Podcasts about right where

Getting it Right Where it Counts // 2 SamuelDavid's life is a mess. He is violent, unfaithful, and deceitful. Yet, according to the scriptures there is something about him which makes him a man after God's heart. What in the world are we supposed to learn from a guy like this?

Help, we're still at the podcast studio, still sitting in the corner we haunt talking about yet another breakup song “Right Where you Left Me,” a bonus track off Evermore album. This one, though, is definitely a little more somber than last week's which might reflect the feeling Rachel will be having after this podcast airs because she is HEADED TO THE ERA'S TOUR! After discussing her hopes for the show, the Sibs leave you no choice but to listen to them talk about breakups forever, at least for the next couple of weeks. For any show notes, visit our website at: https://swiftandswigspod.substack.com/. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/swift-and-swigs-with-sibs/message

Dan Wingard from John L. Scott of Redmond Town Center, stops by to explain why 'You're Right Where you Are'... and Lynn Herkes explains how the WOWsuccessteam and Business Engineering can help you! Website(s): https://danwingard.johnlscott.com/ https://www.wowsuccessteam.com/

Back at it again in podcast land, and this week we're invoking the Goddess Babalon with the wonderful Peter Grey and Alkistis Dimech, the co-conspirators behind the excellent occult publishing house Scarlet Imprint. This week we delve deep into the topic of Babalon with the pair, and examine: Who was Babalon, How did the Babalon working influence Pete and Alkistis' day to day life, What are Babalon's roots, and much much more.   Reclaiming his chair from the usurper Marck, Ulysses Black returns to co-hosting duties. Main theme by Simon Smerdon (Mothboy) Music bed by chriszabriskie.com Peter Grey Biography: Peter Grey is a writer, and the co-founder of Scarlet Imprint. He is the author of The Red Goddess (2007), which has inspired the resurgence of interest in Babalon, the goddess of Revelation. His Apocalyptic Witchcraft (2013) has been called the most important modern book on witchcraft, placing it in the mythopoetic context of the sabbat and in a landscape suffering climate and ecological collapse. His Lucifer: Princeps (2015), is a study of the origins of the figure of Lucifer; he is currently writing the second part, Lucifer: Praxis. His collected writings, from 2008–2018, are published in The Brazen Vessel (2019) with those of Alkistis Dimech. His most recent work is The Two Antichrists (2021), a return to the Babalon and Antichrist workings of Jack Parsons and his eclipsed sodality The Witchcraft. He has spoken at private public events and conferences worldwide to both practitioners and academics. These have included Occulture, the Occult Conferences in Glastonbury and London, Treadwell's Bookshop, the Esoteric Book Conference in Seattle, Flambeau Noir in Portland, the Psychology, Art and the Occult conference in London, Here to Go II in Norway, the Trans-States conference in Northampton University, the Magic and Ecology conference for CRASSH at Cambridge University and Pagan Federation events. He can be heard on podcasts including Runesoup, Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast, Right Where you are Sitting Now, Thelema Now, Spirit Box, Quarantine Sessions with Jake Kobrin, Against Everyone with Conner Habib, Grimerica, Witches and Wine, Thoth-Hermes, and Rendering Unconscious. Peter lives with his lover Alkistis in the far south west of Cornwall on the edge of the Lizard peninsula, where he surfs in the cold Atlantic, walks the ancient land and pursues his magical practice. Alkistis Dimech Biography: With Peter Grey, I am the co-founder of Scarlet Imprint. I am a writer and artist – working principally with dance and the body. My practice is grounded in butô (dark dance). My work explores the occulted dimensions of the body, its subtle anatomy and sexuality as an archaeology of the flesh – drawing from the esoteric and phenomenological traditions – and seeks to unfold a process and techne of bodily spiritual transformation. I have performed in the UK, Europe and the United States, solo and in collaboration with musicians and artists, notably Z'EV, Gast Bouschet & Nadine Hilbert, and Anji Cheung – and spoken on my practice, and given workshops, at conferences and events in the UK, Europe and the United States. Selected works from 2008 to 2018 are documented in The Brazen Vessel and at alkistisdimech.com. I am currently creating Antimony, a work of texts and images on the angelic, alchemical transfiguration of the body.

'I look for stories that are not there just to educate people. If I tell a really good story and it happens to be about the global crisis, about global warming and about the effects on community, if I get your heart, then you're gonna go forward and look at other things, you're gonna start doing some research. It's like, I wanna look at and so to me, I always tell people, tell a really good story and get them on your side, and then they'll go and do their own work. As opposed to like, these are the seven things that are happening in the world right now, due to global warming. When people feel that they, they immediately start going to their shopping list or the things that they're gonna do, or if they feel they're being lectured but if you tell them a really good story, they're gonna be engaged in the story they're gonna, their heart's gonna be in, they'll have a nice little cry or they'll get angry and they'll, they'll walk outta that theatre and they will feel empowered to do something or maybe empowered to read something or to reach out to an MP and say, I gotta do something.'eith Barker is from the Métis Nation of Ontario and is artistic director of Native Earth Performing Arts in Tkaronto. He is the winner of the Dora Mavor Moore Award and the Playwrights Guild's Carol Bolt Award for best new play. He received a Saskatchewan and Area Theatre Award for Excellence in Playwriting for his play, The Hours That Remain, as well as a Yukon Arts Award for Best Art for Social Change.He's a kind, generous and thoughtful person. I met Keith while we were both working at the Canada Council in the mid 2010's. We reconnected at the National Arts Centre's 2019 Summit on Theatre and Climate Change presented at The Banff Centre. Our conversation touched upon indigenous theatre, the impact of telling a good story and the impact of placing artists in spaces with community members, telling their stories and talking about the crisis ands includes excerpts from e92 santee smith - about SKéN:NEN and interconnectedness and e44 bilodeau - the arts are good at changing culture. There were many memorable moments in our conversation. This quote in particular resonated with me: To me, artists being right in on the conversation, being present and actually pushing the agenda is absolutely the thing we need to be. That's where we need to be. Too many politicians and policy and all that stuff. You're watching that stuff fail right now and to put artists in spaces with community members, telling their stories and talking about the crisis… that's happening and engaging people, that's the power of theatre and that's the power of art. That, to me, is the thing that's gonna push people to make changes or to start talking or to enter into dialogue. Because right now we have a left and a right that isn't gonna speak. They don't like each other. They don't like their politics, but you get them in a room together and they actually break bread and start having food. They realize that both their kids go to the same school. They both drive the same car. They both love hockey. You know, if we start finding those connections through art, then they they're gonna engage. And it doesn't matter if it's an indigenous artist telling that story or you know, another, IBPOC person or anybody else. If you're telling a good story, people are gonna be engaged and, and it'll compel you to wanna do something.I also have a special treat for you in the last 5 minutes of this episode. You'll hear near the end of my conversation with Keith that I accepted to produce a radio version of his APOLOGY, MY play which was commissioned by the 2021 Climate Change Theatre Action (CCTA) project. You'll hear my son Riel playing a political advisor and my wife Sabrina Mathews playing the Prime Minister of Canada. Big thanks to Riel and Sabrina for this powerful reading of the play and big thanks to Keith and Climate Change Theatre Action for permission to produce this amazing play that anticipates a future we can still avoid.Note: Here is the APOLOGY, MY play by Keith Barker, performed by Riel Schryer and Sabrina Mathews as a stand alone audio file:This is one of 6 episodes recorded during the Gathering Divergence Multi-Arts Festival & Conference Fall 2021 | Art in the Time of Healing: The Importance of IBPOC Arts in Planetary Renewal event from December 8 to 10, 2021 in Toronto.The others are:episode 90 is a conversation with dance artist, choreographer, director and embodiment facilitator Shannon Litzenberger and reading her State of Emergence: Why We Need Artists Right Now essayepisode 92 is a presentation (including audience questions) by Santee Smith from the National Cultural Policy and arts in Response to Climate Change panelepisode 93 is a presentation (including audience questions) by Anthony Garoufalis-Auger from the National Cultural Policy and arts in Response to Climate Change panelepisode 94 is a presentation (including audience questions) by Devon Hardy from the National Cultural Policy and arts in Response to Climate Change panelepisode 95 is my conversation with CPAMO Executive Director Charles Smith and artistic programmer Kevin Ormsby from a keynote address including excerpts from their conversation about the Living in the Skin I am In: Experiential Learnings, Approaches and Considerations Towards Anti-Black Racism in the Arts publicationLinks mentioned in this episode:https://nac-cna.ca/en/cycle/climatechangehttps://www.conscient.ca/podcast/e44-bilodeau/Script of APOLOGY, MY by Keith Barker(published with permission of the author) This play came out of exchanges I've had with my uncle over the years. He is a fervent climate change denier who believes it is a hoax drummed up by lefty pinkos. This play is me writing out my disillusion by imagining a revelation about the climate crisis through the eyes of a Prime Minister who finds himself (or herself) on the wrong side of history.I'm sorry. I truly am.You can't say that.Why not?You're making it personal. Don't do that.It's an apology.You need to think bigger picture here.Fine…On behalf of the country--The country, the people, whatever you want to call them, are not the ones who aresorry, the government is.…On behalf of the party--Whoa whoa whoa, it's not one party's fault, it's every party's fault. Got it?(Prime Minister sighs)Mr. Speaker I stand before you today to offer an official apology.There you go.The denial of climate change is a sad and regrettable chapter in our history.I like the chapters – That was a sad chapter. This? This is a new chapter.In the last hundred-and-fifty years populations were introduced to widespreadelectrification, internal combustion engines, the car, and the airplane.Sweet. Keep it in the past, stay away from the future.This massive shift to fossil fuels exponentially increased material prosperity andmeasures of well-being. But we were wrong.We're never wrong.It was a mistake.Mistakes are just as bad as being wrong. Neither will get you votes.It was regrettable.Mm, better.We are past the tipping point of climate change. Now we must deal with the fullconsequences of government failure.Way too negative.Now we must deal with the consequences of inaction… and a multi-generational cultureof denial to maintain the status quo.Cut the last part.I think we need it.And I think we don't. Keep going.…Unprecedented warming cycles have melted the ice caps, causing the mass extinctionof species. The acidification of the oceans has destroyed the majority of marine andmammal food chains. The occurrence of extreme weather events has vastly increased assea levels continue to rise.You can't say all that.People already know this.Then why are we saying it again?Because it's true.Truth is overrated.Then why am I even giving this speech?Because, politically it's a smart move if we do it right. It also makes you look like aPrime Minister--I am the Prime MinisterYeah, well, you know what I mean.I don't think I do.Listen, don't focus on the small stuff. You need to ignore your instincts. Whateverfeels right, is wrong. You won't win this if you repeat mistakes.Don't put this all on me.Says the guy who stood up in the House of Commons and denied the existence ofclimate change on the same day scientists announced the Arctic Circle was ice-free.They did that on purpose to make me look bad.What, melt the Arctic Circle?You know what I mean.I don't think I do.You really think you can fix this?What do you think?You always answer a question with a question?Only the dumb ones.Right…Where were we?Somewhere between mass extinction and extreme weather conditions.…Today, we recognize the denial of climate change was wrongNot wrong but -Regrettable.Beauty.I've already said regrettable...Yeah, and you're going to say it a hundred more times so get used to it.…The fossil fuel industry actively misled the public and is largely to blame for theinaction on climate change with capitalism being the driving force.Don't say the C word.Why not?You can't be seen placing the blame on industry.Just over a hundred companies are responsible for 71% of all the Global GreenhouseGas Emissions.That is debatable.Not if we're using science it's not.Wow, and where was this guy a few years ago?I am trying to make up for my past mistakes.And that my friend is how you kill your political career.I need to say this.No, you don't. You're talking to the base. Card carrying members. They voted for youbecause of your ideology. You can't just bait and switch these folks. Do that and youcan kiss the election goodbye.You're right. Thank you for that.For what?It didn't really hit me until you said my words back to me.What'd I say? Sorry, I've said a lot.Mass extinction.Oh come on. I'm just trying to get you re-elected here.This isn't about politics anymore.Everything is about politics.Sorry, but I need to do this.Let me do my job here. I'm a fixer, it's what I'm paid to do. Fix things. And if you want this fixed Mr. Prime Minister, then you need to start listening to me pronto. Do.  Not. Apologize. These altruistic feelings are fleeting. Trust me. You think you've found some clarity, but you haven't. And when those feelings pass, and they will pass, you will regret having made a decision in a moment of weakness. You understand me?Perfectly. I think you need to go.You're making a big mistake.Maybe, maybe not.Let me help you.No, I think you've helped enough. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a speech to write.Last chance… Really? Fine, it's your funeral… You know what? I wasn't going vote foryou anyways.Aww, you broke your own rule.And what is that?Don't make it personal.END *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESHere is a link for more information on season 5. Please note that, in parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and it's francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' which are 'short, practical essays for those frightened by the ecological crisis'. To subscribe (free of charge) see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. You'll also find a podcast version of each a calm presence posting on Substack or one your favorite podcast player.Also. please note that a complete transcript of conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes from season 1 to 4 is available on the web version of this site (not available on podcast apps) here: https://conscient-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes.Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on conscient podcast social media: Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on April 2, 2024

Thomas Capshew, Ph.D. is an expert in the field of human potential. Dr. Capshew utilizes psychotherapy, meditation, energy work (Reiki), hypnosis, shamanic practices and spiritual mentoring to help his clients find positive change in their lives. With the heart of a social worker, the mind of an attorney and the soul of a mystic, Dr. Capshew spreads consciousness through his writing. He published both “Divine Warrior Training: Manifesting the Divine in our World” and “Consciousness Rising,” to spread love through the world and to advocate for a peaceful, loving planet. Currently, he resides in Fredericksburg, Virginia and enjoys the outdoors, photography and music. During these uncertain times, the world is yearning for a shift in consciousness. “Consciousness Rising” by Thomas Capshew, Ph.D. is an enlightening new book that explores the beauty in pure, collective consciousness. By illuminating the destructive nature of the dominator consciousness, Dr. Capshew explains how the best way to bring global change is through self-love and love for one another. With the help of Dr. Capshew’s teachings, readers will understand the importance of attending to one’s own heart. Through the use of mental and spiritual techniques, readers can use neuroplasticity to reframe a more positive mindset and meditation, boost their connection with the Creator and understand that they have inherent value as divine creations. These constructive changes can extend to the outside world and build strong connections between the seen and unseen worlds. https://thomascapshew.com/ Have you ever pondered upon the fact that you are capable of so much more and this world is restricting you? Do you feel that you’re capable of doing better things for your happiness? You’re doing your daily duties, but there is always a greater calling and a consciousness to discover? People like to live in disbelief and not gain the consciousness they can and agree to live the same monotonous life. But you realise you can do way more and are capable of achieving greater satisfaction and good? Here’s the hard truth: you are so much more than you believe you are. In this episode, we are joined by Thomas Capshew where he talks about his experience throughout his life and his recent book. Tune in to this episode to learn more about this whole new array of things and how to get your hands on it. Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Understand the different ways you can bring up your energy and develop a relationship with your interior self. Discover the importance of listening to yourself and your heart. Learn the significance of meditation, and Thomas also describes in detail different critical points from his book. Episode Highlights [01:34] A Message for the Listeners Thomas delivers the message of more healing over trauma over this entire year. He also mentions that a massive shift will be seen in light, love and life all over the place. The media will only bring in negativity, and hence he promotes that we see around us to see all the positive solutions coming into force. He describes how we are all a part of the consciousness that created this world. [06:30] Introduction Thomas explains his meandering path through life. He also describes his experience in his childhood growing up in a Christian household as a fundamentalist Christian, going to Law School and then moving to work as a Social Worker. He mentions having a crisis of faith and describes his experience with getting people to adopt Christianity.  He talks about his awakening towards the idea of spirituality. [18:15] Consciousness Rising He talks about how he had no plans to write a new book, but he got instincts that lead him to write Consciousness Rising. He describes that he talks about how it is essential that consciousness keeps remembered in this material world. Thomas goes on to describe his idea of consciousness.  We’re a part of a vast hide and seek game, where the intelligence and universe forgot themselves, and now it is coming back in a full circle.  [28:48] Lawyer to Social Worker Thomas talks about how he wanted to follow his heart and do the right thing for him. Sometimes you have to make a bold choice and be courageous. [31:20] Topography of Potential A mistake is only a choice that you haven’t learnt from yet. Everyone comes into this world with a map, also called topography of potential. Developing different skills is essential to realise the heart song. [41:07] Tsunami of Acceleration  The tsunami is just the volume of consciousness coming into this world. We are accelerating the recognition of trauma and healing and making it a win-win for everybody.  Additionally, we are also in an over-flooding of information which requires our brain to process vast amounts of data. [45:52] The Dominator Consciousness  Dominator Consciousness is what has been embedded into us humans for over a thousand years. It instils in us the sense that we need to have power over people. It is about creating a scarcity of resources.  Enjoy this Podcast? It’s easy to show the side of ourselves we’re proud of. But actual change and self-love come with being able to accept all of you—even the sides you’re afraid to show the world. If you enjoyed today's episode of Spiritual Dope Podcast, then hit subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning into this podcast, then do not hesitate to write a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can take a big hit of spiritual dope! Have any questions? You can contact me through email (brandon@spiritualdope.co)  or find me on Instagram and Facebook.   For more updates and episodes, visit my website. You may also tune in on Audible, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.  To spiritual highs, Brandon Brandon Handley 0:00 Yeah, that is worth that it's worth hitting on right? You know, so that you're kind of teed up then so Alright, we'll get it going. And 54321 Hey there spiritual dope. We are here today with my guest Thomas cap shoe. He who Tom what I do with it what I do with your bio Tom. There we go. He is an expert in the field of human potential dr capture, utilize a psychotherapy, meditation, energy work Reiki, hypnosis, sermonic practices and spiritual mentoring to help his clients find positive change in their lives. With the heart of a social worker, the mind of an attorney and the soul of a mystic Dr. Cap shoe spreads consciousness through his writing, he published both divine war warrior training, manifesting the divine in our world and consciousness rising to spread love through the world and advocate for a peaceful, loving planet. Currently, he resides in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and enjoys the outdoors, photography, and music to a doctor. Good Doctor. Thanks for joining us today. Um, I like to start these off with the whole idea that source speaks through us, right? We're kind of like these conduits for divine energy creation. And right now, in this very moment, something's common through you that needs to be shared with somebody who's listening to the podcast, what is that message? Thomas Capshew 1:33 The message is that this is the year where we are going to have more healing happening in the world on this planet than we have trauma happening. There's there's, we're going to reach a tipping point where the collective trauma and wounds that we've all experienced, will be outweighed by the amount of people working to heal those wounds. And from there on out, we're gonna see a huge shift in the amount of light and life and love that flows into the world. Brandon Handley 2:22 Where do you feel like you see that Thomas Capshew 2:26 it's happening all over the place, you know, if you just listen to the media, you're not gonna see it, all you're gonna see is negativity, because that's what attracts people. It's like watching an accident, you know, you can't take your eyes off of it. But if you look at what's happening in our communities, what's happening with each other, it's creating all kinds of Win Win situations from people developing organizations that transform homelessness, to poverty, to all of the all of the major questions and issues that we've had as collective humans. Those are all coming into new positive solutions. There's a website that I follow, called heart math that does a global coherence project where they've got these measuring sites around the world that show when the human collective gets gets into coherence with each other, and it's happening more and more frequently. So there's lots of lots of evidence. I'm a licensed clinical social worker in Virginia, and have a private practice here, as well as a practice online. And in the last couple of months, I've never had the volume of people coming in saying, you know, I'm 55 years old, and I've been carrying this around since I was eight years old. I want to get rid of this. From that happened to me this this event that happened to me at eight years old. I'm no longer interested in having it limit me. I've had such a volume of people coming in, in the last few months that are shedding their wounds of the past. Brandon Handley 4:46 That's great. Do you think that they have what do you think the reasons? Is there something pointing to that like what the reason is for them now? Why now really sad trauma right? Thomas Capshew 5:00 Well, I think collectively in in my book consciousness rising, I assert that we we are all part of the consciousness that created the universe. And from a vibrational standpoint, as, as time moves forward consciousness, the vibration of consciousness rises. And so it's easier for people to see their limitations and to recognize that they can shed those limitations. So collectively as a species, our our entire collective is raising its consciousness. So it's, it's getting lighter and lighter and easier and easier to shed those darker energies that we took on when we got wounded. Brandon Handley 5:57 Gotcha. So, you know, it sounds to me, like, you know, just consciousness as a whole is, is evolving, right? And that's what what we're what we're experiencing when we see people who are coming in and releasing the trauma and letting go of the things that are limiting them. Unknown Speaker 6:13 Right, right. Unknown Speaker 6:14 Look, I Brandon Handley 6:15 really enjoy the book, actually, consciousness rising. I want to share it with you. But you know, I've got I'm using a, you know, reader on the Mac Book here. And yes, I've got highlights, you know, just highlighted many, many different things. You know what, let's talk a little bit before we jump into the book, though, let's talk a little bit about you know, who is Thomas cashew? Right? Like, no, you've got, you know, what I know about you is, is where the pieces of whereas it says no kind of with the heart of a social worker and the mind of an attorney and the soul of a mystic. I know if you were those pieces come from myself, but let's let the audience know, like, where does the the, you know, the mind of an attorney come from? in that? Thomas Capshew 7:08 Yeah. Well, I've called, I've had what I call a meandering path through my life. So I started off as the middle of five children raised in a fundamentalist Christian household and started off my college career studying to be a minister, and ended up having a crisis of faith and left the church kind of ended up getting a psychology degree undergrad and then owned a small business and decided I didn't want to do that any longer. And so kind of on a whim, I went to law school. The reason that I went to law school is because I was a janitor in a law firm and had a running dialogue with the secretaries about how often I was supposed to clean the the kitchen. They were messing it up every day, and I was supposed to clean it up clean at once a week. And the attorneys told me, they were laughing about the messages. We were leaving back and forth. And they said, you should think about going to law school because you make good arguments and you write well, so you know, a few years later, I went to law school. I practice law in Florida for seven years. I enjoyed it. I was good at it, but it didn't make my heart sing. And so eventually, I got involved in the legal aspects of assisted suicide. That was back when jack kevorkian was doing his thing. And I was doing legal seminars for hospice. Workers about you know how to navigate that thought, and I got to know some social workers and thought, hey, that's a good combo social work and law. So I went back to school and got a Master's and PhD in social work, and then graduated and practice social work. And in the meantime, I decided to go to an interfaith Seminary in New York City. And God ordained as an interfaith minister, which kind of completed the circle of my meandering careers, but it's really fun because I feel like I've put them all together and what I do now, which is, you know, I've got I've got the ability to see clearly the what's happening, which an attorney does. I've got the The compassion that a social worker would have and I have the spiritual focus of my, my interfaith ministry. Brandon Handley 10:13 Well, you know, I always think of life is the family life Cirque family circus, right? And that path that Billy goes on when he's kind of walking around the neighborhood, right? It's just kind of like it's just and, and life is not linear, right? I don't care. Yeah, I don't care who you are. I'm sure you went to school and you had some goals, and you met them? Right by becoming a lawyer. And that seemed like it was linear. But I'm sure that the whole path there and throughout was not right. Right. I'm really curious. So I'm not aware of what a fundamentalist Christian is. Could you just elaborate on that for me, because there might be an audience member to that might not know what that is? Thomas Capshew 10:57 Okay. The way I'm using that term is someone who believes that the word the written New Testament is to be taken literally, and that that's what you use to decide how to live your life on a daily basis. And so, it's non denominational, meaning it's not, you know, one of the big it's not Catholic, it's not Methodist. It's, it's just each church stands on its own. So it's fairly constructive around behaviors. No, no drinking, no smoking, no dancing. No music in the worship service, other than acapella singing. So that's what I was raised in. Brandon Handley 11:57 Sounds very, if we're gonna go to the 80s. Very Kevin Bacon, very Footloose. Right. Yeah, reference see, you know, I'm happy to share my my age, you know, as we as we mark ourselves as we go through these, um, the other piece in here is, you know, so you. So even though it was kind of restrictive, you still went to go study to be a minister right off the bat. Right. And I'm just curious, you mentioned the the crisis of faith, what what do you what do you feel like that was? Thomas Capshew 12:34 Well, one of the things I did, as a member of the church is I did missionary service. So I went to Europe to try to convert people to Jesus. And the crisis of faith that I had was, I had this question that the members of the church couldn't give me an adequate answer for and that question was, say, there's a guy that lives in the jungles of Brazil, and has never even heard of Jesus, much less, you know, been offered to accept Jesus as a savior. And but he lives a good life, and he takes care of people and he does the things that Jesus would, would ask him to do, and he dies, does he go to heaven? Or does he go to hell? And the answer that I got from everyone in the church was, he goes to hell, and it's your job to get there before he dies, so that he won't go to hell. And that this wouldn't compute for me. As, as I have come to know my Creator. The the creative force of the universe, I the shorthand that I use for that force is love. That love is what created the universe and what is that energy that sustains us? And so, obviously, if the Creator is all loving them, they're you know, may not even be a hell much less. Have some arbitrary decision that some guy that's not heard of a certain person that's gonna go to hell. Brandon Handley 14:37 Yeah, like, what about everybody that came before Jesus, right? That makes sense, right? I mean, I can see kind of where that that that breaks down. And then, so you're going through law school, you become a lawyer. We'll hit on heart song here in a little bit. And where you know what They're kind of in here, do you go full on spiritual? Right Where's like kind of your I know in your book you and I jotted it down to our at least I highlight it in the book. It's like, life's kind of like a series of awakenings. Right. And it's not just like, not just, hey, there's one awakening moment. But you know, there's a series of them. But if you could kind of pinpoint where you feel like you had maybe your first Thomas Capshew 15:31 Well, the first awakening was the crisis of faith. The Awakening that brought me to the work that I do now is that, as a social worker, the spiritual component often has not considered. And when you think about mental health, often times what I've found in my practice, is that mental health issues arise out of a spiritual discontent, out of kind of not really knowing what you're doing here, not having a framework for how the world works for you. And so then out of those out of those uncertainties often come anxiety or depression, you know, if if you're working in a, in a job where you're doing something that doesn't really make your heart sing, then it's really easy to go into depression, you know, what am I doing here? Why am I doing this? Am I am I just doing this to get a paycheck so that I can pay my mortgage so that I can, you know, not be homeless? I mean, what kind of life is that. So that's where the spiritual discontent comes in. And if you focus on getting to the essence of why you're here, why you're on the planet, at this moment, or at this lifetime, then you can start moving into a place where you're, you're enjoying waking up and getting up and doing what you feel is what you're supposed to be doing for your life. Instead of doing what somebody else wants you to do for your life. Brandon Handley 17:35 Right now. Understood, right? Definitely, definitely something that we hit on on this podcast often, right? You know, when you find when you find, you've kind of woken up to the idea that what you're doing now is really everybody else's best idea for what you should be doing. Right? And then and then then trying to figure out how to unwind all that into what you at least feel like you should be doing. So. No, I love it. So let's talk about the book. Let's talk about the book consciousness rising what you know why you why here, why now, this book? Thomas Capshew 18:14 Well, let me tell you a little bit about how this book came to be. Because after my first book, divine warrior training, I didn't really have any plans to write a second book, but about four or five years ago, I kept waking up at 4:18am and got up and had stuff to write down, you know, typed out stuff, and I'm like, oh, okay, there's, that's an interesting article, like one of the first ones was, nothing exists outside of relationship, that you can't even define something without defining what it's not or what it's in opposition to. And so, over the course of the next couple of years, I just kept on getting prompted to wake up at 418 and write stuff down. It wasn't every every time at 418, but more often than not, and then eventually it dawned on me again, you know, kind of those awakenings to what source has in store for you. I said oh, this is a book and originally it was a book called The human value proposition which is the first part of consciousness rising, but eventually developed into what what we have now and the Why is mainly because I think Think it is in evitable. It's the, it's absolutely essential to reality that consciousness ends up remembering itself in, in, in the material form. That's the whole process that we're a minute part of, we're actually the leading edge of the material form, recognizing everything as divine. And we're just, we're just on the cusp of getting to that place where we say, you know, there's everything sacred. There's nothing that's not sacred, and we need to start treating everything that way. And when we do, our whole world is gonna shift. Brandon Handley 21:03 Oh, absolutely right. I love the idea of kind of being on the edge of consciousness, right being kind of, um, I always think of it as, you know, just being literally on the razor's edge, right Is that fine as the universe continues to expand? We are, you know, the, the expanded, you know, de expansion of consciousness, right? And right on that edge, right? Always right on that edge of edge of creation, right? This is what's happening right here. And now, what would you tell me what you mean by consciousness? Thomas Capshew 21:38 What I mean by consciousness is intelligence that created the material world. So in my first book, divine warrior training, I talked about I call it I call this process, the