Podcasts about right they're

When it comes to being right or wrong, we all have different ways of responding to one another. Pastor Brian discusses how to bridge the divide those who we believe are "right" and those who are "wrong."

Brendan puts down the Milk Duds and takes a spiritual look at the coronavirus. And then he does an incredible deep dive with health coach/acupuncturist Andrea Henkels on how to follow your dreams despite immense rejection and criticism. The spiritual heroes talk about how to pursue an unconventional career and the criticism that comes with it, even when it's from the people who love you the most. They also mention stories of incredibly successful people who overcome an insane amount of rejection to all then just become Kevin Hart. 

All right. Welcome back to mindset radio. I'm your host Jeff Banman. And today I have begged, pleaded, convinced, guilt, tripped and otherwise, and probably now responsible for dinners and drinks for the rest of my life. Uh, but our guest today is the man, the myth, the legend, Jordan harbinger, and more, more myth, I think. I know. Don't beat yourself up. That's not allowed. Uh, you've done an exceptional job. I love listening to your show. Believe it or not, not everybody knows who you are, which is unfortunate. I've run across people all the time and I'm like, Hey, I finally convinced Jordan to come on the show. And they're like, who? And I know that's hard to believe...it's easy for me to believe, man. My, I have an infant son who doesn't give a crap who I am. Right? And he never will. I think. Isn't that how it is with kids?No, I, I don't know. Cause here's the funny thing with even with a little man this morning, right? So just turned two in November and we were getting ready to go for a walk, do whatever. And I turned around and I cross my arms, he looked right at me and just crossed his arms. Exactly. It's a big grin on his face. So that'll start, it'll start to come eventually.I gotta tell you this, uh, I've got, I interview a lot of people for the Jordan harbinger show as you know, cause you, you do listen to the show and thank you for that. And I've got, you know, acquaintances, I should say buddies, whatever that are like well known household names across at least America. And they're like, yeah, you know, I thought when I have kids I'm gonna finally be the cool dad because you know, super famous, super rich person that everyone, you know, cow toes to walk into a restaurant, never wait for a table, never pay for stuff half the time. And he's like, no, my kids are still like, can you drop me off at the corner? I don't want people to see that I'm with you. And like, and some of it's for different reasons. Like, you know, most of us, we're just going to be too nerdy to hang out with the kids.And for him, maybe it's like half nerdy half. They don't want their friends asking questions for their dads or something like that. Like you're dead if during that one time or that one movie. But still, it's kind of like no matter how cool like you can be on, we literally had this conversation on their yachts and they're like, yeah, well, and I'm like, I'm on your yacht watching the NBA playoffs on a big screen TV that comes up from like the mahogany whatever. And your kids are like, dude sucks. You know, like it's you just, you can't,no, never, ever. You can't man. I mean it's, you know, I've got the spectrums. Like we were talking about 15 and a half. She splits a year with me. So I spent my 45th birthday standing in line at the DMV to get her learner's permit. I'm excited though. So I mean, and you know it, it's coming back around. That's what I'm watching. They kind of, especially with the girls, you know, my oldest now coming closer to 16, we have a whole different relationship and it's very cool to kind of see that come around. Like she's excited to do stuff with me. Um, so it does, it ebbs and flows, but yeah, dude, it doesn't matter who you are. You could be the coolest cat on the face of the planet. Your kids going to still be like, alright, leave me alone. I think that's the way it goes.Yup. Exactly. So I, he's five months old. I got a few more years.A bit of time, man. You got a little bit yeah, that that first, uh, that first year and a half. You're just like you are, I have no idea who I am.Right? Yeah. I would say common. Common advice I've been given is the first 10 years they'll think I'm cool and then the next 10 years they won't. And then like in their twenties, it's kind of 50, 50, and then after age 30, again, they realize I'm not a total dumb ass and I actually have something to say. I put my own experience with my own parents, like my parents are awesome. My parents don't know anything. Oh, turns out all that stuff that I thought I knew better than I was only half. Right. Okay, fine. I was 10% right, but I'm still going to count it because I can never let them have this one. And now that I'm 40, I'm like, Oh, time is limited, you know, just enjoy it. But I don't want to waste your listeners time with reminiscing orI think it's, you know, it's all relevant and it's all things that we, uh, deal with. You know, it's like when I had Phil McKernan on and, uh, even Sherry walling and some people, you know, uh, you know, we talked about the family issue several times, especially in our community. It's like, how do I go from being fireman, a cop, you know, quote unquote hero, which I hate that term. Um, you know, but, and then step in and be a dad and be like a normal dad or a normal mom, you know? Uh, it's tough.Why do you hate that term? I think a lot of people your position, they hate that. I mean I, my dad loves his hobby is like paying for policemen's meals at restaurants, which by the way I think is not allowed in most places, but indeed in Detroit they're like, thanks. Yeah, they're hot dog, but out here in California they're like, I cannot do that. Please do not do that. I have to fill out paperwork when you do that. So, but he loves it. And, and uh, it's funny cause I think a lot of people look at servicemen, firemen, cops, et cetera as heroes. But yeah, I guess I guess it's probably uncomfortable hearing it to your face. I would, I don't know how I'd feel. It's hard to say thatit's caused a lot of conflict. It's interesting because Phil Phillip has asked me to give my one last talk in February here in Boulder. Um, and it's brought up a lot of stuff. And some of that is what you know, we're dealing with now is like, really now you've done this, you've done a lot of work on yourself, you've done a lot of different, you know, aspects. But I think for me it's like I don't, that's not, it's not why I did what I did. It's, I, I didn't do it for any of that and I'm not, you know, I think part of the thing, it's like I laid in bed and like, I want your house to burn down because I want something to go do. I want to like, I want war and conflict because I want to fulfill my destiny, my job. How does that, you know, mentally conflict with and emotionally conflict with you? Saying thank for, thank you for my service or you know, Hey, I think you're a hero. No, dude, I'm actually not because it's not how it works inside. Uh,that's, that's funny if, yeah, I think if people knew that firemen got accepted, wow, look at this big ass house burning down, man, there's, this one was really expensive. This is going to be a fun one. Then probably public perception change.Well, I mean, in, it's in for me, you know, old school, you got to think, you know, I started back in the early nineties and then when I, it's like when I came back from Kosovo in 99 nobody knew what the hell was going on. Nobody knew the services invaded and committed mass atrocities in this country and the things that we dealt with, you know, it was just, it was a blank. Right? I mean, it was, it's interesting to me pre nine 11 post nine 11 you know, when nobody gives a shit that I was a fireman. The only people that cared that I was a firefighter was the, you know, seven year old kids coming in to check out the fire truck. Nobody, you know, you didn't walk down the street. Rarely did anybody offer to buy your meal for ya on occasion. But it was super limited and nobody was walking around saying, Hey, thank you for your service. You know, pre nine 11 it just wasn't existing. And now it's in your face always. You know, and, and I, I, I get it, you know, Mike Brown and I talked about this the other day. It's, he's got a buddy that always responds with thank you for your support when they say that and then they get a little awkward because it's like, wait a minute, did I, do I support the war? Do I, do I agree with that? So it kind of is a throwback to them, uh, in a kind way, if you will.Yeah. And, and, uh, look, I think people now more than ever appreciate it just because it is in the media a lot, but I understand how the, to bring this back to value for your listeners, I understand how your self image doing whatever you do might not match what the public sees and that can actually cause some discomfort and have that not because I do anything particularly heroic, let's be clear. But people will say things like, Oh, I'll get a video from a friend. And they're like, I met the mall and the person in line in front of me at this restaurant is listening to your show. So I started talking to them and they were like amazed that I knew you. And so I'm sending a video with this random like Chinese woman in line for dumplings. She is really excited and sort of getting all like, you know, Oh my gosh, she's Jordan harbinger.I'm all excited and that makes me uncomfortable. Not because I don't enjoy it. I think it's awesome. And I think most kids up til age, whatever 30 I probably like if only that would ever happen to me, just one time in my life. But when it actually happens it can be highly uncomfortable because people get so excited and there's a part of me that's like I can never live up to that. Like I can never live up to that. And we see our own blooper reel in our head because we, they got like tripped over his own foot last night cause he stepped on a Lego and like yelled at his kid and then felt bad about it and then like got work late because he spilled coffee all over his crotch and didn't want to get laughed at. So he had to turn around and go home and change his pants.Like what? That's our self image. And then when other people are like, wow, you're so awesome. It's like thank you. But also the, you have cognitive dissonance that comes into play, doesn't feel comfortable. And so if you're in a service position and you feel uncomfortable when people give you those kinds of accolades, then congratulations. You're a normal human being and you're not a narcissist or just somebody who's maybe not done a ton of work accepting that kind of praise, which makes you a normal human being. So I want people to feel comfortable with that and not feel like, Oh yeah, I don't like that. And that makes, that makes me even more weird for not liking praise. Something's wrong with me. That's not the case. It's always almost always the case that when you feel awkward about somebody giving you high praise, it just means you probably have a healthy self image. Maybe you skew a little bit more towards negative, but that's okay because I think we're as humans kind of designed to do that. We have a negativity bias. And it's completely healthy,man. I, you know, that's exactly, so this is perfect conversation because you know, the way I look at one, why I wanted to bring you on the show, it's like you're the encyclopedia of knowledge now, right? You've been interviewed just a massive amount of people and you've gotten a chance to really one, learn a lot, but, but contribute a lot out there and you know, for today, the problem that I wanted to kind of have the conversation with you around that, that I feel like we all deal with is, especially in the services we have, this need to be everything to everyone all the time.I understand that, right? So let me, let me disassemble that a little. You mean that if you're, let's say you're a policeman, you mean you've got to be a cop both when you're at home, but also when you're out with your friends, but also when you're at work naturally, but also even on your lunch hour when you're just trying to house a steak hoagie and not get any on your uniform or cheese steak and not get any on your uniform, you can't really turn it off cause it's part of your identity. Right?Which component of that there? It's a 24 hour gig.Sure. So in every occupation has that, but you guys, and I say you guys meaning just fire, police, military, whatever. Hopefully that's clear. You guys have it more because yes, I'm a or interview or radio host or whatever you want to call it all the time. But nobody's like, Oh my God, is anybody a radio host? This man's having a heart attack, right? Like that will never happen. Interview his wife and see how she's feeling right now. Like that's never going to happen to me and no sane world will that happen. But if you're hanging out with your family on your one day off, cause you've been working a bunch of overtime, putting out fires in California and you finally got to go to your kid's party for like three hours and somebody passes out, you can't be like, look man, I have been working a lot. And that's all you, you can't do that, right? You're, you're on. And if you're a police officer and your daughter brings home a sketchy looking guy, you're not like, you know, I'm just going to pack these in guy.Yeah, this is okay. I know I recognize the gang tattoos, but look man, I am not on the clock. Have fun honey. Like that's not going to happen either. Not only because you're a dad, but because you're like, I know what that symbol means and that's, there's no way you're leaving the house with that guy. Right. And I'm sure that that happens all the time. And so in a way it's like with VR, it's, it's one of those with great power comes great responsibility. But sometimes it's like, well fine, but I want to turn the responsibility off. So I can play Xbox, dammit.Yeah, man. There's, yes. And there's this place where it's like, I mean, I, years ago all confess, long time ago I, you know, when I first started the fire service, I had firefighter plates, you know, tagline, license plates. I eventually took them off. I was like, you know what, cause I don't want to stop at the accident anymore. I don't want to, I don't want to be this. If I'm not in it on it, I want to be just average person. I want to be okay to just be, you know, Jeff, not fireman, not, you know, military guy, not agency guy and anything else. I just want to hang out. Uh, you know, I think that's a big problem.I can imagine because you can't, it's like never taking a day off, which I think we all know what that feels like as well. Just owning my own business. I know what it's like to be like. I mean, I'll sit down to a nice relaxing meal on Thanksgiving and Christmas and I'm like, I should be answering fan mail, zeroing out my inbox, reading this book for doing some prep for this show. What do I have to do? I mean, I will literally be, I try not to do this one. I'm holding my kid, but even sometimes it happens and I'll go, Oh man, in five minutes I got to put him down because I really have to get back to work. And I'm like, no, I don't. It's Sunday at 1:00 PM what I need to do is put him in bed and go watch Netflix.You know? That's, that's what I need to do. But I can't really turn it off. And I think for people who are in positions, like what your audience and what you, the position that you're in, it's even more dangerous because if I say, what's the worst thing that's going to happen if I don't finish this book today? The answer is, well, I guess I could do it tomorrow. I just have to get up a little bit earlier and maybe listen while I'm at the gym. But if somebody says, what's the worst thing that happens if I don't stop at this accident? You start catastrophizing because you either start saying, Oh my gosh, well this could happen, this can happen. You start catastrophizing or you just start thinking nothing. Who cares? I got to get on with my life. But then you probably have a crisis of conscience that's like, yeah, I shouldn't think that way.What kind of horrible person drives past an accident when they have the training to stop it. So you're compelled to, nothing's really compelling me to bust out my Kindle. Right. Like a little bit of guilt that I can turn off cause I realize it's a little irrational. Your guilt is maybe that person's child is in hell a and you don't stop because you're halfway to whole foods and your kid's crying. You know like w what, what? It's a different game and I don't think, I don't think a, what do you call us? Civilians? Like I don't think us, right. Joe's like understand that fully. Because if you're a teacher in somebody who doesn't understand their math homework and they can't get ahold of you, Oh well you'll, you'll help them out on Monday. But if somebody passed out on the sidewalk, you have almost like a moral obligation and it's hard to turn that off and realize that you need your own sanity.So I think a lot of people in your position, you put yourselves last more so than most parents do, more so than most teachers, more so than most, I don't know, public servants in another position, like the mayor of most towns is not sitting at home on the weekend and worrying about what's in the office. Um, it may be a big city, but most, most of them are hanging out with their family and having Turkey, you're the one that has to be awake at 3:00 AM for the call. And that, that level of stress is not good for you longterm. And then of course they say take a vacation and you're like, I wish I freaking good. You know, I'm on vacation thinking, hope nothing bad happens to my friends. Even if you can put society out of your mind, you got your buddies out there.Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and it's, you know, it's interesting because like we do, we, we leave ourselves last in line and there's a level of expectation I think even in relationship and friendships and et cetera. Like there's this normal like why can't you just turn it off? Why can't you just be home right now? Why can't you, you know, you're not at work, why can't you just leave that at work? And so that's kind of this be everything to everybody all the time that shows up. It's like, okay, so I've got this side of me that I can't turn off. It's a 24 seven deal that I have this moral, ethical and you know, emotional response of ness to right. That I just am always tuned into what's happening. And then, you know, my wife wants me to be freed up and easygoing and have fun and not care, right. And, and not have this thing. And so it's like there's this ebb and flow, constant conflict. And I know, cause I've listened to some of your shows that have been radically helpful for me and a lot of ways, uh, you know, the people that you've had on and just kind of beginning to dissect how I begin to create transition points or points of recovery or understand kind of how I flow from one ideal person to another ideal person in a way, right. Without then the guilt and shame and crap that goes with it.Yeah, I think there's a lot of cognitive, well we've mentioned cognitive dissonance, but there's brain science that goes into to this like catastrophizing, what's the worst thing happened? And you start going down the if trail and the stakes are higher for what you guys are doing, guys and gals, let's be clear now, there's a lot of women out there now and I, I like, um, and you know, you're in this weird position where society will look at everything. Well, police especially now, um, firemen, I dunno if are, if you're immune to this, but, uh, I can't, nothing comes to mind. But with police man, now it's like you're under fire and all of you under fire. Whenever there's any kind of negativity. And I, I would imagine any cop out there now, in fact, I wonder this, I'm so curious if, if police now feel like they're looked at differently by a lot of folks just because of what's been in the news and that really, it really sucks to hear that because I mean, when I was little, the police would come in your house and you'd say, Hey, do you want some coffee?And they'd be like, sure, thank you. Now I feel like that would just never happen. Um, because there's just this more arms length distance, at least in bigger cities, especially, um, with where the police stand. When I grew up, I didn't grow up in a small town, but they would come in and they didn't take their shoes off because, you know, that's, that's a little bit too much. But they would have, you can make them tea or coffee and they would be like, thank you. Yeah, that's, that's great. Now I don't think that's allowed. And I remember recently, I live in San Jose, California. We had a package stolen and the cop came in and sat down at our kitchen Island and open up his laptop and did the report. And I was like, wow, this is such a different experience than I've experienced anywhere else.And even just the, the times that I've dealt with the police in other big cities, even in New York, when they come in, it's just like, you almost feel like you're at the police station. And I'm like, I didn't commit any crime. I called you guys, you know? And I remember just like feeling really intimidated and I realized, Oh yeah, they have half or one, some percentage of the time these guys walk into a house and someone tries to stab them or something, you know, like, so I gotta just sort of keep that in mind, but you can't live your whole life that way. And that's just really easy for me to say as a fricking podcast or it radio guy and you guys can't turn it off. And that takes its toll. There is science behind this. When you are in fight or flight mode or when you are at least an elevated stress for a long period of time, you don't, uh, you wreck havoc on parts of your brain. Um, you age faster, your heart, uh, is obviously not as healthy as it should be. And if you're always eating on the go, those two risk factors combined are just not good lifestyle. Um, I don't want to say choices because it's, it's hard to say that it's a choice, but they're not good lifestyle factors I should say. And that's, that's really bad for everyone around you too. And so you're really caught between a rock and a hard place. I hadone too. Yah. Which is not only all those core factors to it, but then, and it's finally cool because that's why I think we're doing well with the podcast and we're growing significantly in this community because we can now have these conversations and five years ago, 10 years ago, like this just, it wouldn't even be accepted. The kind of, the idea of looking, of looking at what's going on of, you know, emotional safety and the things that we deal with. Like when I grew up that, that, those were not conversations that were had at all ever around, you know, we live in a world of suck it up, shove it down, slam it down, deal with it, and do your job. And that's how a lot of us, especially kind of in our upper thirties and forties, you know, that's how we grew up. That was the environment.And it's cool for me to at least to see that today we're able to have these conversations and they're listening, right? And people are more curious about how do I deal with this? How do I transition emotionally? How do I understand all these core factors? Right? They're just kind of the task and purpose factors and then the internal factors that are in play. I mean, I, I remember flying the episode you did with, uh, Gabriel as Rocky when you guys were talking about self-development, uh, and kind of go and add it, right? I can't remember what the tile they upset was right off hand. Uh, but I was texting you all the way through it. Like this is, you were spot on with it. Uh, I,I always remember Gabe and I do a lot of stuff together because he's a frigging genius with his research. Go ahead.Yeah, like in that [inaudible] that, that particular episode, I'm going to find it, tag it and put it into the show notes because that particular episode, you know, you went through and you talked about all the kinds of the bullshit that's out there, the reality of things, you know, he did a phenomenal job and kind of breaking down a look at self-development in a way that I believe made sense to our, would make sense to our community rather than kind of this hoopla, hippy dippy hang out kind of stuff. You know, you were talking about some of the programs you've gone to where you just felt like totally violated in it. Like, get me outta here. Uh, and you know, and you were sharing some of those stories along the way that I think really resonated with me. And resonates with our world because it's like I don't, I it, there's a fear that if I become soft or soften myself, I won't be capable of doing my job as well.Yeah. And there may be some truth to that, but it becomes, it becomes problematic because of course you wouldn't parent the same way that you police. Right? Like, well, I, in theory you should probably not do that. Yeah. I mean, what, who am I to tell anybody how to police? But that's the idea behind it and it's really, really tricky to make recommendations like that because I'm sure people out there see therapists and things like that and it's like, okay, great. Have you ever been to Iraq, Afghanistan? No. Have you ever put out a fire I've ever seen burned a child, you know, and you're there and the parents' reaction, have you ever had someone pull a knife on you? Uh, you know, while you're in a closed space and your partner is taking a leak? I don't know. You know, like all of these things are, it's hard to relate to and it's, it's hard to have somebody be like, you just need to relax more.It's like F you, right? Like, what do you tell? Sure. Tell me that while you have another sip of your latte over there buddy. Like, sure. I just need to ask some more. And then it's like try yoga and like what planet? It just feels like the people giving advice to first responders and military. It's just, they're on another planet. They're from a different planet. It's completely nonsensical in a lot of ways. And so it's not, it's not relatable, which makes it worse because it's like hearing some quack tell you to do something and it's like you just don't even understand my reality at all. And it makes you feel more isolated of cool because then you think, Oh, the help that's available is some Yodel with a four year degree who's never even left, you know, our city or state and has certainly never held, uh, held a position like mine in a F in a dirt lot like Iraq or Afghanistan.And now I'm sitting here like listening to him tell me what I need to do. It's just gotta be really isolating and frustrating and that I think is just part of the problem. And of course you've talked to other people with the same problems. It's a good support group, but you're mostly just venting as opposed to getting actionable strategies and that. That makes me kind of sad to hear because I think it's no surprise we rely on you to do your jobs to have a functioning society where I can sit here and sip my latte and Dole out unqualified advice. Right? Yeah.I mean I used to have this statement where it's like if I went to see somebody went down to sit with a psycho or whatever, I'm like, listen, if I am actually honest with you, if I actually share with you what you want me to share with you, you're going to have PTSD by the time we're done. You know what I mean? Yeah. You're going to be fucked up, like, like, and, and then I'm going to end, the problem is like we live in a world or the way our brains work, it says, so there's this whole world for me now kind of uncovering, which is this understanding of how to bring calm to chaos. All right, so we're back and you know, here's where we kind of left off and we were talking, you were, you were, were kind of exploring this understanding from the law enforcement aspect where you know, you're Sharon, you know, cops used to be able to come in and sit down, have a cup of coffee, you know, actually converse with you where today it's like 24, seven always on edge.And it's this, you know, it was interesting as we're going, because I've been looking at this quite a bit, it's like this collapse of, of stress between the public and the providers, if you will. Right? So it's like this, there's this vicious circle that's happening. I think now that's been happening over the last several years where you know the police are a little bit more under fire being watched being you know, putting them on edge, the public's on edge about the police. It's like this high state of conflict where somebody has got a run in the middle and be like, okay can everybody just settled down for a second and take a breath and kinda hit the reset button. I do see that happening significantly.Yeah, I can imagine that there's not a whole lot of resources out there. I mean it's like there are and there aren't and everyone complains about things like the VA. I don't really know much about that, but I do know that no matter how many resources are out there, it can be really tough. When you go home and your friends and neighbors are kind of oblivious, you almost maybe feel like you're living a secret life. Maybe you are living a secret life.Yeah, which my neighbor, my neighbor in Florida for years, it's like, dude, what do you do? Cause you're like disappear for several weeks and then you just play golf when you're home and your work in your garage. Like I don't understand what you do. Yeah, man. I mean I think the, I, you know, it's been an interesting conversation so far because we've kind of explored where for us there's not all the, the resources are limited and in the way that people understand or give us, and I'll say us from the community, the opportunity to express ourselves fully and actually deal with some of the struggles that we face and have an open, honest conversation or dialogue without freaking people out. I was, you know what you're talking about. If I said, if I sat out with a psych, it'd be like, you know, you'd have PTSD by the time we're done. The problem is if I lay out what I actually feel inside, I'm going to hit all the trigger words. You know what I mean? They're going to be like, you know, well I gotta call somebody, I gotta, we gotta fix this. This guy's, you know, suicidal or this guy's, you know, homicidal or whatever. It's like, no, this is just my life. This is just the way I operate.Yeah. I think that there's probably a bit of, what would you even call this, like a protective shell that everyone's in your position is able to put on, but I don't, is that healthy? That's the question, right? Is that something that is healthy and I'm not totally sure that it is. I think maybe it serves a purpose, but I think that it's also probably, there's probably a problem that I don't think most people can switch it on and switch it off. I think that's the biggest issue. That's the biggest problem is it's hard to turn it off. Then when you're at your daughter's graduation, it's just still there. And so yes, it sort of protects you, but is that something that you actually, is that healthy for you mentally?Yeah, it does. It actually work for you longterm? I mean it is, it's like we've, you know, I, I re relate it back to when I was a kid when I was three or four or five now my mom would always laugh at me because there's two things I played growing up. Fireman and army. Like that was it. And I had to put on blue corduroys to play fireman and then go change into Brown corduroys if I wanted to play army, like I had to be in context, if you will. Right? Even as a kid, and I think I've looked at that skill right now. If I take that as a skillset, how do I pull it on when I put on my uniform or when I put something on, it's like, okay, here's where I am. This is who I am for this period in time. And when I take it off, I'm no longer that right now I am transitioning into husband, wife, mom, dad, son, brother, friend, hanging out or whatever it might be.Yeah. That's got to be tricky and also mentally taxing, and I think that's very problematic because I don't think a lot, I don't think a lot of people really know that, including the people that are doing this, you know, that are in your position, know that there is such a cognitive cost, a psychological cause to making that switch. It's not just leave it at home. If you're shoving it down, it's like eating Brussels sprouts. If you don't like those, right, you're, you're cramming it in there and it wants to pop back out and it's all you're devoting cognitive bandwidth, brain power to keeping it from popping out, and that's unhealthy because it's stressful for you. It's taxing for you.It's wearing, it's wearing. I mean, I think that's where I look now at 45 exhausted most times. Right. If you actually, if I'm honest with myself and with people around me, it's like I'm just worn out.Yeah, I can imagine. And you're not going to rest well if you're consistently working on made to, I don't want to, I'm trying not to talk last here. If you just keep on pushing something down, you're not going to have, let's say you spend 10% of your cognitive bandwidth trying to push it down. 90% of you is there. So being present is tough. Um, focusing on self care is like last priority cause you're just trying not to screw up the family party by being a weirdo or whatever. Right? There's all kinds of stuff that that happens as a result of that, that that is invisible and that's, that's the problem. That's what's unhealthy. It's invisible. It's, that's what makes it insidious. That's the word I'm looking for. It's insidious. You don't see it coming because you think everything's fine, everything's fine, everything's fine. And then you're just like, why the hell am I tired constantly?How come I can't relax? And then it just, they throw a label on it like, Oh it's part of your PTSD or it's like residual trauma. And it's like, yeah, but the real truth is that you, you can't relax, you're not focused, you're constantly monitoring your surroundings even though you're in your own living room. Like that's super unhealthy. And I don't, I don't think maybe it doesn't affect everybody, but certainly people that have seen combat or conflict or people that are on this street every day, you know, like that type of stuff that doesn't just go away. And you even see it when, when a police officers and military or retired, there's, it just doesn't go away. And I think because as an evolutionary strategy, the people that survived to, to reproduce were the people that didn't shut that stuff down so easily or forget it. So. Right. They were constantly vigilant. I don't think some Roman soldier really necessarily retired and lived out the rest of his years. They probably were, I don't know, back then, dead at 30 max at or no.Well, yeah, you lose all value. I mean, in a sense a truck goes away, you lose all value. And that's where I've really looked at it to say, and you know, you brought up an interesting point where there are a lot of labels that go with us, right? It's, Oh, that's just PTSD, or Oh, you must have done something or you must have seen something. It's like, no, it's just this, this constant inability to transition effectively to kind of settle myself and to turn it off. Right. To bring the volume switch down a little bit. Um, you know, that's been the interesting exploration for me. Now, understanding kind of the biological factors that go into play, uh, deep inside in the way we are trained and developed. And then of course, you know, childhood trauma and everything else that comes into play for us. We just aren't given the tool to ebb and flow in this life that we've chosen.And yeah, it's more, it's more exhaustion. It's more, you know, self-driven stuff than it is any incident or seeing something or participating in something cause a greater population. You know, you've got chose to put on a uniform. I chose to go to combat or I chose to run in that burning building or I choose to save lives. I choose to do these things and going back to kind of where we started, it's like when you, when you call me a hero or when you elevate me, it almost dismisses what I do in a way. Does that make sense to you? I mean, what do you think about that?Um, can you clarify that a little? I need to make sure I know what you're, yeah,so, so for instance, you know, we talked about this internal struggle between like not wanting to be called a hero or not wanting to be acknowledged so much. You know, cause for me, I'm laying in bed hoping your house burns down or you know, I want to go to the next thing I want to call out on my SWAT team. I want to do these things. I want violence to occur out there in the world. And when you then call me a hero or you elevate me because of what I've chosen to do, that creates that separation right. Internally from kind of the external view of who I am. But in doing that, also, what I'm trying to struggle and balance with is like the acceptance of myself and myself in the, my place in society. It's, I feel like there's this unspoken expectation that says, you know, if we're a firefighter or a cop, you know, we're committed to service.We're committed to the people around us, you know? Yeah, we're there to save you. Yeah, we're heroes. But internally, I don't think any of us feel that way at all and we don't know how to express stuff very well. I mean, we're, I had one of the guys on the show not too long ago that literally like at 16 you know, he started riding firetrucks 16 and they ran a house fire people inside trapped and burned up and the chief sat him down in the car, pulled out a six pack of beer and says, okay, this is how you're going to solve it. You know, and no wonder he's an alcoholic later in life. Right? Yeah. Dude, that's the world, man. That's the world we live in.Yeah, that's a, that's problematic. If people are, and I'm sure that's the exception and not the rule, I hope it is. But if those are the tools that sort of the tools of the trade that you learn when you start the job or yeah, just hit the gym extra hard tomorrow, you know, like, okay, but that's a bandaid on a bullet hole. And that's very problematic because what happened, not just that it doesn't work, but then people think, man, you know, I am having a drink with the guys and burning off some steam. I am hitting the gym, I am going for a run, but I still feel kind of shitty. Something is wrong with me. And that's the dangerous part. Not like, Hey, this tool is not working. I gotta find something else. Because you know, this isn't working for everyone. Maybe we should research this. It's, this isn't working for me, but I serve shit. Don't want to be the guy that walks in and is like, I feel bad. Right. Maybe that's not the culture.It's absolutely not the culture. I mean that's, and that's where I think we're finally, you know, we're just, I mean we are, you know, this is partly why it's interesting to have you on the show because in this, in the entrepreneur space, right? I mean it's like you and I hanging out at MMT in park city, just kind of taking a break, sitting out on the balcony, bullshitting, right? In this, in this flip side of the world, there's a lot of advancement, a lot of development, a lot of openness around self discovery and what's happening and emotion and freedom around that. And, and that's, that's becoming very much more mainstream than it used to be. But our audience, I mean, we're still antiquated. I mean, we're still in the dark ages when it comes to that stuff. Like we are just on the cusp of these conversations flowing out across the, across these communities. Cause it is, it's, it is, shut it down, shove it down, deal with it. Um, suck it up, buttercup. I mean, those are the, that's the, that's the training. That's the conversation. And I've said for years, you know, the only acceptable emotion in these worlds is anger, right? You can't be too happy. You can't cause then you're fucking off. You can't be sad because then you're weak. But you can be as angry as you want to be. And I think that perpetuates. It's like it's a self perpetuating cycle we're dealing with constantly.Yeah. Th the anger is an issue. And I think a lot of guys just men in general have this as a default because we're not necessarily taught good emotional communication. And a lot of us are less wired for that in a way. And then lean on that and go, wow, where a guy, you know, and so I, I don't know about you, but my dad, his diff, he's a great guy by the way, just to clarify. But he's his default communication when he's frustrated a little bit sad, feeling a little bit stressed, feeling a little bit rushed, feeling like he is a little silly because he forgot something. He just goes and gets angry because he doesn't have the other channels. Right? Like he doesn't have the other modes. It's like he's got red and, and you're like, Hey, color this in blue. And he's like, uh, red. Right. He just can't do it. So there's fun dad. And then there's like angry dad and then there's normal dad, but there's not like sort of down today dad, there's just really short temper and shorter temper and that's no, that's sort of normal for him. His dad was the same way. All the guys in our family are the same way and I'm fighting that all the time.Man. You just described me to a T really the majority of the time. Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, it's been difficult. I mean, I did the work with Elliot road kind of release the anger stuff, which really helps significant crazy, you know, the, on the hypnotherapy side. But it's, it's difficult. And for me, what I've noticed is it's really driven by this sense of anxiety and anxiety around not being good enough for everybody around me. Yeah, that's, that's problematic. But it's also thanks normal as well, if that makes sense. Yeah. Well, and that's, and that is, and that's kind of right. That's the purpose behind some of this show is to kind of normalize this, this conversation that says, okay, that's, yes, it's a problem. Yes. You know, it's an issue that needs attention and you're not abnormal. Right? You're not the only one feeling that way. And, and I like that you said that it's, it is, uh, there's a big man issue there around it cause it is, I mean we weren't really, we're taught to be, to create physical safety really well. We're not taught to create kind of emotional safety for the people around us at all. And a lot of waysit's a good point. And additionally, I mean even in addition to that, not only are you not taught to create psychological safety, it's not even prioritized. You know, you're not even doing it for yourself, let alone for other people. It would be different if we were also self if we were centered and grounded and you know, felt good about ourselves and that it was just, Oh, we're just sort of selfish as guys. It's like, no, we're not even creating that for ourselves, let alone for other people. And you can't really create it for other people until you create it in yourself. You know, we, we think we're fooling everyone and our kids raising these kids and we're like, yeah, I just want my daughter to be confident. Yeah. I just want my son to be [inaudible] when they see your example and you think, Oh, I'm putting on a brave face.Okay fine. But after like age seven, they can tell. Right. And then he spent 20 years being like, I'm faking it. It's like, no, your kids are like, yeah, my dad, you know, he doesn't really take care of himself. You know, he's always stressed out. We think we're putting on a brave face and it's just so obvious cause you know, the cracks show, especially when they're sitting around at the dinner table and you blow up because they mentioned they didn't finish their project and before they finish their sentence telling you that they got an extra week for it, you start talking about how they didn't get their work done, dammit. You know, and like they're just hold up dad, we got an extension. Oh, you know, it's like that kind of thing. The cracks start to show, or when we massively overreact to something that they've done and they realize that that isn't normal.Or they see other people acting normal or they're just like, why is this the case with my dad? Oh, you know, mom says it's something from work. Like kids are smart. It's, there's, someone told me, uh, you have to be really careful when you have guns in the house, right? Because kids will get their hands on it and the retort is always, no, I have a gun safe. And it's, did you know the combination to any of your parents' stuff when you were a kid and the answers yeah. By age 11, 13, 15 years old. So the key isn't, don't let the kids have the combination that against safe. It's, by the time they're obviously going to have figured out what that is. They know how to use a gun safely. Right. That's the, that's how you keep them safe. Not, not by telling them, not by diluting yourself that they have no idea how to get in there. Cause you the same fricking safe code as you do on your iPhone. So when they candy crush, you're telling them the code, right? Like they, they're onto you buddy. You know,I knew all my dad's stuff was, I'm, yeah. At a very young age. Let me ask you a question. What have been a couple of your favorite episodes this year that you've done? I mean there's, we're closing out 2019 kind of related to any of this stuff. What do you, what have you taken away from your experiences this year in all the shows that you've done?Yeah, I've done some really interesting ones in the past year especially. There's one with Jack Barsky who was a undercover KGB spy who came to America at posing as an American and he later decided that he loved America so much he was just going to stay here. And he, he ended up never getting caught up until recently actually, well after the Soviet union had fallen. And so that's a really interesting story. It just kind of shows that if you ever feel like, Oh man, this country has gone to hell in a hand basket. You know, it's nice to see somebody from the outside who's essentially one of our sworn enemies, you know, coming in and going, actually this place is great for all these different reasons that I think a lot of people don't think about every day. Um, we had Admiral James DaVita's come on and talk about character that's a, he's an interesting guy because of course he's that, he was the NATO Supreme allied commander.So that's kind of a big deal to have somebody come on and talk about that sort of stuff from straight from the horse's mouth, you know, had a lot of opportunity to do bad things and, and didn't, and uh, man, we had a guy from catch me if you can, uh, the inspiration from cashmere, if you can, that movie with Leonardo DiCaprio. We had a Frank Abignail come on and discuss the psychology behind some of the, the cons and the imposter stuff that he was doing. And so the shows run a wide gamut. Even recently we had general Robert Spalding about how China is essentially looking to overtake America with technology, but also the spy, where that's going in some of the, and how the Chinese communist party really does have it out for us. And it's very well documented. It's not a secret. We're kind of the only ones that are sleeping on.So we've done a lot of really great shows that show that both things are both going in the right direction but also need to be maintained, right? Like we need to pay attention to the direction that we take our society and our country and ourselves. Because all of those things are integral to maintaining democracy. Like we can't just work on self-development, but we also can't just be paranoid about everything around it. It's like we really have to work on the whole picture. That's really, really crucial to do. So, eh, don't we risk our, our whole, our whole way of being.Yeah, I'm mad and I think that's what I really enjoy about your show. You know? And again, part of the, my mission, I feel like bring people into my world. You know, they may not, they may not listen to Jordan harbinger. They may not know you exist. Uh, cause it's kinda not in their bandwidth being able to bring resources and tools to the table for the men and women out there that are doing their jobs every day. You know, you've got some phenomenal stuff out there that I know would make a difference in their life.Well, thank you very much. Yeah, I appreciate it. I'd love that people are listening to podcasts more now and if they're interested in this and maybe they'll be interested in the Jordan harbinger show and I'm on social media at Jordan harbinger on Twitter, Instagram, et cetera. So I'd love to hear from everybody. Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, thanks for having me on, man. I appreciate the opportunity. It's a lot of fun and talking with you is always fun.Hey man. Yeah, we just need to hang out more often and clearly now. I owe you a nice dinner and I'm going to try to be in San Diego again while you're there, but, and I'll make sure that all the links are up on the show notes. Uh, that, uh, all the links to your a one year podcast, but then, uh, Jordan harbinger.com, uh, your links to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, all the good stuff. Uh, and I know that you're, uh, I think sometimes we feel like people are untouchable or unreachable in the world. You know what I mean? And I want my listeners to know that I know you're a pretty responsive guy and you know, you offer a lot and you're really committed to, uh, bring in a conversation to the table in a variety of ways that helps solve problems everyday for people, you know, kind of the every day. That's what I really appreciate about what you do.Well, thank you very much man. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to everybody and like I said, it's always fun to chat, so don't be a stranger.Hey brother, I really appreciate you joining us today. All right,that wraps up our show and matter of fact, the last show of 2019, happy new year again, Jordan harbinger. Brother. Thank you for giving us your time coming on this show. Uh, educating me and us giving us your thoughts and your insights and really a summary of everything that you've been able to accomplish over this last year. I appreciate it so, so much. I hope everybody had a great 2019 or at least you're still here. You asked me 20 that year. 15 was a pretty much a shit show in a lot of ways, but a lot of great things came out of it and I'm looking forward to an entire new year to really blow this thing up. So a couple of little things. One, we're going to continue with the Tuesday, Thursday podcast episodes starting in 2020 for the month of January. We're going to be dealing with the operational pillar.Number two, mental acuity has some great guests lined up throughout the month. Really some phenomenal episodes, some great tools and lessons and things to learn and practical application. Please do me a favor, keep sending me your notes, your feedback, your thoughts on what we're doing and how we're doing it and if it's working for you or not. The last big thing is I need your support and keeping this show up and running, keeping things moving and giving back to you. A lot of you have asked for more, for more depth, for training, for etc. And we've got to figure out how to do that. So I put together your a hundred day operational challenge. It's available at mindsetradio.com or you can go to mindsetradio.com/opyourlife. That's Opie your life. It's a go nation basis because this podcast is a part of the operation mindset foundation. So there's some options to do that. And if for right now, for some reason you want to take on the program and you just can't swing that donation, send me an email and we'll talk about it.I'm really looking forward to bringing people into that program. We're going to begin January 15th as a group and after that you'll be able to sign up any point in time and it'll run for you and not a problem. So that'll be up in live starting January 15th make sure you get in, register early so that we can know who's coming in. Get some things set up. It's going to be a lot of fun. It's going to be a freaking ball Buster, but I promise you at the end of the a hundred days there is gold at the end of that rainbow. So I look forward to you joining me. Thanks for listening. As always, do me a favor, share this podcast out. Share it with those your work, those you love, those you like and hell. Even though she can't stand, maybe they'll shift some contacts for them.So thanks for giving me a great year, your time, your attention, your listening and your feedback. I greatly appreciate it. Thanks to all the sponsors and stepped out this year and really supported us. Roofers, Elliot Rose at the prime mind app, chief Miller apparel and all the others that just showed support across the board. I greatly appreciate it. I'm looking forward to having the conversation in the new year with you. Bring us some new guests, new tools, new techniques, and some real practical application routes from stop again, don't forget to swing by out mindset.com check out the foundation in 2020 we're going to be out on the road quite a bit, teaching a lot of the programming that's out there. So if you want to bring something to your department, pop in, fill out the grant app, and let's get this. I already started, so it's all there and available for you. Let's really elevate the conversation of how we perform at the top of our game, mentally, physically, and emotionally in all aspects of our life for 2020 that's the mission. I hope you'll join me for it. That's it. Have a great safe new year and we will talk to you soon. 

