottom you can take planter pots and sit them in the bottom on the planter sit them with the bottom facing up so the do not get crushed. you can also fill it with dirty it you do this you could fill it up to half full to 15 inches then take paper and put a layer on that soil before adding the potting soil to keep any weeds from coming up. The compost does not have to be fully composted if you are going to put it in the container you do want it to be about 80% broke down before using it and the rest will break down in time, Q Why did you put your beds parallel to the fence for the front yard? I have a large space to add more beds. Does it matter if they are north/south verses east/west? The space is on the south side of our yard. The beds I have now are east/west. Thank you!! A: Thank you for watching we put them in the direction because that was the way our traditional ground garden was laid out and if we would have went the opposite direction of what the video shows we would have gotten fewer beds in that area. We have found that if you are in mostly full Sun throughout the day it really doesn't make that big of a difference if you're East or West or North the South facing beds the Sun will go over them regardless. If you are facing some shade situations then it's best to adjust the beds accordingly before building them in order to accommodate the shade. We will have some that shoveled tomatoes shade out very minimal amount of time other vegetables. But it will be to the point where it will not affect the overall growth or production of them Q: Quick question for you - I am in the beginning stage of building a raised garden. The space that I am using has had wood chips/mulch on it for about 3 years. I moved all the old wood chips so I can pull up the weed block and level the ground. Can I use the old wood chips to help fill and level the ground, then put down the weed block? Thanks for your guidance. A:Yes with our raised beds we did not use any weed block or cardboard as we have seen and feel that 10 inches of compost will kill the weeds. Yes some will make it in the bed but it will happen you can use the weed block if you would like but that will keep worms from going into your bed besides the ones that will be in the soil you fill the bed with if you do not use weed block at the bottom on the bed the wood chips will not hurt the soil. When you much on top of the soil and mix wood chips in it will rob the soil of nitrogen with your situation they will be find and will help hold some water Q:I would like to know what to put in a newly made raised bed. Is there a order of items and not just dirt? A: We filled our raised beds with a raised mix we had delivers in bulk from our garden center Bluemel's landscape and garden center in Milwaukee. It is cheaper to buy in bulk instead of bags for large beds If you want to create your own mix there are many different recipes you can pick from. I would suggest 1/3 compost 1/3 peat moss and 1/3 vermiculite. depending where you live you can call local garden centers and see if they have bulk mixes and if they deliverer. Thank you Q:You recommended coffee cans for starting off squash plants and keeping the can around the base of the stem to keep away squash vine borers. I cannot find metal coffee cans like they used to sell Folgers coffee in anymore. They package the coffee in plastic containers. What else can I use? Thank you, A: Plastic coffee containers will also work just fine we have tried it with the cardboard containers thought it does hold up early on by the end of the season all your are left with are the metal rights as we used to start our seeds in, The plastic would even be better for the reason if you did have a issue and needed to remove the container you could cut it away. As we have said this seems to really reduce the chances of the squash vine borer but we are still very vigilant Q:Do you not have problems with rabbits in your garden that you don't need a fence around the beds? A: we do not, years ago when we starting gardening in the backyard we had a big problem, over the years we plugged the holes under the fence where they were coming in and we did have a 2 ft high chicken wire we left up year round when we did ground garden but we have not see a rabbit in the garden for years Deer defeat www.deerdefeat.com Check out the companies that make the show possible Power Planter of www.powerplanter.com Proplugger of www.proplugger.com World's coolest rain gauge www.worldscoolestraingauge.com Rootmaker of www.rootmaker.com Us coupon code TWVG at checkout and save 10% of your order Tomato snaps of www.tomatosnaps.com Chapin Manufacturing Inc. of www.chapinmfg.com Pomona pectin of www.pomonapectin.com Iv organics of www.ivorganics.com Dr. JimZ of www.drjimz.com Seed Savers Exchange of www.seedsavers.org Waterhoop of www.waterhoop.com Green Gobbler of www.greengobbler.com Nessalla koombucha of www.nessalla.com MI Green House LLC of www.migreenhouse.com Spartan mosquito of www.spartanmosquito.com Phyllom BioProducts of www.phyllombioproducts.com Happy leaf led of www.happyleafled.com Neptunes harvest of www.neptunesharvest.com Dripworks of www.dripworks.com We Grow Indoors of www.wegrowindoors.com Harvestmore of www.harvest-more.com Deer defeat www.deerdefeat.com Blue ribbon organics www.blueribbonorganics.com Bluemel's garden & landscape center www.bluemels.com Milwaukee,WI official garden center of the show Wisconsin Greenhouse company of https://wisconsingreenhousecompany.com/ Chip Drop of https://getchipdrop.com/?ref=wisconsinvegetable Tree-Ripe Fruit Co of https://www.tree-ripe.com/

The Wisconsin Vegetable Gardener Radio Show from March – Oct weekly Heard on Joy 1340 AM & 98.7 FM Milwaukee, WI Saturday mornings 7-8 AM CST https://tunein.com/radio/Joy-1340-s30042/ Heard on WAAM 1600 AM & 92.7 FM Ann Arbor, MI Sundays 7-8 AM EST https://tinyurl.com/p68cvft Heard on KDIZ 1570 AM Minneapolis, MN Saturdays 4-5 PM and replay Sundays 2-3 PM CST http://player.listenlive.co/57071 Heard on KFEQ 680 AM at 107.9 FM St. Joseph/Kansas City, MO Sundays 10-11 AM CST http://www.680kfeq.com/live-stream/ Heard on WRMN 1410 AM & 96.7 FM Elgin/Chicago, IL Sundays Noon-1 PM CST https://www.wrmn1410.com/ Heard on KYAH 540 AM Delta/Salt Lake City, UT Saturdays 1-2 PM MST Reply Sundays 9-10 PM MST https://www.yahradio540.com/listen-live/ Heard on KMET 1490 AM & 98.1 FM Banning, CA Tuesdays 9 - 10 AM PST April – Oct https://www.kmet1490am.com/ Heard on WCRN 830 AM Westborough/Boston, MA Saturdays 10-11 AM EST https://tunein.com/radio/WCRN-AM-830-Full-Service-Radio-s1112/ Heard on WOGO 680 AM & 103.1 FM Chippewa Falls, WI Sundays 9-10 AM CST https://www.christiannetcast.com/listen/player.asp?station=wogo-am Check out https://thewisconsinvegetablegardener.com/ Email your questions to Gardentalkradio@gmail.com Or call 24/7 leave your question at 1-800 927-SHOW In segment one: Joey and Holly talk about the the right way to plant trees Look up Call diggers hotline Holes should be 2-3 times wider than the root ball, but only as deep as the root ball. Remove the containers or cut away the wire basket. ... Place the tree at the proper height. ... Straighten the tree in the hole. ... Fill the hole gently, but firmly. ... Stake the tree, if necessary. Mulching Do not use compost 100% Water use the water hoop In segment two of the show Joey and Holly talk about four chemical they would not use in there garden you can if you want but they do not. Sevin: Active ingredient is carbaryl Common pesticide – powder that is sprinkled on plants Wait time from application to consuming vegetables is 3 to 14 days – soft skinned veggies longer, tough skin veggies quicker Follow application instructions carefully Overexposure can cause a range of symptoms, including blurred vision, breathing difficulty, abdominal cramps, muscle tremors, diarrhea and vomiting. More serious complications range from convulsions and unconsciousness to respiratory failure. If you get Sevin on your skin or in your eyes or if you inhale or swallow it, call a poison control center or doctor immediately. Have the product container or label with you when you call. Sevin kills bees, so do not spray it on vegetables that are surrounded by blooming plants. Store Sevin in its original container and out of the way of children and pets Preen: Main ingredient is trifluralin Herbicide – used for controlling weeds Many different varieties Can cause tumors and cancer Preen can affect waterways when used in erosive areas Apply according to directions on the package Keep children and pets away from area applied Glyphosate Aka – round up Weed killer Spray application Needs to be applied properly or will drift in the air Glyphosate is a non-selective herbicide, meaning it will kill most plants. It prevents the plants from making certain proteins that are needed for plant growth. Glyphosate stops a specific enzyme pathway, the shikimic acid pathway. The shikimic acid pathway is necessary for plants and some microorganisms. Can cause cancer and respiratory complications Sethoxydim Weed b gon Sethoxydim is a selective postemergence herbicide used to control annual and perennial grass weeds in broad-leaved vegetable, fruit, field and ornamental crops Spray for grassy areas Apply according to directions Does not drift Keep away from children and pets Sethoxydim is moderately toxic by ingestion , and not toxic by dermal absorption (4). It causes skin and eye irritation. Inhalation of dusts or vapors can cause irritation of the throat and nose (2). Other symptoms of poisoning include incoordination, sedation, tears, salivation, tremors, blood in the urine and diarrhea Want to kill weed safe use Green gobbler we would recommend it is organic 20% Omri Listed Horticulture Vinegar Weed Killer In segment three Joey and Holly welcome their guest worm expert Bruce Galle Bruce Galle is The Worm Guy! The Worm Guy has over 38 years experience in raising and studying worms. He has also written best selling books on the subject, one being the one being 14 Day Worm Castings teaching others to turn around bedding material into complete castings in just 14 days rather than normal 3 to 4 months! http://thewormguy.com/ 1. How did you get to be The Worm Guy? 2.Why are worms so important to gardening? 3. Is it safe to add worms to your soil? 4. What are worm castings and why should they be added to your soil? 5. What are composting worms and are the different than a common earthworm? 6. Here we have an invasion of jumping worms, would doing something like worm composting be beneficial if the jumping worms do become overly invasive? 7. How can we find out more about you? In segment four Joey and Holly answer your garden questions. Q: We have a large property but I want to simplify some gardening and want to plant lettuce etc. in pots like you said. I have a large pot that is maybe 20” high or more and almost 2’ in diameter. My question is do I fill the whole pot with potting soil or do I put dirt in the bottom of the pot to save the potting soil? Also, I have had a compost tumbler for years but hardly ever use the compost. Does it have to be totally composted before using it? Maybe I could put the un-composted stuff in the bottom of that big pot? A: with the large container if it is 20 inches deep you can put filler in the bottom of it such as milk jugs or soda bottles but the lids on and sit them in the bottom you can take planter pots and sit them in the bottom on the planter sit them with the bottom facing up so the do not get crushed. you can also fill it with dirty it you do this you could fill it up to half full to 15 inches then take paper and put a layer on that soil before adding the potting soil to keep any weeds from coming up. The compost does not have to be fully composted if you are going to put it in the container you do want it to be about 80% broke down before using it and the rest will break down in time, Q Why did you put your beds parallel to the fence for the front yard? I have a large space to add more beds. Does it matter if they are north/south verses east/west? The space is on the south side of our yard. The beds I have now are east/west. Thank you!! A: Thank you for watching we put them in the direction because that was the way our traditional ground garden was laid out and if we would have went the opposite direction of what the video shows we would have gotten fewer beds in that area. We have found that if you are in mostly full Sun throughout the day it really doesn't make that big of a difference if you're East or West or North the South facing beds the Sun will go over them regardless. If you are facing some shade situations then it's best to adjust the beds accordingly before building them in order to accommodate the shade. We will have some that shoveled tomatoes shade out very minimal amount of time other vegetables. But it will be to the point where it will not affect the overall growth or production of them Q: Quick question for you - I am in the beginning stage of building a raised garden. The space that I am using has had wood chips/mulch on it for about 3 years. I moved all the old wood chips so I can pull up the weed block and level the ground. Can I use the old wood chips to help fill and level the ground, then put down the weed block? Thanks for your guidance. A:Yes with our raised beds we did not use any weed block or cardboard as we have seen and feel that 10 inches of compost will kill the weeds. Yes some will make it in the bed but it will happen you can use the weed block if you would like but that will keep worms from going into your bed besides the ones that will be in the soil you fill the bed with if you do not use weed block at the bottom on the bed the wood chips will not hurt the soil. When you much on top of the soil and mix wood chips in it will rob the soil of nitrogen with your situation they will be find and will help hold some water Q:I would like to know what to put in a newly made raised bed. Is there a order of items and not just dirt? A: We filled our raised beds with a raised mix we had delivers in bulk from our garden center Bluemel's landscape and garden center in Milwaukee. It is cheaper to buy in bulk instead of bags for large beds If you want to create your own mix there are many different recipes you can pick from. I would suggest 1/3 compost 1/3 peat moss and 1/3 vermiculite. depending where you live you can call local garden centers and see if they have bulk mixes and if they deliverer. Thank you Q:You recommended coffee cans for starting off squash plants and keeping the can around the base of the stem to keep away squash vine borers. I cannot find metal coffee cans like they used to sell Folgers coffee in anymore. They package the coffee in plastic containers. What else can I use? Thank you, A: Plastic coffee containers will also work just fine we have tried it with the cardboard containers thought it does hold up early on by the end of the season all your are left with are the metal rights as we used to start our seeds in, The plastic would even be better for the reason if you did have a issue and needed to remove the container you could cut it away. As we have said this seems to really reduce the chances of the squash vine borer but we are still very vigilant Q:Do you not have problems with rabbits in your garden that you don't need a fence around the beds? A: we do not, years ago when we starting gardening in the backyard we had a big problem, over the years we plugged the holes under the fence where they were coming in and we did have a 2 ft high chicken wire we left up year round when we did ground garden but we have not see a rabbit in the garden for years Deer defeat www.deerdefeat.com Check out the companies that make the show possible Power Planter of www.powerplanter.com Proplugger of www.proplugger.com World's coolest rain gauge www.worldscoolestraingauge.com Rootmaker of www.rootmaker.com Us coupon code TWVG at checkout and save 10% of your order Tomato snaps of www.tomatosnaps.com Chapin Manufacturing Inc. of www.chapinmfg.com Pomona pectin of www.pomonapectin.com Iv organics of www.ivorganics.com Dr. JimZ of www.drjimz.com Seed Savers Exchange of www.seedsavers.org Waterhoop of www.waterhoop.com Green Gobbler of www.greengobbler.com Nessalla koombucha of www.nessalla.com MI Green House LLC of www.migreenhouse.com Spartan mosquito of www.spartanmosquito.com Phyllom BioProducts of www.phyllombioproducts.com Happy leaf led of www.happyleafled.com Neptunes harvest of www.neptunesharvest.com Dripworks of www.dripworks.com We Grow Indoors of www.wegrowindoors.com Harvestmore of www.harvest-more.com Deer defeat www.deerdefeat.com Blue ribbon organics www.blueribbonorganics.com Bluemel's garden & landscape center www.bluemels.com Milwaukee,WI official garden center of the show Wisconsin Greenhouse company of https://wisconsingreenhousecompany.com/ Chip Drop of https://getchipdrop.com/?ref=wisconsinvegetable Tree-Ripe Fruit Co of https://www.tree-ripe.com/

Allowing ourselves to be human | Looking for the effortlessness | Building Momentum | & The Forced Self Reflection   I feel as though I am entering a new phase in my lif, and I thought I’d call this the unofficial season 2 of the Hey Heart 143. Remember 143 means I love you so we’re saying Hey Heart, 143.   My First guest of 2020 is Beatris Karaoglanyan, her spiritual given name is Sat Avtar Kaur, but she likes to call myself Be, because it reminds her to just be.   Beatris or Be, is the the creator of Relationships and Yoga, Healing and Awakening!   She helps guide her clients into wholeness through Shamanic Coaching, Spirit Journeying, Soul Retrieval and clairvoyant divination.   She weaves  spirituality with science, connecting many different technologies to bring wholeness and healing for her clients and students. She is passionate about discovering and providing what is needed for healing and real transformation to take place.  I loved what Beatris said in one of the yoga classless I attended with her where she said to the class... “ Life should be 90 %effortless and 10 % effort.”   I think I’ve tried to carry that in a lot of things I do. How can we brig that into our daily life? B says she learned this mantra on a retreat with another teacher who would push them on their run in Big Bear, California. Her teacher told her to look into nature, and receiving effortlessness and inspiration from nature, and to keep that 10 percent effort going. “I brought this into my life, I noticed how much more fun life becomes. A lot more inspiration came in.   There was a lot more ease a lot more play,” says Be. She says she learned to be more aware.   “We as a society push ourselves. We’re taught to work hard, and if you’re working hard enough maybe you’ll be successful, and you will be worthy of the reward, but this 90 percent effortlessness inspiration threw that old power out and made life more about what calls me forward, and what makes me want to live my life.”   Q: During this COVID19 pandemic, I’ve noticed social media is saturated with this ‘work hard’ and ‘come out of this with a side hustle,’ and more messages that could make some feel badly.   Be:   It is okay to rest.   “If there is a ‘should’ in a sentence, forget about it. This should, could, would, stuff takes us out of our truth and makes us do what other people think is right.”   Let the “SHOULD” go. “The should’s are basically in the way, by sucking your energy out. It makes you feel like you’re not enough. If you can, let go of the should, and receive the inspiration. Does it inspire you to get the new skills going or does it make you feel like it’s too much work and it’s not aligned with you. If it throws you into overwhelm you need to let it go.   If you’re inspired to hustle, to create a website, to go on a run, to do workouts go for it! But don’t do things because others are telling you to. This is what creates that effort.   If it throws you into overwhelm, you need to let it go for now. Overwhelm means you already have too much on your plate.   Daily habits Be sticks to. 1- Morning Yoga practice 2- Evening hike/walk in the mountains. Be says this is her alone time with herself, and this helps her be her true self to not be distracted by the ‘should’s’ of other peoples’ opinion. This allows her to see who she truly is.   Be has a government Job, working for the EPA, and teaching yoga in the evening. You can find B teaching Yoga on ZOOM through the Awareness Center.   Beatris says the pandemic has expanded her practice through what’s possible through technology. Q: You mentioned this is ‘waking us up? What does that mean to you?   Be: This is a full on death and rebirth of humanity. We have never experienced anything like this as a whole.   The new beginning that comes through death and rebirth creates amazing transformation.   We’re seeing the air is cleaner. There is less traffic. We’re going inwards. “Our shit is floating up, we’re sitting with ourselves we’re forced to sit with our shit. Whether it’s fear or anxiety whatever has been stuck in those old, old hidden cracks and crevices. It’s floating up and we get that sift that off our the top of our spirit surface and clear it out. There is a major clearing that’s happening to all of us. I am hearing you’re doing the work. You’re letting fear and whatever it is come up and sitting with it and moving to a better place through dancing, through whatever you need to feel better. This is an amazing practice!”   “The other thing I wanted to say is about this whole social distancing thing. We need connection. In our culture, it demands separateness, it demands disconnection. We haven’t known to connect heart to heart. This Coronavirus (social distancing) is in a way helping us connect to ourselves, our true selves. From those true selves we have the natural ability to connect with each other in a deeper way. Soul to soul level rather than head to head.”   “A lot of us are condemning our human experience by saying we should be doing this or shouldn’t be doing that. Allowing ourselves to be human, means allowing ourselves to have those moments where we lose control and binging, or falling into depression or we’re scared or anxious. All those stuff that’s linked to survival that has helped us through millions of years is part of our human experience.”   Q: I’m hearing it’s been very difficult for people living entirely alone. The uncertainty makes it difficult for a lot of people. B:   Uncertainty is big, it’s always present.   Certainty is an illusion. It’s part of our illusive reality that keeps ourselves unaware and numb. Uncertainty in nature is ‘normal stuff,’ what keeps me balanced is trusting that I am connected to my inner self. I am connected to great spirit. I am held. I am supported. God supports me. Whatever God is to you, to me God is this conscious aware energy that is within everything. It is alive with everything that’s out there and in there. I am in constant co-creation with God. This helps me feel like there is complete certainty in the Uncertainly. I have control because I’m in communication with the creator. I am the creator and the creator within me is creating with the big all creator. There is no fear of death, or loss, everything is continuously changing and transforming and there is one thing that’s changeless, and that’s the inner truth. That’s me. All the other stuff is uncertainty.   GETTING TO YOUR TRUTH.   Sometimes it takes effort to sit yourself down and go in, I would recommend, to have little tiny commitments. Sometimes we tend to be big thinkers and commit to 45 min meditation and an hour run and yoga everyday. The universe loves momentum. You start small, two minute meditation everyday. If I want to do more that’s fine, I’m allowed to do more. Don’t change the commitment of that two minute commitment until you get momentum. There is this lizard brain that shuts down when we get scared or overwhelmed it goes into that lizard brain and the fight, flight, freeze experience kicks in and we literally cannot think and then we think we can’t do it. I’m just going to binge.   We beat up on ourselves. So little commitment. What is it that inspires you? What is it that your spirit says. Maybe instead of a long walk you just go stand outside.   The 10 percent effort is, ‘I’m going to walk and stand outside.’ What feels like your 10 percent effort? Walk and stand outside. If spirit calls me I’ll start walking. Be’s 143 Self Love Tips.   *See what inspires you, what makes you feel self love. Sit with that. Maybe sit with your journal and ask yourself what does self love look like? For me it’s hiking out in nature, taking a bath, writing, pulling a card everyday from my oracle deck.   *Self love looks like saying ‘No’ to something. Saying ‘no thank you.’   Saying ‘YES' to whatever aligns with me. That’s self love. Saying ‘yes’ to something I’ve been afraid of but I know this is something that I want.   *Being committed to holding on to my power, and not giving it away.   Repeat after me... Be’s mantras posted on her wall.   1- When she feels like you SHOULD be doing something. Taking care of others, or something is on your mind torturing me.   “I release YOU to your own highest good.”   2- The other favorite mantra to do looking in the mirror.   “I like myself, I love myself, I see my soul”   This is a good one to build that momentum that you want for your day.   To find Beatris or join her ZOOM yoga during quarantine   Website: RelationshipsandYoga.com To Join her ZOOM Class: BeatrisHeals@gmail.com LIVE yoga classes: https://www.awarenesscenteryoga.com/  

