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2 episodes with right after
2 episodes with right after
2 episodes with right after
RIGHT AFTER winning the lotto.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
What happens RIGHT AFTER you breakup with a Narcissist or toxic person? What to expect when you leave a toxic relationship. In this video Lee Hammock, a diagnosed narcissist, tells you what to expect when leaving a narcissist and also what narcissists do when you break up with them. What's going on beautiful people, if the is your first time seeing my face or hearing my voice, my name is Lee and I am a self aware narcissist. I have narcissistic personality disorder ( NPD ) and I've been in therapy for my personality disorder since 2017 and it has definitely changed my life because without it, I would have lost everything. The point of these videos is to help bring awareness from the other side of the narcissistic *buse spectrum. All my videos give perspective on why many narcissists do what they do and the possible different reasons behind them. The victims get validation and the Narcissists get to see that you can get help and that you are not alone Website - www.mentalhealness.net Courses/Groups - https://courses.mentalhealness.net 1 on 1's and all my links - https://beacons.page/mentalhealness Self Love Journal - https://a.co/d/70L3zKb Remember, It's not your fault - https://a.co/d/2WNtdKJ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mentalhealness/support
April 3, 2024 Do you have a customer retention problem? If so, I bet I know one of the major factors behind it. In this podcast, we take a deep look at the critical customer management system that should be firiing RIGHT AFTER a person buys. It's called "customer onboarding." I know. Not very sexy. But if you're missing this piece, a lot of confusion is happening for your customer as they get your product. How do I get it? What do I need to do to prepare? What do I watch out for? What do I do first? You need to be ready with answers to questions like these, to help them get results. You need to point them to the "Yellow Brick Road" that gets them to Oz. If you don't, they'll wander around aimlessly, burn out, get lost, experience failure, feel disappointed in themselves, and never buy your product again. Yes, my friend. I know you don't want to hear this... But you can't just grow the product. You have to guide them to success, too. In this episode, we'll talk about what topics to cover in your customer onboarding, as well as where/how you can put this system to work. Lucky for you, it's not that hard to build this element in your sales machine. But you do need to have one. Let's start today, shall we?... Podcast Sponsors: This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, my preferred e-commerce platform for farmers. Are you looking for a new solution for your farm? I can't recommend it enough. Easy to use inventory management, great customer service, continuous improvement, and a culture dedicated to equipping farmers with marketing expertise, Local Line should definitely be one of the e-commerce solutions you consider as you switch. Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2024. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline This podcast was sponsored by Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, setting up your Google Business Profile, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, and practicing different types of offers. You get to chose what you want to study and build each month. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work. Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside, watch my new Email Marketing Course, or take the onboarding assessment tool to help you identify where your funnel is broken and what project to do first. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Start and cancel your membership anytime. Some of the resources mentioned in this episode: Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Subscribe at https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/subscribe Canva Template: Tips and Tricks for CSA Success -- The Beginner's Guide to CSA Success. This is a beautiful, well written guide you can give to your CSA member rookies to teach them the "secrets" to becoming a great home chef faster using the CSA way of eating. Purchase this template and use as-is, or switch out pictures or pages to suit your farm. Ideal for vegetable CSA onboarding. Get my CSA Handbook template -- This is my 2023 CSA handbook. Handbooks are a great form of customer onboarding. If you don't have one yet for your CSA, use mine to help you figure out your sections and then change out the wording to suit your far! To get the handbook template, subscribe at: https://shared-legacy-farms.ck.page/c8cc81f21a Join my CSA Academy and learn how to fast-track your CSA members to CSA success. Try it out for the first month for $1 using coupon code TRIAL. (After that, the price increases to $19/month). Go to www.mydigitalfarmer.com/academy to see what's included with the monthly membership. You'll get access to the ENTIRE resource library I use to help support my CSA members and get them to CSA mastery fast! Use the templates inside to help you build your own customer onboarding and/or training curriculum this summer. This is a MAJOR shortcut to figuring out your onboarding process!! So valuable! Cancel your membership anytime. Episode 252 How to Monetize Your Farm's YouTube Channel for Passive Income- I share ideas for playlist topics in here Find my marketing Facebook group for CSA farmers! Follow me on Instagram for a daily IG story tip on marketing! @mydigitalfarmer Subscribe and Review in Apple Podcast I'd love for you to subscribe to my podcast! I don't want you to miss an episode. Click here to subscribe in Apple Podcasts! My hope is to feature guests periodically on the show. If you know someone who is innovating in the area of marketing as a farmer, please send me an email at mydigitalfarmers@gmail.com.
Teddy Swims stopped by the studio RIGHT AFTER he found out he had the number one song in the country! We're chatting with him about life, puppies, music...all of the above!
They're together! Co-parenting and co-podcasting! Jax & Brittany share all about their trip to Comic-Con in Kentucky (and all the airplane hijinx that ensued) How many photos of your child is too many? When are you too old to wear Jordans?, Going to a parent mixer RIGHT AFTER they announced their separation, Men wearing shapewear, They share their knowledge of European football, Uber hacks & etiquette, AND which star of FX's THE BEAR did Jax just run into?? Check out our great sponsors!!! Quince: Indulge in affordable luxury! Go to Quince.com/jb for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. HungryRoot: Get 40% off your first delivery and free veggies for life at Hungryroot.com/reality Booking.com: Book who ever you want to be on Booking.com Booking dot YEAH!!! Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive!
The couple in today's Second Date had a perfectly normal time DURING their date, but it something that happened RIGHT AFTER that changed everything.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The couple in today's Second Date had a perfectly normal time DURING their date, but it something that happened RIGHT AFTER that changed everything.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Loki is back! And his show takes up RIGHT AFTER the final moments of Loki season 1!!! And Loki does what he's best at – he brings shenanigans! Time-slipping shenanigans! Speaking of time traveling shenanigans . . . we slipped past episode 408 because of some technical difficulties . . . it will arrive sometime […]
It's our season finale y'all!!!
The couple in today's Second Date had a perfectly normal time DURING their date, but it something that happened RIGHT AFTER that changed everything.
The couple in today's Second Date had a perfectly normal time DURING their date, but it something that happened RIGHT AFTER that changed everything.
CONVERSATIONS WITH CALVIN WE THE SPECIES #Rutgers #bball #motivationalspeaker #communityactivist #OrangeNJ #NJAllState NEW: The ‘other' REGGIE MILLER, and a 5-second Rutgers bball career and motivational speaker……and so much more. https://www.youtube.com/c/ConversationswithCalvinWetheSpecIEs 207 Interviews. GLOBAL Reach. Earth Life. Amazing People. PLEASE SUBSCRIBE (You can almost find any subject you want) ** REGGIE MILLER; Rutgers, BBall,(5-Second Career, 1987), BS, Sociology; Brotherhood; RM Motivation; A Few Good Men; Motivational Speaker; Image Consultant; Community Activist; Live from Orange, NJ (Also showing documentary) “Rutgers gave me a big hug…..” Reggie Miller YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGqfxNJ1v_Q “My interview with Reggie: poignant, emotional, passionate and inspirational. His life journey is the ‘stuff' they make movies about. AND they did thanks to Reggie Bullock, Greatness 5. The documentary, “5 seconds-The Reggie Miller Story.” Reggie had that 5 second Rutgers basketball career….and went on to a life of giving back to community activism, and bettering the community…..His creed, “If you love a Brother, Help a Brother.” A remarkable man. An unforgettable interview. Documentary showing RIGHT AFTER interview.” Calvin ** CONTACTS Website: https://rmmotivation.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/reggie.miller.7965 ** REGGIE BULLOCK: Greatness 5 Films: FACEBOOK https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1659123566 ** BIO: For over twenty years, Mr. Reggie Miller has been inspiring many throughout the state of New Jersey, encouraging them to reach their full potential. He seeks to instill the necessary principles that will allow them to be positive and proactive in their own lives, and becoming a positive influence in the lives of not only their families, but others within the community. Mr. Miller attended Rutgers University where in received a full scholarship for basketball. His dream of going to the N.B.A. was abruptly taken away during his freshman year due to a serious spinal condition. However, this set back did not keep him from obtaining his Bachelor's Degree in Sociology. He used that study of the development, structure and function of the human society to improve his own community. Not only identifying key issues surrounding him, but taking an active role in changing them. Issues including bullying, self- esteem, goal setting, and violence in communities amongst others. Ten years ago, Mr. Miller was diagnosed with cancer which prompted him to become a strong advocate for healthy eating. He facilitates various preventive programs to help better understand the importance of healthy habits. Mr. Miller is currently the Program Director of the Male Student Support Program. This school-based program is a partnership between RUTGERS New Jersey Medical School and the Orange Public Schools addressing the psychosocial challenges impacting minority male students, helping them understand that education is the key to success. Community activism is at the forefront of Mr. Miller's mission of giving back. He has organized rallies, peace marches, and basketball tournaments that promote collaboration and communication within the community. Miller founded A Few Good Men, a collaboration between prominent community leaders in Orange, NJ to mentor, educate, and inspire young men by providing and leading activities and events in their neighborhood. Reggie Miller is committed to bettering the community and dedicated to his personal creed “If you Love a Brother, Help a Brother”. ** WE ARE ALSO ON AUDIO AUDIO “Conversations with Calvin; WE the SpecIEs” ANCHOR https://lnkd.in/g4jcUPq SPOTIFY https://lnkd.in/ghuMFeC BREAKER https://lnkd.in/g62StzJ GOOGLE PODCASTS https://lnkd.in/gpd3XfM POCKET CASTS https://pca.st/bmjmzait RADIO PUBLIC https://lnkd.in/gxueFZw edits by Claudine Smith- Email: casproductions01@gmail.com
Toronto Blue Jays!!! Toronto Blue Jays! (just for the algorithm) Bonus Episode: Justin Verlander to the New York Mets - 53:50 mark... we learned the news RIGHT AFTER we finished recording Join Our Patreon. Follow the podcast on instagram @thewalkoffpodcast. On Twitter @walkoffpodcast We are of course, on YouTube. Join our Discord: Free Invite
From Doing the Right Thing for the Win! In our last few +1s, we've been talking about The Law of Cause and Effect. We started with Michael Singer's wisdom. Then we went old school with Jesus and Epictetus. I promised we'd talk about what modern SCIENCE has to say about applying the basic ideas of The Law of Cause and Effect to the process of optimizing our lives. That's what we'll do Today. But… First… As we journey back from 2,000 years ago to today, let's pause briefly and see what another one of my favorite teachers had to say about the subject. In 1841, the great American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote an essay called “Compensation” in which he did his thing by integrating wisdom from the East with our Western perspective. He tells us: “Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed.” Yep. There you go. The Law of Cause and Effect. Now… On to the science! Here's the short story. Research shows that people who can MAKE THE CONNECTION between the things they do and the Energy/Productivity/Connection they feel NOW are MUCH MORE likely to actually DO THE THINGS they say they want to do than people who don't make that connection. Michelle Segar calls it having “the right why.” In her great book, No Sweat, she tells us that people who succeed in consistently engaging in healthy behaviors like eating well, moving their bodies and getting good sleep have CONCRETE goals rather than abstract goals. When you ask people who ACTUALLY DO the things they know are best for them, they will, essentially, tell you that the reason they do them is TO FEEL GREAT NOW. Unfortunately, most of us (75% of the people in her research!) have abstract goals like “getting healthier” or “losing weight.” Those might be good reasons but they're not EFFECTIVE reasons. As it turns out, Michelle tells us that: “The vast majority of the participants whose goals were weight loss and better health spent the least amount of time exercising overall—up to 32 percent less than those with other goals.” Why? Because the people who ACTUALLY did the things that were good for them made CONCRETE connections between what they did and how they felt. They exercised to enhance the quality of their daily lives—to create a sense of well-being, a feeling of being energized and centered. They found a way to get *immediate* gratification out of their exercise—which is a LOT more effective than pursuing some future, abstract target. As Michelle tells us: “Human beings, it turns out, are hardwired to choose immediate gratification over long-term benefits.” She describes the “lose weight” and “get healthy” goals as too fuzzy and abstract and clinical and calls them the “Wrong Why.” When we lead with those Whys, our exercise becomes a chore— which then leads to a failure. Who does chores with sustained enthusiasm?! So… Want to give yourself the best chance at getting more Energized, Productive, and Connected by doing the things that will help you enjoy those fruits of your Heroic behaviors? Again… MAKE THE CONNECTION between what you do RIGHT NOW and how you feel RIGHT AFTER. Then give yourself the gift of Heroic levels of Energy, Productivity, and Connection. The Law of Cause and Effect. Let's use it. And change our lives. TODAY.
It can be so easy to miss really great moments happening right now because we are so caught up in what we need to do for the future or what has happened in the past. Living in the present can help us slow down & allow us to be more open-minded to new & different opportunities.Show Notes:Are you often thinking about what you could have done or should have done or wish you knew in regards to something that happened in the past? If you are, I encourage you to realize that this is a fruitless activity. This is perfectly ok to do RIGHT AFTER the event/situation that has happened. You can take the time to reflect on what happened & what you can learn from this experience, but take those lessons & let it go. Move on from it & don't allow it to be a chokehold on your life. We LITERALLY cannot change the past. Like, we cannot. It's impossible. So continuing to bring it up will only be you inflicting pain on yourself with no benefit or purpose.But maybe you're dwelling on the past because someone in your life continues to bring it up. Sometimes we have a hard time letting things go when we were hurt or something didn't work out in the way you desired, so if someone else contributed to those things happening, we might keep bringing it up because we haven't taken the time to heal from that experience & understand what it meant to us & why we responded the way we did. And this can cause hurt to the other people involved because you're bringing it up & allowing that wound to be exposed again, rather than heal. Even if the other people involved don't feel as bad about what happened as you do, you still need to let it go & move on. Staying in that mindset will not make anything better or different.As far as the future, most of the time thinking about the future is super exciting. It's the thing that can boost motivation in whatever we are doing & working on, while also providing hope to life-changing, evolving & becoming better when we finally have those future moments realized. But this can also pull you away from seeing the silver lining in what's going on in your life right now & the opportunities you could have if you take your eyes off what's ahead. What's ahead could change for the better, but you'll never know that because you are too focused & attached to that version & vision of your life you're currently chasing.You could also be attached to the future because you need a distraction from what's currently happening in your life. Or it's the perfectionist coming out that needs to always be planning for how to excel in the future, always trying to one-up yourself. Regardless of the reason, it's important to know that everything doesn't need to be about the future for your life to be good.Let's dive into the tips on How to Live in the Present:Don't Overly Multitask Accept What's Happening Now, Not How You Want it to BePractice Gratitude on the RegularForgive Others & Let Go of GrudgesDon't Get Stuck in How Life Used to Be Don't Be in a Rush or Anxious About Time Work On Control Issues Anonymous Venting: https://www.sabrinajoy.com/resourcesRSVP for the NEW PLANNER!! https://www.sabrinajoy.com/plannersignupVisit me on Instagram or TikTok: @sabrinajoyperozzoAnonymous survey for topic suggestions: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScqcg0URMsH61Evk_3SiSURBkNuk5aUZVo97H5nuLVB0q36Iw/viewform?usp=sf_linkQuestions, comments, or feedback? Email Me: realpositivegirlpodcast@gmail.com Sign up for my weekly newsletter https://www.sabrinajoy.com/newsletter!Support the show
Do your people really KNOW how you feel about them? Like do they know how much you love them and why you love them - all of it? One of the biggest lessons learned in the last month is how important it is to LOVE YOUR PEOPLE HARD. It's just so easy to get caught up in routine and the daily to do's and before you know it, the day is done and it's time to sleep then do it all over again. Sometimes that means slowing down and other times it means setting rules so you don't miss the good stuff. Lots and lots of ideas of how you can show your people love on the daily. Lindsay talks about the changes she's made in her life since her husbands health scare. One of the biggest- showing her people how much she loves them on the daily. We only have so much energy in a day. And since we know… where attention goes, energy flows, we have to be super careful about what we spend our physical and mental energy on. Because time spent worrying about things that don't really matter, take away from time spent on the important stuff. It's so easy to be frustrated and distracted - both things that take us further from the goal. -Here is how Lindsay adds habit triggers: Like the podcast tips on habits in general - put things out or stack them! Like put things in the tray in the kitchen or in the bedroom - to remember to do it. OR do it RIGHT AFTER something else. So it happens. This is a great way to actually change - and not stay the same. It's hard to change your ways especially if you have done the same things for a long time. These are the BEST strategies for adding in more LOVE routines to your life. -Here are the ways Lindsay does it: 10 minutes per kid each night before bed doing whatever it is that is best for them. More physical! Hugs, taps, squeezes. And THOUGHTFUL things. Eye contact - being present. Knowing they are important. We need more human touch because we are all online so much! Saying no or cancelling plans when you need it. Show appreciation Be spontaneous Celebrate what makes them unique Compliments Thoughtful gifts Celebrate them! Birthdays or wins Do activities they like Take good care of them when they are sick Movie night Hold hands Do a chore for them - like getting gas or picking up prescription, dry cleaning. Something you wouldn't do normally. -Ways people sent in! Bring coffee Phone call, text, say I love you. 1 on 1 time with each person Date nights Check in on them Ordering something that will make life easier - new to go cup, key tile Reflecting on the day at bedtime ex: I saw you were determined etc Making coffee / tea each day Buying favorite snacks/wine Stop and hug my people, even when im busy Call/text when they're going through a rough time. Offer my time to help. Random text when thinking of a friend Lunch ones for kids and husband Surprise fav drink or snack Good night and good morning routines to start and end the day with love and gratitude Pack healthy snack for office Make them laugh, hide notes or a card Listening to people Being present when we are all together Send texts to my teens wishing a good day and reminding I love you Wellness check texts! Watch their fav shoes instead of yours Conversation cards on long trips - ask questions Scratch hubby's back while he brushes teeth Be present - turn off phone Cooking healthy food for them Cook and bake for them Serve hubby dessert with night meds in his chair I try to do 1 on 1 things that fills their love language even if it is not the way I normally show love. Randomly send friends a Starbucks gift card Folding their laundry Make sure they know how I feel on the regular Always kiss my kids good night at every age Organize husbands supplements My hubby tucks in my sheets at night so I'm extra comfortable CHEERS to loving your people HARD!