This weeks guest is Ryan Narus. Ryan is a double graduate from Wake Forest University with an undergrad in Psychology and an MBA with concentrations in Operations and Marketing. Graduating in 2009 left him unable to find a B2B sales job, so he settled for car sales. Flash forward 4 years later and he won several awards, wrote a book, and discovered he was completely disillusioned with Corporate America, so he started a mobile home park business. Now he has been a part of 10 MHP deals spanning 1,245 pads and over $20MM in acquisitions, all with starting with more student loan debt than cash to invest in deals. He is going to share with us how to destroy all our excuses!Links: http://www.archimedesgrp.com/Connect more with your host Samuel Knickerbocker at:https://www.facebook.com/ssknickerbocker/?ref=profile_intro_cardhttps://www.instagram.com/ssknickerbocker/https://howmoneyworks.com/samuelknickerbockerWelcome back to the fuel your legacy podcast. Each week, we expose the faulty foundational mindsets of the past and rebuild the newer, stronger foundation essential in creating your meaningful legacy. We've got a lot of work to do. So let's get started. As much as you like this podcast, I'm certain that you're going to love the book that I just released on Amazon if you will, your legacy, the nine pillars to build a meaningful legacy. I wrote this to share with you the experiences that I had while I was identifying my identity, how I began to create my meaningful legacy and how you can create yours. You're going to find this book on Kindle, Amazon and their website Sam Knickerbocker com.Welcome back to fuel your legacy. And as always, we have some more incredible guests coming on. And today we're talking somebody who has made his millions he's crushing it in the mobile home park industry. If you've ever thought who owns that trash heap over there. I'm just kidding. His are probably nicer than the average. But no. So Ryan, he was fed a lie when he was younger, much like, probably most of us are you who are listening to this, that if you study hard to graduate from top universities, you're going to get a job, and everything's going to be hunky-dory and you're going to retire with ease and everything's gonna be fantastic. Well, he found out much like I'm sure you're finding out, which is why you're listening to this podcast, that not everything turns out as advertised. Thankfully, he has rebounded, really got into his rock bottom, and launched from that with a solid foundation. And now he's here to help you understand, hey, kind of where did that aha moment happen? How did you launch and how did he overcome the fear of failure? So I'm super excited. Ryan, take it away. Awesome. First, of foremost, Samuel, I want to thank you. I'm flattered to be here. We have a ton to talk about offline, because we're both huge fans of a very Reading and Writing I haven't even told you I've written a book which we can get into again offline but yeah I am so pumped to be here I really am and I don't have anything to sell I am literally doing this because I want to help you the listener escaped corporate America cuz it is awful awful awful man and you know what stinks about it it's that you're forced for this line which you hinted at which is work hard in school you'll go to a good college and then from there you'll have a job and then you work really hard at that job and then you get to retire. Well, it turns out like quite literally none of that is true you can work hard and still not to go to a good school. You can go to a good school I went to Wake Forest University, a very good school made the on Becky list. And so quote-unquote were elite or whatever, because people are on Becky's of the world, are paying to get their kids in on fake scholarships. Right so like a good school, not Ivy but a very good school is no guaranteed job. Oh my gosh, don't get me started about that. My wife's a huge Full House fan. So I like to give her trash for that good, but it's like did I went to Wake Forest twice I went once to get for undergrad, I got my degree in psychology and statistics, literally, to be a salesman. I wanted to be in sales. And I figured what better way to sell them to understand the psychology of the people you're trying to persuade. And it paid dividends, especially because I got a statistics minor, which also helped me optimize my selling schedule, which we can I did Moneyball statistics to opt I was a car salesman, I optimized my day based on a whole bunch of data I put together which is cool. But long story short, even after graduating with first an MBA, there's no gear I hadn't no guaranteed job coming out of it and both times I was going out of undergrad and grad. And I found myself stuck at a job where I did not want to get promoted because I hated it. And I didn't find any meaning or purpose in it. I found myself not wanting to go up. So not wanting to and not wanting to stay put. And then it's like, well, I'm making too much money here. Where am I going to go? Because I've adapted a lifestyle that has become part of my identity. And it's not just a sunk cost of racking up student loan debt and putting it a bunch of hours and years playing the office politics game, but it just becomes part of your identity. It's hard to let that go especially if you're used to a certain lifestyle, right? So you're living a middle-class lifestyle, you drive a certain car, you go to certain restaurants, you have certain friends, really hard to let that go. To give a teaser about where I'm going with this. Eventually, I gave all that up and moved into a mobile home. Chase my dream. Sosacrifice is a big part of where I'm going with this but to kind of go back so we don't do a huge Quentin Tarantino. Its where my journey started when I was in, obviously, when I was in high school really when even before that when I decided Wake Forest was my dream school and I wanted to go I did everything I could to get it. And I did. And I had several key moments in my life where I realized if I don't get my stuff together as I got like 1980 on the essay T, other PSAT so in the average at the times, this is when it was based off 1600 Wake Forest average was 1320. It wasn't even close. So I was like, Okay, well, we've got to get this score up and flash forward. Several years later, from my freshman year to my senior year, I scored a 13 to one out of 1600. So I got the average as T score. Then I had slightly above the GPA and I got accepted the way I can. It was like a dream come true getting to go to my dream school, I loved it. And I was following that trajectory, right? Like, hey, go to a really good school, you have a really good job when you come out. Well, turns out, I did it. It turns out I got a lot a job down. So I graduated in oh nine. So you can't be like, well, you just graduated right at the start of the Great Recession, well, actually had my job locked off, locked up before the economy took a tumble. It was that I picked the wrong job. Because I didn't know myself well enough. I didn't self assess well enough to know who I was at heart. So even though I had a psych major, and I took a ton of classes that basically browbeat you into the really trying to come to the realization that you need to understand who you are, what you like, and what you do not like, or you will make a decision based on what you think other people want you to do. What Are you real? Whether you realize that or not? Whether you're consciously going well, I'm going to do this because I don't want to make dad unhappy? Or you're going, Well, no, I want this. But really, do you want that? Or do you want the world so for example, investment banking, I know a ton of investment bankers that are doing it, quote, unquote, for themselves, but really, they're doing it because they want to impress other people. So the thing that I came into really, really hard and fast is I didn't have my dad was a college professor and marketing. He was not a psych person, right? He wasn't there to tell me, Hey, you really should figure out like really drill down into who you are at heart and what you want to be when you grow up. I didn't have that. And so I picked a job that was selling. It was a sports sales. And so I was like, Oh my god, sports and selling done right. This is going to be my life. And it ended up being I tricked myself into literally taking a telemarketing job, which was horrendous. And then It was like July, June or July of 2009. After I had graduated answer, everyone who just graduated who was going to get a good job, got a job. And so I was like, I can't find a sales job because number one, I'm not. I've already graduated. Right? So I can't read the graduate. And number two, the only people were hiring business to business sales, wanted someone with five years of experience and a Rolodex, who could roll in day one and be effective. And that was not me. What I needed was someone willing to take a chance on me. Thankfully, my karate instructor from high school was a car salesman who's a manager at Hendrick, Honda, and Charlotte, and they gave me a chance. And I could have easily been like, I went to Wake Forest University car sales is beneath me. I want the business to business sales, not consumer, not business to consumer. But instead, I said, You know what, I am not going to sit at my parent's house and feel sorry for myself. I'm going to go and do Do something to make the most of it. What I ended up doing was I ended up tracking my data, literally using Moneyball statistics with multivariate regressions to optimize my day and figure out who are the best leads to follow up on which ones can you let go? What part of the sales process is vital. And what I found during that process, literally just using a basic, very regression analysis, is if you can show people numbers for a car, even if they're like, I'm not buying today, your likelihood of selling them jumps from like 25% to 60. So better than a coin flip. So then all of a sudden, I craft my entire sales process around how can I convince someone to test drive their car and to just sit down with me for five minutes, and it absolutely revolutionized the way I sold cars and in my first full year, I hit Honda's highest award right out of the gate. I sold 200. And I think was 241 cars, so about 20 cars a month, right out of the gate at 24 years old. And I had a moment which where they shipped me up to Washington DC for like to stay at a five-star hotel. And it was this weird moment in my life where I drank way too much.And, and it wasn't that it's not that I'm I went up there to dress nice and be a party boy. It was that at the moment, I didn't realize that I was filling a void in my soul. So I thought I wanted to be a salesman. I thought it was good at it and an old boy I have made it. But at that moment when I was shaking hands with the district manager, and he looked me in the face and said, are you going to do this again next year? Like I better see you here next year. Of course, at the moment I was like you're going to see me here next year when I walked away without a warm To have my dinner and just sunk in that I was completely unfulfilled. It sunk in how many hours I spent doing that how much of my life I sacrificed to get to that moment. And basically, I was told, go do it again. You better do it again. And also it. It was pretty lucrative, relatively speaking, but it wasn't. It's not something that would ever make me millions unless I owned a car dealership. You know, I had a great I had a meeting with my general manager who told me point blank, he makes what, 300,000 a year, some huge number, but he's like, I never seen, my kids. He's like, you need to think long and hard if that's what you want. And I kind of realized at that moment, talking to my general manager, that if I wanted the car industry, I wasn't getting promoted up, because it takes me 20 years to get to be a general manager only to miss my kid's entire life. I realized around that time that I needed my name. On the side of the building Henrick Honda right and used to be Henrick Honda, because Mr. Hendrick rolls in and his Ferrari once a year to shake hands have dinner and tell everyone they're doing great. And then he drives back to Quail Hollow and hangs out with other multimillionaires, not billionaires, right? So to me I was like what I need is time freedom and I achieve time freedom by having my name on the side of the building but flashing back to hitting Hanta gold. What I realized then in there at that moment, was how completely unsatisfying making decent money is getting the literally the highest award you can get out of the gate is and, and at the time at 24 years old, I'm in the moment I filled that void without call and was totally embarrassed the next day. But it was one of those moments where I knew something was wrong at the moment and I didn't know how to fix it. And it wasn't until a few years later. Because I never hit that award again, by the way, because I've tried to make my life I tried to have a life balance that I couldn't achieve selling cars. And it wasn't until I sprained my ankle playing basketball, where I was sitting at home with ice on my ankle, where I went, I am not going to make money today. I'm 20 something, it was maybe 2526 years old. Not making money that day. And I went, I can't do this. And I went out and I bought the crutches. And I went out to sell cars using crutches, that same day, and just muscled through the pain. And it was really around that time where I realized I can do this in my 20s. That's annoying. If I get hurt when I'm in my 50s or 60s, or God forbid, I don't plan my retirement correctly, and I'm working in my late 60s. I can't afford to not have a paycheck coming in if I get hurt. And so it was the Several pivotal moments where I realized, number one, I don't want to get promoted upwards at the car dealership,I can't really go out because a car sales experience doesn't really translate somewhere else directly, I would really have to start at the bottom of the rung and I had gotten used to a lifestyle that is really hard to give up with, like I mentioned earlier people that whether you really truly want what you think they want you to have, or whether or whether you are just like falling victim to the pressure you think they're putting on you to live a certain lifestyle. It gets to you. And so I realized after a lot of reading, so I realized first and foremost, if it's not owning a car dealership, I need to own a business period. Because it's a lot of introspection and I went I meant to be my boss. And also during this period, I realized that Hate cars. What the heck am I doing here, but I utterly hate cars. They're depreciating assets. It was a really bad investment. I love investments. I ended up getting my series seven one day because I just loved it. And so I was like, I love investing. I love the idea of owning my own business. I love the autonomy. I love the idea of time freedom. So I'm a guy who likes to work 80 hours a week, but then occasionally I like to work 20 hours a week. So I want that flexibility and know that money is coming in and the only way to do that is to start a business. And so then I went step one self-reflection understand self assess. Who am I What do I like? Do I like my coffee completely black or like cream and sugar? Do I even like coffee? Do I? Am I a night owl? Am I an early bird? Like who am I at my core? What am I truly passionate about? And it's as soon as you can answer that question and even me myself after taking many many years of asking myself very hard. Questions, I still cannot look you in the face and tell you I confidently know myself. So if you're listening in, and you're like, I know myself, I know you don't. And it is, really, really painful. But it is worth it to just absolutely obliterate cell phone, deliver it, liberate your self-esteem and then rebuild it with a proper foundation. And like Steve Jobs says, and a bunch of other people says Warren Buffett to the best word in your business repertoire is the word No. Because I looked at over 100 businesses, I even started a couple that didn't go anywhere. But because I said no to a lot of sexy opportunities that ultimately didn't fit, who I was at heart and it made deciding things so much more efficient, so that when I eventually found mobile home parks, which is what I do full time now. It was, it was, my wife hates that I say this, but it was just like meeting her. The stars just aligned. I was like, Oh my gosh, this is who I'm supposed to be with. Like when I met my wife, we, we just, we clicked. And we just knew that we were getting married and very quickly, and we've been together seven years now and over seven years now, and I am in love with her. And we are happier now than we've ever have been. And I knew that early on. And it was the same thing with mobile home parks. So sorry, sweetheart, I know you're listening to this.But if you can't get there if you don't know who you are, and it's very similar to dating, right, like you want to go after the thing that looks the best, or the most popular thing or the thing that you think your friends are going to be proudest about. And what you need to realize is it's not that it's someone who fits you like a glove and compliments you so flashing back to the car dealership, I spent four years there. And then I decided you know what I need to do, I need to get my MBA because I don't understand business. And this will allow me to pivot into another company. And I also realize too, that at the car dealership, I was gaining amazing skills, how to sell how to market, how to do operations, how to take a really angry customer when I am the bad guy, because I'm the quote-unquote scummy car salesman and then have the and completely flip that on its head, have them leave with the warm and fuzzy and go next time I'm buying a car I'm coming to Ryan and I'm sending my friends here, because he's not a car salesman. This is a professional. So learning how to do all of that and so much more we're skills that I use, I used this morning at my current business. So I realized that whatever job I have is going to pivot into I was going to start whatever company I was going to start getting my MBA would and taking another job would not I can take something that is Even if I look at it, I'm like, well, that might be below me. I need to take it for the experience. And so I ended up going to work for Wells Fargo, which is their leadership program, which taught me many great things. And I was very thankful for that opportunity. But I realized very quickly at that opportunity that I was not meant to do that. And thankfully, while I was getting my MBA, I had discovered mobile home parks, and I was a year into it when I started at Wells Fargo. So I hate to say that I had one foot in the door and one foot out, but basically what I was doing during that first full year is proving that mobile home parks could make me money. And then the second full year was at Wells Fargo. I needed to scale that up and also plan to go full time. So it took me two full years from discovering mobile home parks, and three acquisitions to even go full time. And that's not to mention the three years I spent reading any book I could get my hands on so I used to challenge myself to a book a week and I've read well over 100 bucks, probably well over 200 bucks now, definitely slowed that down a lot like we were saying offline. But I forced myself to read. I forced myself to learn, I forced myself to network. And most importantly, I forced myself to self assess and understand who I am. So that way when it was time to make the jump to full time, it was time for a sacrifice. And when I did that, finally, I cut my salary big time, so I pay myself $35,000 a year $35,000 a year, I make more than that. But every penny above that I forced directly into my net worth. So it's like injecting steroids into my business because every penny I make since I'm an S Corp, it only gets taxed once. So I'm forcing funneling all that money into my business and not paying myself but just a salary, right and a measly one at that compared to what I probably could make in the open market. The reason is that it forces me to live a frugal lifestyle. So when I quit my job at Wells, I moved into a mobile home when I realized it was and I live there every other week for 14 months. So it wasn't like for a week, it was over a year. What I realized it was to get full time I had to make a sacrifice, I had to cut some crazy expenses of mine that I didn't truly make me happy. I had to live extremely frugally. I slept on a mattress. And I had two lawn chairs and a TV without a stand. It was leaning against my wall. And what I realized at that moment was I could pay myself to the property manager salary. So all of a sudden, I could make 35,000 a year, be an owner of a business. And if I get lucky, and I make a whole bunch more that year, I can funnel all that directly into business which I was lucky and there's a lot of luck involved to which I cannot stress enough luck and timing is completely out of your control and A huge part of it. But because I made that major sacrifice that allowed me to get full time and then the crazy thing about going full time and your side hustle is out of seemingly nowhere, you will see opportunities everywhere. And you're like, Oh my god, how did I miss this? And I will tell you how you missed it. It's because you're working 50 to 60 hours making someone else rich. And even if you're making 35,000 or less or not paying yourself at all, like I think the founder of Nike didn't pay himself for like 10 years. Yeah, he.He struggleduntil he struggled. Oh my goodness. And so you got to look at soda for a lot of reasons. I've been very lucky. So for a lot of reasons, like you have to, you have to make a massive sacrifice. And I have to tell you, from the moment I quit Wells Fargo today, I've been writing this Hi, it was June of 2016. 17 it's now October of 2019. So it's been two years and change. And I am so happy not being in corporate America anymore. I have a bunch of wonderful stories about achieving time freedom and how I've had my son, and how having time freedom it allowed me to literally be there for my premature babies birth, which never would have happened if I had to request PTO or early paternity time or get worried about being passed over for promotion or worse, work a commission-only sales gig. So if you hear my story, and we're about to dive into this a little deeper, I'm excited to see what questions you have for me, by the way, because I've seen you take some pretty furious notes there. If you're listening to this, know that it's going to require it. The word sacrifice means if you look it up the definition inherently means you're giving up something valuable to you and the hopes that you're getting something more valuable and exchange, right? But inherently, it's going to hurt. And in some cases a whole lot. But what you'll realize in very short order, once you destroy your self-esteem and rebuild it, the right way from the ground up, not with lies or not even lies, lies is a bit of embellishment. It's a hype story that other people are pitching to you that they're perpetuating, and they don't necessarily know that it's not true. So it's not necessarily a lie. It's just that when you are if you're the product of the five people you spend the most amount of time with, you know, and your, your mom is a plumber, your dad is a salesperson, like they're going to attack problems like a plumber or a salesperson, right? Like one of the best books I ever read. Besides four hour workweek, which is an amazing book, by the way, was the Millionaire Next Door because it makes you think like a millionaire like Rich Dad Poor Dad, brilliant book. It makes you think like a millionaire. So if you're you don't come from money because I didn't. I never thought like a middle-class person. So you have to think like a rich person. You have to make sacrifices, you have to self assess. And you have to be patient. Because it took it's not fair to say, Oh, I found mobile home parks and it took two years, and then took another two years and changed to get where I'm at now, it's not fair to say, well, in 2012, Ryan discovered he wanted to own his own business. And then three years later found mobile home parks. It's not fair to say that, that you know, that time was it because before then I was developing skills. And before then I was getting degrees from universities. And before then I was self-assessing to a smaller degree and reading books. So it takes a lot of time. And that's just not a sexy thing to say. And for someone who is stuck in a job that they're miserable that because I was there more than once. It sucked Here, but you need to hear that and you need to prepare yourself. Like Heidi Halverson says in her book motivation. The most successful people are the slight optimists. They're the ones who go, not who go, oh, I'm going to do this, or the ones who go, oh, I'm never going to do this. It's the ones who go, I'm going to do this, but it's going to be hard. So if you can have that mentality, you can look at it like it's a marathon. You will be like Bill Gates says you will be you'll probably overestimate what is it the quote is like, you'll overestimate what you can do in one year and underestimate what you can do at 10. And to end before we go to questions, I'd like to say I made a LinkedIn post recently, where I copied and pasted my goals. So that's the first meeting that my business partner and I had in July of 2015. Our first meeting, we wrote down very specific goals, very specific goals with dates that we were to accomplish these goals by For a five-year time horizon, and actually up to a 10-year time horizon, I copied those goals. And I pasted them to LinkedIn, just a post. And I put where I'm at today, and I smashed all of them. So if you're listening to this, and you're going, oh God, Ryan took seven years to get to where he's at today from discovering he was meant to be an entrepreneur, I will tell you, it will go by a lot faster, and you will accomplish way more than you think you will. Because there's a lot of, there's a lot of time in a day. And there's a lot of time in a year. And even I'll give you a good for example. Just I'll make this my denouement I do do a lingo every single day because it's been my life call to speak Spanish and I'm on like 855 days in a row or something like that. 15 minutes a day in Japan. Mucho Espanol our hit that I can speak Spanish now because not because It's not perfect, it's a disaster. But home is what we say works. And because I practice for 15 minutes every day no matter what, in two-plus years, I'm fluent. If you ask my tenants, they'll laugh and they'll be like as we go MCO up arrow as they own brave where they have large Espanol. So it's really funny, but he can see this man can speak Spanish, right? So what I'm getting at with all of this and where I'd kind of like to end and right out to the sunset for questions here is a little bit every day goes a long way.Yeah, absolutely. Okay, we are going to dive in because I have I love this. It's one thing that I love. Well, there are multiple things that I love in life. But when you find people who think like you, and express themselves the way you do, and yet have completely different passions in you, it's exciting. Right? I would never feel like Finding a mobile home park is like meeting my wife yet, However, no, no but to be honest though, what I do right now is that's how I feel about what I do right now that my broker profession of helping people understand how money works. I am as in love with that as I am with my wife. And sometimes that's a struggle because it's like, oh, man, I wish you'd love me more, right? That'd be nice, you know, but really, this like I love this in every fiber and core of my being I love helping people understand money and prepare financially for their future. And I love what it does for my family. On the income side, so like there's, there's, yes, there are hard days, there are things that you don't love about your job. And there's probably stuff in the mobile home park when you have to evict somebody or have to clean up a trashy site, right? There are bad days, right? But it doesn't matter how bad that day is. I love every part of the bad as much as I love every part of the good and finding and that is I love this. If I were to be a relationship coach, I am on the money side, but not the, on the human side, right, but it's something that I've told all of my single friends who are and my siblings who are looking for a spouse. And it's something I learned through a lot of reading stuff before. But when I was looking for a wife, I said, Look, and this may be a little graphic for people who are whatever, just know, but but I was looking for a wife is like, Look, I have to be able to like wake up in the morning and have sex with you. That's like something I got to be able to do. Right. I can't marry somebody who I'm completely not attracted to. But attraction is a very small part of this equation. For me. I'm looking for compatibility over attraction every day all day. I'm looking for compatibility. If we're not compatible. I don't care how attractive you are. It will not make up for a lack of compatibility. And that is as true and relationships as Ryan pointed out as it is in business as it is in a career, if your career is not as like compatible with who you are, that's not possible. So Ryan I, just met briefly before we record this, I'm busy, I read his stuff. And he's probably seen me a little bit. I don't know if you pick this up or not. But my tagline or one of the taglines that I use when I'm speaking on stage is to identify your identity. That is like the core of my message, the core of fuel your legacy. I believe that your legacy is the enactment and the living of your identity. But first, you have to identify your identity. And then the fuel your legacy is a financial component of gaining the financial confidence to live your legacy regardless of the outcome, right and that's where that sacrifice comes in. But that sacrifice is only possible after you know you're backed up against the wall and you know, without a shadow of a doubt. This has been identified and I'm living it out and it's a gift to the world. And so I love that that you recognize that your, the lifestyle that you adopted had become part of kind of an identity that you had adopted. But not that you reallylike when you pulled back all the core, it wasn't who you were. Right? And that is lives where you reach.Yeah, it's so crucial to get to that point. And it is hard to hear it is hard to say okay, everything you believe about yourself, I need you to question everything, not leave anything on unsewn stone unturned like I love it said like, what do I like with my coffee? Do I even like coffee right? Question everything. How do I like to do my hair? Do I like to do my hair? What color do I like my hair right? What kind of clothes do I wear? Why do I wear these type of clothes do I want to end before we got I'm in a shirt and tie right now he's in a polo. And he's like, man, should I go put a tie on? I feel how to dress. Like, did you just do you? I mean, I have a meeting. So I met a shirt and tie today, but like, just dress how you're comfortable. Like there's no reason to dress a way that you're not comfortable if it's inauthentic to you, and I love that.So, I'm going to go way back to the beginning, because I think this is another crucial thing, and I want to hear your thoughts on this. But you said something that I think only aneither an experienced person and human development or, or somebody just thought a lot about it, but you persuade people and so many people think that a salesman is there to kind of be that sleazy person or manipulate them. So how would you define the difference between persuasion and manipulation I don't think there's a lot of difference. I know that's probably not what people want to hear. But manipulation is basically in layman's terms, doing things to affect someone's behavior to get what you want out of them, right. And persuasion is a form of manipulation. But at the same time, I think persuasion comes with a lot of negative connotations in that you think you're just going to wave a magic wand and persuade someone and the truth is, outside of a cult leader, that's not something that happens unless you're lying to someone. There's persuasion, you're not going. It's really hard to be that charismatic, that you're going to convince someone to do something against their will. Right. So in other words, in car sales, I sold Honda's reason why I picked is number one I drove the product, and I believed in the product. And so and also it carries its value. It doesn't break it last forever. I have a 2900 fit, stick shift, love it to death 250,000 miles on it, I'm gonna keep it as long as the thing goes, I've paid it off a long time ago. It's cheap. It's great on gas, I can do that. That's easy to sell. Right? Because when people come in, oh, you know, I don't want to make the wrong decision. Dude, I've had this for a while now I've had it for 10 years, right? Like, if you're looking to have something reliable, that's going to hold its value and be cheap, but safe, like a no brainer, right? So what you're doing in a sale, is you're presenting the facts in a way that allows someone to make their own decision. Now you have things like strategical missions where you might weave out that it's not as comfortable as the Toyota. Right so like, I'm not going to just volunteer that information or maybe you do so like there's a lot of gray area and sales which kind of opens the way for you to lie. And so my thing was when I got into car sales, I was like, I'm going to do this the right like I'm not going to be a scummy car salesman, one of two things is going to happen. I'm either gonna go do this honestly. And the whole world is just gonna implode. And it's not gonna work, or it's gonna work and it's going to wow people because they're going to be like, Oh my god, I curse that. Like if someone asked me like, what's more, comfortable Toyota, or Honda, I'm going to tell you the truth. The Toyota if you want to ride a couch, go get a Toyota. But here's the thing. If you want to enjoy if you want to feel like you have more control of your car, you pick a Honda. Right? So in other words, like persuasion to me, is it manipulation? Yes, it is. But that manipulation doesn't necessarily have to be nefarious, right. So for example, towards the end of my years at Honda, Toyota got rocked with safety issues. I mean, rocked with safety. And it wasn't just the car pedal thing getting stuck. It was they failed really big tests and I can't remember what it was. But I remember showing people like, hey, look, just FYI Toyota's are great cars, they hold their value, but just FYI, here is a serious issue that Toyota has that they have not addressed yet. And it's funny when even though I was presenting the facts in a way that was knocking down my competition, people didn't like that. I don't know. It's just not even bringing up period. And I think the takeaway there is manipulation doesn't necessarily have to be nefarious, right. So in that instance, I was like, Hey, this is a safer car. Check these third party sources, right. So am I manipulating someone for my self-gain? Yeah, absolutely. I want to sell you a Honda and you had not had you buy a Toyota. However, it's safer for you to buy this Honda right now at least right. So in other words, it doesn't always have to come with the various connotations. And kind of where I also think it's important to make note of if your incentives are aligned with your prospective buyers, that's everything. Right? So in other words, it becomes nefarious and deleterious for someone in an in a situation where they're being persuaded where it doesn't incentivize them to buy whatever you're selling. Right? So you're selling some snake oil, right? And truly, you know, in the bottom of your heart that the snake oil doesn't do anything, right. But the person trying to buy it is seeing something that's not there. And you are allowing them to see that and you are planting seeds there, whether you're being truthful or not. Whether you're omitting key details or you're directly lying to them. If somebody is looking at a story that you're telling, and they are buying that story, even though you know It's not true. That is a really bad thing. But even still, like that person is actively wanting to believe in something. So if you're a critical thinker, like you said, you ask tough questions of yourself and your surroundings. Even if it is really hard to ask those questions. You're never going to get persuaded. Unless someone directly lies to you. And even then trust but verify, man always checks the facts. Yeah, I agree. I, in my mind, I would say kind of the difference between if I had to separate the two words, I would say manipulation is, is more of mal intent. And persuasion is to help people be to get what they need. And it comes down to what is your intention? And are your values aligned? Are your values aligned with the buyer or are they not if they're not, and you're still trying to get them to buy something that at that point, I would say it's more like manipulation. It's mal intent, whereas persuasion it's a fine line, right because you're employing the same techniques. So, to use an extort a story from my past, I did door to door sales for five years for four and a half years. And, and I did it one year. And then I went out and I served a two-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. And when you're talking about Jesus Christ, the last, the last thing you want to do is like sell somebody, Jesus Christ, right, because maybe they're going to join for the wrong reasons and all this, right. There's some there are some ethical things there that for me, I was like, I want to sell them this, but I have learned all these sales tools on the door to door sales and happened to be that I knocked a lot of doors on my mission. So a lot of the skills and tactics applied to both to both situations and I would go through kind of ups and downs where I like I would be using the sales, tools, and tactics but I felt kind of dirty using them because I was I didn't want to sell somebody the Jesus Christ. But on the other hand, when I wouldn't use them, I felt like I was not giving them the best opportunity to see Jesus Christ in the best light. And so part of it is you're using these skills, these are skills you've been given, and it's okay to be persuasive, that I think comes down to what's your intent in being persuasive, because part of and this is where I would separate a salesman from a closer, right. And a salesman is somebody who is they're just with their pocket bolt book in mind, and they're how, how much money can I get out of this person? And they're just selling them anything. And then a closer their objective is not to get not to sell them something as much as to get a yes or no and help their client make a decision. If they can try and make a decision, yes or no, everybody wins, right? Most of the time. The client really respects that and will actually buy from you just because you were objective about the whole process, rather than going even though they probably could get something or they might have liked the toilet a better in the end right out of respect for knowing that you are living in alignment, that they'll do business with you because they can trust at that point where the salesman they always feel like okay, what's your not telling me? What, What's he trying to do just get my pocketbook. And I think that that's an important distinction, especially when we're going to start talking about kind of how you grew your business and how you overcame some different challenges. And that's an important thing to understand where you're coming from and the intention behind what you're doing. And I think, to identify that you have to go in and identify your identity, do that self-assessment, and, and start thinking about this.If you're lying to yourself, you're going to lie to other people, whether you realize you're doing it or not.Yep. And I say all the time, the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. Andto, to further that example, I didn't This is a great conversation but before we started recording, he, Ryan'sjust told him to hit record because of our conversationso good. So so I was telling him that sometimes if I've read three quarters or half or a quarter of a book and I feel like I've got the main idea and it's just becoming repetitive and multiple stories of the same, teach the same principle, I will stop a book halfway. I'm not committed to finishing a book just because I need to finish a book for my own like to see the finished bar on my audible. Like, if I've got it, I'm moving on, where he's like, man, if I open a can of beer, I've got to finish my can of beer. And so we Chuck all these and maybe that's a bad thing. And I think, no, there are advantages to both mentalities depending on what angle you're taking it. But I think the the the commitment to finish that commitment applied everywhere in his life. And it's about what is the finishing for him it was about finishing, identifying his identity and continue to live by his identity. And he's not going to be satisfied until that's completed. And he already told you, he's still working on it. He doesn't know exactly who he is, and he doesn't think you do either. And I would agree. I'm fairly confident with who I am like I can function knowing who I am. But I'm still questioning everything I believe every day and I'm seeking to have associations with people who question everything, I believe from a just aspect of business aspect to where I'm uncomfortable. I disagree with some people and maybe get a little bit angry about other people's opinions. But I put myself in those situations voluntarily because I want the challenge I want to grow. And I'm not satisfied until I've, I've completed my growth. And so it's just an interesting thing to think about. And then Say I want to touch on one thing before we go further. But there's this thing that you talked about. And I wonder what's the emotional thought process? You kind of talked about it, but when you realize that your time is worth more, your life is worth more. So many people they're working and they think it's okay like I'm surviving. But how do you value your life? How did you get to the point where like, Okay, my life is worth more than this job and I'm done with this job because my life the actual experiences that I could operate or have are worth more than this, this income. So I mentioned earlier one, one thing I challenged myself to do is meet everyone I could write it Everyone says, Oh, it's all about who you know, like, it's not who it's not what you know, it's who you know, everybody knows that. But almost no one applies that in their life. So I was like, Okay, and this is true axiom wisdom of those passed down through the many years. Like, let's see if there's any credence to this. I talked to anybody with a pulse. I don't care if you're a janitor or a CEO, or anywhere in between, I wanted to talk to you. And that's still true. Today, I'll talk to anybody. It's a big reason why I want to come on here too, by the way, like, I want to give people free content. So they can escape corporate America to like, I'm not selling anything. I'm not raising any funds for my properties. I just want to help people, but also like, What's in it for me? Well, I'll tell you what's in it for me. Hopefully, someone listening now will go, I need to get on the phone with this guy. Even if I don't offer him anything. And I want that because I want to hear from you. I want to understand your thought process. And I've met thousands of people in my life thousands and I've just, it's amazing how everyone is unique, yet. Everyone is very average. And it's until you realize how average You are where you realize like if you're a fan of the office like I am, I love Michael Scott as a character. He has this one episode which is Jericho, where he promised a bunch of kids that he was going to pay for their college. Evan, they graduated then they're like, hey, Michael Scott, where's their money? Hilarious episode. And, and he doesn't have the money, right? And so they like someone asked him like, why would you promise that you're going to pay all these kids colleges 10 years ago? And his answer was, well, 10 years ago, I figured by now I'd be a millionaire.And has funny as that is, it is so true across the board. So many people are like, I'm going to be rich one day. And when you ask them, they joke, oh, the lottery, or I'm going to get a promotion or this is going to happen or that's going to happen and no one wants to actually take the steps and To do that, right, and it's not at your job, unless you're crazy unless you're LeBron James, right? Unless you're like 1% of the 1% as athletic or smart or anything. Like, just think of think about basic statistics. If you want to be in the 1% of the wealth, you need to be 1%. good at something, you there needs to be 1% good looking, or 1% smart, or 1%, hard-working, or 1%. Lucky, right? You're not just going to get into the 1% because you exist even if you're the 90th percentile you that's not the 1%, right. So what I realized is, well, what's a really easy thing to be 1% in the 1% in what no one else is willing to do. So for me, it was easy it was like, Let's go meet everyone in the world because that's a really basic truth. Like to meet everyone you can and I've met some incredible people and Go and do things like living in a mobile home. And in my industry, no one wants to everyone wants to syndicate money. And put the guild deals together, no one wants to operate their deals. And not only do they not want to operate, but they also don't even want to go to their properties. Two hours ago, I was sitting in one of my properties, I go almost every day if I can have my properties, and for a long time, I was the physical property manager before I was able to start hiring people. And it's like, you need to be able to do those things. To do that, so So getting back to I think, ultimately what you're getting out there is like, you know, emotionally How do you get there? Well, step one is, you have to like you mentioned earlier, you have to understand that no matter what you pick in life, they're going to be awful things, awful things about it. Like the subtle art of not giving an F by Mark Manson where he's like, dude, any. Any job you pick is going to come with a pile of crap. You just have to pick the pile of crap. That, you know, you can live with every day and for me. For me, it's that I knew I wanted to do real estate. It just fits my skill set well and I and I knew I wanted to help charity somehow. And more specifically, I knew I wanted to help underprivileged kids, and name a better way to help underprivileged kids than to help give them a clean, safe place to live. I started as a partial scholarship, I offer to pay for college applications. I do free food giveaways, I try my best to help remove the stress from these families so that kids can focus on their school. And for me, that helps me through really bad days, because I have a lot of really, really bad days. But ultimately, it's like, it's like this man. I want to talk to everyone I can talk to and if you're listening in, I recommend you do the same because you'll never know who you're going to meet. And it could be a janitor that gives you the best information about your life. Never know. And you know, you got to find a way to escape the fear. A great book I can recommend is Susan Jeffers Feel the fear and do it anyway. And really what that book kind of taught me is that like that in four-hour workweek it's like, dude, imagine the worst-case scenario it's not that bad. Like if you vividly imagine the worst-case scenario, you're going to survive and that's the point not to be a spoiler on Susan Jeffers. That book is full of amazing things. But her big thing was right out of the gate. She's like, fear. It comes from thinking you can't handle a situation.To convince yourself you can handle it. Yep. Then.You can. Exactly and it's like courage. It's not you. Courage is not the absence of fear courage is feeling the fear of doing it anyway to quote her book.I completely agree. So how did you when you decided to quit? I mean, it sounds like from timeline if I got everything right. You got married three or four years before you quit your job completely correct.I got married in November of 2015, which was a couple of months up to Korea, every mobile home park and Okay, it was about a year and a half before I went full time.Okay. So about a year and a half. How did so one thing that a lot of people face when they try and move from corporate America and entrepreneurship, everybody faces it? If it doesn't come from outside, it comes from inside. Tell me the story of your biggest naysayer. And how you silence them in your mind and said, Look, I'm doing it anyway. Oh, man, there's a lot. There's a lot of people. There's a lot of people in corporate America. One guy laughed at me and was like, you're going to be a real estate agent. You're going to leave this at the Wells Fargo leadership program.The way that it's investigated by our government, yeah. Oh,yeah. I don't want us about things about Wells Fargo.I had a bad I was Think I was in a bad culture at Wells I there's a lot of folks at Wells I know that just absolutely love it so I think I was just unlucky in that regard but there's it you know I again if my way when my wife listens to this you get really mad but one thing that I think needs to be said is that whether somebody the closest people to you may be the biggest naysayers I'm not saying that my wife was not supportive or that she wasn't a native she was a naysayer so to speak, but there are a lot of things that she was saying and doing that she will if she was here to defend herself, she would be like, That's not fair. I didn't know what I was doing at the time. But she grew up like a lower upper class. So like if I was like upper-middle class, she was like a lower upper class or like Country Club big house. Meanwhile, I was like, middle class, my dad's college professor, my mom's a salesperson, a good income, get private school. Wake Forest is private. You know, so I wasn't rich by any means, but we're middle class. But her parents were, I want to say wealthy, but they're definitely over that threshold of being considered coming from wealth. And so when I rolled home and was like, guess what, I've got amazing news. I found the one I found it around the one I meant to be with its mobile home parks. She said a lot of really bad words in a very elevated tone of voice. And I think that you know, I don't want to say that she was a naysayer saying I couldn't do it because she never said I couldn't do it. She was more like, you're thrusting our family and our future into literally recourse debt. In other words, if one of my properties goes belly up, they're coming after all of my assets. So I have full recourse debt over myself on my properties. So in other words, Ryan, you're going to put our family into full recourse debt. Literally, to a certain degree a trash can. I hate to say it, I'm supposed to say modular home communities, but a lot of people have looked at me and been like, why are you you're buying garbage cans? This is a horrible thing to say. But I get it if you come from a country club lifestyle, right? So number one, you're taking a recourse debt number two, you're going to pay yourself nothing. Right? $35,000 a year. I was it for the first few years I lost money. Well, the first year I lost money in the second year, I made money but I didn't pay myself anything. So I really lost and then the third year pay myself 35,000 and then I'm in the fourth year and change and it's still on purpose paying myself 35,000 a year. So from her perspective, this is awful. And she has no said as basically, I was I basically in an awful way was like you're being a dream killer.a horrible thing for me to say but I'm I think this is a story that people need to hear because when you have a Significant Other that was that loves you, and wants to build a life with you. And you come home one day, unannounced, and you're like, this is what I'm dedicating my life to. That's a crappy thing to do, especially when you're going to follow up by calling or a dream killer. So I did a lot of really lame things. And she will tell you, first and foremost publicly that she did a lot of really lame things, too. We recorded it on my podcast, I gave her the mic. And I was like, You know what, say whatever you want to rules, no bad words, and no giving away any of my secrets. And I let her just rail on me for like 10 minutes. And then for the light, it's like a 15-minute episode and the last five minutes, we just kind of have a cute little back and forth where we together talk about marriage through the lens of entrepreneurship. So ultimately, who's my biggest naysayer? You know, I don't know. I'm a person who hates losing. I'm competitive and it's not winning. To me is not nearly as much fun as not losing. I kind of make sense like the magnitude that I have an emotion I feel when I win is dwarfs the magnitude of the pain I feel when I lose. So it was tough the first year from someone who was my best friend and my spouse, right and so I reason why I say that because my wife is gonna get really mad when she hears that I told this story. But Sweetie, we have that episode so you can ask for it. The reason why I want to say that is I know that there are listeners to this episode right now who have a significant other who, for whatever reason, haven't bought in yet, or given them a lot of flack, I will tell you, you are not alone. And if you truly know in your heart, that you are meant to do something, you will find a way to persevere through that. And if that person that significant other is meant to be there with you, you will find a way to get through it together and come out even better because, at the end of that episode, we were both like, yeah, we love each other more now than we did going in This, I think that those are all really, you know, it's kind of lame for me to basically pick my spouse to answer that question. But the truth is, I think people need to hear that man, I do. And you can if you're if you know yourself and you found the spouse that like you said earlier you want to have sex with but also fits who you are at heart and you want to build something together. And they're truly supportive. Right? They're going to stand by you even if they fundamentally hate what you're getting into. Yep, I completely agree. I was. I was fortunate enough to when I was dating, I already had found what I was doing for eternity right before I got married. So that was part of it was kind of baked into the cake. However, I will say that over the last like a year and a half I've ramped up a lot of my public speaking a lot of my traveling and it's hard. It's been a topic of conversation in our marriage are saying K, well, how can we manage this? She doesn't she thought she would love being a mom, she doesn't love being a mom, which is hard because she also doesn't necessarily want to go earn all the income. So it's like, Okay, well, how do we balance that there are still responsibilities that have to be done. Now we have two kids, we can't send them back. So it is a management thing. And it's not necessarily I think what you said is actually, probably that the rawest and real if people love you, and you potentially are bringing them into something that they didn't feel like they signed up for, and better ways to deliver that message and to get the buy-in. Absolutely. dropping their head and say, well, baby, join me or get out. Right.Exactly. And so so with that, though,I love all this. We're going to have to have you on again because this just is not enough time to have this conversation. And we're going to talk a little bit after this about some things that I think could we might be able to work together on Elsa sounds like we have some similar missions. But I'm going to go through there are two more sections here. Well, first, how can we support you? How can we get in touch with you? If we did want to have a phone call with you? Where would we reach out to you to kind of hear more of your story or share our gratitude for you being so vulnerable? Yeah, absolutely. So literally just google me My name is Ryan and I are us that's and like, Nancy, LinkedIn is probably the best place to find me second best places my website, Archimedes GRP. com. You can drop me a line on either place, I'm pretty much so wide open door  I have a lot of people that reach out to me that is like, Hey, can I buy your coffee? Or can I take you out to lunch or this or that? And it's like, dude, honestly, I just want to meet you like how does it benefit me? Just getting on the phone with you. I want to hear who you are. I want to hear your story. I want to know where you came from, where you're at and where you want to go. And I thoroughly enjoyed teaching. I thoroughly enjoyed Helping, I thoroughly enjoy connecting so offline when Samuel, I were talking I was I thought of two people I would love to introduce you to. That's who I am. And if I have you in my database, then I can connect people to you and you to people and I love that. So I like I said, I'm not selling anything. I don't have fun, I'm not looking for investors. I'm not self-promoting for anything. I just want to help people because I have to tell you, being stuck at a job is is torture. It's torture. I look from quitting to like six to 12 months after quitting corporate America, I lost something like 15 pounds, and I changed none of my habits. I was depressed. It's true. So if I can help people because I don't think you know, you can argue like AI is going to come in and take over thought jobs and automation is going to take over thought jobs. So we need to reinvent jobs going forward. You can make that argument but truth be told, go find your happiness because I got to tell you, when my son was born premature, being able to be there by my wife side, she's in the hospital for almost a week and then my son in the hospital for over two weeks and then Nick you to be there by their side when they needed me the most and not have to worry about work. That was worth the I don't care if someone was like, I'll give you a million bucks to miss this moment. I would never take it to be there at 3:45 pm on a Thursday in the middle of a workweek, watch my son be born. That was the most amazing experience in my life. Why there is no amount of money you could ever give me that would make me forego that experience. So to me, it's like, like what I am like, you are helping me by allowing me to help you because I want you to achieve that. So please reach out to me. I mean that Again, Ryan nearest anywhere us, Archimedes GRP. com Find me on LinkedIn. Connect with me I'd love to. Okay.So this night, I encourage everybody to reach out to him. I'm so grateful that I get to know him. I'm excited to connect with the people that he'smentioned to me offline. And I said I think there's some potential there for us to even work closer together. This is my last two sections here, and they're kind of my favorite. So we're doing legacy on rapid-fire. It's five questions. I'm probably only gonna ask you four of them though.And one word to one-sentence answers. Cool. Okay. The only caveat to that is this first question you must clarify.Okay. And you'll understand that when, when I ask it because everybody assumes that especially these more enlightened people that have been talking to everybody answers that same and I'm like, okay, expand. Okay. So, so here goes. What do you believe? is holding you back from reaching the next level of your legacy today.Timeand I'll expand on that. I think that the concept that I have works so I bought 10 mobile home I've been a part of 10 mobile home park transactions now. So far, I've made a ton of mistakes along the way. But truth be told, it's going to take a lot I'm not you can't just go to the mobile home park store and buy a bunch of good mobile home park deals. It's the industry is flooded right now with people trying to enter the space so there's not a lot of good deals out there period. And even if there were, I wouldn't want there's my time is limited. So number one, it's like buying it's like planting seeds you the limiting factor there is the time you plant the seed and then you watch it grow but have to wait. You know if I buy it a great deal today. It's not like I make a bunch of money today. I will make the money when I sell or refinance and I'll get cash flow along the way. But, you know, you buy a property in the big jumps in your IRR. And you know the money that hits your bank account comes after many months or many years after you've executed a turnaround. So for me, the limiting factor is absolutely time. Okay,awesome. And what is the hardest thing you've ever accomplished?meeting my wife. Okay. I was abysmal with women. I could not I was annoying, unlikable, and it took me years of my life to learn how to talk to people. And my wife. I met her at the car dealership, she showed up to buy a Honda. She ended up buying a Volvo. So I was not. I was not manipulative. I was persuasive. And another, another light, but yeah, I was just god awful were women. And I taught myself how to speak to people and through getting proficient in interacting with people. When my wife presented herself it was, it was just it everything fell apart. It fell into place so easily for both of us, to get married and to grow our lives together.Awesome. And what's the greatest success than to this point in your life?Other than my sonI would say escaping corporate America. I mean, that's more than getting my black belt in karate or hitting a hundred gold or getting a master's degree or teaching myself Spanish. I got to say if you're listening to this and you think you are meant to be your boss and to escape corporate America, I am telling you, you are right. And it is. It is on par with getting married and having a child. That is amazing.Awesome. And what is one secret He believes contributed most to your success throughout your journey, habit, mindset or behavior.So many things, man habits, habits are everything. But I, again, I think the self-assessment is got to be the most important thing there.The 1% rule that I talked about earlier where you've got to find your 1% is huge, but I mean, if I have to pick only it's like I mentioned earlier, life is a marathon man. You will do a lot you will overestimate what you do in a year and underestimate what you do at 10.Totally. And then, so that's the end of that section. This is my favorite section. Okay, this is this question that is why I do this podcast. Okay. Okay.So we're going to pretend that you are dead. So your family sad now butsix generations from now. Your great, great, great, great, great-grandchildren. They're sitting around a table that discussing your life, right? They're discussing your legacy. They're having this conversation. What do you want? Your great, great, great, great, great-grandchildren? What do you want them to be saying about your legacy and six generations from now?I want them to be saying, I'm glad he taught us to leave the world better than you showed up. So for me, I, you know, I don't want to divulge how much I'm worth. But it's gone from effectively negative to a lot. And it's because I take that mentality into my properties, right? So I want to buy something at or above appraisal value. So in other words, I'm happy to pay an unfair price advantage seller, because I know that I'm going to make that property better off for having been there. And the reason why I mentioned my scholarship and paying for college applications and doing things like Bible studies on the properties and going to my properties and talking to people face to face. Because I want the people on my properties to be better off for having been there. It's really easy to be like, Well, I hope in six generations I've amassed so much like I'm the Vanderbilts, right? So they have wealth and they can do what they want and not worry about money ever. But the thing of it is, studies show that by the third generation, most wealth is gone. And I have a friend who's third-generation wealthy and he, he's told me multiple times. He's like, I am breaking this, I'm going to be abnormal here. I am going to continue my family's wealth. He's a wicked, ambitious guy, right? There are a lot of people that once you hit that third iteration that's gone. And not only is that gone, but I think I possibly hit a really big milestone in my life to