god game. Gods. You know, one of those shorthand labels for consciousness as well, although it's kind of been co opted by some people to be something less than what it is. But the god game is, before anything in the material world existed, there existed this intelligence. And this intelligence, decided at a point of singularity to begin a process where matter, matter was created, and matter is more dense than intelligence. And the the game is that, from that point of singularity, it created the material world so that the material world would eventually be able to recognize the intelligence of the universe. So it goes a full circle back, it's like a Hide and Seek game, you know, we're part of this huge Hide and Seek game where the intelligence of the universe forgot itself. And now it's coming back to remember itself. Brandon Handley 23:18 Love it. So the guy games, the game is, essentially just to recognize the intelligence of the universe. Right. And would you say that, is that part and parcel to reconnecting to it as well? Is, is that the recognition period? Is that the recognition period when you actually connect? reconnect? Yeah, Thomas Capshew 23:43 yeah, when, you know, we've all humans have experienced a habit. We've all had an experience where we've felt one with everything. Most of us have some, some people say they haven't felt that but many humans have felt that that's reconnecting that's joining back into the the understanding that everything's connected. Everything you and I are connected, every person that listens to this, every person that doesn't listen to this is also connected. So that's, that's the, that's the inevitable movement forward of consciousness to get to that place where I recognize that you're a part of me, that I'm a part of you. I'm a part of the plant that's sitting in front of me, we're all connected. Brandon Handley 24:48 So, I try to I try to share out the idea that, you know, the universe crew was created, you know, from something the size of a pea, right? You know, and And if we think that we're not connected, like, after all being kind of jammed and crammed into the size of a pea, right, knowing what we know, to about just kind of like, how, you know, photons and you know, everything just stays connected, right? There's no masses, not masses, there's never never need less mass, right? You know, the same amount of mass exists and in perpetuity. So, at one point, you know, we, we've all been a part of one another, right? So we we carry it, even, even from a material level, right? Even if we can't, even if we can't wrap our heads around, like being synced on an energetic level, we can wrap our head around the the idea that we all share some type of at least a couple skin cells from whatever, before us, right? Thomas Capshew 25:54 Well, if you think about atoms and molecules, atoms, you know, don't, don't disappear, they just get reconstituted. So, you know, we each can have atoms that used to be part of Albert Einstein, or part of Hitler, or part of Jesus, you know, those, those atoms that the material world just is in constant flux of shedding stuff and reconstituting as, as something else. And so we've each got that that we share. Brandon Handley 26:38 Now, and I just think it's, you know, sometimes it's challenging to share that idea if somebody is not in this space, quote, unquote, right? So if they're like, oh, what are you talking about? You know, how do you? How do you share that idea? So thanks for thanks for walking through that visual as well. Thomas Capshew 26:56 Actually, COVID has helped us with that a little bit. Because we now understand in ways that we didn't before COVID, that respiratory droplets are what sends COVID from me to you. And they're not anything that we can see. But we've certainly been able to verify that with science, right? And so then my, my being in proximity to your being has an impact, even if I can't see it, right. And so you take that from the biology of COVID. And you put it into the energetics of physics. And, you know, anytime you're in close proximity with anybody, your your atoms and photons are all mixed up together. And, you know, we know that intuitively. Right? You walk into a room, and everybody's angry, you can feel it, right. You walk into a room and everybody's having a blast, you can feel that. Right? You can't necessarily measure it, because it's energetic versus, you know, Brandon Handley 28:22 that we can't measure it because we haven't developed the tools to do it yet. Right. Like, I mean, it's, it's really, it's really kind of what it boils down to, right. There's, I'm sure that there's you know, I'm sure there's somebody who's working on it right now. Right? I'm sure there's a prototype no doubt, no doubt. Um, one more thing, too, is is, you know, gone from a lawyer to a social worker, right? Why do that? Thomas Capshew 28:46 Yeah. Why do that? Exactly? Well, because I wanted to follow my heart. I enjoyed practicing law. I was good at it. My last job was as an appellate Attorney for the Department of Transportation in Florida. And if you you know, you want to look it up. I my last case, was before the Florida Supreme Court, and I won that case seven to zero. And as it was estimated that I save the state of Florida, $660 million. So, you know, it wasn't that I couldn't do that do the work. It's that didn't make my heart sing. When I chose to go back to school, and I'd love to study I'm a lifetime student. When I chose back to go back to school, my attorney friends, half of them thought I was nuts, to go from law to social work. The other half were envious. Because they weren't necessarily doing what they wanted to do, but they felt like they were stuck. So, you know, sometimes you just have to make a bold move and be courageous and say, you know, this is my life and I'm, I've got to live it the way that I think I'm, I need to live it, even if you make a mistake. And it wasn't a mistake, Brandon Handley 30:20 not not Oh, you know. And of course, you know, my first my first thought is I will not for you, Tom. Right. I know. So it worked out for you. And, to your point, though, too. I think that even if it's a mistake, I did a recent interview where, you know, we're just trying to talk talk talking at the end of the interview and, and she was just talking about whatever it was, she's doing, developing into, like, you know, being making a living, I'm like, Look, worst case scenarios, like you're doing something that makes sense to you right now, to your point, you know, following the heart song, let's talk a little bit about that. Because that is one of the topics in the book is the heart song. So, which, which I thought I thought spoke out nicely. I think it came in yet right underneath of. And I like that typography of potential, right. So let's talk about a little bit of what is the typography of potential and the heartsong. Thomas Capshew 31:17 Okay. First, I want to comment about a mistake, because a mistake is only a choice that you've made that you haven't learned from yet. Once you learn from edit, it's no longer a mistake. It's, it was maybe a missed direction, but it adds to your, to your path. riddle me Brandon Handley 31:43 this one. I've seen this. I've seen this a lot of times, and like I'm in the hardcore Personal Development Series, right? I just say hardcore Professional Development Series for these people that like, you know, you know, grind and hustle people, right? But the idea that a mistake made more than once is done on purpose, true or false? Thomas Capshew 32:09 No, mistake made more than once is you haven't learned yet. Got from ionic standpoint, we, we create circumstances over and over again to heal ourselves. And sometimes that circumstance will re wound us. But that's part of our energetic move forward is to try to create the condition that will create the healing. Brandon Handley 32:43 Yeah, no, thank thank you for that. I, like I said, that's one that always kind of irritated me, right? Just like, you know, who are you to make you to make that claim, right to be like, well, you made that mistake more than once. That's on purpose. What are you talking about? Right? Like, how can you be so like, that's, anyways, anyways. So typography, potential heartsong, let's say, Thomas Capshew 33:04 yeah, typography of potential each one of us is born is created by love and comes into the world with a typography of potential. Just like a typography map, there are things that we will easily be good at, and things that we will have to work like hell to be good at. So there's valleys in our topography of potential as well as hills or mountains. So a good example is comparing my basketball skills to LeBron James basketball skills. I was born with a valley in my typography of potential for basketball. LeBron James was born with a mountain. So absolutely, he's worked his butt off to get where he is. But he started with the ability with a lot of potential that he just built on to make him such a phenomenal basketball player. I, I would never have gotten there, because I didn't have that preset group of skills. I had other skills that you know, I've worked to develop. So each one of us has that topography of potential. And our work is to develop a deep enough relationship with ourselves so that we can know what what that typography is so that we can find what I call our heart song, which is our heart song is that one purpose that we are on the planet to fulfill. Oh, you know, for me, it's working with people To live up to their potential, you know, that's, and it's taken me a while to come to that, understanding that that's what I was put here to do. And so developing different skills that helped me to live that heart song, you know, over time, what we've what we've done with people, we've, we've, as a as a species, we have wasted so much human potential. In fact, all of us, every single one of us will die without actualizing all of our potential. Brandon Handley 35:39 I mean, and just pause there for a second. I mean, is that necessarily a bad thing? Is, is that a good thing? or a bad thing? Right? And like, yeah, let's say that, you know, you're doing all you can to maximize who you are? Or is it more to the sense of, there is always something more and greater that you can accomplish? Right? And regardless, regardless, right, so, inevitably, yeah, well, we're all gonna perish leaving something on the table. Right. Is that? Is that kind of the thought there? Thomas Capshew 36:14 Yeah. And, you know, I'm not saying that that's a bad thing. But what I'm saying is that the way we've built society, is we really don't work at helping people develop their potential. We work at it our schools, work at developing people to work for other people, instead of to follow their own dream. And so you know, who's, who's the next? Yo, yo, ma in, you know, a low income area of Chicago that won't even know that for the their whole life because no one introduced them to a cello. Brandon Handley 37:09 Right? Yeah. No, no, that's fair. That's fair. Yeah, that was something you had on in the book as well. It was it was talking about, I guess, coming along your path or opening up to your heart song. Or it might it may have been another section. And of course, this folks may, just because we talked a little bit about saying, you know, things may look bad right now, but they're actually good. Right. And one of the things for me, it is turned out? Well, in this related sense of the story of your book, we've had to pull our kids from the educational system, right. And we've been able to teach them at home. And I'm very excited about it, because I recognize that we're not like crushing little souls. Right, or, or trying to morph them into, you know, the, the solid and industrial line workers, right. So, for me, it's very exciting, right to, to be able to kind of break a shackle as it were, and to be able to, you know, we talk about coming back to ourselves, right, by coming back to ourselves, but a big part and this is my opinion, right? A part of us coming back to ourselves is because we've been layered and layered and things that we aren't by by the social conditioning, right? So if you don't get socially conditioned, right, then who do you have to come back to, then you have the opportunity to live out your whole life as who you're supposed to be? Right? Thomas Capshew 38:47 Right. So imagine a world where every newborn was seen as God as seen as a divine being with unlimited potential. And our job as caretakers for that newborn is to help them develop there in a potential what, what kind of world would we have within five years mean that just think of the transformation where people would all be doing, what they love and what they were meant to be? And, you know, everything. My My belief is that if when we live into that world, everybody is going to be doing their heart song, and everything's going to be taken care of, I mean, Providence, you can I, I could be a janitor and be singing my heart song or I could, you know, decide that I'm going to figure out a way to convert you human excrement into energy for, you know, whatever, right? That the possibilities are endless if we start with the idea that as parents and as caregivers, were shepherding in higher consciousness, when a baby gets born, Brandon Handley 40:27 I think it's interesting to think of it that way, right? To just realize that that's the consciousness expansion, kind of come right in behind you. And it's, it's your, your job or your goal or if you put effort into it, then you can help accelerate that expansion. Is that how you kind of look at it. So you also bring up the idea, and I thought this was pretty cool too. And it really kind of relates to, to the whole thing, but the tsunami of acceleration, right, or the tsunami of consciousness, and kind of what we're doing here and consciousness rising, always share a little bit of that. And I'd love to hear, you know, have you share where you see that coming into play? Thomas Capshew 41:14 Well, the, the tsunami is just the, the volume of consciousness that's coming into the world. So if you think about it, 50 years ago, we didn't have a word for domestic violence. We didn't, we didn't have a word for child abuse. Those were concepts that have come into existence in the last few years. We are, we are accelerating the recognition of trauma and of wounds, that then we begin to heal by raising our consciousness and recognizing the way that we can treat each other that is a win win for everybody. And so that, that tsunami is happening. The The downside is, we're also in a tsunami of, of information. We have never, it humans have never had access to as much information as they've had in the last, you know, every every year it grows exponentially. And so, the problem with the access to information is that it it requires our brain to process the information, our brain is also designed to look for danger. And so that's where fear comes from. And so, there's so much information that anybody can access a limited amount of information and go to fear. And that's what happened. That's what's happening in our society is, we're getting siloed into different information flows that create fear of each other. And stead of going to our heart where we access our Creator and the love of the universe. And our heart is the place that when we live out of our heart, then we see the expansiveness and the way that we can all win and all get along and live into our potential and live our hearts song. So, you know, there's a couple of tsunamis going on. One of them is pushing us toward fear and one of us is one of them is pushing us toward love. And the great thing about being human, probably the the one thing I'd say is the most. The bait, the best thing about being human is we have choice. We get to choose, choose love, choose fear. You know, fear is of the head. Love is of the heart. Brandon Handley 44:36 I think that the power of choices is it's recognized and it's often on recognized, right? So it's like for one once you recognize the power of choice, you're you're you're astounded, right but until you realize just how powerful choices the word and meaning seems arbitrary right? You know, because, again, go back to the you know, we you feel like you made all your choices yourself, but really you just accepted everybody else's choices for you. Right? And then and then at a certain point, you realize, yes, you accepted all their choices, but now you can start to see and turned your knobs and whatnot for yourself right to make your own conscious choices, right. with intention purpose, for those outcomes. One other term that you have in the book that I really enjoy, is the dominator consciousness been no, you know, to me, that's kind of what we're coming out of, if we choose to look at it that way. But could you share what what that what that what that means? Thomas Capshew 45:47 Dominator consciousness is what we've been embedded in for 1000s of years. And it is the sense that it's important to have power over other people versus power among. And so what what's happened is we've bought into the idea that there's a limit to power, and resources and love, and all of those things are limited, when in fact, they are not, they're unlimited. If we access power from our Creator, there's plenty of power for everybody. If we access resources from our Creator, there's plenty for everybody. If we access love from our Creator, there's plenty for everybody. So the dominator consciousness perpetuates itself by creating scarcity. And then selling that resource to people. So for example, land is is scarcity, you know, is there's a certain amount of land available and, you know, if you live in Northern Virginia like I do, you've, you're gonna pay a premium for a piece of land, if you live in the northern territories of Canada, that same size land would probably be, you know, a miniscule amount compared to what it is in Northern Virginia. So it's creating scarcity and then saying, Okay, well, I'm going to have power over you by marshaling resource and then not sharing it with people. So power among is understanding that we all have capacity to access our source of power and love and resources. And when you do that, you become a manifester, yourself and you you bring into the world, the things that are needed, and with your co creating with the Creator. Brandon Handley 48:23 Yeah, that's, I mean, that's the part where you really know where you release that scarcity, where you release, release that restriction on yourself, right? And you open yourself up to the possibilities, right? And therefore you know, you you are this kind of goes back to you now you're making those conscious choices now you're in alignment with who you are. Now you start singing your heart song, right? And and, you know, you begin to kind of let it all in Unknown Speaker 48:51 what is Brandon Handley 48:54 what is like one practical tool that you would give to somebody who's on the journey today. Thomas Capshew 49:01 The most useful, practical tool that I suggest is to develop a practice where you go to your heart, where you meditate, and you access what I call the temple of your heart or the Sacred Heart. And from that place, you can access the resources of the universe. And so developing a relationship with your your interior landscape, as I call it, is probably the best thing you can do to find your path forward. Because our mind is what keeps us engaged with the exterior world that we see. And we aren't going to find our passion and purpose out there. We'll get a lot of people that will tell us what they think it should be. But only when you access your heart. Can you hear that? Quiet whisper of your heart song. And that's the only place in the in the world that no one else can go to. But you? Yeah. Brandon Handley 50:22 Do you have I think I think I've seen some meditations that you offer. Do you have a meditation that would somebody could experience like this? Thomas Capshew 50:32 I do. There's a on my website, which is Thomas kept shoe.com there's a free, choose love meditation that you can download. And in the last couple of months, I got a bunch of meditations put up on my, in my shop. They're they're really expensive, though. They're 97 cents apiece. Brandon Handley 50:59 Oh, breaking the bank. Thomas Capshew 51:01 Yeah, right. So what I do, I do a particular kind of meditation called x asis meditation. And the purpose of the next asis meditation is to shut down your mind and shut down your body, so that your consciousness can expand and move out into what I call the sea of possibilities. And so next asis meditation takes you, it's a guided meditation that takes you on a journey to a place where you become one with everything. And then I've got a series where you, then I lead you back on a level zero, the level one you, you go to the sea of possibilities and spend three minutes and then I lead you back. level two, you go for nine minutes, and then I bring you back. And level three, you go for 27 minutes, and then I bring you back. And so the purpose is to develop the skill to be aware in your consciousness without having your mind intervene. So it's, it's a, it's a bit. It's theta brainwaves for those of you that are more into the science. We're right now in beta brainwaves. If you close your eyes and breathe down into your diaphragm, you'd go into alpha brainwaves, which is light relaxation. Theta brainwaves is four to eight hertz, and that's deep relaxation. And that's where, you know, you come up with a lot of creative ideas and stuff like that. And then delta brainwaves asleep. So that phasis meditations are designed to have you hit that theta brainwave range and move out into your consciousness and leave your mind and body behind for a given period of time. Brandon Handley 53:19 It's always nice to lead the body time. Always nicely the body so just real quick, who would you say your ideal like client is if you've got like an idea of that. Thomas Capshew 53:29 Um, my ideal client is someone who is self reflective and who knows that they're they're a spiritual being having a human experience but often gets trapped in the human experience. And so you know, my job is to kind of help them tip that scale over to where they can live their life knowing that they're a spiritual being and everything they experience as a human experience. Brandon Handley 54:07 Awesome. So if your ideal client is listening right now they should go to find more of you at Thomas capture calm or where were they find you? Thomas Capshew 54:19 Yeah, that Thomas capture calm. I have, they can click on a free 30 minute consultation. So we can chat about what their needs are and what skills I have and whether that's a good, good match or not. I'd also like to offer a free ebook to your listeners. So if if you want a ebook of consciousness rising, then you can email me at free ebook at Thomas captured calm. So make sure you got three E's in their free ebook At Thomas capture calm and I'll send you a download for the book. Brandon Handley 55:08 I know we didn't like to talk too much specifically about the book, but it's definitely it's an enjoyable read. I think it's effective. I think it's practical. I think that you know, it's very it's, it's almost like a spiritual lawyer wrote it. Alright, so Tom, I want to say thank you so much for spending some time on spiritual dope today. We really appreciate you being here. Thank you for I'm really actually interested in your spiritual warrior book. I think that sounds like fun. And thank you for sharing this book with me and sharing it with the world with the work that you're doing. Thomas Capshew 55:44 You're welcome, Brandon. And I'm really grateful for you having me on and all the work you're doing to move consciousness higher. Brandon Handley 55:57 And that's where we'll stop Tom. So I appreciate you Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Matt from Snowflake join us. Matt, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Matt Sustaita: Yeah, my name is Matthew Sustaita. I am a senior sales and enablement content strategist at Snowflake. So, I’ve been with the company for about five or six months now. So pretty new to the team, but definitely having a lot of fun. SS: Yeah, you definitely joined Snowflake at a fun time. In your current role I know that you kind of helped to oversee a bit of the content governance for sales enablement and given that snowflake just went through an IPO from your perspective, from a sales enablement perspective, what was it like to help prepare the company for that process? MS: Yeah. So on the content governance side, part of the big issue, especially as a company scales and grows and obviously goes into the IPO stage is to make sure we’re all beating to the same drum as it were, and making sure that what is being communicated is what we want to communicate. And so a lot of what I did, especially my first few months, just before going IPO, is making sure we’re rolling out the right call tracks and scripts and things that we want our salespeople in all levels to do and say, and then, you know, take the extra step to train to it and support them and provide managers support. So, they’re getting feedback on what they’re saying and then getting it in, but they need to make it clean, make it accurate, and make it meaningful for the customers that they’re trying to prospect to. SS: Absolutely. Now, in addition to your current role at Snowflake, you’ve also have quite an extensive background as an instructional designer. So, I’d love for you to talk to us a little bit about what that looks like when you’re creating a new training program. What are some of the key things that you consider when designing a curriculum? MS: Yeah. So, the biggest thing to really consider is getting into that analysis or that discovery phase and doing a really good job. I think the challenge that I see a lot of companies, and even in my own organization, it could be a challenge where you see a potential problem or you think there’s a solution that’s going to solve for it and you just go, and you start building. But in reality, just like, you know, any good salesperson you want to make sure you do a really good discovery to really identify what it is that businesses are struggling with, where do they really need help? And so, on my team, something that I really pushed back on is if you get a request for a problem like negotiation or discovery questions, or what have you, any different aspects of training that salespeople might need? I really like to slow down the person asking for, and really identify where the real problems, what are they doing today? What do we actually want them to do what barriers are in the way and stopping them from actually being able to perform an act the way that we want, and then what do we want them to do at the very end of this training? Right? What behaviors do we want to see changed? Because putting people in front of content is great and all, but what are you really measuring? Right? Where’s that really going at the end of the day? So that’s something that I really slow my team down on. So, before we even start designing or start rolling out a solution, really understanding the specific problem we’re targeting for, and then build to that solution. SS: I love that. Now I want to talk a little bit about in a corporate setting. How can you help design learning experiences that entice participants to pay attention and stay engaged, especially right now while they may have distractions, as you mentioned in a COVID and remote world, there’s definitely a ton of those around us right now? So, how do you help them learn during this time? MS: Yeah, that’s a really good question. It’s very challenging because you kind of have to think through the barriers that people are experiencing in their own life and kind of flex and be willing to just accept them such as life challenges, kids being at home, the environment’s different, there’s all sorts of different, unaccountable variables that you really can’t do much about. I have to take that into consideration and think through what barriers are my people or the salespeople going to experience with our own ecosystem. So, if we have all of our various resources on Google Drive sitting on somebody’s drive somewhere. Well, that’s a barrier. What happens if that person leaves, what happens if I need access to it right away? So, part of what I do is really think through the entire organization and the entire user experience from the person sitting in the seat as a learner, to what they need to do to be able to get access to the information they need. So, designing a course is great and all, but you have to think about the whole journey almost. Just like we have a customer journey for our customers, you have to think through the learner’s journey, what they’re going to experience. So, part of what I do is put myself in that, like see and have that empathy, but then think, okay, what do I need? So, if I’m putting a course on an intro portal somewhere, how can I make it clean and simple and super easy for them to navigate that intro portal and get to the information they need and then, what are some of the other supplemental supports or information they might need that might not pertain to that course, or might not be involved in that course or that content, but be something beneficial for them that they could also go research and a little more about on their own. So those are the kinds of things that I think through as I think about the engagement and the content and distractions. I’m really not a big fan of just putting people in front of something and saying, devote an hour or two hours to this. It’s more about, what can I put in front of you to make sure you have what you need at the time that you need it? And then how can I make sure that’s easy and accessible for you and digestible so you’re not spending hours looking for it or just giving up really quickly because you’re running into a barrier. SS: I love that. Now you have experience with a wide range of curriculum designs. Everything from instructor-led, you know, you talked a little bit about web-based and blended learning. So, what are some of the pros and cons of each of the different structures? MS: So, the way that I typically approach what kind of solution we’re going to have, whether it’s an instructor-led, web base, et cetera, really goes back to those objectives, right? What do I want the user, the learner, to be able to do by the very end of this training and to be frank sometimes, especially in certain realms, like I worked with a utility companies where it’s very hands-on clearly you kind of have to have some component of instructor-led training. If you have hands-on solutions, and sales, it’s a little harder to sell that because typically you can demonstrate capability without actually being in the office somewhere, and so that’s kind of the way that I approach it is to think through what are the actual objectives? Where do I, what do I want this person to be able to do by the end of it? And then how do I assess for competency? How do I say they have mastered this objective that I said is that we’ve agreed on is important, and how do I show that they can, they have proved that capability to do it? Sometimes that might require some virtual input. So, if I need feedback for a manager, typically try to use videos and try to do something else so they can demonstrate it and then get feedback from their manager, with guidance on a rubric and whatnot, and other times it’s just using a more blended approach where you can have that component that’s online. And then hopefully when you go back to the real world and connect, you see each other again, you can do more demonstrations in class. But for now, it really starts with your terminal objective and where you want to go and what you want to see them do. And that’s going to drive the kind of solution and the kind of output you’re going to have. SS: Absolutely. Now, how do you go about deciding which design approach will be more, most effective in the various situations? MS: Yeah. Great question. So, that does tend to go back to, I hate to say it again, it’s in your analysis, right? Identifying the problem, identify the behaviors and the barriers and challenges, looking at where they’re at today and where you want them to be tomorrow or where you want them to be in this end solution. And that’s really going to drive the kind of design for the solution. I’m a big fan of being as in real life or in world as possible. So, if we have an inter portal and we have a lot of information that is built by many teams on there, I tend to find a way to kind of curate that information and put them in a nice little learning path if I may, especially for people that clearly don’t have time to go fish out the information and find it themselves. I like to put it in a nice neat row if I may. So, they can really tackle the content in ABCD, a sequential order, and then point them to more resources if they want to learn more or give them extra support. That’s kind of the way that I designed or approach some of the trainings, but it always depends on that light objectives in that role. So, for instance, when I was working on a particular project all about negotiating and working on negotiation, I had thought through, okay, what’s going to get buy-in for these people. How do I get them eager to dissect and practice and reinforce these skills? In the sales world, I call it a WIFM, what’s in it for me. That is a really good way, especially with salespeople to get them involved is because if they see if this other person over here did X this way then they received 110% or close a huge deal or whatever, maybe there’s merit to me trying this out too. So, it’s part of, it’s kind of leveraging the stories that are out there and leveraging this solutions way that we think people should go and getting that buy-in early on. And it’s a lot easier to get them eager to try it out and practice on their own and incorporate the entire thing or aspects of it into their own sales strategies or sales tools and then kind of go from there. SS: Matt, this has been a fantastic conversation. To kind of close out this particular topic, I’d love to understand how do you reinforce knowledge or skills after a learning experience to ensure that it really sticks long-term? MS: Yeah, there are two things that I like to do to reinforce skills. So, the first is to really leverage and use the managers. So, in our case, if I have some sort of skill that I want the salespeople to demonstrate, I typically work with the rest of my sales enablement team to craft like rubric a coach’s guide. Just something, sometimes it’s just as easy as an infographic, right? It’s something super simple, one-pager, the managers can use to provide that ongoing support, that ongoing feedback and to really look down to that specific behavior and skill that we’re looking for because I think, if you leave it general and leave it open managers don’t really know what to do so they get very general ambiguous feedback. That’s not very helpful, versus if I say, these are the objectives from the course, right? You’re going to be able to do X, Y, and Z. And then I’ll craft the rubric for the manager to specifically look at X, Y, and Z, give feedback on the areas that we want to give them feedback on, and then help them to kind of craft that response to their AEs or to the people that support. I find that to be the best way to kind of like get that initial feedback and the initial support from the user side at the end of the training. So, leveraging the manager is the first step, and then I’m a big fan of like, you know, stealing from marketing here, doing a more kind of drip campaign, right? Because if you look at the way people learn, I believe research shows that about 60 to 80% of what you heard or what you like got from some sort of lesson is lost in the first five or six days. So that’s a pretty big chunk of information gone, so if you don’t continually reinforce it and continue to kind of drip some more learnings or some low digestible chunks or some reminders or some wind stories or what have you out to the field, they ended up not applying that training. So even if it’s really, really good and you get great NPS scores and everybody loves it at the end of the day, it’s useless. It doesn’t do anything if it doesn’t really impact your bottom line. The way that you approach that as using that kind of drip-style, where you put out your big training, put out some extra material a week later, and then some more in two weeks, and then maybe some sort of follow-up a month later, but continue to keep it top of mind and continue to focus and practice in the skills that you’ve identified are big issues within your organization. SS: I love those two tips. Thank you so much, Matt, for joining us today, I really enjoyed our conversation. MS: Me too, it was great. Thank you so much for having me. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders visit salesenablement.pro. If there’s something you’d like to share or a topic you’d like to learn more about, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you.