STAFFORD!! NO!!! WHY?! That can pretty much sum it up this week as far as instant reactions. Also, "Oh God, Kenny Young" and "Darn it David Long" and "Swear words, Taylor Rapp" to the defense. Kenneth and Blane discuss the game RIGHT AFTER the Rams fell 37-20 to the Cardinals. Subscribe to Turf Show Times for immediate reactions to games, as well as Last Minute Thoughts w/Rob & JB, plus Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Scott (@SHOTOFYAGER) is joined by fellow Podcaster Logan Hedrich (@LoganHedrich) to break down AEW's EPIC ALL OUT PPV, which they attended together. They recorded this RIGHT AFTER returning to the hotel following the show and break down everything from the epic night; the matches, the surprises, Bryan Danielson, Adam Cole, Ruby Soho, Punk and whether this was the best show OF ALL TIME.www.ChallengeMania.Shopwww.ChallengeMania.Livewww.Patreon.com/ChallengeMania
Why does your body randomly jolt you awake sometimes RIGHT AFTER you fall asleep? - Bill Cosby gets free, Britney Spears does not - Uncle Thumbs firework safety - Happy Bobby Bonilla Day - Vacation traveling bathroom breaks - 4th of July fake callers
In last week's interview, Jeanne said at the end, “Jesse (her husband) is going to retire and I know the money will show up to allow that to happen.” RIGHT AFTER that interview Jeanne walked to the mailbox and in it was a letter worth $185,000! And there it was. The money for her husband to retire. Oh and to bump her investment portfolio up to a higher status so she got a higher level wealth manager. Listen to hear all the fun details of this manifestation! And if you're ready to start manifesting money, let's do it!!! Apply to Manifest $10K-Pay After You Manifest and you can start manifesting now, then pay me based on your success.
We start everyone's favorite sequel to Chrono Trigger: Chrono Cross! Finally we catch up with our favourite pals, Chrono, Lucca, Frog, Robo, and see what they're doing, right? Right? After a while? We assume this is some kind of Final Fantasy XII start with temporary characters before switching to your favorites. Also: Johnny ruminates on a Bolero jacket, there's way too much PUBG talk, Kid falls out of a regional Christmas Carol performance, and Vanessa is very excited about a Sliders scenario. This Week: We get to Termina in Chrono Cross! Next Week: We either get to the beach in the Original timeline, or recruit Glenn in the alternate timeline. Our Patreon: http://patreon.com/squarerootspodcast Contact Square Roots! Twitter: @squarerootspod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/486022898258197/ Email: squarerootspodcast (at) gmail (dort) com Thanks to RichaadEB for letting us use their cover of Scars of Time! Find Richaad on Youtube: youtube.com/richaadeb Twitter: @richaadEB Patreon: RichaadEB
Rio J and E Fikes conduct a week in review of the social unrest across America and other topics. Right After we recorded this episode we learned of the passing of Brother Chadwick Bosman... Rest In Power Black Panther
This is a mini episode because OF COURSE Chad Daybell's arrest affidavit was released RIGHT AFTER we published our previous episode. So, here are the latest updates from the affidavit which gives us a bit more insight into what may have happened to Tylee and JJ last September.Support the show (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/TrueCrimeSociety)
In our last few +1s, we’ve been Optimizing our Optimism. After hanging out with some long-lived nuns, we spent some time with Marin Seligman (NOT SMOKING two packs a day) then we spent some time with Sonja Lyubomirsky (journaling on our awesome future lives). Today I want to go back to Kate Hefferon’s textbook: Positive Psychology and the Body. RIGHT AFTER the section in which Kate chats about the nuns, she shares some wisdom in a sub-section called “Caveat to optimism.” Cue suspenseful music. → Dun DUN DUNNN!!! Here’s what Kate has to say: “As with most of the topics in positive psychology, we must take into consideration the alternative viewpoints. We need to be very open about the benefits and indeed the negatives when dealing with optimism in health. Optimism may cause individuals to persist at trying to control situations that are biologically uncontrollable, which may in turn lead to enhanced levels of distress, disappointment and depression. It may also cause us to forgo adoption of medical advice and treatment. Overall, the ‘cult of optimism’ and tyranny of positive thinking must not go unheeded. Kashdan and Rottenberg have argued that psychological flexibility is imperative in illness and health environments, enabling us to adapt to uncertain environments and outcomes and to better adjust to these.” Ah!! The “cult of optimism” and the “tyranny of positive thinking” MUST NOT go unheeded. Which is why Gabriele Oettingen’s Rethinking Positive Thinking is one of my favorite books and why we come back to her wisdom again and again. One more time: Science says, we MUST (!) embrace the constraints of reality and honestly appraise obstacles. It also says that unmitigated good isn’t good. Instead, we’d be wise to counterbalance our levity with the appropriate gravity to create optimal BUOYANCY! When? How about… TODAY!!!
How do you build a successful eCommerce business that has attracted nearly 5 million visitors in a month? For Jerry Hum, it took a few failures and a couple of stumbles out of the gate with his cofounders before finding the winning combination of users, demand, and products all in one. Jerry is a co-founder and the Executive Chairman of Touch of Modern, a members-only e-commerce website and app focused on selling lifestyle products, fashion, and accessories to men. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Jerry takes us through his early struggles and how he found the secret sauce to making his eCommerce platform one of the most popular among male shoppers. Plus he explains what metrics other eCommerce pros should be looking at, and gives some advice to other entrepreneurs. Key Takeaways: For a multi-brand company, customer retention and lifetime value is the critical metric to look at Build the primary platform where your primary customer prefers to buy Combine marketing engagement and transactional data to prevent high engagement high cost marketing yielding low sales volume --- Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible eCommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce --- Transcript: Stephanie: Hey everyone. This is Stephanie, your host of Up Next In Commerce. Today we have Jerry Hum. The co-founder and executive chairman of Touch Of Modern. Jerry, how's it going? Jerry: Pretty good. How are you? Thanks for- Stephanie: [crosstalk] good. Yeah, how's it going? So you're in a loft right now, right? In SF, living the quarantine life. Jerry: Yeah, in San Francisco. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: Yep. Stephanie: How- Jerry: [crosstalk] for a little longer than most other folks. Stephanie: Yeah. So what's your day look like with being sheltered in place and... I think San Francisco is even stricter than Palo Alto where you guys [inaudible] allowed to do even more than we are. Jerry: Yeah. Well, we actually started preparing for it a little bit earlier actually, just as it was making news headlines and most companies were still up and running. We were planning kind of contingencies and all that planning and seeing how work from home would be like if we had to do it. Luckily we came up with a plan just in time. We actually went into it before even California started making statements about it. So I think we are kind of in a pretty decent groove in terms of keeping the business running smoothly and all that. In terms of a day to day, I'm actually surprised as to maybe how engaged people have remained. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: Being that we have to do it all through technology. I actually started thinking about it, why is it that work from home is almost a little bit easier now than it was in the past. And I think it's because when it's the only option then you just do it. Right? Stephanie: You have to make it work. Jerry: Yeah. It's not like if half the office is doing one thing and then... Or not like half the office. If most of the office is at work and a few people are work from home then it's actually more difficult because the people in the office are like, "Oh, I'll just wait for that person to get in or something." But if this is the only way that every one is communicating then it's actually fairly smooth. Obviously everything takes a little bit more time and all that. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: [inaudible] day is actually longer than usual. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: All things considered, I think it's working pretty well. Stephanie: Good. Yeah. Hopefully it will all come to a close soon. How have you all handled... I mean has there been any struggles, I'm imagining taking photos of your products and things like that? That's probably a very in-person type of thing that [inaudible] people have perspectives on and all want to help. How are you handling things like that with your business that seem pretty hard to do virtually? Jerry: Yeah. So luckily, some of our folks have set-ups at home. Stephanie: Good. Jerry: Yeah. Because usually, photographers, this is not just a job. It's also a passion and a hobby. Right. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: So we've been able to make due... Obviously at a reduced capacity. Yeah. Stephanie: Yeah. Well, good. So maybe that's a good point to dive into what is Touch of Modern. If you were to explain it to the listeners and give us some background. Jerry: Touch of Modern is the only shopping destination that men visit daily. And we offer a [inaudible] mix of remarkable products across all categories and that you can use everyday.This could be anything from a flame thrower you can strap to your wrist, or the newest exercise gadget, or anything in between. Stephanie: Are women allowed? Because I was on there and I was like, "I want to buy some of this stuff." I would buy... Maybe not a flame thrower but there was some good stuff on there that I'm like, "I want this." Jerry: Of course, women are allowed. It's just kind of more... A little bit more of our differentiator. Because most E-commerce sights out there are catered toward women. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: [inaudible] we're not the only one but one of a few that really cater to men. Stephanie: Got it. Yeah. It looks awesome. A lot of the products. I was afraid to hit buys right away. How did you come to create the idea of Touch of Modern? And I think I read it was the third... The third times a charm. That you had done three other things, or two other things before that until you got to Touch of Modern. What was that like? What was that journey like? Jerry: Yeah. I'll give you the long story here, maybe. Stephanie: Good. Jerry: [Four] founders, guys from New York. The business actually was a peer-to-peer experienced market place. And this is kind of similar to what Airbnb has now. Obviously they built that on top of their existing business but we were trying to start from scratch at the time. That was extremely difficult because you're telling folks to change their lifestyle. Right? If you need to suddenly offer a cooking class, that's not a easy thing to do if you don't have the customers for it. Right? Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: Or the time for it. And then we're telling customers to come on this platform and book stuff. But if you don't have the activities, what is there to book? Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: So it becomes this chicken and egg problem. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: It came out of our own need because we were guys from New York, you're kind of looking for interesting things to do all the time, just in the city. Right? The second business was called Raven. Well, the first one was called [Scarra 00:05:24]. I don't know if I mentioned that. Second one was called Raven. That was a slight variation on the first. And that was we took out half of the equation because we realized, double sided marketplace, super hard. Right? Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: We started offering activities that already existed. This could be like hang gliding. This could be sky diving. This could also be day at the spa. Right. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: We also layered on a recommendation algorithm where you could like stuff. And based on your activity, we would offer you a daily feed of different activities and things that were new to discover in your area. We got a lot of engagement out of that. People found really cool things. If you look at my feed versus somebody else's, it would be really different based on what we like. When we looked at it, it was like, oh this is a pretty accurate description of things I'm interested in and my hobbies and such. Right? Jerry: And that was difficult because people would then discover stuff but they wouldn't actually book it with us. They would just call directly [crosstalk 00:06:29]. Stephanie: Wow. Jerry: What we learned from that was, well, we need reason for people to transact. Right? And we need maybe something to make us relevant for right now. So the second generation of that business was actually arranging events where we built a mobile app as the early days of... Not the iPhone but when apps started getting the more complicated... Better than just the kind of beer pouring app. Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: Those simple things. Right? So we used Geofencing to create this thing where if you went within a certain perimeter of something going on, we would tell you about it. We'll alert you and be like, "Hey, like... Street fair over here or something over there." And that was really cool because there wasn't another app like that. At least that we know of... That we knew of at the time that was doing that. Also at the time, a lot of folks were moving to San Francisco. Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: Probably even more so than they are today. A ton of messages from people saying, "Wow, you're really helping me discover the city. Every weekend we pull this out and, you know, see what's going on." Especially because San Francisco is the type of city that always has something going on. Stephanie: Yeah. Like on the side streets, you're like, "There's a whole festival going on right now." Jerry: Yeah. So that was really cool but again, a lot of these things were free. So it wasn't there wasn't a real business model there. There's just a ton of engagement. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). It seems like you guys are kind of ahead of your time with that. Because even when I'm hearing about that now, I'm like, oh, if you would have kept going with that one, Airbnb probably would have acquired you. Jerry: Yeah. Right. Stephanie: Oh, if you kept going with the Geofencing thing, Google would acquired you because I worked for Google Maps before this. Jerry: Oh, yeah. Stephanie: They're still trying to figure out how to show you where the festivals are, where the farmers markets are based on your location. So maybe you guys are just ahead of your time with everything. Jerry: Maybe. That would be the positive view of it. So I think the lesson we learned from that was... Incredibly hard to scale location based things. because you could sell out all the tickets to this one show or a certain percentage of it but there's unlimited margin and you're constricted by the location and therefore we couldn't justify the kind of business mechanics that were necessary to actually make that sustainable. I mean, it raised a ton of money. Right? And so this isn't going to get like... Where it wasn't like, hey, we're going to get to a billion people and then it's going to work. It's not like that. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: So we were like, what were we good at and what were we not good at? We were really good at getting people engaged. Really good at discovery aspect of things. We just needed something more scalable to be the thing that we featured. And realized that, hey, products... You get scale with products. Right? Mass distribution and all that. There's real margin there because that's kind of built into the modal that [inaudible] already exists. Jerry: We had always kind of liked products, just as the people that we were. But we didn't want to touch it because we didn't want to deal with real world problems of moving things around, shipping, [crosstalk 00:09:46]- Stephanie: Yeah. Logistics. Jerry: Yeah. Logistics. Right? After going through the struggles of the first two business, we realized that things are not really... It's not rocket science. Right? This has been done. We started thinking about what kind of unique angle we could take at it. I remember we were in the living room and we're talking about speakers for some reason and who made the best speakers. Dennis had his idea. Jon had his idea. And then Steven, who's real audio files, was like, no, these are the best speakers. He knew all these brands that we didn't even know about. We knew the mass market brands but not the kind of stuff that he was into. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: He had all this knowledge. Okay, you win that debate. Right? And we realized that we have this thing that we geek out on. Right? Jon was really into cooking and he had these really expensive knives that he would keep in this [inaudible] that he would have to take out and show us. Dennis was really into outdoor activities and all the gear that's associated with that. I use to be an architect when I was in New York so I spent way too much money on furniture. So that was my thing. Right? And so everyone had our own thing. No one out there was catering to this desire or whatever it was that ties all these things together. Right? Jerry: So we just started sourcing things that we thought were cool. Hey, if we think it's cool, other people are going to think it's cool too. Right? It wasn't like a men thing. It wasn't even necessarily a discovery thing. It was just these were the things that we thought were cool. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: Through that process, right away it kind of hit in a way that the other two businesses did not hit at all in two years. Right? Where day one we started getting real transactions and kind of buying activity. Right? Stephanie: How? How did you get buying on day one? How did people even find your website or know where to go? Jerry: We did not even have a website on the very first day. We actually... What happened was Dennis, who ran marketing, would just start running ads and would go to a landing- Stephanie: Okay. Facebook? Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: Or what kind of ads? Okay. Jerry: Facebook. Earlier in the days of Facebook too. I think a lot of what we did, now, can't be exactly replicated but there's probably some learnings to take from it. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: So we basically just collected emails and say, "Hey, there's this thing that's coming soon." Right? I think [inaudible] probably remember years ago there was tons of these types of things that are just coming soon and you're like wow [crosstalk 00:12:39]. Stephanie: Yeah. That was the strategy back then of just like just put up a landing page and see if people want that fake product that you could create. I remember books where they would suggest that and I'm like, that's a good idea. Jerry: [crosstalk] that is more less of a pit. I mean, we were creating it. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: I'm not talking about like, let's just run ads and see if people like it. We were just building it at the time, that same time we were running ads against it. And basically we had an idea of what that metrics needed to look like in order for a business to work. Right? We just made assumptions down the whole funnel. Right? If we acquire an email for this much, and if this percent of folks convert, and assume a certain order value, and certain repeat rate then this is what our business would look like. Right? Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: And no data for anything outside of what it would cost to acquire an email. Basically, we knew the cost of that. Then we started sourcing products and building the website behind it. Then we just went down the funnel and firmed our assumptions. Sometimes they were better and sometimes they were just different. We kind of just proved it out from the top down. Stephanie: Got it. That's really cool. Has it always been a member's only platform? Has there ever been a time where people could just go to the website, the app, and just see the products without inputting their email? Jerry: Yeah. So, we require folks to input the email for the upfront reason that we are talking to... And this is also maybe one of our differentiators, is that we are not a clearance channel per se. We talk to vendors who have products that are new to market. Right? So they may have endeavors to go to traditional retail or something else, and they may not want their prices shown necessarily to everybody. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: So that's one [inaudible] been the case. Stephanie: Got it. Okay. Cool. So when I was looking at your catalog and just seeing everything that you have, how do you go about curating something like that? I mean, it sounds easy in the early days of, oh, so and so likes knives so he pulled in his favorite knives. But I saw how many products you have on that page. Maybe it's like... How many a day do you release? Jerry: It's about 300 a day. It's quite a bit. Stephanie: How do you find 300, even a month, cool products that are so unique like that and keep up the level of quality that's on there? Jerry: We have a team of about 30 or so folks on the sources and buying team and they're out just looking for what's cool and unique. And obviously we have our standards and things that we look for and they just go out and try to find things that meet those standards. And they also try to find things that are... that we've just never seen or heard of before. Right? Then we bring it back, it goes through an approval process, and then we put it up and run it. It's fairly simple. Stephanie: Does it still go through you to approve of every single product? Jerry: Not every single product. Stephanie: No. Jerry: In the early days it was and now we have a team of folks that can do it. Stephanie: Got it. And you also have an app that people can buy from. Is it the same functionality? Does the website mimic the app or how did you think about expanding to mobile? Jerry: It's mostly the same functionality. We expanded to mobile fairly early on. Like I said, our previous companies were... We were already experimenting with mobile back then. I don't think we had one on Scarra but Raven, we definitely did. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: That was a core part of it. So we went to mobile pretty early on and I don't think we knew this per se, but it was interesting because men tend to be more comfortable buying on mobile too. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: And maybe that influenced part of our strategy or vice versa. It seems to actually be the more popular platform for us. Both in terms of actual use engagement and revenue as well. Stephanie: Okay. And do you see different customer profiles when it comes to the mobile user versus the website users? And do you cater to them differently based on that? Or personalize things different? Jerry: No. The experiences are pretty congruent on both sides. The mobile users tend to have a little bit of a higher value. But that could also be because you kind of have to self select into mobile. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: You go on to the website and then you're all, hey, we're really into it. And then you go on the app. Right? Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: It's kind of hard to say what's [inaudible 00:17:21]. Stephanie: Go it. Very cool. So in the early days you were doing Facebook ads. And I think I read that you were doing TV ads as well at a certain point. How has your marketing strategy evolved over... since you started? Jerry: Yeah. So in the early days of Facebook it was like a wild, wild west. Right. Big brands weren't really on it. So it was a great time for companies like us. And this is why I say a lot of it can't really be replicated today exactly the same way we did it back then. So when a lot of competition started moving in, in order to compete, we kept broadening our category just... I mean, just becoming a stronger business. Right? Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: So it would be a lot harder to start with just a handful of products the same way we did. When we started, I think we launched with 12 products and that was it. It was like 12 individual products, not twelve vendors, just 12 [inaudible] things you could buy. Right? Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: That was enough to make it work. Probably impossible now to do that. As the business grew we could support more channels. We went into Google and then eventually got to the size where we can actually start experimenting with TV. I think also, TV has evolved over time as well because of visual advertising. Because so many brands see the benefits of digital advertising. You can track things and kind of go after a more specific audiences. That TV now kind of has changed to have some of those properties as well. So we use them both kind of together and they enhance each other. You can tell when, if you're spending too much on TV and not enough on digital, then TV starts to suffer. If you spend too much on digital and not enough on TV then the opposite happens. Stephanie: Got it. How do you find that ROI of the campaigns? Then decide, okay let's scale back on TV and increase mobile ads or something. What metrics are you looking for? Jerry: We actually have the exact same metrics on TV as we do on digital. Right? And this is just... cost acquired customer and lifetime value and all that. The way we track it is now you can know exactly when your spot airs and basically we have a baseline of traffic that we know that, hey, if nothing is airing, this is what are organic traffic looks like. Right. So when we air a spot, we can see that spike. We do a [inaudible] analysis to say this much of the traffic following that airing is probably through the TV. Stephanie: Got it. Okay. Very cool. So when it comes to metrics, when you think about E-commerce, what metrics do you think are most important to keep track of? Or how do you define success when it comes to E-commerce? Jerry: Yeah. There's a ton of stuff. I mean, it really depends... It depends a lot on what kind of product you're selling. Right? I'll give you two extremes. One extreme is like us, and for us we are a multi-brand retailer. Right? You can buy a number of things and also we change our selection everyday. So you can keep coming back to keep buying different things. Right? Jerry: So what's important to us is lifetime value and retention. Right? How fast do you break even on the cost to acquire a customer? At the end of the day, that's kind of like the most basic thing for any kind of company in our space. But the products that you're selling may influence how you look at it. Right? If you're selling cars or mattresses or something that you just don't buy very often, then you may think about it very differently because it's just not feasible to thing that the retention rate is going to be nearly what ours is. Right. Or at least not be frequent enough for you to be able to plan your marketing spin around. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Go it. How do you keep your customers... How do you retain them and keep them coming back? Versus acquiring new customers. How do you think about that mix? Jerry: I mean, you always have to acquire new customers. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: I think [inaudible] is just like a natural part of business. You can't deny that it's there. Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: [inaudible] you can be great but there's going to be some folks that it's not for. Right? It's not like 100 percent of your folks are going to stay with you forever. Even the folks that do eventually they may change taste or things like that may happen. So in terms of splits, I think that also varies on performance for us. For us we care about kind of a payback on the spend that we're doing and pending on where we see better performances kind of where we'll weight it. And also kind of seasonally because I would say for retail there's holiday season and all that, you may want to do one thing versus another. But that's going to be really specific to the kind of company that you're running. Stephanie: Yeah. So when it comes to changes in spending pattern, what have you seen with everything from COVID-19 going on? Like what kind of differences? I saw you have a... I think a stay-at-home section or something similar like that. Shelter in place, on your website. How have you seen things change since that started? Jerry: People's priorities definitely change very quickly. Luckily for us because we can change our assortment everyday, we were actually able to adapt really quickly. We got that store up from... From when we said we were going to do it to when it was up was a matter of... Like the morning to that afternoon. Stephanie: That's impressive. How did you line up all the vendors? I mean, to me that's like a long process of picking the vendors and picking out the product and making sure they can ship enough, depending on demand. How did you get all that lined up so quickly? Jerry: The thing is... I mean, when this first started happening especially. And we need to agree now still, it seemed as if time had just sped up suddenly. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: Things that would take an entire quarter could happen now in like a day. Right? Stephanie: Yeah. It has to. Jerry: Everyone was wondering what would be different? All of our vendors, suddenly their retail channels dried up. Right? And they had to move things around. So we just called them up and said, "Hey, this is what we're doing." Obviously most of the folks that were on there, day one, were folks we've worked with already in the past. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: Or coincidentally we were talking to and hey, this fits, kind of thing. Right? It was tapping existing relationships. And parallel, the design and engineering teams were building up the store. We were using some existing infrastructure that we could repurpose and re-skin for the store. It was an amazing feeling. I didn't think we were going to do it in a day but it happened. Stephanie: Yeah. And are you changing that catalog? Like each day or week or... Jerry: [crosstalk] as well. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Stephanie: Got it. Does it... How do you think now your company is going to change based on now you know how quick things can move if it has to? Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: Do you think that your internal policies and all that stuff could change going forward based on how quickly you can see thing go through? And maybe seeing things aren't a priority or approval for certain things might not be as high priority as you thought they were or... What's your view on that? Jerry: Yeah. I mean, in terms of policies first... I think in more so than anything it was like validation of a lot of policies that we had in place. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: It was confirmation that we could move quickly. Because we always thought we could. I think that's always been our thing. One of the questions people always ask is how does a company that sells premium products, how does that respond in a recession? Right? This isn't a recession but it's a time when people's priorities are going to shift maybe away from things that were... seems more frivolous to things that are now more essential. Right? For us, we always said, well you know, we can respond quickly but it's never been proven. And now it's been proven to an extent that we can respond quickly. And we can move to things that are more essential. It's still essential with a twist. Right? Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: It's still within our brand. And it's going to bring a bit of uniqueness and delight into people's lives that are staying at home. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: I think it's validation that the modal can move quickly. The way we thought. And that our brand can extend to the different categories. And address people's needs as they change. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Do you think these buying behaviors are going to last for a while? And if so, are you shifting maybe your thoughts on what Touch of Modern looks like in 2025, 2030? Is it kind of having you re-think things a bit? Jerry: I think that people's buying behaviors will change because I don't think it's going to go back to exactly the way it was. You know. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I agree. Jerry: Yeah. People are going to be much more... And I hope they're going to be much more health conscience. I hope that this introduces some good habits. Right? I think people take a bit of time to reflect and think about things like self improvement. Maybe they didn't have the time to do before because I think some people staying home are going to realize like, "Hey, there's this new hobby that I've always been wanting to do that I can do now." Or, "Maybe I should drink less." Whatever it is that they discover when they change their lifestyle, that there's actually parts of this that are good, that they can take away and keep with them. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Except for the drinking lessening. I think that one's going the wrong way. Jerry: Wait. I don't know. I don't know how some people are- Stephanie: Happy hour time keeps getting earlier and earlier. I'm like, I need to set up rules around this house. Oh my gosh. It's only like two o'clock, what am I doing? Jerry: Well, I mean, another silver lining here is that I think people now have actually seen how quickly the environment can actually improve just with... And in a short period of time. Right? Because in the past I think it always seemed like this insurmountable thing to certain folks where it's like, "Yeah, you know, we can recycle and do this, but we've been doing that for a long time and nothing has really changed. It's actually been getting worse." Right? Jerry: And then suddenly you take a step back and it's like, hey, things change quickly. Right? Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: So maybe it's not as impossible as we thought. We just have to be deliberate about habits that we have and maybe where we spend our energy. Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah, I think sometimes a little shake up like that can be good for people and the economy. And good things could come from it. Even though there's a lot of bad going on as well. I think, yeah, it depends where you're looking, I guess. So when... Oh, go ahead. Jerry: Yeah, I mean, [inaudible] other wise it's just all bad. Right? Stephanie: Yeah. No, everything can't be all bad. There has to be something good out there. That's what I'm hoping for anyways. So when it comes to outside of Touch of Modern, and more of the E-commerce industry as a whole, what destructions do you see are coming? Especially with COVID-19 now. We're seeing some of that already happening. But what are you betting on in the future... Yeah, coming? Jerry: Well, I'm going to bet probably more on E-commerce. Right? I think people are going to build habits from shopping at home that are not going to go away. Right? I think certain things that maybe people use to only buy in person are like, hey, I can buy this at home. It's actually a pretty decent experience, probably going to keep that habit even after this. And I think people are going to maybe focus a little more on preparedness for things than they have in the past. I think human nature is that you never think that these kind of outlier type of situations can happen, but they do. Be that once... Once in a century, I'd never think about it. But a person lives a long time. Right? Jerry: You may see a once in a century thing in your life. That's probably going to happen for a lot of people. Right? And this is that thing for us. Stephanie: Yeah. Agree. It seems like there's going to be a lot of new people coming online who never were online before. And it brings me to a point I saw on your website that I liked a lot is kind of meeting a consumer where they're at. There's two things I saw on your website that I thought would be perfect for a new consumer who doesn't normally buy online. The first one was you have a toggle button on your homepage that says, "View as." And you're about to actually change how you view products on the page, depending on what you prefer. Stephanie: So I thought that was genius. Any insight behind that? Or any thoughts when you were creating that? Because I haven't seen many websites allow you to toggle that view to what you prefer. Jerry: Yeah. It's just like a preference thing. Right? Our experience on the landing page is we just drop you right into our offering. Right? It's not like a landing page where you then click in and search and do all this other stuff. Mostly E-commerce is catered to search. Right? You just go on the page and automatically thing is you type in what you're looking for. Right? That's not really our experience. It's there but it's kind of secondary. It's mostly a browse and kind of meander your way through our offering. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: We let people maybe pick the way they want to meander. Right? Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). How do people meander through 300 hundred things? Because I was going through and I wanted to look at all of them but after a little I'm like, oh, this is too many. And I kind of wished maybe like... What did I see? There was this screen that extended your screen. So you have your MacBook or something and you plug in a little cord and you have an extension of your screen, which is awesome. Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: I'm like, that should have been shown to me first because I want to buy that right now. Whereas, what was the second thing? It was showing maybe like an expensive bottle of wine, which I'm like, oh, push that down some because I'm not fancy like that. How do you think about helping people get through these products each day? Jerry: Well, I think your first time experience is going to ne a little bit different than your second and your third time. About almost half of our users, and I'm not talking about customers but just people that visit, will actually come back at least once a week. And so- Stephanie: Wow. Jerry: Yeah. And so if you're doing that and then our most frequent visitors are coming back every single day, then it's not as hard to browse through everything. Because then you can browse through it and then you'll hit a point where, okay, now I'm looking at yesterday's stuff. Right? And so, if you keep up with it everyday then it's not actually a ton of stuff. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: But for your first time, you're looking at all the days that have accumulated in the past five days. And certain events will also extend beyond that. I think the first time experience is like, wow, this is a ton of stuff. And also because you probably want to click through every single thing. Right? Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: But after awhile you're probably just looking for the things that catch your eyes. Or you're just going to scan and be like, okay, that's really cool. That's really cool. But you're not necessarily going to check out every single thing. Right? Stephanie: Yeah. [inaudible] Jerry: Also, on the mobile app, the scrolling screen is just much slicker and smoother too. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: I think you might just browse there. A lot of folks also will tell us that it's just something that they peruse through when they're waiting for something or commercial break or something like that. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). The second thing I saw that I really liked, which I also haven't seen... Maybe I'm just not on enough websites. I don't know. But I was looking through... It was an about shipping section. And it showed a visual of what does your shipping status mean. Jerry: Yeah. Yeah. Stephanie: And it just... It showed everything from like, we place our PO, and than it goes to the supplier, and here's what it means if you see... I don't know the whole... I can't remember the whole layout. But I thought that was genius showing it in a visual format. And I'm sure that probably brings down a lot of customer support emails. But tell me how you all are thinking about giving that transparency to the customer. Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: And hopefully prevent a million a emails of, hey, where's my product. Jerry: This is another product of our business modal. Or kind of what differentiates us a bit. We sell across all categories. Right? Meaning that we have to be able to accommodate all the categories. So it's not like, a company that just sells furniture ships one way. A company that just sells clothing ships another way. Right? And so their customers go there expecting a certain experience. A company that sells everything needs to ship all the different ways. Right? So a customer might not know exactly what this shipping process is going to look like when you buy something because they may not realize... I mean it's obvious now when I talk about it but if your company goes on a site, you're going to expect shipping experience to be generally consistent. But for us it's like, we're going to ship furniture differently, then we're going to ship clothing differently, and then we're going to ship, you know, this cup, right? Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: And so for us it's just more like informing the customer, this is what's going to happen. This is what it's going to look like. And this is what the different steps mean. For us, we found that more so than anything, they just want to know what's going on. That it's moving and... like internal. Yeah. Stephanie: How about when it comes to relaying the value of the product? How do you convince someone that something is really good? Because I don't think I saw reviews on the website. Unless I missed them. How do you... That's usually the first thing I look for. Is it five stars? You know, I want to see if someone has the same kind of experience that I'm looking for. How do you tell someone something's valuable without that? Jerry: Yeah. I mean, a lot of what we do is educating the customer. Right? Because a lot of these things they never heard of, they didn't know it exist. I wish we could say we do an awesome job at it and we provide all these reviewed stuff but... And we vet the product. We'll go and look at the reviews and we'll test the product and all that. But it does take a leap of faith in the first purchase and maybe you get a learned trust after some time, that like we've done the research. Jerry: Because if you go and research these products you're going to find that they're pretty highly regarded. Stephanie: Yep. Which I think actually might be the modal that it's headed is just show me one or two people at your company that I trust to review product, and I trust them. Because a lot of reviews, I mean, at least on other places... Marketplaces and things like that. They're paid reviews. And so you go through and you're like, well, I can't trust 90 percent of these anyways. So I think it is kind of shifting towards just give me the one person that I can trust. Or the one company that I can trust to curate something for me. And I know if it's coming from them, it's going to be quality and good. Stephanie: Are there any big transformations that are going to be on your plate after the environment kind calms down? Or any big projects that you plan on starting or changing within your strategy? Jerry: Yeah. We're working on shipping things a lot quicker. The reason being that a lot of our products do take a little bit longer because we have these various modals that we work with. And we found that when we can ship things more quickly people are generally way more happy and more likely to come back and purchase. Stephanie: Got it. How can you speed up the shipping for... when it's a bunch of different, I'm guessing, retailers who all their own different practices? How can you kind of know that you can speed that up and make it all pretty uniform? Jerry: Consign the product. Right? So they will house it in our warehouse and we essentially act as their distribution center. Stephanie: Oh. Okay, cool. Tell me a little bit about that. Do you have to buy warehouses in different parts of California? Or how is that modal set up? Jerry: Right now our warehouse actually has a good amount of space. And we've actually developed our distribution system to fit with our model, right, which is that we run things in these short spurts. Right? And what's cool about that is that things come in and they go out really quickly so we're not sitting on mountains of inventory. I mean, we're nearly inventory-less. We're very inventory light. We don't actually require that much space to run a lot of products. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: So right now, for the foreseeable future, it's to keep it within our distribution center. It's a long winded way of saying... Stephanie: Okay. Got it. How did you learn to do that? When I even think about shipping products to a warehouse and making sure everything goes well, how did you learn best practices around... Yeah, around all that? Jerry: Yeah. This is interesting because when we first started we were shipping our own products from day one. And so- Stephanie: From your house? Or from where? Jerry: From the house. [inaudible 00:41:45]. Stephanie: That's awesome. Jerry: ... of just tons of boxes in the living room. And then when the FedEx guy came we would... The first day we just piled it in the lobby and our neighbors got really pissed at us for doing that. Stephanie: I can imagine. Jerry: So the second day, we knew when the person was coming and we just did like bucket brigade style where we just passed packages from our living room down to the... Basically we had our four founders there. And we would just pass it down, bucket brigade style, down the stairs as quickly as the guy could load it into the truck. Stephanie: Oh my gosh. Jerry: And then the first day we finally opened the office, we set aside half of it for fulfillment. And the reason why we did that was because we realized our model is just very different than a traditional pick and pack modal, which is what most 3PLs... What's called a third party logistics provider. At least back then, they were mostly doing pick and pack type operations. And it didn't really fit our modal and we realized that at a certain scale we'd have to bring it in house. It's better to learn it now than to try to take it in when it's already at scale and have huge disruptions in customer experience. So basically, we just started doing it at a really small scale and built our operations all custom to that. So our, kind of, back office technology is all custom. Right? So everything ties together and it suits us in a way that... If you went with a just a third party provider, it probably wouldn't work as well. Stephanie: Very cool. Well, definitely have to get that picture from you so you can post it somewhere to show people because that's... Yeah, a really fun story of starting out. Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: What do you see for new people starting out, building their stores and all that? What is some advise that you give them? Or best practices or things that you did that you're like, don't do that, that actually worked out really bad. Jerry: So this probably goes back to your first question about the two businesses that we had before. We made some classic mistakes. Right? Which is, I think the big one is you build the whole thing and you spend like a year building it and then you think that one day you're going to open and people are just going to come in. Right? Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: Then you start thinking, hey, maybe we just keep tweaking the product and eventually people will come. Right? Really all you're doing is staying busy. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: Because if the demand is not there, it's not going to suddenly show up, almost like the world changes, right? And you would be at the right place at the right time. So it's prove out the demand first. And then when the demand is there, you can take your time with the product. Right? It's like, you don't want to be in a place where you're convincing yourself that the reason you're not succeeding is because the product is not quite right. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: If there's a real need for it you can come out with something that's pretty minimal and just addresses the core need. And it doesn't even have to run perfectly and be totally ironed out. And that will give you enough signal that there's something there that people want. And then you can find it down the road and keep expanding your market to... [inaudible] but this is now more mass market. And so on and so forth. Right? Because the early folks, they want your service, whatever it is, so much that they're going to put up a little bit with you in the early days of like not having it all totally together. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). [crosstalk] Jerry: And so... Yeah. Yeah. You got to prove out the demand first before you totally refine the product. Stephanie: Cool. And what about when it comes to technology? How do you think about... It sounds like you guys did a lot of just in-house... everything. In-house logistics. In-house website stuff. What would you tell someone right now? Should they try and build things in-house? Or... Yeah, what are your thoughts on that? Jerry: It's easier now to build anything in-house than it use to be. Right? Back then it was actually a little more difficult because a lot of the frameworks that are being used today were really fresh back then. Right? So people weren't learning it in school. They had to teach themselves. There weren't the coding bootcamps back then either. So engineers were still a little bit hard to come by. Now, resources are there and everything. Jerry: We were lucky because we did our own coding in the first versions of the site. It was me and Steven, our CTO. More him than me but we built the early versions of that and didn't hire engineers for a long time. Maybe longer than... we probably should have hired engineers a little bit earlier than we did. But we got by with just two folks building stuff. Right? But you also learn a lot. You are kind of like more intimate with the product, even today, just because we have that history with it. Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: And I think one of the things that's really important to us early on was the data ownership. Right? We don't want to have all these different things talking to each other and not have a clear picture of what's going on. Right? Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: We don't want any black boxes. There's things that if we don't have access to all the data then we're just going to cut that service and we're going to build it ourselves. Stephanie: Got it. Very cool. Yeah. Great advice. So with a couple minutes left, we're going to move on to... it's called the lightning round. Brought to you by [Sales Force Commerce Cloud 00:47:37]. Sales Force Commerce Cloud. This is when I shoot a question over your way and you have a minute or less to say the first answer that comes to mind. Jerry: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Stephanie: Are you ready? Jerry: Okay. Stephanie: Dun, dun, dun, dun. We'll start with the easy ones first and then we'll end with the harder one. Sound good? Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: All right. What's up next for dinner? Jerry: Left-over Chinese food. Some more. Stephanie: Yep. What's up next that you're buying from Touch of Modern? Jerry: What am I buying next? Well, I'll have to see what comes up next. It changes everyday so I don't know yet. Stephanie: All right. Well, what did you just buy recently? Or what's your most recent purchase? Jerry: My most recent purchase was, funny enough, it is a cast-iron rice pot from [Le Creuset 00:48:22]. Stephanie: Okay. Have you tried it out yet? Jerry: No, it hasn't gotten here yet. It was very recent. This was probably... couple days ago. Stephanie: Cool. What's up next on Netflix or Hulu queue? Jerry: I actually don't have either. I don't even own [inaudible] TV. I don't watch a whole lot of stuff, actually. Stephanie: Okay. Hey, that's an answer. What's up next in your travel destinations after the environment calms down a bit? Jerry: I think an easy one from California would be Hawaii. I like to go there to relax and it's a relatively short trip. So I like to go there [inaudible 00:49:05]. Yeah. Stephanie: What's your favorite island there? Have you been? Jerry: Yeah. I go to Oahu fairly frequently. I really like Kauai, I've been there once to do a hike. Stephanie: Yeah. That's my favorite island with all the waterfalls there and the crazy hikes that- Jerry: [crosstalk] been to the weeping walls? Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: Yep. Oh, yeah. I want to go back though. We were only there for a couple days and I feel like there's so many different hikes and waterfalls and just things to see there. I mean, it's... Yeah, like a jungle. It's awesome. On to the hard question. What's up next for E-commerce pros? Jerry: E-commerce pros. Hmm. Man. What's next for the pros? I think, I mean, it's going to be adapting to the changes in customer behavior that are coming out of this. Whatever that is. I don't have a crystal ball for that one. Stephanie: Got it. Hey, that's an answer. All right, Jerry. Well, this has been a fun interview. For everyone who hasn't gone and checked out Touch of Modern, you should. It has really fun products on there. And yeah, thanks for coming on the show. Jerry: Thanks for having me.