The EdTechLoop Pod is joined by a special guest this week as TCAPS STEM Coordinator, Heidi Skodack, shares her thoughts on the upcoming Hour of Code activities and STEM opportunities for students of all ages. Get involved in the "Hour of Code" December 9-15! Show TranscriptsLarry Burden 0:04 Whatever you say is etched in stone.Or at least when I was doing the little research that I did.Heidi Skodack 0:13 Do you agree?Danelle Brostrom 0:14 I do,Larry Burden 0:15 We have to be able to hear you.Heidi Skodack 0:16 Okay, this could go really bad.Larry Burden 0:19 I am unconcerned.It's Episode 99 of the EdTech Loop podcast, my name is Larry Burden and she still hasn't figured out how the zombies got into her Minecraft castle, it's Danelle Brostrom, and at long last, our quest is complete, as we joyously welcome TCAPS STEM Curriculum leader Heidi Skodak. I know you have many other titles, but we're just gonna stick with that one. Through a process of trial and error, I have crafted this week's moment of Zen.Moment of Zen 0:51 I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough. We must apply. Being willing is not enough. We must do.Larry Burden 1:01 A little Leonardo da Vinci for you there. We've eliminated all the unnecessary ingredients so we could truly appreciate the flavor of this week's meat of the show. Hour of Code. So every year, somehow when we do these podcasts, we make mention of the Hour of Code. We kind of, this is a really cool thing we should get involved in, after the podcast where we've mentioned it, we go, next year we need to have somebody on to discuss this before the Hour of Code so that we can get more people involved. So this year we have the person that knows it all.Heidi Skodack 1:37 Definitely not the case, nobody can know it all.Larry Burden 1:39 Definetly no the case, I was talking about Danelle.Danelle Brostrom 1:43 No, no. We can dive right in though.Larry Burden 1:45 Alright dive right in, I know you have a bunch of questions and I'm gonna throw a lot. I was mentioning to Danielle before the podcast that this is... I'm looking for some marketing materials here, because I have a daughter that's about ready to go off into college, who's a Maker but doesn't really realize that she's a Maker. And I've been trying for years to get her involved, a little bit more involved in, and we're discussing this earlier, Computer Sciences, computer programming, STEM, coding, whatever you want to call it. So I'm going to use all these materials, all the things that we're getting today on her.Heidi Skodack 2:20 That's perfect, you have the sleeper makers are the best. They don't realize they like STEM and computer science, until they've actually gone and done job experiences or job shadows with other people to realize what they actually love to do is create and make and, in the space called early STEM.Danelle Brostrom 2:38 So why, why are colleges and businesses, the workforce, why are we pushing kids to do STEM? Why are they looking for kids that are interested in STEM?Heidi Skodack 2:47 There's a long answer and a short answer to that. The short answer really is that the jobs of the future really are going to be related to computer science, and science, technology, engineering, and math and how those you bring together to actually develop careers, based on those things. So computer scientist is one area that is a big push right now. They talk about, at code.org, they talk about the different areas and careers that you can go into related to STEM.Larry Burden 3:15 So, again, huge researcher me. Not really. It seems like there is a giant gap in what industries need, what our job force, what is needed in the job force and what we are actually preparing kids for. How are we setting up kids, you know, through the Hour of Code, and through our programming in our classrooms, how are we setting kids up to be introduced to coding, or computer science?Heidi Skodack 3:43 Well I think we have a lot of work to do. We certainly aren't where we need to be K through 12. And it's a difficult task because you're really thinking about things, and jobs of the future that don't exist yet. So that's, that's a big hurdle to overcome but getting students exposed at the earliest age; kindergarten, first grade, second grade, you know, that's where it all starts in jobs the future. If you're at all in tune with things that are happening in Traverse City there's, you know, a group called TC Connect, which has now joined up with the Chamber of Commerce, to talk about where the jobs are going to be in the future in Traverse City, and their goal really is to bring high tech jobs back to Traverse City, so our Boomerang students, our kids right, who go off to college and get a, or have education in the area of computer science, programming anything STEM, when they come back they have jobs. And so they recognize the need, our local need for building that capacity in our students and it has to start in K through 12. So how do we build that capacity at a young age, which means building capacity of the teachers to recognize the importance of implementing some STEM based activities and computer science activities in the classroom starting in kindergarten.Danelle Brostrom 4:56 Do you think it's a, think it's a hard sell or do you think that's an easy sell. When you go out and talk to teachers about this, the new kinds of skills that our students need, do you, are teachers nodding and being like, Yeah, let's do it, let's go, or do they have some hesitations? Can you talk about that?Heidi Skodack 5:12 I don't think I've run into anybody who has said, Do we really need that?Danelle Brostrom 5:16 That's crazy.Heidi Skodack 5:18 Yes, exactly. But I do run into apprehension because when I mean we're going to talk about really, you know, Hour of Code, I do run into some pushback in, I don't know how to code, how can I teach my kid, I have no experience at all in computer science or coding, how, how am I going to be able to teach that to my students? And so that's really what the conversation, that's where you get pushback from is, how can I do it I've never done it myself. Because as a teacher, you always want to be the expert in the room. Well those days are kind of gone. You have to be sometimes learning with the students on new ideas in, especially related to computer science.Larry Burden 5:54 I have a weird question, and this is this kind of came to me right before the podcast. It's odd because when I was in high school, a millennia ago, there was a computer programming class, we had to take computer programming, it was just, it was one of those things, we think this is going to be important so we learned how to like, you know, do the if and then type of statements and it was really really basic, and then it seemed to like drop off the map for a while. And obviously now it's starting to be, starting to become re-ingrained in what we do, but why did it between the late 80's, early 90's and now, there was a gap where, I mean it was always it's kind of there but as far as a priority, a curricular priority, I don't think it was there.Heidi Skodack 6:40 And that is absolutely true. What happened I mean, that was one of those like, Oregon Trail. Right?Larry Burden 6:46 Exactly.Heidi Skodack 6:47 Elementary school.Danelle Brostrom 6:48 Right.Heidi Skodack 6:49 So, but I do, I do think there in, in the past, you know, in the 90's people were using coding to do very particular jobs, right. And now everything you touch, a lot of times has some sort of coding in it. I mean, think about your cars, or your phones. I mean that was prior to cell phones really, that where everybody had a cell phone. So the technology that's been developed and just the amount of code that's needed to run those devices, and those different things has completely changed. So before it would be something large, like, you know when you're thinking about NASA, right? They're going to use, we would expect to see a bunch of coding in the 90's. But we didn't expect all those personal devices, and how rapidly the technology changed for the demand for that coding piece, and I also think it is part of that Maker Movement when you're able to go online and YouTube questions and answers on what you're trying to do yourself, and to try to problem solve those things, and do coding yourself. You can find thousands of web, websites that actually teach coding to all age groups.Danelle Brostrom 7:54 That is the most amazing piece of this. My nine year old wants an alarm for her bedroom door for Christmas, that can keep her sister out. And I can go,Heidi Skodack 8:03 She's gonna make it right.Danelle Brostrom 8:04 Exactly, that's the thing. Because of course that's what she wants. But we can buy one for like $40 on Amazon, and it's this kid friendly, blah, blah, blah, that has a swipe card and stuff, or I just googled, how to do it, and found awesome instructions that were in plain English, with items I can go purchase right here, and I'm just gonna give her a box of stuff and she's gonna build it, and she's gonna code it. Like we can we can get the Raspberry Pi, we can do all these things that can make things happen and I think that's exciting for kids, and that's exciting for us, and it's incredible to me the amount of what you can do yourself really.Heidi Skodack 8:40 And just the language like Raspberry Pi, right?Larry Burden 8:43 yeahHeidi Skodack 8:43 A lot of parents are like, the kids will ask for a Raspberry Pi and they're like, that's an easy gift. Run down to Grand Traverse Pie Company and pick up a rasberry pie.Danelle Brostrom 8:51 We could get one of those too but.Larry Burden 8:53 Just had one of those a couple days ago for Thanksgiving. It was fabulous.Heidi Skodack 8:58 That's the interesting piece is that language sometimes, there's a language barrier between kids and their parents. And a lot of times they're purchasing things for their students that are related to technology, and coding, and computer science that they know nothing about. They recognize very clearly the need for, you know, exposing their students to new and different things related to those areas but a lot of times they don't know anything about it. So it's, it's scary, because there's the technology piece, like a lot of times what you deal with Danelle, balanced with dude, they're asking for something about STEM and computer science, tell me what else you want?Danelle Brostrom 9:36 Yes, yes. So you mentioned the apprehension and not completely knowing everything and I totally see that when I'm out working with teachers, so tell us by the Hour of Code is such a perfect introduction, um such a perfect vehicle for teachers to do this.Heidi Skodack 9:49 So the Hour of Code walks teachers with zero, or anybody for that matter, because I mean, part of the goal is to get the teachers interested with their students. The other is, how do we engage parents to do the Hour of Code at home, so they can actually see not only how easy it is, but the resources that are available for them to help their students in the future. So Hour of Code is a step-by-step, small little videos that if you're in the lower El. grades, you can show the video on your screen and then do the steps with the students on their own devices that they have. But really walks them through step-by-step and engaging things. So the, the new one really this year, or maybe it was out last year is dance party. So everyone likes dance party because students get to develop a character that does certain dance moves. You can make it dab right?Danelle Brostrom 10:40 To Old Town Road, I may have been doing in my office this morning, it happens.Heidi Skodack 10:43 You can select, you know, is it a bear, is it a frog, and then select the music that the frog will dance to, and really walk them through the process of movement and using block coding, which is really the basic beginning part of coding is drag and drop. So, it really, very descript, tells you exactly what is going to happen, and then you select features, and then you drag and drop to take those blocks and put them into a program. So it does give you the option if you're more advanced to actually see the code that's actually spitting out. Because you and I remember the days of, you know, what code looked like is very different. Block coding wasn't around and you are actually typing all those things and putting, you know, your pseudo code next to it so the next person who comes behind you, knows what you are coding. So, very different, very accessible, drag and drop clicks. If you don't get it right, there's a helper at the top that you can click on and it will walk you through the steps to fix your programming if it doesn't work. Typically, you can do it under an hour, a lot of times if you have, if you're little kids a lot of times play with video games and things like that. So, it might take you under an hour to do it. Usually kids are faster than the teachers, when the teachers are just learning. But everybody has fun. Jame McCall is gonna do a little coding session for us too. We want to show how easy it is. I'm gonna see if I can recruit some, a couple principals.Larry Burden 12:08 If she could do it, everybody can do it.Heidi Skodack 12:10 Yes.Larry Burden 12:11 Sorry Jame, sorry,Heidi Skodack 12:13 So just to, just to show people with no experience have gone in and done a lesson on coding in an hour or less. And just that exposure to just that process, that thinking process of what do I want to do, you have to really think about what your end product is.Danelle Brostrom 12:29 Code.org has done an amazing job of bringing in all these different Hour of Code resources. They are there aren't just, you know, four or five that you get to pick from. There really are, maybe 100 different ones.Larry Burden 12:39 So many.Danelle Brostrom 12:40 Yep, and some are unplugged so some don't use any devices. There's some, some really really basic ones that are great for pre-readers, where they're just moving along. And then there's, like, like how you mentioned, the ones that are all the way where you can actually write the code, and you can actually develop your own app., or create something from scratch. I think the, the amount of options that are there can sometimes be overwhelming too, but as a teacher I just grabbed one and started playing it and was like, Oh, this one would be great for my kids. And like that, that's an easy way to, to kind of get started. And I cannot stress how user friendly the products are too, because I've been in a classroom with kids, and the kids are like, I'm stuck I don't know where to go, and I look at it and I have no idea where to go, and I can't figure out what the problem is, and I just asked. I'm like hey, anyone got puzzle eight on the Star Wars one, and then some kid comes over and helps them and I'm like woo. Yes, I don't have to do that one. But, just to see the kids persevere and get help from their neighbors, like there's, there's so many good skills that are happening when kids are doing this Hour of Code.Larry Burden 13:41 I can't stress this enough, pre-reader. This is for every single classroom in any school district, even without a device. I was talking to my wife this morning about Hour of Code. She has a toddler classroom.Heidi Skodack 13:41 Yes,Larry Burden 13:42 I'm pretty sure there's probably something for your classroom.Heidi Skodack 13:55 Yes there is, Pre-K.Larry Burden 13:59 So toddler, toddler, all the way to your seniors, every classroom in the school district, could be doing something involving Hour of Code. That's so cool.Heidi Skodack 14:12 And that's just a drop in the bucket, I mean Hour of Code is a drop a bucket. But it really could spur some interest in other things for the students. So, well worth it. So, I mean that's why we want to really blow up Hour of Code, create a little competition. I know really it's a joint collaboration between, you know STEM and the Technology Department to be able to support teachers as they attempt to do the Hour of Code with their students. So I'm really excited about it.Larry Burden 14:40 So, I have a question. How do we embed STEM education, this the big, this is the big question. This is going right in there. How do we embed STEM education in our curriculum, especially in that Lower-El, Upper-El area. You know, we have classes, and we're developing more classes in our high schools, in our middle schools. I don't think we've got enough, really, to and I don't think it's, it's mandated, the way we would probably really need it to be for it to be successful, as successful as it should be in our public schools, but I really think due to time constraints or, again, some mandates, what can we do to get it more embedded in our curriculum in those elementary years? Big question.Heidi Skodack 15:29 Well that, that is the question. I thought you had the answer to that.Larry Burden 15:35 Way above my pay grade.Danelle Brostrom 15:36 I promised her not difficult questions Larry.Heidi Skodack 15:40 That actually is an excellent question. It's one that we have struggled with for a long time because of the time constraints especially Elementary. So, one of the biggest things that came into play was, if we were talking about our Math and ELA, there's a little bit of a hierarchy to, you know, core curriculum. So, a lot of times, ELA and Math gets the majority of the time that teachers spend. And then Science and Social Studies, and the question is is where does STEM fit in. Because STEM stands for: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, and it's not those individually, it's the collaboration of all together, right? So where do we find places in the curriculum that already exist, where we can make sure that we're identifying and emphasizing those STEM activities that are taking place. It's really project-based, hands-on learning and the integration of all of that together. And so, the biggest question we had is, how are we going to fit it in? Our answer right now is that we are implementing the FOSS Science Curriculum, right. We're trying to kill two birds with one stone because FOSS has STEM embedded activities within the FOSS program. And so it's not only teaching science, but the students in their activities are incorporating those STEM pieces in there. So we're not only covering topics within, how you do a project-based learning related to STEM, but we're also covering our science standards within there. And so our avenue right now is using the FOSS curriculum to embed some of those STEM activities. Because, I was constantly brought back to the fact that we can do all these outside STEM activities: robotics, tech-girls, you know recycle racers, and the things that we offer in the district, but our goal is to reach every single student, and how do we give every single student the opportunity. Science and FOSS was the solution because it actually embedded it and we could use it all at the same time. Really, that was the passion, how can we include it where kids going to see it every day. So right now we have it rolled into fourth and fifth grade. Third tri we'll get it rolled into the FOSS science curriculum into third grade. So we'll have third, fourth, and fifth grade, with FOSS science and embedded STEM curriculum within those units of study for the students. So, not a full fix yet, but at least we know that we're at least getting it to every student in third, fourth, and fifth grade.Larry Burden 18:03 Definite step in the right direction.Danelle Brostrom 18:05 This kind of transformation isn't going to move as quickly as we want it to. It just isn't because it's so very different and you are talking about more of the project-based learning, and the making, and that's, it's just very different. So I think it's okay to work slowly in that respect.Heidi Skodack 18:21 And Danelle, you and I have had many conversations about silos, and breaking down those silos andDanelle Brostrom 18:26 That's hard,Heidi Skodack 18:26 It's when those pieces happen, when all those are coming together that you see awesome results and excitement in students for learning as well as a deeper understanding because they have the application.Larry Burden 18:40 It could be argued that the STEM curriculum is already there. It's the STEM mindset, and the STEM activities in the curriculum that isn't there. So really, it is, it's just finding, it's finding curriculum that has that, that Maker mindset involved. It's finding that math curriculum, or incorporating a Making mindset into the current math, math curriculum that will bring STEM into what we do in the classroom.Heidi Skodack 19:06 We'll get into it later I think when we talk about computational thinking. And, and those are all aspects of things we want students to experience and do, but it's about how you're doing that together as one instead of, I'm just going to do math, I'm just going to do science, I'm just going to do tech. It's when they all come together.Danelle Brostrom 19:24 And that's where our worlds overlap, because that's 100% what those ISTE Standards are about and specifically...Larry Burden 19:31 Great segue, that was awesome.Danelle Brostrom 19:32 I know right, I was already gonna talk about the computational thinking stuff, but, but yeah computational thinking is a big part of those ISTE Standards so even if the kids don't go into coding, when they're learning to code they're being a better thinker, and they're breaking up problems into simpler parts, and improving their designs over time. All those kinds of things are the core pieces of computational thinking, but they're good to know no matter what you're doing. Right? They're good everywhere, no matter what industry you're in. I mean, I can't tell you how many times, I'm not coding but I'm definitely trying to solve problems and changing up my plan because that didn't work.Heidi Skodack 20:08 Right, whether you're on the side of doing the coding, or on the other side where you're actually operating the machine that has all the coding in it. I mean, there has to be that thought process of, you know, what is happening when a problem occurs? You know, what, how do I solve that problem? Is it a call to tech right away for some support or is it something I problem solve myself? Because the, the tools that we're, even if you're not on the side of coding, the tools that we're using are so high tech now you have to be able to have some of those problem solving skills built in, no matter what your job is or where you are.Danelle Brostrom 20:39 Can you talk to us about the new K-12, Computer Science Standards? I'm so excited about these and I know you are too, so.Heidi Skodack 20:44 So, Computer Science Standards were adopted last year at the end of the year. And those really require all students to have K through 12, computer science experience. And again it's designed around the same things, the ISTE standards, the STEM Standards, getting more STEM into schools, and Computer Science Standards, and what those look like. The good news is, is that the, as a state we recognize the importance of it. Are we ahead of the game? Not at all. I don't think at all in Michigan as far as computer science goes. But we're getting there. And the point is, we're doing it right direction. We have a couple of things going in. I went to Computer Science Summit in Arkansas, believe it or not. So, to myself I said, really, there's a lot of computer science going on, Arkansas?Danelle Brostrom 20:45 Go check it out.Heidi Skodack 20:51 Yeah, go check it out. So I went. And, it really was a summit from all the governors throughout the United States that were there, and talked about what programs they were implementing, and what kind of funding they had behind the support. And Hattie he was there to talk to us. Had a good chat with him, and I was really interested in how far ahead Arkansas was, South Carolina was, in their implementation of computer science standards. But one of the things that was critical was the piece that number one, you had adopted standards in your state, and the second piece is that they had somebody leading it at the state level, which is coming as well. That's coming next, is where we will have a person that actually leads, what is the implementation of computer science going to look like in schools, and what resources do we have available. Because we know, sometimes we get mandates and we don't necessarily have all the resources. But it's how we respond to what is coming that really makes the difference. So I think our attempt at blowing up code.org or blowing up our code this year, we'll, we'll put a little bit of dent in it. But the standards are very clearly outlined, and they're very simple at the elementary levels, but it really is about the process of thinking and problem solving. It's going to be great, but it's also going to, we have to again, adjust and adapt to how is that going to fit in the curriculum. Do we force it in somewhere? So it's really about again, intentionally looking at what is already offered, where does it naturally make sense to put lessons and computer science in K through 12, and starting to think about it before we have some sort of mandate as far as what that's gonna look like. That work excites me, simply because it's good for kids and you're looking for ways to give them more exposureDanelle Brostrom 23:18 And Heidi, I have to say too I'm so excited to see the digital citizenship portions, and cybersecurity written into those K-12 Computer Science Standards because even, and I'm looking at the lower elementary standards right now, and they're talking about networks and the internet, explain what passwords are and why we use them, and why we have to use strong passwords to protect our devices. Like yes, and then there's under impacts of computing, work respectfully and responsibly with others online, keep logging information private, logoff devices appropriately. Like, all those things we talked about in the digital citizenship realm, I'm seeing embedded in these standards too, which is beautiful.Heidi Skodack 23:56 I mean, that becomes, just the way we do business.Larry Burden 23:59 If you're going to teach computer science, you probably should teach how to, teach our students how to do it appropriately.Danelle Brostrom 24:05 And how to do it safely.Larry Burden 24:06 It's a foundational, fundamental piece. We were talking about definitions earlier. So now you know we've dropped computer science and computer programming and STEM and all these things, and coding. They're all separate things. What are some of those definitions when we talk computer science, what are we, what are we saying?Danelle Brostrom 24:22 I get them all mixed up, I'll be honest. Help us Heidi.Heidi Skodack 24:27 I don't know if I have the answer to that one. Computer science is the broader picture, right? Computer science really encompasses all those different areas, and jobs and activities, like the umbrella that then coding and programming, you know, would be under. That's how I would probably define it.Larry Burden 24:45 I think it's important to say that because I think sometimes especially our students and maybe even our parents have a, they see computer science, and they immediately think okay this is Calc three minimum. We're talking about this fear of math that we're trying to get over. And the,Heidi Skodack 24:46 What is that? I don't now what that is.Larry Burden 25:06 And I think sometimes when we say computer science, people immediately go there and that's not, it's so much more than that. A softening of that definition for people that are looking. Again, I'm, I'm looking at marketing to my child. And I'm thinking, if I say, well, honey, you need to pursue a career in computer science.Danelle Brostrom 25:29 Think that's nerds behind their computer, but it's not!Larry Burden 25:33 Yeah that's probably not going to be successful so. But then if I started talking about what coding means, and what programming means, and what work in a 3D realm means, and all the, all the potential applications of computer science, suddenly, that's a lot, shinier.Heidi Skodack 25:51 I think a lot of times when you think of it related to careers. So, if you take those, that language out of there. I mean now that you have to, but if you take the language out of there about coding, and computer science but if you're working with students, you're talking about what are you interested in for your careers, and connecting those pathways of how is computer science embedded in those careers that you think you want to do? That's where you get kids connected. You know, if you talk about computer science or coding, they picture somebody in a cube farm all day just doing coding. That's not what it is. You know computer science could be thousands and thousands of careers related to computer science that people don't realize that, that are there. I mean, I think about the engineering classes at West and at Central, and even in their laser cutting machines and their small CNC machines that they have, that's all computer programming. So the person that's operating that and designing, doing the design and the making, and making decisions on where should that piece be cut out, how deep should the cut be and what is the location on the X, Y and Z axis, that's all, that's all related to computer science and coding. So I think when you have it in the conversations of careers, and then talk about how those computer science principles are linked to those, then that kind of breaks down a few barriers, than the picture of somebody sitting in a cube farm coding.Danelle Brostrom 27:12 I think the more we can lean on their passions too, and then help show them how they can connect. Again, I think of my own child who her passions are animals, and taking things apart, and creating things. And then I watched her, she was reading that "Beauty and the Beak," book where they 3D print the beak for the eagle who doesn't have one, or it gets broken or somehow. And I remember seeing her eyes light up and she was like, "I could do this," and it was like, yes, yes you could. So just sometimes it's connecting those dots for kids because they don't realize that their passion for dance could go along with this really cool thing where they're coding the LED lights on the dance, you know what I mean it just, just connecting those dots.Heidi Skodack 27:54 You know the design prosthetics which what you're talking about which has been, that field has completely changed. Because if you remember this, I always found this interesting because I thought, god if I was going to school again that would be very interesting to me. Right. You know when you think about prosthetics that were done in the 90's right, compared to what we see now, it's basically an artistry, that they do. It's out of chrome, and different materials, and metals and, and the design, in that art piece that design piece is an element that is seen throughout. As well as materials. I mean that science behind, behind the materials that they're choosing. I mean if you're running in the Paralympics we see the different things that they use there. But just that change in, it's not only functional, but it's aesthetically pleasing, and you're making decisions on materials and design. So, that area was always of interest to me because that has changed so rapidly lately.Danelle Brostrom 28:52 There's your "A," Larry. Your "A," in STEAM.Larry Burden 28:55 I was going to bring that up, so what subjects, this is on code.org, their little marketing slideshow had a slide, what subjects do students like a lot in high school? Not surprisingly, the highest was art and design, second was performing arts, third, computer science and engineering. Now I would argue, art and design right now is computer science. If you're going to get into the field of Art and Design, well not even behind. I mean if you're doing, and certainly in performing arts, if you're doing anything in, in theater in the background or in film in the background. You're going to do 3D modeling. You're going to, it's all programming now, it's all computer science, it's all understanding those processes. If you're in computer gaming and doing the art for that, 3D modeling, 3D rendering. Art and design and performing arts, just wrap it into the computer sciences, really. It doesn't sound as sexy.Heidi Skodack 29:52 Yes, and even in architecture. The flip time, and the expectation of time to get a set of plans done in do that modeling, that visualization modeling, completely changed. You used to have weeks in between and now the expectation because we have all these tools, because of computer science that we're able to use and do projects more quickly, right. So now we're spending our money on technology, and our time is decreasing, but the expectation is increasing, of what the expectations are. Same thing in theater arts, when you're designing those stagecraft, and,Larry Burden 30:28 Those sets that they put together now.Heidi Skodack 30:29 Those sets are done all ahead of time, including like how they're going to work. So those moveable pieces, like what do those gears look like, and how is that rotating. So more time is spent on the pre-planning, than it is on actually the design, construct, building so that is all done ahead of time in the design process that's amazing.Danelle Brostrom 30:49 Heidi are we still seeing a gap in the amount of girls and minorities that are going into STEM fields, and doing coding or is that kind of changing do you think?Heidi Skodack 30:57 It is changing. We're doing better, but we're still not there yet. Females and minorities in general, you know, to increase enrollment and excitement about going into those fields is super important. To have those diverse conversations with different people at the table is super important. So the more we can help students or guide them in that direction, you know you don't want to force somebody, you know, to do it. But certainly, you have to make sure that they had an opportunity to make that choice.Danelle Brostrom 31:25 For sure.Larry Burden 31:26 An educated choice.Heidi Skodack 31:27 Yes.Danelle Brostrom 31:27 And girls will typically look at coding in different ways to. Like isn't it true that they'll try to fix the problem, or try to create something that will make a difference. Like that's kind of what usually brings girls to the table. We need those kinds of, of students. And I love what you're doing with TechGirls. Can you talk about TechGirls real quick because I think that's such a cool thing that we're doing in our region.Heidi Skodack 31:46 TechGirls, I actually started a group when I was in Farmington, but we started a group up here at Central in 2016, and their mission really is to increase awareness for females and minorities in anything related to STEM. And they won a grant last year to allow them to expand to West Senior High. They reached out to Elk Rapids, and did a lesson with a second grade class. Within the community, they volunteer at a Senior Citizens Center, helping them with their technology. They've done Recycle Racers with our kids at Eastern and then throughout the district last year. But really, their mission is to, you know, really build that mentorship so it's so important for them to see young women in those roles of leaders, that are leading those areas of technology and in STEM, and to know that there's a pathway for them moving forward. One of our TechGirls actually, you probably already heard the news on her last year, was Elizabeth Sanders won the Congressional App Award, and went to Washington DC, based on an app that she designed. And her app, of course, right about helping people. So her's was the Calc-u-saver, and you can actually download it online, and looks like a calculator, but if you're in a dangerous situation you can punch in your numbers, looks like a calculator, and it will send a message to your person to say, you know, come and pick me up. It has the location sensor on it you know, so they know where to pick you up and to call you back to get you out of that situation that you feel is uncomfortable or dangerous. So kudos to,Danelle Brostrom 33:23 It's amazing.Heidi Skodack 33:24 our TechGirl. So we're still working to expand that. I mean the goal would be lovely to have it at every school in the district but slow growth there. But we're working on it.Danelle Brostrom 33:33 But you are, I mean you kind of do have it in every school because the little's see these high school girls that are, you know, it's a high schooler who, who's interested in the same kinds of things I am, and they're so cool, and I could do that. So, I mean I know that they're just based at our secondaries but man, the impact is so cool across the district.Heidi Skodack 33:54 Getting there. And they're a great group of girls, and they volunteer for just about anything. And we can always count on them. So super proud of them.Larry Burden 34:01 I have to say last question, if you have any other questions 'cause we are way over.Danelle Brostrom 34:07 Well I was just gonna say, is there anything else that, that we didn't touch on that, that you want to share, that you want to talk about. Anything that you're like, oh, I wish they would have asked me that.Heidi Skodack 34:15 Just that Hour of Code, the dates for the Hour of Code are December 9 through the 15th, but we've actually extended it through the 18th. Just make sure you get in your Hour of Code, and if there's any teachers that are interested or need help, contact, Danelle or myself, and we'll be happy to get them set up. Our goal was to create a competition, we want to see how many east side versus west side we're able to do the coding, and kind of have a leaderboard that's going to be on a website that we'll share with teachers and principals.Larry Burden 34:46 Sounds great. TechTool of the Week!TechTool of the Week 34:51 TechTool of the week, I just want to mention there are a ton of great resources for educators who are interested in doing coding in their classroom. Code.org has the HourofCode.com. There are posters that you can download and hang up. There are stickers that you can order. Then all of the different activities, and games, and things. And then don't forget about REMC, our local REMC has some different items that you can do coding with. If you go into their system and search for STEM, you can get things like: bloxals, Dash and Dot, Little Bits, Ozobots, Fearow and the drone, all those kinds of things you can do coding with as well, and they're, they're hands on. And then, if you're not local there are other REMC's do different things. Some REMC's I know have Microbits or the Osmos that you can check out that you can do coding with. But just definitely check and see what your REMC offers through that Classroom Makers Project because there are a lot of great resources over there.Larry Burden 35:42 You mentioned drones and we should have hit on the drone thing. We'll get it next time, we'll get it next time. Tutorials and updates, just wanted to say, you know, last week we did that, the annual EdTech Loop Gift Guide, there's some great STEM gifts, great STEM gifts in that guide, so give that a listen, that pod listen. It was a really fun show. I want to also give a shout out to an upcoming special 100th episode of the EdTech Loop podcast on digital citizenship. It is like a digital citizenship blowout. Has all the information so look for that in the upcoming weeks. In closing, follow us on Facebook and Twitter at @tcapsloopDanelle Brostrom 36:19 @brostromdaHeidi Skodack 36:20 @skodackLarry Burden 36:21 Bam! Subscribe to the podcast on Podbean, iTunes, Stitcher, Tune-in, Downcast, Overcast, the Google Play Store, Spotify or wherever else you get your ear candy. Leave a review, we'd love the feedback. Thanks for listening and inspiring.Danelle Brostrom 36:38 I can't see the time from where I'm sitting.