Q: You're a mad scientist, what scientific experiment would you run if money and ethics weren't an issue? --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/equiknoxpodcast/support

Good morning, RVA! It’s 45 °F, rainy, and it looks like it’ll stay rainy for most of the morning. In fact, you should expect a chance of rain each of the next several days.Water coolerRichmond Police are reporting that a male 16-year-old was shot to death outside of a store on the 3000 block of Nine Mile Road this past Thursday.As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 219 positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth, and three people in Virginia have died as a result of the virus. VDH reports 22 cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 8, Henrico: 8, and Richmond: 6). You can now start to see the spread of the virus well beyond the urban crescent and into the rest of Virginia. For what it’s worth, in his briefing on Sunday, the Governor said six people have died from the virus in Virginia. More on that below.Not entirely unexpected, but the City will keep their offices closed until at least the end of the month—this ever-updating list of critical services will, however, remain open. But! Pair that closure, with this new service: On Friday, the Mayor announced that, through a partnership with the YMCA and the Community Foundation, the City will “provide emergency childcare to elementary and middle school-aged children of essential medical personnel in Richmond.” We’ve got a need for medical professionals and, with school shut down for the foreseeable future, they’ve got a need for childcare. This sounds like a great way to meet that need.According to the legislative calendar, City Council will still meet today at 6:00 PM for whatever remains of their regularly scheduled meeting. You can take a look at the agenda as it stands here (PDF), and with Council’s informal meeting canceled, perhaps this is tonight’s actual agenda. Every paper has been continued, except ORD. 2020–091 (reallocating money to the affordable housing trust fund) and ORD. 2020–092 (extending the deadline for filing for tax exemptions). As we continue to live in This Most Unusual Time, it’s worth reading this opinion from Attorney General Mark Herring about how public bodies can continue to meet during shutdowns, lockdowns, and bans on gatherings of more than 10 folks (PDF). There’s a clear tension between Virginia’s freedom of information laws and the need for social distancing and isolation during a pandemic. I am obviously not a lawyer, but, reading through Herring’s opinion, it seems like City Council will be pretty limited in what business it can conduct until either the General Assembly passes some new state laws or we’re on the other side of this crisis. At the moment, “can’t they just have a Zoom” is not an option. Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch says five councilmembers will meet in person, as required by law, and four will call in (something that they can only do twice per year). This is clearly something the GA will have to address, right?? Localities can’t just not have their legislative bodies meeting during a literal state of emergency!Over on the schools front, starting today, RPS will expand their meal delivery program by using school buses to drop off food at 34 locations around the city. “Each bus will have volunteers to help hand out the grab-and-go meals, including Spanish-speaking staff for our Southside routes.” They’re also updating their meal distribution sites to focus on the new bus-delivery program. If you want to help out and you’ve thought long and hard about it, you can volunteer by filling out this form.At his press conference on Sunday, which you can read about over at the RTD, Governor Northam said folks should expect the coronavirus crisis to “stretch out for several months.” There are lots of Northam quotes in this piece about the need to social distance and take seriously the recommendations to avoid gatherings of more than 10 people. There are, however, no quotes about further restrictions from the Governor—which, honestly, seems wild to me. If you want to see how restrictions and control measures can impact the spread of the coronavirus, the New York Times has a good dataviz piece about when peak-virus hits each county in Americaunder three different scenarios. Anyway, the RTD says, ominously, that “Northam said he would announce Monday an update on school closures at a daily press conference that will be moved to 2 p.m. going forward.” I guess we’ll learn more about schools this afternoon and see if the Governor is willing to implement stronger controls to help slow the spread of the virus.A couple days ago the Bird app went dark, and I think they’ve pulled their scooters from Richmond’s streets. I haven’t left the Northside in a while, so I’m not 100% sure. The Verge says both Lime and Bird have started to pause service as a result of the coronavirus.Here’s an excellent TikTok combining social distancing, VCU men’s soccer, and toilet paper. Yes it’s a link to a tweet about a TikTok. As an official Old, it’s the best I can do.Classic Richmond emergency supplies: Milk, bread, and now toilet paper—but also liquor. Bob Lewis at the Virginia Mercury says folks are stocking up on booze as part of their shelter-in-place supplies. The piece ends with this excellent quote, “‘You can never be too careful,’ she said as she walked toward her car with a bulging bag of liquor bottles. ‘Besides, I have a college kid who’s over 21 and who’s now back home, so I’ve got to stock up.’”It’s almost time to record a new episode of the Sam and Ross Like Things podcast, and for our 75th episode we’re doing things a bit differently. If you’re willing, record an audio clip of you saying your first name, location, and a sentence or two about something that you like. Could be ginger ale, hearing the sound of rain from your screen porch, or epidemiology. Literally anything you like! Then email the file to samandrosslikethings@gmail.com, and we’ll put everything together next we record. By “we’ll” I mean “Sam will do this.” It’ll be a nice way to hear other folks' voices and remember that even during quarantine there’s still stuff worth liking.This morning’s longread‘I’m going to keep pushing.’ Anthony Fauci tries to make the White House listen to facts of the pandemicI’ve tried to keep longreads delightfully unrelated from the coronavirus, but this interview with Dr. Fauci is something else.Q: You’re standing there saying nobody should gather with more than 10 people and there are almost 10 people with you on the stage. And there are certainly more than 10 journalists in the audience.A: I know that. I’m trying my best. I cannot do the impossible. Q: What about the travel restrictions? President Trump keeps saying that the travel ban for China, which began 2 February, had a big impact [on slowing the spread of the virus to the United States] and that he wishes China would have told us three to four months earlier and that they were “very secretive.” [China did not immediately reveal the discovery of a new coronavirus in late December, but by 10 January, Chinese researchers made the sequence of the virus public.] It just doesn’t comport with facts. A: I know, but what do you want me to do? I mean, seriously Jon, let’s get real, what do you want me to do?If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

Imagine you’re in your early 30s, you’re in a wheelchair, hallucinating, barely able to follow the doctor’s speech. It’s Friday. And he says,” You’re not going to make it until Monday.” That is today’s guest, Cherie Kephart. A mysterious illness led to years of suffering, during which her symptoms again and again were undiagnosed and misdiagnosed. For many years, Cherie dealt with relentless pain and the anguish of not knowing what was causing it. She shares important lessons the painful experiences taught her about the point of suffering, the meaning of forgiveness, and the importance of stopping, noticing and recalibrating when life moves too fast, among others. The following is just a tiny taste of Cherie’s remarkable insights. Q: What’s the point of suffering? Cherie: The big lesson suffering taught me was that I needed to slow down and pay attention. Q: What eventually led to your healing? Cherie: Believing it would happen was one of my first steps in healing. If you can’t believe it, then it probably won’t happen. Q: What does forgiveness mean? Cherie: The freedom to move on. Q: You’re on a healing path. Does that mean you were broken? Cherie: No. In the midst of my suffering, I felt broken. But in retrospect, I experienced something that propelled me into the beautiful life I live now, that I don’t think I would have gotten without it. And I’m still on the healing path, recognizing that I’m not broken. That I am whole and complete. When I ask if there’s one last thing she’d like our listeners to hear, Cherie says, “Don’t let fear drive you. Put fear in the back seat. Put it in the trunk. Strap it to the roof. Don’t let it drive you. It will be with you. But you have a choice what you do with your fears.” Cherie Kephart is the award-winning author of A Few Minor Adjustments: A Memoir of Healing, an inspirational story of one person’s persistence to find healing. About Cherie Kephart Raised in Venice, California, Cherie longed to travel and experience the way other people lived. After serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Zambia on a water sanitation and health education project, Cherie returned to the United States with an African souvenir she didn’t expect: a mysterious illness. She fell severely ill and almost died, leaving her with symptoms that went undiagnosed for many years. This inspired Cherie to write her memoir, A Few Minor Adjustments: A Memoir of Healing, taking the reader on a powerful but entertaining journey through her adventures and search for life-saving answers. Find Cherie on Social Media: CherieKephart.com Facebook Instagram: @CherieKephartwriter Goodreads Cherie’s Books: A Few Minor Adjustments: A Memoir of Healing The Healing 100: A Practical Guide to Transforming Your Body, Mind, and Spirit Poetry of Peace Books Mentioned in the Interview: Fierce Joy, by Susie Rinehart Love Is Complicated: A True Story of Brokenness and Healing, by Marlena Fiol, to be released summer 2020 About Marlena Fiol, PhDMarlena Fiol, PhD, is a globally recognized author, scholar and speaker. She is a spiritual seeker whose work explores the depths of who we are and what’s possible in our lives. Her significant body of publications on the topic, coupled with her own raw identity-changing experiences, makes her uniquely qualified to write about personal transformational change. She is also a certified tai chi instructor and freelance writer whose most recent work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and newsletters. You can find Marlena in the following places: https://marlenafiol.com Facebook Twitter: @marlenafiol

Susie is an award-winning author, champion ultra-runner, life coach, activist and mother of two young children. On June 30, 2016, she was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive tumor on her brainstem. Her doctor told her, "Without surgery, you have less than five months to live." After multiple complicated surgeries, she has recovered but there were big risks. That was over three years ago. Susie's incredible journey to find her voice and a new kind of bravery after facing death allows her to share important lessons about pain and suffering, finding and holding onto joy, and the importance of slowing down to experience the sweetness of the moment.  The following is just a taste of Susie’s insights.  Q: You speak of two different kinds of pain. What are they? Susie: Clean pain is loss. It is the medical diagnosis. It is the broken bone. Dirty pain is the worrying and the added anxiety and suffering that we layer on top of that loss or that clean pain. Q: What is the point of suffering? Susie: When we go through moments of crisis, we think they're tragic. And yet often, they shine a light on something that we wish we could get rid of, and then also guide us forward in a way that we didn't think we were capable of. Q: What is your path to joy? Susie: Finding a little bit more in balance, having a little bit more self-compassion, a little bit more courage, and a little less criticism of how I show up. Q: You’ve spoken of the need to stop so much doing and focus on being. Is it our doing-ness that’s harmful or our frenetic need for approval? Susie: You don't have to give up the doing. That is your executive functioning brain that wants to accomplish things in this life. But I feel I've been able to accomplish more once I've given up the need to always get it right before I even begin.  When I ask if there’s one last thing she’d like our listeners to hear, Susie says, “Choose connection over consumerism. And if it's work that drives you to achieve excellence, take breaks early and often, and then come back to your work, rather than putting it off until the only thing that you have left for yourself and for others in your life is your exhausted, resentful self.” Susie Rinehart is the author of Fierce Joy: Choosing Brave Over Perfect to Find My True Voice, an inspirational story of learning to choose joy over fear.   About Susie Rinehart Susie is an award-winning author, champion ultra-runner, life coach, activist and mother of two young children. On June 30, 2016, she was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive tumor on her brainstem. Her doctor told her, "Without surgery, you have less than five months to live." After multiple complicated surgeries, she has recovered but there were big risks. That was over three years ago. Susie's incredible journey to find her voice and a new kind of bravery after facing death allows her to share important lessons about pain and suffering, finding and holding onto joy, and the importance of slowing down to experience the sweetness of the moment. Find Susie on Social Media: https://susierinehart.com/ (Website) https://www.instagram.com/susierinehart/ (Instagram) Susie’s Book: Fierce Joy: Choosing Brave Over Perfect to Find My True Voice Books Mentioned in the Interview: A Few Minor Adjustments: A Memoir of Healing, by Cherie Kephart Love Is Complicated: A True Story of Brokenness and Healing, by Marlena Fiol, to be released summer 2020 About Marlena Fiol, PhDMarlena Fiol, PhD, is a globally recognized author, scholar and speaker. She is a spiritual seeker whose work explores the depths of who we are and what’s possible in our lives. Her significant body of publications on the topic, coupled with her own raw identity-changing experiences, makes her uniquely qualified to write about personal transformational change. She is also a certified tai chi instructor and freelance writer whose most recent work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and newsletters. You can find Marlena in the following places: https://marlenafiol.com Facebook Twitter: @marlenafiol  

DOMINIK EULBERG on: - Facebook: www.facebook.com/dominik.eulberg - SoundCloud: @dominik-eulberg HOW I MET THE BASS on: - Facebook: www.facebook.com/howimetthebass - Mixcloud: www.mixcloud.com/HowIMetTheBass - Spotify: spoti.fi/2KipBo7 3 QUESTIONS to DOMINIK EULBERG: Q: From bird sounds to early rave classic - how did you meet the bass, Dominik? A: I was asked to create a mix with the music which socialized me. Music did not interest me in my childhood. Nature was my music: the rustling of leaves, the splashing of streams, the chirping of grasshoppers and of course the opulent concert of birds. The melancholy piping of the blackbird was my first earworm. Only the electronic music aroused my deep interest, fascinated me with a research-driven curiosity. In 1993 I started DJing. To capture both of my great sources of inspiration, I've decided to create a two-hour melange of my favorite bird songs and my favorite picks from 1993 and 1994. Q: You´re travelling all over the planet for about two decades yet. How do you manage your stressful tourlife and calming down the weekdays after so many years? A: Nature is not only my great source of inspiration, but also an inexhaustible source of energy to recharge my batteries. Therefore I live in her, directly on a wonderful nature reserve. For me nature is the easiest, healthiest and most cost-effective way to happiness. I only need binoculars to broaden my horizons. So I can immerge in the contemplative experience of nature for hours and get into deep resonance with our true home. Q: Which future Eulberg projects are on the way - what are you currently working on? A: I’m writing a sensitization for nature book for the renowned Fischer Verlag, creating a photo book with insect focus-stacking macros, working on a butterfly card game, creating Remix-EPs for my current album Mannigfaltig, working on the soundtrack for a cinema nature-documentary, designing a bat sound installation with the Chaos Computer Club and produce a new EP. TRACKLIST: 1. Aphex Twin - On - Warp Records - 1993 2. Amsel - Blackbird - Turdus merula 3. CJ Bolland - Con Spirito - R&S Records - 1995 4. Singdrossel - Song trush - Turdus philomelos 5. Teste - The Wipe (5am Synaptic) - Plus 8 Records - 1992 6. Rohrdommel - Bittern - Botaurus stellaris 7. Marmion - Schöneberg — Superstition - 1993 8. Kiebitz - Lapwing - Vanellus vanellus 9. Tata Box Inhibitors - Plasmids (Placid Mix) - Touché - 1994 10. Nachtigall - Nightingale - Luscinia megarhynchos 11. Vapourspace ‎-- Gravitational Arch Of 10 - Plus 8 Records - 1993 12. Blaukehlchen - Bluethroat - Luscinia svecica 13. Pete Lazonby - Sacred Cercles - Brainaik Records - 1994 14. Zaunkönig - Wren - Troglodytes troglodytes 15. X-313 - Spectra (Hardsignal Treatment) - Generator Records - 1994 16. Ziegenmelker - Nightjar - Caprimulgus europaeus 17. Drax - Amphetamine - Oscillator - 1994 18. Wiedehopf - Hoopoe - Upupa epops 19. Emmanuel Top - Acid Phase - Attack Records -1994 20. Uhu - Eagle owl - Bubo bubo 21. Energy 52 - Cafe Del Mar ( DJ Kid Paul Mix) - Eye Q Records - 1993 22. Buchfink - Chaffinch - Fringilla coelebs 23. Cygnus X - Orange Theme - Eye Q Records -1994 24. Wachtelkönig - Corncrake - Crex crex 25. Trancesetters - Drive - Touché - 1994 26. Gartenrotschwanz - Common redstart - Phoenicurus phoenicurus 27. Acid Jesus - Radium - Klang Elektronik -1994 28. Drosselrohrsänger - Great reed warbler - Acrocephalus arundinaceus 29. Cold - Strobe Light Network - Thule Records - 1995 30. Pirol - Golden oriole - Oriolus oriolus

DR. MOTTE on: - Facebook: www.facebook.com/DrMotteOfficial - SoundCloud: @dr-motte HOW I MET THE BASS on: - Facebook: www.facebook.com/howimetthebass - Mixcloud: www.mixcloud.com/HowIMetTheBass - Spotify: spoti.fi/2KipBo7 3 QUESTIONS to DR. MOTTE: Q: Talking about your mix. What do these early tracks and genres mean to you and how did you get in touch with Techno and House later? A: I collect music since the age of 12 and that was in 1972. A record store opened up 5 minutes where I lived in West Berlin. At the age of 14 I discovered Jazz. I was a Jazz fan till 1979 and went to all Jazz concerts and spend all my money for Jazz music & Jazz concerts. Later at the end of 1970s I was listening to John Peels music which had a huge impact for alternative music in any direction and I was very much involved in to the „Geniale Dilletanten“ movement in West Berlin. 1986 me and 2 other DJs opened up the club „Turbine Rosenheim“ and there I started the first ever Acid House Party. Q: You just celebrated 30 years Loveparade. How would you describe the development of Electronic Music and the whole scene around from 1989 till now? A: It was a "Do It Vourself" movement in the beginning. We wanted to do an innovation with the lifestyle we lived together of this new acid thing what was coming up. We all had a super feeling about the new music and we had the impression that we could embrace everyone and everything. When the wall fell down and East Berlin was open we had the chance to build our own world in the old buildings and free spaces we created inside. That was very magic and the drugs much better. Thanks for being at the right place and the right time. Q: Besides music you are active in several political and social projects. What are you currently working on and what are your plans for the future? A: We need to protect our own culture and the open spaces we use for. In Berlin is a lot of gentrification going on and some investors collecting buildings and raising the rent for the clubs, studios and practise rooms. This will kill the club culture in Berlin and elsewhere in Germany. I'm thinking in the moment what is the best thing to do to protect our electronic dance culture in Germany. I'm sure pretty soon there will be a solution and some action. We need to come together and rise up and fight for our rights and 30 years of building up of our own culture. We need protection by our government not ignorance. We are the people and we want freedom for us not security.