Where is the line between company culture and just doing business? Even if it’s a little blurry, there has to be one. Right? After all, you can’t spare someone’s feelings at the expense of the entire company. To explore this paradox further, co-host Kate Marshall of Zestful catches up with Liz Ratto, the head of people at Cedar, Inc. The two discuss: Building a nurturing environment at a startup Navigating the reality of a startup while still catering to its employees Developing a culture that normalizes feedback, growth, and change The #Perks series on Crafting Culture is brought to you by Zestful. Zestful makes daily recognition and rewards a breeze with its consolidated and easy-to-use employee perks platform. To learn more, visit zestful.com/craftingculture. Listen to this and all our other Crafting Culture episodes with Apple Podcast, Spotify, or on our website.
Star Wars Episode IX, The Rise of Skywalker is finally here! 9 films all leading up to this moment, working its way all the way back to George Lucas' original Star Wars (A New Hope) to Disney's purchase of everything Star Wars in 2015. This is a spoiler free review and thoughts on the film so if you haven't seen the film yet you're safe to listen to this episode! Shaken Not Nerd is bought to you by the outstanding team at Incognito Comics! A new Star Wars prequel to the Rise of Kylo Ren is out now, and trust me if you're a Star Wars fan, or you were a little upset with how things have been treated, this is the book for you! A new Star Wars run of comics also comes out early 2020 that is set RIGHT AFTER the events of The Empire Strikes Back! (be sure to listen to Some Like it Slabbed to hear these reviews!) Our Spoiler discussion/review will release in 2 days time where we'll give our official scores!
This episode.....is all about Star Wars.....all about our deep anticipation of The Rise Of Skywalker. We also get Mr. Z's reaction RIGHT AFTER he gets out of his screening of the film......don't worry, there's the Movies Over Easy guarantee: #NoSpoilerEver.....we share some memories of the Skywalker saga as well.
I did an internet search and no listing with the problems I'm experiencing with my board! Seems my luck! BUT! They do have worldwide centers to fix technical problems! Still going to do a hard restart RIGHT AFTER the show ends...just to say I did! Hour two was superb inside this 100% Random Play month! Are you listening?@The Fiction - 08 Take Me I'm yours (instrumental) [Public Eye]Pamela Davis - I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa ClausJohnathan Pushkar - Don't Leave Me [Straighten Up] (Jem Records)Millie Courtney - Eleanor-RigbyPhyllis Johnson - Mr. CallahanEveret Almond - Have A Very Very Very Merry Christmas [Kool Kat Kristmas 3] (koolkatmusik.com)Joe Sullivan - 03 Secret Weapon [Growing Up Schlockstar] (Futureman Records)The Cherry Drops - We're So High [LIFE IS A BOWL OF CHERRY DROPS]Beyond Veronica - 1. IF YOU LOVE HER@Tobbe - Wingman (koolkatmusik.com)Richard Turgeon - Skippin' Christmas [Kool Kat Kristmas 3] (koolkatmusik.com)Luck,Now - band - 02 Imaginary Friends [Enough For Now]Shake Some Action! - 12 Escape [CATCH THE SUN]Dennis Gurley - Might Fall In Love Tonight [5 Spot]Cotton Mather - the-book-of-too-late-changes [The Book Of The I-Ching]The Decibels - Christmas Wish [Kool Kat Kristmas 3] (koolkatmusik.com)David Brookings & The Average Lookings - 06 Rainbow Baby [Scorpio Monologues]The Turnback - 11. A Long Way Home [ARE WE THERE YET?]Crab Dance GIs - Instant Music (Just Add Water)
Hey folks, we are officially back from our quick little vacation! We had an awesome show with the usual Outcasts except Kyle had to take off RIGHT AFTER we did our Patron show so if you wanted a little more Kyle in your life this week you really need to check out this week’s Patreon […]
Cutting Through the Matrix with Alan Watt Podcast (.xml Format)
--{ "Slick Formalities of New Normalities: People Praise their Flags Routinely Day by Day, While their National Values Go the Opposite Way." © Alan Watt }-- Mentioned in a Talk in 2001, Right After 9/11 that The Hardest Thing for an Individual would Be to Hang on to Your Sanity - Depopulation Agenda - Everything Normal was to Be Turned Upside Down - Bush Sr. Speech about New World Order Coming into View - Even Thoughts to Be Banned; U.N. Talked about Self-Policing - Socialistic Societies, Privileges Rather than Freedom - Politicians; Psychopaths Gravitate Towards Power and Applause - PNAC Group, The Warhawks; John Bolton - General Wesley Clark - Christianity Could Never Exist Alongside a Post-Modern Society where Experts are Running the Show and Decide the Value of Life - Experts in White Coats or Business Suits - Entertainment is a Massive Business - Scientists Promoted as Stars - Your Given Your Leaders, Pied Pipers - Nothing in this System is Left to Chance - Orwell, Entertainment would Be Cranked Out by Machines - Reshaping Man, Woman, Marriage, the Value of Life - Situation Ethics - Trained to Eat Bugs Rather than Meat - Trained to Be a Victim; You're the Problem - The Unelected; After Margaret Thatcher Left Office She Talked about Now Belonging to an Organization of Former Leaders Who Get Things Done - Secret Circles Across the World; RIIA, CFR, Trilateral Commission - Much of the World has Looked to the U.S. as a Place where Rights Exist and the Ordinary Man Knew His Rights - United Nations Charter - Always Think for Yourself - You're Living in an Age of the End of Individuality - Rebellions versus Revolutions - Socialism in the USSR and Socialism in Germany and the U.K. - The Big Shift in Europe of the Industrial Revolution - Orwell on Linguistic Minimalism; Shrinking Dictionary of Words so No One Could Communicate Rebellion - All that Gave Meaning to Society has Been Destroyed - Constantly Working on the Minds of Young People - Crowding You into Cities - The Family is a Small Tribe - H.G. Wells wrote about the Destroying the Family Unit so Government Could Dictate Directly to the Individual Who Would have No One to Defend Him - What was Called Patriot Radio is Now Just Entertainment - Even in the 1990s, the Rest of the World would Listen to Americans Who Knew Their Rights and Demanded Them - Given the Same Slogans and Rhetoric but Everything has Turned 180 Degrees in the Opposite Direction - Thinly Veiled Propaganda on Behalf of Politicians - National Health Services - NHS Trusts Handing Over £205m a Year to the Government in Interest Payments as Debts Mount - Monopolization - Universal Health Care; Paying for Health Care across the World - Disabled 41-Year-Old Canadian Man is Euthanized After Funding for Home Health Care Runs Out - Academia Considers Cannibalism - 5G and Smart Cities - Report Pours Scorn over Google's Ideas for Toronto Smart City - UK, Marriage Rates Continue to Fall - Edward Snowden Prepares to Release Memoir - Media Blacks Out Roger Waters' Performance (Event Organized by Waters and John Pilger) in Defence of Assange - Pompeo: Iran Behind Attack on Saudi Oil Facilities - Visit www.cuttingthroughthematrix.com to Donate and Order. *Title and Dialogue Copyrighted Alan Watt - Sept. 15, 2019 (Exempting Music and Literary Quotes)
From Fired to Successful Online Business 3 in Months Kerry Egeler from Broken Arrow Oklahoma, founder and owner of The OKC TEE SHOP. Kerry’s background. Kerry was fired from his job just a few years ago and finally his brother in law ( an online marketing, business building coach ) said, “ now will you trust me and let me help you build your online business?”Kerry took the jump with a young child and one on the way he dove into building his online t-shirt business. Within a few months of OKC Thunder basketball his busienss was profitable. Kerry built his business with the help of his brother in-law with zero start up money. All online, all drop shipped product, no inventory. Just a website, social media accounts and his creativity designing Thunder themed t-shirts. Kerry’s biggest advantage over his competition is speed. If something happens at a Thunder game, someone tweets a quote, gets in the media whatever it is. Kerry can turn that into a t-shirt design and its live on the website within hours. For example the recent Baker Mayfield chugging a beer at that baseball game was on a t-shirt and online within hours. With the help of social media marketing, these t-shirts are on the market. Unlike his competition who have to print these designs, and have inventory at their store and online which takes weeks. Speed is the key. Today we thrive on speed, instant gratification is our drug. From Amazon Prime delivery in hours, ordering food, buying concert tickets. Speed is our favorite drug, we HATE waiting for more than we need to, when wifi is slow its the worst thing in the world! Right?After a few years Kerry as his online business down to a tee. (pun totally intended) He’s working on building online courses to show others how this can be done, how you can start your online business with zero start up money and have sales within hours. Great news for This is Oklahoma fans, our t-shirts will be up on the website www.okcteeshop.com available for purchase. If you want to learn more about Kerry’s business send him a message on Instagram @okcteeshop. Thanks for listening and as always, please leave a review 5* preferred. #thisisoklahomaMike
We enjoyed this Saturday afternoon relaxed chat with Catherine Deano, Co-Founder of Painting with a Twist. Cathy invited us to her beautiful French Quarters condo in New Orleans and we set up shop on her couch to record this RIGHT AFTER we shot a video for Franchisors.com. Be sure to check out that video as well. In this podcast we explore: -The PWT Founding Story -Technology -Differentiation of the brand -Advice to emerging founders (17:11) -A taste of New Orleans culture (21:30) -Get to know Cathy! You will really enjoy this segment. The questions Cathy answered are: (1) If you could go back in time, what one thing would you tell your teenage self? (2) When you were younger what is the one thing you wanted to be? (3) If you could only have 5 apps on your phone, what would they be? (4) What is something you would never do again? Follow Us On Facebook and LinkedIn: @MODRNbusiness @Zjfishman (insta too) @RyanThomasHicks (insta too) HUGE THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: SCORPION INTERNET MARKETING www.Scorpion.co/mb Named the #1 franchise marketing company in America by Entrepreneur Magazine, Scorpion delivers all-in-one solutions for franchise brands looking to defeat disjointed marketing and increase revenue. As a marketing partner, Scorpion assists franchises in the management of branding, website design, online listings, paid advertising, and more, eliminating the need for multiple vendors. To learn more, visit www.Scorpion.co/mb RPM: www.openmyfranchise.com Open for business - a simple term but a complex process; Let RPM help you. We are a real estate/project management firm whose main goal is to turnkey the opening process for both franchisees and franchisors. Let us manage the brokers, architects, contractors and other various vendors. Allowing you and your franchisees to focus on the training, marketing, and hiring. We save you on average 20% time and 17% total project cost. Check us out at www.openmyfranchise.com to see how we can help you Title Sponsor for the Summer Tour: Franchisors.com Audio Engineer: Ben Kliever
For our second movie review, we take a deep dive into psychological thriller High Life, directed by Claire Denis, with lead actor Robert Pattinson. First half of the episode is our prediction and our first thoughts of the movie from the trailer, second part of the episode is our RIGHT AFTER the movie thoughts, along with a funny anecdote. The last part is our final thoughts, meanings, and opinions of the whole movie. Have you seen this movie yet? If so, what did you think of it?
In today’s episode, you will hear how Satori after pushing for too long without rest, got sick. “The overwhelm, stress, the lack of sleep, and trying to juggle all the demands, was killing me.” Here are some of the awesome things you will hear in this episode: Find out how Satori because of his backstory can help his most successful clients go from stuck to unstuck, and how you can use this simple and powerful system in your business and personal life to thrive. Find out the secret to accelerated growth, freedom and wealth without overwhelm, without working harder and without spending more money. And see what successful entrepreneurs, pro athletes and experts have in common to achieve consistent and sustainable growth in the midst of outside demands. So listen here to find out what top leaders and teams are doing to remove unnecessary distractions… and win big. ---Transcript--- They’re stuck because they keep spinning their wheels. they got to stop spinning their wheels. Because the overwhelm is killing them. Hey what’s up everyone Satori Mateu here with a new episode of Halfass to Badass. A lot of clients come to us because they’re spending a lot of money on marketing, and development to grow and it’s either working really well and they just want it to work better and they want to optimize and move further, faster. But usually they’re spending a lot of money on training, development, hiring expensive consultants, and they’re using very tactical approaches hoping for it to work, but it’s usually not working that well anymore. Typically, the biggest issue is… they’re spinning their wheels. too many moving parts. They are overwhelmed. I remember when I first started building my elite consulting business.I wanted to grow quickly so I could build a strong brand and have my wife and kids at home. At the time I was trying make money online so I wouldn’t be constrained by location. I was buying into the laptop lifestyle fantasy and that it was going to be so easy. I was doing everything by myself. I really wanted my wife to be able stay home so she could do what she really wanted to do which was being a mom and be with our kids. I wanted to grow quickly so I could build a strong brand and have my wife and kids at home I was struggling because I wasn’t making any money online. All of our clients came through recommendation. I started a blog and after a while people started to contact me through my blog, asking me if they could work with me. I would get on the phone with them and I listened to what they were going through and if it felt like a good fit, they would become a client and I would start helping them. The problem was, the flow of clients was too far in between, (I mean, I did charge premium to work with so one client could sustain us for a couple of month) but still I felt like was on an income roller coaster. I was working all the time. When my family had amazing picnics on the beach in Malibu, I was working. Beautiful Sunday play times in the park. I was working. I felt I was slaving away without getting to enjoy my family. What made it feel even worse was that I had promised my wife the American dream. I had moved us from Sweden to the US away from her family and here I was not being able to live up to the promise, the dream I had painted for her. I felt like a failure as a husband, a failure as a dad. After pushing and pushing too long without rest, I got sick. The overwhelm, stress, the lack of sleep, trying to juggle all the demands I put on myself, was killing me. I had intense pain in my stomach, heartburn. Eye’s were burning cause I was up all night, but still waking up early because kids make noise. I went to doctors, had X.rays, they put tubes down my throat to check my intestines. They couldn’t find anything. Nothing was wrong. They couldn’t see anything. But I could feel it. Hitting the wall this way, had me suddenly question everything. I remember doing a tele-seminar to promote an event I was scheduled to do in Sweden, I was going to travel from the US. And I sold NOTHING! I was in so much pain. Luckily for me, I’m a smart man. I mean, I teach this stuff. I sat down and did an intervention on myself. I did the event I had been promoting to the people who had already bought tickets, it was a 3-day event. The moment I hit the stage the pain went away. I was home. It was me and the participants. That’s when it became crystal clear to me that the secret was “precision”. Precision is the key dominating your business. Precision, is the key to success in life, in business, to being a successful father, husband, a world influencer. I had forgotten what my strength was, what I loved, what I valued most. I had tried to do and be everything. I was trying to be the marketing department, sales department, customer service department, I was doing tech, copywriting, video editing, content creation. I was the talent delivering the content. And… trying to be a family man. Hello!!? It became very clear to me that if I wanted to be the best version of me, if I wanted to successfully grow my business and have a real impact in the world, I had to remove the friction. Remove distraction. I had to remove everything that was going to slow me down. This showed me that I had been overworking my brain and lost perspective of my true gift. I had missed what really would move the needle. I had bought into the illusion of multi-tasking, multi-focusing, and thinking if I did more I would achieve more. I had bought the lie (which a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners do) “You sleep when you’re dead” attitude. Hustle, Hustle Hustle, right? Wrong! I was just ineffective on multiple levels. I had the delusion, “I just need to push harder.” I also learned working with clients, giving people more knowledge, more skills to help them be successful, was not helping them. I had to help remove overwhelm, I had to simplify and take them out of the whirlwind and distractions and help protect their focus. You need to stop focusing on going wide and doing more, stop spinning a million plates in the air and start narrowing down your focus. Be like a sniper, and engage in precision. So I started looking at everything that would distract me, bog me down, overwhelm me, I asked myself, “What pulls me away from being efficient, what makes me unprofitable, what sucks my energy, what’s meaningless and not aligned with my values. And I wrote it down and started removing stuff. After I did that, I started making money again, started serving my clients better, and enjoyed my time with family without the guilt of thinking, “I’m not doing enough.” Suddenly, I moved faster, it accelerated my business, instead of slowing it down like I thought it would. I made a plan. My plan was to do this with other entrepreneurs and business owners, cause I noticed a lot of them were struggling with the same stuff. So I started a group with 12 entrepreneurs, doctors, and experts in multiple fields where I taught them how to accelerate their growth. Some of them started getting results right away. One of the women in the program 10X her income in 30 days. some were resisting to follow the lead, they insisting of doing it the old way, so I had to kick them out of the group. I initially started the group with the intention of doing it only for 90 days, but it was so cool to see the growth process I so extended it to a year. We created multiple best-selling authors, digital products that people could buy online, Coaching programs. A few completely changed the direction of their life, their careers… it was really really cool. I didn’t stop there. I then started implementing the work with all my other private clients. After that, I did it with larger companies to fine-tune sales and marketing processes, team building, growth strategies. And it was amazing to see how it worked with entrepreneurs, doctors, small and large business and even with families. But there was still a problem… Even after all that, things were still not perfect. Here’s what I mean… A lot of our clients were so stuck in their old ways of thinking And distracted, so caught in the whirlwind of other people’s demands, Business owners that wouldn’t respect their teams effort to stay focused, they’d just barge in and demand attention whenever they wanted. My badass Entrepreneurs would be bombarded with a million sales messages everyday, go to conferences and buy a bunch of stuff that sounded good but did not pan out to be what they thought it was, so they got stuck, looking busy and mistaking that for achievement. Even with their best of intentions they were trying solve their problem with an old way of thinking... I ended up getting so frustrated I decided to build a system (a timeless system) build on principles (because principle are very different than some cool tip or hack for the moment) I wasn’t interested in selling some new shiny thing. I wanted to genuinely help my clients in a way that would make it easy to support them in their growth both personally and professionally… We chose to call it Precision Based Growth I thought If I can create something that will remove friction, accelerate growth and put entrepreneurs and business owners in the driver seat of their business it would give them the life they want, the marriage they want, the family they want and ultimately leave the legacy they want. After almost 6 yrs in the making and investing every dollar ever made we created Precision Based Growth. I can now take any individual, any entrepreneur or business owner and in less than an hour know exactly with total certainty where they’re stuck, give them a precise roadmap on how to fix it, increase revenue and remove overwhelm and distractions from their life so they can be a highly functioning human being. Not saying this to brag. I initially created it for me, but after some deeper thought on why I got into this to begin with, what came to me was, “I want to end human suffering”. May sound like lofty goal, and I’m not stupid, thinking I’m going to do that on my own, but I want to give it my contribution, my best shot at it. I want to know I had a hand in some way. Right? After creating Precision Based Growth I was not only able to grow faster, let my wife continue to be a full-time mom, homeschool our kids, I’ve also been able to have a bigger impact in the world, because I can now move faster with more simplicity. Is this making sense? And in the end, all of this means I now have the freedom to hang with my family and not be dominated by all the craziness. Here’s the thing… In any market… with too many moving parts, nothing becomes important and everyone feels overwhelmed, overworked and stuck. As a result, growth stagnates. Imagine for a moment a target, with the bull’s eye in the center, so you got your target and you want to achieve all these important goals; more clients, more revenue, more profitability, strong team, decrease expenses, right? Important, but how do you stay focused when you have all these distractions, disruptions, and demands and you’re being pulled in all kinds of directions. You with me? You got phone calls, texts, social media, “You’ve got a minute” kinda questions. So if you’re literally trying to hit the target and you’re being pushed and knocked out of focused, how is that going to go? What are they odds, you’ll hit the target? Not very high. Here’s what’s going on… if you’re sales are down or stagnant. if you’re competitors are getting too close and your growth feels like it's plateauing... Probably, the reason why is because you’re spinning your wheels and have way too many moving parts. you’re stuck in the whirlwind of the day to day. (say something playful…maybe it’s more like tornado) Anyway… everybody’s focused in the center, the bull’s eye…right? they're like “hey we should grow faster, work harder, hustle more…” but they’re all scattered, chasing every new shiny idea. Of course, nobody likes to see that or admit it… but isn’t that true…? Which is more important here… staying focused on matters or trying to please everybody else’s demands… that’s right, focusing on what matters! If we know that staying focused on what matters is the key to accelerated growth doesn’t it make logical sense to remove unnecessary and disruptive moving parts? Of course it does! What would you rather have… a focused, deliberate and elite performing team that can produce predictable success or a scattered, unfocused team that's being reactive going after every new thing pulling for their attention? Clearly, we would much rather have focus and deliberate success, right? So, the question becomes… how do you accomplish that? The secret is called precision-based growth. (don’t worry about the word precision) It doesn’t mean… you have to be perfect or be micromanaging everything… it’s the complete opposite. precision gives you freedom, flexibility, it makes you playful and allows you to move faster and accelerate your growth and wealth. It’s not going to cost you more, rather reduce your cost. Here’s how it works… Phase ONE: Get Clear. Is all about clarity. We identify your core values and most relevant key targets that are aligned with what you’re after and then we ask the question that is really, really important... If every area in my business remained the same what ONE area would accelerate the growth of my business most? Then go a little bit deeper… we say, “ok, what are all the key activities that are distracting, disrupting and demanding my time that if removed would make me more productive, make me more money and provide me with the most energy? And finally, we ask, what do we need to either eliminate, delegate, outsource or schedule so we can focus and move more efficiently? When you have the answer to these questions, you use those answers to slim down, remove and simplify your business and your daily activities so you can accelerate your growth with precision. Same with your personal life. Phase Two in Precision Based Growth is Execute: Execution...How do you implement the most effective, most efficient messaging, packaging, positioning, offers, the most precise, effective sales process that guarantee you best buyers to know you are the most trusted advisor, the most preeminent authority and go to expert in your field. We want to make sure you and your team dominate every conversation, interaction, and help answer you best buyer’s objections and become masters of closing new business. This is why, It’s critical you protect your time and have your team do the same. Now, how do we strategically and tactically start implementing the most precision-based activities? It’s very simple… Once we strip away all unnecessary, unwanted and low-productive and unprofitable activities we move into… Phase Three. OPTIMIZE: Here’s where most companies and individuals fail. You go to be relentless in engaging your team (or yourself, depending on what you’re wanting to achieve) and Develop deliberate habit-forming activities to make sure you and your team are constantly elevating your thinking, skills and processes to achieve consistent and sustainable growth in the midst of outside demands. It’s a very very simple concept. And it’s extremely powerful. Here’s what’s great. Most of your competitors (actually 80%) don’t even know their goals and their teams have no clue. They’re just caught in the whirlwind, being reactive and doing the day to day stuff… but the ones having the biggest growth are doing this… This is where the money is. If you don’t want to burn out yourself or your team, you want to do this. You see, your competition is stuck in the storm fighting to keep their head above water... If you want to, really grow your business and really outperform your competition. the money is in the bull’s eye, the money is right there in the center… focused on precision-based growth. The leader and teams that are doing everything with precision and narrowing down their focus, stripping away all the fluff and unnecessary distractions… win big. Listen, if you don’t simplify your business, if you don’t simplify your life, and focus on precision growth you’re guaranteed to complicate it and stagnate. Remember; Precision Based Growth equals Exponential Growth. I hope you found today’s episode helpful and you enjoyed it as much as i enjoyed making it for you… if you know somebody that might find this helpful please feel free to share this episode, share this podcast… If you loved it , I surely would appreciate a 5-star review. Until next time stay focused and keep optimizing your business for massive growth. Talk to you in the next episode...