The phrase “release to production” conjures a very specific set of thoughts and even emotions for folks who live, breath, and work with technology. Some of those thoughts and feelings are positive, while others are fraught with conflict. At the same time, those of us who are active in our religious community experience a different kind of “release to production” - releasing our children to the production environment of our faiths, whether that is teaching abroad, missionary work, or adult religious education that takes our young adult across the globe. And like our IT-based production release experiences, we watch our kids transition into chaotic systems, where parental observability is minimal even as the probability of encountering unknown-unknown error types grows. This week we continue the discussion from the last episode, where Leon and Josh to look at what our IT discipline can teach us about how to make this phase of the parental production cycle easier. Listen or read the transcript below. Kate: 00:00 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experience we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion or lack thereof. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh or at least not conflict with our religious life. This is Technically Religious. Leon: 00:24 This is a continuation of the discussion we started last week. Thank you for coming back to join our conversation. Josh: 00:31 You know, there's a moment in my and my childhood that I think accurately reflects my approach or how I got into IT. And I really wished that I could have had somebody at the top of Devil's Run with me who could say, "Look, now young Josh, this is not a good idea." So you have to picture this. It's this, the largest hill in my neighborhood and Ontario and it is a, a run that goes down, hits a flat top and then goes down again, uh, into this grassy meadow before there's a highway. And there are trees that are grown, that are grown in across the path. And here I am, I'm probably seven years old, right? This is the 80s. There are no bike hel, there are no like bike helmets. No. And I'm on my BMX, right. Uh, no suspension. It's not like I was, you know, dry, uh, riding a mountain bike with, you know, eight inches of travel on the front end and three in the back. Like this is teeth chattering. And I friends and I of course are at the top of this run. No one locally is Devil's Run. And I'm like, I can totally do this. And so I set off down this hill and about, oh, about a third of the way I realize I'm in trouble. Not only are my fillings rattling out of my teeth, right, but I, I'm, I'm losing control. And then I hit the middle, this, this flat top and I'm like, oh, I can. And then I hit the second part of the hill and I'm flying down. [chattering noise] Just the chatter the entire way I get to this meadow. And I realize that there's a fence coming up. Cause that's the only thing between me and the highway. I slam on my brakes. If you've ever slammed on your brakes and a grassy meadow, you do not stop. You just slide. I crashed headlong into this chain link fence. The next thing I remember was my friends standing over me. "Hey, are you okay?" I don't know how long I was out. They, they walked down, um, Devil's Run after seeing my spectacular run. I wish, I wish that someone had said, hey, you know, you should probably take a different route to the bottom of this hill. But I got there really quickly and that's kind of like my IT career. I got to my it career really quickly. I'm only 40 (ahem!) something and I've been in it for 21 years and there are a lot of people that are a lot older than I am that, you know, they did the, they did the traditional route and didn't get into the right t career until they were 25 or 26. Leon: 03:10 Sure. Right. And Yeah, the subtitle for that. And for some of us, perhaps the epitaph on our tombstone will be, "Mistakes were made. Lessons were learned", and that's...sure! Josh: 03:25 There was a lesson to learn in that? Leon: 03:26 Yeah, there probably was. There's a few, few functional lessons. So in the category of "Mistakes were made. Lessons were learned." And really it was the, the impetus for this entire episode, uh, my son is, uh, actually about to be on his way back from Israel. Um, I'd like to point out that he left last Wednesday, uh, for a year of yeshiva and he's coming home. Uh, it was, uh, a challenge from start to finish. He got there and things were not as he expected. Um, I will, I will say that he is a fairly resilient kid. He's done traveling. He's, you know, he's been to a high school yeshiva program that wasn't at home. Yes. There was some, um, some homesickness that was certainly involved. Yes. There were normal dorm shenanigans that occur in every dorm situation, you know, "Hey, I want that spot. You can't have that spot!", You know, that kind of stuff. But, uh, there was also a set of circumstances that were not related to that. They also were not of the caliber of civil unrest, mind you, but, um, just a lot of things that didn't match the set of expectations that he had going in. And by the time we got the better part of a week in, he was so miserable and so unable to, to change his frame of mind that nothing was going to work. And we also realized that everything that we wanted for him, everything that we, and by we, I mean my wife, myself and him, were going to get out of this experience at yeshiva wasn't going to occur. And even if it did occur, it wasn't worth or greater than the challenges he had faced already and the challenges that we're clearly still going to occur while he was there. So we made the decision this afternoon and, um, got a ticket and he's, he's gonna fly home tomorrow. So this is effectively the same as you know, catastrophic failure and a rollback in, you know, in production. That you have your change control window, you have everything plotted out and things simply nothing installs or deploys the way you expect it to. And you find yourself at 2:30 AM with three more hours on the change window to go saying, hmm, no, we got to pull the plug, roll it back and we'll try again some other time, but we have to sit back. So that's, that's the story. Um, so let's, you know, so let's talk about this in an IT context. Josh: 06:11 You know, the, this is a tough one, right? Because in in the IT context, if we have to roll back our change, the change management folks are going to ding our change scores, they're going to say, "Hey you, you failed to deploy", and I will say that my current employer is changing that mindset. There is no longer a, a ding for rolling back a change because it means that you did your T-minus an you were executing and you recognized that this is not going to work the way that we wanted it to work, so we're going to roll it back because we want to protect the customer. Or in this case, you want to protect your, your child. You. Leon: 06:54 Right. Josh: 06:54 You're like, "Look, you being at yeshiva is just not going to work. We're going to bring it back, we're going to re-plan, and then we're going to redeploy and probably in another direction." I mean, we've talked about this before, right? Sometimes you have to walk the path that you were not supposed to walk only as far as you needed to so that you could realize it's not the path and then come back and walked confidently down the path that is the correct path for you. Much like me pursuing my, my law degree just was not going to happen. Leon: 07:24 But you never sat there and said, "What if? What if?" No, you, you had enough of the what if to say no, no, no. I know. I know what that one was. Yeah. Josh: 07:32 I also wanted to be a stockbroker. I made it, I made it to the first class of my, or the first lesson of my first two classes and I was like, no, I do not want to be a stockbroker. Did you know the stock brokers have to do math? Leon: 07:46 Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're doing a lot of it. Josh: 07:48 I didn't, I just thought they made money. It was weird. I had the things you don't know when you're 21. Leon: 07:53 Yeah. Yeah. This is difference between counterfeiters and stockbrokers. Josh: 07:56 Oh, weird. Leon: 07:57 There's a joke there. I, I'm not good enough for financials to be able to finish that joke. So feel free to like leave a comment on the podcast about like how the, what the punch line for that would be. Um, so, so when we think about rollbacks to production, I think in it context it happens. But then we think about, all right, what can we do? Not just to make sure that this thing doesn't fail in the rollout, but how we can change our, uh, it culture, our it processes so that rollbacks occur less often. And you brought up a really good example, um, you know, as, as a true DevOps aficionado, you're going to invoke the holy name of Netflix. Josh: 08:36 Of course, right? Netflix. Netflix is "The" company when it comes to, hey, let's break things. Uh, they introduced this idea of chaos monkey and it was actually built on a platform that allowed for this continuous, continuous deployment model and they would inject these problems. Uh, so the idea was that they wanted to see what would happen when there was a quote unquote random failure. Uh, so they, they developed this, this platform that was shut down an instance and did it impact us? And if it did, oh, that's interesting. Why did it, ah, let's go investigate. And so they would do the root cause and then resolve it. Um, chaos monkey has gone a step further now. Uh, one of the, one of the inventors of that methodology and of that platform has developed a platform called gremlins and gremlins are, are, I mean, they're exactly like those little evil creatures that were in the bad eighties movie that we watch over Christmas of the same name. Right? They're like, "Terminate an instance? Uh, no, no, no, no. We're going to rail the CPU in your box. Oh, we're going to fill a volume. Oh, we're going to steal your swap memory!" Um, that whole idea of let's, let's inject some failure into that deployment model just to see what happens. That's what I think is really important. Leon: 09:57 Um, so, and just to clarify for folks who may not be familiar with the term or as familiar with IT, this isn't just breaking things for the sake of breaking things. This is breaking things to then see what the effect is and build a product that is more resilient to these random breakages. And not only that, but to build teams that think in a very particular way about what could go wrong. Um, just to extend the Gremlin concept even further. I heard that, I'm not sure if it was at Netflix or somewhere else that the chaos monkey visits the humans. Josh: 10:32 Oh boy. Leon: 10:33 Um, right. And does not inject chaos into them. But what it does is, uh, somebody will show up at somebody's desk right before a release to production and say, you are really, really sick right now. You have to go home for the rest of the day with pay, but you have to go and the person will say, "But, but, but I was part of the release team." Like I, we know, we'll let you know who, what happened tomorrow. Good luck. You know, this has been a visit from your friendly neighborhood chaos monkey. So you know, what happens when a particular person isn't available. And of course, again, the, the, you know, the next day they go back for a postmortem and say, well, because you know, Sarah wasn't there. Um, we didn't have somebody who do that. Oh, that's really interesting. Um, since I know that Sarah is very committed to being able to take vacations and actually be sick, sometimes we probably ought to figure out how we can have some redundancy in our human processes. Um, you know, so that that doesn't affect us when it matters. Josh: 11:33 Um, I just want to point out that the last week, my team of three, I quickly became a team of one and it just, you know, PTO and a great opportunity to go out and meet with a vendor and suddenly Joshua is running solo. Um, right. We survived, although we like to inject chaos just for fun. Leon: 11:53 I'm not saying chaos isn't entertaining when it occurs to other people. [Laughter] It's was it Mel Brooks who said the difference between comedy and tragedy, if you fall down a manhole cover, that's comedy. If I get a paper cut, that's tragedy. So yeah, the chaos monkey is great, but uh, it's, you know, when it happens to somebody else. Josh: 12:15 So how would we apply this then, Leon to, to our families, right. Uh, I think I have some experiences that my family has gone through in the past decade, right? My daughter was diagnosed with scoliosis, uh, had back surgery. She's got, uh, 21 inches of titanium rod on each side, or sorry, 16 inches of titanium rod on each side of her spine. Uh, 21 or 22 titanium screws in her back. And, um, she did a, uh, Trek which, and Mormon, uh, in Mormon culture, I wouldn't say theology, Mormon culture. Um, they reenact a, a pioneer journey, so they have handcarts and they, they drive them. She did that. Uh, 3.5 months after back surgery. I mean, my son on a mission, um, you know, was diagnosed with Tourette's, which made conversation very hard. Now he's out doing missionary work and loves to talk to people. Um, and then on my own, my own family, right. I, I suffer from depression and I, my, my work toward getting promoted happened to coincide with a really difficult depressive episode. Um, so I mean, I, I, for me and my family, I think that those experiences have taught us this. And I do love baseball. So this, yes, as the baseball analogy, when life is throwing you curve balls, just swing away. I mean when people look at those things, we were like, "Oh, well, you know, Josh, you know, he, he has, he has depression", but when you swing away at those curves and you, you know, you pull one out of the park, uh, for me that, that, uh, allowing that chaos into our lives, uh, it allows, it allows the acknowledgement that, "Yeah, I don't have control over this thing, but I am still going to take an active, active role." But I mean, how do I take that and how do we instill that into my kids. Obviously I, I've done it, but I, I mean, I don't know how I did it. Leon: 14:13 So I think you're, I think the analogy is good and I think the point is good that Netflix said, look, failures are going to occur. So, the only way we can get better at them is to keep experiencing failures and keep on growing from them. But we're not going to wait for the failures to happen to us. We're going to actively seek those failure modes. Now that doesn't mean uh, again, quoting Barbara Collaroso, uh so, uh, class if you don't cross the street. But if you don't look both ways before crossing the street, something bad could happen. "Jenny, go run and show them!" Like you don't do that. So, but as you, you can't watch, but I almost almost made him spit coffee out of his nose. Um, or whatever you're drinking probably wasn't coffee. Um, so I think that finding situations for our family to go through with which are less than perfect, which are, um, perhaps a little fraught or have the potential to be a little bit fraught, whether that is, you know, moving, I mean, just simply, you know, moving, moving to a new, a new home to new school, to new city, I think that causes a lot of families, a lot of, uh, concern. What are we going to do to the kids? We're going to teach them how to move. We're going to teach them that things change. Um, I think moving every month is probably a little excessive, but I think we can look for those as opportunities, not just as challenges. Um, if you know, somebody in the family speaks a different length, is able to speak another language. I think having that person insist on speaking it and allowing the rest of the family to adapt to that. Um, I've seen families where one parent speaks only one language. The other, so the family I'm thinking of, he's from Spain. She is from Switzerland. They speak all the languages, they speak together, so they each speak Spanish, French, German or schweizerdeutsch in English. They speak all of those. So Dad speaks to their daughter in Spanish only. Mom speaks to the child in schweizerdeutsch only. And they speak to each other in front of the child in French only. Josh: 16:22 Oh my goodness! Leon: 16:23 So that the kid understood that there were different modalities to speaking. When I'm talking to Daddy, I have to use these words. When I'm talking to Mommy, I have to speak up these words and if they're both here, I have to use these other words. But it taught the child to sort of mental resilience. Um, that I think is admirable and I've seen families do it that way. I've also seen families do it where dinner time is, you know, Spanish time. We're just at, at this meal, this is the only language we are going to speak. Good luck. You will not damage your children doing that. Uh, pulling from my own personal experience. Uh, the way that the Adato family takes vacations is relatively unique. Uh, I'll try to tell this briefly, but um, when we go on vacation, we don't tell our kids that we're going, we don't tell them where they're going. We don't tell them how long they will be gone. What I mean by that is that my wife and I plan the vacation like you do, but we don't tell our kids anything about it. It's done completely in secret. And then on the day that we leave, we usually, uh, wake them up around three o'clock in the morning. A lot of our vacations are driving vacations. So we wake them up around three o'clock in the morning and sing to them [singing] "We going on on an adventure. We're going on!" As the kids got older, they would swear at us more as we did that because we were waking them up and then they know what's coming. We'd load them into the car in their pajamas and we start driving. About 20 minutes in, we'd start giving them clues and we'd continue to give them clues, uh, for the next four or five hours. When they were young, this kept them occupied and out of the "Are we there yet?"-mode since they wouldn't know are we there yet? Cause they don't know where there is but the clues were not particularly helpful. For example, we were going to Boston and some of our clues was like the little magnet tiles. You know there was a one and a two... One if by land two if by sea? [groan] There was also, there was a Minute Maid orange juice container that was cut out in the shape of a guy for the Minute Men. And, uh, we also had a little stone and a matchbox car... For Plymouth Rock. Yeah. Josh: 18:33 Oh..wow.... Leon: 18:33 Since I said we were going to Boston, all of that made sense. But since we didn't, they, they sometimes got really obscure. Like we went to Israel, we did take a trip to Israel and one of the clues there was a model airplane with holes drilled in it. Um, which did not mean as my son announced loudly to the plane that we're going to crash. [Laughter] Um, instead I was, I was trying to make a joke about the holy land, so... Right!?! Right. So these clues, these clues are not easy or, or helpful clues. They're really just obnoxious clues that keep the kids paying attention. So, but the point is, is that as we go on vacation, like a whole vacation experience is one of guessing and trying to figure it out and, and having fun with it and learning to enjoy the uncertainty of it. Um, because at the end of the day, I think that's the part that we as parents and also I think, uh, you know, we as young adults who were failing in different ways and, uh, our kids who are young adults and failing in particular ways, I think that's the challenge is "Wow do we face and, and address uncertainty?" How do we, you know, "I thought it was going to go like this and it's not, and now what am I going to do about it? Um, you know, I don't know what to do. This wasn't part of my, my game plan. So now what?" And sometimes the answer, the right answer is rollback come home, regroup. You know, sometimes that is the right answer. Sometimes the answer is, you know, sidestep. Okay, so lawyer isn't going to work, but you're not going to not work. You're not going to not do something. So, alright, how do I take a side step into another career? I think that that's what it comes, uh, comes down to, is facing that uncertainty and having strategies for when those uncertain moments crop up. Josh: 20:32 Thanks for making time for us this week to hear more of Technically Religious, visit our website, TechnicallyReligious.com, where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions and connect with us on social media Leon: 20:46 Test in Dev? Not me! I test in prod. What could possibly go wrong? Josh: 20:51 Narrator: Apparently, a lot. Nobody was surprised.    

Check out Becki's YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTG10qvgLMRSoB9OIc6xNxA You can find her on Facebook and Instagram, too! Becki Biermaier everybodylookup@gmail.com EPISODE TRANSCRIPT INTRO: You are not here by accident. You are here by design. And you are here to find courage in the face of fear, to replace isolation with connection, to push back that feeling of overwhelm and to start feeling confident. And you know how you're going to do it? By listening to other people's stories. There's no better way to feed your soul and raise your vibration and shift your mindset than to hear the stories of those who have gone before you. I'm your host, Lori Lynn, also known as Her Royal Excitedness and I invite you to Rise and Climb. Lori Lynn: Welcome to another episode of Rise and Climb with your host, Lori Lynn. Our guest today is Becki Biermaier, Becki and I met about 20 years ago at a party with a mutual friend and we had this instant connection and I was like, "I think I found my new best friend." Becki Biermaier: Yeah, that's exactly how it was because when we left I was like, we just talked straight for five hours. I was at a party with like a hundred people and only talked to one person and then we were like: "Do you wanna get together tomorrow? What are you doing?" "Yeah, absolutely. Let's go hang out." And here we are almost 20 years later doing that. Lori: Becki is one of the people that I admire most. She is the Queen of Overcoming. Um, Becki grew up as a little person. Becki: (laughs) And still am. Lori: She grew up to about three and a half feet tall. When my three kids made it past three and a half feet, they all felt like they achieved something great. They were taller than Auntie Becki. Becki: Absolutely. Lori: One of the things that I have enjoyed most about being friends with Becki is, um, I feel like I should talk to you. I feel like we should have a conversation. So I'm going to stop talking to my listening audience and I'm just going to let you guys have a window into our conversation so that I can stop talking about her in third person. Becki: Lord, help the listening audience to track with us. Lori: Well, one of the beautiful things about having you as one of my best friends is how intentional you are. I would love for you to share some of the stories about how intentional your parents were and then how that led up to today and how you interact with kids and strangers and my kids -- how you're able to basically impact and educate people just all over the globe now on ways to handle situations with people who are disabled, who look different, who do things differently and just really normalize it and just make it like, you know, this is just how different people do different things. And how cool is that? Like God made us all different and isn't that beautiful? Um, so can you talk to me a little bit about like little, little Becki? Becki: Absolutely. Um, growing up my parents were average height and my oldest brother has diastrophic dwarfism, which is what I have as well. And then the next brother is average type. And then there's me, it's a hidden recessive gene that we have in our family. So it could go back as far as like biblical times. And Mom and dad were obviously at the children's hospital a lot with us and saw children being raised all ends of the spectrum. So there were kids who were extremely spoiled because mom and dad felt guilty and tried to overcompensate for disability. And then you had parents who were just raising normal kids and even though they were disabled, they weren't treated any differently. And they very much saw this huge divide of these kids who were over compensated for being spoiled brats and the kids who are being treated like average height kids are average, you know, um, non-disabled kids were turning out great. And so that's what they decided to do. And one of my favorite stories is growing up. We had a fall day, probably mid October, so the leaves were down here in Minnesota and mom and dad said on the night before, you know, everybody cancel your Saturday morning plans because we've got something different for you to do tomorrow. We all got up, had to be in the yard at like 8:00 AM. And, uh, they divided our backyard into three equal portions. And so my dwarf brother had a portion, my average-height brother had one and then of course I did. And they said the three of you are going to rake the yard and you're only responsible for your personal portion and it's going to take, you know, Mike and Becki the longest being disabled, but you guys need to see that you can do the exact same job that your average height brother can do. It's just you're going to have to go at it differently and it's going to take you longer. But that is how all of life is going to be for you. You're going to have to prove yourself. And so today you can, and they said, you know, tonight your feet are going to be super sore but dad and I will rub your feet and we'll give you some Ibuprofen and soak your feet so they feel better and today we'll give you breaks and things like that. They also said, you know, your other brother, he is not required to help you. He can if he wants to, but when his portion is finished, he's free to move on and go and play. And um, and so we got busy and of course my average-height brother finished right away. It didn't take him long and he helped Michael for about 10 minutes and me for 10 minutes. And I know a lot of people when I tell that story, they're like, gosh, that's really cruel for your parents to do that to you -- making handicapped kids rake the yard, you know. But it was actually one of the better things they could have done for us because I really did see at the end of the day, I can do what other people can do. I just have to go about it differently. And it may take me longer, but I can do just as good of a job. And that was one of the main lessons that really stood out to me when we were growing up. Lori: Wow. Well, I know you've told me the story about having to like clean up after dinner. Would you tell the that as well? Becki: Yeah, it was crazy because you know, chores. We all had the same chore rotation that you know, tall kids have except for obviously I didn't have to mow the lawn thankfully, but my dwarf brother, he did. And he was told just to figure it out and not in a cold way, but in a way of like, you can figure this out. And so I remember one night, it was my night, I was probably seven or so, so they had me starting on the after dinner rotation of clearing the table, putting away leftovers, throwing all the dishes. And I said, well, how am I going to get the dishes off the table? I'm not even as tall as the table. And just with great confidence they say, you know what? You are a very, very smart, smart girl. And if you're not sure you can ask the Lord and quite your heart and listen for a strategy and God will show you what to do because someday you're going to be a woman and you're going to have your own house and your own kitchen table in your own guests. And you'll have to figure this out. So let's do it now where we can practice at home and if you get stuck, we'll be in the next room. If you need ideas or you just feel like you need somebody to brainstorm with. So off they went. I think they were probably watching Wheel of Fortune and (still, that's what we watch as family -- how is Pat Sajak that old?) But anyway, I did what they said. You know, I quieted my heart and asked the Lord for help. "God, show me how am I going to get these dishes off this table." And literally I just thought of this idea of climbing up on the table, pushing the dishes to the perimeter, getting down from the table. Now, with everything, you know, serving dishes at all, right at the perimeter, I could easily carry them over to the kitchen from the dining room, drag a chair over, and do the dishes. And when I couldn't the silver out at the bottom in the sink and I tried everything. I did call my mom and I was like, "Mom, I need you to do the silverware," which was kind of me wanting to be rescued. And I love what she did because she was intentional. She said, how about if I brainstorm with you how you can do the silverware? And so she said, do you see anything around you that will help you reach the silverware from the bottom of the sink? And of course at this time I'm tired and I don't want to be doing dishes anymore. And I said, no. And she said, well, look closer. And there was a ladle that was already drying in the drying rack. And so we decided I would try that, and sure enough, the ladle worked and I could use the ladle to push the silverware up the side of the sink so I could grab them. The only thing I couldn't get out were the sharp knives. That didn't work so well. But she was glad to help me with those. And then tell me how proud she was that I had figured things out and she said, you know, someday when you have sharp knives, um, and I'm not there to get them out for you. You'll have to really think about a solution that'll work for you and maybe we can work on that. Even now, start praying, brainstorming ideas. And so stories like that where they were loving, they were kind, but they did not at all take away my, um, need to be a problem solver and they did not rob me of that. And I think that's one thing today parents can do is they just want to fix everything for their child and that doesn't serve them well in the long run. Let them struggle it out. Let us fail. But greater than that, let them see that they can be victorious on their own. If they can do it, let them do it. Lori: Yeah, I love the whole, you know, you're a smart kid. You'll figure it out. Um, I've used a lot of that, a lot of that in my own parenting. Um, you told me a story this weekend about a boy in your class who is really struggling and, um, I would love for you to share that story just because I feel like it kind of goes hand in hand with your parents believing in you and that really, um, oh, what is the word I'm looking for? Like galvanizing your belief in yourself. Um, eventually moved from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Nashville, Tennessee. Right. Completely on your own there. 19 years for 19 years. Um, but I feel like you're able to then turn around and impart that to other people and so would you mind, talking about the kid in your class? Becki: Yeah, this past year (I've been teaching for over 20 years and different times I've been principal or head of school, but it's great to be back in the classroom). And this year I had a boy in my class who just was so pressured by his parents for good grades and he was also, you know, really shall we say behaviorally challenged. And just was really struggling and trying to please mom and dad and battling with himself with, he'd rather be obnoxious kid who didn't do his work and just that struggle that happens in middle school so often and he really needed to have a good grade and just wasn't feeling confident. And I said, no, just study extra this weekend cause I really think you can do this one. It is a really hard test but you're smart enough for it. And if you study I think you'll surprise yourself but you're not going to get a natural A on this when you're going to have to really work. And um, you know, I go home and I do the weekend and don't even think twice about it. We come in Monday and he takes his test. I happen to turn it around in class and at grade it and it's sitting on my desk and he comes up to my desk to ask me a question and sees that he had gotten 98% on this test and he was so excited. And so this kid who is one of the ringleaders of the bullies is just like this giddy little boy, which is probably who he truly is on the inside. And he says, can I take a picture of this on my phone so I can text it to my dad? And I was like, absolutely, absolutely. And of course, you know, at school, no phones allowed, right? But in that moment, this little boy who truly is a little boy, even though he's a teenager, would know he could make his dad proud and he felt proud because he really pushed himself any overcame. So I let him take a picture of the grade and texted off to his dad. And, um, it was just a really sweet, sweet reminder of, you know, all you gotta do is believe in somebody and give them a little push because boy, don't we all have enough people telling us we can't, but let's find a few who tell us we can. Lori: No, it's beautiful. I love that. So when you are out and about in public and you encounter people who are not intentional about kind of normalizing um, you know, disabilities and you know, just people who look different or have different abilities or different ways of having to do things. How do you handle when like if a kid is staring at you or says something out loud parent or super awkward. Becki: Can I tell you a really funny story? So back in Nashville, I'm headed to this great pizza place, Pie in the Sky, and I am on foot, I'm not on my mobility scooter. And so I go into the restaurant, I'm the first one there with my friends and I say of course to the hostess, I'm going to need a table for four please. And she said, sure, give me just a second. Well across the restaurant is this very, very curious and surprised four year old boy, let me guess, he's around four and he sees me and he yells while he is pointing, "Mama! Look! A real life puppet!" In front of the whole restaurant. I just think that's really adorable. I mean that is like, that's pretty amazing, is really cute, you know? And of course it's my job to make sure he's comfortable and I want him to have a really great grade, all of those things. So I smile really big, big at him and then I wave and he goes me, which is amazing and I'm totally laughing inside. Mom, however, wasn't finding it as amusing as I did and she was smacking the kid on the head and saying, "Shut up, shut up, shut up," knocking him down in the booth. Really what I would have loved to do is go over to her and say, please don't do that. Please, please don't do that. Because I think that is why shame is so attached to disability. It's because the parents themselves are embarrassed by the children's behavior, but that's not what the child is translating. That's not what they're getting out of it. Right? They're getting out of it. Shame on you for, you know, the whole situation with a disabled person and it translates into disability being known with shame. And I think that's the wrong approach. So better is the parent who says, yes, I see that person over there in a wheelchair or I see that that man is using sign language or that man has no arms. And just politely say that and say, yeah, God makes everybody different. And sometimes that's just enough and the kid can, you know, move on. But it does require some times that parents actually take the initiative and bring the child over and say, you know, we noticed that you're writing in a really cool wheelchair and this is my son Joey. And can we ask you some questions? Because majority of disabled people want that and we're happy to say yes, that'd be great because we want you to have a positive experience. And so we're prepared for that. We obviously chose to go out with public. We know that we looked different and so we kind of expect that now you do randomly, you know, run into, you know, sister crabby pants or whatever. Everybody has a bad day. My job is to engage with the child and you as the parent can even just say: Tell us about your wheelchair. How fast can you go? Or tell us about the cool things that you've learned to do without having arms. Can we ask you how you brush your hair or things like that. Because then what you're doing is you're creating a new normal for your child that disability isn't a bad thing. It's just a different thing. And so you're setting your child up to have a great experience. The other thing is if you can try to keep them from hiding behind you and so at least make them come out and say hello while they're absorbed, absorbing everything that's happening around them because they're taking in all of it and they may not be able to do more than just watch. And that's okay too. When they're like four or five, three, four or five older than that, you really shouldn't expect your children to engage more in conversation and for the parents to lead the way. That's really the way to go with that. Yeah. Good stuff. So when it's done right, it's positive for everybody. Lori: Okay. You had talked about a little bit even showing pictures and oh my gosh. Have you seen, what is it called? The Butterfly Circus? No. Oh Becki, we're gonna have to watch that later. Yeah, it's a short film. It's so beautiful. But that would be an excellent example of something to share with your kids before encountering people who have, you know, I don't know deafness or loss of limbs or something like that. And I actually have resources available for parents then if they email me, it's very user friendly for parents to walk with their kids through at home to help prepare them for having good positive encounters with disabled people. And it's easy enough to print off just a few sheets that will help you know how to train your children I head of time, so you're not stuck in one of those horribly embarrassing moments. Becki: And so it really teaches parents how to help prepare and then how to provide conversation starters with disabled people. And then after the encounter, how to help your child process, what they just experienced. So I do have that available that I can get to families easily. Lori: How do they get that? Becki: Email me, everybodylookup@gmail.com and I can email you back and I can attach what you need for that. Lori: So everybodylookup@gmail.com. Awesome. And I know you've got some videos too that are great resources. Yeah. What is the name of your Youtube Channel? Becki: I believe it's Everybody Look Up. I should check that. Or you can just search for Becki Biermaier. Lori: And how do you spell your name? B. I. E. R M. A. I . E. R. And Becki has an I. Not a Y because I was an 80's child and all the girls in sixth grade, we all decided to get a rid of our Y's. Turn them into I's. So Shelli with an I. Becki with an I. Lori I'm Lori with an I. Well our final question of course we have to like dial down, go deep, do some soul searching for the final answer to the biggest question. And that is what is your favorite Karaoke song? Becki: If you ever catch me doing karaoke, please carry me off to the hospital because something must be seriously wrong if I'm ever in that moment. I never a great visual artists. Yeah. You know, my only hope could be that there would be something on stage that's three and a half feet tall that I could hide behind. Um, but I guess I would have to go with "Jesse's Girl" by Rick Springfield because he was supposed to be my husband. I had a poster on my wall and I, I really thought if you just had the chance to meet me, he would totally marry me. Now I don't know who Jesse is and I certainly don't want his girl. He can keep her, but it is a song that I, I know through and through. So I guess my karaoke choice would be "Jesse's Girl" by Rick Springfield. This is why we're friends. Love it. What's your song? I gotta know this one cause you know the night is young. It's actually not. We're approaching 11 o'clock the night is young for a young people ending for old people like us. It's true. I shouldn't get in the shower and tend to go out. I know. It's so crazy. [inaudible] started at like 11 o'clock and now we're like, hey, it's almost 11 o'clock where's my sleepy time tea. I'll knit a few rows, turning the bed with my heating pad, take my medication. (Laughs). All right, Lori, close us out. What's your favorite karaoke song? Lori: All right. Well, I don't sing, but I like to rap. Becki: Oh. Oh my gosh. 20 years. How did I not know this? Lori: And my husband ... Becki: Yes? Lori: Was supposed to be LL Cool J. Becki: Oh, you guys would be so great together. Lori: Let me tell you why. Because -- all right, so my ex-husband is named James Todd. Right? Okay. LL Cool J? His name is James Todd Smith. And the girl who lived on the next street over that was like my honorary daughter? Her last name was Smith. Oh my gosh. I was so close. And I'm Lori Lynn -- LL -- Becki: Look at all these conditions. Let's go out with you and your rapper soon to be husband and go sing Karaoke. And what will you be singing or rapping? Lori: "I Need Love." Literally. (Laughs) Becki: I think this is where we end the podcast. Probably better on some blue eye shadow and I'll meet you in the car. Lori Lynn Outro: Thanks for listening. If you thought of someone while you are listening to this episode, would you send it to them? Just let them know you were thinking about them or that they came to mind and make that connection. If you would take a minute to rate and review my show, that would mean the world to me. And let me know about topics that you want us to cover in future episodes. Oh! And don't forget to subscribe. What are you waiting for? Go! Hit the subscribe button right now! I'll see you next time. MWAH!