Getting the right amount of AI in your business is critical. If you pursue predictions that are too far reaching it can over burden your business, ultimately losing customers. But, if you don't use AI now, you are late, and are already behind your competitors. This isn't a game of leap frog, this is pivoting your business towards high-probability targets with greater insights, at an increased rate. Okay, Hey, everybody, welcome. This is Grant, welcome to another episode of ClickAI radio. All right, so bite size, right size AI for your business. What does that mean? Well, when you think about the continued pool right on time and resources for the small to medium business owners, it's no good to get AI predictions that are way beyond our reach, right? I mean, if the size of the effort and the work to accomplish that prediction is too big or too much, that doesn't do us any good. All it does is frustrate us. So we need to course be able to grow our business one step at a time. And in fact, we often will call that a smart Step Smart in the sense that it's a progression towards a goal or a target smart also and that it's the right size. So here are a few pieces to think about when we're going to do a smart step. We go through, of course, the all the activities of running our business. But there's a point then where we start working on the data, and figuring out, hey, if I wanted to go solve a particular problem, right, if I had a particular target that I wanted to go after we start thinking about that target. But what we do is then we ask ourselves, do I have the business information? In order to accomplish that? Some people might say, hey, I'd like to be able to know are my buyers male or female? Well, that starts to become a bit of a challenge, right? Because lots of times that gets into personal information, right? Things that you can't really share PII right stuff that you can't pass along. But there's other things we can go after. So for example, we might want to know, what are the periods of time or the factors that contribute to our refunds that are increasing? Maybe hypothetically, right? Or we might want to know, hey, what particular conditions are contributing to us selling a product more effectively in one region or another? So what you do is you think about what target Can I go after, and, and the AI comes back with things like, hey, if you do these things, you'll increase your sales promotion activities, on Thursdays and Fridays, then you, you know, probabilities are, whatever 90% 85% that you'll see an increase in sales. Or if you increase the price of a particular product that you're selling, then your refunds actually will reduce, because what it does is it will narrow the field of those people that are buying and of course, you'll get more highly qualified buyers. Alright, so there are other kinds of things that we go after, when we take a smart step, we might say, well, they I could come back and say, well, in order to reduce your refunds, quit selling through this particular affiliate, if in fact, you're using affiliates, or whatever it might be, the goal is to get the right amount of AI applied, and get that put into the business long enough, and in a short enough time, but then to execute long enough so that you can see the effects of them without overburdening your organization. If you took on too much and actually destroyed your business because you took on too much. The AI then actually turns out to be counter for the business. All right, let's look at a report here. I was evaluating something from Forbes, the, you know, the forbes.com. They have this data section on what are the things that are being you know, where AI is being used today, there are four or five areas I'm going to call out here. One of the areas that they focused on is in this area of marketing, which is what I just started talking about marketing and sales. Those are the first two areas. And in fact, they made a statement. The statement was if your company isn't using artificial intelligence and marketing, you're already behind. And that has really been the shift just in the last 18 months, right. Not only can AI help develop your marketing strategies, but it's also fundamental and instrumental in executing those as well. So I was talking about the smart step, a minute to go. So if you think there's the activities or running your business, there's identifying a target, there's applying AI to your business information, and then reinventing at that point, right. So this is a series of reinventions on the business, you can reinvent just a small piece a small step at a time. And the reinvention might be, hey, we will stop or reduce our selling activities in a particular region, right, because the AI gave some insights on them. And so you do that for a period of time and you monitor the effects of that that's a critical activity, we find that a lot of organizations will go do the initial act, you know, step right, try to move forward, of course, but won't do the level of monitoring and keep the AI engaged. And that's actually a mistake. All right. Another area that Forbes pointed out here is sales, of course. And obviously sales has got a human element to that. But predicting customer needs improving communications, for you know, sales, forecasting, ai does a great job with those things. So I'd say if you're not applying AI to marketing and sales, you're you're already behind and your competition isn't just going to get ahead, meaning the ones that are using AI won't just get ahead, it will actually be a leapfrog. We call it a digital leapfrog. They will leap ahead so far and so quickly, that it will take longer for you to catch up than historically, it has been for you to compete with, with other organizations. All right, that's the good and the bad of it. Let's see AI being used in r&d, of course, right. I mean, we obviously see that taking place today. It helps some research problems and developing solutions. Of course it you know, never been thought of what about human resources? Yes, in fact, PepsiCo uses a robot called robot Vera to phone and interview candidates for open sales positions. In fact, I found something interesting about this, this is something that we've been applying as well. It's the notion of using AI as part of your lead searching, and your hiring activities. So there's this capability from IBM Watson, where you can tap into it, and then it will help you do that kind of searching on on LinkedIn actually. So we make that service available through the the things that we provide. So if you're interested reach out to it's kind of a cool, cool thing, really, because you think, Hey, I can't, you know, constantly as a small to medium business person I can't constantly be chasing down on, Hey, where's my next leads? Right? Where's my next highly qualified set of people? Turns out that with this, with this service, then that we use on it with with this IBM Watson, not only can we establish it to do this searching on LinkedIn, so that it's working, while you're not right, it's looking intelligently for the right kind of fit while you're off doing other things. But it also comes back and says, Hey, not only here's the set of really highly qualified people, but it also turns out that you can take that set, and then you can extract a Facebook, CSV, Facebook formatted CSV file, that then you can load in and create an audience directly off that and then campaign directly to people that fit that profile. Kind of cool, right? Yeah. So when you think about, hey, I need the right size of AI. First, let me go after a target. That's not going to break the the business in the organization. But second, let me also intelligently use AI to find the right kind of people to target. Now that we are right sizing our organization using AI. So first, picking the right AI inspired target. And then second, getting the right AI inspired set of leads to go after that that's a huge hit for your organization to be able to do that. Of course, ai course can is applied in accounting and finance the things that you would expect their customer service, you know, in the customer service area, I'm kind of on the fence on it, because a lot of times companies will use AI and chatbots. And lots of times I'm like, Hey, I just want to get to a human, you know, but it's slowly getting better on this. And in fact, we use an AI system for our voiceovers. In fact, with the videos that we produce, in all the media that we create, we use AI voices and most people can actually tell that they are AI generated voices. In fact, I just produced one the other day, check it out. I put it on to clickai.com/free-AI-audit one more time, clickai.com/free-AI-audit. Man, I should have made it easier URL. Hopefully got that. All right. If not back up, you may have to listen to that a couple times. What I what I demonstrated there, and I was making this video is for is for the other purposes, man, if I could say that it's for other purposes. But what I did with it was I introduced I call him Jim. Right? And, and I'm interacting with Jim, and it's this AI. Voiceover Oh, you know, there's another place that I use that as well. If you go to click ai.com, just click ai.com I put a video I was practicing building explainer videos. And I was like, man, do I really want to go spend the money for you know, some human voice over this thing? I mean, you know, it's just gonna be hundreds of thousands of dollars anyway, to do that. And it's like, there's got to be a better way. And so I've been using this for a while, it's actually really cool. And you know, we actually will use that in your behalf. So if you are interested, let us know, we can save you a ton of money, doing stuff like that. Okay, so when you're building your marketing, or training materials, using AI generated voices, they're actually getting pretty good for that kind of thing. It's not as useful for chatbot stuff, right, that's a different kind of air is AI. But, but for the voiceovers, it's actually a pretty decent way to save you a ton of money as a small to medium business owner. So So okay, here's four bite sized places to use AI today as a small to medium business owner. Once the voiceovers that I'm talking about, and go to those site locations you can you ultimately can reach out to me using those sites, if you go to the free dash AI dash audit site, you can actually get get connected and get on my calendar, we can chat, the lead searching and the hiring through that, that that's really cool AI that's backed up by IBM Watson. Again, reach out to me on that clickai.com/free-ai-audit, be happy to tell you how you can get access to that. And then there's another which is transcriptions. Right. And so, in the area of transcription, even this very podcast, I use AI to transcribe it right for a long time as using things like rev, you know, rev.com, they charge like, you know, a buck 25 a minute and after a while you're like, man, I just want to podcasts, I don't want to like, you know, break the bank, you know, to be getting the message out, man, I use some awesome AI services there, I actually can make those available to you, and save you a ton of bank, getting your stuff transcribed. So okay, so there's four areas, and then there's a fifth. So the so the four areas was voiceovers, lead searching, hiring, and then transcriptions, right all using AI in each of these areas at super low cost with really highly effective outcomes. The other is, is one that I started with, I was calling it a smart step. And that's in the marketing and sales area of your business, right? That's where you're taking some of your business information, your transactions, things like that. You're thinking about, hey, what's my target that I'm going after? And then then you're using AI to figure out alright, predictive with these high predictions. If you reduce this activity or increase this activity, you will have this sort of impact on your sales. Okay, so those are bite size and that's what we have to go after, as a small to medium business owners. All right, everyone, I hope that was helpful. Thanks for joining and until next time, only take bite sized AI. Thank you for joining Grant on ClickAI Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback. And remember to download your FREE eBook, visit clickairadio.com now.  

Welcome back to the fuel your legacy podcast. Each week we expose the faulty foundational mindsets of the past and rebuild a 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, fuel 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 gonna find this book on Kindle, Amazon and as always on my website, samknickerbocker.com Welcome back to the fuel your legacy podcast today. Actually this is an interesting story about how we have this guest on her name's Wiley Benson. I actually heard about her First from some videographers, who are like, Hey, you should go check out my lane because we work with her. She's awesome. I think she'd be a great connection. And that was like a year and a half ago, two years ago. And it just whatever happened never happened. I don't know, I listened to her podcast because she also has a podcast, which we'll talk about. She hired her first mindset coach after she had a stress-related heart attack. So think about that, like after your life changes and you almost die. That's when you decide it's time to make a change and she basically attributes and living a life devoted to that purpose. So she's been able to live a life of purpose because she found out that was essential. And the first step began her journey of discovery on her own natural gifts, really related to helping others see how to receive wealth and a Christ-centered living fit hand in hand and if you know me on any level then I kind of wrote that same thing about what I love doing.So I love, love, love helping people return to Christ. And I love, love, love helping people understand how money relieves stress so they can do so. So this is gonna be a lively discussion. I'm excited. And not very many times do I get people who have like the same thought processes or at least put in words the same things I do. So we're gonna get to know each other. And you get to listen in on this. But why don't you go ahead and share your story and why you're so passionate about what you're doing start at the beginning so we can get an understanding of where what led up to the events to create who you are today.Sir, I would love to thank you so much Samuel, and I really appreciate you sharing a little bit more about you and the background of when you got when you heard about me first, I actually didn't know that story. So that's kind of cool. And to know that we are so closely connected in our purpose and mission. I've been on a podcast before where I felt like I couldn't I have to tone myself down a little bit and maybe not talk quite so much about Christ or God or whatever. And it's just really refreshing to be in a place where I feel like I can be completely authentic and, and true to who I know I am. So thank you. Thank you for being you. And thank you for inviting me to be on the podcast today. As you're talking, I was just kind of allowing myself to go back over my history a little bit and see where I wanted to start. You already mentioned that I had a stress-related heart attack about eight years ago, that really started me on my journey of becoming who I am today, you know, where I help people with their purpose, really understanding that I have a purpose. And that was what the stress-related heart attack was caused by living a life that wasn't living in purpose. But I feel like I really want to go back even farther. I don't usually go back, you know as far as I'm going to share with you Your audience today that about 25 years ago, I was doing Mary Kay. I know if those of you don't know it's a direct sales company. It's been around since 1963. I remember because that was the year I was born. So it's been around forever. And I did Mary Kay for 18 years and I was a director I had, had earned a couple of cars and Mary Kay I had a really great group of women that I led. And it was right about the time of 911. I remember sitting in my house, I had my little kids, my kids are grown. Now I have little kids. And this happened. And I really was faced with this idea of is, is there really nothing more to live than just helping people look good on the outside and That that was like a turning point in my life. And I started making some changes in my meetings that I did the weekly meetings that I did me with the women. But that was back in the time when mentors and coaches and you know, life coaches and things like that weren't really a thing. And people didn't really hire people. I mean, there was like, some books that you could read and stuff. But I was just like, branching out and kind of doing this thing on my own and trying to help people get deeper into, you know, who are you what do you want to, you know, what is your legacy that you want to leave in your life? And it was like I was people would look at me like I had three heads. They were just like, what the heck are you talking about? It was a totally different time then and totally different mindset. So I actually because I didn't have any training, I didn't really know where I was going. I kind of crashed and burned. With that, and so instead of continuing on with my Mary Kay career, which I thought I was going to be doing that for the rest of my life, I decided to leave that and I went back to corporate America and started working for other people. And, you know, I was a mom, you know, raising kids and, and then when I left Mary Kay, my kids were a little bit older. So I felt like I had the freedom to be able to do that. But the problem once I got back into working in the real world, was that I felt like I was building somebody else's legacy. I was showing up. I'm, you know, really an amazing employee, for people. And I felt like I was taking on this idea that, you know, I wanted to build a legacy by helping somebody else build their legacy. And that's in my book, the seven gateways your map to integrity in life. business, that's something that I share with you is my story of, you know, being in corporate America being in line to become the next CEO of a multi-million dollar company. And then two weeks later I got laid off. So I have put all of my heart and life into building somebody else's legacy. And then it was just cutoff.And that was kind of the beginning of sort of a spiral downtime in my life where I went from, you know, feeling very capable, very confident in who I am to every day and every job that I got laid off from or got fired from, I got fired from a job. All these different things started really eroding my self confidence and my self esteem and my worst, you know, just really, really feeling what I was worth. out in the marketplace. And so it was at one of those jobs that I had kind of spiraled down to. So going from being, you know, in line to the CEO of a multimillion dollar company, down to the last job that I had out in the workforce was a shipping manager. I worked pretty much by myself surrounded by boxes, I shipped snowmobile parts. That was that was where I was, when I had a heart attack. I was actually at work. When I had this heart attack. And the heart attack the doctor told me it was called broken heart syndrome. And the more that I got to, like journaling and really understanding about my journey, and myself and what I was worth and where I had kind of sunk to, I realized that it was because I was not living a life of purpose. I wasn't trying too, I didn't have a legacy of my own that I was building. And so you know, hiring that first coach after I had the heart attack, and just really diving in and finding what my purpose and mission was, and going to God every single day and asking him, what do I need to know? just teach me. And I really was divinely tutored. And the that book, the seven gateways, all came from that time where I was rebuilding myself and rediscovering who I was, and really understanding my purpose and my legacy and my mission. So I would say that that was that in a nutshell, that's kind of my journey that led up to who I am today.And how long ago waslike, did you publish your book?Just January I think January was when it actually was I got my first copies in hand. Had pre sold quite a few copies. But actually having the print book done, I have audio and audio also now and it's in ebook form as well. So, you know, just since January, but it was actually in creation for about three and a half years.That's it interesting how I'm curious why why do you think it was in creation for three years? What took you three years to get published?I knew that, you know, this path that I was on of discovering my purpose. At first, I thought that the path that I that I was being given was only for me, you know, it was just for me to help me get out of the place where I was, you know, to get to a much higher, more, you know, the best person that I could be. I thought it was just for me, but as I started looking over it, I was like, this is a blueprint. This is a way that people can take these seven go through The seven gateways, faith, abundance, charity, prosperity, obedience, humility and equity. Those are the seven gateways. And I started looking over those that list you know, and what I have learned these these quantum leaps, they were quantum leaps for me. And as I started looking over it, I realized that it wasn't just for me, it was actually a step by step plan for people to go from, you know, being stuck in a dark place where you have no idea how to get out of it. You feel like you're completely trapped within your own body, that you know, your spirit and your heart and your soul is just dying to get out and create, but because of either your limiting beliefs or the circumstances that have been created, or whatever it is that you feel like you can't get out and that's what the Seven gateways are so from me, you know, experiencing these seven gateways and then actually communicating those on paper to in a way that other people could understand them and that they could simply and effectively walk through these gateways as well. And then of course, you know, just lots of editing and great people to help me incorporate my story into it and everything to make it interesting. So it wasn't like a textbook. It was just you know, took took some time to get this all put together.I love that there's so much gold in this I'm excited to tear it apart, and in a good way dissect it. Okay, so yeah, um, one of the things that is so important, not just for sushi recognize this from a perspective of her career. So in contrast, she was helping people look good on the outside. And by the way, my mom did kick me Mary Kay, lots of my friends who Mary Kay, it's a great company, I have nothing negative to say about it. And it is very much look pretty on the outside. Now they're one of their. And I think this is a true principle, you often feel how you look, right? So if you look in the mirror and you feel and you look, and you think that you look bad, you're gonna feel bad inside. If you look in the mirror and think, man, I'm looking good today, then that's extra confidence. So it does help like your outer shell does help, how you feel about yourself on the inside, so not to make any mistake there. However, the ability to look beyond that say, Okay, how am I really changing somebody on the inside? If they only feel good about themselves? When they have this makeup on? Am I really making a lasting impact? Am I making a change that's going to change their life and they're the next generation? Is it a legacy proof thing? And that's where I think it's crucial to understand what what exactly are you doing and when she asked yourself that question, People weren't quite into her being that position in their life. And it doesn't mean that those people who she was leading when she starts asking these questions, I guess I'm curious, I'll ask you this. Why do you think that they were not interested? Do you think it was because they, it was just so out of left field from what how they they saw you, or do you think they really weren't interested in and discovering themselves on a deeper level that way?No, I definitely think that there was an interest. I remember in the days building up to the first meeting that I had, you know, where I actually tried to teach people. There was a lot of excitement generated It was like, I had people coming out of the woodwork people who had not attended a meeting and, you know, months were all of a sudden, like, I'm gonna be there, you know, I'm gonna come. I think there definitely was an interest. I think it was a little bit of a combination of me not being ready. You know, me not having the training. I had never had a mentor. I didn't Really no, I was like discovering it probably could have been called more like a mastermind. If I had known what a mastermind was at the time, you know, we might have been able to do something there. But, but I think it was just I was a little bit ahead of the curve. I was a little bit, you know, on the crest of the evolution of people will really, except accepting this idea that there were people who had gone through something that could actually help you get through it a little bit faster. And I'm even right now I feel like I'm on the crest of new things as we're evolving, you know, in our current time right now in history, where there's a lot of uncertainty about the future. I feel like the the new program that I just created the Lord's way to wealth is really on the crest of you know, moving forward, but the the difference this time, is I have had that mentoring. I do you know, know what What it takes to help to inspire people and bring people along with me. So yeah, I think it was probably a combination of the time and also me not being quiteready. Yeah, it's interesting back back at that period of time, Tony Robbins was around as far as like life, if you want to throw them into life coach area, pretty much Tony Robbins like he is the godfather of life coaching. For for most people, there's a lot of business coaches, Brian Tracy Zig Ziglar them. There's lots and lots and lots and lots of business coaches, but specifically in the life coaching space, it was pretty much Tony Robbins. And from that, I mean, there might have been a few other people but no one quite on that level. And now there's tons and tons of people who are specifically helping you withmore lifepractical things and not just on the business or money side of things. So that's awesome. When you went back to corporate America, this is this is interesting. I hope that people are listening. But you ended up feeling like you're building somebody else's legacy. And then it all got taken away from you. And many people they feel like and you use this word there were security there. Mmm hmm. How would you define security? Like what is security when it comes to job security or income security? Let's just label it as income security because I think that will broaden out the explanation a little bit. But how would you define income security?I've had so many different experiences, like I've owned several businesses, I've started several businesses. I've been a consultant in a lot of different businesses. And, you know, work for myself obviously, you know, with Mary Kay and, and other things. And I used to believe that job security or income security came from being a good employee. And so when I would go to work, I would totally like take this on and If I were the owner of the business, like what would I be doing today if I was the owner of the business, and that kind of backfired on me also, and you can read about that in my book. But now, what I realized is that you can put your guts into everything that you do. But if, if you're putting your security into somebody else's hands, there may be outside circumstances well, like even right now, the way we're going, you know, the things that are happening right now, there's a lot of people who are not working through no fault of their own through no fault of their business or their boss, you know, would would would probably never have like said you're fired. But but there's, there's they're not there. So when you put your security into somebody else's hands or into some outside circumstance, then that's not true security. I feel like the only true security is when you yourself know What your natural gifts are, and how to turn that into something that other people need. That is really your own. Your only true securitycould not have said it better myself. I'm going to go back and challenge on something you said, and I am sure you didn't mean it this way. But unfortunately, sometimes people they'll hear something. And as long as it confirms a prior belief of theirs, they'll accept it at face value, rather than thinking about it more deeply. And this is why I want to tear this down. Okay. The idea that they're not working through no fault of their own is absolutely contrary to the idea of they chose to put them put their their security in somebody else's hands. The fact that they chose to put security and their security in somebody else's hands means it was their choice to begin with. It is absolutely their fault. They're not working like let's not sugarcoat it. Let's not pretend that Oh, somebody else happened. I'm a victim of Coronavirus. I'm a victim of layoffs. bullcrap you're a victim of not choosing to create, and that's your own fault. Okay, that's my opinion, you're on top. Now,I'm going to agree with you with also an added little piece is that I truly believe that our belief is what creates our outcome. So if there is the belief that I need to have somebody else to create security for me, then the outcome is going to be produced from that.Yeah. 100%. And, and it's because of that, that I love doing this podcast. This is why I started this podcast because it's my belief that that's not true. It's my belief that the only security as you said is in identifying your identity and learning how to add value to others. That's the only security It doesn't matter what I work in money, right? I help people with money all the time. I teach people how money works. And the irony is money is nothing more than an object. And value is really what we need to have a more honest conversation about and as long as you know how to add value It doesn't matter what the money we could use currency, Let's exchange the word money for currency doesn't matter what the currency exchange is, or the monetary exchanges, it could be Spanish dollars, it could be pesos. It could be whatever it is, as that could change, and it doesn't change. Why Lane's belief in herself, it doesn't change my belief in myself, it doesn't change Riley's ability to provide value to others and receive adequate compensation in whatever form of exchange we're using for myself, right? So because we've identified our identity, we can then add value. And it doesn't matter what that monetary exchanges we're going to be taking care of, and we're going to be have security inside of ourselves and peace and comfort in and hope because we know we can add value. It's people who have given their ability and we're going to get into this here in a second to two other people that are in in pain. So when she she's in line to become a CEO guys think about that you're in line to become a CEO. Have a massive company and you get laid off. The problem is if you've built your identity around what other people think of you, I don't care if you're, let's say, You're this beautiful woman, you've got three kids and a wonderful husband. And then you find out that your wonderful husband's been seeing some other woman on the side, right? Your whole identity was built on your perfect life and how other people saw your perfect life. Not always, but a lot of women, this is the case. And so when they find out that they would have been passed over, or rejected or whatever, it destroys them from the inside out, and they crumble. When reality, their identity, who they are there was always value there and it had nothing to do with who their husband was. It has nothing to do with who their kids were, has nothing to do with that they are you as an individual have value, regardless of anything around you. And it's important to understand that to create boundaries, and ultimately create true peace, happiness, joy and security in your life. And so when you got fired, laid off Maybe go a little bit more into that. How like, I'm sure you've journaled about this at some point. What aspects of your identity Did you have tied to your ability to perform in the corporate world?Everything was totally tied to that. I, I, I started my first business when I was 13. And I've been my identity has always been, up until that point had always been attached to the accomplishes the accomplishments that I created, personally or professionally. That was that was where my identity completely was. And that's why and I'm so glad that you shared that because so many people do attach their identity to something like how good of a mom I am or how good of a wife I am or how you know, perfect my life looks or whatever. But What happened when I got laid off? At first I was just like super confident, you know, I was like, You know what, I still got a lot of good years