Host Ali Nazar interviews Shaun Tai, Executive Director for Oakland Digital, on the organization's innovative approach to bringing tech and design jobs to underserved populations in the East Bay.Transcript:Ali Nazar:You're listening to KALX Berkeley, 90.7 FM, University of California and listener-supported radio, and this is Method to the Madness, coming at you from the Public Affairs department here at KALX, celebrating the innovative spirit of the Bay Area. I'm your host, Ali Nazar, and today with me I have Shaun Tai on the phone. He's the Executive Director of Oakland Digital. Hey, Shaun, how's it going?Shaun Tai:Hey, what's up, man? How are you doing?Ali Nazar:Pretty good. Really appreciate you joining us today.Shaun Tai:Oh, man. I'm happy to be here, man, and spread the knowledge. Spread that inspiration. I'm ready.Ali Nazar:Okay. Great. I always start this program with the same question, because you are a founder of an organization, and founders usually come to the decision to put so much energy into something like starting an organization, and dedicating their blood, sweat, and tears to it because they see a problem in the world. Tell us, what is the problem statement that Oakland Digital is trying to solve?Shaun Tai:Communities of color, specifically community college students, lack the same opportunities afforded to privileged communities. We focus specifically on artists of color, predominantly women of color, that are looking to break into a design career. Our problem really stems from, honestly, my own story of not quite the community college level, but the state level, of Cal State-East Bay, which I love. The teachers are doing a great job. They're teaching software. But they don't have the resources, and to be honest, the time, to be like, "Yo, check this out. Here's what they do at Twitter. Here's what they do at Facebook. Here's what they do at the local agency level." That's what Oakland Digital does, is we take those students and get their foot in the door, of not just tech, but business, non-profits, and some really cool creative agencies.Ali Nazar:Cool. Okay. You alluded to a little bit about your background and how you got to this. Can you tell us a little bit about you and where you come from?Shaun Tai:Man, well I come from the Bay Area, man. As anyone listening knows, the Bay is super real, authentic, dope, to be honest. It's just real. I've always wanted to do something real with my life. My dad passed away when I was two months old. I was raised by a single mother. Very small family. Born and raised by an entrepreneur. A woman entrepreneur of color. That was just the ultimate inspiration, from a work-ethic standpoint, of seeing my mom work seven days a week in Oakland, running a furniture design studio. Just seeing that work-ethic of not just her going to work, and showing up early, but coming back home and cooking for me and my brother.Then, after she cooked dinner, sketching, so 10:00 p.m., 11:00 p.m., and faxing those designs to a factor in Hong Kong to just create some dope furniture. Create things. That mix of creativity, that mix of hard work, really passed on to me, and that's what gave me that spirit of not just creating, but doing something with meaning and purpose.In my mom's case, it was making her customers happy with some great furniture. For me, it was how do I give back to the community with things that I love? Creativity, technology, community, social good, social impact. Really, my mom gets full kudos and credit for being my inspiration.Ali Nazar:Nice. She sounds like an amazing woman.Shaun Tai:She is.Ali Nazar:She put that idea into your brain, and that spirit into you, but what about your training. Did you go have another job or a career before starting Oakland Digital?Shaun Tai:Yeah, man, I'm, dude, I'm glad you asked. I know we were talking offline about music, and how powerful music is. In 2006, my partner Ray Luv, who's actually a Bay Area rap legend ... I grew up on Mac Mall, [inaudible] Tupac's music. We got together and created a YouTube channel when it wasn't hot. YouTube was cool in 2006, but it wasn't what it is now, with people getting billions of hits.We created a show called Pushin' the Bay TV, where we chronicled the Bay Area hip-hop and rap history. Interviewing people from Shock G, Dru Down, Spice 1, Too Short, E-40, The Jacka, rest in peace, and all of these Bay Area rap legends who did not have an online presence, right? But we were the first to say, "Hey, why don't we do this and celebrate the beautiful rap history in the Bay?"Ray Luv and I, we would just go around and interview people. We went down to L.A., East Coast. What I found was how powerful technology was. Specifically the YouTube platform. In one year, we received around 14 million views, and for that time, that was groundbreaking, and ground-shattering. What I found from talking to the young people was how influenced they were by these videos.But what I learned about the game were some of the things that were, I don't want to say negative, but definitely not the things I wanted to promote. After a year of success, and things were going up, I actually decided to give it up, and to cancel, because I wanted to do something for social good. Not that it wasn't powerful. Not that it wasn't getting impressions, but I thought, "How do we use tech for good?"That very simple core of "tech for good" is what birthed the Oakland Digital spirit of tech for good, and then, of course, myself being a designer and a creative, "creative tech for good," right? Those concepts birthed the idea of how do we help artists become professionals? Just like that young 13 year-old watching that YouTube video, how do I not just consume this technology, but create something cool, too, and then take those skills to get a career?That's the birth of OD. Oakland Digital.Ali Nazar:Wow, man. That's such a powerful story. Thank you for sharing it. We're speaking to Shaun Tai, who is the Executive Director of Oakland Digital, here on Method to the Madness on KALX Berkeley.Not a lot of people would have the guts to leave a burgeoning career like that, and take a left turn and follow their passion, so that's definitely commendable. I'd love to hear about, after you got to that point of understanding that, "Okay, I want to do something for social good? Creative tech for good." How did you then formulate the idea of how Oakland Digital would actually be an organization pursuing that goal?Shaun Tai:Yeah, I mean, I did gloss over a few details, like one of the biggest things that I learned while doing Pushin' the Bay TV was, there was an event at Stanford. I know you guys are rivals, but Stanford. Shout out to them, too. I met MC Hammer, Chamillionaire, and Mistah Fab, and Quincy Jones III, with Ray Luv and Mac Mall. They're friends. Everyone in the rap industry is friends.When I met MC Hammer, that day, he was introducing this crazy idea called Twitter. This is 2006, 2007. It was this thing that, in 140 characters, you could write about what you're doing. The whole crowd was confused, because here are effectively three rappers that are using this thing called Twitter, and in the crowd, I think very few people were.That's when I learned like, yo, tech doesn't have to be disseminated by the top-down. It can be actually by the community-up. After that day, actually, that same day, I went up to MC Hammer, and I'm like, "Yo, I'm here with Ray Luv and Mac Mall, who you know. Much respect. I love everything from your music career, but also your entrepreneurship. How do I get in touch?" Because he's like, "I love Oakland. I love the A's. I love technology."I tweeted him that night, ironically, I tweeted him, and from that year exchange, back and forth, we became friends. He's still an advisor to Oakland Digital, to this day. Between finding mentors, advisors, early on, to finding people that believed in the vision. Board of directors, co-founders, people that just believe in what you're doing.Then, of course, here's the big thing. Legal. After MC Hammer's like, "Yo, I'm with that idea of tech for good." I was walking down, and this is a true story, I was walking down Broadway, and I see City Hall, in Oakland. I literally said, "I'm just going to walk into City Hall and find out how to start a non-profit."I remember going up inside, checking in with the security guard, going up to the ninth floor, I believe. I met with this lady named Kathy Littles. I don't know if she's still around, but shout-out to Kathy Littles. I said, "I want to start a non-profit that's tech for good." She was like, "What is tech?" She literally said, "What is tech?" Because you have to remember, at this time, '08, right? "Tech" didn't exist in Oakland the way it does now. That was 10 years ago. Nobody even understood the word "tech."I said, "Well, it's these companies like Google, and Facebook, and how do we use that for good?" She was like, "Oh, okay. Well, here's a stack of contacts." Literally probably 10 pieces of paper, front-to-back, of non-profit people. "Contact all of them, then get back to me." Literally, I looked at it like, "Yo, this is crazy." I asked, "Well, how do I get paid?"She laughed. She said, "Non-profits, you've got to fundraise." I was like, "How often?" She laughed again. She said, "You've got to fundraise every day. Every week." I just didn't get the concept, coming from a for-profit background. I literally took that stack of papers, but I found one piece of paper where I started. I just called everyone. I just called everyone. Some had phone numbers, some had e-mails.Then I finally e-mailed one person. She's an artist. She's the only person that got back to me from probably a week of phone calls and e-mails. She said, "I have an art non-profit. Now it's defunct, but a guy named Don Tamaki, who is the," I think she used the term "godfather of Asian law. He helped us get started, but he's too big for you, Shaun. He won't get back to you."I remember cold-calling this law firm, Minami Tamaki LLP, shout-out to them. They're still in the SF. The receptionist picked up, and I said, "Hey, I'm Shaun. I'm just doing a cold call. Could I talk to Don Tamaki?" Just like wide-eyed, didn't know what the hell I was doing. He didn't pick up, but an assistant picked up and said, "Okay, I just shared that you want to start this non-profit. He said come in." On this date and that time, and I go in, and I think I'm wearing jeans and a shirt. I pitched this. There was two gentlemen next to him, who I found out later is his son and his son's friend, who go to Cal, by the way. They were interning with him for the summer.I threw this pitch about "tech for good." Completely vague. It was so bad, I don't even know what it was, but it was really bad. But he saw that passion of helping people with tech for good, and with design. Just taking everything that I cared about and presenting that, right? At the end, he was like, "Shaun, I'm going to help you get incorporated. Get your bylaws. Build your board. I'm going to put my son on this project."Really, that combination of passion, that combination of timing. There's a huge one for your listeners. Things have a time period and time relevance. You know what I'm saying? You can't come up now and start the next Snapchat. That's already over, right? Timing-wise, Oakland was not hit with tech yet. Timing-wise, Don Tamaki had his son interning, right? All of this things had, timing-wise, MC Hammer's talking about Twitter. You know what I'm saying? All of these things just were like a storm of positivity, and just relentlessness, to do something very positive for the community. Right?After that, he helped get us incorporated. We got incorporated July of 2009. And yo, now we're in Downtown Oakland, and we have benches, billboards, bus ads, helped almost 5,000 people to-date. We're just doing big things.Ali Nazar:That's awesome. Well, it's a great story, and I think a really great example of there is a serendipity to the formation of an organization like this. There's the timing, but there's also the passion. The passion that bubbling up from things that have happened in your life, is another thing that depends upon timing, and so-Shaun Tai:Right.Ali Nazar:We're speaking with Shaun Tai today. He's the Executive Director of Oakland Digital, on Method to the Madness here on KALX Berkeley. July 2009, and we're sitting here in 2018. It's been almost 10 years, so just tell me about that journey. You got some momentum there. You got your organization set up. But it's not a clear product or service yet, so how did you get to where you are today, with all of those numbers you just quoted. 5,000 people helped.Shaun Tai:Oh, yeah. I'm so glad that you said that there's no clear purpose yet. I think what's wrong with now is that there's almost an abundance of resources. Speaking about UX and UI. You can download a mobile-UI kit and build a start-up right now, right? But I think what's so dope about that time is there was so much exploration to be done. Right? There weren't solutions, there were questions.Think about that. There were questions, not solutions, at that time. The fact that people believed in the vision, at that time, says something. We had no product, and I talked to one of my advisors at the time. He was only 19 or 20, but he had worked at HP and AOL at 14 years-old. He's just a genius dude. His name is Jordan.I was like, "Jordan, yeah, we're a non-profit now. What should we start doing?" He was like, "Shaun, what are you doing today?" I'm like, "Nothing." "Let's go downtown. Let's pick one block in Oakland." I think it was 14th Street in Oakland. "Let's just go up to every single small business there and ask them what do they need with design and marketing." Right?I remember going to our first business, a small business owned by a Black woman, and she was like, "Oh, my God. I was praying to God, like literally, that someone would come and help me." She was like, "I can't find my phone line." Out of everything in the world, right? "I can't find my phone line." And we [crosstalk]-Ali Nazar:You guys were a gift from God, huh? [crosstalk]-Shaun Tai:No, no. I mean, it was like, she just was like, you know how it is, you're sitting there every day, no one comes through the doors. It's desperation, right?Ali Nazar:Yeah. Yeah.Shaun Tai:We did that, and we were like, "How do people find you?" She was like, "Yelp." That's it, it was like, "Yelp." We literally claimed her business on Yelp. We hooked that up, took photos of her studio, helped clean up the room. That was our first client. Then word of mouth, just going to businesses, talking to students.Really, between helping these small businesses, predominantly women-owned businesses, just like my mom, and then helping local students, Laney College, we were like, "Great. We're helping these two different groups of people. How do we connect them?" Right? Get those young people skills, build up their resume, their portfolios.It's not just pairing them with non-profits and businesses, but solving problems, right? What we ended up doing was start building out programs. One's called Inspire Oakland, where we go to community colleges, and state-level colleges, and we say, "Do you want your artwork on a billboard?" The whole room says, "Yes." Right? We're getting them inspired to have a professional career.Right? Because at school, you're like, "Okay, I know PhotoShop. I know Illustrator. But how do you apply that to anything real?" We, effectively, with Inspire Oakland, are the clients for these students. They're designing billboards for us to spec. Literally, commercial-spec billboards, bleeds, color, visual hierarchy, following the creative brief, going through multiple revisions, iterations of designs. That's what gets the students really, really excited about their careers.We only pick six winners, and those are the winners you see up all over Oakland right now, buses, benches, and billboards. But the question that we ask all of the students is, "Do you want to be an apprentice at Oakland Digital?" Once the billboard competition ends, while the billboards go up, we select, from around 70-80 students, a cohort of 10-12 apprentices. Those are the students that, yo, once they get through Oakland Digital, they're ready for hire. That's what we're doing right now. We have 10 apprentices learning UX. These are raw artists that are super talented with pencil and pen, but not so much the digital space, right? The reason we pick the tech space as the formats and the learning environment is that those are the highest-paying jobs. Now, here's the thing, brother: we're not telling them to get tech jobs. In fact, I'm very proud that a lot of them don't want to get tech jobs. However, the mindset of design-thinking, the mindset of design sprints, the mindset of creating products, of launching [tings], notice I said "tings," not "things." Those are the same tings you need to be successful in the non-profit world, opening a small business. I was so proud when we were at eBay with the UX designers, and we have super-exclusive events. We're at Twitter, Salesforce, Google, Google.org every Wednesday. They're in the tech world, and these professionals ask, "What do you want to do after this apprenticeship?"I'm so happy to say 80% are like, "Do my own ting. Help our community." That's the answer I want, right? We're using tech as an educational platform, as a learning platform, to get those skills to game up, to level up, but the goal for us is how do we give back to our communities? Tech for good. Oakland Digital. Holla.Ali Nazar:Wow. Wow. So much going on there, what you just said, and really impressive how it's come from that. You founded it with passion, with not necessarily the concrete of what the programs are going to be, and now you have so many different programs. I have a couple questions about that. One is, in a cohort of, what is it? 70 or so students-Shaun Tai:Yeah.Ali Nazar:... and they're getting to be up on billboards, and whatnot, where's the funding sources coming for the non-profit right now? Is it all through, is it earned income from you guys selling services?Shaun Tai:Yeah, and I actually, I want to touch upon that, for anyone listening. What I hear from students a lot is, "I want a work-life balance." That's one. The second thing is, "I want to start my own business." My honest answer is, "If you want a work-life balance, do not start your own company." I want to make that very clear.Ali Nazar:[crosstalk].Shaun Tai:If you want a work-life balance, do not start your own company. Work for someone, go there at 10:00, go home at 5:00. You know what? Props to anyone that wants to do that. But just don't get it twisted that you can do both. I think you need to make that decision early on in your career, not later.Ali Nazar:[crosstalk].Shaun Tai:If you are ... How do you feel about that, brother?Ali Nazar:Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. You can't have everything. They're all good things, but some of them are mutually exclusive. That's what you're saying, and I agree.Shaun Tai:Absolutely. I'll start there, and I will say that for the first three, four years at Oakland Digital, I received zero dollars. I had a six-month gig at Facebook. I had a five-year gig doing marketing for the former Chief of Science at Amazon. Shout-out to Andreas Weigend, who teaches at Berkeley. I had all of these part-time jobs to pay the bills, but I realized that if I don't give up everything for one, I'll be good at few things, terrible at most of them, and not really great at one. Right?I found that what's the one that I would call my baby? I was like, "That's OD. Oakland Digital." What happened was, I dumped everything, kept OD, and that next year, which was 2015, Google funded us. To your point, Google.org funded Oakland Digital, because they saw us as one of the only groups in the Bay Area really using tech in creativity to empower overlooked talent, specifically communities of color. I was really proud that Google saw that vision.When we got that three-year grant from Google.org, shout-out to Justin, Adrian, [inaudible], and Chelsea. They saw that we were talented. We were raw. We were grassroots. We were making an impact, but we just needed some funding to make big tings happen. The question that we were addressing that they wanted to fund, the solution, was Bridgegood.com. It's a platform called BridgeGood, that connects talent to amazing opportunities.Right now, if you're an artist, you don't have an online portfolio, you can go to Bridgegood.com, you sign up. By the way, we don't sell your data. We're not making profit. It's a completely not-for-profit platform. You can sign up, get a free portfolio. You can attend VIP events, including working out of Google every Wednesday, going to cool places like LinkedIn, design studios, even small businesses. That's the way that we wanted to scale Oakland Digital, in a very organic way, because everything that you sign up for, we'll be there. We'll also introduce you to some key connects. That's our biggest funding partner, is Google.org, but I would say the majority of our funding, in terms of year-round, is just ordinary people. Like, "Yo, I just saw your bus ad. I think it's dope. How do I make a contribution?" Things like $50. $100.Another thing I'll say is, if you're trying to start a non-profit to make a living, or get money, I would also say don't do that. It's not necessarily rewarding financially, and I would say do it because you actually care about that, the mission, the impact. The non-profit world is equally as cutthroat as the business world. Everyone's fighting over the same funding. I just happened to be very lucky to have an amazing team around me that really cares deeply about the art community, but