Today I wanna talk about mainstream MLM advice. This is gonna be a fun episode ;) I went on Google and I googled… How do you win an MLM Top MLM strategies today … Stuff like that. I grabbed a whole bunch of blogs and I started power reading through them and finding ALL the advice they were giving. A lot of them were like, "The Top 10 Steps To Be a Top MLMer", and stuff like that. So I was like looking at the TOP 10 steps or the TOP 3 strategies or whatever. As I was looking through all of them… Some of them just made me flat out laugh. So what I’m gonna do is walk through them here… Just in case somebody's wondering if I'm throwing rocks… I AM. https://youtu.be/msZgv8szCEg The purpose of it is because, a lot of people who follow this show and have been consuming my stuff or have been in Secret MLM Hacks and then become a student… What's interesting is a lot of people will be like, "How have I never known this?" Look at the information that you have available to you. Please don't feel guilty. Don't feel weird. I'm here to help justify that. One of the reasons I started doing this is because I started looking to see what kind of information the MLM world has available. A: Not much. I was like, "Well I could probably make quite a splash" and we are. So I'm gonna walk through some of these so-called ‘Top Tips’ that I compiled. MLM ADVICE #1 One of the first things that people say will cause success is that you need to find a company with a product you LOVE. I love my iPhone… But I have never in my life had this iPhone put money in my pocket. How much you love your product has NOTHING to do with your ability to actually make it sell. Nothing. It has ZERO to do with how well it sells. Nothing at all. Have you ever walked out in a room and said, "I love this product, it's just so awesome," and your true passion is what sells it? You can get sales like that… But it’s not very likely, and usually, they don't stick very long. Passion does not equal profits. When I was in college and we were talking about the entrepreneurial space a lot. I took A LOT of entrepreneurship classes and they would say things like, "You need to be passionate about what you do." Now I understand that in the long term you should feel passion around it because it gets challenging and not much else will pull you through… But passion is not a sales strategy. Passion is not a marketing strategy. You're NOT gonna get money just because you love the thing that much. THAT was the #1 piece of MLM advice. You have to find a company that you love the product… Or you could just make an effort to share your business and product every day. Or just build a funnel and it'll pitch every moment instead of every day. Set a goal. In the last month, we had 3,000 people hit one of my new funnels. That's 100 people a day. Physically, I wouldn't be able to keep up with that. You can bend time with funnels. MLM ADVICE #2 Now, these are some good ones… Identify your target market. At first, I was like, "Sweet," but then I kept reading and it was like, for example, "Do you only want friends and family or do you want people outside of friends and family?" And I was like, "Crap, that started so well." MLM ADVICE #3 Another good one was to listen and then sell the solution. I actually wholeheartedly agree with that. Listen to people and sell the solution. I wish they had talked more about storytelling though. MLM ADVICE #4 Learn how to market. That was a good one, but then when it said to learn how to market, it was like, "Create a big list." I was like, "NO" MLM ADVICE #5 Figure out how to stand out from other distributors. I really agree with that piece of MLM advice. Figure out how to stand out from other distributors. You know what's funny is, I actually learned this as a door-to-door sales guy. I was knocking on doors and it was sooo hot. I was doing door-to-door sales selling pest control six years ago. It was the middle of the summer and it was sooo hot. So one day I went over to McDonald's just to stand in the AC and funny enough, half the other sales guys were in there also trying to cool off. We were all sitting there in this McDonald's just sucking up their AC for a little bit when this guy walks up and he goes, "Hey, I need your services. When can you come by?" Since we were a group of salesmen, we were all looking at each other wondering who's gonna take the sale. "No, no, you take it. No, no, you take it. You take it," until suddenly our boss pointed at somebody and they got the lucky laydown sale. That experience didn't leave me. We walked away and I started thinking about it. It didn't matter who that guy chose. We ALL sell the same thing with the same product, with the same fulfillment. We had the same trucks, we had the same uniforms, we had the same pitch, we had the same cheesy jokes at the same points in the same pitch. It did not matter to that guy who he bought from. Now tell me how that's different from MLM distributors? We all sell the same product with the same pitch, with the same scripts, with the same stupid jokes, with the same methods. THIS is what I realized walking away from that McDonald's that day… The other salesmen are actually my competition. But they were also my friends and family. Funny enough, I grew up with a good percentage of the people who were selling pest control with me that summer. Your upline and your downline is your competition. Finding out how to stand out from other distributors was an amazing piece of MLM advice. I wholeheartedly agree with that and that is what Secret MLM Hacks teaches. MLM ADVICE #6 Another great one was to develop a system for follow-up. I was like YES, absolutely. If you heard my last episode, I just talked about that. You need a system for follow-up. It's typically where you'll make most of your money, both in selling products and recruiting. MLM ADVICE #7 Here are some other weird bits of MLM advice that I don't agree with at all… Lead with the product, not the biz. Some people are looking for the business. I actually started that way. I don't lead with the product right now. But I know that I'll move that way at some point, but we just passed 1800 people asking to join my downline, who I've never met. And I'm leading with the business first, then the product. That's not a set-in-stone thing that that person is talking about. MLM ADVICE # I think this one actually from entrepreneur.com. I think it was the second piece of advice… Bullet point number two on “How to be successful in MLM”. Take massive action. THAT was the strategy. The strategy was MASSIVE action. What don't you have to do that on? Are you serious? That's the big secret? MLM ADVICE #9 This next one I heard when I was at an event. Everyone there was super excited like, “We can't wait till this guy shows up. He's gonna drop some amazing stuff on you about how he's been able to blow up so big," I was actually with Colton and the time comes… The guy stands up, and he goes, "Guys, here's the big secret on how I've grown my downline so big. When I'm at a restaurant," And everyone starts writing, "R-E-S-T-A-U-R-A-N-T" “When I'm at a restaurant and I see somebody eating alone, I sit down at the table." … And I was waiting… But that was the strategy. Like what kind of hot garbage? Are you serious? MLM ADVICE #10 Here’s another piece of MLM advice that I heard from a huge, famous blogger in MLM space… One of his favorite strategies is to leave business cards on windshields. I was like, "That's your strategy?" No wonder my stuff looks so crazy! MLM ADVICE #11 Another bit of MLM advice was to become a life coach. I don't want to become a life coach. I'm building a business, I'm building an asset, I'm building something that's actually sustainable. I am NOT recruiting anything that has a heartbeat. If I start recruiting people who need the opportunity, I am required to become a life coach. If I start recruiting people who are dying for the opportunity and are begging to be in my downline… They're messaging me, they're the ones that reach back out over Messenger saying, "Hey, let me in." Guess who I don't have to become a life coach for? That person. It's not that I'm NOT willing to help… But if I have to be a life coach for thousands of people, that is not a duplicatable thing. I remember one guy in one of the first MLMs I was a part of. He was like, "This is a passive asset." I was like, "Dude, you're working 80 hours a week. There's nothing passive about it." He was making a lot of money. He was making a good chunk of change every month. He's like, "Yeah, but it's passive." I was like, "There's nothing passive about the way you're doing it, man." It is because of the types of individuals he's bringing in. Not to judge Not to compare I’m not saying anyone's better than anybody else … But some people are just in a better spot in life to take action than others. We all know that's true. MLM ADVICE #12 Here's some great piece of MLM advice. Somebody was like, "You should get on YouTube. You should have a newsletter." YES. "You should blog." … But then they botched it. Having a newsletter Being a podcaster Being a YouTuber A blogger … The reason that's so powerful is that it extends your reach. It creates more noise. It helps people say, "Oh my gosh, have you seen this guy?" I will never, in my entire life ever have to do this episode again. By the time I die, there will probably be tens of thousands of people who have heard this episode. That's the whole point. I'm bending time, baby. That's why publishing's such a big deal. Q: You wanna attract people to you? A: Start something like this. This is one of the easiest ways to do it. You don't even need to have a great offer or a great business, and you'll recruit more people. Make more noise and more people will see you. I publish a lot. I'm very, very, very cutting. MLM ADVICE #13 The next bit of MLM advice: Evaluate the higher-ups. And I was like, "Yeah, totally evaluate the higher-ups." If you wanna see how to have success with what kind of company you're trying to be, definitely evaluate the higher-ups. And he was like, "Are they as committed to your success as you are?” I was like, "No. I'm not responsible for anybody's success." I'm gonna help: Answer questions Solve problems … But the best way for me to be successful is to focus on my success. That's one of the greatest fallacies of the MLM space: You'll get more successful the more people you recruit. The best way for you to be successful is for you to focus on YOU, and make you better. Are they as committed to your success as you are? That's like saying in a marriage that you're gonna focus on changing the other person. If YOU get better, you start healing the relationship a lot faster. That's why I'm so focused on who I want and don't. I require input. I require effort from those I recruit. This isn’t an offer, it is a relationship. For me to say I'm as committed to your success as I am mine… I understand the warm fuzzies it brings, but in my very strong opinion, that is a fallacy that has you recruit people that are probably not a good fit. STEVE LARSEN TOP MLM STRATEGIES Here's what I do believe you should go and evaluate opportunities on. If you're trying to find… A company to go join The success strategies … One of the things that you have to evaluate a company or opportunity on is your ability to market it. Not sell it, market it. How can you rank the product? Can you rank your ability to bring it to market? You can have all the passion in the world but not have a freaking clue how to market, and you're not gonna make any money. It could be the exact opposite. You could have lots of ability to market and have no passion BUT you'll make a lot of money. You need to have a strategy before you join ANY opportunity. How will you market that product? And if you don't know what marketing is... Marketing is how you get people to your face. Sales is what happens when they're in front of your face. My definition of marketing: Marketing is changing somebody's beliefs and prepping them so they can buy. Sales is presenting the offer and overcoming objections. That's what they are. And if you don't have a plan on how you're gonna get more leads, you're gonna die. Q: What does every business need more of, always? A: Cash flow and leads. You have got to have a strategy put in place for those. HOW TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN MLM Next thing, I would evaluate companies and opportunities based on their ability to fulfill. I don't wanna spend all this time putting a marketing strategy together and executing it if the company has a hard time fulfilling. If they can't box up the thing and ship it, I don't care how good I can market, I'm gonna have a lot of people who are mad. I wanna evaluate a company and an opportunity based on how well I'm paid. If I'm not allowed to market a product that has an incredible compensation plan on the internet, I'm still gonna make no money. If I have not as amazing a comp plan but I am allowed to… Put this thing on the internet Say the name Create my own front ends Create funnels Make things that attract people to me … I'm gonna make a ton of money regardless of how amazing or not amazing the comp plan is. The whole point of this is that cash is the byproduct of marketing and marketing alone. Cash is the byproduct of marketing. LEARN HOW TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN MLM DON’T MAKE A… Business card Logo Slogan Cute saying Facebook group that has some alliteration about you being some kind of successful MLM thing The only thing you need to focus on is sustainable marketing strategies. That's why I can walk into any company and help them increase their sales. I know what causes cash. When I walk into any business, including MLM, it's the same stuff. To be an entrepreneur is to be a problem solver. To be an entrepreneur is to know what the marketing strategy is that sells your thing. If you don't know what that is, that's likely the reason why you might not be where you wanna be right now. I largely automated most of my businesses… I'm not taking massive action in certain things anymore. It's because I have systems. Find a company with a product you love. It helps, but it's not required. Identify your target market. YES Listen and then sell the solution. YES Learn how to market. YES 100% Figure out how to stand out from other distributors. YES Develop a system for follow-up. YES, absolutely. Lead with the product, not the biz. That depends, this is not set in stone Take massive action. Not necessarily… I don’t. Sit next to lonely people in restaurants. NO. Leave business cards on windshields. Are you kidding me?! Become a life coach. I don’t wanna be a life coach! Publish. YES! Publish, publish, publish! Evaluate the higher-ups. YES HOW TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN MLM WITH SECRET MLM HACKS Probably the biggest question I get is: “Steve, how are you using the internet for your personal MLM today?” To be clear, I am, but it's HOW that matters, and it's HOW that you're probably interested in. Facebook doesn't easily let you drive ads to MLM, and most MLMs won't even let you say their name on the internet, which is stupid. Despite those and other forces, I am using the internet to grow my personal downline and sell products. MLM is changing, and you're probably feeling that, right? It's why I created a little mini-course in a bundle… To show you HOW I'm doing this all today. It's called The MLM Funnel and you can get it at themlmfunnel.com. I'm doing this because you might not know WHERE to start in all of this and, secondly, because there's a cool new book by Russell Brunson called Network Marketing Secrets that I want you to go get. He's a cool guy, so I'm talking about this book a lot lately. I'm also going to give you a little bribe so you go get the book through my link. How evil of me. When you go to themlmfunnel.com and get Russell's new book, Network Marketing Secrets, I'm going to give you my Pre-built Recruiting Funnel Template, the Hack MLM Downline Onboarding Course, which is how I auto-train my downline when they join my team. ALSO, a discount ticket to my next event called OfferMind so that you can learn to outvalue your upline and downline. If you want all this for FREE, just go to themlmfunnel.com now and get a crash course into prebuilt funnel templates that I'm using with my own downline now.

APARDE on: - Facebook: www.facebook.com/apardeofficial - SoundCloud: @aparde HOW I MET THE BASS on: - Facebook: www.facebook.com/howimetthebass - Mixcloud: www.mixcloud.com/HowIMetTheBass - Spotify: spoti.fi/2KipBo7 3 QUESTIONS to APARDE: Q: Going into your mix shows some special roots from different genres. What do these tracks mean to you now? A: Each of this tracks had a great impact to me and is an all time favourite of mine. Like the first track Deftones - "Drive" I was listening to at the age of 16. I usesd the acoustic version because it fits better into the mix. I remember after I had listen to Aphex Twin - "Vordhosbn" and Extrawelt - "8000" my stylistic in electronic music has found a kind of direction. Q: How would you describe your development as an electronic artists, from the roots until today? A: In the first years of producing my music was very experimental. I produced in different genres but I was always more driven by the electronic stylistic. Now my music is more conceptional and more specific. And of course, I'm allowed to play my music in front of many people and being a part of a great community at Ki Records. Q: You recently released your album "Hands Rest" on your homebase label Ki Records. Whats the story behind and which interesting projects are coming next? A: The album is a summary of 2018 wich was a very difficult time for me. The title track is about to stop all activities for some time to regenerate. Its also about continue doing what you want to do. I'm very looking forward to the release of the remixes of my new Album „Hands Rest“ – a remix from Lusine for example! I also worked on a remix for Vimala and Wallis Bird, which will come out soon.

Nir’s Note: Jane McGonigal is a game designer at The Institute for the Future and bestselling author of Reality is Broken and SuperBetter. She’ll be speaking at the upcoming Habit Summit in April. (You can register here!) In this interview with Max Ogles, McGonigal discusses impact of future technologies on behavior, habits, and the way we design products. Q: You recently worked on a project designed to visualize the future of technology. The idea was that using some future, not-yet-existent product, nicknamed FeelThat, people could actually share emotions with each other. (Here’s a link to the video.) What was the thinking behind it?Jane McGonigal: This is a project with Institute for the Future to look at some of the emerging technologies that are being prototyped, tested, and innovated right now. We try to imagine where technologies might take us in a decade or more if they became widespread and popular. We use a process to collect signals, or “clues,” about the future that suggest things that might have the potential to change our lives down the road. You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: The Unbelievable Future of Habit-Forming Technology https://www.nirandfar.com/the-unbelievable-future-of-habit-forming-technology/ Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/nirandfar/support

This is the audio from our video here: https://youtu.be/GpJJkSBP-YQ   They say “never start with an apology”, so we won’t. Not everyone loves vintage guitars – in fact many people think it’s all a load of pish. Dan and I are not such people and so we took this opportunity to visit ATB Guitars in Cheltenham, UK and fill our boots with an afternoon of complete and utter kids-in-a-sweetshop indulgence.  There is no real point to this video, other than to remind ourselves that it’s only this very moment that ever matters; simply to do and to experience. MASSIVE thanks to Mike and David at ATB for making us so welcome and letting us have the run of the store! https://www.atbguitars.com/ Instagram @atbguitars Questions arising…Q: Are vintage guitars really ‘better’? A: No. Modern guitars aren’t better either. Q: You couldn’t tell in a blind test though, could you?A: Maybe, but if your brain is trying to tell, you’re not doing anything relating to actual music. Q: That’s every guitar gear video ever, isn’t it?A: Touché. Probably! The bit after the video in the venue or studio is Q: Did Mick buy that Strat?A: Not today. But one day when the day is right I will. Q: Why didn’t you play the //insert any guitar we didn’t play here//?A: We chose the ones that interested us the most. We’ll answer everything else we can in Monday’s VCQ. Enjoy the episode! Pedals & stuff in this episode… • Keeley D&M DriveUK & Europe: http://bit.ly/2oTblU1Australia: http://bit.ly/2pUDUAEhttps://www.thatpedalshowstore.com/collections/pedals-1/products/d-m-drive-pedal • DanDrive Austin PrideFind Dan on Instagram @dandrivepedal • Catalinbread EchorecUK & Europe: http://bit.ly/2mORqULAustralia: http://bit.ly/2BWjXTM • Catalinbread Belle Epoch DeluxeUK & Europe: http://bit.ly/2RVldeSAustralia: http://bit.ly/2Ovelqa • Supro Tremolo UK & Europe: http://bit.ly/2pZrAkZ * Why do we have preferred retailer links? Find out here: http://www.thatpedalshow.com/partners Interesting bits and go-to sections…- Here we come, walking down the… 0:00- 1957 Gibson ES-5 Switchmaster: 02:30- 1959 Gibson ES-335 and more old hollowbodies… 04:45- Plug in the Switchmaster and ’59 ES-335: 12:40- Mick reflects on his reissue 335 and the real ’59: 17:10- Amps today? 18:35- Plug in the ’59 355 and ’66 Casino: 19:20- Effects today?: 23:02- 1955 Gibson Les Paul Custom: 25:25- A gilding of Goldtops: 27:40- A look at some Les Paul Juniors: 35:25- Gibson SGs: 36:45- Plug in the ’55 Goldtop & ’64 SG: 39:05- Plug in the ’53 & ’57 Les Pauls: 48:40- Dan reflects on the ’57 Les Paul compared to his ’58 Reissue: 54:40- Fender corner! 58:20- Strat heaven: 1:04:43- 1963 Korina Body Fender Stratocaster: 01:14:49- L Series Fender serial numbers?: 01:17:07- The only bases anyone ever needs: 01:18:30- A note on Fender headstocks: 01:19:00- 1974 Fender Hardtail Stratocaster: 01:20:00- The only reissue in the shop! 1:20:40- A brief look at the amps: 01:21:30- Plug in the ’58 Strat & Tele: 01:22:16- Plug in the ’61 and ’63 Strats: 01:31:30- Plug in the ’58 Jazzmaster: 01:37:20- Plug in the ’62 Stratocaster: 01:42:48- A note on old guitars: 01:50:02- Thank you! 01:51:00 Guitars in this episode - check https://www.atbguitars.com/ to see what’s still there!• 1957 Gibson ES-5 Switchmaster• 1959 Gibson ES-335• 1959 Gibson ES-355• 1955 Gibson Les Paul Custom• 1957 Gibson Les Paul• 1953 Gibson Les Paul• 1955 Gibson Les Paul• 1964 Gibson Firebird VII• 1961 Gibson SG (Les Paul) Junior TV Yellow• 1955 Gibson Les Paul Junior TV Yellow Maple Body• 1965 Gibson SG Standard• 1964 Gibson SG Standard• 1958 Fender Telecaster Custom - Prototype/Catalogue• 1958 Fender Jazzmaster• 1966 Fender Jazzmaster• 1963 Fender Esquire• 1957 Fender Stratocaster• 1958 Fender Stratocaster• 1959 Fender Stratocaster• 1961 Fender Stratocaster• 1962 Fender Stratocaster• 1963 Fender Stratocaster (Korina body)• 1974 Fender Hardtail Stratocaster• 1982 Fender Stratocaster Amps in this episode• 1955 Fender Deluxe (5E3 narrow panel)• 1959 Magnatone 280A We hope you enjoy this episode. Please subscribe to our channel. Please buy TPS merch to support our efforts https://www.thatpedalshowstore.com We are on Patreon – crowdfunding for creativeshttps://www.patreon.com/ThatPedalShow Please visit our preferred retailers!UK & Europe: Andertons Music http://bit.ly/2cRvIvtAustralia: Pedal Empire http://bit.ly/2mWmJQf