left in me, I'm an awesome, you know, I, I know that I can provide value somewhere else and I went out there and I started, you know, just looking for the next opportunity. The problem was that I didn't find a next opportunity that was equal to, you know, in, like professional prestige and pay and all of that, you know, of what I had. So it was like, okay, that's fine. You know, I've got this new job, there's room to move up, I know how to move up. You know, I know how to do what's necessary for people to love what love what I do and to promote me. So I still, you know, have this this great opportunity. But that was the job that I got fired from like a year later. I was supposed to go in for an employee review and was going to get a $2 raise. That's what I thought that I was going to get. And it would have brought me back up Almost to where I was, you know, in the prior position, and instead, they said, we're letting you go, we're firing you, you're fired. Here's your final check. Let me walk you to the door, grab your stuff on the way out. That was that was my experience. And from that, that was when I really started questioning my value. That was the moment when I was like, maybe I'm not as good as I thought I was. And then the next job that I got was like, $5 an hour less than what I and it was, because that's what I felt like I was worth. And, you know, even within that, that other job that I got, I started doing things that I typically would never have allowed myself to stoop to in a professional situation because I used to know how much more valuable I was I was actually cleaning the toilets. And there's nothing wrong with cleaning toilets. I clean toilets at my house, but I've never been hired to do That I always felt like I was, you know, capable of so much more. But I had allowed my own value, the value that I gave, I had allowed it to slip to that point where, where, you know, I didn't feel like I was worth any more than that.Yeah, it's a it's such an interesting thing. I have been on this. I don't know if it's a rant or as I've been saying, I thought it for a long time, but it's been coming up more and more in my life. Specifically, I think because of the Coronavirus and people feeling victimized by life. And I just don't have a lot of patience for victims. And so I want to help you proceed. It's not like I want to get you out of my life. I want to help you move to the next level of thought. But like becoming the CEO of your own life has been like the biggest for me and it's interesting because I don't know where I learned this. I think I put better words to it which we're going to get into And second, I put better words to it more recently, but even from a young age, I had my first so the first job I remember being asked to do when I was See, I would have been like 910 years old, the neighbor lady had some some weeds that she wanted cold. And we are homeschooled. So my mom volunteered us to go over there and pull weeds and she was going to pass. So we went over there. And that the woman was nice enough, say, Okay, well, this is the job I need done. What do you think it's worth? You know, she was treating us respectful even though we're 10 year old, 11 year old kids. And so we're like, yeah, I think it's worth about five bucks an hour. Like, I'd rather set basically was this or doing homework. So to put put that in perspective, I didn't like homework, but I'd rather do homework than I do back breaking work for less than $5 an hour, right? That was that was in my mind. I knew what I was doing. And so we came home. She said, No, we came home. My mom's like, hey, why aren't you over there pulling weeds. And we're like, well, because she didn't want to pass what we thought we were worth. And she's like, Yeah, right so she marched us back over the we had to pull weeds for free. It sucked. But what I learned, based on what I'm saying is I always had this mindset of like, I'm going to determine what my work is worth. And if you like it great if you don't fine, you know, I don't need to let you define my work. And then later I was 414 years old, I was working as a brick landscaper, and same type of situation. I was managing a crew of five adults laying brick. Well, the owner of the company would get all the materials lined up and set there and then he would disappear he'd come back to do some some cutting some cuts for brick but other than that, I I ran the whole crew. I was getting paid $7 and 50 cents an hour they were getting paid 1050 and so if you think you can keep from your employees what you're paying everybody people talk like reality is people talk Don't Don't be dishonest. Don't be cutting random deals here because the reality is people talk Okay, there's no point in In beginning that type of behavior, because you can't ever keep up with it. But so I found out they're getting paid more than me. So I confronted the owner of the company about it. I was like, Look, man, I'm, I'm the crew lead, like, I'm the one telling these guys what to do. I'm 14 years old, you need to pay me at least what you're paying them. He's like, Oh, well, they're they have families, and they have all this other reason why they should get paid more than me. And I was like, Well, look, and this was like, on a Thursday, Thursday or Friday, I was like, Look, you can either pay me what you're paying them, or I'm done. You know, like, I'm not gonna keep working for you. And then he called me back later that day, and he tried to fire me and I was like, No, like, you don't get this. I quit already, unless you're paying me more. But the point is, from a young age, I've had this mindset of I'm going to determine my value. And it's so important because if you're walking into even if you are an employee, okay, there's nothing wrong with being an employee. ralina said that multiple times here as well. But even if you're an employee I would still think it's best to think of yourself as a CEO of your company, your company is you and whoever your shareholders are, you're your spouse and your children. That's your company. And it's your job to negotiate a contract that satisfactory for both parties involved the company, you're working for your employer and you and if at any point, you feel like there's a discrepancy there as in, you're being taken advantage of, it's your duty, as the CEO of your company, to either renegotiate that contract, get out of that contract and get somewhere where it's better in your your ability doesn't matter if you get paid hourly commission. Salary doesn't matter. That's not important. The important thing is, are you thinking like a business owner? Are you thinking like I'm the CEO, or are you thinking like a victim, please, I think of Oliver Twist, whenever I please, sir, can I have some more? It's like no, like, why would I give you more I'm trying to make my company profitable, prove that you're worth more and then we'll have a conversation and so Um, speak to that a little bit from from that language, how, how important was it for you to when you pulled yourself out of it, to start thinking again, I know my worth, I know my value and I'm not going to accept less.It was everything because that's actually what caused the heart attack was the in congruence assay of my spirit, my heart knowing really what I was worth and the value that I had to bring to the table and, and living something completely out of alignment. That was really what caused the heart attack was being completely out of alignment with the job, the time that I was getting to this job. And like I say, you know, there's nothing, it's totally moral and ethical, you know, to work in a place, you know, where you're doing manual labor or shipping, you know, cleaning toilets, whatever those things that I was doing. There's nothing wrong with those things that I was doing, but it was totally out of alignment with what I was capable of. That is where that in congruency, you are not being authentic, you're not honoring yourself, you're living well below your privilege, you're going to cause something's going to give, there's going to be stress there's going to be your spirit is going to rebel. And there's going to be something my heart. I lost function of half of my heart because of that. And I know that that's what caused it.So let's, Ah, man, we're gonna run out of time here, which I want to have answered, ask this question because I think this is for me this is this is directly connected to my mission and what I'm trying to accomplish in life. But I forget who who I first heard this from I've heard it from multiple people at this point, so I don't know who to attribute the quote to. So if you're listening, and you feel like you've said this before, you heard me say it. Great. You can take credit for it, but the idea that Well, first off, let's start with just the concept of cognitive dissonance. cognitive dissonance, I think is essential to maintain a certain level of cognitive dissonance. But ultimately, you can't maintain cognitive dissonance forever, one of two things is going to happen. So let's first talk about what cognitive dissonance is cognitive dissonance is when you believe something about yourself or about somebody else. And the results aren't showing up your unmet expectations essentially, is, is a more layman's term of cognitive dissonance. Okay, well, that is a form of cognitive dissonance, we're going to say there's a higher level thought and there's a lower level thought just to make term simple. If you start to believe higher level things, but lower level results keep happening. And you spend your time around lower level thought people than one or two things is going to happen. Either your your body doesn't like cognitive dissonance. So either you will start to lower your thought process to blend in with other people or Those people will remove themselves and you will be attracting or you will be surrounded by more people who have your same level of thought, your results, your results will increase. The problem is most people don't like cognitive dissonance because it's painful. And in Riley's case it almost killed her. Right? Where if you're, if you maintain this higher level of thought, and it takes a long time for the results to show up and to rise to that level of cognitive dissonance, then that can be depressing, can give you anxiety, okay? This is where a lot of people get into this feeling of being suicidal. And this is a real, this is a very real thing. And maybe Marlene wasn't aware that she was suicide, okay, but her body knew that it can't like when you read the scriptures again, I this is where we're getting into Christ to a house divided against itself cannot stand. You cannot serve both God this higher level thought and Ma'am, in this lower level thought it's not physically possible. It's not like you shouldn't, it's not physically possible from an energy perspective. Think of yourself like a magnet. Okay? What happens when you have two opposing magnets trying to, to put them together, they resist each other. Well as that cognitive dissonance increases, the magnetization, the magnetism of your, the energy of your body is doing the same thing and it's literally tearing you apart from inside out. Like that is from an energy perspective, electricity, which is what we're all made of atoms and quantum physically, that's what's physically happening. So then we get suicidal and we want to kill ourselves. It's not that we actually want to end the the function of our electrical being. It's that we are recognizing there's a part of our physical being that needs to exit our life. And that is those thoughts, those mindsets, those relationships that are holding us back that are causing that tension. So here's the Question when you decided to fully live in your purpose and just go for it, regardless of all the fear of what other people were saying, how much like what did that do for you physically, from a healing perspective?Oh, 100% wholeness. The doctor actually had told me that my heart would be working at 40% of its capacity for the rest of my life. And because of my changes, you know, that I made in my mindset, because I started on this path and started asking, day by day, what is what can I do, you know, to get more in alignment, and getting these seven gateways. And ultimately, you've given me a perfect segue to actually share a little bit about the Lord's way to wealth too. But when I started doing that, I experienced a complete wholeness. Within six months, I was hiking the highest mountain peak in our in Utah County. So it is everything. It's everything. To make that commitment to be your highest self to live in the highest capacity that you can be, and to be in alignment with that, that is everything to a whole and purposeful life. And can I just kind of share a little bit about the worst way to weld? Because back in November, so it's been several months ago, I asked the question, because I was experiencing some of this cognitive dissonance, dissonance. I was living my purpose. I was serving people I was influencing I was, you know, giving value in a way that was really serving me, you know, that was serving God. And I still was struggling financially. So it was like this cognitive dissonance. It's like, what is the deal? You know, I feel like I'm doing everything right. And I'm not experiencing the financial independence that I that I feel like I'm capable of. And so I asked the question, is there a different way to wealth if you're on the Lord's errand The answer came that was on a Friday, the whole weekend long, I was just like constant download of spiritual confirmation of the answer to this question is absolutely yes, there is a different way to wealth, if you're living your purpose and if you're taking God as your partner. And that was the final piece, the seven gateways was a way for me to teach people how to get from not knowing what their purpose is, or living totally out of alignment with it to becoming, you know, living a life of purpose. The Lord's way to wealth now takes that one step further, and you can actually make money with it. And that was all came from asking that one question. And then the cognitive dissonance went away. Everything was in alignment, I, you know, was able to understand things the way that God understands them. Sure. Solet's let's try and summarize that I have my own opinions about The way God understands money, but I'm curious if you were to summarize what the Lord's right of wealth like the the summary of it, and I know there's going to be so much more depth. That's why if you guys are listening to this, you just need to go work with her to get the more depth because there's no way we can cover it on this. Well, even if we could cover on this podcast, that's not the purpose of the broadcast. So, but I'm curious like if you were to summarize what what that added step is or how he views that process? What would you say that is?everything that we've discovered, I did actually create a mastermind for this and we've we've been creating this over the past four months. I just we just finished the last module of it yesterday. So it's it is an actual online course. Now, I just talked to my person that's putting everything together, it should be ready by Monday as an online course, and there is a Facebook group called the Lord's way to wealth that anybody can join. It's a free public group. But in this mastermind We discovered principles that are scriptural, scripturally based and scientifically based, and most of it is that we have created different meanings to the scriptures and the way, you know that God has had, the information is already here, and we have the information, but we have misinterpreted or we've changed the meanings to align up with what with our beliefs or whatever, you know, like limiting beliefs that we have within ourselves about money, or whatever to make us feel like we're okay. In the mediocrity that we live in. But when you actually read it and understand it, the lessons and everything are super clear. And I would say that as far as God's understanding of money and what he wants us to understand, we are heirs to everything that he has, that is scriptural. We are equal with Christ. As an heir to everything that he has, he has created a world where abundance is you plant one apple seed, you get a billion apples over its lifetime. There. There is such abundance that's available to us right now and especially right now during this COVID-19 you know, we feel like we're trapped. I needed spinach the other day and I was like, I don't have any spinach. Oh, I've got dandelions out in my lawn. I went out and pick some dandelions and I use the dandelions instead of spinach. And I was like, wow, God provides everything that we need. And I feel like the the main message of the Lord's way to wealth is to really receive the abundance and prosperity that God God already has promised us. That's that's really the ultimate lesson of the Lord's way to wealth. And it again is like a step by step process.

How do you build a successful eCommerce business that has attracted nearly 5 million visitors in a month? For Jerry Hum, it took a few failures and a couple of stumbles out of the gate with his cofounders before finding the winning combination of users, demand, and products all in one. Jerry is a co-founder and the Executive Chairman of Touch of Modern, a members-only e-commerce website and app focused on selling lifestyle products, fashion, and accessories to men. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Jerry takes us through his early struggles and how he found the secret sauce to making his eCommerce platform one of the most popular among male shoppers. Plus he explains what metrics other eCommerce pros should be looking at, and gives some advice to other entrepreneurs. Key Takeaways: For a multi-brand company, customer retention and lifetime value is the critical metric to look at Build the primary platform where your primary customer prefers to buy Combine marketing engagement and transactional data to prevent high engagement high cost marketing yielding low sales volume --- Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible eCommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce --- Transcript: Stephanie: Hey everyone. This is Stephanie, your host of Up Next In Commerce. Today we have Jerry Hum. The co-founder and executive chairman of Touch Of Modern. Jerry, how's it going? Jerry: Pretty good. How are you? Thanks for- Stephanie: [crosstalk] good. Yeah, how's it going? So you're in a loft right now, right? In SF, living the quarantine life. Jerry: Yeah, in San Francisco. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: Yep. Stephanie: How- Jerry: [crosstalk] for a little longer than most other folks. Stephanie: Yeah. So what's your day look like with being sheltered in place and... I think San Francisco is even stricter than Palo Alto where you guys [inaudible] allowed to do even more than we are. Jerry: Yeah. Well, we actually started preparing for it a little bit earlier actually, just as it was making news headlines and most companies were still up and running. We were planning kind of contingencies and all that planning and seeing how work from home would be like if we had to do it. Luckily we came up with a plan just in time. We actually went into it before even California started making statements about it. So I think we are kind of in a pretty decent groove in terms of keeping the business running smoothly and all that. In terms of a day to day, I'm actually surprised as to maybe how engaged people have remained. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: Being that we have to do it all through technology. I actually started thinking about it, why is it that work from home is almost a little bit easier now than it was in the past. And I think it's because when it's the only option then you just do it. Right? Stephanie: You have to make it work. Jerry: Yeah. It's not like if half the office is doing one thing and then... Or not like half the office. If most of the office is at work and a few people are work from home then it's actually more difficult because the people in the office are like, "Oh, I'll just wait for that person to get in or something." But if this is the only way that every one is communicating then it's actually fairly smooth. Obviously everything takes a little bit more time and all that. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: [inaudible] day is actually longer than usual. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: All things considered, I think it's working pretty well. Stephanie: Good. Yeah. Hopefully it will all come to a close soon. How have you all handled... I mean has there been any struggles, I'm imagining taking photos of your products and things like that? That's probably a very in-person type of thing that [inaudible] people have perspectives on and all want to help. How are you handling things like that with your business that seem pretty hard to do virtually? Jerry: Yeah. So luckily, some of our folks have set-ups at home. Stephanie: Good. Jerry: Yeah. Because usually, photographers, this is not just a job. It's also a passion and a hobby. Right. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: So we've been able to make due... Obviously at a reduced capacity. Yeah. Stephanie: Yeah. Well, good. So maybe that's a good point to dive into what is Touch of Modern. If you were to explain it to the listeners and give us some background. Jerry: Touch of Modern is the only shopping destination that men visit daily. And we offer a [inaudible] mix of remarkable products across all categories and that you can use everyday.This could be anything from a flame thrower you can strap to your wrist, or the newest exercise gadget, or anything in between. Stephanie: Are women allowed? Because I was on there and I was like, "I want to buy some of this stuff." I would buy... Maybe not a flame thrower but there was some good stuff on there that I'm like, "I want this." Jerry: Of course, women are allowed. It's just kind of more... A little bit more of our differentiator. Because most E-commerce sights out there are catered toward women. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: [inaudible] we're not the only one but one of a few that really cater to men. Stephanie: Got it. Yeah. It looks awesome. A lot of the products. I was afraid to hit buys right away. How did you come to create the idea of Touch of Modern? And I think I read it was the third... The third times a charm. That you had done three other things, or two other things before that until you got to Touch of Modern. What was that like? What was that journey like? Jerry: Yeah. I'll give you the long story here, maybe. Stephanie: Good. Jerry: [Four] founders, guys from New York. The business actually was a peer-to-peer experienced market place. And this is kind of similar to what Airbnb has now. Obviously they built that on top of their existing business but we were trying to start from scratch at the time. That was extremely difficult because you're telling folks to change their lifestyle. Right? If you need to suddenly offer a cooking class, that's not a easy thing to do if you don't have the customers for it. Right? Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: Or the time for it. And then we're telling customers to come on this platform and book stuff. But if you don't have the activities, what is there to book? Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: So it becomes this chicken and egg problem. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: It came out of our own need because we were guys from New York, you're kind of looking for interesting things to do all the time, just in the city. Right? The second business was called Raven. Well, the first one was called [Scarra 00:05:24]. I don't know if I mentioned that. Second one was called Raven. That was a slight variation on the first. And that was we took out half of the equation because we realized, double sided marketplace, super hard. Right? Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: We started offering activities that already existed. This could be like hang gliding. This could be sky diving. This could also be day at the spa. Right. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: We also layered on a recommendation algorithm where you could like stuff. And based on your activity, we would offer you a daily feed of different activities and things that were new to discover in your area. We got a lot of engagement out of that. People found really cool things. If you look at my feed versus somebody else's, it would be really different based on what we like. When we looked at it, it was like, oh this is a pretty accurate description of things I'm interested in and my hobbies and such. Right? Jerry: And that was difficult because people would then discover stuff but they wouldn't actually book it with us. They would just call directly [crosstalk 00:06:29]. Stephanie: Wow. Jerry: What we learned from that was, well, we need reason for people to transact. Right? And we need maybe something to make us relevant for right now. So the second generation of that business was actually arranging events where we built a mobile app as the early days of... Not the iPhone but when apps started getting the more complicated... Better than just the kind of beer pouring app. Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: Those simple things. Right? So we used Geofencing to create this thing where if you went within a certain perimeter of something going on, we would tell you about it. We'll alert you and be like, "Hey, like... Street fair over here or something over there." And that was really cool because there wasn't another app like that. At least that we know of... That we knew of at the time that was doing that. Also at the time, a lot of folks were moving to San Francisco. Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: Probably even more so than they are today. A ton of messages from people saying, "Wow, you're really helping me discover the city. Every weekend we pull this out and, you know, see what's going on." Especially because San Francisco is the type of city that always has something going on. Stephanie: Yeah. Like on the side streets, you're like, "There's a whole festival going on right now." Jerry: Yeah. So that was really cool but again, a lot of these things were free. So it wasn't there wasn't a real business model there. There's just a ton of engagement. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). It seems like you guys are kind of ahead of your time with that. Because even when I'm hearing about that now, I'm like, oh, if you would have kept going with that one, Airbnb probably would have acquired you. Jerry: Yeah. Right. Stephanie: Oh, if you kept going with the Geofencing thing, Google would acquired you because I worked for Google Maps before this. Jerry: Oh, yeah. Stephanie: They're still trying to figure out how to show you where the festivals are, where the farmers markets are based on your location. So maybe you guys are just ahead of your time with everything. Jerry: Maybe. That would be the positive view of it. So I think the lesson we learned from that was... Incredibly hard to scale location based things. because you could sell out all the tickets to this one show or a certain percentage of it but there's unlimited margin and you're constricted by the location and therefore we couldn't justify the kind of business mechanics that were necessary to actually make that sustainable. I mean, it raised a ton of money. Right? And so this isn't going to get like... Where it wasn't like, hey, we're going to get to a billion people and then it's going to work. It's not like that. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: So we were like, what were we good at and what were we not good at? We were really good at getting people engaged. Really good at discovery aspect of things. We just needed something more scalable to be the thing that we featured. And realized that, hey, products... You get scale with products. Right? Mass distribution and all that. There's real margin there because that's kind of built into the modal that [inaudible] already exists. Jerry: We had always kind of liked products, just as the people that we were. But we didn't want to touch it because we didn't want to deal with real world problems of moving things around, shipping, [crosstalk 00:09:46]- Stephanie: Yeah. Logistics. Jerry: Yeah. Logistics. Right? After going through the struggles of the first two business, we realized that things are not really... It's not rocket science. Right? This has been done. We started thinking about what kind of unique angle we could take at it. I remember we were in the living room and we're talking about speakers for some reason and who made the best speakers. Dennis had his idea. Jon had his idea. And then Steven, who's real audio files, was like, no, these are the best speakers. He knew all these brands that we didn't even know about. We knew the mass market brands but not the kind of stuff that he was into. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: He had all this knowledge. Okay, you win that debate. Right? And we realized that we have this thing that we geek out on. Right? Jon was really into cooking and he had these really expensive knives that he would keep in this [inaudible] that he would have to take out and show us. Dennis was really into outdoor activities and all the gear that's associated with that. I use to be an architect when I was in New York so I spent way too much money on furniture. So that was my thing. Right? And so everyone had our own thing. No one out there was catering to this desire or whatever it was that ties all these things together. Right? Jerry: So we just started sourcing things that we thought were cool. Hey, if we think it's cool, other people are going to think it's cool too. Right? It wasn't like a men thing. It wasn't even necessarily a discovery thing. It was just these were the things that we thought were cool. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: Through that process, right away it kind of hit in a way that the other two businesses did not hit at all in two years. Right? Where day one we started getting real transactions and kind of buying activity. Right? Stephanie: How? How did you get buying on day one? How did people even find your website or know where to go? Jerry: We did not even have a website on the very first day. We actually... What happened was Dennis, who ran marketing, would just start running ads and would go to a landing- Stephanie: Okay. Facebook? Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: Or what kind of ads? Okay. Jerry: Facebook. Earlier in the days of Facebook too. I think a lot of what we did, now, can't be exactly replicated but there's probably some learnings to take from it. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: So we basically just collected emails and say, "Hey, there's this thing that's coming soon." Right? I think [inaudible] probably remember years ago there was tons of these types of things that are just coming soon and you're like wow [crosstalk 00:12:39]. Stephanie: Yeah. That was the strategy back then of just like just put up a landing page and see if people want that fake product that you could create. I remember books where they would suggest that and I'm like, that's a good idea. Jerry: [crosstalk] that is more less of a pit. I mean, we were creating it. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: I'm not talking about like, let's just run ads and see if people like it. We were just building it at the time, that same time we were running ads against it. And basically we had an idea of what that metrics needed to look like in order for a business to work. Right? We just made assumptions down the whole funnel. Right? If we acquire an email for this much, and if this percent of folks convert, and assume a certain order value, and certain repeat rate then this is what our business would look like. Right? Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: And no data for anything outside of what it would cost to acquire an email. Basically, we knew the cost of that. Then we started sourcing products and building the website behind it. Then we just went down the funnel and firmed our assumptions. Sometimes they were better and sometimes they were just different. We kind of just proved it out from the top down. Stephanie: Got it. That's really cool. Has it always been a member's only platform? Has there ever been a time where people could just go to the website, the app, and just see the products without inputting their email? Jerry: Yeah. So, we require folks to input the email for the upfront reason that we are talking to... And this is also maybe one of our differentiators, is that we are not a clearance channel per se. We talk to vendors who have products that are new to market. Right? So they may have endeavors to go to traditional retail or something else, and they may not want their prices shown necessarily to everybody. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: So that's one [inaudible] been the case. Stephanie: Got it. Okay. Cool. So when I was looking at your catalog and just seeing everything that you have, how do you go about curating something like that? I mean, it sounds easy in the early days of, oh, so and so likes knives so he pulled in his favorite knives. But I saw how many products you have on that page. Maybe it's like... How many a day do you release? Jerry: It's about 300 a day. It's quite a bit. Stephanie: How do you find 300, even a month, cool products that are so unique like that and keep up the level of quality that's on there? Jerry: We have a team of about 30 or so folks on the sources and buying team and they're out just looking for what's cool and unique. And obviously we have our standards and things that we look for and they just go out and try to find things that meet those standards. And they also try to find things that are... that we've just never seen or heard of before. Right? Then we bring it back, it goes through an approval process, and then we put it up and run it. It's fairly simple. Stephanie: Does it still go through you to approve of every single product? Jerry: Not every single product. Stephanie: No. Jerry: In the early days it was and now we have a team of folks that can do it. Stephanie: Got it. And you also have an app that people can buy from. Is it the same functionality? Does the website mimic the app or how did you think about expanding to mobile? Jerry: It's mostly the same functionality. We expanded to mobile fairly early on. Like I said, our previous companies were... We were already experimenting with mobile back then. I don't think we had one on Scarra but Raven, we definitely did. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: That was a core part of it. So we went to mobile pretty early on and I don't think we knew this per se, but it was interesting because men tend to be more comfortable buying on mobile too. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: And maybe that influenced part of our strategy or vice versa. It seems to actually be the more popular platform for us. Both in terms of actual use engagement and revenue as well. Stephanie: Okay. And do you see different customer profiles when it comes to the mobile user versus the website users? And do you cater to them differently based on that? Or personalize things different? Jerry: No. The experiences are pretty congruent on both sides. The mobile users tend to have a little bit of a higher value. But that could also be because you kind of have to self select into mobile. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: You go on to the website and then you're all, hey, we're really into it. And then you go on the app. Right? Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: It's kind of hard to say what's [inaudible 00:17:21]. Stephanie: Go it. Very cool. So in the early days you were doing Facebook ads. And I think I read that you were doing TV ads as well at a certain point. How has your marketing strategy evolved over... since you started? Jerry: Yeah. So in the early days of Facebook it was like a wild, wild west. Right. Big brands weren't really on it. So it was a great time for companies like us. And this is why I say a lot of it can't really be replicated today exactly the same way we did it back then. So when a lot of competition started moving in, in order to compete, we kept broadening our category just... I mean, just becoming a stronger business. Right? Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: So it would be a lot harder to start with just a handful of products the same way we did. When we started, I think we launched with 12 products and that was it. It was like 12 individual products, not twelve vendors, just 12 [inaudible] things you could buy. Right? Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: That was enough to make it work. Probably impossible now to do that. As the business grew we could support more channels. We went into Google and then eventually got to the size where we can actually start experimenting with TV. I think also, TV has evolved over time as well because of visual advertising. Because so many brands see the benefits of digital advertising. You can track things and kind of go after a more specific audiences. That TV now kind of has changed to have some of those properties as well. So we use them both kind of together and they enhance each other. You can tell when, if you're spending too much on TV and not enough on digital, then TV starts to suffer. If you spend too much on digital and not enough on TV then the opposite happens. Stephanie: Got it. How do you find that ROI of the campaigns? Then decide, okay let's scale back on TV and increase mobile ads or something. What metrics are you looking for? Jerry: We actually have the exact same metrics on TV as we do on digital. Right? And this is just... cost acquired customer and lifetime value and all that. The way we track it is now you can know exactly when your spot airs and basically we have a baseline of traffic that we know that, hey, if nothing is airing, this is what are organic traffic looks like. Right. So when we air a spot, we can see that spike. We do a [inaudible] analysis to say this much of the traffic following that airing is probably through the TV. Stephanie: Got it. Okay. Very cool. So when it comes to metrics, when you think about E-commerce, what metrics do you think are most important to keep track of? Or how do you define success when it comes to E-commerce? Jerry: Yeah. There's a ton of stuff. I mean, it really depends... It depends a lot on what kind of product you're selling. Right? I'll give you two extremes. One extreme is like us, and for us we are a multi-brand retailer. Right? You can buy a number of things and also we change our selection everyday. So you can keep coming back to keep buying different things. Right? Jerry: So what's important to us is lifetime value and retention. Right? How fast do you break even on the cost to acquire a customer? At the end of the day, that's kind of like the most basic thing for any kind of company in our space. But the products that you're selling may influence how you look at it. Right? If you're selling cars or mattresses or something that you just don't buy very often, then you may think about it very differently because it's just not feasible to thing that the retention rate is going to be nearly what ours is. Right. Or at least not be frequent enough for you to be able to plan your marketing spin around. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Go it. How do you keep your customers... How do you retain them and keep them coming back? Versus acquiring new customers. How do you think about that mix? Jerry: I mean, you always have to acquire new customers. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: I think [inaudible] is just like a natural part of business. You can't deny that it's there. Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: [inaudible] you can be great but there's going to be some folks that it's not for. Right? It's not like 100 percent of your folks are going to stay with you forever. Even the folks that do eventually they may change taste or things like that may happen. So in terms of splits, I think that also varies on performance for us. For us we care about kind of a payback on the spend that we're doing and pending on where we see better performances kind of where we'll weight it. And also kind of seasonally because I would say for retail there's holiday season and all that, you may want to do one thing versus another. But that's going to be really specific to the kind of company that you're running. Stephanie: Yeah. So when it comes to changes in spending pattern, what have you seen with everything from COVID-19 going on? Like what kind of differences? I saw you have a... I think a stay-at-home section or something similar like that. Shelter in place, on your website. How have you seen things change since that started? Jerry: People's priorities definitely change very quickly. Luckily for us because we can change our assortment everyday, we were actually able to adapt really quickly. We got that store up from... From when we said we were going to do it to when it was up was a matter of... Like the morning to that afternoon. Stephanie: That's impressive. How did you line up all the vendors? I mean, to me that's like a long process of picking the vendors and picking out the product and making sure they can ship enough, depending on demand. How did you get all that lined up so quickly? Jerry: The thing is... I mean, when this first started happening especially. And we need to agree now still, it seemed as if time had just sped up suddenly. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: Things that would take an entire quarter could happen now in like a day. Right? Stephanie: Yeah. It has to. Jerry: Everyone was wondering what would be different? All of our vendors, suddenly their retail channels dried up. Right? And they had to move things around. So we just called them up and said, "Hey, this is what we're doing." Obviously most of the folks that were on there, day one, were folks we've worked with already in the past. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: Or coincidentally we were talking to and hey, this fits, kind of thing. Right? It was tapping existing relationships. And parallel, the design and engineering teams were building up the store. We were using some existing infrastructure that we could repurpose and re-skin for the store. It was an amazing feeling. I didn't think we were going to do it in a day but it happened. Stephanie: Yeah. And are you changing that catalog? Like each day or week or... Jerry: [crosstalk] as well. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Stephanie: Got it. Does it... How do you think now your company is going to change based on now you know how quick things can move if it has to? Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: Do you think that your internal policies and all that stuff could change going forward based on how quickly you can see thing go through? And maybe seeing things aren't a priority or approval for certain things might not be as high priority as you thought they were or... What's your view on that? Jerry: Yeah. I mean, in terms of policies first... I think in more so than anything it was like validation of a lot of policies that we had in place. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: It was confirmation that we could move quickly. Because we always thought we could. I think that's always been our thing. One of the questions people always ask is how does a company that sells premium products, how does that respond in a recession? Right? This isn't a recession but it's a time when people's priorities are going to shift maybe away from things that were... seems more frivolous to things that are now more essential. Right? For us, we always said, well you know, we can respond quickly but it's never been proven. And now it's been proven to an extent that we can respond quickly. And we can move to things that are more essential. It's still essential with a twist. Right? Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: It's still within our brand. And it's going to bring a bit of uniqueness and delight into people's lives that are staying at home. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: I think it's validation that the modal can move quickly. The way we thought. And that our brand can extend to the different categories. And address people's needs as they change. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Do you think these buying behaviors are going to last for a while? And if so, are you shifting maybe your thoughts on what Touch of Modern looks like in 2025, 2030? Is it kind of having you re-think things a bit? Jerry: I think that people's buying behaviors will change because I don't think it's going to go back to exactly the way it was. You know. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I agree. Jerry: Yeah. People are going to be much more... And I hope they're going to be much more health conscience. I hope that this introduces some good habits. Right? I think people take a bit of time to reflect and think about things like self improvement. Maybe they didn't have the time to do before because I think some people staying home are going to realize like, "Hey, there's this new hobby that I've always been wanting to do that I can do now." Or, "Maybe I should drink less." Whatever it is that they discover when they change their lifestyle, that there's actually parts of this that are good, that they can take away and keep with them. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Except for the drinking lessening. I think that one's going the wrong way. Jerry: Wait. I don't know. I don't know how some people are- Stephanie: Happy hour time keeps getting earlier and earlier. I'm like, I need to set up rules around this house. Oh my gosh. It's only like two o'clock, what am I doing? Jerry: Well, I mean, another silver lining here is that I think people now have actually seen how quickly the environment can actually improve just with... And in a short period of time. Right? Because in the past I think it always seemed like this insurmountable thing to certain folks where it's like, "Yeah, you know, we can recycle and do this, but we've been doing that for a long time and nothing has really changed. It's actually been getting worse." Right? Jerry: And then suddenly you take a step back and it's like, hey, things change quickly. Right? Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: So maybe it's not as impossible as we thought. We just have to be deliberate about habits that we have and maybe where we spend our energy. Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah, I think sometimes a little shake up like that can be good for people and the economy. And good things could come from it. Even though there's a lot of bad going on as well. I think, yeah, it depends where you're looking, I guess. So when... Oh, go ahead. Jerry: Yeah, I mean, [inaudible] other wise it's just all bad. Right? Stephanie: Yeah. No, everything can't be all bad. There has to be something good out there. That's what I'm hoping for anyways. So when it comes to outside of Touch of Modern, and more of the E-commerce industry as a whole, what destructions do you see are coming? Especially with COVID-19 now. We're seeing some of that already happening. But what are you betting on in the future... Yeah, coming? Jerry: Well, I'm going to bet probably more on E-commerce. Right? I think people are going to build habits from shopping at home that are not going to go away. Right? I think certain things that maybe people use to only buy in person are like, hey, I can buy this at home. It's actually a pretty decent experience, probably going to keep that habit even after this. And I think people are going to maybe focus a little more on preparedness for things than they have in the past. I think human nature is that you never think that these kind of outlier type of situations can happen, but they do. Be that once... Once in a century, I'd never think about it. But a person lives a long time. Right? Jerry: You may see a once in a century thing in your life. That's probably going to happen for a lot of people. Right? And this is that thing for us. Stephanie: Yeah. Agree. It seems like there's going to be a lot of new people coming online who never were online before. And it brings me to a point I saw on your website that I liked a lot is kind of meeting a consumer where they're at. There's two things I saw on your website that I thought would be perfect for a new consumer who doesn't normally buy online. The first one was you have a toggle button on your homepage that says, "View as." And you're about to actually change how you view products on the page, depending on what you prefer. Stephanie: So I thought that was genius. Any insight behind that? Or any thoughts when you were creating that? Because I haven't seen many websites allow you to toggle that view to what you prefer. Jerry: Yeah. It's just like a preference thing. Right? Our experience on the landing page is we just drop you right into our offering. Right? It's not like a landing page where you then click in and search and do all this other stuff. Mostly E-commerce is catered to search. Right? You just go on the page and automatically thing is you type in what you're looking for. Right? That's not really our experience. It's there but it's kind of secondary. It's mostly a browse and kind of meander your way through our offering. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: We let people maybe pick the way they want to meander. Right? Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). How do people meander through 300 hundred things? Because I was going through and I wanted to look at all of them but after a little I'm like, oh, this is too many. And I kind of wished maybe like... What did I see? There was this screen that extended your screen. So you have your MacBook or something and you plug in a little cord and you have an extension of your screen, which is awesome. Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: I'm like, that should have been shown to me first because I want to buy that right now. Whereas, what was the second thing? It was showing maybe like an expensive bottle of wine, which I'm like, oh, push that down some because I'm not fancy like that. How do you think about helping people get through these products each day? Jerry: Well, I think your first time experience is going to ne a little bit different than your second and your third time. About almost half of our users, and I'm not talking about customers but just people that visit, will actually come back at least once a week. And so- Stephanie: Wow. Jerry: Yeah. And so if you're doing that and then our most frequent visitors are coming back every single day, then it's not as hard to browse through everything. Because then you can browse through it and then you'll hit a point where, okay, now I'm looking at yesterday's stuff. Right? And so, if you keep up with it everyday then it's not actually a ton of stuff. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: But for your first time, you're looking at all the days that have accumulated in the past five days. And certain events will also extend beyond that. I think the first time experience is like, wow, this is a ton of stuff. And also because you probably want to click through every single thing. Right? Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: But after awhile you're probably just looking for the things that catch your eyes. Or you're just going to scan and be like, okay, that's really cool. That's really cool. But you're not necessarily going to check out every single thing. Right? Stephanie: Yeah. [inaudible] Jerry: Also, on the mobile app, the scrolling screen is just much slicker and smoother too. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: I think you might just browse there. A lot of folks also will tell us that it's just something that they peruse through when they're waiting for something or commercial break or something like that. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). The second thing I saw that I really liked, which I also haven't seen... Maybe I'm just not on enough websites. I don't know. But I was looking through... It was an about shipping section. And it showed a visual of what does your shipping status mean. Jerry: Yeah. Yeah. Stephanie: And it just... It showed everything from like, we place our PO, and than it goes to the supplier, and here's what it means if you see... I don't know the whole... I can't remember the whole layout. But I thought that was genius showing it in a visual format. And I'm sure that probably brings down a lot of customer support emails. But tell me how you all are thinking about giving that transparency to the customer. Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: And hopefully prevent a million a emails of, hey, where's my product. Jerry: This is another product of our business modal. Or kind of what differentiates us a bit. We sell across all categories. Right? Meaning that we have to be able to accommodate all the categories. So it's not like, a company that just sells furniture ships one way. A company that just sells clothing ships another way. Right? And so their customers go there expecting a certain experience. A company that sells everything needs to ship all the different ways. Right? So a customer might not know exactly what this shipping process is going to look like when you buy something because they may not realize... I mean it's obvious now when I talk about it but if your company goes on a site, you're going to expect shipping experience to be generally consistent. But for us it's like, we're going to ship furniture differently, then we're going to ship clothing differently, and then we're going to ship, you know, this cup, right? Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: And so for us it's just more like informing the customer, this is what's going to happen. This is what it's going to look like. And this is what the different steps mean. For us, we found that more so than anything, they just want to know what's going on. That it's moving and... like internal. Yeah.   Stephanie: How about when it comes to relaying the value of the product? How do you convince someone that something is really good? Because I don't think I saw reviews on the website. Unless I missed them.   How do you... That's usually the first thing I look for. Is it five stars? You know, I want to see if someone has the same kind of experience that I'm looking for. How do you tell someone something's valuable without that? Jerry: Yeah. I mean, a lot of what we do is educating the customer. Right? Because a lot of these things they never heard of, they didn't know it exist. I wish we could say we do an awesome job at it and we provide all these reviewed stuff but... And we vet the product. We'll go and look at the reviews and we'll test the product and all that. But it does take a leap of faith in the first purchase and maybe you get a learned trust after some time, that like we've done the research. Jerry: Because if you go and research these products you're going to find that they're pretty highly regarded. Stephanie: Yep. Which I think actually might be the modal that it's headed is just show me one or two people at your company that I trust to review product, and I trust them. Because a lot of reviews, I mean, at least on other places... Marketplaces and things like that. They're paid reviews. And so you go through and you're like, well, I can't trust 90 percent of these anyways. So I think it is kind of shifting towards just give me the one person that I can trust. Or the one company that I can trust to curate something for me. And I know if it's coming from them, it's going to be quality and good. Stephanie: Are there any big transformations that are going to be on your plate after the environment kind calms down? Or any big projects that you plan on starting or changing within your strategy? Jerry: Yeah. We're working on shipping things a lot quicker. The reason being that a lot of our products do take a little bit longer because we have these various modals that we work with. And we found that when we can ship things more quickly people are generally way more happy and more likely to come back and purchase. Stephanie: Got it. How can you speed up the shipping for... when it's a bunch of different, I'm guessing, retailers who all their own different practices? How can you kind of know that you can speed that up and make it all pretty uniform? Jerry: Consign the product. Right? So they will house it in our warehouse and we essentially act as their distribution center. Stephanie: Oh. Okay, cool. Tell me a little bit about that. Do you have to buy warehouses in different parts of California? Or how is that modal set up? Jerry: Right now our warehouse actually has a good amount of space. And we've actually developed our distribution system to fit with our model, right, which is that we run things in these short spurts. Right? And what's cool about that is that things come in and they go out really quickly so we're not sitting on mountains of inventory. I mean, we're nearly inventory-less. We're very inventory light. We don't actually require that much space to run a lot of products. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: So right now, for the foreseeable future, it's to keep it within our distribution center. It's a long winded way of saying... Stephanie: Okay. Got it. How did you learn to do that? When I even think about shipping products to a warehouse and making sure everything goes well, how did you learn best practices around... Yeah, around all that? Jerry: Yeah. This is interesting because when we first started we were shipping our own products from day one. And so- Stephanie: From your house? Or from where? Jerry: From the house. [inaudible 00:41:45]. Stephanie: That's awesome. Jerry: ... of just tons of boxes in the living room. And then when the FedEx guy came we would... The first day we just piled it in the lobby and our neighbors got really pissed at us for doing that. Stephanie: I can imagine. Jerry: So the second day, we knew when the person was coming and we just did like bucket brigade style where we just passed packages from our living room down to the... Basically we had our four founders there. And we would just pass it down, bucket brigade style, down the stairs as quickly as the guy could load it into the truck. Stephanie: Oh my gosh. Jerry: And then the first day we finally opened the office, we set aside half of it for fulfillment. And the reason why we did that was because we realized our model is just very different than a traditional pick and pack modal, which is what most 3PLs... What's called a third party logistics provider. At least back then, they were mostly doing pick and pack type operations. And it didn't really fit our modal and we realized that at a certain scale we'd have to bring it in house. It's better to learn it now than to try to take it in when it's already at scale and have huge disruptions in customer experience. So basically, we just started doing it at a really small scale and built our operations all custom to that. So our, kind of, back office technology is all custom. Right? So everything ties together and it suits us in a way that... If you went with a just a third party provider, it probably wouldn't work as well. Stephanie: Very cool. Well, definitely have to get that picture from you so you can post it somewhere to show people because that's... Yeah, a really fun story of starting out. Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: What do you see for new people starting out, building their stores and all that? What is some advise that you give them? Or best practices or things that you did that you're like, don't do that, that actually worked out really bad. Jerry: So this probably goes back to your first question about the two businesses that we had before. We made some classic mistakes. Right? Which is, I think the big one is you build the whole thing and you spend like a year building it and then you think that one day you're going to open and people are just going to come in. Right? Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: Then you start thinking, hey, maybe we just keep tweaking the product and eventually people will come. Right? Really all you're doing is staying busy. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: Because if the demand is not there, it's not going to suddenly show up, almost like the world changes, right? And you would be at the right place at the right time. So it's prove out the demand first. And then when the demand is there, you can take your time with the product. Right? It's like, you don't want to be in a place where you're convincing yourself that the reason you're not succeeding is because the product is not quite right. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: If there's a real need for it you can come out with something that's pretty minimal and just addresses the core need. And it doesn't even have to run perfectly and be totally ironed out. And that will give you enough signal that there's something there that people want. And then you can find it down the road and keep expanding your market to... [inaudible] but this is now more mass market. And so on and so forth. Right? Because the early folks, they want your service, whatever it is, so much that they're going to put up a little bit with you in the early days of like not having it all totally together. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). [crosstalk] Jerry: And so... Yeah. Yeah. You got to prove out the demand first before you totally refine the product. Stephanie: Cool. And what about when it comes to technology? How do you think about... It sounds like you guys did a lot of just in-house... everything. In-house logistics. In-house website stuff. What would you tell someone right now? Should they try and build things in-house? Or... Yeah, what are your thoughts on that? Jerry: It's easier now to build anything in-house than it use to be. Right? Back then it was actually a little more difficult because a lot of the frameworks that are being used today were really fresh back then. Right? So people weren't learning it in school. They had to teach themselves. There weren't the coding bootcamps back then either. So engineers were still a little bit hard to come by. Now, resources are there and everything. Jerry: We were lucky because we did our own coding in the first versions of the site. It was me and Steven, our CTO. More him than me but we built the early versions of that and didn't hire engineers for a long time. Maybe longer than... we probably should have hired engineers a little bit earlier than we did. But we got by with just two folks building stuff. Right? But you also learn a lot. You are kind of like more intimate with the product, even today, just because we have that history with it. Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: And I think one of the things that's really important to us early on was the data ownership. Right? We don't want to have all these different things talking to each other and not have a clear picture of what's going on. Right? Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: We don't want any black boxes. There's things that if we don't have access to all the data then we're just going to cut that service and we're going to build it ourselves. Stephanie: Got it. Very cool. Yeah. Great advice. So with a couple minutes left, we're going to move on to... it's called the lightning round. Brought to you by [Sales Force Commerce Cloud 00:47:37]. Sales Force Commerce Cloud. This is when I shoot a question over your way and you have a minute or less to say the first answer that comes to mind. Jerry: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Stephanie: Are you ready? Jerry: Okay. Stephanie: Dun, dun, dun, dun. We'll start with the easy ones first and then we'll end with the harder one. Sound good? Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: All right. What's up next for dinner? Jerry: Left-over Chinese food. Some more. Stephanie: Yep. What's up next that you're buying from Touch of Modern? Jerry: What am I buying next? Well, I'll have to see what comes up next. It changes everyday so I don't know yet. Stephanie: All right. Well, what did you just buy recently? Or what's your most recent purchase? Jerry: My most recent purchase was, funny enough, it is a cast-iron rice pot from [Le Creuset 00:48:22]. Stephanie: Okay. Have you tried it out yet? Jerry: No, it hasn't gotten here yet. It was very recent. This was probably... couple days ago. Stephanie: Cool. What's up next on Netflix or Hulu queue? Jerry: I actually don't have either. I don't even own [inaudible] TV. I don't watch a whole lot of stuff, actually. Stephanie: Okay. Hey, that's an answer. What's up next in your travel destinations after the environment calms down a bit? Jerry: I think an easy one from California would be Hawaii. I like to go there to relax and it's a relatively short trip. So I like to go there [inaudible 00:49:05]. Yeah. Stephanie: What's your favorite island there? Have you been? Jerry: Yeah. I go to Oahu fairly frequently. I really like Kauai, I've been there once to do a hike. Stephanie: Yeah. That's my favorite island with all the waterfalls there and the crazy hikes that- Jerry: [crosstalk] been to the weeping walls? Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: Yep. Oh, yeah. I want to go back though. We were only there for a couple days and I feel like there's so many different hikes and waterfalls and just things to see there. I mean, it's... Yeah, like a jungle. It's awesome. On to the hard question. What's up next for E-commerce pros? Jerry: E-commerce pros. Hmm. Man. What's next for the pros? I think, I mean, it's going to be adapting to the changes in customer behavior that are coming out of this. Whatever that is. I don't have a crystal ball for that one. Stephanie: Got it. Hey, that's an answer. All right, Jerry. Well, this has been a fun interview. For everyone who hasn't gone and checked out Touch of Modern, you should. It has really fun products on there. And yeah, thanks for coming on the show. Jerry: Thanks for having me.    