Email Product Manager Gurbir Singh and the Deliverability Godfather himself Andrew Barrett sit down to talk ISPs (Internet Service Providers), ESPs (Email Service Providers, and how they factor in to your emails making their way into the inbox.       TRANSCRIPT: [0:00:18] PJ Bruno: Hi there, this is PJ Bruno. Welcome back to Braze for Impact. I'm very, very excited to have with me today, two of my very good friends, special guests. One, Gurbir Singh, who's a product manager here at Braze, and he owns email. Hello, Gurbir.   [0:00:33] Gurbir Singh: Hey, PJ. How's it going?   [0:00:34] PJ Bruno: Pretty good, man. Also with us, Andrew Barrett, our director of email deliverability in the house. How's it going, buddy?   [0:00:41] Andrew Barrett: It's going well. It's going great. I'm so happy to be here in the same room with you guys for a change.   [0:00:45] PJ Bruno: I know. Andrew's usually in D.C. Doing the remote thing, but we see them all the time on Slack, the deliverability dojo. He is the Sensei. He's there answering all the questions. Today, I wanted to get these two email champs in the room. Just talk a little bit about deliverability, but also more specifically ISPs and ESPs. What are they? What are they responsible for? Let's pretend I know nothing except a small amount of information. Right now, that is, correct me if I'm wrong, ISPs, they provide the internet, they can leverage spam filters and blacklists to protect people from unwanted mail. Examples, I guess would be Comcast, AT&T, Verizon. Is that accurate so far?   [0:01:33] Andrew Barrett: Absolutely.   [0:01:33] PJ Bruno: Okay. Jump in and stop me as soon as it's inaccurate information.   [0:01:38] Andrew Barrett: No. Everything you said right there is absolutely true, but you take it one step higher. What they really are are businesses. They're businesses that are in the game to make money. Same as anybody who's actually sending mail to users of the inboxes that they provide. One of the big questions out there in deliverability land is, how do you make money off of an inbox that you're not charging anybody to use? Right? It turns out that everything we say about delivering email has everything to do with, not just the business model that we're in as marketers and senators, but also what's the ISP's business model here? Once you understand how the ISPs are making their money, all kinds of light bulbs start going off in your head around deliverability. What you find is that when you align your email sending program to the ISP's revenue requirements, what their business model is, all of a sudden, bang, deliverability happens.   [0:02:39] PJ Bruno: It's magic.   [0:02:41] Andrew Barrett: It is magic. You can't avoid it. It is an inevitable outcome of aligning your business model with the ISP. The great news is, is that everybody wants the same thing. Right?   [0:02:53] PJ Bruno: Right.   [0:02:53] Andrew Barrett: Email recipients want email that they love to read. ISPs want to be able to put that content in front of their users of the free inboxes. That's because the more often those recipients can engage with the email, the more and better opportunities the ISPs have on making money, because their customer is not the inbox user, their customer is the advertiser that's putting contextually relevant advertising alongside the email that we're sending. If we're sending mail that users want to read, the recipients are happy, the ISPs are happy, we're happy, everybody's happy.   [0:03:37] PJ Bruno: I mean, and that's the dream state is making everything happy. But I guess does it mean that traditionally, ISPs look out for the email receiver, while ESPs prioritize the email sender? Is that, not at all?   [0:03:53] Gurbir Singh: No, I mean I think ISPs definitely do look out for the users, but as Andrew said, they definitely look out for their own business model as well. Then, ESPs are really focused on working with the brands. Right? These guys are the delivery agents. They're the ones sending out massive amounts of emails on behalf of various brands around the world. Their goal is to say, I want to get you in an inbox. I want to make sure you're successful. It's kind of hand in hand a little bit. The circle of life is really, if you make the ISPs money, you're going to be good.   [0:04:27] Andrew Barrett: That's right. I mean, anytime our business model is in conflict with the ISP's business model, we lose. All right?   [0:04:34] PJ Bruno: Gotcha.   [0:04:36] Andrew Barrett: It's important to understand that the users of those free inboxes are not the ISP's customers. Right? The users of the inbox are the inventory, and it's an inventory with a super short shelf life. The ISPs, their job is to create a pleasant and curated email experience for the users for their inventory, so that they'll last long enough to show them some advertising.   [0:05:04] PJ Bruno: Right.   [0:05:06] Gurbir Singh: That's a good point.   [0:05:06] Andrew Barrett: If you can just keep that in mind, that relationship between those three parties in this little love triangle that is email-   [0:05:15] PJ Bruno: Email is a love triangle. Don't kid yourself.   [0:05:17] Andrew Barrett: That's right. It's very tightly interwoven.   [0:05:21] PJ Bruno: Okay. Let's take a step back. In the beginning, ISPs showed up materializing out of basically nothing. Right?   [0:05:31] Gurbir Singh: Well, I mean a lot of the original ISPs were just the people who provided the internet. Right? Like AOL. They allowed you to connect to the internet, and then they were like, look, there's this thing called email and you can get it. We'll provide you an inbox where you can receive all your email. Same with Yahoo.   [0:05:48] PJ Bruno: At some point along the way, there were abusers. Is that right? Because this has got to be kind of, I'm talking about-   [0:05:56] Gurbir Singh: Anywhere there's volume, there's to be people looking to game the system. Right? There's going to be abusers, there's going to be people who are going to say, "Click here and get 10 free and ringtones," and you know that takes you somewhere else where you don't actually think you're supposed to be going. There's always going to be people gaming the system, and the ISPs, that does not jive with their business models, so they created a spam folder, and they put these guys in the spam folder, and they got really sophisticated at tracking who is a spammer, who's not. That distinction is really where ESPs, I think, really help along with keeping marketers honest and saying, look, if you put this subject line in, that's spammy, don't do that. Here's some best practices. Here's how you should create your content. Here are the people you should target. Things like that.   [0:06:44] PJ Bruno: Right. It doesn't stop at best practices. Right? We got here, the Gmail Promo Tab, which launched I guess, 2013, when Gmail announced the creation of different inbox tabs, including the promotions tab. Now, initially, it was said that Gmail is killing email marketing. Was this the notion that was kind of felt across the board by marketers that this was a tough pill to swallow?   [0:07:08] Andrew Barrett: Well, marketers definitely felt that way. In fact, we saw a lot of ... A couple of guys I remember back at that time were proposing a class action suit against Gmail, forgetting for the moment that Gmail, at the same time was also providing them for use of this infrastructure that they could use to reach their intended recipients. Nevermind that. Right? They're putting us in the fake inbox. I can understand the frustration. It's hard to have something taken away that you had for so long. But the other side of the coin is that way of thinking that, oh, you're putting me in the promotion set. I think that's wrong thinking on behalf of marketers. I think that that assumes a model of advertising that is more interruptive. Right? Like TV and radio, which is very linear. You're watching your story, and wait a second, wouldn't you like to buy some soap? No? Okay, well let's get on with the story then, and so on like that. Right? Email and other digital channels are not linear. Right? I think that marketers are best served when they can get their message in front of the recipients when they are their most receptive to it, and they are most receptive to marketing messages, not when they're reading email from grandma in upper Poughkeepsie. If you interrupt that, right, you're way more likely to get exactly the wrong kind of attention from the recipient in the form of a spam complaint. On the other hand, if you're enjoying strong placement in the promotions tab, people will turn to that tab when they are ready to see the promotions. I'm not a regular guy because I like email, but I like to see what winds up in there, mostly because I'm curious about the content and-   [0:09:12] Gurbir Singh: Right. It's research for you at that point.   [0:09:14] Andrew Barrett: But I do a lot of buying out of that promotions tab.   [0:09:18] PJ Bruno: The most relevant things are pushed to the top of the promotions tab. That's pretty much how it works. Right?   [0:09:24] Andrew Barrett: It can be, especially with some of this newer stuff that Gmail is rolling out, especially on the mobile side.   [0:09:30] Gurbir Singh: Yeah. It's like the new Gmail promotion tab does that. It groups up your messages based on industries, based on relevant, for when the offer is expiring, things like that. There's a number of variables that Gmail has introduced, but the traditional promotion tab was just if you got there and it's at the top of your inbox, it's there. Right? I think that's what was frustrating for marketers is that they spent all this time learning to get into the primary tab and now they're being asked to say, by the way, we redid the promotions tab and we give you all these new levers to pull and play with. Now, go back into the promotions tab, and people are rightfully so, kind of upset because it's just being thrown at them.   [0:10:10] Andrew Barrett: Well, they're are only upset if they don't remember what marketing was like before.   [0:10:14] Gurbir Singh: Yeah.   [0:10:15] Andrew Barrett: Right? They have this beautiful one-to-one direct channel to ostensibly engaged recipients that never existed before in the history of the planet, and nobody writes a check to Gmail to send email to Gmail's users. It's a gift horse. To get angry about that seems a little disingenuous to me.   [0:10:36] PJ Bruno: It feels very human.   [0:10:37] Andrew Barrett: Well, okay fine. They're human beings.   [0:10:42] PJ Bruno: You get something you want and then you get it taken away, you get pissed off. But no, I mean, they've been optimizing that promotions tab. Right? It's card based. It's like, you know what? We know you want to be in the inbox, but let's create something great in the promotions box that actually optimizes for what you're trying to do.   [0:10:59] Gurbir Singh: Yeah. I think it's a really good push by Gmail. One, they're going to collect way more data around what the message really is. Two, they're going to collect, are people actually interested in these offers, or are we going to push people down? You can see the business opportunities there for Gmail to say, similar to ad, you can pay to be at the top or you can pay to be at the top of your own industry bundle. If I'm Nike and Adidas, I could theoretically page email and say, "Put me always above Adidas." Right?   [0:11:31] PJ Bruno: Wow.   [0:11:32] Gurbir Singh: I don't know if they're actually thinking things like that, but I just see a bunch of different opportunities that they kind of opened, that other ISPs don't even have the luxury to even think about right now.   [0:11:43] Andrew Barrett: Yeah, they could do that, but I think they have a longer game in mind. Right? If they do something that appears to inhibit, in any way, the user's engagement with the inbox in its totality, I think they're not doing themselves any favors. What I think that we'll continue to see, and I'm guessing here, too, is that the kinds of changes we'll see in the promotions tab are those that award senders who are doing a better job at sending content that appears to be more engaging to a preponderance of recipients. That is awarded a better placement in the inbox.   [0:12:25] Gurbir Singh: That's true. I think they also, or actually the first ESP in my opinion that's actually adopted a mobile phone. This update to the promotion tab is directly for people who use the Gmail application. Right? They've acknowledged desktops are going out of time and we are getting switched to a mobile only world, and they're one of the first that are actually adopting. It's like this card that's coming out, it's a static image, but future iterations allow you to scroll and tell different cards and have different images and different links.   [0:12:58] PJ Bruno: Right. That's what AMP is, right?   [0:13:00] Gurbir Singh: No. AMP is completely something that's just interactive email.   [0:13:04] PJ Bruno: But within the email you can actually kind of scroll and click in and see different.   [0:13:08] Gurbir Singh: Yeah. It's like having a website right in your inbox so you don't have to leave, which is another pain point I think for marketers because the behavior is always been, I want to drive traffic to my website, and now all of a sudden, when this thing comes out, it's still in beta, but when it does come out, you're basically telling your customers you're living within the Google ecosystem. Right? You're browsing within the Google ecosystem, they're going to do some actions. You have no insight, no way of knowing what they're doing outside of the parameters you provided them. That's it. You can't dynamically change the workflow on your website as you typically do. This is a bigger change than people think it is, in my opinion.   [0:13:56] PJ Bruno: Gurbir, you're a big part of what we do here with our email at Braze. Obviously, you helped push our content blocks live, email preference center, all this stuff, optimizing the crafting and sending of emails, a big part of what you do. How do you overcome that resistance to change? Do you guys give a lot of thought to that when you're like-   [0:14:16] Gurbir Singh: Yeah. First of all, I mean, I work with a really talented engineering and design team that kind of put all these things together.   [0:14:22] PJ Bruno: Shout out.   [0:14:23] Gurbir Singh: Yeah, shout out. I might be at the face of it when it comes down to external, but there are some true heroes back there. But yeah, I mean, we do a lot of research when we're looking into new features. The content blocks is a great example, right? Content blocks, typically known as the email only feature, with other industries. When we looked at it we said, well, wouldn't it be cool if you could use it in Push, if you can use it on web? The same exact offer being tied to a user across every channel you want. You can have that consistency easily as a marketer, without having to replicate and create these over and over again. That operational cost is what we looked at a lot. Right? The cost of a marketer sending up four separate messages, setting up four different channels, and then ensuring, is the QA right on all four of them? Testing that and then sending it out. Right? If we can reduce the time for you to create all of that, those are the things we look at.   [0:15:24] PJ Bruno: Right.   [0:15:25] Gurbir Singh: But yeah.   [0:15:29] PJ Bruno: Andrew?   [0:15:30] Andrew Barrett: Gurbir is the expert there. Every day, I will defer to his expertise there. I like to keep my head down in the inbox. That's where I'm most comfortable.   [0:15:40] PJ Bruno: That's where he belongs.   [0:15:41] Andrew Barrett: Right.   [0:15:42] PJ Bruno: That's good. I'm trying to get all these things straight in my head. Do we see, traditionally, ISPs, they do want to protect the receivers of mail, right? I mean, obviously they want to protect their bottom line, but will be under the guise of this?   [0:16:00] Andrew Barrett: Well, no, I mean it aligns very well at times perfectly with their own business model because if they're putting their own customers at risk to third parties, they're not going to keep coming back to their inboxes just to get shot at again.   [0:16:14] PJ Bruno: Gotcha.   [0:16:14] Andrew Barrett: They want to keep them around. Keeping bad things, malware, spam, other types of things, out of that inbox, speaks directly to the longevity of their business model and the longevity of their inventory, the users.   [0:16:33] PJ Bruno: Launched back last year, in 2018, you guys know about this, the BIMI. I don't know if they call it BIMI, or if it's just brand indicators for message identification? For those of you who don't know, it's a standardized way for brands to publish their brand logo online and lets logos be easily incorporated into messaging and social media applications. It does this with built in protections, which is building off of D-Mark.   [0:16:58] Andrew Barrett: Right.   [0:17:00] PJ Bruno: I mean, I guess we could say at this point D-Mark is starting to catch on more and people are using it more.   [0:17:06] Andrew Barrett: Absolutely. Gmail has been kind of a kingmaker in that regard. I mean, if you ask Gmail, they would prefer that everybody use D-Mark for everything all time, which is fine. For the longest time, it was really a tool for high value targets like financial institutions, insurers, banks, things like that to keep bad guys from trying to spoof their brand in order to capture login credentials and things of that nature. D-Mark, at its roots though is an authentication protocol, or a platform standing, a reporting mechanism that stands on top of authentication. The timing is really kind of interesting because Google Plus business pages are going away. Right? That whole Google Plus social media experiment is going to get killed off here in a couple of weeks. That was how you got your logo or your picture in the inbox next to your subject line was through validating a business page and [crosstalk 00:18:25].   [0:18:25] PJ Bruno: That was the only way to get it in there?   [0:18:27] Gurbir Singh: Well, you could do it through their promotions tab now, too. You can just pass in a logo and it works. That's why I don't get why?   [0:18:34] Andrew Barrett: Well, yeah, but I don't think they would pick up that logo unless they had some kind of assurance that you were using that logo, that you were an authorized user of that logo, which means-   [0:18:47] Gurbir Singh: You can just pass in any logo when you use the promotions tab. We've tested. I can pass on anything, which is why I find it really funny where-   [0:18:54] PJ Bruno: That's crazy. That's nuts.   [0:18:54] Gurbir Singh: Right, but it's Google, right? Look how big Google is, how many teams did they have? Clearly somebody's not talking to somebody.   [0:19:04] Andrew Barrett: Well, I think BIMI will replace that functionality.   [0:19:08] Gurbir Singh: Probably.   [0:19:08] Andrew Barrett: You've got this authentication standard backing up the presentation of this logo, and suddenly you don't have to rely on Google Plus anymore, and align in the header of your html to prove that you actually own the domain, so that the logo or the picture can turn up in the subject line. It comes at a good time and it helps to enhance this message around adoption of D-Mark.   [0:19:33] PJ Bruno: You said Google is really a big advocate of D-Mark. Do they have a vested interest in D-Mark?   [0:19:41] Andrew Barrett: I don't think that they do. I'm not sure why they're so hot and bothered over D-Mark above and beyond the other authentication protocols, SPF and DKIM, which are sort of prerequisites for D-Mark. D-Mark is just the reporting thing. The question I think that's on a lot of people's minds these days that pay attention to this kind of stuff is, does a more restrictive D-Mark policy get you better inbox? I mean, you can publish a D-Mark policy that says, if it fails, don't do anything. Right? Or you can have a D-Mark policy that says if it fails DKIM, reject it, or quarantine it, or do something with it. Do you get more inbox if you say, if it fails? Yeah, don't do anything.   [0:20:30] PJ Bruno: Or if it passes, is there some sort of reporting? If it passes and D-Mark is present, then you could have some sort of reward?   [0:20:37] Andrew Barrett: Maybe.   [0:20:38] Gurbir Singh: Like positive effect, like a scoring system, goes up or down?   [0:20:42] Andrew Barrett: Do not know. Don't know.   [0:20:44] Gurbir Singh: Black box.   [0:20:46] Andrew Barrett: I think it's still working itself out. I'm not at all sure why Gmail is championing D-Mark.   [0:20:53] PJ Bruno: I mean, this thing, the BIMI thing, it was created by [Authenticators] Working Group, which was led by cybersecurity firm, Agari, and then also representatives from Comcast. Failmail, right? Microsoft.   [0:21:07] Andrew Barrett: Well, Agari is in the D-Mark reporting business. Right? So that's their vested interest in participating, but I don't know what Gmail's is other than having a handy replacement for the death of Google Plus.   [0:21:24] Gurbir Singh: Yeah. I mean, I could see if you can be a better inbox provider and essentially wipe out spam, which is the majority of volume that these guys ever see. Right? It's like 90% plus or something. That's a lot of storage costs. Right? ISPs have to keep every email around. They just do. Right? You can scroll back years and years of your Gmail inbox and you'll see, you can still find it, you can still click it. That's sitting somewhere. They're paying for that cost. If they can wipe away 90% of that somehow with a better authentication system, that's a lot of money for somebody. I can see that being a really big beneficial ad for them.   [0:22:05] Andrew Barrett: I agree with you to an extent. There's a lot of spammers out there who are signing their stuff with a DKIM and SPF and that are publishing a D-Mark record.   [0:22:14] Gurbir Singh: Well, I'm assuming with BIMI, it's another level, essentially. That's why they're working towards that one, and hopefully that one solves it. Like anything, there's always-   [0:22:24] PJ Bruno: There's always counterfeiters out there, man.   [0:22:26] Gurbir Singh: Yeah. Someone's going to break it.   [0:22:28] PJ Bruno: Catch me if you can. Moving on, what's the future, what are the big things on the horizon that email senders should be looking for, as far as feature specific, as far as, I mean, legislation affecting anything?   [0:22:48] Andrew Barrett: Well, I think we can call the legislation one absolutely dead and cold now. The Federal Trade Commission recently completed a two year review of the 16 year old CAN-SPAM federal law and decided it was all good, man. They spent two years looking at that sucker and decided, wow, it just can't get any better than how it is, which is really, really frustrating. I was at the Federal Trade Commission in the spring of 2003 for two days of testimony from a bunch of different groups, and there was five different versions of anti-spam language. It's five different competing versions pending in the lower house in Congress. They were trying to merge all those disparate versions of the language together in what would eventually become CAN-SPAM, and they were taking all this input from nonprofit anti-spam, watchdog groups, senders. They actually had a couple of spammers on the stage talking about why they do what they do, and that sort of thing.   [0:24:02] PJ Bruno: Interesting.   [0:24:02] Andrew Barrett: It was all in. Everybody scrubbed in on this thing. What came out in 2003 act, which was largely the [Burns Widen Act 00:24:14] was terrible. I mean, not only did it fail utterly to advance a definition of spam, which I don't blame them for because that is problematic on its face for a whole bunch of reasons, but where they really fell down is that they failed to advance a meaningful definition of email. Right?   [0:24:37] Gurbir Singh: They left it as a digital communications?   [0:24:39] Andrew Barrett: For the purposes of this statute, email means "an electronic message," period. Full stop.   [0:24:48] PJ Bruno: Great.   [0:24:49] Andrew Barrett: What? Really, really bad. Ideally, the definitive quality of email would have been transit via SMTP.   [0:25:02] Gurbir Singh: Right.   [0:25:02] Andrew Barrett: That's what was needed there. You can never look to lawmakers to predict the future. It's not the law we wanted, but it was probably the law we deserved. It was just that, and so I was really astounded when they decided that they weren't going to make any changes.   [0:25:22] Gurbir Singh: Didn't California, or aren't they evaluating their own special law just for the state of California?   [0:25:29] PJ Bruno: Leave it to California.   [0:25:30] Andrew Barrett: Yeah. Well, they had one before 2003. California is great at passing really restrictive laws, only to have them be superseded by federal legislation months and years later. The California anti-spam law was very restrictive and it was in place for only a couple of months before the federal law came in and eviscerated it, superseded it.   [0:25:55] PJ Bruno: All right, guys, we're at about time. Before we close up shop, any last words of advice to email sender's, email receivers? It can be simple to something you want to go out on. What's the big takeaway?   [0:26:11] Andrew Barrett: Just remember that business relationship between those three parties, and if you can keep that in mind, that relationship will inform every decision you ever have to make as a sender. If I had to define deliverability in one sentence, it would be, how not to look like a spammer. That's it. But there's a whole lot underneath that that can keep folks talking for days, and hours, and careers.   [0:26:36] PJ Bruno: And podcasts.   [0:26:37] Andrew Barrett: And podcasts.   [0:26:38] Gurbir Singh: Andrew's going to write a book.   [0:26:39] Andrew Barrett: And career long podcasts.   [0:26:40] PJ Bruno: I have to make this a whole series. Gurbir, you got some final thoughts?   [0:26:44] Gurbir Singh: I mean, I circled back to Andrew. It is a business. Understanding the motivations of each of these guys will help you, and make you successful.   [0:26:56] PJ Bruno: Absolutely. I'll say to spammers out there, if you're looking for alternative forms of revenue, check out the speaker circuit, because apparently, they'll be willing to have you on stage. Thank you guys so much for coming to hang out with us. This is PJ Bruno, Gurbir Singh, and Andrew Barrett. You guys take care. [0:27:14]

Highlights of the PAC-12 Sustainability Conference held at UC Boulder on July 12th 2018. This podcast episode includes presentations and interviews from: Jamie Zaninovich – PAC-12 Conference Deputy Commissioner and Chief Operating Officer Richard Gerstein - UNIFI Chief Marketing Officer Mary Harvey – Former U.S. Women’s National Team Goalkeeper, Olympic Gold Medalist and FIFA World Cup Champion Jason Richardson – Retired NBA Player and NCAA Champion Paisley Benaza – Ph.D. Student and Communications Strategist at Arizona State University Arielle Gold – Professional Snowboarder and Olympic Bronze Medalist Consistent with its reputation as the Conference of Champions, the Pac-12 is the first collegiate sports conference to convene a high level symposium focused entirely on integrating sustainability into college athletics and across college campuses. All of the Pac-12 athletic departments have committed to measuring their environmental performance, developing strategies and goals to reduce their impact, monitoring their progress, and engaging fans and communities in greener practices. The Pac-12 Sustainability Conference signals an elevated approach to enhancing sustainability efforts within collegiate athletics departments, designing new collective initiatives, and sharing best practices to transform college sports into a platform for environmental progress. Transcript of PAC-12 Sustainability Conference Highlights: Jamie Zaninovich – PAC-12 Conference Deputy Commissioner and Chief Operating Officer We're very proud of the thought leadership platform we have at the PAC-12 and I think everybody in this room fits in really well and speaks to what we're trying to do in this space as leaders in the collegiate athletics sustainability movement. I think one other thing that's really exciting about today is the diversity we have in this room. For those of you that will engage with each other throughout the day, we have multimedia rights holders, we have sales teams, we have marketing professionals, we have sustainability industry professionals and of course school reps representing both sustainability offices as well as our athletic departments. It's really a only of its kind event that brings together this diverse group within college athletics and sustainability. So, thank you everyone for participating. We have a great program for you today. I won't get into it in detail, but we hope it will spark a lot of conversation around new ideas and expanding existing ideas in the collegiate sports sustainability space and hopefully extend that throughout this global movement. We really challenged our program committee this year to outpace what we did last year, which was very difficult for those of you that experienced Bill Walton and others at last year's conference. Let's say it was memorable. But I think it's safe to say that they went above and beyond to find an incredible group of speakers and panelists for this year's event. Today you'll be hearing from professional athletes, former professional athletes, NBA champions, NCAA champions, former and current Olympians, as well as Colorado's own Arielle Gold, who recently brought back a bronze medal from the Olympics in the halfpipe snowboards. And Arielle, as you will learn later today, has now dedicated herself to helping effect climate change which she experienced firsthand in her experiences in the Olympics. So without that, Mary referenced that we have an announcement today. As you might've seen on your way in, or in the backdrop, or on these pillows, or on a free pair of a Repreve branded socks that everyone will get today and are very cool and already flying off the truck. We have a very special announcement today in that we're announcing the formation of PAC-12 Team Green, which is a first of its kind, collegiate athletic sustainability platform which will serve to promote all the phenomenal greening efforts in the PAC-12 and around our campuses. I think it's safe to say this is a historic day, honestly, in collegiate athletics. There's never been a college conference that has embraced a collectively like our schools have a sustainability initiative like this. While our league office and member institutions have already been executing phenomenal sustainability initiatives for years, PAC-12 Team Green will now allow us to have a collective home and brand all of those efforts, including amplifying them on our own media company, the PAC-12 Network. So, from our PAC-12 zero waste challenge campus recycling competition, to our constant efforts leading sustainability activities at our multiple sports championships, to the formation of our sustainability working group, which is again one of its kind, a working group that's been working for a year which is composed of both the sustainability professional and athletics professional on each of our campuses. We are united now under PAC-12 Team Green to further cement and strengthen our leadership position in sustainability in collegiate athletics. But wait, there's more. As part of the launch of PAC-12 Team Green today, we are also honored, thrilled, so excited to announce our new partnership with Unifi Manufacturing, as the founding sustainability partner for our PAC-12 Team Green platform. Unifi's goals and missions align perfectly with those of PAC-12 Team Green and our conferences. They have led the way in innovation as a leader in the emerging circular economy movement. We are thrilled to welcome them as the first and only founding partner of this new exciting platform, PAC-12 Team Green. As part of this multiyear partnership, and as an official partner of PAC-12 Team Green, Unify will serve as a prominent partner at all PAC-12 championships, will provide funding to all twelve of our campuses to promote zero waste efforts and will work with PAC-12 networks on the creation of custom content to further promote some of the industry leading sustainability efforts being executed on our campuses.  Richard Gerstein - UNIFI Chief Marketing Officer So, while universities are playing a big role, surprisingly professional sports are also leading the way on sustainability. In 2015, the Mariners recycled or composted 87 percent of all waste generated at SAFECO Field. In 2005, only 10 years earlier, the rate was 12 percent. Nearly everything used at Safeco Field is recyclable or compostable. They put bins out, replace garbage cans with recycling bins, and cleaning crews hand separate plastic and compostable waste after every game. As a result, they've diverted 2.7 million pounds in 2015 of waste from landfills, and just as importantly saved $125,000 in landfill costs. This can be good for the bottom line as much as it's good for the world. So what if every PAC-12 stadium was landfill free? And Nike's making a difference in professional sports, as all the replica NFL jerseys are made from recycled polyester. And they're doing the same with the NBA replica jerseys as well. But I would, ask why shouldn't that also be true for the PAC-12? So my hope for today, is that together we can challenge the norms, overcome the obstacles, and set audacious goals. So let's ask, "what if?" What if just one PAC-12 school demonstrated the power of a circular economy and converted it's student apparel to 100 percent recycled polyester fiber. So let's say we converted 415,000 shirts for one school. We would take 5 million bottles out of landfills. We would save enough electricity to power 51 homes for a year. We'd save enough water to provide 630 people with daily drinking water for a year. We would improve the air quality by avoiding 140,000 kg's of CO2 emissions. And the great news is, it doesn't take a $50 million dollar capital project to get it done. However, it all starts with recycling. Unfortunately, we are woefully low as a country and I wish I could tell you that our universities, with all our millennials, do better. But in most cases, they don't. China recycles at more than double our rate, but by asking "what if?" I truly believe we can make a difference demonstrating the power of the circular economy, and the people in this room have the ability to lead that change. So we have a great day ahead of us. It's all about asking "what if?". So, I encourage you to think beyond the expected, beyond the obvious and set a goal and path towards becoming known, not only as the conference of champions, but as champions of sustainability. So I leave you with a reminder of those that have come before us, from the halls you will all return to at the end of this week, and what they achieved by simply asking, "what if?". Mary Harvey – Former U.S. Women’s National Team Goalkeeper, Olympic Gold Medalist and FIFA World Cup Champion Interviewed by Josh Prigge – Founder and CEO of Sustridge Mary Harvey, tell our listeners a little bit about who you are, a little background on your personal life and what brought you to be doing what you're doing today. I'm a former athlete. I'm a former member of the US Women's National Soccer Team. I played eight years for the US Women. I'm also a PAC-12 graduate of a couple of schools. So my undergrad was at UC Berkeley, or Cal as we call it in the athletics world. Then I got my MBA at UCLA. But the other thing that is germane to why I do this work, is growing up in northern California. I was quite young, but still old enough to remember the drought of 1977. So, conservation of water was something that I've never forgotten. And that combined with early experiences with recycling that I had due to a neighbor that was actively involved in it. This really shaped me at a very young age around why environmental protection is so important. So fast forward, I chose to get involved in it as a volunteer. I'm the vice chair of the Green Sports Alliance, which is a marriage between sports and environmental protection and a labor of love for all of us. And finally, I've had the incredible opportunity to work as an advisor on sustainability for the successful 2026 World Cup bid to bring the 2026 FIFA World Cup to Canada, Mexico, and the United States. So, let's talk about a little bit about that marriage of sustainability in sports. Why do you think that's an important issue? How can sports help drive sustainability forward in our society? Well, lots of lots of ways. Sport has a very special place and it touches people emotionally, so it has a very special place. As a result of that, people convene. So people convene in stadiums and ballparks and on fields. People come together. And when people come together and are connected by the love of something, it's also an opportunity to associate that with other things that are also powers for good to drive change. So, when you look at, either mega sporting events like the Olympics or the World Cup, or collegiate football, or even just local recreational sports, you're convening groups of people together and people who have a shared interest. But also as a byproduct of that, we have an opportunity to talk to them or educate them in a way that's appropriate. Right? They're there to watch sports or enjoy sports, but talk about how we can collectively make a difference. And that's what sports offers the opportunity to do in a fairly effective and an efficient way. Now, how about sustainability leaders? What can they learn from athletic leaders? What do you think sustainability professionals can learn from professional athletes like yourself? What do you think are some of those similar traits and qualities of sustainability leaders and professional athletes? Well, I think it's about driving performance. As an alumna of the US women's team, we talked about what drives performance on a daily basis and how do you get there, how do you maximize it, what affects it, and how you achieve it on a sustained basis. So performance is always going to resonate within the athletics community. Translating that into sustainability, there are lots of ways to do that. So, be it metrics where you're looking to perform against diversion rates or whatever the metrics are that you have set for yourself. But also it's an opportunity to look at the financial performance as well. So there's a strong correlation between measures that improve your sustainability performance and savings. There are many opportunities to decrease some of your cost drivers by implementing sustainable practices. But at the same time, we're finding increasingly, that there's also opportunities for driving revenue. So things that were considered waste 10 years ago are now raw materials for another process. So as you look at that, and the opportunities for that. For example, the oils that are used for the fryers in restaurants is now an input for the biodiesel process. So those things all have value. So it's also about capturing value, which drives performance around sustainability. We've been hearing a lot about waste at a lot of these sessions today. We heard a lot of great examples of these universities leading zero waste and, and also how to communicate the financial payback and the economic opportunities behind a focus on zero waste. And making it fun. We just heard about tailgating and best practices around diversion rates, and hearing about key learnings. And they said, "Listen, it's got to be fun. It's got to be easy for fans and it's got to be fun." And if you combine those two, people really take to it. The engagement from fans, even though they're not yet in the stadium, is a lot higher. And it's one of the important points here today, is it's not just about reducing our impact but it's also about the community and building community, engaging the community and also hoping that they take these practices home and those values start to permeate throughout the community. What else have you seen that at the conference today? Any highlights? Any points that you'd like to share with our listeners? I love the keynote. I thought we started off very strongly with a keynote from the CEO of Unifi around "what if?". Applying "what if?" to sustainability and environmental protection specifically. So, what if we were going to try to bring close loop into all these different things like single use plastics? What if we were trying to eliminate single use plastic items? These are propositions that people have posed and done and achieved, so it is possible. So we look now at, what if we were able to successfully get rid of ocean waste? What if we were able to get rid of single use plastic items? What if? I thought that was a great way to frame it. I think that that's going to be a fantastic partnership. And having that leadership from the top is just so important. Throughout my career in sustainability, I've learned that leading sustainability in an organization is a lot harder when you don't have that top level leadership. And having Jamie Zaninovich here talking about things that he's obviously passionate about and what he wants to see happen in this conference is exciting. And, and to have that top down support is crucial. Critical. I'm doing a session at the end of today which is around when it became personal or when it, when this started to matter to a person. I will be up there with Arielle Gold, snowboarder Olympian. We're going to be talking about at what moment did protection of the environment and being more responsible happen for you? I can articulate it growing up in the late 1970's. I learned every drop of water was precious because we didn't have it. So I actually asked Jamie that same question. I'm going to call on him tonight during that session and say, "When did it make an impression on you?" And he has a story. Sure enough, the guy who grew up to be in a position to then make an impact and say, "You know what, PAC-12 is going to be about sustainability. So much so that we're going to have the PAC-12 Green Team." I've never been so proud to be a PAC-12 alumni because from a conference that looks at this as not only the right thing to do, but tremendous opportunity that can be derived from it. So, you can trace that influential person who makes that key decision, you can trace that back to at some point in this case. He had a moment where it started to matter to him, so that when somebody years later walked into his office and says, "Hey, I want to talk to you about sustainability," he's going to listen. And now numerous positive impacts are coming from that - what happened to him that many years ago. Mary, it was so great to chat with you. Such an incredible insights. Before we let you go, I would love to hear your top highlight in your time working in sustainability and your top highlight from your years as a professional athlete. The top highlight working in sustainability, I would say was the opportunity to work on the united 2026 bid. Because the bid books were public. We were writing a sustainability strategy that the world would read. It's a promise. Your writing basically a promise when you write a bid book. And so having the opportunity to say "what if?". Right? That whole idea of what if eight years from now we could put on the most sustainable World Cup ever in three countries and transform cities on environmental protection and sustainability. The opportunity to work on something like that was once in a lifetime and now it's about doing it, which is even better. We saw the last Super bowl did a great job. They had a great diversion rate, a waste diversion rate, and the World Cup being several years out, we're all very much looking forward to. And how about your top professional highlight as a player? I would say winning the Olympics, to be an American and win a gold medal at the Olympics, it hits you in a very special place. To be part of a group of women who would go on...we were kids back then. We're in our early, late teens, early twenties. To be part of a generation of women who in life since then have gone on to be changemakers in so many other ways. But the genesis of it was even before 1996, which is the 1991 Women's World Cup final. For an American to be an Olympian, and especially Olympic gold medalist, it's unbelievable. As a soccer player, it's about winning the World Cup. And so to be a part of the 1991 Women's World Cup team that won the first Women's World Cup ever, I'll never forget it. And it was a tough final. We got out of there with the win, but it wasn't easy. But look at the change it's invoked. So I'm really proud of having been a part of that.  Jason Richardson – Retired NBA Player and NCAA Champion Interviewed by Paisley Benaza – Ph.D. Student and Communications Strategist at Arizona State University So, Jason, so what does it really feel like when you're that guy and you're on the court and you're actually the spectacle that we're watching? It's pretty tough at first. When you first get into that arena. You're coming out to the stadiums and it's 20,000 people out there. You're like, "Wait a minute, what did I get myself into?" But at the same time, you're out there to do a job. You practiced all your life for it, you worked all your life for it. Eventually to crowd just starts to fade and all you see out there is your teammates and the other five opponents on the basketball court. Can you talk to us about that rivalry feeling and does it stick with you? Pretty sure everybody knows the rivalry does stick with you no matter what, how old you get, how far away you become from it? To this day, I hate Michigan. There's no question about it. Those colors make me sick. Which is crazy because I actually grew up a Michigan fan. I grew up a Michigan fan all my life. We watched the Fab Five when I was younger, the football team won the national championship, the basketball team won the national championship in '89. And when I had opportunity to go to college, my whole family thought I was going to Michigan and the night before I announced Michigan State. Ever since that day I hated Michigan. So a lot of people in this room are either recruiting for their schools, recruiting students for their programs. What was it about Michigan State for you to make that last minute switch? I think it started off with coach Izzo. When I was going down there as a sophomore getting recruited on unofficial visits, he felt like a father away from home. And then all the guys on our team we're like brothers away from home. It was just an open family and that made me decide to go to Michigan State. So the key is family and I think PAC-12, with all our universities and brands, I think that's a theme that is throughout all of our schools. Bleacher Report, which is like an ESPN for online, they did this whole story on the bottled water obsession taking over NBA locker rooms and it was really interesting to read. And you could see here they have superstars and they have all these different brands of water - Fiji, Dasani and sparkling water. So what did you get out of that? Well, it's actually funny when I read this article. I was a part of the team in Philadelphia where they tracked our water, like we were little kids. It was actually pretty amazing and it forces us to drink water and guys started asking, "Hey, can we have Fiji here? Can we have Smart Water here?" And you started realizing all the bottle of the water that were just coming through the system. It was very interesting seeing this article because now you're seeing your favorite player grabbing these water bottle. As a kid thinking, "Oh, Lebron James is drinking Fiji water." Just imagine how many kids are asking about this water. Now you're getting all these bottles involved that are getting put out there. If you look at it from a sustainability standpoint, all of the bottles of water are contributing to that plastic trash. How do you think that players could think about sustainability and not just branded water because that's a luxury thing, right? I think it definitely is a luxury. I think last year over 90 billion gallons of water bottles have been distributed or used, and I think that's the big problem. Players are like, "Oh I'm drinking Fiji, I'm drinking this water." And now it's a branding issue because now you're getting all these bottles out there. I think the more you educate them, I think guys will be more open to doing stuff like recycling and reusing bottles. So I think that's something that we have to think about and maybe it comes from the universities, where we're educating athletes to become advocates for sustainability in that they don't become these single use bottled water drinkers. The MLB told me that they really were hard pressed to find an athlete to basically take the mantle of sustainability. So maybe it has to start from the universities. Maybe we have to train them younger so that they don't feel like they needed branded designer water. So, any closing thoughts? I think sustainability is great. Being from the Midwest, we didn't know anything about recycling. We just throw everything out and the garbage man pickup everything, and that was it. Not until 2009, I started learning about it. A teammate, Steve Nash, was very heavily into it with the NBA. We had a thing, I only think the NBA d does it anymore, called Green Week. He taught me a lot about how to be sustainable and stuff like that. And it was great for me. Once I started going to other teams, I started asking questions about it. I got traded to the Orlando Magic and they had this big banner and it was the first NBA arena to be certified LEED. And I asked questions about it like, "What do you know about this?" I was like, "Hey, Steve Nash, he helped me out with this." But I started hearing more about it. Just last year the Sacramento Kings became the first arena in the world to be 100 percent powered by solar panels, which is great. Hopefully we can push more NBA arenas to be LEED certified.  Mary Harvey - Former U.S. Women’s National Team Goalkeeper, Olympic Gold Medalist and FIFA World Cup Champion Arielle Gold – Professional Snowboarder and Olympic Bronze Medalist Mary - Now let's get to the winter sports. Arielle, tell me a little bit about when this got personal for you. Arielle - So, I'm a professional snowboarder. I'm halfpipe snowboarding, and I grew up actually in Steamboat Springs, which is just a few hours away from here. I spent pretty much my entire childhood doing things outside. I always had a love of the outdoors, in particular snowboarding. And one of the great opportunities that snowboarding has afforded me is the chance to travel around the world, pretty much year round. One of my first big trips that I went on was my first Olympics, which was in Sochi, Russia. I was 17 years old. That was in 2014. And I remember going into that Olympics with obviously very high unrealistic expectations. It's the first Olympics and you want it to be kind of that dream experience. I got there and remember going up to the half pipe for the first day of practice, and it was about 60 degrees Fahrenheit, which is not the best. Unfortunately our first practice actually ended up getting canceled because the half pipe was so soft that we couldn't even ride it. And the following day we showed up to practice hoping that the conditions were going to be better, once again, it was really warm and they were actually spraying these blue chemicals all over the halfpipe to try and preserve the snow long enough for us to just have a practice session, which is usually about two hours. That didn't necessarily work very well. So, we ended up going into the day of our event having had next to no practice, just kind of winging it and hoping the halfpipe held it together long enough to have a good contest. I unfortunately was doing my second run of practice and doing a trick that I've done hundreds of times, and ended up hitting just kind of this ghost of bump in the flat bottom of the half pipe, which threw me onto my stomach. I ended up dislocating my shoulder and wasn't able to compete. So essentially, that's how my first Olympics ended. Had to have that put back in, go through the whole process of trying to get healthy again, getting home and rehabbing. But one of the biggest takeaways I had from that was obviously seeing those conditions firsthand and realizing that there was something wrong. We were really far up in the mountains. A lot of people actually go up there to back country snowboard, so that was definitely not a year to be doing that. Mary - So we have these experiences as athletes or as kids. Then we go on to, in your case, life still competing, and in my case life after competing. With this moment you described, how have you taken that experience and brought it forward in things that you say and do with respect to the environment? Arielle - Well, one of the first things I did when I got home from Sochi, was I started researching what I could possibly do to kind of reduce my own environmental footprint. Obviously I travel all the time, so I know that I have a larger footprint probably than a lot of people do. So I just wanted it to do whatever I could to try and reduce that impact as much as I could. One of the first things I did was start speaking with a group called Protect Our Winters, which was actually founded by a professional snowboarder, Jeremy Jones. So a lot of professional ski and snowboarders are pretty involved. What they do is essentially provide a platform for athletes like myself to use their influence to have a positive impact. So I started out really basic - going and speaking at middle and high schools in the Colorado area, speaking to kids and just kind of trying to raise a little bit of awareness, especially in the next generation, because they are the future. That's kind of what I did for the past four years is just some of that lower level, just kind of speaking around these schools and just trying to spread the word as much as possible. I'm doing my own duty, trying to recycle and ride my bike as much as I can and kind of doing all of those basic level things that we should all be doing. It should be second nature at this point. Then, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to go back to this past Olympics a few months ago, which was really an exciting experience for me just to kind of have the chance to get a little bit of redemption after the way that the last one went. We were fortunate to have some pretty incredible conditions in Korea, so I had one of the best halfpipes I've ever ridden and was able to come home with a bronze medal. So that was definitely a bit more of the result that I had initially expected. And one of the great things about that, aside from just enjoying that overall experience, is coming home and just having all of these new incredible opportunities arise such as speaking at this conference. I just got an opportunity to speak at a conference in Argentina. Just doing all of these different things that I probably never would have had the chance to do had I not been able to go back and get a little better result. So, just being able to use my platform for something positive is something I've always wanted to do and always respected other athletes for doing. Mary - If you look closely, everybody's got something. There's something that happened, an experience, something you lived through. And we heard earlier today about when you're talking about engaging athletes or engaging people, it's about getting to know them and finding out what moves them, what drives them, what they're passionate about. And if you can find that anecdote. So, the anecdote that Arielle shared, my anecdote, Jamie's anecdote, whatever the anecdotes that were shared today. If you can tap into that, that's 100 percent authentic. And you will find that when you tap into people's authentic experiences, insecurities about what car they drive or whether or not they're the best ambassador for sustainability - those things start to not matter because that experience is 100 percent authentic and true to them. And you'll find, hopefully, if we can get more athletes to come off the sidelines and start to talk about that, it probably starts with understanding that piece of it. Arielle, what are your thoughts? Arielle - One of my favorite quotes, and I may butcher it a little bit, was actually one that came up in one of the PowerPoints that I presented to some students at a local school in Colorado. The quote essentially says, "The forest would be a very quiet place if the only birds that sang were those the sang best." So essentially, what that tells me, and hopefully what all of you will get out of that, is that you don't have to know everything about something to be passionate about it. And that's something that I've always been a little bit apprehensive about, especially going into something like sustainability and climate change. So for me, just to have this opportunity to speak to all of you and have the opportunity to share my own personal experience and try and kind of fuel the fire a little bit, is what I'm grateful to have the chance to do here. Mary - Now, to wrap things up this evening, I'd like to just mention that this sustainability conference is a wrap and the next PAC-12 Sustainability Conference will be on June 25th and 26th of next year at the University of Washington. So go Dogs and we'll see you all next year.  