GROJ on: - Facebook: www.facebook.com/grojmusic - SoundCloud: @groj HOW I MET THE BASS on: - Facebook: www.facebook.com/howimetthebass - Twitter: www.twitter.com/howimetthebass - Mixcloud: www.mixcloud.com/HowIMetTheBass 3 QUESTIONS to GROJ: Q: Talking about your roots. A lot of german Synthi-Pop/New Wave tracks are inside your mix. How did you get in touch with this kind of music and how would you describe your roots? A: Thanks for having me on this project, great concept and I loved to work on it. These are big names in my family - Kosmische Musik was always around the house and readily inculcated to anyone flipping through album covers in the living room. But children rarely like the music their parents listen to and why would these names stand out from all of the musical action of the 70-80 and 90s? My attachment is conceptual. I think German Rock had it's own mission and a different vision than what was happening at the time elsewhere. It isn’t too pushy or too snob and still very elegant and refined. The music is grounded in a feeling of home and belonging, of being back at the castle. At the same time it is very transporting, rhythmic subtleties and repetition is central to it. I learnt a lot about making techno from these guys and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Q: You´re from Grenoble, living now in Montreal/Canada (is that right?). How would you describe your development in electronic music between Europe and North America? A: That is correct. I go back and forth a lot. I love Montreal and where I come from in France. I think both continents feed off each other. While there has always been some strong artistic rivalries and misunderstandings in the past, I think both schools hold a lot of admiration for one another. Being in Montreal is great because there is a flow from both sides and you don’t need to pick a side. I think this comes through in my music as well - I try to be free-spirited, raw and open to serendipity like a North-American, and at the same time I see the value in not pissing on everything that has been done before, in preserving heritage and order like a good European artist. So the course of my development as an artist in a sense is also to unite and re-concile these two worlds. Q: Which future Groj projects are on the way? A: At the moment I’m working on an album, which is something I haven’t done for several years now. It is both a great and terrifying feeling. There will soon be a single release on microCastle which is a club cover I made of Transmission by Joy Division. A new EP on fryhide is coming soon as well.

The “” is a unique destination hotspot with a full biohacking facility, sauna, farm-to-table restaurant, precision medicine arm, hemp farm, horse facilities, and much more. It is owned by one of the physicians who hosts the “, on which I was recently a guest.  Recently, at the castle, I had the pleasure of giving a talk on how to . Afterward, I took part in a Q&A with several of the physicians in attendance at the conference. On today's podcast, part two of this two-part series (), you'll get to sit in on this very interesting discussion. Enjoy! Questions and topics covered in the session... -Follow-up questions for Ben from his presentation...6:48 Q: What do you think of using the long term, particularly as it pertains to EMF and dirty electricity? Q: Do you think is not valid? A: They're legit. Q: You said a score of 3.8 for the TSH is good but not optimal. How do you figure out what your optimal levels should be? Q: Is it true that if you take colostrum on an empty stomach, it won't raise your insulin-like growth factor (IGF)? A: I've never heard that. Colostrum is an anabolic. -What is the ideal estradiol post-menopause?...12:45 Get it back to pre-menopausal levels Book: -How does a sense of spirituality and spiritual practice play into one's health and wellness?...16:12 Changes epigenetic expression, improves sleep cycles Gratitude changes level of empathy toward others Blue zones have strong beliefs in a higher power, meditation, etc. Medical students are not trained in the efficacy of spirituality Physicians "curse" patients; "so much time left to live" -How would you increase free testosterone naturally?...19:19 Avoid heavy amounts of intense exercise (HIIT) Prioritize sexual experience; send body the signal you're maintaining fertility Decrease insulin resistance; increase healthy fatty acids Get adequate rest Stress management -How does ashwagandha play a role in cortisol and other adaptogens?...26:30  (Receive a 15% discount using code: BENGREENFIELD) Books by -How long would a dietary change take to see a change in the Omega 3 Index?...28:25 At least 3 months Can vary from person to person SMASH fish: , , , , -What CGM (continuous glucose monitor) devices do you recommend?...32:05 -When is it optimal to test IGF-1?...35:40 -Should a microbiome be tested a certain time of day, fasted or unfasted, etc.?...36:30 -Is it true that it is difficult to test for parasites because the parasite releases an enzyme when the stool hits the air?...39:30 -What are the key factors to getting quality deep sleep?...41:40 Article: Cold environment - 60-100 mg (use code: GREENFIELD15 to save 15%) for deep sleep (no Bluetooth) Regular exercise regimen Avoid alcohol Period of fasting (3-4 hours) -Are people who follow a low-carb or ketogenic diet low in magnesium?...45:30 -For Ben: How are you dealing with your high cortisol metabolism?...48:56 "I haven't followed a strict ketogenic diet for years." at the end of the day -Is a colonoscopy an effective means of "resetting" the microbiome?...50:45 -How do you treat someone with a common cold? If it develops into an infection, how do you naturally heal it sans antibiotics?...52:36 , rest, and (save $500 with code: BEN) Taking antibiotics correlates with anxiety and depression in the future Take a every morning: prevents getting a cold -Under what circumstances should one seek an antibiotic, even if they are determined not to use antibiotics?...1:00:00 -How to deal with fainting episodes related to stress?...1:02:25 Improving vagal nerve tone (use code GREENFIELD for $100 discount) Podcast: Cold exposure: cold showers, dunk face in cold water -What about things like sauerkraut and kombucha in promoting microbiome health?...1:03:45 is good; approach kombucha with caution -Thoughts on a 5-day fasting mimicking diet vs. a 3-day water fast?...1:07:10 Solid science behind the Fasting mimicking diet is more realistic in its feasibility (water fast is very difficult) -For Ben: Are you still doing the NAD injection that burns for 15 minutes?...1:09:32 -How can you deal with exercise-induced hypoglycemia when you're not diabetic?...1:12:15 -How do you mitigate the effects of a bad night of sleep?...1:14:30 Brief spurts of (HIIT) Large amounts of to reset circadian rhythm Regular meal times or (save $10 with code: BEN10) -And much more... Resources from this episode: - (use code: BEN for a free gift at checkout) - - - -Book: - - - - (Receive a 15% discount using code: BENGREENFIELD) -Article: -Books by - -Podcast: - glucose monitor Episode sponsors: -: My personal playground for new supplement formulations. Attention Ben Greenfield Fitness listeners: receive a 10% discount off your entire order when you use discount code: BGF10. -: Enjoy all the benefits of the 11 superfoods and their micronutrients that help increase resting metabolism, support cardiovascular health, and remove toxins to turn back the hands of time! Receive a 20% discount on your entire order when you use discount code: BENG20 -: I’ve been using Four Sigmatic products for a while now and I’m impressed by the efficacies of their mushroom products. I use them. I like them. I support the mission! 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It’s another potluck episode in which Wes and Scott answer your questions! This month - interview questions, headless CMSs, resume design, redux vs context, and more! Sentry - Sponsor If you want to know what’s happening with your errors, track them with Sentry. Sentry is open-source error tracking that helps developers monitor and fix crashes in real time. Cut your time on error resolution from five hours to five minutes. It works with any language and integrates with dozens of other services. Syntax listeners can get two months for free by visiting Sentry.io and using the coupon code “tastytreat”. Freshbooks - Sponsor Get a 30 day free trial of Freshbooks at freshbooks.com/syntax and put SYNTAX in the “How did you hear about us?” section. Show Notes 2:21 Q: Are there any tutorials you would recommend to learn more computer science related knowledge (algorithms, closures, etc.)? 5:12 Q: Do you have any suggestions for picking a headless CMS? 8:55 Q: Do you have any advice for someone in a customer service background seeking a more flexible job with remote work opportunities? Resources? Is this a realistic goal or a good way to approach my job search? 15:13 Q: How much importance would you place in the design of a resume? Is it worth the cost? 21:09 Q: With the new React Hooks and Context API, do we still need Redux? 25:37 Q: If either of you could change anything about your personal tech stack, what would it be and why? 29:07 Q: Do you prefer to use React’s defaultProps or plain JS default function parameters to give your component’s props some default values? 30:44 Q: You guys chat CMS sometimes - why no love for Umbraco? 35:53 Q: I’m ready for a new challenge, how do I break this to my employer? 38:16 Q: What’s the difference between const add = (a, b) => { return a + b } and function add (a, b) { return a + b }? Links Udacity Coursera Contentful Ghost Prismic Strapi HeadlessCMS Sanity WordPress Drupal ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Scott: J.A. Henckels International 10-piece Capri Granitium Nonstick Cookware Set Wes: IRWIN VISE-GRIP 2078300 Self-Adjusting Wire Stripper, 8" Shameless Plugs Scott’s Gridsome Series Wes’ YouTube Tweet us your tasty treats! Scott’s Instagram LevelUpTutorials Instagram Wes’ Instagram Wes’ Twitter Wes’ Facebook Scott’s Twitter Make sure to include @SyntaxFM in your tweets

Strength Training, Hydration, Blood Panels, and Protein Click Here for I Am Clovis Free 7-Day Trial! Topics Covered: Clovis Housekeeping: 2:15 - First ever Google Hangout was a success! 3:37 - Launching a new podcast series - Clovis Client Case Studies! 4:01 - Latest podcast episode with Abel James is up! Comments/Questions: 6:30 Commenting on the Podcast with Abel 7:37 - Q: “You talked about 5x5 in an episode… what kind of workouts are those?” 9:55 - Q: “I know we've been told we need to drink a certain amount of water, what ratio do you think is necessary?” 13:10 - Commenting on comments: “I take salt shots every day and my doctor took me off my blood pressure meds!” 13:44 - Q: “What specifically should I have my doctor order in a hormone panel to get an idea of where I am?” 14:50 - What you want to test: Testosterone Estradiol Progesterone FSH LH TSH Free T3 Reverse T3 Free T4 Vitamin D Inflammation (C-reactive protein) Comprehensive metabolic panel (which will test for things like electrolytes, fluid balance, kidney function, liver function, etc.) 16:12 - Commenting on cholesterol panels 18:40 - Commenting on health insurance and “saving money” 19:27 - Q: “What's your take on those that say we don't need more than 40g of protein because any protein that can't be used by muscles and tissues is converted into glucose in the liver by gluconeogenesis?” 25:18 - Q: “What about elderberry syrup? Recommendations? Was curious if I make my own and use monk fruit sugar does it become syrupy like regular sugar?” 25:52 - Q: “If you soak almonds and remove the skins and then put them in a dehydrator to dry out will enough lectins be removed to eat?” 27:11 - Clovis is not Keto! 27:30 - Q: “Best drinks when fasting? Water, coffee, green tea?” 29:10 - Q: “Would you recommend using monk fruit instead of honey?” --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/theclovisculture/support

In this bonus episode, we are joined by Kevin Henderson, the head of US operations for Pimax.Q: Kevin, tell us about yourself, your tech history and how it lead to Pimax?Q: Did you ever try in of the early VR machines in the 80s or 90s?Q: Communication from Pimax is a concern, as Spokesperson will be improving communication? Q: Pimax was supposed to ship in early 2018, but it ended up being 1-year later, was there a particular holdup? Q: You mentioned an 8% defect rate, it seems the cable is the biggest culprit, what steps has Pimax done to rectify that and other quality issues? Q: What are Pimax's distribution plans heading into general release? Q: Will the audio strap be shown at GTC? Q: Should we expect parallel or linear development and release of accessories?Q: Will the wireless module require compression, and are Pimax partnering with another company on the module? Q: Has there been any talk with other tracking systems other than SteamVR, such as Mo-Sys?Q: Is there a chance for Pimax to make a tracking puck? Q: Is there any news or updates on lighthouse availability?Q: What is the status of the 8KX, and have you tried it? Q: We assume you have a 5k+, 8k, and 5kBE. Which is your favorite? Q: Can you talk about anything Pimax had to hone in on, such as the lenses, and will there be additional refinements? Q: Let's talk about the Oculus software support integrated into PiTool. Is it Revive or Pimax solution? How will it be supported going forward? Q: Is there a difference in the LCD panels for newer builds vs older builds?Q: Can you update us on the eye-tracking module?Q: Where do you see VR going in the next few years? Not just from Pimax perspective, but industry wide? [Q: The Community likes you, but they still want a Kickstarter update for each SKU, can you give us one? Q: Steve gets corrected on ending on a high-note (regarding delivery) Q: What are you favorite games to play on the Pimax, what do you look forward to playing? Q: What GPU do you use? Q: Do you adjust SS in PiTool or SteamVR? Q: Do you have any concerns of Pimax's unique market window of wide-FOV could close with other hardware announcements like StartVR, Xtal, ect? Q: The floor is yours! Q: Do you think VR displace home TVs, home-cinema? If so, when? Q: Closing Note: We are now streaming live on Youtube when we record the latest episode, audio version will always be made available in podcast form. Also, please keep in mind the live nature of the Roundtable when listening back to the podcast uploade-mail: vrroundtable@gmail.comYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/vrroundtableFollow us on Twitter @VR_RoundtableFollow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/VRRoundtableFollow Gary on Twitter @ReckonerVRFollow Steve on Twitter @Scubasteve2365Follow Anthony on Twitter @VRGameRankingsFollow Chris on Twitter @Virtually_Chris

Are you dreaming of building your own home? Buying land and building a property on it is a dream many people share. But what about the logistics? Buying land and building your own house is uncharted territory for most people. We have seen many people build their dream homes on land that they’ve bought for that purpose. We’ve seen where things can go wrong, and all of the ways that a buyer can prevent these things from happening. So here’s our do’s and don’ts for building your own property. Q: So you want to buy land to build a home. What should you be looking for in the land? Are there any red flags to watch out for? A: Firstly, when looking to buy land to build your dream home, carefully consider the land’s location, size, and surroundings. This includes whether the property would be an appropriate size or style that will fit with the neighbours, which will become an important factor when you apply for planning approval. Q: Is it feasible to demolish an existing property on land that you’ve purchased? A: Always do a land registry search. It’s a small cost to pay, but can tell you a lot about the land you’re considering. The search will be able to tell if the property is registered. If it was built before 1982, it may not be registered, and unregistered land can take time to get papers in order, especially if you’re relying on old deeds, when it may be very difficult to prove title. If you’re demolishing a property, you will certainly need an asbestos survey. You can’t just knock a property with asbestos down, and removing asbestos can be a costly job. You’ll also need a bat survey, which usually entails an initial survey and often a ‘dawn and dusk emergence survey’. Before building, you’ll need a geotechnical survey, as without this unexpected building costs can arise, which can add thousands of pounds to your build cost. Q: You’ve bought the land, and now want to go ahead with the build. What kind of permissions do you need, and how will this affect the time frame of building your house? A: Step back a little. Before exchanging contracts, it’s essential to put a preliminary enquiry into the planning department. This is called a pre-application. You will need to get an opinion from the local planning department, to see if they will grant full approval to build. You can prepare and submit this yourself, as long as you can sketch a rough idea of your design. The cost of doing this is currently around £140, so it’s not a large risk, but if you buy first and don’t get approval, it could be a costly mistake. Q: What happens after you’ve applied for permission?  A: Subject to the above, you now own the land. You then need to employ an architect or an architectural designer to save money. They will discuss your design requirements, and be warned, architects can charge up to 10% of the property’s build cost, though designers will cost less. Visit the RIBA website to find a list of local firms. Q: What else should I be aware of?  A: Definitely think about utilities (gas, electricity, main drains, etc.). All these things will add to your total costings. A tip here is to get your solicitor to do a ‘multi search’, which doesn’t provide all the locations of various utilities, but will help you through the process of dealing with the public companies. Q: What about trees? A: Check and see if there are any trees preventing your build, and if so, if there are any tree protection orders. Speak to the councils’ tree specialist; they are free, knowledgeable and usually very helpful. You may need to employ a professional tree surgeon, especially if the land is heavily planted. Try to find land that’s not too overgrown. On another note, make sure that there’s no Japanese knot weed on the land....

Nir’s Note: Irene Au is a design partner at Khosla Ventures and former Head of Design at Google, Yahoo, and Udacity. She’ll be speaking at the upcoming Habit Summit in April. (You can register here!) In this interview, she chats with Max Ogles about design strategy for startups. Q: You have an impressive background as a designer at Google, Yahoo, and now at Khosla Ventures. Could you describe how your design role translates in venture capital? Irene Au: As entrepreneurs start to recognize how crucial design and design thinking are to the success of their company, they are motivated to understand how to hire good designers, how to position them inside their organizations, and what this means for their product and development. You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: Don’t Ask People What They Want, Watch What They Do https://www.nirandfar.com/2017/02/dont-ask-people-what-they-want-observe-how-they-act.html Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/nirandfar/support

MATHIAS KADEN on: - Facebook: www.facebook.com/mathiaskaden - SoundCloud: @mathiaskaden HOW I MET THE BASS on: - Facebook: www.facebook.com/howimetthebass - Twitter: www.twitter.com/howimetthebass - Mixcloud: www.mixcloud.com/HowIMetTheBass 3 QUESTIONS to MATHIAS KADEN: Q: Talking about your mix, talking about your roots: What do these tracks mean to you and your development as an artist? A: These are one of the first kind of House and Dance Music Tracks I listened to when I was young. I have a big collection with all my roots on 7-inch vinyl and this is why I decided to spin my old records live instead of doing a perfect Ableton computer mix. Q: You´re touring a lot in South America, you´ve learned the spanish language. Seems that has become your 2nd home? What makes South America so special for you? A: I have to say that these days South America means a lot to me. The partys , the people, the feeling is always so great that I would love to play every weekend there. A few months ago I started to learn spanish because of the interest and also it's super helpful while I'm traveling inside South America. I´m flying over every 2 months, so I would say it became my second home for sure! Q: Which future Kaden projects are on the way, what can we expect in 2019? A: I did plenty of new tracks from very deep to super groovy Techno. I want to open my heart to different kinds of music. Releases coming on Avotre, Pets Recordings and two other labels, but the EP's are not finished yet. I´m working also a lot for my Dub project „Mathimidori“. The next EP will be out on Ornaments with a Rhauder Remix. And a new Remix has just been released for Joel Mull on Distillery Records.