also about successful designers, and really getting involved in the tech world in a meaningful way. When I say "successful designers," I mean "making money from doing something you love," right? We all say that. We all hear it. But it is possible, but you do need to feel uncomfortable in the sense that you might hate tech. In the Bay, a lot of people do, but you still need to understand it, explore it, and break it down. Right? You don't want to just be ignorant towards it. You want to actually understand it, and see what makes it tick. Because we can take those same concepts and make non-profits blow up. I think that Oakland Digital is one of those examples of how do we use tech for good, and utilize those resources? Not just money, but talent, too. We have a lot of volunteers from the tech world. And give back to the community in real, deep, meaningful ways?Ali Nazar:Wow, so that's awesome that you guys had Google as a benefactor, and I'm sure not just the money that they gave you, but the other doors that are opened are plentiful. We're speaking with Shaun Tai, he's Founder and Executive Director of Oakland Digital, right here on Method to the Madness on KALX Berkeley.Give us a little bit of a taste of what is the scope of it now? You went on this journey, it sounds like, almost 10 years ago.Shaun Tai:Yeah.Ali Nazar:How many employees? How many students have you had? Give me some of the breadth of this thing.Shaun Tai:Yeah, no. One of the things that I learned about the non-profit world, I sit on the grants panel for the Cultural Arts Program, and we just distribute money to artists, and we distribute money to non-profits. Last year, so I've been doing it two years in a row, for the City of Oakland. I've been noticing how much non-profits are struggling. A lot of the non-profits were in debt. What I noticed was non-profits are paying staff full salaries, because they should get paid full salaries. However, it's hurting their impact, right? Let me give you an example. Those four years that we were figuring out what we were doing, and making an impact, I don't think I deserved pay at that time, because I was still learning, right? I think that it's keeping that lean, agile methodology of how do you run as lean as possible, with as much impact as possible? I feel that the non-profit world needs a shake-up to think that way. Because if non-profits are just, quite honestly, fundraising to pay staff, that doesn't equate to community impact. You know what I'm saying?Ali Nazar:Yep.Shaun Tai:I don't have the answer, other than what I said earlier about "How do we take some of the things that start-ups do?" Right? Contractors, and paying people per-project. Compensating them what they're worth, but maybe on a contract or project basis, to get goals accomplished, right? And build some cool products, launch some cool things, the same way a start-up would do in the tech world.That, to me, I think that mindset, the growth mindset, is what the non-profit world may be lacking right now. But I do see things improving. I do see non-profits using design-thinking methodologies, and design sprints, and things that we in the tech world normally do to launch cool stuff.One example is, on BridgeGood, we actually give our students the experience of working with engineers and becoming UX designers by working on the platform itself. They gain, because they don't have to spend $15,000 for a boot camp, and they have a portfolio piece that's actually tangible. That's a way where both sides can win, right? The student can gain experience, build a cool platform, but at the same time, they can build their own career, and impact the community.Long story short, I think the non-profit world just needs to rethink how they spend money. Rethink, this is a good example, when we as non-profits apply for a government grant, which we don't even do that, you're tied in. Let's say you get a $1 million grant. Sometimes, you'll be doing more work than that $1 million, in terms of you'll run out of money. I've seen non-profits go under that way.How do we just rethink non-profits? How do we rethink and re-imagine the way non-profits run? Grants? Grant cycles, you're applying for a grant a year in advance. I don't know about you, brother, but every month for us changes. Do you know what I'm saying?Ali Nazar:Yeah, I mean-Shaun Tai:How can you apply a year in advance? These are the things that, about the non-profit world have, these confuse me. I don't understand why they do things the way they've been doing them for 100 years, when society's changed.Ali Nazar:Yeah, I think you're right on to something there. I have participated in the non-profit world, as well. That's why I asked the question around earned income, because that's ultimately what gets you sustainability as an organization, is that you don't have to rely on anybody else.Shaun Tai:Right.Ali Nazar:But you guys are in an interesting position, because you do have a product or a service you can provide, but monetizing that's a different question. It's a very challenging, I think, question, and one that I think many people are trying to answer right now.Shaun Tai:Right, and so, the impact that we've generated from BridgeGood is, we have a calculation of how do students get a job in design and/or tech? We've boiled it down to these three things: education, whether it's a BA or an AA. Two, some sort of apprenticeship or internship, and then help with their resume or portfolio. The portfolio is like 90% of getting a job in design. We figure if we can help a student build all four of those, it's a 90% likelihood that they'll get employed in some entry-level design position. What is the impact of that, right? Times, right now, we have 5,000 users on BridgeGood. We calculated roughly 300 have obtained some type of entry-level work. That times between 20,000 and 30,000, that's a lot of impact. But now to your point about-Ali Nazar:[crosstalk].Shaun Tai:Yeah, I know. It's super dope. It's super dope. When we just did a study of going back seven years on LinkedIn, of all of the students that have been through our program. We've had people get jobs at Yahoo!, Apple, YouTube, local non-profits, which I was super happy to see. That's really the impact. There's no quick solve.I mean, think about your career, right? You're like, "I've been in this for eight years." You and I, we're kind of a rare breed, where I think people growing up now, they just expect jobs right away. If there's one thing that I have learned, there's no free handouts. You've got to pay your dues. I feel-Ali Nazar:Wow. Shaun, I ... Sorry. Go ahead.Shaun Tai:Yeah. Nah, nah. I just feel like that's what we've got to get organizations to understand. Be committed. Stay committed, and keep doing things for good.Ali Nazar:Yeah, and I think following your passion, which you've certainly done. Oakland Digital is a great asset to the community. We have about a minute left, and I always like to close organizational founders, like you, with the same question. If everything went perfectly for Oakland Digital over the next five years, where will it be?Shaun Tai:Yeah, where would we be? We'd have a 15,000 square-foot building, with the ground space leased out, for some revenue. Then we would have a designer residence program, where we could facilitate, and make sure that the artists going through our program would actually be employed. 100%. 100% success rate, and really seeing the whole Bay Area respect artistry and creativity. Also, also be the Mecca of non-profits for the rest of the world. To be like, "Yo, the Bay Area has the best non-profits. BridgeGood Oakland Digital. Holla."Ali Nazar:Nice. Nice. All right. I'm so behind that. It's very interesting, also, that you added real estate to that vision, because it's like with-Shaun Tai:You've got to.Ali Nazar:... the housing costs the way they are, non-profits have to own a piece of the land, or else they're not going to be able to survive. [crosstalk]-Shaun Tai:I'm telling you, brother. I'm telling you brother, hey, and I appreciate what you're doing, because a lot of people behind-the-scenes do not get that credit. Thank you for what you're doing for the community. Let's keep pushing this, inspire the Bay Area together, man. Let's do it.Ali Nazar:Thanks, Shaun. Well, you've been listening to Shaun Tai. He's the Executive Director of Oakland Digital. To learn more about them, you can go to oaklanddigital.org. Any other ways to contact you, Shaun?Shaun Tai:Bridgegood.com. If you want to get a free portfolio and kick it, we can hang out. Let's do it.Ali Nazar:Cool, okay. That's how you get ahold of Shaun. This has been Method to the Madness on KALX Berkeley, 90.7 FM. I'm your host, Ali Nazar. Thanks for listening, everybody, and have a great Friday.Shaun Tai:Peace. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In this episode we are talking about our remote work tools that enable our distributed team across the world to collaborate, design, and build software. Throughout the episode, Todd, Ken, and Jamon touch on their favorite tools—from Slack, Zoom, and Google Sheets—why they chose them, and the ways they have added custom features to really make the remote experience special. Show Links & Resources Slack Zoom G Suite BlueJeans Screenhero RealtimeBoard InVision Trello Airtable Shush Dropbox Bigscreen VR Taking the Pain Out of Video Conferences by Ken Miller Episode Transcript CHRIS MARTIN: The topic at hand today is remote tools, and all of the different ways that you have built a remote company. Where do you even start when you're thinking about what tools to pick when you're going remote? KEN MILLER: This is Ken Miller, by the way. It happened very organically for us. To be honest, I don't know that we could've done this company this way before Slack. Because the tools that came before, Hipchat and IRC and Yammer, even though I worked there. Sorry, Yam-fam. They just didn't quite do it. Right? They didn't quite create the online atmosphere that we need to work the way that we do. Does that sound accurate to you, Todd? I feel like once we found Slack, we were like, "Holy crap, this is epic!" TODD WERTH: I think there's a few alternatives. Hipchat, at the time, wasn't good enough. There were a few alternatives we investigated. I would like to mention at the beginning of this ... This is Todd Werth, by the way. I would like to mention at the beginning, I imagine that a lot of companies in this podcast will need to be paying us an advertising fee. Like Slack. JAMON HOLMGREN: We actually adopted Slack before we were remote. We had ... I think we were using Google Hangouts or something. Or whatever of the myriad Google chats there are out there. They have like 12 apps. We were using something else in person, and then we started using Slack organically right when it first came out. TODD: Sorry about that noise you all heard. That was me throwing up a little bit in my mouth when you said "Google Hangouts". (laughter) KEN: We'll talk about video-chat in a minute. JAMON: By the way, this is Jamon Holmgren. It was ... Initially, we jumped onboard. They did a really good job marketing themselves. We had used Hipchat a little bit, but it just wasn't what we expected. We started using Slack. That was in early 2014, I think it was? I don't think it's a coincidence that within a year and a half we ended up going remote. I think that was one of the enabling tools. We got used to it in the office, but it enabled remote work. TODD: To talk about chat apps or chat services is important, but on a more general standpoint, I would say how you approach it is actually try 'em and do it. A lot of companies seem to just use whatever is available and not look for optimum solutions. If trying three or four different chat systems is too onerous for you, that's probably the wrong attitude, in my opinion. KEN: You think, "don't settle". Don't assume that the first thing that you try is the only thing, and then conclude that remote isn't gonna work because the tool that you tried sucks. JAMON: We tried a lot of tools at ClearSight, before the merger. We tried ... I can't even name them all, to be honest. Part of it is because I like ... I'm a gadget guy, I like to try new things and see how it goes. There was actually a lot of skepticism around Slack because they're just yet another tool that they had to log into and pay attention to. "We already had the email, so do we really need this." It was kinda funny, when I went back and looked at our inner-company email, just tracked ... I think I used the "everyone@clearsightstudio.com" or something email address to track how often we were using it for company communications. It just dropped off a cliff after Slack. The amount of email, the volume of email that was flying around went way, way, way down. In fact, I remember we used to send GIFs in the email threads, and stuff. There were elements of the culture that we have today in Slack going on in email threads. Slack was just so much more well-suited to that. That actually came about very organically. We had tried a bunch of different things. We tried Slack, and it just picked up steam, picked up steam, picked up steam. TODD: I don't ... I'm not even exaggerating, I don't believe I've ever sent an email to anyone at Infinite Red internally. I don't think so. KEN: Unless it's a forward from someone external. TODD: Correct. I think there's people on our team who probably don't check their email very often because they don't have a lot of -- KEN: Yeah, if you don't do sales or any kind of external outreach -- TODD: Yeah. That was a sticking point a few times, when people were sending out the emails, and we had to ... They were wondering why people weren't responding, it's because the variety of people never check their email. JAMON: It is funny, because email does still, it is still a tool that we use for remote communication with outside clients, especially people first coming to us. But as soon as we can, we get them onto Slack because we've found that that level of communication is the least friction, it's very seamless. Slack is definitely featuring very centrally in our remote-tool story, for sure. TODD: Rather than just ... I'm sure a lot of people out there use Slack. If you don't, give it a try. But rather than just gushing on Slack, I do wanna say that the important part here is we did go through a lot of different chat services. You have to give 'em some time. At first, for example ... We do love Slack, but at first it didn't seem that different. There wasn't a bullet list that's like, "Oh, this has feature X", it was a bunch of little, subtle things that made it work especially well for us. KEN: Part of the meta-point there, is you have to treat your tools really seriously. Right? Google and Amazon and all these big companies, any well-funded start-up, whatever, they're gonna lavish a lot of attention on making an office that works for them. Right? TODD: Mm-hmm (affirmative). KEN: They're gonna create an office environment very thoughtfully. I've been to a lot of these offices. A lot of them are very thoughtfully considered. Right? They're designed to create a certain atmosphere. For example, I was at the Square offices once. Huge, cavernous room designed to create a sense of energy. That's the open-office mantra, that sense of energy. They had these little cubicle ... nicely designed cubicle things where you could go if you wanted quiet. Clearly, noise was the default. That architecture creates a culture. At least it reinforces a culture. As a remote company, your tools are your architecture. You either need to buy them from people who design them in a way that works for you, and Slack seems to work for a lot of people, or you build things that work for you, or you create norms about how they're used that do the same thing. We've done some things on Slack, we've done some things on Zoom, to create that sense of being together. Todd? TODD: I would like to add emphasis to what Ken just said. Imagine a time that someone puts into an office: architecture, the layout, the furniture. Rearranging it multiple times, placing stuff. Now think about the time that companies you've worked for put into remote tools. Anyone out there with their hands up saying they spent about 30 minutes on their remote tools -- KEN: Ever! TODD: Yeah. It's not surprising that one is superior to other in those organizations. I would pile on, like Ken said, and take the same amount of effort and consideration of your tools as a remote company as you did with everything else in the physical space if you're a commuter company. CHRIS: I'm interested, too, because as you're talking, you're talking about the difference between physical architecture and the architecture of your tools that allow you to do remote work, and if everyone's using Slack, and it looks and functions the same way, what brings the sense of uniqueness to a company that's using the same tools? TODD: Me. Just me being around makes everything unique, wonderful, and amazing. To answer the real question, you have to take Slack ... One of the great things about Slack, 'cause it's highly customizable, you can add plug-ins, you can add all sorts of integrations. We're gonna talk about other tools than Slack. They literally just pay us a crapload of money just to talk about this. JAMON: I wish. KEN: I wish. TODD: You don't take the vanilla. The point of a tool like that is you take it and you make it your own. JAMON: I did see someone tweeting about switching remote companies. They quit one company and they got hired by another. They did mention, actually, how similar it was. You go into the same place; you sit down at the same chair; you have the same computer in front of you; you log in to a different Slack, and you start working. Right? There is some level of consistency there. In a way, that's a very good thing. You can be comfortable very, very, very soon. There are plenty of things to learn about a new company without having to also learn new office layout, new office norms, policies about who can put their lunch in the fridge and who can't. I don't know what else. It's been so long since I've been in an office, I don't even know. I think there is some level of normalcy there because people do use similar tools. Like Todd said, you can customize Slack to work the way that your company needs to, and you can customize other tools as well. Since we're programmers, since our team has a lot of programming capability on it, we do actually build a lot of glue code in the scripts and things that will help tie all the tools together. KEN: In most organizations that have adopted chat tools, whether it's Slack or something else, they are usually billed as an internal supplement replacement for email. It is great at that, don't get me wrong, but I think something that gets lost in the way people talk about in the way we communicate now is that ... Let me tell a little story. I used to be a big fan of Roger Ebert. Rest in peace. Brilliant writer, right? Super enthusiastic. He was very critical of the way people write online. Very critical of things like emojis and emoticons. I think, while I respect him a lot, I think he completely missed the point on that. The point of that is, although, yes, we type to communicate online, it's not really writing. Not in the way our English teachers taught us. Right? It's typed speech, really. Right? It's a register of communication that's closer to the way that we talk than it is to the way that we would write if we're writing an essay or a blog post. One of the things that I really like about, Slack for example, is the rich way that you can communicate without it looking junky. It doesn't look like something awful or 4chan or some of the other really junky-looking message boards that have that level of expressiveness. It gives you the level of expressiveness so that you can substitute for the lack of facial expressions and body-language, but it's not writing. You don't write ... you don't type into Slack the same way you do. It's much closer to the way that you talk. For a remote organization, where we're not on Zoom all the time, although we are a lot, it's super important that you have that level of human expressiveness in your medium, in the medium that you're using to replace spoken word. TODD: Three comments. One: Zoom is the video conferencing tool we use, and we'll talk about that in a second. Two: I don't spend much time on 4chan, Ken, so I'll take your word on that one. (laughter) Three: just to give an example, talking about customization and you might be asking yourself, "Okay, Todd, I've used Slack. I've used chat. What're you talking about?" Just give you a few flavors. The simplest is creating your own channels that have some sort of cultural significance to your organization. One of ours is called "Rollcall", where we ... It's the digital equivalency of walking in and out of the office. "I'm here this morning." "I'm gonna go get my car worked on." "I'm back." It's not just status, it's also ... not just whether you're working or not, but it's a way to communicate basic, little life things in a short way. We have another one called "Kudos", where we give kudos to people. Which, at first, I thought, probably, wouldn't take off, but it actually did. It's where you give kudos to people for things that they did well, and I'm really shocked how many people give kudos and how many people respond. That's obviously just using the base tool and choosing what content to put on there, and how to organize. There's other things, too. Obviously there's things like code-repository integration, a code bug-reporting integration. We integrate with other companies' Slacks. They have a Slack channel, we have a Slack channel, and they connect so that we can do that with our clients. All the way to we have a custom Bot we wrote for Slack. Her name is Ava. She does a variety of internal processes for us. She's kind of ... In the old days, you'd have a database and you'd have a Windows app written to connect your database for your company, you'd do things in there. We have a lot of internet SaaS-tools. And then we have Ava that integrates a lot of them together. JAMON: Todd, can you give an example of something that Ava does for us? TODD: Yes. There's some basic things that a chatbot might do. For instance, you might wanna ask her where Jamon is, and she'll tell you the information she knows about Jamon. It's a lot of operational stuff. For instance, our Project Manager, Jed, has to produce weekly reports for clients. Ava produces those for him. Stuff like that. Stuff that you would normally do, like I said, in the old days, in a desktop app personally. JAMON: Todd came up with Ava quite a while ago, actually. It was sort of a toy to start with, just playing around with it. He had some ideas where it might go, but over time we've actually invested more and more resources into this internal chatbot and it's proven to be quite valuable. It's saved a lot of time, reduced the amount of overhead that we have to have tracking things because it's able to do a lot of process things. KEN: So far, she has not escaped and murdered us. (laughter) TODD: Not so far. I'm working on that. JAMON: That's a win. TODD: There's some tiny things. She's just a way for us, if we need to program something that we have a sticking point like, here's a very simple thing that took me five minutes to ruin. We do a lot of things on Mondays, and constantly wanna know what last Monday was, or Monday three weeks ago. You can literally just say, "Ava, what was Monday two weeks ago," and she'll tell you. That's a very tiny thing. Generating project PDFs or generating project reports is a bigger thing, obviously. JAMON: Another tool we use to communicate, non-verbally in Slack, is "Reactions". Someone'll post something and we react to it. I think this is pretty common in Slack teams and this is something that Slack did a good job of coming up with a cool idea. Usually you think of up-voting and down-voting, but when you have the whole range of emojis, including custom ones and animated ones and things like that, it can be a very cool thing. One interesting example of this: we have an integration with ... Ken, what's the service we use for Chain React tickets? KEN: Zapier. JAMON: Zavier. Zapier, yeah, and it connects with Eventbrite, and that basically will post any time someone buys a ticket to Chain React, which is our React Native conference, of course, happening in Portland in July. You should buy a ticket. (laughter) We get a notification, and it pops in there, says who's coming. When we're getting down there ... We were getting down to the last few advanced workshops that were available, someone started putting a number emoji underneath it. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, like that. You can see then, at a glance, how many were left. It was very cool how we were all collaborating on that. When someone would buy the advanced workshop, Kevin VanGelder, who's our resident Windows guy, he would put a little Windows emoji on there because that's part of the advanced workshop. It was just a cool way to communicate and collaborate without even using words. TODD: I think the important part of using reactions or emojis or Slack Responses ... Reactions, if you're not familiar, Slack is ... It's simply, someone posts a message, and instead of responding to it, you can post a little image on it, like heart, or a thumbs up, or a vote-up, or whatever. Slack Response is an automatic system that, when you say X, it outputs Y into it. One Slack Response that Jamon hates is that when you say "I'm not a big fan", it posts this picture of this really, really small fan. It's hilarious. I love it. (laughter) JAMON: Really hilarious. TODD: Every time someone put ... We had some that we had to remove, 'cause they just came up too much. Every time you'd say "founders" it would show the Three Stooges, which is "Accurate", but... KEN: It was "founders' meeting". TODD: Oh, whatever. KEN: But still, yeah. TODD: It was accurate but a little too much noise. The point is, it's very important. We've probably added a huge number of Slack Responses, a huge number of our own emojis, and the emojis you can use for Responses. A lot of them have become very cultural. Just to give you a few examples: my cat, Calle, that's short for Calle Berry, I took a picture of her paw. And, of course, cats, if you just do the front part of their paw, it looks like they have four fingers instead of five because their fifth one's back further. We came with this emoji and this thing where, if someone does a really great job, they get a "high-four", instead of high-five, and that's Calle's Response. JAMON: I didn't actually know that was Calle's paw. TODD: Oh, yeah, that's Calle's paw. JAMON: That's cool. TODD: So that's a cultural thing that I created one day, and it just kinda stuck. It became a "high-four"; it is an Infinite Red thing, you get a "high-four". We have other things like that, too, that are very specific to our culture, where you have to explain to people who come in what that means. I would definitely customize it, make it fun. We don't worry too much if clients see it. We're not doing anything inappropriate. At first, there was discussion, "Is it professional if they accidentally trigger one of the Slack Responses?" "No, but does that really matter?" "No," in my opinion. KEN: It depends on the Response. (laughter) TODD: Of course. KEN: There were some that were a little over the line and that, without context, could be a little startling. We removed those. TODD: Yeah, that's true. KEN: But for the most part, yeah, just something that's quirky. Hopefully, we all have clients that, at least the people who are in the Slack room are able to appreciate that. TODD: Another one that's totally part of our culture is, there was this early picture of me looking into the camera with a stern face. That became the "shame" emoji. That's been used ever since. Every time someone wants to throw shame upon someone, my face is there. I don't know if that's good or bad. JAMON: There's another one that's quite disturbing, of you, Todd. TODD: Oh! When you say yes "yis", Y, I, S, yes that is disturbing. JAMON: "Yis dream." TODD: You have to work here to ... KEN: You had to be there. KEN: Some of the things that came from my experience at Yammer, where a lot of the company was run internally on Yammer, there's a couple of really big advantages to that. Especially, at an all-remote company, where the vast majority of conversations happen there. One is that there's very much less pressure to include people in meetings just because, just in case they might have something to say about it. Because if you've having a conversation in Slack, you just pull 'em in. Right? After the fact, and they can catch up. But the other was, there was an ethos at Yammer that was, there was this pat question which was, "Why is this private?" "Why did you make this group private?" "Why is this in a private chat?" Making closed conversations justify themselves, rather than being the default. Particularly when we invite other people into Slack, I notice there's a little period of training, where people will instinctively start DMing, 'cause it's like "Well, I need to ask Ken this question." Say we brought our bookkeeper in, right? They would ask me 'cause I was the contact. I'm like, "Ask this question in Finance." Right? "Ask this question in the Finance channel." Which happens to be one of the private ones, for a variety of fairly obvious reasons. By asking in the channel, then the other people who might be interested can just observe. That's one of the ways that you compensate for the lack of that serendipitous, overheard conversation that people are so fond of in a office. CHRIS: In Episode Two, we talked about the philosophy of remote work. Todd, you actually made a comment that was really interesting to me. You said, "When the leadership uses the remote tools, they immediately get better." Why do you think that's the case? TODD: Human nature. I'll answer your question with a little story. I worked for company ... This is circa 1999. I don't know. I didn't work for 'em; they were a client of ours. For many, many years they were very much a Microsoft shop. They had no interest in testing anything on other platforms like Mac or whatever. We worked for them for nine years, something like that. So this is all through the 2000s. It was frustrating for people who wanted to produce websites that were universal. If someone opened 'em on a Mac, it would actually look good and not look horrible. One day, one of the VPs who was above the software group bought an iPad. I think, about a year later, he bought a MacBook. Once he had that iPad, all of a sudden, it'd become very important that things look good on his iPad, which is funny and horrible at the same time. It is just human nature. If you use something, it's much more front of mind than if you don't. Even the best of people suffer this. If you have a mixed company, meaning you're part remote, part commuter, one of those groups is gonna be a second-class citizen. Period. If 10 people are in a meeting, and eight are remote and two are in the office, the two in the office are gonna be the second-class citizens. More often, it's the vice versa, right? Getting everyone on the same page gets rid of second-class citizens. If you wanna make the best remote environment, either getting the majority or getting the people who have more power in the remote situation will increase your tools' quality big time. JAMON: That's for sure. We've seen that internally at Infinite Red, as well. When we use the tools, which we do, leadership team is probably the heaviest user of the remote tools in a lot of ways. There are situations where they're just not good enough, and we make sure that they get changed, for sure. Zoom is a good ... Zoom, the video chat, video call system, is really an interesting one because it has worked the best for us in terms of video calls. We've used a whole bunch of them. We've used everything from Google Hangouts, Skype, Appear.in, which is pretty decent. Pretty frictionless, actually. I like Appear.in for how fast it is to jump into it, but the quality is still a little bit sub-optimal. A few others as well. The nice thing about Zoom is that it allows you to put everybody into a grid pattern. It has a gallery view, which is really cool because then you feel like you're having a meeting and not doing a presentation. That's something that came out of us doing sales calls and internal meetings where we kinda felt like, "I don't wanna be the person on the big screen," right? Feel like your giving a presentation. "I wanna feel like this is a meeting with everybody in an equal place." It makes people feel more comfortable. That was a situation where we were using the tools for various things and found the one that, I think, has worked the best 'cause, as a leadership team, we needed it. TODD: Yes, as far as video chat or video calls ... We actually need a name for that. What do you say if ... It's not really video chatting. JAMON: Video conferencing? TODD: I don't like ... KEN: It's not exactly "conferencing". TODD: I don't like the term. JAMON: Video meeting? KEN: Video meeting. TODD: Yeah, there needs to be a term for that. We need to coin a term for that, at least internally. CHRIS: Zooming. TODD: Zooming. Well that's ... That's not tool-specific. KEN: Slack as a tool is much stickier, in the long term, probably, than Zoom is. At the moment, Zoom is, by far, in our experience, the best quality. JAMON: Mm-hmm (affirmative). KEN: But that could change. Slack ... there's a lot we've invested in customizing and it would be harder, but ... Although, we have invested some in Zoom, which we can talk about a bit. TODD: I would say Zoom is our favorite for our situation. One of our clients is BlueJeans.net, which is not really a competitor, but they do video conferencing. BlueJeans is really great for many things. One thing is they do every platform well. KEN: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yep. TODD: Which, Zoom, and a lot of the other ones don't necessarily do. Now, we're all mostly on Macs, and it works really well on that, so that works out well. Also, BlueJeans.net has a lot of additional features. Where we basically just need video conferencing; Zoom is so superior. Google Hangouts is horrible. Please, please stop using Google Hangouts. KEN: Don't use Skype. Don't use Google Hangouts. TODD: Well, Skype -- KEN: Skype has gotten better, but -- TODD: Skype's quality is great, but it does a max of six people. We have 26 people. KEN: I disagree that they're quality is great. TODD: I was being ni -- KEN: Even domestically, I've had problems with it. (laughter) JAMON: We have Microsoft people listening. TODD: I was being nice, Ken. JAMON: It crashes a lot on Mac. KEN: The point is, here, you should demand rock-solid video 99% of the time. TODD: Yeah. KEN: If that's not what you're getting, look at another tool. JAMON: This extends to the internet bandwidth that you have available at your place of work, too. Some people that were really scraping by on 20Mb or something connections, and it was impacting video quality, and -- TODD: On what tool? KEN: No, their connection. JAMON: Their internet connection, yeah. That was something that we, overtime, got everybody to upgrade to faster and faster internet. I think that was a success for, pretty much, everybody. They have pretty acceptable internet, now, at this point. TODD: Some aren't as much. We have a person who's a nomad and travels around. We have someone who's in extremely rural Canada, up above Toronto, Tor-on-toe, I'm told is the proper way to say that. Zoom does very well in bandwidth, so the people that do have limited bandwidth, that works very well. We actually have meetings, 26 people in Zoom, which before would have been crazy. Skype limits you to six, which I'm not sure how useful that is for most meetings, but good for you, Skype. KEN: The only thing it's not so great on is battery-life, if you're using a mobile device. JAMON: It sort of trades CPU time for bandwidth. KEN: It does, yeah. JAMON: One of the things that Zoom doesn't do, that we've sort of built a system on top of, is permanent conference rooms. We've found this to be very useful to say, "Hey, let's jump into this 'conference room A', or 'conference room B'." We have better names for it. We name them after rooms in the boardgame Clue. TODD: Trademark Milton Bradley. (laughter) JAMON: There's a billiard room, there's a conservatory, there's a study, kitchen, et cetera. We have different uses for those different rooms. Some are for sales calls; some are for ... One is called Kitchen, which we use for the kitchen table, it's basically where people just jump in there, and work together in relative quiet. It's a cool little concept. We actually built an online, like a website, as well as a desktop app that shows a Clue board with the different rooms that light up when people are in them, and then it puts avatars of who's in that room, including guests, which is very cool because I can go in there and say, "Hey, look! Chris and Todd are having a meeting over there. I'm gonna jump in and see what's going on." I can just click in there, and it opens a Zoom window, and I'm in their meeting. TODD: For example, currently, Chris, Jamon, Ken and I are in Study. We have Kevin and Ryan in Library, and we have Jed in the Billiard Room by himself. I'm not sure what that's about. Maybe playing a little pool. KEN: This goes back to the notion of tools as architecture. Consider the experience of being in an office, and you want a meeting. You say, "Hey, let's meet in Fisherman's Wharf." I was in an office where they named things after San Francisco neighborhoods. "Let's meet in Fisherman's Wharf." Everybody, after they've been oriented into the office, knows where that is and they just go. That's it, right? That's the experience, right? Furthermore, if you wanna know where somebody is, you walk around the building, look into the rooms, and see that so-and-so is in Fisherman's Wharf, so they're in a meeting, they're busy. Now let's look at what it's like to be remote, without a tool like this. "Where's the meeting? Okay, I gotta ask somebody. Oh, okay. Oh, did someone start the meeting? Oh, no, no, okay, somebody needs to start the meeting. Alright, gimme a second, I'm gonna start the meeting. Here's the Zoom URL." TODD: Oh, God! KEN: "Okay, you gotta invite somebody." "Do you remember the Zoom URL?" "I don't remember the Zoom URL." "Okay, hang on. Okay, I got it. Here you go." That's the UX, right now. JAMON: Yes. KEN: Of the base ... TODD: Oh, jeez. KEN: ... video conferencing tool, and it's no wonder people hate that! JAMON: Yep. KEN: Right? TODD: Can you imagine? KEN: Yeah. It turns out ... We've had to increase the number of rooms over the years, right? But how many do we have now? Eight? TODD: Eight. KEN: So we have eight rooms now? TODD: Eight current rooms. KEN: That's pretty much fine. TODD: Mm-hmm (affirmative). For a team our size, that works well. JAMON: We usually don't fill all of ... I think, yesterday, I looked in there and there were six in use, which was kind of a anomaly, but ... KEN: In an office, we can keep adding those as long as we need to. JAMON: That's right. KEN: This is a case where I think we've created something that is actually better than what people who have an office have. JAMON: Yeah. KEN: Right? Because you can, just at a glance, see where people are. Nobody has to even tell you what room they're in. They just say, "Hey, we're meeting." You go look at the Clue board, and you see where the people that you're meeting with are, and you join the room. JAMON: Yeah. KEN: It's just one more little piece of constant friction that we've eliminated. I love it. I think it's a fantastic tool. TODD: Yeah, I keep the Clue desktop app open all day long while I'm at work. It's also cool to see the little avatars and stuff. Makes me feel like I'm at work. When we first started, you did have to push ... This is a very common interaction. "Hey, Todd, I need your help with X." And I'm like, "Let's have a meeting" or "Let's jump in Zoom" or whatever. "Which one?" "I'm already there. I joined a room as soon as you said it." "Which one?" "Open Clue. (laughter) Look for my name. Click on it." JAMON: Yeah. TODD: That only took a few weeks, to be honest, of constantly just needling that to the point where, when someone says, "Hey, I wanna jump in a room," they look and they see where you jumped in. KEN: That brings back the importance of having the leadership on the tool. TODD: Yes. JAMON: That's right. This tool actually came out of a side-project. I think Gant and AJ, two of our engineers, came up with the idea and built a prototype, and put it out there. It was ... I remember being, initially, a little bit skeptical that it'd be useful and it's turned out to be a really key part of our remote experience. TODD: That's actually an important point. No one asked anyone to make that tool. No one asked for permission to make that tool. They made it. They turned it on. Now, we've had tools that people've made. For instance, my tool Ava, which, now, is very useful, originally was Dolores, which is from HBO's great TV show, "Westworld". Dolores never caught on. She didn't do enough important stuff, and so she just kinda died. Later I resurrected her as Ava, which is from the movie "Ex Machina". Excellent movie, by the way. KEN: It's still kind of a disturbing allusion, though. TODD: It is, but it's ... It's a great movie. And then the next movie he did, which was "Annihilation", was fantastic as well. Anyways, not important, obviously. The point is, no one needs to ask for permission. They can make tools. They do. They put 'em out there, and they live or die based on whether or not they're actually used. We do sunset things that just never really took off. CHRIS: You're mentioning a lot of tools that enable remote work, that enable productive work. What are some tools that you're thinking about or are in place that help with focus and eliminating distractions? 