In this episode of Building Infinite Red, Jamon, Ken, and Todd touch on the exciting world of lawyers, accountants and bookkeepers, as well as a variety of finance-related topics such as cash flow and different types of accounting. Be sure to listen to the end of the episode as Jamon shares the vision for Season 2 of Building Infinite Red. Show Links & Resources YNAB – You Need A Budget Saturday Night Live Highlight: First CityWide Change Bank Episode Transcript TODD WERTH: Hello, everyone. Today we were talking about which topic to talk about, and we had the idea, how can we come up with a topic that's extremely boring, that no one wants to talk about, but actually is super important? So, we're going to talk about lawyers, accountants, bookkeepers, finance, and other things. Basically, how to start a business and still feed your family. Let's start off with you, Ken. If I were starting in business and you and I are sitting in the airport and I knew you had started one and I asked, "Hey, Ken. What should I worry about first off when I'm starting a business?" What would you say? KEN MILLER: I would tell you to go find a good accountant and a good lawyer right away. You don't need to pay them to set up the business for you. You can do that yourself or you can use a service like LegalZoom or something like that. But you need to have somebody who is familiar with the kind of business that you're planning to do. We have a great lawyer who happens to specialize in digital agencies. I've got an accountant that I've personally worked with for many, many years. It's not the cheapest, like you want your accountant to be good. A bookkeeper is sort of a different matter since your accountant is not doing your day to day books, and you don't necessarily need a bookkeeper right away because you're probably not going to have a lot of transactions right away. To be honest, I found it was helpful for me to just do it personally for a little period because then I understood what was going on better. JAMON HOLMGREN: Ken, what's the difference for those who may not know between an accountant and a bookkeeper? KEN: Well, I'm told bookkeeper is a little bit old fashioned, but it's still very descriptive. Your accountant, aka your CPA, your Certified Public Accountant, that is someone who will do your state and federal and maybe even international taxes for you. They may or may not have people who will keep your books and stuff. Now, bookkeepers, they're the ones who will record transactions coming in and going out basically, so that your books are an accurate reflection of what's happening in your business. Todd, do you want to interject? TODD: Yeah, just real quick. Sorry to be pedantic, but my wife's an accountant. Bookkeepers often are not accountants. Some of them are just people who started doing books at their company and continue to do it. When you get to accountants, you have two types of accountants: One is CPA, which is a tax accountant; and then there are other accountants who specialize in corporate stuff, like my wife. She went to college for it and is highly trained. KEN: That's the kind I recommend you get, is the kind of who is trained in accounting practices. JAMON: First of all, what's the more modern term for a bookkeeper? Is there? KEN: I think Heather liked the term, what was it? Financial assistant, something like that? JAMON: Okay. TODD: I think that's what she said. Heather is my wife, by the way. JAMON: And then secondly, what does an accountant give you that a financial assistant does not? KEN: Well, A, They are literally certified by the state. And B, They have experience in tax law. JAMON: CPA does, but they're more corporate accountant. They're going to bring more like ... It's my understanding that they can bring more strategic ... KEN: Yeah, they can be more strategic help, they can help you design your practices for paying people, for collecting money, because there's just a lot of i's and t's that need to be dotted and crossed. JAMON: Yeah, that makes sense. TODD: Yeah, not to keep on interrupting about accounting. Sorry, my wife's an accountant. JAMON: We're gonna play a little game. How many times will Todd mention that his wife is an accountant? TODD: All CPAs are accountants. Not all accountants are CPAs. My wife has absolutely no interest in being a CPA, she never did, it had nothing to do with her job. However, if you need ... One of the things she specializes in is international accounting. So, a bookkeeper is someone who enters data, basically. They're gonna get bills in from the outside via mail, they're gonna enter those into the bookkeeping system, or the accounting system, they're gonna pay invoices, whatever. They're a clerk. An accountant is more like a programmer. They investigate where things went wrong, they figure out the best ways to do things. If you have a half million dollars in pounds in the UK, and you need to transfer in the US as US dollars, how do you go about that? There's very different ways. Some are very expensive, some are not. So, that's ... An accountant spends a lot of time doing strategic-type accounting stuff, as opposed to data entry, which is more what your bookkeeper does. JAMON: Yeah, so when I started ClearSight back in 2005, one of my early employees, his dad was a controller, which is like kind of an accountant, but it's specifically to a- TODD: That's really interesting, Jamon. Did you know my wife was an accountant? JAMON: I did not know that, Todd. I hope you remind me again. A controller is basically, it's a type of accountant that's kind of high up in a company and focused on ... Basically, in charge of the company's finances, and ... So, he was a controller and I went to lunch with him and I asked him for advice. And the first question he asked me, this was kind of interesting because I did not expect this, he said, "How's your accounts receivable?" And I was like, "Uh ... I know what that is, but what do you mean by 'how is it'?" And he kind of helped me think through my terms, like how long until the payment was due, and was I taking money upfront? Which I wasn't, weirdly, I wasn't taking money upfront. I was just doing the work and hoping I'd get paid. TODD: Hoping is the key term. JAMON: Hoping, yeah. And more than once I didn't get paid. And that sucked, especially when I wasn't getting paid very much. KEN: That's definitely one of the harder things to learn when you start doing this, is if you've only ever worked at a company, you don't realize how much effort goes into just getting people to actually pay you, right? 99% of the time it isn't out of any malice, it's not people trying to mess with you, it's just their processes are also run by humans. Maybe they're a small company, maybe they're a big company and something got lost, or things didn't get signed off correctly, right? There's just a million little things that have to be kept track of. And so, whoever is doing your day to day accounting, be nice to them. TODD: Yes. KEN: Be nice to them because you really need to trust them to be on top of what they're doing. TODD: You do not want to piss off an accountant if you value eating, for sure. Cause they won't do anything wrong, but they will sure drag their feet on your particular account. One other things I wanted to add, especially with larger companies or companies that have accounting departments, accounting is never personal, okay? And Ken said they probably don't want to mess with you. They may not want to mess with you, but they may actually have a policy not to pay their vendors, which seems absurd but it's true. So, in other words, if you're sitting in an executive meeting at a company that has 5,000 people, and your cash-flow ... you need some cash or whatever. The directive to the accounting department could be, "Only pay the vendors with the highest interest, the top 25% of them. Do not pay anyone else." And so, it's not ... they're not trying to get to you, it's just business. KEN: I think it's also very tempting when you're ... If you're a creative person and you're getting into business and you wanna be able to be a partner to your clients, and that's all very laudable and we wanna do that and we strive to do that. But at the end of the day, when you're negotiating a contract, you have to take it seriously. You have to take what it says seriously because there may come a situation where it's no longer you and the friendly person you're talking to, it's just you and the contract and someone unfriendly. Or you and the contract and someone not unfriendly, but as Todd says they're just ... implementing a policy. It's a lot harder to do something about it than possible which ... It really highlights how important the relationship is, as well. So, you need to have a good contract that actually reflects what you and your counter-party actually mean. And you have to keep that relationship good all the way through. JAMON: Absolutely. We had a client a while back that wanted to use their own contract, which is not uncommon. I mean, we have our own kind of Master Services Agreement that we'll send over, but in this case they had their own, they wanted to send it over. And this sort of brings it back to having a good lawyer, because in this case, something fell through the cracks and we signed it without sending it over to our lawyer. And this was a big mistake because- TODD: Big mistake. KEN: Big mistake. Did we mention it was a very big mistake? TODD: My wife, who's an accountant, by the way, said it was a huge mistake. JAMON: Oh, she is? Oh, that's interesting. But what happened was the project started off really well, and it went very well through the first month. And then, abruptly, we don't know what happened because the whole way through the client was telling us we were doing good work. Even after things went weird, he was telling us that we were doing good work, which really didn't make sense. But he wanted out of this contract, or he wanted to hold our feet to the fire. And we realized, and we sent our contract over to our lawyer, and Ken ... Wasn't his response something like- KEN: He said it was the most punitive contract he'd ever seen. JAMON: And he said that it was designed to be used as a weapon. TODD: Yes. That's what he said. JAMON: Which was not a great place to be in after we had already signed this thing. TODD: Against us, by the way. Not for us. KEN: Yeah. JAMON: So, luckily this particular client ended up taking a route ... It wasn't an easy route, but he took a route out of our contract that let us off the hook, essentially, with some work from Ken. So, thanks Ken. But we made it through that one, but not everybody would. That could be a really big problem. So, having a good attorney, which we did, and actually using him, which we did not, is really important when you're putting these contracts together that you're talking about. And then, of course, there's a certain amount of teeth to it, so they will pay you. KEN: We designed our standard contract to be, we think, really, very fair. JAMON: I think so, yeah. KEN: And so, if a client wants to use their own contract, we now ... It always goes to the lawyer. It doesn't matter what it costs. And he's very reasonable with how he charges for that- TODD: Sorry to interrupt. That's a good rule. If you don't feel that it's worth paying your lawyer the $300 an hour, or whatever your lawyer costs, it goes up from there, trust me, because this project isn't big enough, then don't take the project. And that sounds harsh, but if you can't pay your lawyer to look at the contract, then don't sign the contract. It's not worth it to you. KEN: If it's a small project, we don't accept- JAMON: Yeah, and that's why we have a standard contract, because the lawyer drafted it. And so, we can send it over and we don't have to pay him every time. Of course, it costs more to have him draft it, but then if they sign it then we know that we're good to go. But if they want their own contract, you need to have it reviewed by your attorney. And if you don't know of an attorney, you can ask around on social media and stuff, you can generally get some recommendations. TODD: One thing I do wanna say, though. And this is often somewhat shocking to people who have never ran a business, who worked for other people or other corporations throughout their career. The world for you as a business owner, is very different than the world for you as an employee. If your employer doesn't pay you, you can go to the labor board, and the government will come in and they will sue that company and they'll get that money for you. Because of that, your employer's gonna pay you. KEN: And your wages are legally privileged. So, if they're in bankruptcy, you get your money, not necessarily the very first, but it's a very high priority. It's a very high priority debt. TODD: Correct. If you have a personal contract with ... between two people or between two companies, or between you and a company, there are no such protections whatsoever. You will get paid if the person who's paying you wants to pay you. If they don't pay you, there's no government agency you're going to go to who's gonna help you- KEN: Well, there's the courts. JAMON: The court, basically. TODD: ... other than the courts. And if you're talking about a $10,000 bill that they owe you, you are not going to court for that. You can try to go small claims court, that kind of thing. But the reality is you're not going to go to court for that. And people know this. And there's a lot of people ... And you're like, "Well, you know, I did this contract with Bob, and Bob's wonderful. I mean, I love Bob. He spends his time saving orphan kittens on the weekends." That's great, but Bob's company was just bought by Joe, and Joe is a complete jerk. And Joe now has all your contracts. And Joe used to be a lawyer, bless his heart. And Joe knows that you're not gonna do anything when he doesn't pay your $10,000, so he just refuses to pay you. JAMON: By the way, this is not a hypothetical, this happened to me. TODD: And so, we changed the names, obviously. But Joe does that, and there's really nothing you're gonna do and you're just gonna lose that $10,000. You can try to do collections and irritate them into paying you. But here's the raw fact, if they need you for something they will pay you. Meaning if you still have work to do, they will pay you because they need you. Be very weary of the end of a working engagement when they no longer need you. KEN: This is not to say that everybody is like this. There's plenty of extremely honorable- TODD: Like Bob, Bob's one of them. KEN: ... companies out there. Yes, there's many, many, many great, wonderful, honorable clients who pay what they owe, and they would never screw you. TODD: Correct. KEN: But there's more people out there who, like I said, not necessarily even out of malice, sometimes just out of laziness, kind of don't get around to it. TODD: Another example is if you get a contract where you take liability for stuff that you really have no control over. So, you're like, "Well, Bob's not gonna sue me. Bob's a great guy. He has the same values as I do." But Bob gets successful and Google comes and buys Bob, trust me. Google's lawyers will sue you. If they can, they will. It's not personal, it's just business. JAMON: Beyond accounts receivable, which is obviously a big topic ... And by the way, get as much money upfront as you can. That's a very straightforward way to fix some of this stuff. But beyond that, accountants can also give you a really great insight into the engine of your business. So, they're sort of like your oil pressure. They're your check engine light. And they will give you information that allows you to make decisions, business decisions, going forward. So, an example of this is how much are we gonna pay our employees for bonuses? We need to know what we can afford and what's budgeted for that. Other examples are could we go out and maybe acquire a small business? Or can we invest a bunch of money into R&D? These are all things that we've actually looked at within Infinite Red over the past three years. And we needed to have good information from our bookkeepers and our accountants. And we haven't had always that. That has actually been one of the stumbling blocks that we've run into with Infinite Red, is that we've run into situations where we've been fed what turned out to be inaccurate information. And we've made decisions based on that, and it's caused the engine to run more roughly. KEN: Suffice to say, you really need it to be accurate. So, one of the things that we've done to help make that be the case is that we have our CPA, our tax accountant, and our bookkeepers are totally different, so that we at least have two competent people looking at it periodically. It's not a perfect safeguard by any stretch of the imagination, but it does help a little bit. JAMON: And it's tempting to have one company do both, right? KEN: It is tempting. And I would argue you should not do that. JAMON: Always keep them separate. TODD: Yeah, I would say at the beginning, you do your bookkeeping and then let your CPA do the taxes. And we get to a point where ... For instance, this is the difference between a bookkeeper and an accountant. If you're setting up your books and you're setting up your own chart of accounts, and that kind of stuff, a bookkeeper will just do it. They'll do what you say. Put this in here. Do this, do that. An accountant will say, "Okay. You see how you set up your accounts here? Later, when you get audited ..." And then you're like, "Why would we get audited, what does that even mean?" Well if you need a big loan, the banks are gonna require an audit your finances. Obviously that's the audit on the tax side, but that's your tax accountant. And so, what she'll do is she'll say, "Look, I've been through many audits, this is what they're going to look for. You should set it up this way so that that audit goes smoothly so that loan you need ... Say you get a big new client and you need $250,000 to service that client, and you're gonna make millions? Delaying that loan by a week or two could be disastrous." So, that's the difference between an accountant and a bookkeeper. They know what they know, and they know what's possibly gonna happen. JAMON: Yeah. Banks are a whole other aspect about this that we could talk about. One of the things about banks is that they are generally very slow. You're just one file on their desk. They're not particularly invested in making sure you succeed. And it can really trip you up. Like if you need that loan ... We've been in a situation where we said, "Hey, we wanna borrow some money for a particular thing." And it took ... I think ... I don't remember the timeline, but it was months longer than I expected. Like it was a lot longer. KEN: It took forever. JAMON: Yes. And it felt like most of the issue was on the bank side. Now, being prepared for that, as Todd said, is really important. KEN: In that particular case, there was something that didn't get filed correctly two years ago with the ... I mean, it's ... JAMON: So, another aspect of this, and we can touch a little bit on another property of our business, and that is remote work, is the- TODD: Oh God, banks and remote work. JAMON: Banks, as well as government agencies ... Ken, you've had to set up I don't know how many states now for Infinite Red employees. KEN: Seven, and I need to set up an eighth. JAMON: Yeah. So, this is a whole aspect of kind of the boring ... We're talking about the boring parts of business. But if you're starting a remote work company and you're hiring people from all over, you need to keep this in mind that you're gonna have to set up, what's it called? Nexus? If you have nexus, you have to set up the state ... KEN: Yeah. And having an employee- TODD: What is nexus, by the way? KEN: Nexus just means that you legally exist in a location. And typically the place where you have nexus or not have nexus, as a US company, is in individual states. So, if you have ordered something online and you live in a sales tax state, but they didn't charge you sales tax, the reason they didn't have to do that is because they don't have nexus in your state. So, famously Amazon, for a long time, didn't have nexus in California, or at least they argued that they didn't. And so, Californians didn't have to pay sales tax when they ... I mean, nominally they were supposed to be paying it to the state, but Amazon didn't have to collect it for them. So, that's nexus, and it applies to all kinds of tax, not just sales tax. So, for example, basically everywhere we have an employee, we have to pay taxes. JAMON: Yeah. KEN: This is one of the less glamorous, less wonderful parts about remote work, to be honest. JAMON: There are PEOs or POEs ... KEN: PEOs. JAMON: PEOs, and those will ... They're basically companies that have all this stuff figured out already and you hire your employees through them. KEN: Yes. I believe there's some issues with that. If I were doing this over again, I probably would go with a PEO to avoid a lot of that stuff. JAMON: They're expensive, but they kind of ... They make it ... It's sort of like, in a software engineering world, using Heroku, which kind of spins it all up for you, versus setting up individual Amazon AWS servers. TODD: The other problem with banking, especially with governments in general, is their complete ignorance of the laws about things like signatures. So, I think this is a funny story. So, Ken sent over something that needed to be signed. And I have a bunch of digital signatures of mine that I apply to PDFs. Which is my real signature, and it's perfectly legal, as my wife, who's an accountant, would say. She actually worked for a company that did digital signatures- JAMON: You said your wife's an account? TODD: Yeah, my wife Heather is an accountant. I don't know if I mentioned that. But the signature's legal. So, I legally signed the document Ken sent, and Jamon legally signed it. And they're like, "Well, we can't accept this. We can accept a fax." Okay, so a fax. So, I'm going to go back to 1995 where my fax machine is, and I'm gonna fax it over. "So, okay can't do a fax cause you don't live in that decade. But it can be digital, right? But it can't be digital, it can be a picture of my signature, right?" So, you take the PDF you just signed digitally, you print it out, then you take your camera out and you take a picture of the digital signature you put on the PDF. And then you send them the picture, and then that's fine. It's this kind of ... In some cases we had to have things overnighted between the three of us to sign things. In some cases, we had to go in to the local Chase branch or Bank of America branch or wherever and sign it. And none of this is required by law, at all by the way- JAMON: It's just their corporate policies. TODD: They probably have pneumatic tubes in their offices where they send things to each other. It's crazy. I literally took a picture of ... I made it quite obvious I took a picture of it, too, just to be a jerk. JAMON: So, another aspect of finances is budgeting. So, one of the things I did was I ran a budget with my business, was very happy to hand it off to Ken once we merged. That was one of my favorite parts in the merger. But it was really, really important. So, I did it on just a straight up cash basis. So, money would come in, and I would use a program called youneedabudget.com to enter these transactions, whether they were in-flow or out-flow. And then they have this zero-based budgeting system that lets you allocate money for this and that. It's really good because then you know if you had a couple hundred thousand dollars in the bank, and you needed a certain amount of money for payroll, or you needed a certain amount of money to pay your SaaS products, like your GitHub bill, things like that, you know that you had the money or not in the bank. And it gave you really kind of granular data there. It's not quite the same as using QuickBooks. QuickBooks has a useless budgeting feature. I've looked at it. It's just not ... It's sort of like, "Hey, let's plan out the next year." Which you hardly even know what the next month is gonna be like. But having some sort of zero-based budgeting system is quite useful, I think, especially at first. KEN: Can you explain what zero-based means? JAMON: So, essentially, a zero-based budget is where you start with the amount of money that you have, generally, in the bank, and you take that money and you start moving down the line of categories, allocating bits and pieces, subtracting it from that total until you get to zero. So, such and such for payroll, and such and such for your credit card payment, and such and such for your SaaS products. And maybe you need some for team dinners and travel. And you're just moving down. And eventually, the money runs out, right? You hit zero. Or you run out of categories, and you're like, "Okay, I've got money left over and I'm gonna put this into a kind of slush fund or something that just kind of like keeps it for a rainy day." TODD: Isn't slush funds illegal? We should probably just use a different term. JAMON: Okay, maybe I used the wrong word there. Did I use the wrong word? Sorry. A rainy day fund. TODD: Ken would know. JAMON: An emergency fund. And then eventually, you could even bring that money home if you're the owner. But that's what zero-based is. You always get to zero, and you don't go any further than zero because there's no more money. If you don't get to zero, then that means there's money just kind of hanging out not- KEN: Yeah. So, the amount of cash you have determines how far into the future you can budget, basically. JAMON: Exactly. Yes, that's right. So, when you're starting up, it's really important because you don't actually know what kind of expenses are gonna be coming in. You just can't really predict that. So, doing budgeting gives you that insight into where is your money going. You have to allocate for it, and then you enter it into the system. Once you've got a pretty good rhythm going, it's less necessary because you know where the money's going and you can keep an eye on sort of more macro numbers that will give you ideas of health. I would definitely recommend it for probably the first ... I would say, probably the first three years. KEN: And to be clear, it's not a substitute for real books. But I did find it very helpful in just thinking about how money moves around. JAMON: It's also a little bit inadequate in that it is cash basis. And while cash flow is king, and we need to talk about that, Ken, there's also accounts receivable and accounts payable that will affect the money going in and out. TODD: Yeah, there's something called cash basis accounting. KEN: Yeah. Talk about it just a little bit, which is if you're starting up a business you should be cash basis. Like almost full stop, unless you're doing a hardware startup, right? If you're doing something which has a ton of physical inventory, then you might not want to, but frankly if that's true, I mean you need to be talking to a professional, already. JAMON: Yeah. TODD: The other one's called accrual basis. KEN: Accrual, yeah. So, cash basically is very simple. It's like money coming in, money going out. Period. TODD: It's what you would do at home. KEN: Exactly. It's what you would do at home. It's what you probably think accounting is already like. Accrual is like as soon as we have agreed to pay something, then it immediately goes out- JAMON: And as soon as someone agrees to pay us, then it immediately comes in. KEN: Fancy ways of accounting for inventory, and I personally don't actually understand it very well, so that's about all I can say about it. JAMON: It's useful because it gives a more accurate model of where your business actually is, versus cash which can lag or be ahead of itself. But cash is so much simpler that it's definitely worth doing for a while. TODD: Not to turn this podcast into a company meeting, but Heather actually said we probably should consider going to accrual. KEN: Yeah, well we're large enough now that- JAMON: Wait, Todd. How would Heather know to do that? TODD: Oh, Heather, my wife, she's actually an accountant. JAMON: Oh, okay. Okay. That's helpful. KEN: She's been helping us with our books lately. Anyway. So- TODD: Joke never gets old. Never gets old. JAMON: We gotta liven this up somehow. I mean, it's about accounting and lawyers. TODD: And she's gonna listen to this podcast and today's our anniversary, so this is a special "I love you" to my wife. JAMON: Oh, yeah. Well, happy anniversary Todd and Heather, the accountant. TODD: Twelve years. KEN: Of accounting. TODD: Of marriage. KEN: Oh, I see. Okay. I know this has been a very dry podcast, and I apologize but I tell you what. If you guys are thinking about doing this, if maybe you're already doing this and you're feeling the pain already, this stuff is absolutely vitally important- JAMON: It really is. KEN: ... to what you're taking on. JAMON: If you have a solid basis, if you've got some professionals working with you, it gives you so much more confidence and the ability to sleep at night if you know where things stand and what you need to do. KEN: Yeah. TODD: And here's the truth. Many of you are just gonna ignore us. Cause I heard this, too. KEN: Yeah, I know what you mean. JAMON: I did, too. TODD: It's like, "Okay, yeah. Sure. That sounds like the right thing to do. I should do that, but I'm not going to because ... " for whatever reason. And then you learn and suffer like we have, and you eventually do a podcast where you tell others about it, and they ignore you. KEN: You whistle into the wind. TODD: And the perpetual cycle of business stupidity continues. KEN: So, I'm gonna talk about cash flow last. JAMON: Oh yeah, please. TODD: Make it impassioned, Ken. We want some fire here. KEN: So, I remember my very first job that the controller ... So, the controller is sort of the chief internal accountant. Not the CFO, but the kind of hands on- JAMON: Sometimes it's called the comptroller for some reason. KEN: I think that's a British thing. JAMON: That's a British thing? TODD: In government call them comptrollers. KEN: So, they're the ones who would be doing this at a typical company. So, I remember he had a little sign on his desk that said, "Happiness is positive cash flow." And I remember a client saying, "Cash is king." And I remember hearing these things, but I didn't have anywhere to file them. I didn't understand what that meant, right? And I really understand it now. I really understand it now. Where it's basically, cash flow, it's very simple. It's literally the flow of actual money in and out of your business. So, the money you pay out to payroll, the money that your clients actually pay you, not that they have on contract, but they have actually paid you. And what we found is what you think of a business is trying to do is create a profit. And that is true in the long-term. What you want to do is create the largest profit you can. However, to get there you have to keep operating as an entity. And the lifeblood of a company is cash. The lifeblood of that company is that cash, it's the food. So, if you don't get the food in time, it doesn't matter how much you were gonna get. If you run out of money and don't make payroll, something like that, that company will cease. JAMON: I think that's actually a good analogy. If you're playing Minecraft or any other game where you have a health or a hunger bar, and if you're planting fields and fields of wheat and you're waiting for it grow and you wanna go harvest it but you die of hunger before you get there, that's a problem. That's a cash flow problem. It's the ability for you to pay your bills on a day to day basis. So, yes, cash is extremely king. KEN: Well, yeah, imagine your business is collecting Beanie Babies. And you're like, "I'm gonna buy a bunch of Beanie Babies and I'm gonna wait for them to become valuable." That's not a business. Maybe it's an investment, maybe, right? But because you don't have this cycle of things coming in on a routine basis that lets you continue to operate, you just spend a bunch of money and then you wait 20 years. Right? So, it may be profitable in the long run, but it's not really business. JAMON: So, Ken, how does that look in practical terms for Infinite Red? How do you apply that principal of cash is king? KEN: So, yeah, for example, I was very resistant for a long time to take credit cards. This is another thing you learn once you're on the business, you're like, "Holy crap, the credit cards, they take a lot of money out." JAMON: Yeah they do. TODD: Three percent. KEN: Three percent. TODD: Which is a lot on $100,000. KEN: Yeah, exactly. On a $100,000 project, that's actually a lot of money. I think I'm a little more nuanced about it now, because what they do is they make it easier to pay. They make it easier for someone mid-level in a company to pay. They reduce that friction, and it means you get paid sooner. Getting paid a month early is worth actual- TODD: Money. KEN: It's actual money to you. It is worthwhile getting paid early. And so, we're a little bit more lax about how we accept that. TODD: Why is that, Ken? Why is it when you get paid sometimes more important than any profit you made from that money? KEN: Well, for us our biggest expense is payroll. And that happens twice a month no matter what, right? And so, having that money in hand now- TODD: Knock on wood. KEN: That's right. Having that money in hand now makes a real tangible difference. It's not that you don't wanna pay attention to profit at all. It's like there is this ... I remember back in the original dot com boom, there was a Saturday Night Live spoof where they were like, this business was like, "We make change." Right? They're like, "We make all kinds of change. How do we make up for it? Volume." You can, in fact, cash flow yourself into the dirt if you're not paying attention. JAMON: It is interesting to see in situations where we're really monitoring our cash flow very closely, and we do some things that we know maybe they're not going to pay us for a few months and you're maybe struggling through. And then boom, it does come through. And you see that profit actually hit the books, and that is actually a cool feeling, as well. So, you do need to obviously pay attention to your profitability- TODD: Profit matters long-term. Cash flow matters to stay in business. JAMON: That's right. TODD: Cash flow's also power. And this is something that not everyone groks, to be honest. There's a reason that congresspeople like their job. And it's not because they may not personally be getting rich, and the reason they want to get on committees, especially the finance committee and that kind of stuff, is because what really gives you power is not wealth. Cause wealth sitting in a bank account gives no power, cause you're not transferring it. But control of cash flow gives you power. Now, in the case of Congress, congresspeople or senators, most of that's just evil. But in the case of your business, what I call power isn't necessarily a negative thing. Power means you can buy services. Power means you can give that bonus to your employees and that sort of thing. And really how much cash flow you have flowing through is how much you can do, more so than the profit. JAMON: And this is one of the things that if we can point to anything that is sort of a mission for Infinite Red, a lot of it, I think, centers around enabling remote work and the lifestyle that we all want from Infinite Red. And having the ability to pay for that and enable that through our cash flow is what you're talking about, Todd. TODD: Yeah. So, a lot of lawyers and accountants, to be honest, suck. And that's true of all professions, whether it's doctors, programmers, or whatever. So, I know it's not like you can just Google it and find a good one of them a price that you can afford. So, I know we went through a variety of stuff, a variety of people and/or companies, and I was just curious your experience in how you find a good lawyer, a good bookkeeper, a good accountant. That sort of thing. JAMON: I needed an attorney ... I forget when it was. It was during the ClearSight days. And an employee that worked for me at the time, he was my creative director, Mike [Wozezak 00:37:49], really great guy, he knew an attorney that specialized in creative agencies. And I went and met with him, and talked with him, and I really liked him. He was a former CPA, so he knew kind of the nuts and bolts of accounting, which was helpful. And he also specialized in companies like mine. I kind of brought him along to Infinite Red afterward, and we sort of just adopted him as our corporate attorney. And that was really helpful. So, it was a word of mouth thing, for sure. I think one piece of advice that I would give to people is treat it sorta like you would a doctor. It's okay to go someone, have them do something, see if you like the way they operate, and move onto the next one. If you have to do 10 different lawyers before you find one, do it. Don't settle. Do not settle for a bad one. Keep moving until you find a good one, because I can tell you, I think our lawyer is so great that he is absolutely worth every penny that we pay him. And he's helped save us from bad situations, he's helped us get out of some scrapes, and it's totally been worth it. So, definitely treat it more like you would a doctor. TODD: His name is Josh, and he is wonderful. I've had other lawyers at other companies and I wish I had Josh back then. KEN: Do some networking. Talk to other people in similar positions to you. See if they have someone they can recommend. I would also say, for both, having someone who is always willing to take the time to actually explain to you what they're doing in language that you can understand. That is vital. If you feel like you're being snowed, if you feel like you don't understand what's going on, keep looking. JAMON: Yes. And there are professionals that will do that. KEN: They do exist. They're doing a very important service for you, you want someone that you can trust implicitly, they're gonna be interested in earning that trust. JAMON: There are also specialists. So, we had looked into some legal implications surrounding some blockchain work that we were doing. And we talked to Josh, and he said, "I can't provide the insight that you're looking for. This isn't something that I have training on." And so, I did find another attorney. We didn't end up using her, because we went another direction with the service we were looking at. But she was a former FCC attorney who really understood the blockchain legal ramifications. That was helpful. KEN: Once you start getting into specialized stuff it's a little different. But that's where having that primary counsel- JAMON: Exactly. KEN: ... is very helpful, because they can help translate. JAMON: Now one of the things that attorneys do is they ... A good attorney will do, is they will inform you of the risks, but they will also let you make the decision. They won't try to control the process. So, one of the things that Josh will do is say, "There is a risk. I think it's a fairly small one, but here's the risk that I see. And if you feel that it's worth it from a business standpoint, then go ahead and pull the trigger." But he'll let you make the decision, and he'll give you the information to do that. KEN: Yeah. And a not as good lawyer, will be like, "Oh, no, no. Don't do this because there's this horrible risk." Right? Guess what. Every single deal you do has risk. Every single one. And the truth of the matter is, people will sue you, not usually because they have a case, but because they're pissed, right? A lawyer who understands the limits of the legal process is also really important. TODD: I'd like to add that some previous companies that didn't have a Josh or a good lawyer, and a couple things. And it's true of accountants, by the way. Both are true in what I'm gonna say here. So, Ken said the worst ones are ones that think everything you're doing is horrible and you shouldn't do it. I mean, they only care about risk reduction. Of course, you can reduce your risk by simply not being in business. That is horrible, for sure. But there's another one that I think is even worse. One that's doing that on their side, and they won't even tell you to begin with. So, anything that's risky that they don't wanna ... I mean, they basically just cover their ass at all times, they don't tell you anything. They only do what you tell them to do. I'm not sure how you're supposed to know what to tell them to do because you're not a lawyer, you're not an accountant. I deal with that a lot. They're just an assistant, they just do what you tell them. Well, I don't ... If I could do that, I wouldn't need you. And it's actually something that ... With our clients, we're really trying not to do. We don't expect our clients to know anything. That's our job, to guide them through, give them good, coherent options. Tell them the risk and reward of each option, and let them choose. JAMON: Exactly. TODD: That's our job as professionals, and sadly it's kind of rare, unfortunately. JAMON: Yeah. I'm glad we're taking on this topic. Obviously, it is sort of more of a dry topic, but we can only go so far with the series. And this is our last episode of the series. TODD: Of this first season. JAMON: The first season of the series. We are gonna do more seasons. TODD: Unless you're in the UK, and then in which case it is the first series. They call a season a series. JAMON: Oh, funny. TODD: A little factoid. JAMON: Yeah, I'm sure that our UK listeners will appreciate that. TODD: That sounded snarky. We have people in the UK who love us. JAMON: Do we? Awesome? TODD: Why you so mean, Jamon? JAMON: I didn't mean it to sound snarky. TODD: That's why my wife, who's an accountant, doesn't like you. No, she loves you. JAMON: I like Heather. Even if she is an accountant. No, it is good. It's ... This is what ... Well, we took on two topics at once and we were able to kind of lump them in, but it's something that everybody who's starting a business ... And I know, cause we get feedback that there are some people who are listening to our podcast and using some of our advice as a guide as they start their businesses, this is something they need to pay attention to. And when I started my business, it took me many years to get a lawyer and many years to get a good accountant. I did have a bookkeeper, or financial assistant, I guess, for some of those years because once I started payroll, I started getting out of my depth. I had no idea how to do that. And she was great, I could ask her for advice. She was actually trained as an accountant, as a CPA, actually. But she was, at the time, sort of semi-retired and just kind of doing her thing. Now, with Infinite Red, I feel like we have a really great attorney. We have good accountants. We're still working on figuring everything out, but having Heather help us has been really helpful, as well. It's nice to have professionals that know what they're doing. TODD: Thanks so much. Maybe a little dry, but I think super interesting to people out there, especially when you're starting. I've actually found- KEN: Bookmark this, like when you're actually starting this, bookmark and go listen to it again. JAMON: Yeah, it's a good reference. KEN: If your eyes glazed over, I totally understand, but trust me. TODD: I actually found it pretty interesting. I'm surprised how that flew by. And a podcast that flies by when you're recording it, it usually comes out pretty good. So, I would like Jamon in the close to explain what our plans are for this podcast going forward, since this is the last episode of this series/season. JAMON: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm really pleased with how season/series one went. And it was a ton of fun to do with you, Todd, Ken, Chris. We do plan to do more. We probably won't take a really long break. I'm hoping to maybe take a month, or at the most two, and then hit another season. This season we really wanted to kind of get our voice out there as a founder team. So, Todd, Ken and myself, as the founders of Infinite Red, we wanted to talk from our perspective on building Infinite Red. But as Todd mentioned, I think in one of the early episodes, it wasn't just us that built Infinite Red. It was definitely a team effort. It was, in a lot of ways, our vision, but there's so much impact that our team has on what Infinite Red is. So, for season two, the intention is to bring in key team members, and have them sit around the round table, so to speak, with us. They're not gonna be interviewed. We're not gonna be talking at them. They're gonna be just involved in the conversation as we go forward. And we'll be talking about more things that are, I think, a little more specific, a little more even maybe situational, or things like that. I think it'll be interesting, from a standpoint of getting to know some of our team members. They're really great. We- TODD: They are, they're awesome. JAMON: They're so awesome, and I'm really excited to give the world a glimpse into who else is here at Infinite Red. But it will probably be one, maybe two guests on, and just co-hosting with us. They're not going to be an interviewee. I also wanna say thank you to everybody who has listened and promoted our podcast, who submitted questions to us. It's an incredible honor to actually to be in your podcast rotation. We don't take that for granted. I know there are a ton of really good podcasts out there. I had one person, actually, I went to lunch with Bruce Williams, a really great guy here in Portland. And he said, "Jamon, there a lot of good podcasts out there, but I think one of the things about Building Infinite Red is that you are doing an important podcast. The message needs to get out there about our remote work and the way that we do work." Which was a huge compliment. Bruce isn't the type to just hand out compliments lightly. He's a great guy. We take it seriously. This isn't something that we're just doing as a marketing stunt, or anything like that. We really do believe in the message that we're putting out there. So, thank you all for listening. TODD: Yes, thank you.