Funny, true and scary at the same time. For those who wonder why they should diversify their retirement savings plans... Quote Q: What are banks for? A: To make money. Q: For the customers? A: For the banks. Q: Why doesn’t bank advertising mention this? A: It would not be in good taste. But it is mentioned by implication in references to reserves of $249,000,000,000 or thereabouts. That is the money they have made. Q: Out of the customers? A: I suppose so. Q: They also mention Assets of $500,000,000,000 or thereabouts. Have they made that too? A: Not exactly. That is the money they use to make money. Q: I see. And they keep it in a safe somewhere? A: Not at all. They lend it to customers. Q: Then they haven’t got it? A: No. Q: Then how is it Assets? A: They maintain that it would be if they got it back. Q: But they must have some money in a safe somewhere? A: Yes, usually $500,000,000,000 or thereabouts. This is called Liabilities. Q: But if they’ve got it, how can they be liable for it? A: Because it isn’t theirs. Q: Then why do they have it? A: It has been lent to them by customers. Q: You mean customers lend banks money? A: In effect. They put money into their accounts, so it is really lent to the banks. Q: And what do the banks do with it? A: Lend it to other customers. Q: But you said that money they lent to other people was Assets? A: Yes. Q: Then Assets and Liabilities must be the same thing? A: You can’t really say that. Q: But you’ve just said it! If I put $100 into my account the bank is liable to have to pay it back, so it’s Liabilities. But they go and lend it to someone else, and he is liable to have to pay it back, so it’s Assets. It’s the same $100 isn’t it? A: Yes, but…. Q: Then it cancels out. It means, doesn’t it, that banks haven’t really any money at all? A: Theoretically…… Q: Never mind theoretically! And if they haven’t any money, where do they get their Reserves of $249,000,000,000 or thereabouts?? A: I told you. That is the money they have made. Q: How? A: Well, when they lend your $100 to someone they charge him interest. Q: How much? A: It depends on the Bank Rate. Say five and a-half percent. That’s their profit. Q: Why isn’t it my profit? Isn’t it my money? A: It’s the theory of banking practice that……… Q: When I lend them my $100 why don’t I charge them interest? A: You do. Q: You don’t say. How much? A: It depends on the Bank Rate. Say a half percent. Q: Grasping of me, rather? A: But that’s only if you’re not going to draw the money out again. Q: But of course I’m going to draw the money out again! If I hadn’t wanted to draw it out again I could have buried it in the garden! A: They wouldn’t like you to draw it out again. Q: Why not? If I keep it there you say it’s a Liability. Wouldn’t they be glad if I reduced their Liabilities by removing it? A: No. Because if you remove it they can’t lend it to anyone else. Q: But if I wanted to remove it they’d have to let me? A: Certainly. Q: But suppose they’ve already lent it to another customer? A: Then they’ll let you have some other customers money. Q: But suppose he wants his too….and they’ve already let me have it? A: You’re being purposely obtuse. Q: I think I’m being acute. What if everyone wanted their money all at once? A: It’s the theory of banking practice that they never would. Q: So what banks bank on, is not having to meet their commitments? A: I wouldn’t say that. Q: Naturally. Well, if there’s nothing else you think you can tell me….? A: Quite so. Now you can go off and open a banking account! Q: Just one last question. A: Of course. Q: Wouldn’t I do better to go off and open up a bank

After 10 years as a managing director at Chinese sovereign wealth fund, China Investment Corporation (CIC), Winston Ma started his own investment firm earlier this year. As chief investment officer of newly established China Silkroad Investment Capital, Ma plans to seek investment opportunities around a buzz phrase: Digital Silk Road. After Chinese president Xi Jinping first raised the concept in 2017, Digital Silk Road has become part of what Beijing hopes to alleviate the negative perceptions related to traditional infrastructure projects that the Belt and Road Initiative has been financing in the past several years. Compared to funding bridges, roads and dams, promoting e-commerce or supporting 5G networks have a lower chance of creating negative environmental impact. Other component of the Digital Silk Road could include adding big data platforms and other high-tech tools to make all types of projects more efficient. Ma was among the first group of overseas hires by CIC at the Chinese sovereign wealth fund's inception in 2007. He was a founding member of CIC’s Private Equity Department, and later the Special Investment Department for direct investing. Before CIC, Ma served as the deputy head of equity capital markets at Barclays Capital, as well as having worked at J.P. Morgan and Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP. Ma is the author of multiple books, including China's Mobile Economy, Digital Economy 2.0, Investing in China, and The Digital Silk Road: China's New Growth Story. He spoke to China Money Network during during an interview on the sidelines of the Annual Meeting of the New Champions held by the World Economic Forum in Tianjin last month. Read an interview Q&A below. Also subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Below is an edited version of the interview. Q: You just published a new book: Digital Silk Road: China's New Growth Story. Tell us briefly the main ideas in this book? A: This is the third book of a series on China's digital economy. The first book was China’s Mobile Economy, published in 2016 at the high time of China’s mobile Internet boom. The second book, Digital Economy 2.0., came out in 2017 after the G20 Hangzhou Summit, where President Xi and other leaders announced to use the digital economy evolution to bring new growth to the global economy. The third book is titled Digital Silk Road, as President Xi last year used this term to describe the intersection between the digital economy and the Belt and Road Initiative. The third book focuses on China’s digital transformation and its global impact. You can think of the Digital Silk Road as the convergence of the digital economy initiative and the Belt and Road Initiative. In 2013, when the Belt and Road Initiative was announced, people related it mostly to traditional infrastructures investments in things like railroads, reservoirs, dams, and high-speed rail. However, in recent years, the digital economy is revolutionizing the global economy. So, it is natural to add the digital economy component to the Belt and Road Initiative. Specifically, when people think about the Belt and Road, they should think about smart infrastructure, that may include 5G networks, satellite towers, smartphone and its related economies. Q: Do investments in Digital Silk Road work similarly to traditional infrastructure, where China offers the financing and expertise with strong government support? A: Yes and no. It is similar in the sense that there is still a lot of government support and Chinese capital involved. But at the same time, you will see more diverse forms of investments for the Digital Silk Road. For example, you may see a lot of traditional projects financed by debt and banking loans. But for the Digital Silk Road, there may be more equity-linked investments. Q: And more private capital participation? A: That’s right. So traditionally,

Jack Ma said last month that China needs to focus on "new manufacturing", while the U.S. launched a trade war in order to bring "old manufacturing" back to the world's largest economy. Putting the contrast aside, the focus on new manufacturing has never been stronger in China. Efforts to build smart factories and government subsidies toward the initiative are growing across the country. A recent report published by the China Development Research Foundation, a think tank initiated by the Development Research Center of the State Council, documented some of such campaigns. In one example, Dongguan, a small city in coastal Guangdong province, has cut 250,000 jobs, or around 5% of the city's registered labor force, during a three-year "robot-for-humans" campaign. The city government spent RMB200 million (US$29 million) each year to finance companies to upgrade automation equipment. A company in Hangzhou has cut the number of workers to 11 to 13 per production line from 200 to 300 per production line ten years ago. Another kitchen appliances maker in Hangzhou received government subsidies equaling 5% of the costs to upgrade its production lines. Now it is able to cut labor force by over one third from three years ago and is aiming to achieve fully automated productions in ten years. Shenzhen government is spending RMB500 million (US$72 million) to support robotics, wearable and smart equipment sectors locally each year. Our guest of this episode of China Money Podcast, Hao Jingfang, is one of the authors of the report. Hao is also a science fiction writer and won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette for "Folding Beijing" in 2016, becoming the first female writer in Asia to receive the award. China's new manufacturing efforts echo Hao's observation that, "Whenever there’s a technological breakthrough, it is an advantage for Chinese tech companies to test the idea in a massive market." As companies, governments and investors push to "upgrade" Chinese manufacturing to full automation and "intelligent factories", a large number of jobs will disappear. But the report concludes that with careful management and retraining of the labor force, China will be able to overcome the coming labor disruptions from mass adoptions of robots and AI. However, Hao, a PhD graduate from Tsinghua University with degrees in both physics and economics, is concerned over the difficulties China will face transitioning from "technology adopters" to "technology originators." "A lot of companies are just too short-sighted. Because in the past, there were many opportunities for those companies to make quick money...Perhaps there’s no patience in these companies to aspire for bigger things. And also the investors, they want to just copy the fastest successful business model. So they are not patient enough to make long term investment," Hao told China Money Network during during an interview on the sidelines of the Annual Meeting of the New Champions held by the World Economic Forum in Tianjin last month. Read an interview Q&A below. Also subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Below is an edited version of the interview. Q: You have written science fictions about China at a distant future. And as a director working at China Development Research Foundation, you have a unique vintage point observing China's technology space. What's your overall view of how the Chinese technology sector has grown and developed? A: The Chinese technology sector has grown quite rapidly. It has advantages of a large (domestic) market and close relationships to its customers. Whenever there's a technological breakthrough, it is an advantage for Chinese tech companies to test the idea in a massive market. However, there are some fallback too. The one main problem is the lack of basic research. Investments in basic research in China is comparatively lower comparing to developed countries.

I'm joined by Jake Eisenberg, president of Reach Digital Group. Jake shares his approach to local marketing and explains how he uses social media to boost lead generation and acquire solid leads. His company specializes in helping local businesses, but his approach works for national brands as well.   Q: Jake, you're president of the Reach Digital Group. How did you get into this business and why did you choose to start your own agency?  Originally, I got started with a mixed martial arts blog that I had in 2009, before MMA really took off. This website was gaining a lot of traffic, and I was generating money through ad revenue, and I saw how to bring new traffic in. I started getting familiar with search engine optimization and started thinking to myself, "What are other ways that I can bring this up?"  As I was going through school, and working, and all these other things, I started working on other projects and I stumbled across doing some e-commerce websites, and I got familiar with doing Google AdWords. That lead to search engine optimization, Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, and running social media calendars.  I was having great success with these strategies that I was working on and building through time. Some friends or family members started to approach me and say, "Can you give me a website for my business? We liked what you were doing; let's kind of see what you can do for us."  These strategies were working at a local level and at the national level. Actually, it’s easier at a local level, because there's not as much competition.  So, I started having success with that and it quickly turned into family members who had businesses, became my testimonials, or my case studies. I was able to then get new business through referral. That's how I got started with it: I tapped my own network, did the work well, and was able to use that to leverage new business.  Q: What are some of the biggest changes that you've seen since you started that MMA blog in 2009? Technology changes at warp-speed, so in the online marketing space, what have you experienced in terms of changes?  A lot of the changes I've seen are from the platforms growing. Search engine optimization used to be something where you could just do what they call "keyword stuffing." If you wanted to rank for a certain keyword, you could just put a bunch of that same keyword on a page and you would rank. That's changed, because now there are so many more websites out there. So everyone's doing that, and now you've got to find new techniques, and new ways to do it.  The same thing with Google AdWords. The pay-per-clicks have gone up a lot, because more people are using those channels. Facebook advertising is still relatively new and it's just gotten even more acknowledgment in the media world, because of everything that's just happened. So, we can still kind of consider the Internet to be new.  There are a lot of unknown territories and directions that we can go. We're all learning and it's constantly changing and evolving. There's just so much more competition that you've got to come up with new strategies, and the platforms have become a lot more advanced.  Q: I'd like to explore that a little bit more. For your peers, what should they be focusing on, in terms of skills they need to be honing or new platforms that they need to be becoming more adept at using?  With how the marketing world is changing, it's a content-first world. You've got to build this customer loyalty. If you're selling a service or a product, you want to provide the information to the potential customer, what it is that you have that leads to it. You can put content out there in the form of video or blog posting, and be able to share that.  The two top converting platforms right now are still Facebook and Instagram. If you're able to meet your customers at least on those two channels, as well as having a blog to explain what your business is, because that will help bring in keywords and maybe some backlinking to boost it; start with those.  You don't need to be on every single channel. You just want to be able to meet them on at least the two biggest channels. I recommend tapping those three sources and provide information about yourself and your service.  Q: There are many platforms, and it seems like new ones popping up every day. Obviously, it's better to go where your audience is and Facebook and Instagram are where they are. It seems like a lot of people feel compelled to be on as many platforms as they possibly can, almost like the shiny object syndrome, "There's this new thing; I have to do it." What is your advice for people who feel like they're getting spread too thin?  Realistically, it's because they are getting spread too thin when you're trying to keep up with all the new trends. Coming from a business perspective, you look at the analytics and ask, "Where's my engagement coming from? Where am I getting the most clicks, the likes, the shares?" I would focus on those and chop off the ones that you think you're getting spread too thin on. Because you're wasting valuable time or effort that you could be putting towards something else to just try to keep up with these other channels to maybe meet a small percent of your client base.  Q: So you focus your efforts where there's the likelihood that you're going to get the biggest return on that investment?  Exactly; just make sure to keep checking on that and making sure that your engagement is there, because it can change.  Going back to the idea of how this world is evolving and new technology, one platform could be big now, and in two years it could be a different one. Keep an eye on it and make sure you know where you're actually getting the best benefit.  Q: You mentioned analytics and following this data-driven approach. What are some of the key performance metrics that you use, and what platforms or tools do you use to gather data and analyze those metrics?  That really depends on the approach. If it's paid outreach, look at your cost per conversion and your cost per click, because if your cost for conversion is too high, there's already going to be something wrong there. Always look at it from the monetary standpoint.  For social media, do the posting and look at engagement; see what posts are working, what posts aren't working.  I take a different approach than most: I actually track through my own spreadsheet. I'll give a score to posts that I think were better or worse, and how they did. And I'll go back at the end of the month and review those scores. It's just a method that I found to work.  Q: The only wrong way is one that doesn't work for you.  Right, and I just feel that the analytic software is -- it's data driven, but they don't understand how people are responding to a certain question. So, if you're asking a more human-type question than one that's systematic, those programs aren't going to be able to tell you that. That's something that it's easier to keep track of by going through and judging those type of posts … and constantly seeing if you're going up, what pages were doing better, and focusing on where those numbers are going.  Q: With Reach Digital, you focus on, primarily, helping local businesses?  Local and small businesses. We started locally and have now grown into doing some business at the national level, but we've got a lot of local businesses.  Q: To what extent do you find that small business who tend to do business locally, have more limited resources? How does that affect how you start to help them? That's one of the reasons they'll approach us. A small business might not have the resources to hire someone in-house for marketing. So we're able to offset those costs. Often they're saying, "We want to be on social media; we want to be on blogs; our expertise is focusing on the business; we want someone else to handle the online efforts."  Working with us is a way to offset the cost of getting someone with knowledge. They don't have to train, they don't have to get benefits, and so that's kind of where we found that connection point with local businesses.  Q: Can you describe for me who your ideal client would be?  Our ideal client is someone who has a little bit of knowledge of online marketing, already started to attempt it, and is looking for repairs and someone to monitor it. So we're kind of looking for that now, companies with semi-established to established online presence.  Q: When you have a conversation with a potential client who has some knowledge, and has attempted it on their own, do you find that they come to you with a better sense of where their limitations are, where their needs are, and where their particular pain points are?  Oh, yeah, 100%. When they've actually rolled up their sleeves and attempted it and have got it going, they know where their weakness is and where they need help. They also have a better idea of the message that's going to connect better socially with their customer base from actually trying it. So, it's not as much of a learning period. For us, as a business, we're able to go in there, talk with them, get their knowledge that they've already learned from their client base, and then apply that to help correct those challenges.  Q: What are the typical questions that they ask you when you have that first conversation?  They actually all range. Some of them say, "We know what we're doing, but can you just help us schedule?" Or, "Can you show us how this will bring us ROI (return on investment)?”  That's one of the biggest things. With online marketing, a lot of companies have a hard time seeing how social media can bring a return on investment. That's when we tell them that, “Let's look at the analytics, let us show you where your traffic is coming from, and let's set up some type of conversion campaign to show you that people are calling or signing up.” That's really what they're looking for.  Q: When you're looking at metrics like cost-per-conversion, that gets right at their bottom-line. Right. So they're able to see exactly what's going on, if it's making them money. Because, if it's not making them money, they don't want to pay us. We have to show them that what we're doing is working.  Q: You have a Chief Barketing Officer; tell me about him.  That's my good boy. Actually, it's his birthday today.  Congratulations! Happy birthday.  I'll be sure to pass it along. So, yeah, my dog Bear is a black Lab mixed with a Newfoundland, so he's a big boy, and he keeps the spirits up. He makes sure that everyone is happy (when he's not sleeping), he's always got a toy in his mouth, and he gives us some good suggestions [laughter].  Q: Having a Lab around the office is always a good idea, I think.  Oh, yeah. It keeps morale high!  Q: As you're paying attention to what's happening in the marketing space, you see organizations that do some things that you think, "Wow; that was really brilliant." And then you also see others do things where you just feel like smacking your forehead and going, "What were they thinking?" Tell me about something that fits the latter category, where you wonder where their brains were on that day.  People are starting to take Twitter a lot more seriously than they did a couple of years ago. You'll see now a lot of gaffs on there. They say something that may offend a group of people, and the next thing you know it's a public relations nightmare. I'm seeing people and businesses making that problem. Then having another problem cleaning up that problem, either by over-addressing it (and upsetting other people because they over-addressed it), or not addressing it at all.  Everything is about finding that middle ground. In social media, now, with the way everything is going, is like stepping on glass. A lot of companies are starting to realize that they shouldn't have said something. And especially recently, that's really the biggest thing. I'm like, "What are you guys doing? Filter.”  Q: The feedback that you get when you misstep, as an individual or as an organization, can be swift and severe.  Right. Public opinion can crush you.  Q: Yeah, it seems like there are examples of that in the headlines just about every day. Let's flip that around; for an organization that's done something in the online marketing space that was really quite clever, have you seen any where you said, "Oh, I need to make a note of that; that was brilliant?" Yeah. A lot of it is becoming these grassroots campaigns, especially with e-commerce, how people are tying in with social media influencers. I've seen a lot of really funny campaigns that they've mixed in their products with an influencer and it’s gone viral. I always kind of take note of what the campaign was, how they did it, and just something to keep in my back pocket if I feel that I have a similar product. You've just got to be funny and it's got to connect with the audience. It's amazing how quickly something can go viral.  Q: Are there any that are particularly memorable for you?  There are so many. There's a phone case company that every time they put out a video, it was just using real-world situations that people could really relate to: Dropping your phone or leaving your phone on top of the car, or needing to take a selfie. It was a self-adhesive phone case that could stick to surfaces and it was just using those situations like walking by a mirror wall and they just stuck it on there and took a picture. It was really creative how they tied in actual people’s situations to connect consumers with their product  Key advice Q: What advice do you give to CEOs or business owners when you're advising them on how to increase their return on investment for their online marketing programs? When it comes to social media marketing, it's: Stay consistent with what you're doing Stick to the brand message Never stop marketing, because once you stop marketing, you're going to stop getting sales and you're going to stop getting leads. The importance of testing And another thing I tell them is to constantly A/B test, which is split testing. Try different headlines. Try different subject lines. Make sure you're mixing it up, because you never know what message will stick. It could be one word that could change the complete engagement of an entire campaign. So always test to find that right messaging. Online Marketing Tools  Q: Are there particular tools that you use to do that split testing, or any other testing, to continue to improve the ROI?  For email marketing, MailChimp has an option for you to do that (split test). If it's building landing pages, there are a couple of companies (Leadpages and UnBounce) that already have those options built in. Whatever program you're using, just check to see if they have an option for you to be able to test different headlines, different subject lines, different blocks of text, images, all of that.  Q: How big is the Reach Digital team now?  We have four people who are full time and we have a couple that freelance for us on some bigger projects. Five if you want to include my Chief Barketing Officer.  Well, you got to include him. You have to feed him, so he needs to work, too.  Right, there you go.  Q: Are you guys all co-located or are you geographically disbursed?  We are a mix; it just depends on the service. We are a mix, because with it being a digital world now, everyone doesn’t need to be working in one location. We've found that we have some better employees that we've worked with who are located in different parts of the country and it's just easier to keep them working from their location.  Q: That's another one of those big things that's changed in the last decade that you don't have to all be in the same building and the same room to do work really well.  Right. We've found that using Google Hangouts, you can video chat with everyone at one time, so if you need to have a meeting, click of a button.  Management Tools  Q: What are some other tools that you use to effectively manage the team?  We use a project management tool called Asana. It's just really easy to keep our clients in there. We'll give our clients the connection to it and they can see the projects they're working on. Everyone can effectively communicate and it's a really good way to stay focused.  Another tool that we use for our back end and CRM is Zoho One.  Those are the two main ones that keep us on our path.  The Future: Voice, Video, Bots, and AI  Q: We talked about changes since you started in the online marketing space almost 10 years ago. Look 10 years into the future, where do you see that space going and what should we be doing to prepare ourselves to be effective as we move into the future?  A lot of the future is going to go to voice and video. Most of the Google searches right now are being done on voice. So, it's preparing those new search keywords to work that way.  Another part will be messenger bots. Having messenger bots using artificial intelligence technology is allowing small businesses to compete with big business. They're able to build these messenger bots through Facebook and other tools that are allowing them to, almost, build out a full support staff, to where they can really have all the customers’ questions answered.  They don't need to have these big rooms of customer service reps, and it keeps the customer happy because they're able to handle business without leaving the app.  Voice, video, and artificial intelligence are where I see us going. In 10 years, who knows; look how much technology's advanced in the last 10. So, I can only imagine the next 10.  Q: It could be both scary and very exciting, with a lot of opportunities.  Right. It's going to be a roller coaster!  Q: Are you strapped in and ready for the ride?  Oh, yeah. I love it.  Going back into your history a little bit, you got a bachelor's degree in media and information from Michigan State. Any chance you'll go to the University of Michigan for a master's program [laughter]?  Our family is divided. My entire family went to the University of Michigan, and my sister and I are the only two to go to Michigan State. We've had that in-house rivalry for a while, and it's been great, because Michigan State, athletically, has been on top the last six or seven years now. It's been good that I've been winning the argument.  Q: That's wonderful; congratulations. I was at an event recently with the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and he's from Lansing (Michigan) and is a big fan. So he was singing the school’s and the team's praises. So I think he's there as much as he can to cheer on the Spartans.  Some of the best experiences of my life. Online Marketing for Local Businesses  Q: There you go, that's perfect. Reach Digital focuses primarily on five areas of work, in which you're able to help small business owners: Local marketing Website maintenance Facebook advertising Search engine optimization (SEO) Business listing management Tell me about business listing management. What is that?  Business listing management is where, if you have a business, it will be in any of the business directories: Yelp, Citymapper, Google, My Business, Bing Places, Yahoo, there's so many different directories.  A big, big thing about that with your search engine optimization on a local level, especially, is having yourself listed correctly in all these directories.  There's something call the NAP, which stands for “Name, Address, Place.” Search engines want to make sure that the name, address, and place are correct for all the businesses listed, that is, all the business directories that you're in.  If it's incorrect, they see inconsistencies and it's harder for them to score it. It's harder for them to give you that trust score or ranking, because they see that there's some inconsistency. So it's good to be consistent across the board.  Another thing we're able to do is monitor reviews that come across those listings. If you get a bad review, we're able to let you know so you can respond to it. If you get a good review, we're also able to let you know, so you can thank them and be engaged with your client base.  Q: I would think that would a critically important service, and a strategic investment that small business owners could make to continue to build those key relationships and manage their online reputation.  Yes, online reputation is very important. A lot of people will look at reviews before they even decide to call you, and it's just that extra trust factor. So, you want to make sure that you're on top of it.  Q: In terms of your overall business, how would you rank order those areas of work in terms of where the team spends the majority of the effort and time?  Regeneration Campaigns  For the majority of our effort and time, we do a lot of regeneration campaigning. Which is, if someone's got a service to offer or a product to sell, we're trying to get them leads, so they can call. A lot of our time and effort is spent building those landing pages, and then running page campaigns, mainly through Facebook advertising to send traffic to generate those leads. The main effort is testing and building those pages, and building out those campaigns.  Q: When you do that, do you manage the CRM on your end, or do you use the CRM and relationship management tools that your customers already use?  We will integrate within their CRM. We'll have it set up to where those leads are going to go right into the clients’ systems. Their ads are all run into their own ad managers.  We're not like a normal agency where we'll say, "Okay, you’re going to spend $1,000 a month, and we're going to hit you with 10% on top of it," or something like that. We say, " It's in your ad manager. Those campaigns are yours. Once we're done creating it, it's yours, and we run it.” We'll optimize it, but everything is through their programs.  Q: To what extent are you agnostic about whatever platforms they're using? Really good question. There are a lot of these programs and platforms. Most of our clients are using the bigger CRM platforms, and point of service systems that we've had experience with. A lot are using Salesforce, Zoho, and Lightspeed, which is a point of service, point of sale system. Q: Your team is capable of helping them regardless of how they've implemented on their end? We'll tie into either their email marketing platform, or we'll tie into a web form that was created within their CRM. That web form will link to their system. We will format that form to have the same name to match, so if something is typed in on that form, and they hit submit, it will automatically be properly implemented into that lead form. It's really matching the field names that they already have set up. Q: Jake, what have I not asked you that I should have? Let’s touch on the local business aspect. If someone has a new business, one that's struggling, I can help them get that domain name, web hosting, or a contact management system that they should probably be looking at to use. Q: Sounds like they need to give you a call. They should. Q: If you've got a small business and you need help getting online, or you've already gone online to increase your marketing, and you've realized that you need some expertise and some more horsepower, Reach Digital sounds like a really great place to go. How do they get in touch with you?