Dr. Pennell and Dr. Lisa Lowenstein discuss decision coaching in the LDCT setting and how it provides an opportunity for patients to confirm their screening decision by ensuring they are truly informed.   Hello and welcome to the latest JCO Oncology Practice podcast, brought to you by the ASCO Podcast Network, a collection of nine programs, covering a range of educational and scientific content, and offering enriching insight into the world of cancer care. You can find all recordings, including this one, at podcast.asco.org. My name is Dr. Nate Pennell, medical oncologist at the Cleveland Clinic and consultant editor for the JCO OP.   Lung cancer is a huge public health issue. It's our number one cause of cancer-related mortality, and a big reason for that is the lack of a widespread screening tool which results in most of our patients ending up with advanced disease at diagnosis. Although, low-dose CT screening has been proven to reduce deaths from lung cancer for a number of years now, uptake among eligible patients in the United States is very low, well under 10%. Part of the problem may be a poor understanding of the risks and benefits of screening CT, despite broad recommendations for shared decision-making between providers and patients.   Why is uptake such a big problem, and can shared decision-making be improved to help increase screening rates? With me today to discuss this issue is Dr. Lisa Lowenstein, assistant professor in the Department of Health Services Research at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. We'll be discussing her paper, Implementing Decision Coaching for Lung Cancer Screening in the Low-Dose CT Setting, to be published in the February 2020 JCO OP. Welcome, Dr. Lowenstein, and thank you for joining me today.   Thank you. It's wonderful to be on.   So can we start out by telling our listeners a little bit about the landscape of screening for lung cancer today and the role that shared decision-making plays in this process?   Yes. I think we're in a very exciting time in terms of lung cancer screening, because this is the first time that we have a screening test for lung cancer which is the number one cause of cancer deaths among men and women in the United States. It's really notable that CMS included shared decision-making in their policies for lung cancer screening, because they recognize that, unlike breast cancer and colon cancer screening, we're changing the game a lot of bit here. So we're saying that only high-risk individuals should be screened. So it's not all-comers, and I think telling people about the potential benefits and harms is beneficial. So they go in being a little bit more informed about what the next steps will be, and it is a complex process, and overall, it's still in its infancy.   Yeah. I think a lot of people found it interesting that, in order to reimburse for lung cancer screening, that CMS required this documented shared decision-making visit which on the surface seems like a very reasonable thing. But do you think that's really helping, or is it hurting?   Lung cancer screening is really in its infancy, and it's a complicated process. So we're not just talking about you just show up, and you show up for a scan. Right? We're not where breast cancer screening is. We don't have mobile scans out there. It's taken decades for those programs to get where they are, and I think shared decision-making is just adding one more step and just emphasizing that it's really a program that you're committing to.   And the other aspect is that we really want to highlight that it's not lung cancer screening is enough to prevent lung cancer. Right? It's just detecting it, if you have it. But the best way you can reduce your lung cancer risk is by not smoking, and I think by inserting the counseling and shared decision-making visit, we're reiterating that message to our high-risk smokers and former smokers. Primary care providers, or any providers, aren't even talking about lung cancer screening.   Two, not a lot of facilities may be listed in the American College of Radiology Lung Cancer Screening registry, but their volumes are very low, and they may not actually have the proper equipment or machines to conduct the lung cancer screening. Third is that, if there is to be something to be found on the scan, we don't have processes in place to deal with all the abnormal findings. So I think those are all the things that providers and networks are trying to figure out, and they're trying to figure out like the cost benefit from the reimbursement issue. Because CMS reimburses this scan for a very low cost, and it's lower than what's reimbursed for breast cancer screening.   That's interesting, and in your paper, you mention that, as of right now, something around 6% of eligible patients are getting screened for lung cancer. Which is disappointing, because the studies have been out for a while now. You mention about some of the institutional issues and awareness and providers. Are there any other reasons out there that are limiting this? Because this is something that should be saving lots of lives, and so far, it just seems like it's not making much impact.   I think so, and I think it's misguided in some sense. The reimbursement is not-- you don't have to submit a reimbursement for the counseling and the lung cancer screening. A screening facility can still be reimbursed for the scan without the 1 to 1 ratio of a counseling in shared decision-making billing code, if that make sense.   That's interesting. I didn't know that.   Yeah. So the reimbursement is definitely not going on 1 to 1. I just think, it's a complicated process, and if you were doing a study in Texas and we're serving as many screening facilities as they can in Texas, and I can tell you, a number of them are not doing a high volume of scans. And a lot of primary care providers are trying to find screening facilities that are doing low-dose CT, and it's really hard to navigate the American College of Radiology Lung Cancer screening facility to find a facility. It's about 15 to 20 clinics or something like that.   Wow.   So we tried to look for it on a number of occasions, and it takes us multiple tries every single time.   Well, it's obviously a complex issue, and there's more than one reason for the low uptake. What was the specific issue that led you to do this particular study, and do you think that improving shared decision-making can improve uptake on lung cancer screening?   I think the main issue that we were trying to address here is that, one, we recognize that primary care providers may not be the best-suited individuals to provide the counseling shared decision-making visit. Instead, they may just want to do more of a referral process, like what they're doing in the Cleveland Clinic. Right? Where they say, somebody's potentially eligible, so I'm going to send you to a one-stop shop type of setting. And our radiologists who are leading our lung cancer screening program really wanted to start building this and test it out as an alternative delivery model for the counseling shared decision-making visit which wasn't proposed by CMS or the task force recommendations.   So can you take us through your study design?   Sure. So it was really a pre/post kind of study, really with a quality improvement mindset, as well as using some elements of implementation science, so we can make it relevant more generalizable in our findings. But we first had our period of where they just did what they normally do, where the patients show up. They go and have their scan. They have their normal intake process, and that's it for the lung cancer screening. Then, in our post, we embedded a tablet interactive decision aid, decision coaching module.   So what happens is the patient has the iPad in hand, and they have some patient-facing education talking about the benefits and harms. It's very fast and quick. Patient can get through it and two to three minutes, five minutes if they're not tech savvy. And then we have an advanced practice provider sort of talk about what do they know about the benefits of lung cancer screening? What did they know about the harms, and what are their primary reasons for wanting to be screened, just to kind of confirm their issue, confirm their decision to be screened.   And so what did you end up finding with the intervention?   What they found is that, one, with the decision coaching aspect of it, the advanced practice providers can deliver all the key elements that are required for the counseling and shared decision-making to defer CMS reimbursement. So I think that's really important, in the sense that so much of what we already see in the literature, providers talk a lot about the benefits of screening, but they don't note any potential harms. And it's really important to notice that screening is not without its downsides, and that with an abnormal finding, there is inherent risk. It's not like you're just getting a picture taken. There are steps that need to be followed afterwards.   And the other thing is that what we really like and what our clinical operations people appreciated is the fact that this embedding entire new process did not increase the throughput time for the time that the patient checks in to the time that that patient checks out. Because every institution is paying a lot of attention in money, as to what is throughput time and making sure that it's not too long. And from a patient's anecdotal evidence, the patients appreciated that additional process, because it broke up the time between the waiting periods in between each step.   Yeah. I think that's an incredibly important point that you point out, that they didn't really increase the visit time, but how did that work? The intervention took place during a time that they'd normally be waiting or doing something else?   That's basically what it is, because we did time-motion studies in the pre and in the post. So we followed patients from the time they checked into the time they checked out, and we cataloged what they were doing. And what we saw when we looked at that data in more granular level is that the time was shifted from waiting periods to active time.   That's great. That's really important that you were able to show that. I thought it was interesting that you commented in your paper about the different elements of the shared decision-making visit. That in fact, what we might think of as the primary reason for doing it, which was the element of reducing mortality or their chance of dying of lung cancer, was actually the least important part of the shared decision-making visit. Why do you think that was?   I don't know if it was the least important part. It's just that we had some slides dedicated to it for the decision coaching, but there are so many more harms to talk about, and it's also an artifact of the context to where this intervention took place. So we took it, we were dealing with patients who had already been scheduled to be screened. So we were just confirming their decision, and I think the advanced practice providers knew that. So they might have glossed over the benefit, because otherwise, the patients wouldn't be there, if they didn't value the screen.   Mm-hmm. I guess that makes sense. They knew why they were there. Is there a next planned follow-up study for this?   Good, I'm glad you asked that. So using this data, we're testing this more centralized model and using it in a different setting. So now, we're taking this into a quit line setting. So we have a Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas, or CPRIT, grant that's looking at the decision coaching being delivered by tobacco treatment specialists via phone.   So a primary care provider identifies patients with upcoming appointments that might be eligible based upon age and being a current smoker. And then they get contacted with our quit line folks, here at Anderson, and we deliver the counseling and share decision-making visit, in addition to the cessation, and we give a report back to the BCP. And well, we're hoping that increases individuals to get screened and also have proper follow up, if there is something abnormal on the scan.   So I'm curious if you have any other suggestions outside of your program of ways we might improve the uptake of lung cancer screening in the US.   Oh, I think we could do a number of things. So I think we have to think about each step of the pathway. Right? So one, we have to increase awareness of it. So that's through social media, social marketing, that kind of stuff for both patients and providers and caregivers.   Then, two, we need multiple avenues, where we talk about lung cancer screening, like how we do with breast cancer and colon cancer. Like at church, at your beauty parlor, at your grocery store, and have those kind of public health interventions to get out the information. And three, we really need to train up our health care workforce and help programs. Where it's possible to either have the PCP do it in a robust manner or have a more linked program, where they can refer to a centralized program. Where the counseling and shared decision-making visit can be delivered by their pulmonology or in the radiology scan, and the patient can get scanned that day.   So I think there's a lot of different questions and different delivery models that can be asked, and this is a great area to be working in right now. Because with the release of the Nelson study, it's even more exciting to show that lung cancer screening can be very beneficial, and with using the lung rads, the false positives are much lower. So I'm pretty excited, and I think there's so much opportunity, and we can learn so much from what we're doing in breast cancer and colorectal cancer screening.   No, I completely agree with you. I think it's very exciting that the Nelson study was finally just published, and so hopefully, this will overcome any residual skepticism about the benefits of lung cancer screening. And obviously, continuing to improve on the screening tools themselves, maybe using some kind of companion diagnostic, maybe blood or breath-related, that might improve the-- or using artificial intelligence to better tell benign from malignant nodules. Ways that you can reduce the false positive rates would be very helpful. Well, Dr. Lowenstein, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today.   Thank you. It's a pleasure.   Until next time, thank you all for listening to this JCO Oncology Practice podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, don't forget to give us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you listen. While you're there, be sure to subscribe, so you never miss an episode.   JCO OP's podcasts are just one of ASCO's many podcast programs. You can find all recordings at podcast.asco.org. The full text of the paper will be available online at ascopubs.org/journal/op, in February, 2020. This is Dr. Nate Pennell for JCO Oncology Practice signing off.

As Tony Robbins says that ‘You weren’t born as an overthinker – all humans have patterns to their behaviour. These patterns develop over time based on life experiences. And just as patterns are learned, they can also be unlearned’. First step here is to ‘Say Stop’ to yourself in any situation when you find yourself overthinking. Set a bar for yourself – ‘That beyond a certain point I am not going to think about a situation because I have least control over what has happened and what will happen. What I have control over is how I want to feel right now’. And right now I want to feel pleasant, happy. And that will only happen when live in the moment. By simply being present wherever that you are, with your mind, body and soul. You can also tell yourself – ‘I will think about this thought later’. This way you are postponing your overthinking and slowly getting rid of it. This will help you to deal with your thought process constructively. Secondly, overthinking can create a ruckus in your mind and in your behavior. And you don’t want to live a disorganized way of life. Right? Where everything that you do leads to stress and stress in turn leads to overthinking. One of the effective ways that I have found helpful is to reflect on your problems. Constantly thinking about a certain thought can only lead to more problems. Rather incorporating 30 minutes of ‘thinking time’ where you allow all the thoughts come to your mind; literally everything. In the last 10 minutes of your ‘Thinking time’ ask yourself some rooted questions like ‘why am I so worried, what do I fear the most, what is the worst thing that can happen, can I control anything now, what can I do best in this situation, do I have any evidence to support my thoughts or are they simply thoughts creating a fictional story. Engage in a State of Flow– A state of flow is a zone, a mental space where a person performs an activity and is fully immersed in that state with full attention. You lose track of time and your entire being is involved and you use your skills to the highest. You can literally engage in any activity of your choice, from painting, to dancing, singing or playing a sport. You need to find your flow and allow yourself to flow. You’ll slowly find yourself to be present, very alert and clear-minded. This activity will help you get rid of overthinking. It’s one of the most effective technique of mindfulness. Mindfulness takes time, just like any skill it can be developed over time. You can make this a routine and try and incorporate this in your daily schedule. Let go of the past – Everyone has a past. But some people let go of the past and accept the ‘it is what it is’ mentality which helps them manage their lives effectively. Few others, live in the past and tell stories to themselves about ‘what if’ and ‘should have’ which makes it miserable to live. What matters is what you tell yourself. And if you tell yourself all the things ‘that should have been’ are you really doing justice to your present? Right now? No right! If you want to ease your mind, this is one thing that you need to do – Let go of your anger, let go of any regrets that you have and most importantly forgive - yourself and others. It’s one of the substantial ways to change your story into how you want it to be. Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/happiness_project1102/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/The-Happiness-Project-102640977937269/?modal=admin_todo_tour Email ID - rainajain1102@gmail.com http://thehappinessproject.buzzsprout.com/ https://www.mindunwinds.com Music from https://filmmusic.io "Pamgaea" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) "Deliberate Thought" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)

Writers need a page, a profile and a whole lot of patience and persistence to even feel like we’re close to getting Facebook “right.”The question first appeared, as these things do, in the #AmWriting Facebook group. A book is coming! I’m on Facebook (obviously), but do I need an author page in addition to my profile? Why—and what should I do with one once I’ve got one? Our answer is yes, but of course it doesn’t stop there. In this episode, we talk the ins and outs of Facebook for writers of all kinds, with a primer on the basics and then a few ninja-level tips from Sarina.Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a preview of the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, November 4, 2019: Top 5 Things You Don’t Need to Be a “Real” Writer. We’d love your support, and we hope you’ll love our Top 5s. Join in for actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month. As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.LINKS FROM THE PODCASTThe #AmWriting Facebook GroupGrown and Flown on FacebookRon Lieber’s Author Facebook PageSarina’s Facebook PageSarendipity (Sarina’s Facebook Fan Group)Jess’s Facebook PageKJ’s Facebook Page, which she didn’t even remember existed but will now tend as directed by Sarina.ManyChat#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Jess: Home, Run Away, Harlan Coben (also mentioned, Tell No One)KJ: Kitchens of the Great Midwest, J. Ryan StradalSarina: Ninth House, Leigh Bardugo#FaveIndieBookstoreGibson’s, Concord NHThis episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.The image in our podcast illustration is by NeONBRAND on Unsplash.Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)KJ:                                        00:01                    Hello listeners, KJ here. If you’re in with us every week, you’re what I like to call “people of the book.’ And some of us book people discover somewhere along the way that not only we writers, we’re people with a gift for encouraging other writers. For some of us, that comes out in small ways, but for others it’s a calling and an opportunity to build a career doing work you love. Our sponsor, Author Accelerator, provides book coaching to authors (like me) but also needs and trains book coaches. If that’s got your ears perked up, head to https://www.authoraccelerator.com and click on “become a book coach.” Is it recording?Jess:                                     00:02                    Now it's recording, go ahead.KJ:                                        00:45                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess:                                     00:45                    Alright, let's start over.KJ:                                        00:45                    Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers.Jess:                                     00:45                    Okay.KJ:                                        00:54                    Now one, two, three. Hey all, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is your podcast, your weekly podcast, our podcast, about writing all the things. Fiction, nonfiction, pitches, proposals, essays you know what? All the things, except poetry. None of us do that. But we did have a poet on once. I dunno, I just was thinking that the other day like, wait a minute, it's not quite all the things. Alright, back to the regularly scheduled introduction. #AmWriting is the podcast about sitting down and getting your work, whatever it is, done.Jess:                                     01:40                    KJ, before I introduce myself, speaking of the intro changing up, we got an email this week from someone who said, 'Wait, you changed the pattern at the beginning of the episode and I don't know what to do with that.' It was very, very funny.KJ:                                        01:54                    I love that people go back and listen to all the episodes. It brings me incredible joy.Jess:                                     01:58                    Yes, it does. I am Jess Lahey, I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a forthcoming book about preventing substance abuse in kids. And I write at various places including the New York Times, Washington Post and the Atlantic.Sarina:                                 02:13                    And I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of 30 plus contemporary romance novels. And you can find more of me at sarinabowen.com.KJ:                                        02:22                    And I am KJ Dell'Antonia, a novelist and also the author of the nonfiction book How to Be a Happier Parent, first novel will be out next summer, more to come I hope. You'll sometimes still find my work at the New York Times and in a variety of other places. So that's it, that's who we are. We know some things and today our plan is to talk about what we know about Facebook. But before we do, I just want to thank everyone who has gone in and subscribed to our weekly emails that come out every week about the podcast. That is a new thing that we're doing and I love that people are finding it useful. Every week we send you little something about what the episode is, all the links, and a way to see a transcript, which is pretty cool. And also huge shout out and thanks to those of you who have signed up to support the podcast and get our weekly top fives for writers. It's huge, we feel so grateful and excited that you guys want to support us, and want to be a part of it, and want to get our top fives, which we're having a great time doing. So you know, thanks to everyone for that. And if you're looking to do either of those things, head over to amwritingpodcast.com and you'll find all the links there.Jess:                                     03:42                    Alright, let's do it. You said our topic is Facebook. What do you mean about this Facebook thing?KJ:                                        03:54                    Well, it's a great place to put up pictures of your kids and offend all your relatives on your political views. But as a writer, people have questions like, 'Should you have an author page and a personal page? Should you do everything from your personal page? How has this evolved over the years? And I have wrestled with it. Sarina has come to some pretty good terms with it and I'll just also throw out there that back in 2013 when I started with the Times, they actually said to me, 'We do not want to create a Facebook page for the Motherlode blog, which doesn't exist anymore anyway. So just use your own. It was one of the best gifts that they gave me. I don't think it was actually the right choice for them, but well, and here and today I'm sitting here with no author page, but the AmWriting page and everything I do professionally ends up on my personal page and I'm not sure that's where I should be.Jess:                                     05:01                    I'm a mess. Sarina, you go cause you've got a whole thing. You use it beautifully.Sarina:                                 05:07                    Well, thank you. But we have to talk about vocabulary for a second. Because people have a profile, not a page. And we just want to be careful to use that vocabulary correctly because if listeners go and try to untangle our suggestions, they might run into a little trouble. So every person, like the way that we would define a person has the right under the Facebook terms of service, to have one profile. So, if you use a pseudonym for your writing, you may find yourself in the awkward position of trying to fake it to Facebook that you can have two profiles. And yeah, so that's a good time. But the profile is the main way that most people look at Facebook, you login with your profile. Now a page, you can have as many pages as you want. A page is meant to be representing something that's not a person. Like a brand or a business or it can be a person, like a personality. So I have a profile under Sarina White Bowen, it's three words. And then I have a Sarina Bowen page. And pages and profiles have different things that they can do, they're not identical in their functionality. And that's why we get into these tricky discussions because the way that pages and profiles behave is not identical and that's where some of the weird fun comes in.Jess:                                     06:54                    Well and honestly that's where most of my apathy/confusion lies. Mainly because for me, my profile, Jessica Lahey. Actually, I think my profile is Jessica Potts Lahey because my maiden name is Potts. So that's my personal profile, the thing I originally signed up for Facebook with. That has long since gone out the window as a private, personal thing. Like I get 30 friend requests a day and I accept some and don't. But most of them are people I don't even know. I've just long since given up the ghost on that. But it is how I keep in touch with childhood friends and high school acquaintances and things like that. Then I also have a page as Jessica Lahey and that was something my publisher wanted and it was important to them. But see, here's the problem - if you're accepting any old person out there to your profile, and I'm posting things to my page and to my profile and honestly, there's a lot of overlap between the two. I wish I'd been more strategic about this from the beginning. And I somehow had a profile that was really just personal stuff and then shuttled everyone else over to my page, like put up kind of some kind of like, 'No, I will not friend you, but here's my page.' I wish I'd been more strategic about that, but I didn't and so now I have a mess. I have, two things, neither of which is personal, and both kind of get duplicate posts.Sarina:                                 08:28                    Well, I could make you feel better by telling you that we're all in the same mess, honestly. Because Facebook has treated the two things differently over time. So, it used to be that in the glory days of 2010 you could make a page and even if you'd gotten this right from the very first day...Jess:                                     08:53                    If I could have seen the future...Sarina:                                 08:55                    Well, that's the thing. You would have still not been able to do it exactly right because the behavior that would have been optimized at the time would have changed. So back in the glory days, you could've made that page that you were just talking about and kept your profile private and you could have posted the things you were writing and thinking about it on this page and people would see it and they would interact with you and your page would grow, and grow, and grow. And you might have like 30,000 followers. However, Facebook has very much become a pay to play platform and now they would want you to pay every time you put up a post on your page that you wanted more than say 5% of your followers to see. So the fact that when you share meaningful things on your profile, at least there's some chance that the people who are connected to you will see it. So it's not entirely clear to me that you wouldn't be a very sad owner of a highly followed page by this point. But everybody who relies upon Facebook to push content into the world has been increasingly unhappy with their results because it's not just that Facebook wants your money (and they absolutely do want it), but also just the number of pages in the world grew at such an exponential rate that they can't actually show everybody all the stuff that they're following anymore. Like if you liked your dentist's office in 2013, then you know, the odds of you actually seeing a post from the dentist are really bad. Like the pages who you might actually see are the people who have been out there working it so hard since the very beginning, with a nice pace of content release, and a good interaction that...it's very few pages that are still getting that kind of play. You mentioned that you get a lot of friend requests. Facebook actually caps the number of friends you can have at 5,000.Jess:                                     11:05                    Early on I think it was like 2000 or something. But yeah, it's definitely 5,000. I'm getting close and that worries me. Because what if someone I really want to follow, that's why I don't accept all of them or even real people...KJ:                                        11:19                    People don't know you didn't accept them. And probably most of their goals is just to follow you, which is what happens if someone puts in a friend request and you say no, they end up following you.Jess:                                     11:32                    That's right. Yeah, I forgot about that.KJ:                                        11:35                    At least you've got that going for you.Sarina:                                 11:36                    So, another factor is that now Messenger is tied in with the people you're friends with on Facebook. So I have stopped accepting friend requests completely, unless of course I met the person.KJ:                                        11:51                    Unless it's your friend.Sarina:                                 11:53                    Or, but I got some friend requests after that retreat we went to in Maine and I accepted those. But I don't accept random requests anymore because I've discovered it's just a way for readers to bug me. Like when is such and such a thing coming out and you know, there just aren't enough hours in the day for me to do a good job answering those messages.Jess:                                     12:16                    Actually, I'm so glad you said that because that has been a source of anxiety and frustration for me in that the number of direct messages I'm getting via various apps has gone through the roof and it's a lot of people asking very personal questions about their own children. I got one the other day and she sent me this long, long, long message about what she's going through with her child. And she wrote the word please and she sent a picture of herself with her child.KJ:                                        12:48                    I wish you could auto reply from Messenger. Because if you had that that said, 'I'm sorry, I can't...' I suppose you could just type one. Okay, we're going to get back to how everyone should use Facebook in a second, but just to solve this particular problem with which I am somewhat familiar, type something up, and imagine yourself as your assistant. 