Many want the law to keep pace with technology, but what's taking so long? A simple search online and you'll find a multitude of reasons why the law is slow to catch up with technology - lawyers are risk averse, the legal world is intentionally slow and also late adopters of technology. Can this all be true? Or simply heresy? I wanted to hear from an expert who has experience in the private and public sector. That's why I sought out the expertise of Camille Stewart, a cyber and technology attorney. In part one of our interview, we talk about the tension between law and tech. And as it turns out, laws are built in the same way a lot of technologies are built: in the form of a framework. That way, it leaves room and flexibility so that technology can continue to evolve. Frameworks Reign in Law and Tech Camille Stewart Hi, I am Camille Stewart. I'm a cyber and technology attorney. I'm currently at Deloitte working on cyber risk and innovation issues, so identifying emerging technologies for the firm to work with. Prior to that, I was a Senior Policy Advisor at the Department of Homeland Security working on cyber infrastructure, and foreign policy in the office of policy. I was an appointee of the Obama administration. And then prior to that, I was in-house at a cybersecurity company. I worked in both the public sector and the private sector on cyber issues. Cindy Ng Today, we're gonna be talking about the tension between law and technology, where a law takes a lot of time and inquiry to create something that makes sense and hopefully is impactful for years to come, whereas technology, it's really about ideation and creating and bringing product and service to market as quickly as possible. Tech people, they want law to catch up with technology. Lawyers wished tech people would understand the law a little bit more. And some have even criticized that the law doesn't move as quickly as technology, and you have a lot of experience both as a cybersecurity attorney in Washington and in the private sector. And I'm wondering if there's a deeper divide between the two entities, and I'm wondering if you can share your experience with us in working with lawmakers as well as your experience in the private sector. Camille Stewart Yeah, so, I mean, I think one misconception is you don't want the law to keep pace with innovation. There's no way for you to legislate for future occurrences and for the ideation and innovation we've talked about. You want the law to leave room and flexibility so that technology can continue to evolve. And so that's kind of what has to happen. It's frustrating that there are no legal recourses when an issue comes up, but you almost have to test those boundaries to figure out a framework to fit your bill to address issues that are coming. So even the laws that we do build tend to be framework because we need to leave room for that innovation and ideation. And part of the tension between technology communities and lawyers and technology communities and the general public or the government is trust. So technologists don't trust the government with the information that they have, and the government wants to build that trust desperately so that we can leverage the resources that are at the disposal of both. You know, the government has a lot of insight and intelligence that they can layer over the tools and capabilities in the private sector, and if they came together, it's great, but there's this base level of trust and understanding of what each is trying to do that if we could bridge that gap, so much more could be done. Cindy Ng Is there a think tank or a non-profit or some kind of institution that can bridge that gap that you've seen develop over the past few years? Camille Stewart Yeah, so there are a number that are working on this, whether it's issue-specific, right, "So let's talk about surveillance and bringing people together around that." "Let's talk about a given issue and discuss that." Also the government is trying that. Organizations like DHS that work with the private sector quite a bit are trying to build those bridges and find ways to share information in a way that's valuable to both the private sector and the government through things like AIS, the Automated Indicator Sharing system. And it's gonna be a slow process. Those trusts are bolted tight. Private sector has coalesced together to build trust circles with their peers and people that they know doing work that they understand, and they're sharing information that way. And those mechanisms have become pretty robust and helpful, but the government has to be able to be a part of that for us to really complete the picture, and that's the work that's being done, some through non-profit organizations, NGOs, but also through the government and the private sector starting to get into a room. And then, as people move back and forth across lines, right, traditionally people were govies for life, or they were in the private sector. Now there's more movement back and forth, and that'll help build the trust as well. Bridging the Gap between Law and Tech Cindy Ng What would you say to lawyers who need to understand technology and technologists that need to understand the law? Camille Stewart I would say at a base level, do the work to understand the content. Lawyers need to take the time to understand the technology, to ask the questions, understand what the end goal is, and understanding what the technologist is building and for what end user. And the nice thing is that a lawyer is likely the end user of many of the products that they're speaking to understand, so they can easily understand that perspective. And then do the to work to understand how we got there, how the technologists built that. And then technologists, on the other hand, need to be willing to have those conversations and those explanations and understand that lawyering of the past, there was the perception that lawyers were just gonna say no. Right? They're risk averse, they aren't gonna let you ideate and innovate, they're just gonna shut it down. And that's not really true. My job as a lawyer and the jobs of lawyers at companies today, especially if they deal with technology and cyber issues, is to lay out the risk, understand the organization’s risk calculus, and to put the information in front of leadership so that they can make an informed decision and then help to build a cast-forward that calculates those risks, that mitigates those risks to the best of their ability and be ready to support the company in what they've done. So, with that base level understanding and the willingness to do the work to understand, lawyers can be great assets to technologists because they can be translators, different communities, as well as the company builds out and understands what the risk posture is. It's important to have all key stakeholders as part of that discussion, and lawyers are definitely part of that group. Cindy Ng So you talk about trust and doing your homework having a baseline knowledge of the other's concepts and principles. What have you seen in your work that has worked that you've seen others reach over the aisle, and are you able to provide an example? And also, what doesn't work? Camille Stewart I think the biggest catalyst for change is that things happen, right? So, a breach occurs, and you watch this organization scramble to figure out how to right itself after this big occurrence and realizing that the stakeholders that you were encouraged to have in the room initially were essential when this thing exploded. And had you accounted for more perspective on the front end in a proactive way, it would have mitigated some of the risk on the back end or you would have been able to right yourself more quickly. And so I think watching that occur has started a number of organizations and built a number of frameworks to help organizations get the right people in the room and encourage people to do the work to figure out where different players fall in the conversations that they're having as an organization about how the security is evolving and how technology will be used and integrated in the organization. But I think that outside factors in this area of law and cyberspace evolving has done a lot of the work to encourage the collaboration that's needed.

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.

Steve Larsen: Hey, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen. I have a very special episode for you guys today. I have a guest that I'm bringing on the show. His name is John Ferguson. John Ferguson is an expert in face to face selling of MLMs. He's been hired and worked for the Rich Dad company. He has been ... He's one of the guys that MLMs hire and bring in to help improve their entire sales process. He creates scripts to help sell products, he helps scripts ... He create scripts that lets you sell your MLM product in a way to people you've never met before that is not pushy. So I'm very excited for him to be a here. It is a treat to have him and please take notes on this. This is not your normal kind of a thing, and I had to beg him to get on the episode here. So I'm excited. Let's go ahead and jump into the episode today. So here's the real mystery. How do real MLMers like us [inaudible 00:00:48] and only bug family members and friends, who wanna grow a profitable home business, how do we recruit A players into our down lines and create extra incomes, yet still have plenty of time for the rest of our lives? That's the blaring question and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Secret MLM Hacks Radio. You guys actually have a really special treat. I'm excited. I have a guess on the show with me today and his name is John Ferguson and literally every time I speak with him, I feel like I learn and I grow, and there's different things that I learn about the MLM industry. I learn about what he's doing and frankly, it's amazing, the resume that John has and I wanna bring him on the show here and give you guys a chance to be elevated for ... with what he's being doing. So without further ado, John how's it going? John Ferguson: Doing fantastic Steve and I'm super stoked to be here. I'm glad you invited me on. I am ready to deliver and I appreciate that introduction dude. I feel like a hero already. Steve Larsen: You are. I feel like ... I don't know. Every time I speak with you, you're like, "Oh, yeah. I helped ..." I don't know if I can say this, "Yeah, I helped Robert Kiyosaki. I helped this huge person over here. I set this MLM up over there." Like what? Like you've been doing a ton of stuff. John Ferguson: Yeah. I've kind of tried ... I've played the backend role for a number of years, where like you mentioned the Rich Dad organization, I really played that backend role. If you think about like Batman, he's got not Robin, which was the sidekick, but Alfred. Right? Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: The guy that's making sure all the gadgets work, make sure that Batman's not getting himself into trouble and it's really a role that in the past, has really helped a lot of people like people you just mentioned. So I ... It's a lot of fun for me to see others succeed with the systems and tools and the coaching and mentoring that you offer them. So yeah, it's been an awesome career so far. Steve Larsen: Now I wanna be able to go through kinda how you got into this and did it and all, but could you just ... For everyone else on here, if they don't know the amazing John Ferguson, could you just give us a run down of what it is that you actually do when you say Rich Dad organization and the other ones you've worked with? John Ferguson: Yeah, certainly. So what I do is I help closers sell more. Okay. I help individuals who've never sold in their lives sell their first sale. When it comes down to network marketing and multi-level marketing, I find there's a lot more nurturers than really the A type personalities, and for me what we do, is we take individuals by the hand, we guide and we direct them through selling without selling. And I know that sounds kinda weird, 'cause you're like, "What's selling without selling? Like you've gotta sell." Right? Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: What it is, is I remove the ... we remove the animosity by helping people learn an evaluation process like stepping people, rather than just going in like a hardcore close. Steve Larsen: Sure. John Ferguson: [inaudible 00:03:52]. So that's really what we do. We ... In the past like with the Rich Dad organization, I came in and contracted as a trainer and I worked a number of years, where we took their telemarketing, their speakers, their trainers, their coaches and really developed them in some better methods of asking better questions to help get to the root of the desire and the needs of people and then we can deliver that, through the products and services that we offer. And the cool thing about MLM is that there are so many people that need so many things and I buy so much stuff from network marketing companies. I think I'm like ... on like an auto ship for like seven different ones. It's not that I sell their stuff. It's that there are so many wonderful products out there, I wanna help other people get them to the marketplace and get them in the hands of consumers and eliminate that fear of enrolling people and making a sale. Steve Larsen: That's incredible. I mean so you've done it ... I mean you have quite the rap sheet and thanks for explaining that. I knew you'd do a better job than I would doing that, after talking with you extensively this past little while ... past few months, but are you ... I guess ... there's two different directions I want to go with this. My brain is just all over the place. I'm excited to have you on here. Is ... Do you use a lot of like spin selling methods, like the book Spin Selling? Is it that kind of thing a little bit? John Ferguson: You know, it's more direct and- Steve Larsen: Okay. John Ferguson: I'm not the proponent network marketing that is gonna always jump after mom, dad, sisters, cousin, next door neighbor's dog and try to invite them into my network marketing business. I've never done that in sales either. What I like to do is, I like to put out the proper marketing, which I know that your people are learning some phenomenal tools Steve and you're teaching them how to attract the right people ... actually people who really want what you have and then enroll them and get them buying from you. And so my ... And is coming on the backend of that is, is how do I determine ... Like how do I determine the wants, the desires, the needs from somebody? And so I take them through a series of questions, like broad based questions, pointed questions and direct questions and I always get the question, "Hey, John isn't a pointed question a direct question?", and not really. A pointed question just kind of gets more to the point and a direct question is literally right on the money. It's right when you're going for like the heart of the matter. And so if we can learn to ask a little bit better questions, what I can do is I can find out exactly what their needs are, where their pain is, and I'm not usually paying to like make that person really feel it 'cause who wants someone to like squeeze their wound, right? Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: "Hey, you've got a cut there. Let me get some salt water and just start spraying it on there." No. Okay. But we need to know where the pain is so that we can move them away from it or motivate them towards pleasure and that pleasure point is what I'm after mainly, because we live in a day and age right now that everyone can see through the BS. Like their belief systems, not the other BS. Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: Okay. But where there's so much on the internet, there's so much on YouTube, there's so much all over the place that we just want the information we need now, but we also wanna know that the individual that is working with us is gonna help us for us right, and really cares. And so, our method allows our closers to step into a role ... You know I wouldn't wanna say expert advisor because I don't think coaching closes. It's not something that I believe. I've had a lot of people go from the coaching industry into selling and when they coach, they can't close because they get so much information. Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: The person is like, "Oh, this is great. I'm gonna go out there and do it." So- Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: When it comes to our method, it's really just getting to the root ... It's human communication, man. It's just understanding what your goals and focus and expectations and you as the closer, knowing your product well enough, knowing your services well enough, that you're able to match what is needed and what is and what is desired with that individual in a way that they beg to buy from you. I mean it's backwards. Like if you wanna call it something, I wouldn't call it spin selling. Let's say backwards closing or something like that. Steve Larsen: Right. That's interesting. Do you mind giving a few examples of like the kind of questions you would ask? I guess you and I meet on the street and I show a little bit of interest in what you're doing. What would you ask me? John Ferguson: So here's the thing, I would first off ... If we're gonna meet on the street, like we're at Barnes and Noble or we're in some book store or some function, and I believe you have some type of an interest in my business. Right? So for instance, one of the easier ones out there right now is like health and fitness or real estate, it's a pretty hot topic. So what I wanna do is, I wanna just kinda ask you a broad question. Right? Steve Larsen: Okay. John Ferguson: So for what I would do is this, I really just kinda get in it, "So what do you currently do for a living?" Right? And someone's gonna say, "Well I'm a tractor driver." And I go, "Wow. How long have you been doing that for?" And they're gonna say, "Well, I've been doing that for 16 years." And I go, "Oh, man. You must love it." Steve Larsen: Okay. John Ferguson: And that answer right there is an answer and a question all at the same. Once, I'm slapping them upside the head- Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: Going, "Wow, I love it." Steve Larsen: Interesting. John Ferguson: And then they're gonna say, "Not really." or they go, "You know what? It's not bad going through other people's junk. I just don't see retirement in it." Right? So you're gonna find out an answer ... What I'm doing there, is I'm trying to poke them a little bit without being rude and I don't wanna create a situation where I'm hurting anybody. But I wanna find out, "Okay. Where are you at? Like are you ready to move out of this thing or you're in dysfunction for what?" And if they say, "Look yeah, I hate it. I wanna get out. I've been stuck in it for a number of years." And then I'd say, "Well, fantastic." Right? "So what would you be doing?" or "What ... If you had a better opportunity, what would your life look like?" So what I'm trying to do is I'm giving some broad questions to find out where this individual may fit and I'm building rapport, but I'm gonna stay on an agenda. My agenda is to get them to a more pointed question on how I can get this person into my business now. So I'm ask, "So would you keep your ..." The classic, "Do you keep your options open for making more money?" I don't like that question. Steve Larsen: Yeah, I don't either. John Ferguson: I don't usually use that question because it's too weird. Like for me, it just makes me feel weird. Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: So ... You know shower time. No. So what I gotta do now is I just say, "Hey look ..." I tell him what I'm doing. I say, "Look, I've been a real estate investor for 17 years. I'm looking for some individuals that might qualify to work with me in that arena. Have you ever thought about real estate investing as an option to make more money?" So I'm gonna get a little more direct, a little more pointed on my questioning and I'm gonna ask him right, and if they're in a real estate function or if they're in a network marketing function or I'm going ... So I'm never just going blind a lot of the times into ... just question people off the street. I believe that if you ... there's enough people out there that we can target the proper marketing to attract people on the front end, that by process allows me to help them through all the way to the backend in becoming a buyer. Steve Larsen: Interesting. John Ferguson: So pointed questions. If I was giving all pointed questions, I'd just ask him for instance, if that person said, "Yeah. I'm looking for something better." I say like, "How would you like to better your experience in life?" Right? And they're gonna [inaudible 00:11:16] what they wanna accomplish. Now I'm not gonna get into becoming their buddy. Okay. Those questions aren't gonna be for me to go okay, they say, "Well better life ..." They say, "Well, I'd love to travel more." And if I get into a discourse of, "Oh, I've been here. I've been there. Oh, my life because of what I've been doing in my business has allowed me to do this." I get into my like 30 minute pitch on how great my life is because of my business, I've just lost those guys. Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: They don't care. Like they really don't care. What they care about is, is that you care that they care about what they want. I know that sounds a little weird, but that's what it is and if I'm able to say, "Oh, that's fantastic. I love travel too. I've had the blessing of being able to travel with what I do." And then follow it up ... That statement always opens up another question, "Where would you travel if you had the time and money? Like if money wasn't an option, time wasn't an option. If you weren't dumping trash, where would you go?" Right? And be genuine, like literally we've gotta be more interested. It's about questioning rather than dictating and I think that's where a lot of MLM upline don't understand. They came in the same way and they're like, "Hey, give me your story, give me your two minute blast." Just chase until the buyer dies, literally you're gonna kill them. Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: Right? Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: And so I think ... Today's day and age, if you're able to ask proper questions, you're able to minimize that shortfall and you're gonna be able to lead this person down and you're gonna be able to help that person. And in the meantime, you will build rapport faster if you stay on target with these types of questions, rather than trying to dictate, "Hey, your life is so much better." Find out about them, ask them the questions. It's gonna build so much intrigue in this person that you're asking these questions, you're giving these little mini statements, what I call little micro commitments or a mini statement of where your life is, or what you're loving about your current company and your current situation is you're growing than it will ever do ... You're just dumping a whole bunch of information on [inaudible 00:13:15]. I know a lot of people talk about that, but [crosstalk 00:13:17]- Steve Larsen: You're saying [crosstalk 00:13:18]. So you're saying that it actually works to pay off and actually like care about people? John Ferguson: Right, right. Steve Larsen: Just real quick. I wanna just run through this real fast. So you're saying ... First of all, I love that you defined the difference kind of between a pointed question versus a leading question. You're not asking leading questions, your asking pointing questions. Right? Where it- John Ferguson: Correct. Steve Larsen: Where you're going out and you're saying ... you're saying, "Hey ..." I'm writing notes like crazy, just so you know. You start by saying, "Hey, what do you do?" And big broad question, trying to figure out where they fit like, "Whoa. You must love it." And like that is huge. Before you go on that, you're talking about yourself. You're like, "You must love it." And you say ... From there, there's gonna be a split, "Yes, I do." or, "No, I don't." And then from there, you kinda know where to take the conversation. Right? They're the ones basically ... You're just kind of guiding it. John Ferguson: Correct. Steve Larsen: The whole way. That's amazing. Okay. John Ferguson: [crosstalk 00:14:12]. Yep. You're guiding the process and what you're doing is, you're leading them down this path to essentially want to buy from you. They want to enroll with you. Well they wanna continue to engage. Steve Larsen: So where do you- John Ferguson: The whole [crosstalk 00:14:24] psychology, right? Steve Larsen: Sure. John Ferguson: I mean everyone wants to be heard. Right? And so if someone's gonna listen, they're gonna keep telling you, but you have to guide that not down a road, "Hey, let's become best friends. We're gonna talk about what we ate last night and oh, I love pasta too." "No, I like fried ferret." Whatever it is, don't go there. Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: Like try to keep a pointed ... And so, it's less about us now and it's more about what their needs and desires are and if they feel that they're getting their needs met and their desires met by talking to you, that's gonna draw them in to wanting to move forward, even if it's a simple invitation. "Hey, you know what? Sounds like you'd do really well with what we're doing. I'm pretty sure that you'll love it. Let me give you my business card. Let me get your information and I'll send you an email on XYZ. I want you to watch this five minute video. I want you to watch this 10 minute video and real quick it's gonna ask you a few more questions, it's to introduce you to my business and some of my partners. I think you're really gonna love it just based on our conversation." It kind of opens that door for you to do that initial interview, that initial quick introduction to your business, even if you're out live at an event. You're able to hand your card off, you're able to show them your website and it's less abrasive and they're gonna have more intrigue to go, "Wow. That was a really cool conversation. I don't usually have those conversations, so I'm gonna watch this website 'cause what those guys have might be something I've actually been looking for for a long time." Steve Larsen: So from there- John Ferguson: Whether they're looking or not, they're gonna wanna go look. Steve Larsen: Okay. No, awesome. So from there, they're going ... I'm just ... I'm trying to outline it. So you go in broad, then you go in pointed questions and then you kinda go through ... you called it kinda the needs, desire sections. Right? Where ... And how long do you usually stay in that? I'm sure it's per conversation, but I mean how do you know when you're able to go out and finally drop the line of, "Hey. Let me get you my business card. Let me email you. Let me send you this five minute video." When do you know you've gotten to that spot that you can actually say that kinda stuff? John Ferguson: So typically what happens is, is once I've asked enough of these questions, even before I get very direct, I might ask a direct question of an individual. I might say something like, "At the end of the day, you've influenced your family and you've won more freedom by working with us. Why did you do it?" And then they're gonna tell me and/or ... What's gonna happen even is, is we've been asking them questions so long that they're gonna get like I said, intrigued about us. They're gonna ask us what. They're gonna say, "So I mean it sounds like you've got something awesome going on. What is it you do?" Steve Larsen: Yeah. What are you doing? John Ferguson: Like who are you? Right? Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: That's gonna open the door for you now to share that invitation. Right? You've understood their needs. Now this would ... We're talking face to face right now. Now if I was gonna be over the phone right, some of my advertising was through ... Like don't tell anybody, but I've done some of this ninja stuff on Craigslist. I've just posted a little ad that says, "Hey look, are you interested in XYZ? If you are, call me or if you are, respond." And this stuff works there too and obviously building funnels and posting those paid advertising through like Facebook and Instagram. All that works really, really well, but when it comes down to it, let's say you've got people in Nebraska and you live in California. What are you gonna do? Like how are you gonna meet that person face to face? They've just introduced themselves to you. They're gonna go through your phone, they're gonna [inaudible 00:17:40] your thing, but I like high ticket sales, and so I wanna help this person get the maximum of what's gonna help them. And so the lowest product price point that we typically sell is about $2,000.00 and we do a little bit over the phone, and so if I'm ... I can run this line of questioning over the phone, I'll have a notepad right next to me writing the answers down as I go. So I can go okay, wow that's a need. Okay, wow that's a desire. Right? And so now as I'm asking questions, I can define out what my next questions are. When you get ... We're really good at these types of questionings. These types of questions, it will just come natural to you and it's just following a progressive line, broad based, pointed, direct, broad based, pointed, direct. And sometimes you'll ask a direct question and they won't wanna answer it. They may feel a little standoffish if you haven't done a good job of building that initial rapport, bringing them down the ladder. Right? No one wants to go from the 15th step on the ladder and jump down to step number one, like it hurts. Okay. It's kinda like dropping 150 feet with your buddy, filming it on Facebook and screaming until you fall, like I saw that video of you. That's nuts, right? Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: But no one wants to feel that way without the bungee cord. Okay. Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: So we have to take them down that ladder and sometimes you may have to come back up and ask a little more pointed questions to get to where you want, and then come back down to the direct question to the root of the issue of what their true desire is. So now, they're literally asking you Steven, this may sound a little bit more complicated than it really is. It's literally one or two broad based questions, one or two pointed questions and one very direct question. You'll have five questions and you have literally opened the door and they're literally asking, "So what is it you do? How long have you been doing it? Is there any information that I can have that I can talk to you about?" And if I'm doing this over the telephone, it's about an eight minute conversation. Right? I like to keep it about five to twelve minutes. Anyone out there who I typically find ... especially individuals putting this in their practice, as when we're teaching telemarketing teams or when I'm teaching a network marketing business ... Like I was just in New Jersey teaching 200 network marketers in the room in like a six hour session how to do this and the challenge was is asking less, but doing it in the right way- Steve Larsen: Interesting. John Ferguson: Because I think we have this desire to talk and what I found was a lot of people spent more time talking and trying to talk someone into liking your thing because you like it. No one cares why you like it, they just don't. What they care is why they might like it or why ... what will help them. Spend less time dictating and more time recording right, taking down the right information and ultimately they're gonna ask. They're literally [inaudible 00:20:36], "What's my next step? How do I move forward with you?" I've never had ... I've had people say that they've never had conversations like this ever in the network marketing world. Right? I'm sure a lot of your listeners right now are going yeah, I mean that ... People would just beat me up and just ask me, "Hey, come to my thing. Come to my thing. Oh, you're gonna love it. You're gonna get this. You're gonna get that out of it.", and it was just noise. Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: Well just turn off the noise, ask them more questions and let them speak for a minute and guide them down this path to where they're literally begging to buy from you. Steve Larsen: What's the golden that someone can ask you? Obviously besides, "Hey, where do I put my credit card?" But like what's the question that when you know that you have them, you know what I mean? When you know that this person's progressing and maybe that's probably the wrong way to say that, but when you know that they're following the process to the T and they're eating out of your hand, you know what I mean? When do you know? John Ferguson: It's a number of things. It's a number of questions. Steve Larsen: Sure. John Ferguson: Typically, in our industry because it's sales, some of your listeners may have heard the title buyer's questions. Steve Larsen: Sure. John Ferguson: Really it's ... I like to call them intrigue questions, but really what it is, is they're asking you, "Okay. What's the next step?" That's it, like because it doesn't feel abrasive like a sales pitch or a sales opportunity, it's more of like an invitation. They're typically asking, "So how do I move forward with you? Like what's my next step with you? Do you have a meeting that I can attend? Do you have something that I can acquire now?" Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: And so they're literally asking you at that point for the sale. Does that make sense? Steve Larsen: Yeah, yeah. They're asking buyer questions, yes. That's how I think ... Absolutely. Okay. Intrigue questions. John Ferguson: Yeah. Steve Larsen: And so what would be your follow up at that point? Obviously you said, "Hey, go to the five minute video." or "I'm gonna email you." What's the preferred thing that you do with them after that? John Ferguson: So depending on what I'm doing or depending on the organization that I'm working with, some of them have like an initial introductory video or an initial introductory meeting where they're gonna have to come sit down with you and meet with some of the other team members that you have, or they're gonna come out or they're just gonna stay at home. They're gonna watch a webinar and they're gonna go through this introduction to the company. So typically, I'm delivering them to some type of information that continues to build intrigue, but also delivers some information and it's what we call kind of a either a business orientation, a business briefing and that is literally our first few steps in this entire process. Okay, because at this point now, it's a presentation. Now we're gonna be delivering some of the information to continue that intrigue, but to deliver on what we promised, and then at that point, we're gonna take them to our closing process and it's literally a three step process. It's introduction, invite, presentation and then close. I mean that's as simple as it gets. Steve Larsen: Wow. Wow. Now this is something that sounds like you're doing this like face to face and over the phone but not just for- John Ferguson: Right. Steve Larsen: Not just for ... It's fascinating because most ... especially phone scripts, right? Most phone scripts that I've ever used especially in the internet marketing space, kind of the other market that I'm in, right. I ... Typically, these kinds of phone conversations is something that we would do for more warm audiences and people who knew who we were and knew what were doing, and we were just there to kinda close them and guide them in the sale. But you're able to do this kinda thing to ... I don't wanna say cold, but people who you've honestly may have never met before. John Ferguson: Yep. That's exactly what I do. Steve Larsen: That's amazing. John Ferguson: I don't like the whole ... I got my mom and dad and my cousins and sisters in my first couple of network marketing business. Steve Larsen: Sure. Who didn't? John Ferguson: And it [inaudible 00:24:21]. So I think all of the listeners have done that. Steve Larsen: Yeah, yeah. Sure. John Ferguson: They've tried that. So there's only so many family members you got right, that can buy from you and join your thing. So you have to go out there and build new relationships and the only way to do that is to either go out there and literally cold market, which can be a little more [inaudible 00:24:42], warm them up first. Right? Why not send them to an initial video? Why not get them to opt in to an advertising piece? Why not have them call you first? Get them knocking your door down first and then take them through these little bit of questions, take them through an introductory video or a webinar and then invite them to participate with you. Steve Larsen: That's fascinating. This ... I mean is an incredible expertise. I appreciate you just kind of outlining that. I'm sure top level ... For those of you guys who don't know, I've been talking to you guys a lot about the program, Secret MLM Hacks that I've created and my team's in and we're selling also to any of those ... of you guys who want, we ... John is so good at this, that I pretty much begged him to come and teach a huge segment of this insider course as well. So those of you guys who are like, "Oh, man this stuff's so cool. How do I get more of that?" Well you a lot more of John Ferguson inside of Secret MLM Hacks as well and this expertise is incredible, John. How did you develop this? I mean this is not like a normal ... You know what I mean? I don't know many people who are doing what you're doing like this. In fact, you're probably one of the first ever in this kind of way. How did you get there? John Ferguson: It was out of bare necessity. So let me give you some back story. My ... Just real quick some of my back story. Steve Larsen: Sure. Yeah, please. John Ferguson: I grew up in a home in Southern California. My father was laid off seven times before I was 17. Steve Larsen: Wow. John Ferguson: For most of my life growing up, I lived with my grandparents and my mom, my dad, my two brothers and I, my grandma, my grandpa and my great-grandmother lived in like a 1,500 square foot home in Whittier, California. It had three bedrooms, one and a half bath, and there's a need for four bedrooms there and so I learned a lot. One, I learned family, the importance of family and how hard it takes to work to keep a family together, especially when you're struggling financially, and I also saw that working a job wasn't for me, like I saw the struggle. My father worked three jobs at one time. They would go around cleaning churches when I grow up, and I was a little squirt running around at five, six, seven years old, taking the chalk erasers, smacking the board with them as my dad was finishing up wiping them down in the church and he'd have to go clean them up again. Let me ... Later down the line, I realized why he was a little upset with me but couldn't really freak out 'cause we're in a church. But I saw that level and so I decided to go to college and like most people, they're like okay, go to school, get good grades, go to college, get a good career. So I took that path and I played basketball in college and I went up and dunked on somebody in a preseason game and I ruptured two discs in my back- Steve Larsen: Wow. John Ferguson: Blew out my knee and my ankle- Steve Larsen: Oh, my gosh. John Ferguson: And there was no way I was gonna be able to get in NBA and I'm sure some of your listeners were going, "NBA, yeah." I mean I was not gonna be able to play in the National Basketball Association because I had blown out my body. To this day I can't feel my left leg, like part of my left leg is like numb. My foot is a little bit numb because of that injury. Steve Larsen: Wow. John Ferguson: And so going to college, I mean why go to ... I thought at the time and no disrespect to anyone that has a diploma. That's awesome. You guys did it, you won it. Fantastic. There are careers that definitely need the execution, but for me at the time, I was like well if I'm not gonna get in the NBA. Right? That's the whole reason you're going to college, is to get in NBA ... Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: I quit. I was like I'm out and so I got into the career world. I started working at a company called Hollywood Video. You know that dinosaur video place you used to go rent videos from? Steve Larsen: Yeah, yeah. John Ferguson: I wore the red cummerbund, I had the red bow tie. I was waving at people and within a short period time, it was about four and half, five years, I had risen from the ranks from just customer service representative up to a district manager, and I had 14 stores. I was running multimillion dollars for this company and I remember coming home from one vacation, we got five weeks paid vacation. I came home from one vacation and my beeper, like for those of you guys who don't know what that is, it's kinda like a little box that buzzes and beeps on your hip. Okay? So half the size of cell phones today and like three times its width, but I was coming down the mountain, I was up fishing and camping with my family and it goes off, like beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. And I'm looking down at it and I'm going what is going on with this thing? It was like 911*. 91111*. 91111 and I'm going what is ... Like something ... Someone had to have died in one of my stores. I'm freaking out. I call my manager, the VP over there area and he's like, "Where are you? You need to come in right now." And I'm like, "I just got off of vacation." And if you don't know the type of organization I was working with, it was like to go on vacation, you had to like ... I filled out the form and then the form had to be filled out by my boss and then the boss had to send up to his boss and then corporate had to sign it. They had to send it back to you and you got like five pages of documentation showing you're gone. Right? Steve Larsen: Wow. John Ferguson: So I get back ... Literally I got written up for being gone because one of my store managers got sick, the assistant manager couldn't come in to cover their shift in one of my stores. It's like an hour away from even where I live and my manager had to go in and cover the store for like 20 minutes. What I found was- Steve Larsen: Wow. John Ferguson: It's that I was climbing the wrong ladder on the wrong building and ... I mean at the time, I was the number one in revenue, I was the number one district manager in the company for holiday contests and sales. My teams were like at the top of my level and I had a lot of loyalty and at that one moment, I lost my 2.5% raise. Now think about that. Steve Larsen: Two and a half percent. John Ferguson: [crosstalk 00:30:28] I was freaking out about not earning another 1,600 bucks, 1,700 bucks a year. Steve Larsen: Wow. John Ferguson: Because I was only making about 80 grand a year and 2.5%, 2% of that is 16, 1,700 bucks. Steve Larsen: Wow. John Ferguson: And like to someone like that ... Like I look back on that like how did I survive? Right? Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: But that's how it is. Like that was a good salary then and for me, I had to find another way. And so getting into this situation, I got into my very first real estate property, started becoming ... I became a real estate investor and I ... For two years, I spent a ton of money, like over 200 grand in trends and boot camps and seminars and coaches and I'd finally be able to ... I was able to quit my job and I got involved in a network marketing organization and I've never been involved with one before in my life and they said, "Okay. Go get everybody." So I go ... I get everybody I can get like ... I got like 30 people in this one meeting. I had 25, 30 people. The guy in the front of the room is rocking. Like he's up there, he's like telling a story and I'm watching all my guests and I'm in the very back ... The room is filled with like maybe 200 people and I'm like, "Oh, my gosh. I'm gonna make like a hundred grand tonight." Like it's- Steve Larsen: Look at all this. Yeah, yeah. John Ferguson: [inaudible 00:31:48]. Right? Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: And I'm like, "[inaudible 00:31:50]. This is so great" and I'm looking around at everybody around me. I go up to my mentor, I tap him on the shoulder. I'm like, "Dude, check it out. I'm gonna get certified in one meeting. I'm gonna me a hundred grand, you're gonna make like 50 grand. This is sweet!" Like I'm so excited and I'm telling everybody and all the people that I looked up to in my [inaudible 00:32:10] network marketing business and have been involved with me a couple months and I'm like, "I've been working my guts out trying to get people in this room and this is gonna be so awesome. Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: And at the very end of the night, most network marketing companies do this is, is, "Okay. Are you a one? Are you a two or a three? Are you an A, a B or a C?" Right? And all my people are like two or a like one, meaning that they're in! They wanna join and they got some questions, but they wanna join! I'm like oh, my gosh. How am I gonna handle all this business all at once? And so I grab like two laptops and I go run into the front of the room, I grab all my guests, "So you guys follow me." Right? Like the pied piper, you guys are all just getting. "Let's go!" And so I get to the back of the room and my brain is exploding, my heart's pumping out of my chest. I'm sweating profusely because I'm like, "Oh, my gosh. This is gonna be so cool." How do I not ... Like how do I hide my excitement? Right? [crosstalk 00:33:02]- Steve Larsen: Yeah, to keep it cool. John Ferguson: [inaudible 00:33:03]. It's like this rush, right? It's like drinking five Red Bulls at once. Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: And so [inaudible 00:33:09], I'm going, "Okay everybody. For those of you who are the number ones, raise your hands again. Okay. Fantastic. I've got two laptops over here. I've got them open and ready to go. Just get your credit cards out. I [inaudible 00:33:20] to sign up [inaudible 00:33:21] here. [inaudible 00:33:23] got questions [inaudible 00:33:24]. Let's go!" Yeah. That's about how it was man. Silence. Nobody moved, like not one bit. Steve Larsen: Wow. John Ferguson: And you know I had the, "Oh, man. That's great stuff, John. I'm just not ready to move forward." "Oh, I didn't bring my checkbook." I got all the excuses and like when you go from such a high, like you're gonna win, right? Then you literally drop and then you melt and you're like about to be in tears, your face turns red and you're like, "Oh, my gosh. How did misjudge all this?" Steve Larsen: Right. Right. John Ferguson: That was the moment I knew that I screwed up and I needed to do it better and I had learned right then and there, that I didn't know enough about the people that I had invited to this meeting. That I was told what I considered a lie, was that just invite people, throw a diaper against the wall, some of them will stick, others are gonna slide down, and I realized it doesn't matter what you're throwing against the wall. It's just gonna leave a mess and so I knew right then and there, I needed a better system. I needed a better way to engage the right people and not just people. I knew that I never wanted to chase other people. I never wanted to feel that way again, where I had this pit in my stomach, not because of the success that I was gonna have, but because what did I just do and how did I look, and I just told everybody this was gonna be fantastic and I was exhausted- Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: Because I worked so hard, not one person purchased man, not one and that was the day. And I went in I started ... we're finding the systems and we're finding how I ask people questions and I read every sales book I possibly could and I wasn't finding the information in there. And it was difficult and I started with Rich Dad organization, I started working with some of these telemarketing teams and learning what they did on the phone and how they sold coaching and mentoring and packages and I literally just went into the trenches for a couple of years. And I took what I learned from speaking and training and teaching in the network marketing industry in front of these big rooms and what was going on behind the scenes with a lot of these organizations selling trainings and services and products on how they were enrolling people at these higher levels. And it just ... It just ... They had a baby dude. They had a baby. I'm gonna take this and I'm gonna take that, it was like a mad scientist, Frankenstein, let's just put it all together and over the years, it came out fantastic and to like ride it off of the wings. And I don't really like to like talk about myself a lot, but in this instance I need to and I don't like the phrase ... I hate this phrase and maybe you do too, I don't say this to impress you, but to impress upon you. I hate that phrase, like just tell us the truth, you're trying to impress us. Right? And so I hate that phrase- Steve Larsen: Brag about yourself John. Let us know, let us hear it. John Ferguson: Yeah, man. So it's time to impress you. So I'm telling this so you are impressed by some dude who grew up in Southern California in a box with his entire family, looking like Charlie from the Chocolate Factory, who was able to make it out of that world just by sheer bull dogged determination. I wasn't smart, I just gathered all the stuff, mixed it up in the blender and poof. I joined a network marketing company a few years back and I said, "Look, I have test this method and I'm only gonna be using my method. I'm not gonna be using anything else. I'm gonna con ... I'm gonna throw out some bait. I'm gonna throw out some advertising and get people calling me, and I'm gonna see if these people that I do not know, I can put in some information with ... through a webinar, through testimonials, through Craigslist ads, and let's see if I can build a rapport well enough just with this system, but it works." I started that in the network marketing company, I think it was about November, when I actually started selling and advertising, and by the end of the year, I had taken their sales contest. I was number one that year. I was inducted into their ... Like a lot of you guys know like the Diamond Club or the President's Advisory Council of [crosstalk 00:37:33]- Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: Literally inducted into that crew and people were upset. Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: Because there were people who worked all year long in the network marketing business and they hadn't closed enough sales to make it. Like I remember I had beaten one of the ladies who did a phenomenal job. She's a wonderful person, very good dear friend of mine now, who I've had the opportunity to train and teach her teams this as well. They had done great but I only won by like six grand. Like my revenue was ... It was that close. But with only having a couple of months to finish off this ... the contest by the end of the year to go to their national convention and at that point, I knew I had something different that you could use on the phone, you use in person. That an influencer can use to sell coaching, that you can sell products, you could sell water, you could help people [inaudible 00:38:23] literally a [inaudible 00:38:25] individuals [inaudible 00:38:26], 'cause we know that people don't like what they need. Right? We know that. Like if you just give them the needs like, "[inaudible 00:38:32], like I know I need to take vitamins but I'm not choking the horse pill down." Right? So how do I give them the desire? How do I fulfill the desire and the need at the same time and then wrap it all up into a bow to where they're begging me to buy? And that's what this is man and that's what we've developed and it has shrunk the time it takes for me to work with people. I work about 20 hours a week now in what I do and the rest of the time I spend with my family man and I like to invest in real estate still. I like to buy properties, I really like helping people, I like traveling and speaking and running masterminds, and that's it dude. I mean that's kind of the evolution of this process. That's how I came up with it and I can't a 100% credit because I learned a lot in these different organizations from different people, that had little pieces. Right? I think that's we do as entrepreneurs- Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: As influencers. We've been influenced ourselves to actually go out and influence and so for me to take credit, I'm not a self made millionaire. Okay. It's a team thing, whether it's a book that you've read from someone who has passed away, passed along that knowledge in that book or that audio course, or the mentors that you've continued to have and the friendships and the relationships. Like I've learned a ton from you Steven, like a lot of what you've taught has helped even this process succeed in greater- Steve Larsen: Oh, cool. John Ferguson: And the other businesses that we own. And so like I think that the more people understand how connected that we are, the whole lot easier that everything becomes and it's less about closing and it's more about connecting and getting people to desire what they need, than shoving it down their throat. So hopefully the answer's there. I went on a discourse man. Steve Larsen: I love the discourse, but it's so true like that whole phrase, we all rise together. To me, for some reason that always seemed a little bit cheesy but the longer I've been doing this, the more I've realized the exact same. It's like look, I did not get anywhere on my own, like it's all ... We all do it together, we have to. If you try to do it on your own, you actually will drown. Anyway, I ... I'm so thankful for what you taught here and it just ... I think the listeners are gonna love it. Guys if you have, please reach out to John and say thank you. You can learn more from him as well. Where can people find you, John? John Ferguson: The easiest thing right now to do is I like to connect with people. I like to see who you are, what you're doing in the industry and one of the greatest tools right now out there Facebook. I'm on Facebook, you gotta go by my real name John Albert Ferguson. I know, it's not just John Ferguson. I got the big Al from my dad. So John Albert Ferguson on Facebook and it's real simple. I've got my personal profile and I got my page, and my page ... You can hit me up in the messenger and if you need some help, I'd love to spend about like a 15 minute consultation with you for free. No charge, just to kinda see where you're at, what you're doing, maybe we can unlock a few things and help to implement it and if it's something we wanna work together, you'll be on that, fantastic, and we'll find a way and we do coaching. I do mastermind, such like that, but really I wanna provide value first, and what they're gonna see too Steven, is I love real estate investing. And so you'll see a lot about my real estate and things I do and as well as my coaching and training and speaking within the sales and network marketing arena. So I think that's probably the easiest thing to do man, is just so they can get a picture of who I am, like my family and what I do. I think that one's the biggest thing, is in this industry I think a lot of people don't sell, they don't close. They can't because they feel they have accomplish some level of success before they can introduce their thing. Right? Well let's say I've got this bottle of water here that's gonna change people's lives. Right? Well maybe it's you're first week and your life hasn't changed yet. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You can poster the water, you can your upline, you poster just the experience you've currently had in the last 24 hours of being involved in an amazing community of people and enough is enough. Don't have to be right now and I like the whole act as if thing, but why not just be you? Like be yourself. Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: Like are you going to allow somebody into your house with dirty, muddy shoes? Probably not. You're gonna ask them to take it off. Are you gonna let just anybody join your thing? Probably not and you shouldn't. Like if you're like, "No. Yeah. I will. I haven't made a sale so I gotta close somebody. Like if anyone wants to come in and give me money, they're in." No. That could be way more headache. Steve Larsen: Yeah. No way. John Ferguson: That would be ... It's not worth the headache. You wanna retain the right people so they can build the right community with you and you'll have a whole lot more fun. Like the money doesn't matter. You'll make more money being happy and enrolling the right people than you will trying to get other people just to buy- Steve Larsen: Amen. Amen. We need that on t-shirt and a mug. That was good. Yeah, anyway. I appreciate that. Sorry to cut you off there. John Ferguson: [crosstalk 00:43:32]. Steve Larsen: You were on a roll man. I'm loving the dialogue. This is awesome. John Ferguson: Yeah. No, we're good. Steve Larsen: Hey ... Thank you so much. Hey guys, go check out John though. Go to ... Go to his Facebook page. He's doing ... What ... You said working 20 hours a week, which is awesome. Obviously walking the walk, talking the talk. You know what you're doing and for me it's been fun to look around and go find out like, "Oh man, who were the ones in MLM who are really killing it? Who are ..." and not ... Meaning they've actually figured out a system and you clearly just over and over and over pop up as like one of the most expert individuals in this space and this area and I'm just so thankful to have you on the show. Please go check out John though at Facebook, connect with him. You can do a 15 minute consultation with him. For those of you guys who are jumping in Secret MLM Hacks, you also got an awesome training module from him as well. John, thanks so much for being on the show today. John Ferguson: Yeah. Fantastic. It was a pleasure. I really appreciate it and love what you're doing, Steven. You got some amazing things happening for your listeners and Secret MLM Hacks rocks. I mean if your listeners haven't joined that yet, you need to because that is what we're talking about today, is really engaging the proper people with the proper solutions that are geared towards their desires and their needs and you're laying it out there in plain speech that anybody can implement. So yeah, I'm just glad to have been a part ... a smart part of this and helping your audience succeed, man. Steve Larsen: Oh, man. Thanks so much. Appreciate it and thanks everyone for listening. Hey, thanks for listening. Please remember to rate and subscribe, whether you just want more leads or automated MLM funnels, or if you just wanna learn to get paid more for your product, head over to secretmlmhacks.com to join the next free training today.