Recapping our first 8 episodes in a speed round format (80 seconds each). Podcast recommendations: Short Story Long (w/ Tamara Dhia), Knowledge Project (w/ Barbara Oakley), and Industrial Strength (Joe DeFranco) ( 00:05:38 ) Speed rounds: First 8 episodes ( 00:20:24 ) Q: You can't break necks easy? ( 00:24:38 ) Cool thing #1 : Tamara Dhia (Short Story Long) ( 00:31:46 ) Cool thing #2: Barbara Oakley (Knowledge Project) ( 00:33:42 ) Cool thing #3: Triple H (Industrial Strength)  

To say that Meng Xing, V.P. and entrepreneur-in-residence at Chinese venture firm Shunwei Capital, has been busy would be a gross understatement. Over the past ten years, the 31-year-old venture capitalist and entrepreneur has founded two artificial intelligence (AI) start-ups, selling one, an image recognition AI company, to Amazon and the other to a listed Chinese company. In between, he worked as an investment banker at J.P. Morgan Hong Kong and casino giant Caesars Entertainment, on top of getting an MBA from the Sloan School of Management at MIT. In March 2016, Meng joined Shunwei, a US$2 billion venture firm co-established by Chinese billionaire entrepreneur and Xiaomi Inc's founder Lei Jun. He has so far screened over 200 Chinese AI start-ups and led efforts to invest in nine AI companies during the past year. While Meng's first success was in image recognition, he believes that a stand-alone image recognition type of business popping up in China will face increasing challenges going forward. In order to survive and thrive, Chinese AI companies must focus on a niche vertical industry and create niche products, he says. Rather than simply creating AI technology, they want a company that is applying artificial intelligence for a specific purpose. The industries most likely to create the next great tech companies are financial technology, healthcare, surveillance, agriculture and autonomous driving, in his view. Meng spoke to China Money Network's Nina Xiang on the sidelines of the Montgomery Summit on March 9 in Santa Monica, California. You can listen to our conversation above or read a Q&A below. Don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast's Youtube channel or Youku channel. Q: Can you give a brief introduction of Shunwei Capital? A: Shunwei was founded in 2011 by Lei Jun and Tuck Lye Koh, together we manage around US$2 billion in assets across three U.S. dollar funds and two RMB funds. Since 2011, we have invested in 200 companies across a lot of sectors including Internet of things devices, financial technology, agriculture, new real estates, and coming-of-age technologies. I personally focus on technology-driven companies, more specifically, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, visual reality and 3D structure, for early-stage funding rounds like series A and series B. Q: You had an interesting career before joining Shunwei. Tell us more about that? A: I started my career as an investment banker at J.P. Morgan Hong Kong in 2007 covering the telecom, media and technology (TMT) sector. Then I started a few companies, but the one that really took off was Orbeus in 2012 when I was getting my MBA at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was a company based in Boston and we were doing image recognition and object recognition. It was later sold to Amazon in 2015. Then, I joined Caesars Entertainment, an international casino company, and was responsible for their Asian online gaming sector for two years. After Caesars, I founded Cogtu, a start-up that leverages image recognition to build a native advertising network. The company was sold to a listed Chinese Internet company as well. And I joined Shunwei last year. Q: At Shunwei, you invest in AI start-ups. How many companies have you reviewed and what's your overview of these start-ups? A: Probably over 200 companies so far in the broadly defined artificial intelligence field, and we invested in about nine companies last year. When we are screening companies, first we want to know who are the founders. The good ones, or the ones that venture capitalists are chasing, are companies founded by research scientists from top research universities or research department from Google, Facebook and so forth. The problem is that those researchers have a lot of experience publishing ac...

C-Bridge Capital, a Shanghai-based private equity firm focused on China's healthcare sector, hopes to profit handsomely by bringing better drug know-how from developed markets to the underdeveloped Chinese pharmaceutical industry. Headed by finance veteran Fu Wei, the US$700 million-under-management firm led a follow-on US$100 million round in Chinese pharmaceutical start-up Ascletis earlier this month. Ascletis has licensed and conducted clinical trail on a hepatitis C treatment drug developed by an American company, and is launching the drug in China during the first half of this year. The sheer scale of the Chinese market makes the investment attractive, says Fu, a University of Chicago Booth School of Business graduate. With 40 million hepatitis C patients in China, compared to just four million in the U.S.,  he is confident that the drug will hit it big and bring a lucrative return on his investment. C-Bridge Capital is also looking at other areas such as hepatitis B, which is an even bigger market, and also lung cancer, which has seen a dramatic increase in China due to an aging population of smokers and the effects of high pollution levels in Chinese cities. Fu also sees the need for widespread consolidation in the Chinese pharma and healthcare sectors, which he described as lagging other sectors of the economy by 10 years. He sees Ascletis as a vehicle for acquiring other, smaller players in the pharma sector. Likewise, he described a recent investment in Anrei Medical as a typical consolidation play where the company will be a platform to acquire consumable businesses, especially in the minimally invasive surgery category. You can listen to our conversation or read a Q&A below. Don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast's Youtube channel or Youku channel. Q: Could you give us a brief introduction of C-Bridge Capital? A: C-Bridge Capital is a China-focused healthcare fund. Our name, "C" stands for commercialization, consolidation and China. It's because we invest in growth-stage healthcare companies, and the industry in China is being increasingly commercialized and waiting to be consolidated at the same time. Currently, we manage US$700 million in total including our Fund I with US$200 million, plus US$100 million in co-investments. We also manage a venture fund called I Bridge, it’s a US$100 million vehicle led by Jimmy Wei, who was a partner at Kleiner Perkins. Q: You've worked at all kinds of financial institutions before setting up C-Bridge, including Far East Horizon, Themes Investment Management, Goldman Sachs. How did these experiences lead to the establishment of your current fund? A: Working in all sorts of funds offered me the experience of different investment strategies, as well as cross-sector investment experience. In general, I think the healthcare sector is ten years behind (other sectors in China). Unlike the boom of TMT (technology, media and telecommunications), the boom of financial institutions and the boom of consumer goods, which all started in around 2004 and 2005, the healthcare sector is ten yeas behind. Consumers of healthcare products and services are mainly 55 years old or older, so it’s the old people’s demand. China is just rapidly aging. From the supply side, if you want to be in healthcare, you need to be a PhD with ten years working experience in a big pharmacy company. So China is entering the time for healthcare to repeat what other industries did ten years ago, such as 20% annual growth and industry consolidation. Q: You recently made a follow-on investment in Chinese pharmaceutical start-up Ascletis. How did that investment came about? A: This is a typical example of a commercialization story in China. Gilead Science is a US$100 billion U.S. company with huge success in hepatitis C.

In this episode of China Money Podcast, guest Roger Wu, a partner at consumer-oriented private equity firm Maison Capital, spoke to our host Nina Xiang on China's O2O (online-to-offline) bubble and the firm's investment in a Chinese healthcare device maker. Don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast’s Youtube channel or Youku channel. Q: Give us some background of Maison Capital? A: We are a boutique private equity fund founded in 2004 based in Shenzhen, with a focus on the broader consumer sectors in China, including consumer technology, consumer services and lifestyle, as well as the healthcare sector from a consumer angle. Q: Are your funds all RMB denominated? A: We manage three RMB funds, and are raising a U.S. dollar fund now. By the end of this year, we are expecting our assets-under-management to reach over US$500 million. Q: As Chinese consumers become more sophisticated, how do you invest to capture new demands? Take the healthcare sector as an example, why did you back BMC Medical? A: We target consumer sub-segment leaders, those medical device makers producing products specific to one sub-segment. BMC Medical is the largest home-grown brand in respiratory devices in China, focusing on the OTC market selling to individual patients. When we invested in 2010, the market was dominated by foreign brands with very few local producers. MBC Medical was able to produce substitute products targeted to consumers at more attractive prices, and has been growing steadily over the years. Q: How do BMC Medical compete with foreign brands, which Chinese consumers trust and love? A: First, we have to believe that their product quality gets improved consistently. They can also provide customer services better as they are local. Their prices are sometimes half or a third of the foreign branded products. We see the trend of domestic substitution across the board in medical devices. As some of these domestic producers get better, they also start to export their products. Q: How did you get to know DJI, the Shenzhen-based drone maker? A: We met them early on in a trade show back in 2012. We were actually the first institutional investor in the company. Even though it's a technology company, we believed that it would succeed in the consumer market. We try to spot companies early on in an emerging sector trend. For example, we recently invested in an insurance brokerage firm, China Jiang Tai Insurance Brokers Ltd., as the first institutional investor backing the company. Q: You also invested in Helijia, a consumer service O2O (online-to-offline) start-up. The valuation of this company was pretty high when it raised US$49.5 million series C round last April? A: We have looked at some two hundred O2O companies, and we invested in one. Helijia is an O2O channel providing beauty services (manicure, pedicure, hair, makeup) that we believe will only be adopted by more consumers in the future. What we liked is that the beauty space is quite consolidated. The second player in this market is not even one tenth the size of Helijia. Q: Some people don't believe that beauty services O2O firms can achieve steady growth, as users like to have a fixed person to do their nails or their hair? A: But the platform provides a support system. The manicurist depends on the platform to protect herself. The commentary and rating systems are also key in maintaining service quality. Q: What's your outlook of the O2O sector in China? A: We don't think O2O works for every sector, such as nanny or home chef services. We don't see scalability in these types of services. There is probably a bubble in the space currently. Many of these O2O companies will eventually fade away. Only select sectors will see the emergence of successful companies. Q: Lastly,

In this episode of China Money Podcast, guest Chang Sun, founder and chairman of Black Soil Group Ltd., speaks to our host Nina Xiang about why he left private equity to start up his own agricultural business in Heilongjiang province. The former Asia head of Warburg Pincus also shares his plans to create social impact and make money by improving grain production. He also shares the challenges he faces transitioning from a high-flying dealmaker to a businessman with a passion for soil. Don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast’s Youtube channel or Youku channel. Q：You have been working at Warburg Pincus for 20 years. You left last year as its chairman of North Asia and head of China. Why did you decide to leave at this particular time? A: Last year was my 20-year anniversary at Warburg Pincus. It was also the first time that the Chinese government started a new policy to encourage private capital to move into agriculture reform. These two things coincided and made me realize that I wanted to do something that has impact. Q: So after 20 years, it was time to do something new? A: Yes, one of my concerns during my 25-year investment career, if you add my previous experience at Goldman Sachs, was the lack of impact. Yes, we make investments in businesses. Yes, we make substantial returns. But as soon as you invest, you are thinking about exits. So you leave the business that you think you have contributed to, but they become one of the milestones of your past history. I wanted to do something that's more lasting and has more impact on both society and on my own career. I researched different industries, and felt that agriculture is so backward (in China) compared to the West. You can count with one hand the number of any finance people who are doing anything about it. I feel that I can bring my financial knowledge and resources to bring positive change. Q: Have you done any agriculture investment deals while at Warburg? A: No, which is why it's exciting and challenging. It's a complete 180-degree turn for me. So far so good. I really love it. Q: Were there any particular incidents that prompted your decision for this drastic change? A: Well, the food safety and scandals you all know about, everything from gut oil, diary products, dead pigs... A lot of my business friends go out and try to lease land from the villages to grow their own vegetables and raise their own chickens and pigs. But nobody can do anything about staple food, such as rice, wheat and corn, because it needs scale, labor and capital. China today imports about 15% of its grain needs, mainly soybeans. China was a net export of soybeans 10 years ago. Now 95% of its soybean needs are being met by imports. If you open the sectors of corn and rice, it will go the same way, because Chinese corn and rice are double the international price. Which means the yield is half. With that kind of dynamic, Chinese agriculture is not sustainable. You look at the land size, 1.8 billion mu (one mu of land equals 667 square meters) of land is available for agriculture use, but a lot is not productive and the yield is very low. On top of that, around major cities in places such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shandong province, too much industrial development has caused widespread pollution. Heavy metal and sewage gets discharged into the soil, and then sits there. I shudder to think that our future generations will grow up with the kind of heavy metal pollutants in their system. There is also a depletion of resources. China hasn't had enough rainfall in much of central China. As a result, much of the irrigation water was drawn from ground water, which is not replaceable. This has led to land subsiding, causing collapses of bridges and buildings.