'Cause sometimes, people new to these environments can look at these tools going, "Man there's so many distractions. How do I work?" JAMON: I actually think that's one of the biggest benefits of working remotely, which is kind of counter-intuitive. You think, "Oh, there's so many distractions when you're working remotely." Actually, you can turn off Slack. You can turn your screen to "do not disturb". You can shut off Zoom. You can turn off you're email. You can close all of those applications and just have the app that you're doing the work in, you're writing a blog post, you're writing code, you can just have that open. You can turn on a "do not disturb" mode in Slack that'll actually tell people that you're currently away. If you use the tools that are available, remote work can actually be much better, because what happens in an office? Someone can't get a hold of you on email or Slack, so what do they do? They hop up and they walk over to your office, and they're like, "Hey, did you get my email?" (laughter) "Okay, I will check my email, eventually, here. Is this really important?" One of the things that we do is ... This is kind of funny, but we'll actually say "I'm going offline for three hours, 'cause I'm gonna focus on this thing. If it's really important, text me." Our phone numbers are there, right? Nobody's gonna text you, 'cause that just feels like a complete intrusion. Right? KEN: It does happen. Like, if it's a genuine emergency. JAMON: It does happen if it's like an emergency. But that is so rare. That is awesome, because you're adding a ton of friction, but you're still giving them some way to get to you. I think that's a good property of remote work, that you can actually focus more in those situations than you can in an office. TODD: Yeah, try to turn off all the noise in an open-concept office. Good luck! KEN: Yeah, an office is distracting by default. You have to use technology to get some focus. I can't think of any tool that we use just for focus. Right? It's about human habits around how they use the tools that are already there. TODD: I think there are some, Ken. I don't personally use them. KEN: Yeah, yeah. I mean there are things, but there's nothing we use as a company. TODD: No, but there are people here that use, for one thing, they'll use the various timer apps that tell them to stand up, or if they set a timer for focus -- KEN: I've used the Pomodoro timer. TODD: Yeah, there are things. What's cool about remote work as opposed to depressing cubicle work (laughter), is you can set up the environment -- KEN: Soul-crushing commute work. (laughter) TODD: Soul-crushing commute work, SCCW, I like it. In those situations, you have to go to the lowest common denominator. If 50% of the people are very productive and get focused with music, and 50 can't at all, you're gonna have no music. When you're sitting in your own environment, whatever that environment is, whether it's your home, or a café, or co-working space, or whatever it is that you've chosen to be most efficient in, when you're sitting in that environment, you can control and make it perfect for you to be able to focus. Personally, if I'm doing design work or visual work, I play music. It gets me in the groove. If I'm programming, I cannot have any music. Or if I do have music, it can't have any lyrics in it. That's a focus thing. I tend to like to work more in the dark, strangely. I love light and I live in a very sunny place, and a very sunny house, but I have noticed that I tend to get more in the zone in dark and often late at night, for me personally. CHRIS: I'm the same way, Todd. I have to fake my brain into thinking it's late at night by closing all the blinds and turning the lights off. And it actually helps productivity. TODD: Yeah, that's interesting. I used to have this problem at every company I worked at. Even, say, I shared a room with four other people. One office, and four. I would wanna have all the lights off and have a desk lamp so I could see. No one liked this. Having the fluorescent lights on ... I didn't take cyanide, but I do believe I shopped online for cyanide, just saying. (laughter) KEN: So this is in your browser history, now, forever, man. (laughter) There's a FBI file on you. TODD: Oh, there's been a FBI file. Come on. If you don't have a FBI file on you, what are you doing with your life? (laughter) JAMON: At the old ClearSight office, we had some fluorescent lights, and one by one they would burn out. Nobody would tell the maintenance guy because they just liked that they were burning out. (laughter) Eventually it got quite dark in there and everybody, they just wouldn't even turn on the light. TODD: I would like to make a confession. I have purposely broke some lights in offices. KEN: "True Confessions with Todd Werth." (laughter) TODD: You don't want true ones. No, that actually -- CHRIS: That's Season Two of the podcast. (laughter) TODD: That actually is very true. Sometimes you just have to ... KEN: Civil disobedience? TODD: Yes, I like the way you phrased that. Makes things more noble and less selfish. (laughter) KEN: Yeah, right. Guerilla productivity. JAMON: We have some other tools to talk about, too, right? TODD: Oh, yeah, we have other tools to talk about. JAMON: Should we talk about some of them, or ... TODD: Yes. KEN: But enough about Todd. (laughter) TODD: I'll be here all week. Do not eat the veal. JAMON: One of the tools that has been really helpful for us is Google Sheets. Obviously, that's the spreadsheet program in Google Apps. We ... We're having trouble ... Again, this is pre-merger. We're having trouble figuring out how to schedule people. It was just a real pain. Eventually, my Project Manager at the time, came up with a system that involved sticky notes on a board that were, across the top were weeks, and down the left side were the names of people. We could just put sticky notes. My wife went out and bought a whole bunch of different colored sticky notes. We'd put the same project as the same color across the board. You could, at a glance, see who was working on the same project. You could see how long it was going to be, as far as number of weeks, and every week we'd move 'em over to the left and add another column. That eventually migrated onto Google Sheets, 'cause, of course, that doesn't work so well when you're remote. The collaboration tools on Google Sheets are extremely good. It's very, very responsive to having multiple people on it. When we do our Friday scheduling meeting for the next week, and beyond, we'll all pull open the sheet, and we look at it, and we can all update it ... If we see something that's wrong, we can update it. We can change colors of the backgrounds. It's worked really well for, now, two and a half years. I think that's a remote tool that has actually been quite useful for us for quite some time. Not only does it give us forward-looking data, but it also gives us backward-looking. We can look at previous years and see what projects were we working on at the time, who was working on what, all the way throughout. It's been a very cool tool. We're just repurposing Google Sheets to use as a scheduling tool. TODD: Another tool we used to use ... Jeez, I can't remember what it's called. What was the [inaudible 00:43:17] tool we used to use? JAMON: Screenhero. KEN: Screenhero? TODD: Screenhero, yes, of course. I remember when Screenhero was ... It was eventually bought by Slack and is being integrated into Slack. We used to use that a lot, but truthfully, the tools in Zoom for screensharing stuff became superior and so I think almost everyone pairs with each other Zooming. TODD: Another tool we use is RealtimeBoard, which is a sticky board analogist tool; the designers -- KEN: Designers love it. TODD: The designers used it a lot, but we also use it in leadership and the developers, I think, are starting to look into it. It's great for brainstorming. It's a real-time tool, kinda like Google Docs or Google Sheets, where everyone can use it at the same time, and you see everyone using it. That's been really great. The designers use the heck out of InVision, which is a wonderful tool for showing designs, getting notes, and collaborating with clients, collaborating with the rest of the team, and that kind of stuff. Another tool we use for project management a lot is Trello. If you're not familiar, with it, it's a great project management tool. It's a Kanban board, if you're familiar with those. Not only do we use Trello, we also integrated ... Ava connects to Trello, produces reports from ... Ava connects to Airtable, which is another interesting mix between a database and a spreadsheet. We use Airtable and Trello. Those are some other tools we use. KEN: Something to mention, also, is that between Slack and Zoom we have some redundancy, because Zoom has rudimentary chat and Slack has video conferencing. It's not as good as Zoom's, but it's there, and we already have it. For example, when Slack is down, we have Zoom channels that we can all do basic communication in. That provides a certain amount of resiliency for the work environment, and that's very helpful. TODD: Yeah, it does go down every so often. It's funny because our company comes to a screeching halt when Slack goes down. KEN: Yeah, and that's a valid criticism, I think, of remote working. We do have the redundancy so that people can at least, basically, keep going. TODD: We all know now, if Slack's down ... It was, actually yesterday, coincidentally. JAMON: Yeah. TODD: If Slack is down, we go into Zoom chat. That took a while to get people ... It's funny 'cause we don't use email and stuff, and we use that so much. We could jump into a meeting. We've done that in the past, before we had this redundancy we would just jump into a meeting room and kinda like, "Hey, what do we do?" It was like the lights went out and everyone was confused at what to do. It's actually kind of amusing if you think about that. A bunch of virtual people wandering around in the dark wondering what to do. JAMON: We have a lot of redundancy of internet connection. Someone might be having internet issues, but not everybody is having internet issues. That's a pretty big deal. I remember the office internet would stop working and, even though we were all in the same place, yes we could collaborate, no we couldn't work 'cause we couldn't access -- KEN: Couldn't get to GitHub, can't get to... JAMON: ... Dropbox, whatever. Which, we do use GitHub, we use Dropbox. There's a little tool that I use that, I would say, about a third of the company also uses. We're on video calls a lot. When you're on a video call, sometimes it's nice to have a cough button: you hit a button and it mutes you for just a second, so you can cough or whatever. This one's called Shush. It's a Mac app. You can buy it for three bucks or something. It turns your function key into a mute button, so you just hit that button and it will mute you for a short amount of time. Or you can double-tap it and it turns into a push to talk button, which is nice when you're in a big group. TODD: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I don't use Shush, because I use a hardware version of that. I have quite a lot of audio equipment and video stuff. Pretty sure, in the remote podcast, we talked about the importance of having good equipment and spending a little money on good equipment. You cheap managers out there, stop doing that; you're horrible people. (laughter) JAMON: Also the background of your video call is really important. That was actually something Todd really emphasized when we first started. I will point out that he has the messiest background of all of us, right now. TODD: Well, to be clear, I have two cameras. One is a wide angle which I use for the team so I can move around and stuff; and I have a tighter angle I use for clients, in which case, what's behind me is very specifically chosen to be a background, and I keep that incredibly clean. JAMON: I just say that to tweak Todd, because he's the biggest champion of having a good background. TODD: Yes. Jamon's horizon, right now, is extremely tilted, and it's been driving me crazy the whole time, but I'll get over it. (laughter) KEN: I know. I can't unsee that. TODD: In my 46 years on this planet, I've learned not to mention that, even though I really, really want him to straighten his camera. KEN: It doesn't help, Jamon, you've still got a vertical line that is -- TODD: I'll tell you a funny story about backgrounds. Poor Ken. Ken had this very nice ... I don't know what it was. What was it, Ken? KEN: It's a bookcase, right, (laughter) but it's IKEA furniture, so it looks -- TODD: It's IKEA? KEN: It looks like a dresser. Yeah. TODD: This whole time it was IKEA? We thought it was important. We felt bad for making fun of it. 'Cause it looks like a dresser. It was right behind him, and it looked like Ken was sitting in bed (laughter) with his dresser behind him. KEN: Yes, reinforcing every stereotype about remote workers. (laughter) TODD: Right. We kept on bugging him, and he said, "It's a really nice bookcase." I didn't realize it was IKEA. KEN: I didn't say it was a really nice bookcase. I said it was a bookcase. (laughter) TODD: It looked like a dresser. JAMON: It really did, in fact. KEN: That's because it's IKEA furniture, so it's looks like that. TODD: I guess the point is, how things appear is more important than what they actually are. This is something a lot of people aren't familiar with. We have different people with different levels of quality of what they produce as far as visually or audio. I think the general takeaway is take some time. You are almost doing a mini-television broadcast, and you wanna be ... I wouldn't say the word "professional", because it's not stuffy, it's fine if you're wearing your tie-dye and your shorts, but you should make it a pleasant experience for the viewers. KEN: Yeah. You should look inviting, and it should look intentional. TODD: Mm-hmm (affirmative). KEN: And kept. JAMON: We have some other tips for remote video meetings that, I think, are on a blog post that we created. Was that you, Ken, that wrote that post? KEN: Yeah. We could do a whole podcast, frankly, on how to have a good video meeting. JAMON: We can link to that in the show notes. KEN: We can link to that for now. TODD: That is a podcast I wanna do. I do wanna point out to the audience who can't see us now, we're recording this for your listening pleasure, and I put pleasure in quotation marks 'cause I don't wanna oversell it. But, we are actually on Zoom, so we can see each other. Jamon, thankfully moved his camera so we can't see the horizon any more, which is crooked, but right over his left shoulder is a door-line that's incredibly crooked. I appreciate the effort, Jamon, but come on. Have some dignity. JAMON: I will point out that I'm moving out of this rental in a week because I had a house fire, Todd. (laughter) TODD: Oh, jeez. You can't pull a house fire out every time there's a criticism. KEN: The only thing in my background is my Harvard diploma (laughter) because it's all that anyone cares about. JAMON: Yes, exactly. Over my shoulder, I'm thinking about putting my not-Harvard diploma. KEN: "Narvard". JAMON: It'll just say, "Not Harvard." TODD: Sometimes we just invite Ken's Harvard diploma, instead of Ken, to meetings. (laughter) KEN: Yeah, I just put it in frame and then I walk out. (laughter) I'm like, "I'm just the janitor." CHRIS: I do have one final question, as we bring this episode to a close: Is there any tool that you use outside of remote work or in your daily life that you wish existed as a remote tool. KEN: Blow torch. (laughter) CHRIS: Elon's got that for ya. TODD: Not a tool, completely, but here's something ... I have ideas for tools that'd be cool in the future. We have the concept of "kitchen table". This is a real quick story; please, bear with me. The three of us ... I don't know if Ken was, but there was multiple of us of the company who were speaking at a conference in Paris. We rented a large Airbnb apartment in Paris, and a bunch of us were staying there. It had a very large kitchen table. When we weren't doing stuff individually, we'd all sit around the kitchen table, and we'd work together. We would just sit there, like you would at a library in a university or something like that, and work. We wanted to recreate that in ... virtually. The simple solution is we dedicated one of our Zoom rooms, the "Kitchen", to the "kitchen table" and you can't use that for anything else. If you just wanna be around people, but you're working, you're not really saying anything, as if you're in a library ... I guess we should do the library, but whatever ... you'd go in the kitchen table and just be around people. Sometimes people say things and have little conversations, like you would in an office, but typically you're just sitting there working together. That's cool. It's missing a few features which I'd love to see. For one is, if you're not ... Say there was a group of people working in an open office, and they're in the center and you're on the perimeter of the office. You see them working together there, the "kitchen table", now we have that, with our tool, we can see who's in the "kitchen table" and they're there. Great. But you can also, even if you're far away and they're dim enough ... not dim, but the volume's low enough that it's not disturbing, you can still hear them, and sometimes you'll pick up on little words that may interest you. They'll mention a project you're on, or they'll mention a personal interest that you're interested in or whatever, and you can choose then to go walk over and join them, because of that kind of low-noise but informational thing you're getting by being in the perimeter. I would love to somehow integrate that into our tool, where you could have a low-murmur of people in the background of the meetings that you're not in, and listen for things that might be interesting, something like that. KEN: I don't really know how to think about that question. TODD: I find it very interesting that none of us can really come up with a tool that we wish we had. That's a fantastic answer. KEN: I mean ... JAMON: I think there's probably tools that, eventually, we'll get that will be like, "How did we live without this?" But I don't ... I can't think of one. KEN: I can imagine in the future, basically a VR setup. JAMON: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yes. KEN: If VR gets to the point where it feels natural; it's comfortable to wear the equipment, it's not a burden just to have the stuff on your head, and the resolution is to the point where you could have a virtual monitor in space, and you can have that feeling of actually being next to people. Then you could, in theory, have the best of both worlds, where you can drop out and leave the space if you want to. You can also be in the space and be available for that. JAMON: Yeah. KEN: I think that would be pretty nice, but ... JAMON: There is a tool out there that's ... I think they're, maybe, in beta right now. It's called Bigscreen VR, it's by a guy that I know, Darshan Shankar, who's on Twitter. I met him on Twitter. He's doing this Bigscreen VR system. It's very much what you described, Ken. Right now, it's only on Windows, and of course the VR headsets are still evolving. But apparently the new Oculus Go or Oculus Now, or something, is apparently quite good -- KEN: Yeah, they're getting better. JAMON: It's also likely, they said that within the next year, that it'll come to Mac 'cause they're working on it. KEN: I think another threshold, though, is the quote-unquote "retina" threshold, to where the resolution of the headsets is such that you can't, in terms of resolution, anyway, you can't tell the difference between that and something that you're looking at. JAMON: Yep. KEN: You could actually make a projected display without any compromise. JAMON: Yes. TODD: I agree, in the future that's gonna be wonderful. I do have some current ideas on how to add spacial stuff to our tools to give us proximity information of each other, virtually. Kind of what you would get if you were in a VR situation, but without having VR. Anyways, there's some interesting things there. KEN: Yeah, we've talked about making an ambient audio device, something like that, that can just sit there and ... Kind of like "kitchen table", but without the video. There's a bunch of things we've talked about, but not of them are things that exist today. They're just things that we've thought about creating or ... yeah.
Jessica and Jimmy get together RIGHT AFTER watching Jesus Christ Superstar Live on NBC! Full of Bridge Lane Wine’s Red Blend, they discuss their opinions on the evening’s performances. To add in your thoughts, email us at tanninsandtunes@gmail.com! Don’t forget to join in our REVIEW CHALLENGE! For each review we’ll pair with a dollar towards fire relief in the Napa Wine area PLUS we’ll pair a wine with your username! So gets those reviews in on both Apple Podcasts and Stitcher!
Right After the 2yr episode we have some wrestling talk for ya with returning guest Sock Monkey Mike & special guest host Brandon McIntyre FOLLOW HIM!!! Twitter: @SockMonkeyMike Two Side of The Coin on YOUTUBE CALL THE SHOW! Leave a "RANDOM' voicemail 304 TALK ROB (304 825-5762) 30 day FREE Amazon Prime Trial http://amzn.to/2oQ8QW4
The Four Judgments We all have a divine appointment with our creator Message #3 - The Judgment of the Nations 1. The POINT of the Judgment • When Does this Judgment Come? Right After the Second Coming Matthew 25:31a 2. The PLACE of the Judgment • Where does the Judgment of the Nations Take Place? On Earth Matthew 25:31b 3. The PARTICIPANTS of the Judgment • Who will be Judged? The Gentiles Who Survive the Tribulation Period Matthew 25:32 4. The PLAN of the Judgment Matthew 25:33-46; 2 Thessalonians 2:11
Aún con la resaca de las celebraciones por nuestro quinto aniversario y encarando ya la recta final de temporada, en Subterranea os traemos unos cuantos discos distinguidos, selectos y rompedores, que por otra parte no estarán exentos de polémica y disparidad de opiniones. Haken, Radiohead, Long Distance Calling, The Claypool Lennon Project y Right After the Experiment nºQ marcan un amplio arco de propuestas musicales. La representación nacional sigue estando muy presente con tres formidables trabajos: Manoel Macía, Lemon Parade y Solid Relax Project.
Aún con la resaca de las celebraciones por nuestro quinto aniversario y encarando ya la recta final de temporada, en Subterranea os traemos unos cuantos discos distinguidos, selectos y rompedores, que por otra parte no estarán exentos de polémica y disparidad de opiniones. Haken, Radiohead, Long Distance Calling, The Claypool Lennon Project y Right After the Experiment nºQ marcan un amplio arco de propuestas musicales. La representación nacional sigue estando muy presente con tres formidables trabajos: Manoel Macía, Lemon Parade y Solid Relax Project.
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