Steve Larsen: Hey, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Secret MLM Hacks Radio. So here's the real mystery. How do real MLMers like us bleed and cheat, and only bug family members and friends? You want to grow a profitable home business? How do we recruit a players into our downlines and create extra incomes, and still have plenty of time for the rest of our lives? That's the blaring question and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Secret MLM Hacks Radio. Hi you guys doing? Super glad to be here. I feel like it's been a while since I've published. Really, it's only been a week, but super excited to be able to get this out. It is definitely cold here. We've had a lot of ... Anyway, it's been really, really chilly here in Boise Idaho. That's where we live right now. My wife and I are both from Denver. Now, it's funny because last year there was a ton of snow here comparative to how much they usually get, but compared to Denver, where my wife and I were from, it was nothing. Everyone was calling it snowmagedon, and all the stuff, and there's barely any inches of snow on the ground, and we're like ... Anyway. There was a five foot snow storm once growing up. Anyway, been all over the place. Been lots of fun. Well, as such, it's been very lively here in the Larsen home because I believe since it's been so cold, a little bit of wildlife has been trying to move in. So we've had some mice, which is totally disgusting, and I've never had to deal with that problem ever. It's been very lively with my little four year old and two year old, and we've been running around. Anyway, I'm not sure why I'm telling you this, but it's been fun, and I've enjoyed being able to go and just spend more time with the family. You know what I mean? I hope you guys do too. Hey, I wanted to touch on something here that I think is one of the major reasons why stereotypically MLMers have a hard time recruiting. Okay? Now, someone asked me this question yesterday actually. Asking, "How do I get my people ... How do I just even get like the base team, the core team, the team of people that I wish that I had to go run my MLM with me?" And I was thinking about the answer to that question, and I was thinking about how I've done it. Guys, just in the last week alone I've recruited 20 people. All through automated systems, or at least, so far right now, they're all on the phase where they've been automatically filtered. I should call it that, and they've applied to join my downline. I told you guys about that. that system that I have running, and it does amazingly well, and it's very, very exciting and I think it does so well because I always tell everyone in my downline when they join, to get all my systems because obviously I want them to be successful because of course, it makes me successful also. So why would I not? Right? It's gone really, really well. I've actually enjoyed going through just tons, I mean, awesome stuff with this team that I have, and it just ... Rock stars. I mean, guys the quality of individual, and I'm not comparing people ... I feel bad. Please don't think that I'm judging people at all, right? But there are certain times in a person's life where they're going to be better at business than others, right? If they have the actual time to focus on a business. If they want to do it, rather than me trying to convince them. If I have to convince somebody to join my downline, they're the wrong person already. Okay? Now, I was super sad, a person that I know, that I've come close with decided that they did not want to join, and I was like, "Gosh." I was actually hurt by that because I just have so much respect for this individual, and I was very, very sad about that actually, and I'm sure you guy's have all been there as well because I knew that that person would be successful with it, if they just wanted to be coachable or trainable with it. Gosh, it stung. It did sting. But if you have to convince somebody to join your downline, you shouldn't want them anyways. Okay? What are you going to do? Are you going to put a cattle prod behind their back the entire way, and force them to do all the things it takes? No. It takes a very motivated individual to be successful in anything, but especially in MLM. Anyway, interesting stuff, right? so I was thinking about this person's question. "Hey, how do I get these people, right? How do I find more awesome rock stars? How do I find rock stars?" And that's honestly ... I was really excited she asked that because it's the entire ... That's all that my chorus that's coming out in January, January fourth, that's the date. January fourth. That's all my course teaches. It's how do you find and recruit rock stars on autopilot? Right? How do you actually get those kinds of people to come to you? A lot of people treat the MLM game as if they're hunters. They track and they trap, and they ensnare, and they grab, and they hold, and they strangle, and they get people, and those are the actions that define what they do to go recruit people. That's the wrong way. You're not going to get ... you think you're really going to go get an A playing team like that? No. You have to flip the table. You got to flip the cards. It's a totally different game. It's not like you're playing the wrong hand, you're playing the wrong game. Okay? I mean, it's like anything else, right? It's all about becoming attractive. It's all about creating offers in a way that makes people come to you, right? What I really wanted to point out in this episode is that ... Okay, this is one of the biggest lessons I've learned. When I was sitting on my couch like four years ago now, almost four years now actually, almost exactly, I realized that I had been going about MLM all wrong, and that I was doing the hunting method. Right? I was a hunter, right? And I was hunting and I was saying ... I was tracking, and tracking, and ensnaring, and trying to ... What are the three magic phrases I can say to get somebody to join my downline at any time. That kind of garbage that you see all the time inside the ML Ministry from other educators and stuff. I think it's garbage. It's dumb. Are you kidding me? Are you really going to force somebody into success? It doesn't work. I mean, the amount of effort that's with it, it is not passive income. Oh, my gosh. It is not passive income. All right. 20 people recruited in the last week, and they're all for recruiting, doing crazy stuff also. That's nuts. That's nuts. I didn't beg any of them to join. They are motivate. They're fired up. They're killing it on their own. Why? How did that happen? It's part of what I realized when I was sitting on my couch, 2:00 AM in the morning four years ago. It was freezing. It was a winter time, and I was reading this ebook and I realized that I was doing it all wrong. Then I realized that I needed to create value, okay? I learned, and I don't remember if it was from what I was reading or what, but what I learned is that in some way shape or form you're going to purchase your customers. Okay? Understand that. You're going to buy them somehow, whether you're going to buy them through ads. So, some money or you're going to spend time creating relationships. Right? So, time or some other value piece that you put out there to get them to come to you. The time, value, or money. I mean, something like that. You're going to spend something in order to get attention. Okay? If you think that you're not going to, you're kidding yourself. So think through. Like, "Okay, how can I actually start being successful in this MLM game?" Right, and I'm excited to go through and teach you those kinds of things. That's exactly what I've created and put together, and I'm excited to show you what I've done in order to do that, and that's what the Secret MLM Hacks course is all about coming up, and I think I just spoke in a huge circle right there. But, I'm excited for you guys to go through that because it teaches ... Start thinking that with your MLM. Okay. What's my plan? Am I going to buy my customer? Meaning, am I going to spend money on ads? Whether it's on Facebook, or YouTube, or I don't know, wherever. Am I going to buy my customer through my time? Now, it's going to be hard, especially in the beginning phases of an MLM, to not spend time. Right? You should spend time mentoring, creating leaders, creating ... I'm not trying to ever take the networking out of the network marketing. Does that make sense? I'm not trying to take the personal touch out of this game. That's not how this works. It does require a little bit of personal finesse with each other. Obviously, you have to develop as an individual, which is trust for anything, so I don't have to point that out. Or am I going to put pieces of value out there. Now, I chose that third one. I chose number three. I want to put pieces of value out there that create relationships, so that people see what I can offer, and I don't have to spend so much time on the front end recruiting people. I can focus on training the ones that are actually joining. Does that make sense? That's how I struck ... I did that on purpose. I structured it in a way to do that. So what I did, is I went and I found the top people who were in the industry, and I found a lot of the content pieces that they had put out there, and I figured ... I was like, "Okay, I see what this guy's doing, but I actually think I could recreate that, and better." So that's what I did. I married up several different concepts and things like that from different gurus that were out there, and I re filmed it, and I put it out there for free, and the response was insane. I could not believe how many people were messaging me. the weirdest thing happened. I put it out there out on the open web for free, I was just trying to help solve problems, and then one day somebody messaged me and they said, "Hey, what's your downline? I just want to join it. If this is the kind of thing that you're doing." It was something like that. If that's the kind of stuff that you're doing or if that's the kind of systems you have or whatever. Like, I really want to be apart of it. And I was like, "What?" It took me back, but then that started going faster, and faster, and faster, and people started joining, and people started coming in like hotcakes and bringing their friends in because suddenly I was answering some big questions for them. That was my whole value ad. I was just trying to answer legitimate questions. I was trying to actually be very, very valuable. Stuff that they should have paid for, I was giving away for free. Right? That's one of the ways that I created the relationships with it. So that's all I wanted to say. When you think through your MLM, when you think through the business opportunity you have, ask yourself, what is my upline telling me to do right now? Are they trying to have me buy my customers through money? Do they want me to spend money on ads? Through my time, which is what most of them do, or by putting value out there that solve actual problems, which most of them don't teach that. Start thinking through, like ... and it's fine. If you want to do it some other ways, I'm not telling you not to do it, but I am telling you that there are other ways, and start thinking through what legitimate problems you can solve in the marketplace. What are those problems? What can you actually go solve? I'm not telling ... It does not have to take a lot of your time. You could actually just go and record little content pieces. I'm sure you have a phone. There's a mic feature on your phone most likely, right? There's probably a camera, and you flip that camera sideways, you answer some questions, start publishing, and putting stuff out there, pretty soon you're going to start finding like minded people who want to do what your doing. Who see the issues that you see. Who see the problems. I guarantee you it's the reason why you're still following me. What is this, episode 40, 41, something like that? You're still following me because you're resonating with the things that I'm talking about, right? You are literally walking through the very thing that I'm describing right now. Okay? I want you to think about how? How did Steve Larsen do that to me? What are the beliefs that I had ahead of time about his thing that I've realized are wrong? Hm? I want you to do that. I want you to start thinking through like, "Hey, what are the beliefs that people are having when I go and start talking to people about my opportunity?" Are they saying, "Oh, it's a scam." Or, "Oh, it's a pyramid scheme." Or, "Oh, that's a ..." whatever it is, those top concerns. Right? They're going to give you a lot of surface level concerns. It's your job to look a little bit deeper. Find the core, real reasons why they're saying what they're saying. Maybe they failed an MLM before. Maybe they wish they could be in it, and they just don't know what to say, or maybe they wish they could be in it, but they're afraid of how their family or friends will look at them. Right? Or maybe they want to be in one, they're looking for something. They just don't really understand what a comp plan really is, or how it works, or how they actually get paid, or how I'm going to make money? Whatever it is that you get passion about solving, solve it for free, put it out there, and I guarantee you ... Maybe I'm not allowed to guarantee, but ... Insert legal disclaimer here. But you're going to get people to come to you, and they're going to come and it's going to resonate with them, and they're going to say, "Oh, my gosh. Yes, thank you. I get it. I see what you're doing. What's your opportunity, right? And whoosh, Oh, my gosh. You just flipped the tables. Why?" Because you contributed to a relationship before asking for a sale. That's why. You got to do that. If you don't do it, if you don't contribute to a relationship before asking for the sale, that's like asking for someone to marry you on the very first date. Let alone maybe you didn't even go on a date, you're just walking up to strangers. You wouldn't do that. That's ridiculous. So how come we're not creating relationships before we're asking for sales? I understand it's one of the easiest reasons why. You can just go straight to friends and family because you have relationships with them already, but it's scary to do so. Again, not telling you not to do it, but if you feel confident that it's not going to mess anything up or be weird or whatever, okay, totally fine, but understand that you need to contribute to a relationship. You've got to solve problems. You've got to have a little bit of likeability or whatever it is. Sorry, likeability or whatever it is. Attractability somehow, or perhaps a little bit of attraction to you because what you're doing is you're developing trust with that individual through your content. Okay? If I have a hard time knowing what kind of episode I want to put out there, I don't publish. I want this to solve actual problems for you that you should be paying for. Okay? Whether or not you join my MLM, totally fine with that. This is not a pitch fest. I'm not here to talk about that, okay? I want purpose. If I even tell you the name of the one I'm in, it will kill the goose. So I'm never going to tell you the MLM I'm in. That's why it works so well because it follows rule number one, my rule number one, which is they come to me. Okay? Oh, my gosh. When you do that and when you teach your downline to do that, huge problems get resolved. Stereotypical to the industry kind of problems get resolved because now I'm not tracking and trapping, right? I'm attracting. I'm solving legitimate issues without ever asking for the sale. Now, some sales personnel will probably tell you that I'm being ridiculous. I get it. I know. You're right. I probably could be a little but more aggressive in certain areas with it, but I've learned over experience that I'd rather do it this way and get a little bit fewer recruits, but really high quality ones. Does that make sense? So I want you to start thinking through that. I want you to start thinking ... Because this is one of the biggest secrets to true duplication. If you can teach people how to do what I'm doing right now, which is what I teach my downline to do, it starts to actually duplicate for real because now they're going and solving other people's legitimate issues as well. And you know what? Let's say I get someone who's like, "Ah, Steven. I wish I had a podcast, but I just can't get myself to do it." You know how much ... Everyone talks about MLM, how it's business opportunity wrapped on a personal development course, right? MLM is a lot of personal development. Well, that's not just MLM. That's all business in general. I've had more personal development through the active entrepreneurship and business than any personal development course out there ever. Right? So I get excited when someone say, "Gah, Steven, I don't know if I can create lead gen stuff. Steven, I don't know if I can create X,Y,Z. Ah, I'm nervous about this or whatever." I get pumped about it because I know now what to work on with them. I know where to move with them. I see a person in action. I see a person with desire, okay? That's one of the biggest issues with old MLM models. You're trying to go get people to buy something who had no desire at all in the first place to do it. That was one of the reasons why I stopped doing door-to-door sales. It's not that it wasn't great. I was good at it. But I realized, wait a minute. I'm waking up every single day trying to convince people who were not planning to spend money to spend money. Who are not planning ... Not that it's not possible. I did it. I was good at it. I was a telemarketer too. I was really good at that, but instead I wanted to flip the switch. I wanted to be able to change the game. Where I could put stuff out, and start having them find me. Okay? Again, I know. I could probably be a little more aggressive and pull people and be like, "Hey, this is my thing and I'm going to close you," and I'm still solving problems, but I just ... It's not worth it to me. So I don't it that way, and whatever your MLM is start thinking through how you can do that, and how you can apply it to your thing. How you can apply it. What can you do to start flipping the tables? If you're having a hard time recruiting people, take what I'm going ... Okay. Please raise your hand right now and say, "Steven, I will be coachable for this next sentence." Okay? All right. Here it is. If you're having a hard time recruiting people, you're probably not valuable enough yet. Now, I don't mean as an individual. I don't mean as you as a person. I'm sure you're an amazing individual, and that's not what I'm ... I'm not saying that you're the bane of the existence of the planet. That's not at all what I'm saying. I'm saying that you're not valuable enough yet. Meaning, you have not solved enough problems for another person or you've not created enough of a relationship, or you have not gone out and actually shown genuine interest in the other person, and they can tell that you're looking at them like a number. Okay? That's where the game will fail. Learn how to become valuable. That is worth more than any check that you could write yourself. Learn how to become valuable in the marketplace and it will serve you forever. Anyways, that's all I got for you guys. Okay? Anyway, I ... You buy your customers somehow. Don't expect not to. You won't get anybody. So somehow you buy leads, whether it's your time, your money, or your value, and figure out which one you want to do and then marry it. Get good at it. It's just like anything else. You'll suck at first, and that's fine. Just like anything else, and you'll get on the bike again, and you'll fall and you'll scrape your knee, and you'll get bloodied up a little bit as you do it, and that's fine. It's part of the journey, and it's part of the purification that comes with entrepreneurship, which is amazing. It is so fun. It's my favorite part of the whole thing. One of them anyway, but anyway, that's pretty much it. That's all I got for you. Figure out how you're actually going to buy, quote-unquote, buy your customers. Money, time, or value, and get to it. You will see how funny ... You'll know when you hit it because you'll have struck a pain point and people are going to come flooding to you. That's exactly when I knew that I had struck it directly on the pain points that people were feeling, and I knew that I could go help them. Anyways, that's it. All right, guys. Have a good one. Talk to you later. Bye. Hey, thanks for listening. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback for me. Do you have a question that you want answered live on the show? Go to secretmlmhacksradio.com to submit your question, and download your free MLM master's pack.

In episode #25, Wilco talks about the most important of every sale which is what do you once someone becomes a customer of yours. Time Stamped Show Notes: �00:30: Today's episode is going be relevant for you and you specifically. 01:15: The most important aspect is actually, what do you once someone becomes a customer of yours. 01:48: You need to put in the work to get the customers in. 01:59: It's so much cheaper to get someone who's already a customer to buy another product of yours over and over again. 02:48: Now, the most important part is often to get your customers to consume your product. 04:10: The moment that they start consuming your course, the moment they actually go through your course, that's when things change. 04:51: He had a genius idea for this, in his course, he's basically adding incentives for people to go through it. 06:40: Connectio.io, it's a platform where we sell various tools for Facebook advertising. 06:43: ConnectLeads, it's a tool to collect Facebook lead ads and add them into your auto spinner. 06:45: Connect Audience which automatically synchronizes any of your email lists. 06:50: ConnectRetarget, you can run behavioral target audiences. 07:35: I bundled them all together, we call that ConnectSuite. 09:10: As I said, I'm in a software as a service, so we are depending on recurring revenue. 09:55: I'm actually thinking of creating a course which basically takes them by the hand, and then going through every step by step, how do you basically from zero to creating a profitable Facebook ad campaign. 11:35: On top of that, I'm currently setting up various email automations that basically will check that they consumed the content. 12:35: We know that once people actually go through and consume everything, they're going to be way more likely to actually stick around. 13:53: Don't just sell them the idea of that, make sure to actually go through after the sale. 14:09 If you even add more value to the product than you initially promise them, then they're going to be a loyal customer for life. 15:06: It's going to be a customer for life if you treat them well right and with respect.00:30: Today's episode is going be relevant for you and you specifically. 01:15: The most important aspect is actually, what do you once someone becomes a customer of yours. 01:48: You need to put in the work to get the customers in. 01:59: It's so much cheaper to get someone who's already a customer to buy another product of yours over and over again. 02:48: Now, the most important part is often to get your customers to consume your product. 04:10: The moment that they start consuming your course, the moment they actually go through your course, that's when things change. 04:51: He had a genius idea for this, in his course, he's basically adding incentives for people to go through it. 06:40: Connectio.io, it's a platform where we sell various tools for Facebook advertising. 06:43: ConnectLeads, it's a tool to collect Facebook lead ads and add them into your auto spinner. 06:45: Connect Audience which automatically synchronizes any of your email lists. 06:50: ConnectRetarget, you can run behavioral target audiences. 07:35: I bundled them all together, we call that ConnectSuite. 09:10: As I said, I'm in a software as a service, so we are depending on recurring revenue. 09:55: I'm actually thinking of creating a course which basically takes them by the hand, and then going through every step by step, how do you basically from zero to creating a profitable Facebook ad campaign. 11:35: On top of that, I'm currently setting up various email automations that basically will check that they consumed the content. 12:35: We know that once people actually go through and consume everything, they're going to be way more likely to actually stick around. 13:53: Don't just sell them the idea of that, make sure to actually go through after the sale. 14:09 If you even add more value to the product than you initially promise them, then they're going to be a loyal customer for life. 15:06: It's going to be a customer for life if you treat them well right and with respect. 00:30: Today's episode is going be relevant for you and you specifically. 01:15: The most important aspect is actually, what do you once someone becomes a customer of yours. 01:48: You need to put in the work to get the customers in. 01:59: It's so much cheaper to get someone who's already a customer to buy another product of yours over and over again. 02:48: Now, the most important part is often to get your customers to consume your product. 04:10: The moment that they start consuming your course, the moment they actually go through your course, that's when things change. 04:51: He had a genius idea for this, in his course, he's basically adding incentives for people to go through it. 06:40: Connectio.io, it's a platform where we sell various tools for Facebook advertising. 06:43: ConnectLeads, it's a tool to collect Facebook lead ads and add them into your auto spinner. 06:45: Connect Audience which automatically synchronizes any of your email lists. 06:50: ConnectRetarget, you can run behavioral target audiences. 07:35: I bundled them all together, we call that ConnectSuite. 09:10: As I said, I'm in a software as a service, so we are depending on recurring revenue. 09:55: I'm actually thinking of creating a course which basically takes them by the hand, and then going through every step by step, how do you basically from zero to creating a profitable Facebook ad campaign. 11:35: On top of that, I'm currently setting up various email automations that basically will check that they consumed the content. 12:35: We know that once people actually go through and consume everything, they're going to be way more likely to actually stick around. 13:53: Don't just sell them the idea of that, make sure to actually go through after the sale. 14:09 If you even add more value to the product than you initially promise them, then they're going to be a loyal customer for life. 15:06: It's going to be a customer for life if you treat them well right and with respect.   Transcription:                   Hey hey. It's Wilco de Kreij here back for another episode. Today's episode is going be relevant for you and you specifically. The reason why I know that is because this is going to be very relevant for pretty much everyone who runs a business, everyone who's selling something, whether it's online or offline actually. It doesn't really matter. Today I'm going to talk about, what is essentially the most important aspect of every sale. Whenever you sell something to a customer, like I said, it doesn't matter whether it's online or offline, whether you're in B to B, B to C, or if you're running a set of servers like I do, or it really does not matter. The most important thing isn't what you do up to that point, isn't the kind of adds that you're running, isn't the kind of landing page you get, isn't the kind of emails that you're sending out. It isn't all that stuff. The most important aspect is actually, what do you once someone becomes a customer of yours.              The thing is that a lot of people are like a lot of the times, really focused on getting new customers through the door. A lot of the time as a marketer, it's focused on that aspect, but the reason why we're focusing so much time on that is because it's hard to get customers to the door. Right? Obviously I love it. I'm a marketer. It's not like you just put one message online, and you'll get 1,000 customers. You need to put in the work. You need to put in the work to get the customers in. Here's the thing. Here's the thing.             Once someone is a customer, it's so much cheaper, so much easier to get them to become repeat customers. It's so much cheaper to get someone who's already a customer to buy another product of yours over and over again, compared to going for someone new who's never heard of you before. This goes for every kind of market. Personally, I am as a service, which means that I'm very much focused on recurring. I'm charging a monthly or yearly. Obviously, I want them to actually start using our platforms. I want them to get results that they desire because once they get the results they desire using our platforms, they're never going to leave. Right? They're going to stick around. They're going to pay us monthly, month after month after month, year after year after year. That is our goal. That is our win win. They are getting the value that they want, and in return they're paying us a monthly fee. Right?             Now, the most important part is often to get your customers to consume your product. Right? Let's take for example digital products, digital courses. There's a ton of people who sell digital courses but as you may know, most people who buy an online course, they don't go through the course. They don't. I'm going to assume that let's say you have an online course, and you create something of value. You create a course that I'm going to assume that you're proud of it, right? You created the course. You put all your heart and soul into it and you're proud of it, and you know that if someone is going through that course, it will help them. You know what else will happen once they go through that course? They will thank you for it. They will love you for it. They will respect you. They will see you as the authority.             If someone just sees and ad on Facebook and they see your ad and maybe they go through your sales page, your webinar and then they purchase your course. They don't consume the product, they just made an impulse decision to purchase your product but there's a good chance that next week or so, they don't even know who you are, or a month later or so. You haven't really built a connection. You haven't really helped them. The moment that they start consuming your course, the moment they actually go through your course, that's when things change. Now, obviously you can think, I'm doing every thing I can to sell them. I'm going to get them excited and assuming that they're excited enough to purchase my course, then they're going to consume the thing as well.              Well, that's where you're wrong. Even after they open their wallet, even after they took the credit card and made a purchase, then you sort of need to sell them again into going through your product. You need to do everything you can. I say a wile ago I was at a mastermind, and there was this guy. His name was Dean Harland. He had a genius idea for this. In his course, he's basically adding incentives for people to go through it. He basically he raised the price of the product a little but, but because of that, basically I'm just going to give you an example number. These are not real numbers. Let's say his original course was $50. What he would actually do is he would say, "Hey it's not 50. It's actually $60." Let's say it's 10 modules and then once people bought it, he would say, "Alright cool. You know what? Every single time you finish a module, I'll give you a dollar. Every single time, I'll give you a dollar." Obviously, they'll be paid at the end, because they don't want to send over a dollar every single time, because of the hassle.             Because of that, people got instant gratification. I'm not saying you need to pay people to go through your course. Definitely not. What he did is genius because it made people, even more excited not just to purchase the course, because often people just get excited to buy it because the idea of getting the results, but actually going through the course, that's another thing. He got people excited go through the course, to actually go and consume all the content and because of that, he immediately turned into the guy who helped him, and the actual authority, and the expert in his market. Because of that, it was no so much easier to then say, "I've got all these other kind of products," because now they already knew, this course was insanely good, especially for the kind of money I paid. The next kind of course is probably good as well.             His uptake on his follow up courses, they went through the roof using this method. The reason why I'm bringing this up right here is actually because we're actually going through something in our business as well. As you probably know, or may or may not know actually, one of my businesses is called Connectio.io. It's a platform where we sell various tools for Facebook advertising. For example, we have ConnectLeads. It's a tool to collect Facebook lead ads and add them into your auto spinner. We have Connect Audience which automatically synchronizes any of your email lists. For example, if you're using Active Campaign, you can create a custom audience on Facebook saying everyone who opens a certain email or everyone who did not open. We have ConnectRetarget. You can run behavioral target audiences. You can actually read target people based on for example, if they scroll to a certain section on your page, or based on how many seconds or how many minutes they spend on your site, and all kinds of behavioral things.             We got a bunch of Facebook tools and what I recently did as a test, is I bundled them all together. I sold them as a package all together. We call that ConnectSuite and based on that, they've got all these tools together. Here's the problem. Basically we said, here's ConnectSuite, and you get all these different tools. Then people log in and they saw all these different tools and they we didn't notice but as we started talking to our customers, they were sort of overwhelmed. They didn't know where to start. They didn't even, they were literally overwhelmed. They were literally like, alright, where do I start? Do I start with ConnectExplore, ConnectLeads, ConnectRetarget, ConnectAudience? What do I do first?               We thought, this is an amazing value for Facebook advertising, and it is. We see that people who are already using Facebook ads, they immediately see the value because the get it. They get what all these tools do and they get the amount of value. They get what kind of impact it has on their results. We also get customers in, who are just starting out with Facebook ads, and they're sort of overwhelmed. Because of that, they're not actually going through everything and they want to be taken by the hand and show them what is what.              Because of that, because people were not actually going through everything, because people were not really consuming it, the actual cancellation rate was way too high. As I said, I'm in a software as a service, so we are depending on recurring revenue. We need to decrease our turn out rate. We need to make sure that most people are going to want to stick with us. They don't want to cancel. If people are canceling because they don't even know what we do, then we have something to work on.              I'll give you an example. Here's something we're currently working on to fix this. I still want to sell all of these products as a package because I think it's an amazing value and I know it's going to help a lot of Facebook advertisers, but because I don't want to overwhelm them, I'm actually thinking. This is right now just something that's in my mind. If you want a bit of a back story, you might actually see this later on in a webinar or somewhere in a special offer anything like that, when I'm testing it out. Here's the idea.              Instead of basically selling ConnectSuite, I'm actually thinking of creating a course which basically takes them by the hand, and then going through every step by step, how do you basically from zero to creating a profitable Facebook ad campaign. Not just using our tools, but leveraging our tools but also leveraging all the regular things that are inside the Facebook ads, all the regular strategies and how do you write your ads and things like that. By doing that, we can actually if we sell that course to potential customers, and along with that, we actually say, "On top of that you'll actually get a trail to ConnectSuite." They'll still be able to use all these tools, but now instead of buying all the tools, and in their minds they should be getting value out of all of these tools, now they are actually purchasing that course. That course has a single entry point. They have a single entry point like this is what I should actually go through. Lesson one, module one, module two, module three, module four, module five, module six, et cetera, et cetera.             Because of that, it's going to be easier for them to go through everything without being overwhelmed because it's going to be short videos one by one, and instead of confusing them with like five different options. Where do you get started. You get the point. My idea is that that's going to help a lot. On top of that, still I don't just want to assume that people are going to go through the content. On top of that, I'm currently setting up various email automations that basically will check. This is something more advanced. I'm not sure what other easy tools for this to create. I'm using ActiveCampaign so I'm a bit of a nerd. I would say so. Actually doing some checks and sending custom bags over to see if someone went through a module or not. Basically, what we're going to do is basically create a photo sequence that will depend based on what people have already been through.             If they purchased but they haven't been through the course, they're going to get certain emails. If they already went through certain parts of the course, then they're going to get emails about the parts they have not yet been going through. We're not just going to say, go through the course. No. We're actually getting them excited. We're still kind of selling them on the idea. We're showing for example case studies and what people have done using that system, or we're sending out small triggers or curiosity gaps or anything we can do to try to get people excited about the next step they should take. We know that once people actually go through and consume everything, they're going to be way more likely to actually stick around. By the end of the course, they might just have a profitable Facebook ad campaign, which is awesome. They'll also be doing that, leveraging our tools inside of Connectio.io.             Because of that, because they are not sort of dependent on it. Now they're used to it, they're not as likely to cancel because they already know if they will cancel on Connectio.io, then for example, their retargeting ads are not going to perform as well, because they don't have ConnectRetarget anymore. They will have to find another solution for their Facebook lead ads. They will have to manually create and update their custom audiences instead of ConnectAudience doing that automatically for them, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.             My point here is that whatever you are selling, whatever it is. It could be a service, could be B to B, could even be B to C, doesn't really matter. Make sure to get your customers to consume your product. Make sure to get them, whatever you're selling them on, whatever your product is solving for them, don't just sell them the idea of that. Make sure to actually go through after the sale. Make sure you follow them. Make sure you over deliver with even more value than you delivered upfront. If you make sure that they will go through your product, they will consume your product. If you even add more value to the product than you initially promise them, then they're going to be a loyal customer for life.             The most important thing, what you can do, when every sale happens is what you do after the sale. I'm going to be completely honest here, I haven't done that in every part of my online career. Initially I just had a couple of email campaigns and when I started out, what I was basically doing is just pitching them in the next product, next product, next product. Even though short term that kind of works. It's okay to have an upsell, but initially I was thinking, I need to sell them more. Now, I know that it's even more important to get them to consume the product, to get them to build that connection and forge that connection and then, later when the time is right, then of course, yeah, you can make them another offer if that is relevant for them, if that actually helps them. That's fine.             At that point, you already have established yourself as being a real relationship. You already have a good relationship with them. It's going to be a customer for life if you treat them well right and with respect. That's my tip for all of you today, to make sure that every single time you get a customer though the door, do whatever you can do to make them feel special, make them go through your content, make them consume your product, and just make sure you're doing whatever they want you to do and be awesome.             With that having said, I'll see you all on the next episode. Talk to you soon.              

Mock turtlenecks are cool, mock trials are neat, mock drafts must be good too. Right? They're definitely worthwhile. Fantasy Focus, Fantasy Baseball Today and Fantasy Freakshow all do them. They must be good. We did one. Listen to it. *I accidentally recorded multiple tracks on top of each other for like the first minute. It's only the first minute tho. Promise.