In this episode of China Money Podcast, guest Stuart Leckie, chairman of Stirling Finance, spoke to our host Nina Xiang. Leckie shared his views on how China's provincial pension funds should diversify their investments, and the possibility of China establishing more national level funds to manage its pension assets. Don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast’s Youtube channel or Youku channel. Q: You have done a lot of work with the Chinese central government on reforming and restructuring the pension systems. Can you first give us a brief introduction on China's current pension system? A: You have to differentiate between people with urban and rural residence cards. The rural part is very tiny and backward in terms of pension provision. But the urban system is becoming more sophisticated. Part of it is unfunded. It's pay-as-you-go. The other part is funded, but very conservatively funded, typically in government bonds and cash deposits. Its returns have been equal or a bit ahead of price inflation, but have been way behind salary increases because salaries have been growing very rapidly in China in the past 20 years. Q: The government realizes this and is seeking to change the situation... Q: Yes, actually during the stock market crash in the summer, the government said that it would allow some provincial pensions to invest in the stock market. But back to China's urban pension system, all urban employees, whether employed by state-owned enterprises, private companies, joint ventures or foreign companies, should pay 8% of their monthly salary as contributions. Employers will pay around 20%. They are very high contribution rates, which is to pay off the "legacy" pensions from the old state-owned enterprise pension system. The so-called enterprise annuity in China is indeed a kind of corporate pension plan. They can invest up to 30% in equities. So they have much more flexible investment parameters than the state benefits have. Q: How big is the enterprise annuity plans now? A: It has been growing reasonably quickly. There are over 20 million people in China with enterprise annuity plans, but as a proportion of China's total work population, it's still very small. Q: The biggest pension fund in China, the pension fund of last-resort, is the National Social Security Fund (NSSF)... A: Well, the NSSF is generally classified as a sovereign wealth fund, not a pension fund. A pension fund should know who are the beneficiaries, but we don't know who will be the beneficiaries and how will NSSF's money be used. Sometimes, I am asked to comment on the diversification of the NSSF. My answer is that if you can tell me exactly the nature and duration of its liabilities, I will tell you if the diversification is good. But we don't know much about NSSF's liabilities. Q: The NSSF was able to achieve a 11.69% return for 2014, really not bad? A: Yes, the NSSF is able to hire Chinese returnees who have worked overseas for decades. But still, I remember a few years after it was established, it sent out a request for proposals, all in Chinese, to the international fund management community on the day before Christmas. But the document spelled out everything it requested, including the tracking error. At that time, nobody knew that the NSSF knew what a tracking error was. But they did end up awarding eight international investment managers for different international equity mandates. They went for the big names, understandably. Q: It's pretty impossible for any small alternative investment manager to get in the door with NSSF or China Investment Corp (CIC)? A: Yes, because these are monster funds. Their minimum investment will be perhaps hundreds of millions U.S. dollars. But the Chinese funds also bargain hard for fees.

Stalemateby Rose Lemberg He wakes to warmth. The floor beneath his head. He stares at the spider-patterns etched into the ceiling, tiny and dense, gray against darker gray. No power runs through them. Inert now. Unneeded.He wants to make the patterns work again.—how could anyone survive a descent through Calamity storms?  Above him, someone’s shiny dark shirt smells of static, a faraway storm passing. How are they still alive?Alive, forever, trapped inside this loneliness.A full transcript appears under the cut:----more----Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode seven for May 21st, 2015. I'm your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.Our story this week is "Stalemate" by Rose Lemberg.Rose Lemberg is a queer bigender immigrant from Eastern Europe. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Interfictions, Uncanny, Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction anthology, and other venues. Rose co-edits Stone Telling, a magazine of boundary-crossing poetry, with Shweta Narayan. She has edited Here, We Cross, an anthology of queer and genderfluid speculative poetry from Stone Telling (Stone Bird Press), and The Moment of Change, an anthology of feminist speculative poetry (Aqueduct Press). She is currently editing a new fiction anthology, An Alphabet of Embers. You can find Rose at http://roselemberg.net and @roselemberg, and support her on Patreon at patreon.com/roselemberg.Stalemateby Rose Lemberg He wakes to warmth. The floor beneath his head. He stares at the spider-patterns etched into the ceiling, tiny and dense, gray against darker gray. No power runs through them. Inert now. Unneeded.He wants to make the patterns work again.—how could anyone survive a descent through Calamity storms?  Above him, someone’s shiny dark shirt smells of static, a faraway storm passing. How are they still alive?Alive, forever, trapped inside this loneliness.—where is their ship then? The Machine detected nothing—Two people. A dark face leans over.Who are you? Can you understand me?Oh, yes. The language is familiar—like the warmth of meals shared between friends unknown, like the glinting of the tall glass domes, their shadows trembling in the heat of double suns. The memories dance and reflect off the polished blank steel of his mind, then scurry away.“I remember,” he says, curling his tongue to make the clicking sounds this language requires.Your name, they ask. He knows one: Kabede, but it is not his. He rolls his tongue around it, shakes his head—a no.They take him away on a gurney. His eyes latch again onto the inert designs on the ceiling, and hold, and hold. A room. The person from before is here. The serial number stitched upon their sleeve reads 050089. This person—Eighty-nine—fiddles with the displaywall.Who are you? they keep asking. What is your number? What is your Q? Are you a miner? Did you fall from some other Habitat?Some other habitat? The displaywall shows only one, this one, Neriu Habitat, the single rotating sphere encapsulated in light—but he knows of a hundred siblings, spheres of metal free-floating in Calamity season. Upon the displaywall the storms come together and break, toss the Habitat upon the face of the ocean. Under the wave the storms are snakes of green that spit and lash their tails; above the wave the storms are dense gray columns that funnel up and consume the sky.Nothing can land on Gebe-2.Who are you? What is your number? What is your Q? Do you know this interface?Does he know this interface? His fingers trace a glyph in the air. The storms on the screen disappear, are replaced by an engineer’s dissection of the sphere along the vertical, showing the habitat’s levels—residential, control, mining, the engines with their clever navigating and locking mechanisms. He makes another glyph, flips the display to perimeter—the habitat’s receiving cavities and the inverted protrusions that are there to join seamlessly with—he counts—five other habitats, which, in turn, will join with others during the brief period of Convergence.Someone enters the room, and Eighty-nine turns away from the display. There’s a sewn badge upon Eighty-nine’s tunic—a grebe, a diving bird. Security commune? He’s not familiar with the sigil.They used the interface. They must be ours.No. The new person is squat and powerful, with wiry hair and piercing eyes. Their skin is dark like Eighty-nine’s. No, they cannot be ours. Their memory has been erased. They had to pass through the atmosphere for that. And that offworld suit—His eyes seek the newcomer’s badge out. Cormorant, for Control commune.  No, they will not let him hook up to the Machine until they know more. He could be dangerous to the Machine.If they are ours, the Machine will recognize…Shut up, Eighty-nine. How will the Machine recognize an off-worlder?But so much of it is familiar. He must have been here before. Will the Machine return his name? But he doesn’t want to know it.He doesn’t know why, but he had wanted this. His name is an empty cavity after a rotten tooth has been drawn. Will the Machine put the pain back?He feels its humming all around him. The Machine maintains the grass-cloth patterns of the display-free walls. It spreads warmth through the brick-patterned floor. It is in the displaywall, and in the silent ceiling grid. It waits for him now, an embrace of empty light.The two argue about his Q now. The Machine must assign it. How will he work if they don’t know what commune he belongs to?“Engineering,” he mutters. “Just put me in Engineering.”They take him back to the room, nothing more than a detention cell, where he spent the last night. Eighty-nine settles him into the hammock. The person’s hand briefly squeezes his. On Gebe-2, being alone is a punishment beyond measure.“I won’t be lonely here,” he says to the closing door, not sure what moved him to say it. On a ship full of people he is a stranger, but the place makes him feel like three hundred years of companionable silences. Not a ship. A habitat. He tries to adjust to the hammock, his body too broad and too pale in the artificial half-light. The coarse brown strands in the hammock’s weave smell like basket reeds, but they too must be artificial.—Dream with me.He dreams of Gebe, a city paved with reinforced cinnabar and etched with mazes, a city of soaring spun glass and masonry coffeeshops—but now its beauty’s been smothered under the red skies marred with streaks of black fume. Dead engines hurtle from the sky like bugs sprayed with insecticide, and he barely dodges to avoid the smoldering, screeching debris. He runs, choking on the smell of burning meat and charra oil, resin and feces. He screams at the sharp cries of wild birds released from their protected wildspaces, the crashing glass spires that only a short while ago danced gracefully into a fearless sky.Kabede. He must find Kabede.The university. How they’d cursed the architect who slapped a utilitarian concrete rectangle in the middle of blown-glass dreams, but the engineering school is the only one left standing. It is whole on the inside as well, and softened by age-old Gebian crafts; thousands of people, students and faculty, crowd here on embroidered lotus carpets, argue loudly under chandeliers of blown glass shaped like ibises. They grab his hands, smile up his face and ask for news, but he doesn’t have time. He smiles back, pushes past them to the stairs. Downward. Each level is plainer than the one above —no hand-loomed carpets or chandeliers here, and even the ebony stairs give way to metallic railings painted in pale green. Kabede must be here. It’ll be all right.His friend is at the bottom level, pacing in front of a huge black surface covered densely with blueprints and reading-screen files. Their eyes lock—Kabede’s pupils dilate, and their gaunt dark face splits into a grin. They embrace fiercely, then push away from each other. Kabede speaks, their words disjointed in a way of dreams and scientists. I must take them away from this war, from all wars, I must hide them away in a world without riches, a world undesirable to conquerors, a world stripped of all decoration with only what’s necessary to survive, like the Engineering building survived…Help me, my friend. Help me.He frowns back at Kabede. “You’d strip them of beautiful things just because other people would strip them of beautiful things?” It is, after all, what they are. The people of Gebe are artists, scientists, poets, craftsmen, yes, artisans, makers—it is because of this beauty that they are now hunted.Kabede’s arms fly, accompanying the frantic flight of their speech. A commune where everyone is together and everyone is needed, without trinkets or petty obsessions, without possessions, nothing to distract from the threefold purpose of efficiency, survival, refuge—“You will unmake them.”But Kabede won’t listen. We’ll measure people’s aptitude, and each will be assigned to a commune according to their Q—“You cannot take anybody off-world, Kabede. It’s a fantasy.”Build me a ship, Kabede pleads. You’ve been working on something— but it isn’t anyone’s business what he’s been doing out on the asteroid belt for the last thirty years.“No. No. I’m sorry.”He offers Kabede a game of chess; they’ve always played before parting. But no, there is no time today, and Kabede’s hands curl into fists.This war must end. He hangs in the hammock, neck bent like a trussed bird’s, while shadows regard him across the threshold. The Control person, and a visitor, a frail and ancient darkness against the door’s bright light. More ancient than he is? Impossible.The Keeper of Neriu Habitat gestures the light on and enters, but darkness steps in with them—a face mashed and old like a dried plum, eyes bright but crackled with a minute spiderweb of red around pupils the color of congealed blood. They speak, they praise the Control person’s caution. He is an unknown entity, possibly dangerous, but they are stretched thin and cannot waste workers, not with the Convergence only a month away. If there is danger, I trust the Machine can take it. Plug them in. More people come to take him to a room as faceless as the others, painted a different shade of rough tan, with the same spider-maze ceiling and warm floors. He doesn’t even try to memorize the faces, sounds, smells of the people that surround him. They aren’t his friends. And like with people everywhere, he cannot afford to become attached. Like the savannah blooms they will wither and die, and even when these people’s speech reminds him of someone he misses with every breath, it’s not the same. He cannot become attached.They clip the headset to his head. His eyes roll back. He is in a brown cube without smells or sounds, a space defined by grid-like shining walls. The middle of the room flares up with a projection of three transparent pails. The first is filled with some substance, darker than water.A disembodied voice speaks. Two miners are friends, but one got sick. The healthy friend had mined eight liters of gillium. The healthy one has two empty vessels. One vessel holds five liters, and the other three. How can the miner equally divide the fuel, so that both friends meet their quota?That voice—it hovers on the edge of recognition. It speaks of friendship. Does this Machine have a friend, one it would share everything with, equally, if it could, if it knew where to look?Solve the puzzle.He has no voice here, no hands, no body, no eyes. He cannot touch the jars, but when he wills them to move, they do. He solves the problem in seven turns. It cannot be done in less.The room flickers, and the amount of pails increases by one. The large vessel holds twenty four liters of gillium. The empty ones can hold five, eleven, and thirteen liters…Good-naturedly he finds a solution, and the pail puzzle is replaced by an equation exercise, and after it, another. He remembers how to solve such problems by solving them, but there’s disappointment growing inside him. He opens his mouth to speak.“Do you know Kabede?”The room flickers, displaying now basic trigonometry problems. He solves one, two.“Where is Kabede?”The room blurs, reforms around holographic engineering designs—an airflow node first, then some complex console wiring, then a mining chute, all with nontrivial, tricky repairs. Lovely work. At last, his mind pulls reluctantly back.“I want to speak to Kabede.”The room is extinguished. He is expelled back into his long sweaty body sprawled on the floor.  They drag him up, slap a bird-badge upon his left shoulder. An ibis. He’s been assigned to Engineering commune.At night in the Engineering dormitory he tosses and turns in his hammock, stumbling into dreams. He dreams of Gebe, a city once paved with reinforced cinnabar and etched with mazes, a city of soaring spun glass and masonry coffeeshops—but now its beauty’s been erased, drowned in shrapnel, reformed and erased again under the perpetual red skies choked with toxic fumes. There is no sign of spun-glass spires. The museums have been leveled long ago, their contents evacuated, fought over—so many sacrifices to keep the treasures safe, but now they’re lost. Forgotten. He looks up, but the sky is empty of birds; no avian species are left on Gebe. No animals of any kind, not even insects. Only the humans survive.The university is a compound, the concrete rectangles of buildings crouch low to the ground. He remembers the poetry buildings, and history, art practice, music—but the arts and humanities had long ago been razed. Anthropology’s gone, too, once the most beautiful structure of all, with ornamental spires like cottontail reeds. The hot air smells of smoke and tar, fried canned meat and coffee. He doesn’t bother locating the cafeteria.Engineering is crowded, but the students are all silent, all crouching on the concrete floor, working on small electronic tablets. The carpets are gone, and the glass chandeliers had been replaced by military-grade lamps. Not a single student lifts their head as he passes through to the staircase.Kabede paces in the basement, room and person untouched by the two hundred years that elapsed since their last meeting. His friend’s always been here, framed between the concrete and the smoky air. Behind Kabede, on the table, a holographic image of a dome-like structure breaks into a hundred polished metal spheres that hurtle away from each other and join again. And have you built the ship for me, old friend?The ship, yes, a vast entity of metal mined from the asteroid belt by his bots. The ship—his ship—all complex designs and warmth, always incomplete, always growing. His home.“I haven’t promised you anything.”But this coming war will be the fifth, Kabede says, and the world has been drained of solutions. I need to take them off-world now, my friend, or this war may well be their last.“What are you trying to save?” Whatever’s been beautiful and sacred about Gebe has been destroyed by the wars, or by the Gebians themselves. “There’s nothing left here, Kabede. What value do your people have now, how are they better than millions of others dying on thousands of different worlds? Humans kill each other.” Or else they live small insignificant lives, and only the art they create will remain as they pass, only the art will matter long after they go.But of course, Kabede doesn’t believe in art. Art creates commodities desired by others. They come to trade for it first, then they come to steal, then they come to destroy it because we have too much, and then they come because they always came. It is a mistake to think that art survives death. You can’t survive your death, unless you choose not to die.“We may not die, my friend, but we are the children of loneliness.”I am not lonely, Kabede says. My people are with me. You do not see them, but I do. They are my family, my living, breathing people—and they are everything to me. As you are, old friend. And you are my friend. So help me.“Yes,” he says. “I’ll see what I can do.”Kabede nods, produces an ancient ebony-and-ivory chessboard. They sit down together at the table.Engineering brings his memories back, slowly. He’s always been good at making things work. As a child, he fixed the broken toy trains for the dimly-remembered children next door, he flushed toys down the toilet to see how much the drain would take before clogging, and then unclogged it again using a very long stick and an improvised drill. He fixed the grandfather clock silent since his grandfather’s youth. He cannot quite recall his grandparents, but he remembers how the cogs shone inside the clock, silent first, then shrill in hurried, disbelieving reawakening.He knows that even if all the memories return, the faces of his family won’t be among them.‘We may not die, my friend, but we are the children of loneliness...’How long ago? He remembers now how a scholarship took him away from his homeworld and brought him to Gebe, Kabede’s home—a world famous for its arts, a world illustrious with science. He’d learned so much there—engineering, of course, but also other things. The beauty of glass and groove and light. The Gebian language, with its seventeen emotions to experience art, that marked no genders in speech or custom.He remembers Kabede at the university, bent over some antique flimsy-display reader. Kabede couldn’t make it work again, being always far better at new designs. He remembers repairing the reader for Kabede, bits of century-old diplastic warped and soft like clipped-off fingernails. They learned about the Boundless from that flimsy—the most talented scientists chosen somehow to discard death forever, chosen perhaps by the older Boundless always secretly on the prowl, always searching.They found more information about the Boundless at the great library of Gebe, and a mention of a hidden meeting-place, a planet of wonders. But they have never met a single Boundless other than themselves, not to recognize. Death-lack seemed splendid at twenty, doubtful at best at four hundred or so.Four hundred years. Long enough to unlearn about love if one didn’t pay any attention to it in the first place.He shakes his head. People do not matter. Work matters. Work and art— those things that can be salvaged after the people leave you. Tangible things. Except, of course, Kabede. There’ll always be Kabede. Neriu Habitat is painfully small. The forty three engineers in his commune do not talk much, but sometimes they nod at him. Work matters—repairing the ailing Habitat, with never enough workers to direct. Always repairing, never expanding. Again he asks about Kabede. You must wait for the Convergence to see him, they say. Just do your work. He does—and it is soothing, like the air that circulates through the habitat, purified but always the same, never changing. They make nothing here that is beautiful. Only bland warmth. How is it better than pain? Eighty-nine comes to visit him in the dorms one evening, to play a game, like everyone does here. Eighty-nine teaches him games from Security commune, first simple and then increasingly elaborate clapping games that require coordination and quick thinking. He loses cheerfully to Eighty-nine, engrossed until his fellow dorm-mates intervene. Engineers don’t play such games, they say. “Chess?” he asks, but they don’t know the word, even though he speaks their language. They do not use any game-pieces, no frivolous objects shaped into arbitrary designs that serve no immediate purpose. Too much like art. Instead, they teach him games that require only the mind—language puzzles in which every letter is assigned a numeric value, and the value of whole words is calculated through complex equations. These he enjoys, but Eighty-nine doesn’t, and he does not want Eighty-nine to feel left out.“Let’s play something else,” he says.There’s an old game they play here that the people of Gebe played also. The questioner asks a quick question, any question, tricking the players into responding with the word yes; if they do, they lose.  Are you from here? Eighty-one asks him, an easy question. Then, is your Q higher than mine? Question after question, round after round in rapid succession to trick the players to respond with a short truthful yes in response to a trivial query. One after one, his Engineering fellows lose, and leave the game. Nine out of twelve remain. Seven out of twelve. Do you like it here? The yes is frozen on his lips. What’s not to like? The warm air, calculated to the perfect pleasantness he remembers from his university days, never changes here to a winter storm’s intensity or the sun’s summer scorching; fascinating detailed work; the Machine everywhere, comforting on the edge of his senses. Even the lack of adornment seems soothing now. What’s not to like? Only himself, his returning identity that’ll spit him out in the end, back into the vacuum of loneliness. He can unlearn it with these people. But they… The old Gebians—the people he came to love are burned, are buried, forgotten under the rubble of dreams. He cannot allow himself to become attached again.“I do not like myself,” he says.And us? Do you like us?“Yes,” he lies. Loses. His dreaming drains him further into memory. Ten thousand people on a ship that could hold thirty thousand more. The ship is huge—in the two hundred years since Kabede’s first question he’d perfected his miner bots and dismantled a few small moons. His modular designs for it are genius. Immodest, but true enough; after all, only geniuses become Boundless, only geniuses are punished for their competence with this unending pain.Forty thousand people could fit here easily, but the fifth war really is the last. Only ten thousand survivors, wounded and bleeding. Adults clutch emaciated children, elders crouch quietly, their toothless mouths open; those who still can walk around, frantically trying to be useful to someone, somehow, anything to escape the staring stillness. And Kabede—Kabede is not among them; his friend lies stretched out under the medi-dome, dying from a head wound that cannot possibly be repaired. A Boundless cannot die, but a Boundless can still be killed.It was a mistake to agree to Kabede’s request. They should have left the war behind, gone away together like he wanted. But instead he’d said yes. He’d found a world, a watery planet plagued by storms—increased by Kabede’s designs to such vehemence than nobody would bother to come here. The storms would hide Kabede’s world from curious eyes, prevent the colonists from leaving. Forever, peace—sheltering the people from all wars, taking them away even from themselves.He remembers wondering if the people would find a way to make art, but the walls of the engineering dorm are bare. The reeds of his hammock are woven into uneven patterns that dig into his skin and signify nothing.The ancient Keeper of Neriu Habitat comes to see him once more, in the Engineering dorm. The Convergence is coming, and Kabede, the keeper says, will see him in three days’ time.His eyes trace the spiderweb patterns of the ceiling. He designed them for his ship, just for beauty. Lit up, they were thin lines that rotated and danced, forming an imaginary starmap of the universe, with confirmed constellations warming up to an orange and the unconfirmed to a shimmery gray. Once he’d thought it Kabede’s mistake to believe that art doesn’t survive death, for if he were somehow to die, this ship of his, these minutely patterned ceilings would survive.He is alive yet, but his art, his ceilings are not in use here. Kabede would never approve of something so frivolous.Three days’ time.He remembers most of it now. Kabede gave him the memory leecher, to be installed in the upper atmosphere. If strangers came to Gebe-2 to wage their war, intent and knowledge would be drained of them before they fell into the storms.Once you have the habitats defined, transfer me, Kabede asked, back when they’d made their plans. I want to be embedded in my world. He begged against it, when Kabede was alive. “You won’t have a body anymore…” But his pleading didn’t matter. Kabede was dead now. There wasn’t enough left to exist when the hundred specified nodes were separate. Kabede would only be whole and aware when the habitats came together, briefly, once every three or four years, to synchronize their memories and share mined fuel. The rest of the time Kabede’s mind would be divided into a hundred pieces and scattered across the ocean, memoryless, friendless. A hundred habitats, Kabede had insisted—even if war were somehow to find this world, the people would be divided, easy to hide, safe.Such a waste. They should have left Gebe together to search for the hidden planet of the Boundless, on his ship. This ship.He remembers now how he broke it down. Unmade his home. Reforged it into a hundred Habitats for his only friend.Neriu Habitat screeches in joining others, like a flock of birds pressed together into a ball. Eighty-nine is there when they come to transfer him from Neriu to Deselin, but there is nothing to say.Deselin Habitat corresponds to the medical wing where Kabede had died. Most of what’s left of them survives here, and now, joined with other bits of their scattered cognition, Kabede is as whole as they will ever be. There is no need to don the headset—a hologram appears to him in the room recreated to be identical to the Gebe basement. It is Kabede as they were in death, tall and gaunt, their dark face glistening with projected sweat, but there is nothing to embrace. Only bits of colored light. “It’s good to see you.”I am glad you visit me, Kabede says.“How many times have I done this?”This is the third time. Every sixty years. Every twenty Convergences. Kabede’s image flickers. I’m sorry about your memory, old friend, but I have to protect my people. I will return it to you when you leave, and erase you again from the system. I wish…“Don’t say it, please.” But there is no need to speak. They know the dialogue by heart.I wish so much you’d stay.‘But nothing changes here, Kabede. Nothing evolves.’My people—‘—are ghosts.’They survive. It is peaceful, efficient—‘There is no hope.’Yes, he remembers now. They played this game before, went through the same moves over and over. And I will come again, and lose my memory, to see you. But no matter how we play this, it’s a stalemate, Kabede.There are no chairs for them to sit. They squat on the floor, with the holographic chessboard between them.END"Stalemate" was originally published in Lackington's issue 4, in 2014.This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.Thanks for listening, and I’ll have another story for you on May 28th.[Music plays out]This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Today I will be talking to Tim Castleman. He did something amazing. He wrote two 8k words in under 8 hours. Both books became Amazon bestsellers and ended up generating him over $3k in royalties in just 2 months from the launch + hundreds of glowing reviews! Tim's Story been doing online marketing since 2009. He found a partner with whom he worked for a year. And then, when they parted he had his lowest times of his life. He almost quit and was already thinking of going back to 9-5 job. That was when his friend contacted him telling about the Amazon self-publishing. So Tim decided to do it. He hired a ghostwriter for his non-fiction book. But when he received the text he realized that he could not release it under his name. It was not his voice and was not written well. So Tim had to write the book in 48 hours because he had a deadline. He wrote his book, which was over 8k words in just 4 hours. Now that book is an Amazon bestseller for 90+ days. And being frank with he Tim admits that he did not expect such good results in the beginning. Q: Once you finished the book and it was ready, did you do anything with the marketing of the book? A: I mentioned already that I am Internet marketer and I do have a customer list. Some people will turn immediately off and say “Oh that’s how he made all his sales”. Let me tell you I actually tracked with software the sales that actually came from customers that were on my list vs. social media. And for my last book the clicks from my customers and the clicks from my social media were between 200-300 of each other. Meaning that if you don’t have a list you can to do what I will share with you via social media. The key is you need to find a group of people, that you’re talking to and they actively involved. My first book is called “The creativity Checklist”. That’s a checklist that I use to create products and services for my market. So I’ve already been in several Facebook groups and several forums. I’ve already made my presence known there by being useful and active contributor. So I didn’t just show up by saying Hey everybody here is my book buy it. I showed up I said hey let me help this person. Let me get my name known. And then when it was my turn I said hey guys I have this book out. It is limited for 3 days if you be so kind please purchase it and enjoy the discount. And it’s really all I had to do to get that initial push. I really think when it comes to sales and marketing Amazon looks at 2 things. Your sales obviously initially but then they look at your reviews as well. And the best way I can describe this is imagine you have this friend. And you want to introduce this friend to all your other friends. If Amazon sees that you are making lot of sales and people are leaving positive reviews, then they will show your book to other people. Because Amazon does the majority of marketing for me now. They e mail out their customers, they tell people about my book. And all I had to do was get the initial burst of sales and reviews and Amazon takes from there. Q: Do you know how many books were sold to have that initial push in the beginning? It’s always gonna depend on your niche and your genre and your industry, but I would say if you could do 10+ sales initially you’re gonna at least get that initial momentum. Cause what happens is you get those sales Amazon puts you in a ranking category, so let’s say you’re the 5th most popular book on writing. They also put you in the Hot New Release list. So Amazon puts it in front of the customers, they start buying it and it basically just becomes a big snowball Q: Did you launch the book at 0.99 cents?  A: It was 99 cents. Here is how I do all my launches. I do 99 cents at the very beginning for 3 days. I tell everyone hey it’s for 3 days and then from 99 cents I bump it up to $2,99. The 99 cents is meant to get sales and get reviews at cheapest price possible. Q: You have big amount of reviews for your books. Were they organic reviews or you did something to get them? A: I did something and then they started to come organically. So here is what I did. I basically sent to my list and my social media contacts “hey if you buy the book just do me a favor and leave a review. And if you leave a review and send me a copy of the review to my e-mail address then I’ll send you either another book or a bonus video or something along those lines. They key there you obviously can’t tell to leave a 5 star review so if you get 1 star review you still have to send the book. But the whole goal is to get those reviews initially up there. So I would say 2/3 of my reviews came from the initial push. What is amazing to see is those books continue to get reviews that are what I would call organic reviews. That is you see a book you read it and like it so much that you leave a review of it. Q: Can we say that if you launch the book successfully and get the initial push and reach the momentum, later on there is much less to do? A: Right, exactly. Like I haven’t done anything with either of my 2 books probably in the last 35 days as far as advertising, promotion, sales, discounts, etc and I still make thousands of dollars out of them. Q: The problem with Amazon is that you don’t get the contacts of your readers. How do you deal with that? Do you have an opt-in form in the books? How do you engage people, who have bought your book? A: I have an opt-in form right at the very beginning of my book. I think it’s the first or second page or the third. They see the title, they see the table of content and right there I give them a free gift for signing up. The key is to be successful you have to be a frequent publisher, so you have to be producing content on regular basis. No fewer than every 60 days. You have to build a list of your buyers. There is so much information out there that the only way you can get to them is to have their e mail addresses. And then frequent promotion. KDP days, Kindle Unlimited, you can bundle your books… there are many things you can do to increase your availability and ability to make more sales. Q: You mentioned that every 60 days one has to come up with a new book. Why 60 days? A: Here is my belief and this is untested but it is based on my own experience. Q: Do you send your e-mail list anything before your new book comes out? A: You can send out a survey with possible book subjects, which they choose. I also make teasing by telling that my book is almost finished. Then I send e-mail the day it goes to Amazon. Then the day it launches I send them the e-mail that it is live and priced 0.99 for three days. Then I ask for a review and offer them a free book for the review. The most important tips Tip 1: Come up with your hook or angle before you even start to write your book Tip 2: Come up with the outline Tip 3: Come up with a system or process that works well and then trust that process Bonus Tip: [spp-tweet " Done is better than perfect!"] Links Tim's website 8 Hour Bestseller Don't Forget to Get Your Free Book Click Here to Download  