'I'm sorry, Mrs. Lahey can't respond to all.' And you know you're gonna feel like a jerk, but Mrs. Lahey can't respond personally to everyone and that leaves you the freedom to do it. To take a step back, we have people on our Facebook group page, which is a whole other thing, and is a great tool for various kinds of authors, particularly I think in nonfiction. Someone was saying, 'Here I am and my first book is coming out and should I create an author page?' And there are reasons to say yes to that, I think.Sarina:                                 14:07                    Yes, there are. One of the reasons you might need an author page is if you want to advertise something, you can't advertise from a profile, you have to advertise from a page. So, the main reason that the Sarina Bowen author page continues to grow a following is because of paid advertising. And when you use paid advertising you collect likes sort of by accident. So you should never run the kind of ad that just gets likes because that's pointless. But if you have something to advertise like 'Look, this is my new book. Here is the link at Apple books.' Then that is something I advertise and the page does grow its following that way. So I would say that if you have even a 20% chance of ever wanting to advertise something, you should set up that author page. But then you should not obsess about how many followers it has. You should post only often enough so that it looks like the lights are on. And you don't need to worry about it. It needs to be set up so that there's somewhere people can find this kind of information, like the link to join your newsletter, and the link for your own personal webpage. So you need to be listed there because a lot of people will use Facebook as like a global directory. So you need to be find-able, but you do not need to obsess about how many people are following you there. So you can really put it as one of those things on your Sunday promo calendar where you're like, 'Oh, time to stop by the neighborhood of my Facebook page and maybe update something. You know, a book I'm reading or an article I put out this week.'Jess:                                     16:05                    I use it for my speaking calendar, too. Like you know, 'Oh I'm going to be in the next week or month or whatever I'm going to be in so-and-so.' One thing I would like to add is that so early on in my promotion plan for Gift of Failure, my publisher very much wanted me to have a Facebook page because one of the things they did during my pub week was that I added my publisher as an administrator to my Facebook page and they posted a couple of ads. So that was wonderful and helpful.KJ:                                        16:37                    That's really nice. I have not heard of a publisher doing that, which just means I haven't heard of it. I advertised my book personally a couple of times. But I actually did it from the #AmWriting page, I think, because we have a page and I don't remember if I have a page.Jess:                                     17:00                    I think they did two or three ads just during pub week itself. And that was nice. They wanted to know as part of my original, the fact that I had one was what interested them. So I don't think they actually care that much about my followers. Who knows. Anyway, I want to make sure that was in there.KJ:                                        17:22                    When you pay to place a Facebook ad from your page, that has nothing to do with how many followers your page has. It goes to that subset of people that you hopefully carefully create within the Facebook ad maker.Sarina:                                 17:40                    That's right. The ad engine is a vast thing. There are entire podcasts about the Facebook ad engine. So, we won't cover that today but it does give you access to basically everyone on Facebook and Instagram.Jess:                                     17:58                    And you can target very carefully and all that sort of thing?Sarina:                                 18:00                    Yes, sort of carefully. But yes.Jess:                                     18:03                    Okay. Anything else here?Sarina:                                 18:06                    I do have a page and I do have a group, cause you mentioned groups, and groups are lovely and for a couple of reasons. One is that they gel with what Mark Zuckerberg claims to be his new idea for what Facebook should be, which is groups of like-minded people talking to each other. So I actually have a fan group on Facebook.Jess:                                     18:41                    I belong and I love it. I love your fan group and it is so much fun to go in there and look at what's being posted. I love your fan group.Sarina:                                 18:51                    It's called Sarendipity and I'm deeply uncomfortable with the idea of having a fandom. I don't like to use the word fan, I'm not saying that I don't use it, but I don't really want to be that person. It's kind of like there's always a party that I'm hosting and I have to show up, you know. But what happens is that people tend to go there to talk about things that come up in my books and it really takes the pressure off of me. So in May, I had this book where one of the characters, who was known as lobster shorts, that was his avatar on an app. And one of the central conceits of the book is that the other person in the book doesn't know that lobster shorts is really his neighbor. So they have this whole conversation and I swear there are still people posting various lobster clothing in my group, you know, five months later I'm still seeing, look at this lobster shirt I found. So that's super fun because then the discussion doesn't have to be about whether or not you liked the book or what I'm having for lunch. It's like a commonality. This thing that we've all found funny and here's a little more of it. So my group is full of posts about apples because of one of my series.Jess:                                     20:21                    Your group also, I have to say, there was one thread that was posted by one of your fans and it was a question and it was, 'How did you discover Sarina Bowen?' And it was one of the most and incredibly fascinating look at how readers find authors. Some of them were, 'I discovered her through Elle Kennedy, I was an Elle Kennedy reader.' Some were, 'Amazon recommended Sarina because I read X'. It was fascinating and it was a wealth of information about how people stumble upon new authors. I loved reading that thread.Sarina:                                 20:56                    You're right, that was fascinating. But you also said that I didn't post it. There are lots of authors who do ask that question, who are able to ask questions about themselves without wanting to jump off something high. And, but I can't, it's just not me to do that. There's also other romance authors who posts like Towel Tuesday. And so on Tuesday there'll be some photo of a guy in a towel and the other romance readers are like, 'Ooh, good one.'KJ:                                        21:23                    I thought it was going to be the author and a towel. That's brave.Sarina:                                 21:29                    Well now you're really scaring me. That's not me either. And I really struggle with what is my role in that group. And there are so many ways to do it. And if you are a person, as an author, who is comfortable hosting that kind of party all the time, then the group is probably your greatest asset.KJ:                                        21:54                    Alternatively, if you are a person who, as an author, wants to generally answer those kinds of questions that Jess is getting by Messenger, who has a nonfiction platform, which is self-help or that kind of thing you could create... Yeah. Ron Lieber does it really well, that's what you were going to say.Jess:                                     22:26                    No, I was going to say Grown and Flown, Lisa Heffernan and Mary Dell Harrington, they do that incredibly well. They use those questions as fodder for posts on their massive, massive group for Grown and Flown.KJ:                                        22:42                    Right, but they started out as a group and a blog and only later became a book. I guess what I'm saying is if you are Lori Gottlieb, or you, or Ron Lieber, you could use Facebook to start a group in which people discuss the topic of your book. But, I think that there would be a pretty high maintenance requirement there. I mean, at a certain point it would probably become somewhat self sustaining, but for a while I feel like it would be really demanding that you find and put up questions, and respond to things, and keep track. I think that'd be a pretty big time investment, but it might be a worthwhile one.Jess:                                     23:30                    It would be a big investment.KJ:                                        23:31                    I'm not suggesting you do it, this is a general. Let me just say, I don't think that's you, you need to write books. But there might be people for whom it would be a great strategy. For example, the author of Quiet, Susan Cain has said, 'I thought about writing another book and then I realized, no, my mission is to keep talking about this one.' She does it in a different forum. But if that's where you are, if your mission for the next few years is to talk about the topic of your nonfiction probably. Then that could be good.Jess:                                     24:15                    As a speaker, I have to say, reader questions are incredible fodder for either articles, new chapters, blog posts, things to talk about on stage. I have this sort of wealth of stories and many of them came from readers who wrote me, or posted, or messaged, or whatever and said, 'Here's what's going on and here's how I've used the things you wrote about.' So that can be an incredibly valuable thing and if you want to mine that for all it's worth, a little bit of effort could pay off big time.KJ:                                        24:47                    Right. All right, so we got the basics. You've probably already got your profile. Certainly there's no one in our Facebook group asking questions about how to use Facebook that doesn't already have a profile. You're gonna need a page, but you don't need to do anything more there besides keep the lights on. You could contemplate a group, you need to think about how you use Messenger, and what else? What am I missing in terms of the basics?Sarina:                                 25:14                    Well, we definitely covered the basics, but I could give you a couple of ninja level things. So my page has an auto-responder that is hosted by a service called ManyChat. So if you go to the Sarina Bowen page and you hit the button there to send a message, you will immediately get a reply from a bot and it says something like, 'Hello. And then insert first name of person. Thank you for reaching out. The best place to find information about upcoming Sarina Bowen books is this link right here.'Jess:                                     26:09                    Brilliant.KJ:                                        26:13                    That's for Messenger messages or postsSarina:                                 26:17                    Messenger, but it's Messenger to the page, not the profile. So it also says, 'And if you are a man who just wants to chat or show me your photo, you will not like my response.'KJ:                                        26:35                    Even if you're wearing a towel. Especially if you're wearing a towel.Jess:                                     26:39                    I do like that when I get messages like that, like gross, disgusting, stuff like that. Often for example, in Instagram it will shield it from your view. And so in order to see whatever picture someone has sent you, you have to actually click on it. And I have decided not to click on a few things that I receive via the messaging part of Instagram.Sarina:                                 27:05                    Weirdly, the what to blur out trigger is really strange, though. Because I click on them all the time and it's usually like just a photo of a book on a table and it's like my book, you know. So that's one thing that you can hook up. Now, this is the ninja super top secret thing is that also ManyChat, will collect the identities of everyone who ever messages you.Jess:                                     27:34                    To what end, Sarina? To what end?Sarina:                                 27:40                    I will tell you. A page can also always message whomever has messaged the page before. So if you run a contest where to enter the contest, you send the page a message, then ManyChat can retain that list of hundreds of people and then randomly messaged them when you decide. So I could right now just blanket message, all the whatever thousand people who've ever messaged my page before with, 'Hey, guess what? I have a new book.'.Jess:                                     28:16                    Oh my gosh, you're so brilliant.Sarina:                                 28:17                    I don't actually use it, though. Because I find that people are very confused about whether I'm messaging them personally this way. Like it's not common enough a thing to break down that wall. And I don't actually want people to think that I'm messaging them. So, it's not a useful tool for me, but it does exist. And the other Ninja level thing is about the page itself and how nobody sees them anymore. So I do keep track. My page has either 14 or 17,000 followers. I can't remember right now. And the average post is seen by like 1200 people. So it's less than 10%. But if I didn't do certain things, then it would drop even further because the Facebook algorithm looks carefully at each post to decide if it's going to love you or not. So if you're always posting Amazon links then it hates that. But if you're always posting to your own website, it hates that less. And if you're posting text with no links or pictures at all, it loves that because that seems really genuine to Facebook. Like if you just have a haiku to share or something.Jess:                                     29:53                    Is that why people started doing that thing where they started posting in the first comment instead of in the post itself?Sarina:                                 29:59                    The link? Yeah, the link in the comments. Yeah. I'm not sure. I think Facebook caught onto that immediately, though.KJ:                                        30:05                    So, interesting, completely random side note, Facebook doesn't want you to sell animals anymore. And of course Facebook is actually the largest place to advertise horses. So our barn manager, I just turned her on to go ahead and put a picture, but you put the link or you put the ad in the comments. Because if you put an ad they throw it off and it's got to do with puppy mills and that kind of thing, which I'm totally supportive of. But Facebook killed all the sites upon which people once sold horses and they have not yet been replaced with anything. And it's a problem. But, that does still work to some extent I think. The link in the comments.Sarina:                                 30:57                    Okay, well this is how I handle it. A page can also have what are called top fans. That is Facebook's word for it. So if you turn this feature on to your page, you might have to have a certain number of followers, I don't know what it is. You turn on the top fan badge and then Facebook will actually track for you who it considers to be your top fans. I believe I have, I don't know, a couple hundred of them. And top fan badges are earned by commenting on things and liking things. So I actually run a giveaway like once a month we pick a random top fan and they get to have a prize of their choosing and the prizes are a signed book shipped anywhere, an item from the Sarina Bowen swag store, or a bad, but flattering poem in your honor.Jess:                                     31:56                    While we're on the topic and because I have helped you with some of this in the past and I have had to deal with it myself, when you run these sorts of things and you say shipped anywhere, just keep in mind how much it costs to ship to Australia. Just keep it in mind. Just think about it when you do it.KJ:                                        32:14                    There's a reason people do U.S. only and apologies to those who can't participate, but whoa.Sarina:                                 32:23                    Yeah, one book to Australia is $22.50 and yesterday I shipped a box to France for $57 50. Ouch., right?KJ:                                        32:35                    Groups have a similar thing to the top fan, which is the conversation starters.Jess:                                     32:40                    Yeah, I love that. And there's also like a visual storyteller. We have it in our group and, according to our group, I'm an administrator, but I'm also a visual storyteller because I post a lot of pictures to our group.KJ:                                        32:53                    Well, no prizes for you. I'm sorry.Sarina:                                 32:55                    Well, the point of giving prizes to top fans is to give an incentive to comment. If you were to go look at my page right now (and I have no idea what the last thing we posted), but you'll see like 'Can't wait' and just people chiming in and the chiming in tells the Facebook algorithm that that piece of content is valuable or interesting. So Facebook will give it a little more love. I mean there are days when it feels like my entire job is to try to outwit the Facebook algorithm and not everybody needs to think like this or operate like this, but it's quite the rabbit hole.Jess:                                     33:37                    Well, and we've talked about this in the past, is that certain social media platforms are great for certain things. And for me it's Twitter and for you it's Facebook. And we've talked about this in the past and partially it's a self-perpetuating thing. But when Sarina goes on my webpage (which I let her do from time to time and look at where my traffic's coming from) you know, mine's coming from Twitter and hers overwhelmingly comes from Facebook. So if you know that the genre that you write in is Facebook oriented, then this is really helpful information. For me, I'm trying to figure out how to best use Facebook. And it may be different for nonfiction authors, but I think when you know that that's where your fans are it's worth spending a little bit extra time and effort, as you do, to engage that audience. It's all about decision making.Sarina:                                 34:27                    And in order to remove some of the emotion from it. So yesterday I got very depressed because I have a book launch coming up and I realized just how much I hate launching. Like it's a kind of a popularity contest that I don't really want to enter. I don't enjoy that week of share me, share me, love me, buy me. So one of the ways that I get around this is that every two months I take note of where the growth in my social media following is happening. So I'll just note the totals of how many followers are on the page, how many people in the group, how many on Instagram, how many on BookBub and how many on my newsletter list. Not because I'm obsessed with the totals, but because I want to know which thing is growing the fastest?KJ:                                        35:23                    Where should you invest your time?Sarina:                                 35:25                    Right? Where is the heat? So that I don't obsess about my Facebook page if that's not obsessable this week.KJ:                                        35:34                    Well, my loose take on what Facebook is good for is nonfiction of the kind that I have written and that Jess writes, parenting stuff, family oriented stuff, self-help style stuff. Basically, probably nonfiction with more of a female audience. I don't know what I mean, Facebook is definitely both genders. Does it skew female? Do we know?Jess:                                     36:07                    I don't know, but I do know that parenting stuff, at least from my perspective, does incredibly well on Facebook. And then the added bonus is that some of the outfits I write for like the New York Times and the Atlantic and Washington Post have very active Facebook pages. And when they post my stuff to Facebook, holy moly, the shares for those articles go through the roof. And then of course other Facebook pages pick up those articles. And I'm very lucky in that some of my more evergreen content the Atlantic will repost from time to time, thus revitalizing an article I wrote four years ago, which is lovely. Yeah. So from that perspective it's really useful.KJ:                                        36:47                    Well, I often think of it is Twitter for serious nonfiction, Facebook for lighter nonfiction, Instagram for fiction. But I think that is just a gross, gross oversimplification as evidenced by the fact that Sarina makes a really good use of Facebook. And Facebook's ads for fiction, especially independently published fiction, are kind of I think without parallel. And there's no barrier to entry like there is on Instagram. You can't advertise on Instagram. You can't even link on Instagram. You can't advertise either, can you? Am I right, Sarina?Sarina:                                 37:23                    You could advertise on Instagram.KJ:                                        37:25                    Oh you can still advertise, okay. Alright, fine. Well, this is good. Okay.Jess:                                     37:31                    This is really helpful.KJ:                                        37:32                    We've laid out some useful basics, given me some ideas. I hope we've given some of the rest of you guys ideas. Oh my gosh. Books.Jess:                                     37:56                    Yeah, do we want to talk about what we've been reading? I have a new author that I've recently discovered that's fun to read. You know there are certain really popular authors that are sort of are in the periphery of your awareness and yet you never actually listened to them. I finally listened to a Harlan Coben book recently. So I listened to Harlan Coben because a narrator that I really, really enjoy - Steven Weber, he played one half of the duo on the show Wings in the 80s, and he's still out there doing some great stuff. He's an audio book narrator and I happen to love his audio narration voice. You can click not only on authors in a lot of apps, but you can click on the narrator, too. So if you really like a narrator, try other things they've narrated. And that's what I did. And I've been listening to a Harlan Coben book. I listened to one called Home that was kind of interesting, but now I'm listening to one called Run Away (it's two separate words). I think it's his newest one. The opening was so beautifully done - and what's really fun about Harlan Coben is that he's funny without trying to be comic. Like he's just a witty writer and it's really fun in a way that I don't get to read a lot. And so he's highly prolific. There's tons out there. He has series. He has stand alones and so it's nice to have a new author to be able to dip into and learn new things from. So that's Harlan Coben Run Away so far I'm loving it. Home was really, really interesting. I like that one, too.Sarina:                                 39:32                    Well, Jess, I love Harlan Coben. And there's a lot to learn there, also. One of his novels (my favorite one) was made into a movie in French.Jess:                                     39:49                    What's the book?Sarina:                                 39:51                    I'm trying to figure that out right now. Tell No One. It's a wonderful novel.Jess:                                     39:56                    I actually originally heard about him because Stephen King talks about him a lot. I think they're buds or something or he just really likes his work, but I just never occurred to me to listen to any of his books or read any of his books. But I'm glad I am.Sarina:                 &#

How did Jake Neill help B2B SaaS company SocialChimp cut its cost of customer acquisition (CAC) by 95% in 30 days? Jake Neill This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Lead Hounds Marketing CEO and Co-Founder Jake Neill breaks down the 90 day accelerated growth strategy that he and his business partner use to help their client meet aggressive growth goals.  Jake's Digital Experience Roadmap framework can be applied in any business, and he shares the specific story of SocialChimp, a client that he worked with to cut CAC and generate more than 5,000 qualified leads. Highlights from my conversation with Jake include: Lead Hounds Marketing focuses just on strategy and leaves marketing implementation to its clients and partners. The company has a specific customer journey framework that it uses to build 9 day, accelerated growth plans for clients. One client, SocialChimp, needed a way to more predictably generated new qualified leads and customer acquisition. Using their framework, Jake and his partner cut Social Chimp's cost to acquire a customer by 95% in 30 days, and generated a 7.41 return on ad spend. They also generated 5,677 leads at an average cost per lead of $5.15. Jake says there are three things that are key to making any offer successful - the audience, the message and the offer. A successful campaign must be focused on one particular type of customer avatar, and that customer's key pain point. The Digital Experience Roadmap has seven relationship levels: strangers, visitors, leads, qualifieds, opportunities, customers and fans.  Jake generally begins by building out a good lead magnet and finds that with that in place, the rest of the roadmap tends to build itself out. Jake finds that the best lead magnets are hyper specific and able to be consumed quickly - things like checklists, tools, etc. For SocialChimp, Jake created a "real estate swipe file" aimed at realtors that is converting at 84%. Once you acquire a new lead, then you have to qualify them. Jake finds that deep dive content such as webinars and ebooks work very well at this stage. One thing that many marketers miss is the step that involves turning customers into fans. Jake says there are incredible opportunities for upselling at this stage and growing revenue without having to acquire any new customers. Jake uses paid ads to promote his initial offers and get them in front of the right prospects. When it comes to nurturing leads, Jake says it is critical to keep your marketing human and make sure you are using language you would use conversationally and not artificially pushing a sale onto someone who isn't ready for it. Resources from this episode: Visit the Lead Hounds Marketing website Check out the SocialChimp case study Connect with Jake on LinkedIn Connect with Jake by email at jake@leadhoundsmarketing.com Listen to the podcast to get learn exactly how Jake uses the Digital Experience Roadmap to build 90 day accelerated growth strategies for clients like SocialChimp. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth, and this week my guest is Jake Neill, who is the CEO and co-founder of Lead Hounds. Welcome, Jake. Jake Neill (Guest): Hey, Kathleen. Thanks for having me. Jake and Kathleen hamming it up while recording this episode together . Kathleen: I’m excited to chat with you. Can you tell my audience a little bit about yourself and about Lead Hounds? About Jake Neill and Lead Hounds Marketing Jake: Yeah, of course. So, Lead Hounds Marketing is, we're a company of just two people, and our sole focus is on giving people a formula and framework for predictable growth. So, our objective is to put people on a path to doubling their sales. So, we live, eat, and breathe strategy specifically. So, we're not as much... Early on in our company's journey, we were doing Facebook ads, doing all kinds of things, but what we realized was there's a real need in the industry right now for people who are architects. So, what we did was we partnered up with another company in San Diego named Digitopia, and they are a full-house digital marketing company, and they do kind of the SEO, PPC, all that kind of stuff. So, we partnered with them and used their framework to engineer what we call Digital Experiences to turn strangers into fans, and then they do the implementation side, or the client does it in hands, or in-house. Sorry. Kathleen: Nice. I like that you guys have zeroed in on strategy as your strength. I think there's a lot of agencies that try to be all things to all people, and there is something to be said for not doing that and becoming very specialized. I say that as somebody who has been in agencies for 13 years. I used to own one, and now I'm in one as well. Jake: Yeah. 90 day accelerated growth plans Kathleen: Yeah. Well, one of the reasons I was excited to talk with you is that you guys do specialize in working with B2B SaaS, and you have these 90-day accelerated growth plans where you're able to get really great results for your clients. It's not like a blueprint. It's not like a copy-and-paste solution, but you do have kind of a structured approach to how you do this, and I loved that when you and I spoke you were able to share one particular case study that got amazing results, and I thought it would be fun to just use that as the example through which to break down what this framework is that you use, and how it functions. So, let's maybe start at the beginning, and if you could talk a little bit about how you guys think about the customer journey, you have a particular name for it. Jake: Yeah, totally. So, yeah, like you said, I didn't mention that earlier, but we do focus on B2B SaaS. We've done a lot across different industries, and the framework applies across tons of industries. The framework's been implemented for companies as big as Toshiba, and then all the way to startups. So, I'll show you... That's the case study that you're referring to, that we had already spoken about, was a case study for a B2B SaaS startup. I think it's a really powerful case study because it shows that you don't need also these big budgets and an established business to implement these principles. No matter what your size is, you can implement those things today. Kathleen: Yeah, and you have a couple of resources that I'm going to link to in the show notes. So, I think one of them is an example of your customer journey framework. So, if you're listening, and you want to have some visuals to refer to as you listen, if you happen to be in a place where you can do that, head to the show notes, and you can pull that up and actually see it as we talk. Click here to view the SocialChimp case study Jake: Yeah. I would highly recommend pulling up that document, and you can even pause the podcast as we're focusing on each relationship level, and you can even kind of put in your own. How would that apply to your own business? That would be really helpful. That way, it's not kind of like drinking out of a fire hydrant. Customer journey framework Kathleen: I love it. All right. So, let's start at the beginning. Talk us through how you think about customer journey. Jake: Cool. Yeah. Well, the first thing that I kind of want to start with is just the output, because I want people to understand that when you implement this methodology, that it actually works. So, we implemented it for a company called SocialChimp, and with SocialChimp, they were a startup. They were looking for funding, and they didn't really have a way to predictably acquire customers, which is what I see happening across the board. That's the biggest issue, is how do we create predictability. Tons of people are pushing a lot of different tactics, which are vital. Right? The tactics are important, SEO, Facebook ads, webinar funnel, whatever it is that you're trying to implement, but the problem is when you don't have a systematic approach to turning strangers into customers, then you're kind of like a bull in a China shop. Right? You're knocking over everything. You don't really know what's working, what's not working. Sometimes things work, but you don't really even know how it worked, why it worked. So, if you can't measure that thing, then you can't optimize it or do more of it. So, this framework really helps you get the foundation, and when we implemented it for this company, we cut their cost to acquire a customer by 95% in 30 days, and we generated a 7.41 return on ad spend, and we also generated 5,677 leads at an average cost per lead of $5.15. Kathleen: Was this all in 30 days? Jake: No. So, the first 30 days was cutting the cost to acquire a customer. That did happen, and the 95% decrease happened in the first 30 days, but the campaign's been running for a little bit. It's still running to this day, and still producing predictable results, which is really important because with the tools and tactics, they might work also for a period of time, but they only work for a set amount of time. They might be working for the next six months, but they're not really what you're going to build the foundations of a business for years and years to come. Kathleen: Got it. Okay. So, let's walk through it. Jake: Yeah. So, one last thing before I jump into the methodology is there's a couple things that you have to understand, is with all marketing across the board, there's three things that have to be hit in every single campaign. There's your audience, your message, and your offer. "With all marketing across the board, there's three things that have to be hit in every single campaign. There's your audience, your message, and your offer." - Jake Neill, Lead Hounds Marketing So, I know it's very basic, but what I'm going to assume is that you already know who your audience is, and that you can already articulate the offer to that prospect or that customer in a good way to actually move them to action. So, you already have those things dialed in. I'm going to assume that. So, if you don't have that dialed in, then make sure you dial that in before you implement the methodology. Kathleen: Yeah, and I think most listeners of this podcast probably have all that together, because they're generally pretty savvy marketers. Jake: Perfect. So, in order to understand the methodology, the first thing you need to understand is a little bit just briefly about the actual client themselves. So, we implemented this methodology for SocialChimp, and they have a software that automates social media posting for various industries, so real estate, wealth management, insurance, all kinds of stuff. So, what we had to do first was identify and hone in on our target market. This is a big mistake I see people making early on, is they try to create campaigns that funnel in tons of different customers, but you have to... You can build multiple campaigns, but for a successful campaign, it needs to be focused on one avatar. So, what we chose were real estate agents. The last thing, too, before we jump into the methodology is the... When you identify the audience, you need to hone in on a key pain point. A lot of you listening to this are going to skip this step, and you're going to start working on the Digital Experience, and it will fail if you do that, because hyper-specificity is key to the success of building out this roadmap or this Digital Experience. So, for the client that we serviced, their target market was real estate agents, so what we did was we interviewed real estate agents, we spoke to them, we did our research, we did our due diligence, and what we found was their biggest pain point was, how do I build and engage social media presence without any kind of time? So, they're all stretched for time. They want to sell real estate, but it takes a lot of time and commitment and consistency to post. So, we had to build a Digital Experience out of that. So, at this point, if you don't have the Digital Experience map, I'm about to jump into it. Definitely pause, download the Digital Experience, and then follow along with me. Kathleen: All right. Jake: So, on the Digital Experience map, we have seven relationship levels, and you see those on the side here. I'm going to briefly touch on them. There's strangers, right? That's the very first step. Someone has no idea who you are. So, the questions you have to start asking yourself is, what offers are we going to offer strangers to turn them into visitors, and then visitors, to turn them into leads, and then once we have leads, how are we going to qualify those leads, and then once they're qualified, how are we going to turn them into sales opportunities, and then once they're a sales opportunity, how do we close them into a customer, and then from a customer, ultimately, into a fan? So, those are the seven relationship levels that we have to implement in our business if we're going to see the consistency and the predictability. So, at the first level, you've got the blog post here. So, what we have is what we call a cornerstone piece of content, and that's how we turn strangers into visitors. But I want to take one step up to the lead sector just briefly, because that's actually where we start. If you can build and identify a lead magnet, a really, really solid lead magnet, then this