Subsolid(@subsolid) is a Berlin based DJ who broke daylight at Tresor in 2012. He provided us with his latest recording from a gig at this club showcasing his diverse style of playing. Our sources say that we should expect more from Subsolid in the near future. We present this week's episode with special greeting from the Mecca of techno, Berlin. It is a recording from a gig that Subsolid did at Kanzlernacht, Tresor 14. June this year! Q: You have musical roots in various genres of music, how did you discover techno? A: My musical roots?? Haha, that's right... My first love was old school Hip Hop. I came in touch with Techno in the mid-2000s. Visiting the old Tresor in Leipziger Strasse changed everything, no joke. The ultra dark basement floor, red lights, mad strobes and a hard pumping bass that I've never heard before... This experience was incredible for me!!! I'm infected till this day. Q: Do you have any plans to venture into music production as well? A: Yes, I have planned my debut release on Nachtstrom Schallplatten with remixes from Torsten Kanzler & Pierre Deutschmann (aka Elematic) and Kevin Witt. Furthermore I'll do a Remix for XLR1507 and a solo EP for favor.! There's a lot to do. Q: Coming from Berlin, what influence would you say that this city has on techno music? A: Berlin is the hometown of Techno and it wouldn't even be possible without the crazy party people, every weekend, every day. Everything's moving. 24/7!!! The city never sleeps. Two of the world's most famous Techno clubs (Berghain/Tresor) you can find. Countless producers and DJs are living in the city, which makes Berlin to a Mecca for Techno lovers worldwide… Q: Some Djs have a "go to" record or artist that they always play. Do you have one? A: Two of my favorite producers are Jonas Kopp & Markus Suckut. Both have such a powerful style that becomes part of my sets again and again. Q: What is the best club in Berlin right now? A: Tresor is great but Berghain is not of this world. Artwork: Jan-Joost Verhoef - Green Industry https://www.flickr.com/photos/jjverhoef/

Please take one second and ‘like’, share, or +1 this post, Thank You! I’m excited to share this post with you…. James Penn is someone I’ve followed for a long time, which he doesn’t know. For more than a year now I’ve visited his blog every week or so to see what new case study or technique he’s sharing because they’re always very helpful and fresh. James is a successful blogger, niche marketer, product creator, and affiliate… he’s a  young guy making it happen. I approached him about doing an interview for the Strayblogger readers, and here it is: Q: What got you interested in starting an online business and how did you get started? In 2005, when I was just fifteen, I decided to sell all of my unwanted items on eBay to raise some money to get me through summer. I made about £300 ($500) which was a LOT of money for me at the time. I also got a bit addicted to online auctions. I loved waking up every morning and seeing the increase in bids on my items, and I loved constantly refreshing the last few minutes of an auction and watching the bidding rise. Eventually I ran out of items to sell, but I wanted more so I purchased some wholesale lists for all sorts of different items, such as DVDs, clothes and electronic items. My plan was to use my £300 to buy more items in bulk and then sell the items on eBay for more money. I researched so many different wholesalers trying to find products I could sell and make a profit, but in the end I didn’t have the guts to part with such a significant amount of money. Then I realised that I’d accumulated the details of so many different wholesalers that I decided to create my own lists of the best for all sorts of different niches – such as DVD Wholesaler Lists, Designer Clothes Wholesaler Lists and iPod Wholesaler Lists. I put these lists on eBay at prices from 99p to £4.99. On a bad day I’d get three or four sales and make around £10 ($16), but on a good day I’d sell 10-15 copies and make around £30 ($50) which was pretty good for a 15 year old. I also bought some eBooks with resale rights and would sell these for low prices. After a customer purchased I automatically had the download sent to them and promoted a Clickbank product in the email. This was my first foray into affiliate marketing and I loved it. Eventually I set up a website (after a lot of stress – I’m technically challenged!) teaching eBay selling and I wrote my first eBook called Hidden eBay Wealth which sold very successfully at $15 for a few years. All of this gave me experience in selling, upselling, setting up websites, getting traffic, affiliate marketing, traffic generation and product creation and gave me a fantastic platform to kick on. Q: What’s the best piece of “big picture” advice you would give to someone just starting their online business? FOCUS is imperative. Pick one business model, whether it be affiliate marketing, email list building, product creation or blogging, pick one and focus on making that work. Don’t jump from idea to idea or website to website and don’t buy all the latest “instant money systems”. Q:What would you tell people just starting out that they should focus on? It depends on each person’s situation as to what business model they should focus on. If you’ve just lost your job, have a family to support and need to replace your income ASAP, then I’d suggest creating your own product, setting up your own affiliate program and spend every waking minute recruiting affiliates. But if you still have a job and a few hours to spare each week, or if you have the luxury of not needing money right away, then I’d suggest blogging. Being a blogger will likely take at least a few months, if not more, of hard work before you get noticeable gains but once you get your blog to a level where it produces income that you’re happy with, you really can live the dream internet lifestyle. Plus, as a blogger you can incorporate all the other methods of making money online in your business. You can create your own product and sell it through the blog (something I’m in the process of doing for my health and beauty blog), you can sell affiliate products, you can build email lists, you can gnat ad revenue and much, much more. If you blog about something you are interested in, then you’ll never get bored. Q:What motivates you to keep going and become even more successful? I’m a big believer that “success breeds success”. If you reach one small goal, such as making $10 in a day, then that will motivate you to go and reach your next goal. My motivation at the moment is just to beat the previous month. If I can grow my traffic every single month then I’ll be very, very happy. I’ve increased traffic to my blog every month since December. In December I got 6,126 visitors to my blog, traffic has risen every month since and last month (May) I got 58,551 visitors in the month. There are also the motivations that everyone else has, such as the ability to buy nice things, to take luxury holidays and just not to worry about money. In the early days, my biggest motivation was just to prove the negative people wrong! Q:What is your favorite software tool that you use in your business and why? I use very few tools in my business. To run my blogs I simply use WordPress which is free, a couple of premium themes and a few plug-ins (mainly free ones). I also have an Aweber account which I use to manage my email lists. Most of the processes I undertake are manual. I don’t do automated directory submissions, or mass article distribution, or anything that Google might frown upon – which is why I was surprised my blog took such a punishment in the Google Panda update. To see all the tools and plug-ins I use to set my blogs up and make money from them take a look at my Ultimate Bloggers Toolkit page. Q:How much of your time do you dedicate to: 1) self-education and learning new skills 2) generating new traffic, leads and customers for your business and 3) generating revenue? I don’t dedicate specific times to any of the above, but I’d estimate that about 5% of my time is dedicated to self-education (more time was spent in my early days, though), 90% to generating traffic, leads and customers and 5% on generating revenue. Revenue generation is already in place (such as Adsense ads, Amazon and affiliate links) so revenue is generated by simply getting more traffic – that’s why so much of my time is dedicated to that. Q:You seem to teach mostly about traffic strategies… What is the top skill that someone needs to learn in order to always be able to generate traffic? I’d say there are two main skills… 1. Creating content that people in your market want to read 2. Finding ways to get this content in front of them Here are some ways to get the content in front of them… – Build your distribution channels (email list and social following) and share it with them – Get authorities in your market to share it with their distribution channels. I’ve developed a really clever way to do this and it enabled me to generate over 17,000 visitors to one blog post in just a few weeks by convincing other people that they should share my blog post with their social following. If you want to find out what this method is then download my viral blog post case study. – Guest post on high traffic blogs and funnel readers back to your blog – Increase your rankings in the search engines to capture more visitors. Q:What traffic strategies are working for you right now, and are there any that will always work? My two biggest and best traffic sources right now are Pinterest and Facebook. To take advantage of Pinterest you need to have high quality images on your blog and you need to encourage your readers to pin your content. You can do that by having prominent “Pin It” buttons around (or inside) your images. Here’s a blog post I recently published revealing five tricks to get more people to pin your content (because the more pins you get, the more traffic you’ll get). http://www.bigblogtraffic.com/pinterest-traffic-tricks/ I get traffic from Facebook two ways… One way is my own Facebook fan page which is made up of close to 1,500 very engaged “fans”. I post 2/3 updates to these fans each day with a link to a blog post from the archive. Each update can send 50-200 visitors depending on how many people like and share. The second way is by getting other Facebook fan page owners to share my content. People like to share good content and I’ve got a neat little trick to convince them to share my content which I reveal in my viral blog post case study report. I also get a nice chunk of traffic from guest posting. In fact using only guest posting I got my blog to 1,000 visitors per day from Google alone. After Panda struck me, that dropped to just 200 – but I still get traffic from links in my guest posts. QUICK TIP: Guest post on blogs with BIG Facebook followings (20k+). I noticed that the guest posts sending me the most traffic was because the blogger notified their FB fans of my guest post. Q:If someone only has 20 minutes a day to use social media sites such as Facebook and Pinterest to get more traffic, what is the best use of their time? First of all I’d make sure your site is set up properly. For Facebook, make sure you have lots of calls to action asking your blog readers to like your page on Facebook  and have a Facebook like box in your sidebar of all pages. At the start of each blog post I try to put a paragraph like this… Like Us On Facebook to get updates of new content, to take part in our fun and games and to win prizes in our competitions.  If you can build a big FB fan page that will enable you to generate big traffic and give you incredible leverage. For Pinterest, you need to make sure you have high quality images and display a “Pin It” button in prominent positions as close to your images as possible. If I had just 20 minutes per day I would… On Facebook: Post 2-3 updates to my fans per day with links to blog content Comment on other pages updates as my page rather than personal profile (good way to get authority fan page owners in your market to notice you and increases the chance of them sharing your content) Seek out FB page owners with similar fan sizes and arrange a “content swap” (you share one of their blog posts to your fans, they share one of your blog posts to their fans while also “tagging” each other to grow each other’s fan bases.) On Pinterest: Pin images from around the web (including your own when appropriate) Be active to get followers – e.g. repin images, follow people, like images and comment on them. Similar to FB content swaps, once you have a significant Pinterest following, find other power users and arrange “Pin swaps” – you pin their content, they pin yours. Q:Where can people go to learn more from you? Visit my new blog at BigBlogTraffic.com where I reveal ALL the traffic strategies that are working for me right now. Plus, if you’d like to learn my secret system that I used to generate 17,000 visitors to one blog post using OTHER people’s Facebook fan pages, then download Viral Blog Post Case Study… Q:Final Words: Thanks Nate and all the readers at StrayBlogger for having me. If you have any questions please leave a comment below and I’ll pop in and answer them The post Interview with Savvy Niche Blogger James Penn from Accelerated Niche Profits appeared first on StrayBlogger.