experience begins to kind of build itself out. So, what we did for this client was... A lot of you are already familiar with a lead magnet. By the way, a quick note on lead magnets. The hyper-specificity is super important, but also that it can be consumed rapidly. I see a lot of people using things like eBooks, but those are better used for deep-dive content, which is later in the journey, because it consumes a lot of their time. So, at the lead stage, and this would change your business, if you guys can come up with a really, really, really good lead magnet, a lead magnet is... When you're thinking about a lead magnet, think about tools, checklists, things that can be consumed really quickly and solve a problem. So, with a lead magnet, the place that we always start is making a promise. So, I don't even start with the tool itself. I identify what promise can I make to the prospect that's in alignment with the key pain point. So, what's the best possible thing I could promise? So, what we did for this client was we identified, well, they want more social media engagement, and they want to do it in less time. What if I could hand you more than a month's worth of proven social media content to post to your newsfeed? Right? Where most people would go and say, "Well, let's educate them on how to post better posts." Well, the issue is they don't have time, so you're missing the mark. That's why it's so vital to identify that key pain point early on. Kathleen: That makes a ton of sense. Jake: So, what we did was we created the real estate social media swipe file out of that promise. We said, "How can we give them over a month's worth of proven content?" Well, we just went to... I think it was BuzzSumo, whatever the app is that has... You can find most engaged content. We grabbed the most shared real estate content of 2018. We grabbed 40 posts. We put them into a swipe file, into a PDF document, and then we wrote some copy. We wrote some different copy variations for each post and embedded a link. When the real estate agent clicked the link, it populated the social media post into their newsfeed and gave them 40 free posts to post for, depending on how many times you post, a month or more. Kathleen: Awesome. Jake: So, that lead actually to this day is converting at 84%. So, 84% of the people who land on that page are giving us their email address, and it's not because of the landing page design and the landing page copy. That, of course, matters, but it's about identifying an offer that aligns with that key pain point at this stage in the journey. Kathleen: Yeah. It's like the best landing page copy in the world can't make up for that offer. Jake: Yeah, exactly. It doesn't matter if you're... Yeah. I mean, you could offer a toothbrush, you could write the best copy for a toothbrush, but I don't know how many people are going to opt in, give you their email address for a free toothbrush. Kathleen: Right. Jake: So, once we identified the lead magnet here at the lead stage, the rest kind of writes itself. One thing to note as we're going to build out this experience together, each stage, as you elevate the relationship, it should be the next logical step. So, I should be able to say, "Because you read this blog post, you might be interested in downloading this lead magnet. Because you consume this lead magnet, you might be interested in watching this video. Because you watched this video, you might be interested in this product." So, it needs to be this logical progression. So, after we identified the lead magnet, we went down to the blog post stage, and this is how we turned strangers into visitors. Yes, you can create tons of different content. You can do SEO, this kind of stuff, but the cornerstone piece of content is this one kind of content that explains the value of the actual tool itself. So, what we did was we created a blog post called How to Repurpose Your Content and Get 10 Times the Exposure. So, if you notice the blog post, once again not teaching them about social media, it's showing them how to save time and increase their social media engagement. It's showing the power of repurposing content, and then the tool, what does it do? It gives you the content, the repurposed content kind of done for you. So, there has to be that logical progression. From the lead stage, now you have an email. So, if you guys know about using automated emails, this is where that would kick in, but don't let... If you don't know how to use automation and the CRM and everything, don't let that hold you back from building the experience. That's just a way to push people to the next stage. So, once you have a lead, you have to identify, how do we qualify this lead? So, this is where we build deep-dive content. So, in the SaaS space, a lot of times it's kind of videos around the product, but in most every industry, webinars work really great. This is also where eBooks can work. So, in this experience we built out a free trial video. We said, "Okay. Well, you just downloaded 40 social media posts. Well, how about we turn those 40 into an unlimited amount of social media posts?" So, that's where the free trial, we showed them the software that curates all these posts for them, and then posts it to their newsfeed every day for as long as they want. So, after watching the free trial video, we had a qualified lead, and then could offer that person a free trial offer. So, we said, "Now that you've checked out our video, now that you've checked out our software, would you like to take a free trial?" So, this is a really, really important step. It's a little more straightforward in the software space, because usually it's a demo or a free trial offer, but the foot-in-the-door offer is essentially an offer that you can give that's a low barrier to entry, so it's not your core offer. You don't want to jump in and say, "Buy my product," yet. You want to say, "What could I offer this person to get them to commit one of two things, either their time or their money?" A lot of people forget the value of getting someone to commit their time. Sometimes it's harder to get a commitment of time than a commitment of money. Kathleen: Yeah, that makes sense. Jake: Yeah. Maybe for the viewers who aren't in the software space, just some examples of ways to turn qualified leads into opportunities, let's say you're a brick and mortar. Let's say you're a dentist. People offer $20 teeth whitening. Right? It's not the core offer, but where does a dentist want to have the sales conversation? Where do they want a sales opportunity, when your mouth is open, and they're working on your mouth, and they want to say, "Hey, you've got some loose teeth here, or some crooked teeth. Have you considered braces?" Then that pushes them to the core offer. So, that's an example of an entry point offer that's not in the SaaS space, but if you are in the SaaS space, demos and trials work fantastic here. Kathleen: Yep. Jake: Then, obviously in the SaaS space, software works, selling actual software after the free trial. Now, there's all kinds of practical things about getting people to actually use the free trial. A lot of people sign up and don't use it, so you need email automations and things pushing people to actually use the software, but the software, your core offer, is that next step. Then from the core offer, after someone purchases, the next step is, how do I turn them into fans? So, at the fan stage there's a lot that we can do. What we want to focus on at the fan stage is increasing the lifetime value and the immediate value of a customer. So, what you do here is you offer complementary services to the core offer that would be interesting to the prospect in order to increase that value. So, for them we said, "Hey, you've taken the free trial. You're now using our software to post every day for you. Would you like some more awareness?" So, we offered them paid ads. We said, "You know, we're not..." Once again, it's not costing them time, but they're getting to spread their message out and build their brand and get more engagement to more people, because we're going to manage their ads for them, and maybe do something like a hundred dollars a month, something simple. But that was a really good complementary product, and we had 10% of people took that upsell, and then it allowed us to increase the lifetime value of a customer by 20%, which is extremely important because you can move your entire top line by 20% with one single offer. Kathleen: And without signing any new customers. Jake: Right, exactly. Kathleen: Yeah. Jake: So, that essentially is the framework. I don't know if there's anything that you feel like would be good to hit on in terms of helping people with the more practical side of thinking through any of these offers, but that's just one example in the software space. Kathleen: Yeah. I mean, it sounds like... So, we're talking about going from a stranger to a visitor, to a lead, to a sales opportunity- Jake: Or to a qualified lead. Kathleen: ... to a qualified lead, to a sales opportunity, to a customer, to a fan. Correct? Jake: Correct. Promoting your offer Kathleen: So, really, it's an expanded kind of concept of the customer journey. You guys have a special name for it, the Digital Experience? Jake: Yes. Kathleen: Yeah. It sounds like the key to it, at least what I'm hearing, is really deeply understanding the pain point, because if you get that wrong, it's like Dominoes. Right? You start at the beginning. If you get it wrong, nothing else works. Jake: Yeah, exactly. Kathleen: So, for SocialChimp, you did this exact thing. You walked us through all the different offers and the content, et cetera, that you created. One thing we didn't really touch on too much was, how did you promote the offer in the very beginning? Jake: Yeah. I mean, the way that we promoted it in the very beginning was with paid ads. I mean, there's a lot of ways to promote, and it also depends on your goals. What I see a lot of people missing on as well is the business math on the front end. They don't actually calculate things like, what is the lifetime value of a client? Well, maybe the lifetime value of a client is a thousand dollars, and then you have to ask yourself, well, what percentage of that profit are we willing to spend to acquire that customer? So, let's say typically a business is going to use 10% of two to three years worth of the value of a customer. If you're a startup, sometimes you'll use the whole lifetime value because you want to scale, but most businesses aren't going to use more than 10% of the first two to three years of the value, the profit, not the revenue, the profit of a client. So, it's identifying it early on, how much am I willing to spend? So, if the lifetime value is a thousand dollars, and you're willing to spend 10%, then you know the cost to acquire a customer can't go above $200. Then what you can then begin to do is you can begin to map out your conversion rate at each of these levels. So, you can say, "Okay. What percentage of visitors are becoming leads? What percentage of leads are becoming qualifieds, qualifieds into opportunities," and so on, all the way up to fans. You can then begin to reverse engineer the percentages. So, let's say at the customer stage you are turning 10% of customers... Or let's do the opportunity stage. You go to your sales team, what percentage of opportunities are we currently closing? 30%. Well, if you want to add an additional 10 customers, then you need to make sure you're bringing in another 30 sales opportunities in order to close those customers. So, you can reverse engineer all the way back to the visitors, and I'll actually... In the Digital Experience worksheet, I actually have a business math section, and you can fill that out. We won't have time to go over that in this call, but you could fill that out and identify what is your max cost per click. So, then you can decide what platforms to play on. So, if my max cost per click to drive a customer is going to be, let's say, $1.50 to turn the stranger into a visitor, then I'm probably not going to play on LinkedIn ads, because LinkedIn has a price floor, and you're not going to be able to drive traffic for that $1.50. So, setting up the business math on the front end is really important and vital to the success of campaigns, and it also helps with... If you're a CMO, for instance, and you're reporting to the CEO, it's really important because sometimes a CEO doesn't necessarily have realistic expectations of what should happen on the marketing side, and you can't dispute the numbers. Right? So, what you can do is you can show the numbers and create realistic goals around customer acquisition and what budget you'll need to fuel those customers. Kathleen: Yeah. I love that you guys focus on the cost of customer acquisition, because I think that's a big mistake that a lot of marketers make, especially those that are new to pay-per-click. I hear people ask the question all the time, "What should my budget be?" Right? They think that there's some magic lump sum number, like you're going to say, "Well, if you spend $3,000 a month, you're going to get results." It's really, the premise of the question is flawed because it shouldn't be what should your budget be. It should be how much are you prepared to spend to acquire a new lead or a new customer. As long as you're staying within that amount, your budget could be infinite. Right? Jake: Right. Kathleen: If it's resulting in customer acquisition, then you wouldn't want to cap it, certainly. You wouldn't want to say, "No, I got 10 customers. That's the end of my budget." You would want to keep it going. So, I think that's so interesting, that little shift in mindset that happens, and it's definitely something that you see... The mistake is something you see made a lot by people who are novices with pay-per-click. Jake: Yeah, definitely. So, I'd highly recommend using the business math section on that experience worksheet, and just as you build out your own experience, measure the conversion rate from customers to fan. Well, you can start from visitors to leads, and all the way up, and then measure those numbers, and it's kind of a fill-in-the-blank document, and it'll produce at the end of it what you'll actually spend. It will create the goals for what you can spend to acquire a customer, and that'll inform everything moving forward. Kind of to jump to the original question, I know I kind of went on a side tangent, I think it's an important one, but what we realized was this software was only being sold for $49 a month, so the cost per click that we could drive was on the lower end. So, we chose to play on Facebook. We didn't choose Google Ads or LinkedIn or anything like that. Of course, real estate agents are using Google, but the prices are a bit higher. So, we knew if we were going to get a really big return on our investment, then we needed to really drive home some good offers that could drive low cost per clicks, and Facebook's a great platform for that. Kathleen: Yeah. Now, you also have used retargeting. Correct? So, once somebody gets into your funnel, if you will, or into this Digital Experience, there are ways you can use retargeting to push them faster down it? Is that correct? Jake: Yeah. Yeah. So, that's actually a really important point. I'm glad you brought that up. The middle section on this experience map are the offers that we're going to give someone at each of these relationship levels, but on the outside you see things like retargeting, advertising, SEO, social media, email marketing. These are the platforms and the tools that you use to move people through the journey, and that's where I see most people starting, and that's a very, very, very bad mistake because of what we talked about earlier where you're just going to be implementing content, SEO, retargeting, and you're not going to have a systematic way to predictably bring in customers. So, we did implement retargeting, advertising, social media, all this kind of stuff, but it was to move people through the journey. So, you see, at the first stage, at the visitor stage, we started running ads. Our goal was to push as much traffic to this blog post as possible to build up an audience that we could then retarget. Right? So, retargeting, we retargeted the blog traffic to the lead magnet to get them to give us their email address. Well, now that we have their email address, we have a way of contacting them in multiple platforms. We can speak to them on email and retargeting ads still. So, for people who downloaded the lead magnet, we had email sequences. Kind of just a note on when you're doing this as well, keep it really, really, really human. We didn't say, "They downloaded the real estate social media swipe file. Quickly, buy the free trial. Watch the free trial video. Buy this thing." People can ascend really quickly through the Digital Experience, but we kept it, and our emails would follow normal relationship building, and we'd say, "Hey, because you downloaded this swipe file, I thought you might be interested in watching this video about how you could have a lifetime of proven highly-engaged real estate," and it's just like, "Hey, check this video out, and it's because the action prior to what I'm asking you to do now is you kind of raised your hand and said, 'Hey, I'm interested in this kind of thing.' Let me give you more of it." So, it's really about thinking from a value. It's not this kind of... A lot of people talk about this kind of stuff purely in funnel terms, and they think about funnels and funnel hacking, but a lot of times, people get so caught up in those things that they're just looking to make the sale as quickly as possible. But I think when you... That's why we changed the language from funnels, where people are kind of dropping down in the funnel, to elevating relationships, building experiences that are going to actually earn us the right to do business with our customer, as opposed to these kind of gimmicks that are, "Maybe we can kind of get our customer to buy with this thing." Kathleen: Yeah, marketers are the worst at that. I always say this. We're people, right? We're people who buy things, and we know, as people who buy things, what we like and what we don't like when we're marketed to, but then when we go and put our marketing hat on and become marketers, it's like we throw everything we know about being human beings out the window, and we do the opposite. It's like, the biggest mystery to me of marketing is why do we allow ourselves to do that. Jake: Yeah. I mean, it's wild. I see it happening all the time. I see people, "Hey, you read this blog post. Do you want to get on a call so I can talk about me and my product?" No, I actually don't. I also try to keep things in that human-to-human mindset and ask myself the question, number one, put myself in my customer's shoes, in my prospect's shoes. Would I want to receive this email? Does it make sense for me? Does this thing add value to my life? If the answer is no, if this email... This is a great principle to use. If you're going to send out an email, whether it's automated, eblast, or if you're going to post a blog post, so many people get caught up in, "Well, how many emails do I need in order to push them to the next step? How many blog posts do I need to post each day or each week?" The answer is not about the quantity of content that you're pushing out as much as the quality of content, because when you put something out, it says something about your brand, and if you're putting out crap, then people are going to... They're going to start associating you with, this isn't worth my time. So, if you send them enough emails that aren't valuable, they're going to start... Number one, they're either going to unsubscribe, or number two, in their mind they're going to say, "I don't need to open this email because I'm not going to miss anything." But if you're always adding value, then when they see an email come through from your brand, then in the back of their mind, "I know I'm busy right now, but if I don't read this, I may lose out on something really important to learn." Kathleen: Yeah. My little hack for that is instead of imagining I'm the recipient, because sometimes that can be hard for me, I actually think of a friend, and I think, if I were emailing my friend Abigail, what would I say? I wouldn't say these spammy things, right? I would be friendly. I would be helpful. So, I picture a real person, and I write to them, and that's really helped me a lot make things less marketing-robot-like. Well, this is so cool, and hopefully people have gone in and downloaded the visuals, because it is very helpful to follow that along in this conversation, and if you didn't, go download it afterwards and then re-listen to it again, because you'll get more out of it. The results Kathleen: But I want to recap, go back to the results you got, because this is the exact process you used with SocialChimp, and you guys had crazy good results. So, can you just mention those again? Jake: Yeah. So, when we built out this Digital Experience, we took someone who was getting terrible results, they were spending way more money than they were bringing in. Their cost per trial was $1,147. That's pretty bad. Now, what were they doing? They said, "Oh. Well, we've got a great product, and we're giving you something for free. Do you want it?" So, they were running ads straight to their free trial, but that would be like me walking up into a coffee shop and saying, "Hey, I'm pretty awesome, and I'm rich and funny. You want to get married?" Just because those things may be true, I may be awesome, and we may be a great potential match, but if I come at it with that approach, then I'm going to turn off that person. So, in the same way, I can't come across in that way to my customers. I see a lot of people telling stories about themselves to their customer, but the real question that we need to ask is, how do we change the story that our customer tells about themselves? How do we take them from point A to point Z, where they want to be? So, when we stepped away from that and said, "Okay..." They wanted to hire us originally to run their Facebook ads, and I told them, I said, "I won't run your Facebook ads because you have a much more fundamental problem. If you push traffic to this system right now, then you're just pouring water in a leaky bucket, and you're just going to be wasting money." So, we had to build out that experience, and when we did that, we cut the cost per trial from $1,147 to $56 within just 30 days. Kathleen: Wow. That's crazy. Jake: Yeah, you can see the... We were selling the product for $49, but we also had an upsell that 10% of people took, so it made the monthly payment $59 a month. So, within 30 days, as a SaaS product, they were recouping what they were spending to acquire a customer. It's really, really, really powerful for a SaaS company. Kathleen: That's awesome. Definitely speaks to the value of kind of that whole... You have to slow down to speed up. Don't just try to drive traffic to a bad offer or a bad website. You've got to have a solid foundation. I love it. Jake: Yeah. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Well, before we wrap up, I have two questions I ask all my guests that I want to ask you. The first one is... We're always talking about inbound marketing on The Inbound Success Podcast. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really doing inbound marketing well right now? Jake: Well, besides you, I would say DigitalMarketer. If you haven't heard of them, it's digitalmarketer.com, and my agency's actually certified partners with them as well, they've got tons of resources. But they are phenomenal at this. They really, really, really focus on adding so much value that you almost feel obligated to purchase, because by the time they offer you anything that you have to pay for, you've already learned so much that you know a couple things. Number one, there's this kind of feeling of, well, I need to give back to this person, and then there's also the feeling of, well, I got so much value for free, I can't imagine how much value I'm going to get when I pay them. Kathleen: Yeah. Yeah, they are great, Ryan Deiss and Marcus Murphy and the whole team over there. They're just killing it. IMPACT is also a partner of DigitalMarketer. It's a great company. All right, second question. I always hear from marketers that there's just so much changing in the world of digital marketing, and it's really hard to keep up with. How do you personally stay up-to-date and on top of all of that? Jake: Yeah. So, there a lot of ways. I would also say I do stay up-to-date through DigitalMarketer because they are one of the leading trainings and resources for individual companies, marketers, and digital agencies. They're kind of on the cutting edge, and they are certified with so many people like us who are in the trenches, and then we relay that information to them so that they can get quite a large amount of data around what's working, what's not working. So, I use DigitalMarketer, and then that's how I stay up-to-date, but I really think a lost art is looking back at some of the older advertising, like some of the books, like Breakthrough Advertising. If you haven't read that, it's really phenomenal on copywriting. But going back all the way to the people who were writing direct mail and getting people to literally mail... They were mailing something to someone's house to get them to purchase a product from one single letter. It's really powerful psychology and principles to be learned from those people as well. Kathleen: Yeah. I love that whole going back and being old school. I've had a bunch of people mention that, and everyone cites different books. I think the one you mentioned is a new one. But some of these principles don't change, because they just have to do with human nature. So, it's not like there's new advances in human nature in 2019. It's the same basic principles, and I think sometimes we lose sight of that as marketers. So, great insights there. How to connect with Jake Kathleen: All right. If somebody's listening, and they want to learn more about Lead Hounds, or they have a question and they want to reach out specifically to you, what's the best way for them to do that? Jake: So, they could email me directly. My email is jake@leadhoundsmarketing.com. That would be probably the quickest way to get a response. Kathleen: All right, awesome. I will put that link in the show notes. So, if you want to reach Jake, either shoot him an email or head to the show notes and get that link. You know what to do next... Kathleen: If you're listening, and you learned something, or you liked the podcast, please leave the podcast a review on Apple Podcasts, preferably a five-star review, but I say this every week, and this week I'm going to challenge you if you're a regular listener to take a moment and do that. Leave a review if you haven't done it already. I would really appreciate it. It helps get the podcast in front of more people. If you know somebody else who's doing kick-ass inbound marketing work, tweet me @WorkMommyWork, because they could be my next interview. Thank you so much, Jake. Jake: Thank you, Kathleen. It was awesome.

Welcome to Episode 8 of the Miracle CDJR Podcast! This week we talk with Mike Olari, the Commercial Fleet Manager of both Miracle Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram and Miracle Ford. In this episode, Mike shares a little bit about his origins in California and how he ended up in Tennessee, his love for Sports and what Miracle can offer large businesses in terms of Commercial Fleet pricing and service. This is a great episode that you do not want to miss! Enjoy! Transcript John Haggard: 00:02 Welcome to the Miracle Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram podcast, where each week you’ll learn the best ways to purchase lease service and maintain, accessorize and sell your vehicle for the highest resale value possible, when you’re ready to do it. I’m your host John Haggard, and throughout each month, right here, we will have different team members join us from Miracle to bring you tips that you can use. And you’ll also see a transcript of each podcast for quick reference. On this podcast, we’re talking with Michael Olari. He’s the Commercial Fleet Manager at Miracle Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram. Hey Mike, welcome to the podcast. Mike Olari: 00:36 Hey John, how are you doing? John Haggard: 00:37 Doing well. Glad to have you along with us. You know, people always want to know who’s behind the scenes. Let’s find out a little bit about Mike before we get into your role as commercial fleet manager at Miracle Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram. So did you grow up here in Nashville area? Right? Where are you from? Mike Olari: 00:53 I did not. I’m actually born and raised in California. John Haggard: 00:56 California. California. So how long have you been in this area? Mike Olari: 01:01 I’ve been here almost five years. John Haggard: 01:04 All right. So what got you to Nashville? Mike Olari: 01:07 Well, my parents actually moved out here almost 15 years ago and decided it was time to go. John Haggard: 01:14 All right. Wanted to be closer to family? So where did you go to high school in California? Mike Olari: 01:19 Went to high school at Alto Loma high school. John Haggard: 01:22 All right, so that Alto Loma California as well then? Mike Olari: 01:25 Yes sir. John Haggard: 01:26 All right. All right. And so when you’re not working, what do you like to do on your time off? Mike Olari: 01:31 I’m a big sports fanatic. I love to watch football, baseball, everything. John Haggard: 01:37 Gotcha, Gotcha. So you go to games, watch primarily. Are you one of those that has like eight games up on your television set where you can look at all eight of them? Mike Olari: 01:45 Do I have to answer that one? John Haggard: 01:49 Ha, I hear you. So what other hobbies do you have when you’re not doing sports? Mike Olari: 01:53 I like to go out and just hang out with friends and I actually do like to do my yard work and kind of keeps me level-headed. John Haggard: 02:01 Gotcha. Absolutely. So how did you get started in the car and fleet business, Mike? Mike Olari: 02:07 Well, I got started in the car business about six and a half years agom=, out in California. A buddy of mine called and said he needed some help. I told him I’d never been a salesman before. He said, give me six months. If you don’t like it, we’ll part ways. We’re still friends now. Six and a half years later, I’m still doing it. I enjoy what I do. John Haggard: 02:24 Well, so now before you got in automotive, what did you do before? Mike Olari: 02:28 I did construction for almost 20 years. I’m electrical for 15 to 16 years of that. Enjoyed what I did, loved it. Just had some health issues come about, which ended up putting me out of that business. John Haggard: 02:47 Understand. And so then what brought you to Miracle Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram? Mike Olari: 02:51 Well, I actually came out here to visit my mom one time, and drove by, and I’d been wanting to get out here. Mike Olari: 02:58 So I in and talked to one of the sales reps that was here and found out how many cars they’ve sold and how many, you know, salesman they had. It was pretty much what I had out in California at the time, so I made a jump. John Haggard: 03:11 There you go. So as the commercial fleet manager, what does your day typically look like? Mike Olari: 03:17 As you know, I am over the Ram store, but I am also over the Ford store as well. So I do a lot of running back and forth, have bids that I’ve got to get out almost daily now. And you know, if I get a phone call, hey, we’ve got a customer over here that’s looking at a van, I run back over and, and help that customer out and you know, do the best I can to, to make sure everybody is helped quickly. John Haggard: 03:45 All right. So now how long have you had a fleet department at Miracle Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram? Mike Olari: 03:51 We’ve had a fleet department here for right at about a year and a half. John Haggard: 03:56 Okay, so relatively new. Mike Olari: 03:58 Yes. John Haggard: 03:59 And then so what, what was the decision, tell me about how that came about where obviously you’re sitting around a table I guess one day talking with people and they say, you know what, we need to do a fleet department here. How did that come about? Mike Olari: 04:11 Well, they had, they had already kind of been working on it. In a sense already. And I just brought up the fact that there is a lot of, you know, a lot of businesses out here, and I watched a friend of mine out in California build his up out there. I know there’s plenty of people that we can help out here in this area and that’s what I like to do. Mike Olari: 04:33 So that’s why we ended up doing it. As soon as we started talking about it, built the back end of the building on, they went gung ho, we got business link and we been blowing and going ever since. John Haggard: 04:44 All right. Then you said you also handle Miracle Ford as well as for their fleet department and how long has that been going on? Mike Olari: 04:52 But two to three months. They’ve done fleet before in the past, but never really had anybody to take the grasp and just run with it. So right now that’s what’s going on. John Haggard: 05:02 So you’re doing both stores… Are you getting any sleep? Mike Olari: 05:06 It doesn’t feel like it. No. John Haggard: 05:09 Ha, I hear you. Now, what are some of the companies that you work with, those who have are doing fleet management with you? Mike Olari: 05:15 One of the biggest ones. We have Servpro. We’ve got them, we’ve got people, US Pest is another huge one, Assure Heating and Air. There’s quite a few that we actually work with, but the two big ones that we do are a Servpro and US Pest. Those are the ones that they do purchase a lot of vehicles. John Haggard: 05:36 You know, today people are sensitive about pricing. They say, Hey Mike I could use 10, 20, 30 vehicles. You know, how can somebody get a good deal with a commercial fleet today? Mike Olari: 05:48 In that aspect that they’ve got that many vehicles that they’re looking at. What I do is I go through and I set them up with a Fan number at Ram or a Fin number at Ford. What that is, it’s a fleet number that they get from the manufacturers and whatever they get off on, on the vehicles, that’s what they get. So it’s already a set in stone number. Say it’s $5,000 per vehicle that they get off. That’s what they get. John Haggard: 06:15 And that comes directly from the manufacturers, is that right? Mike Olari: 06:19 Yes sir. John Haggard: 06:20 Got It. All right. And would you say it’s better in a fleet situation to purchase or to lease? Mike Olari: 06:26 Most of the time it’s better for them to purchase. There are some times that the lease will work out better for them because there’s a program called track lease, and what that is, is it’ll give them the ability to set their own residual at the beginning and at the end of it, when it’s sent to auction, if they owe less than what it got at auction, they actually get money back. If it gets less than what they owe, then they got to pay. At that point. You got to make your decision on if that’s good for your company, but it is 100% tax write off. So that’s the way things are starting to go is to that track lease. John Haggard: 07:04 What about trade in’s on fleets at the end of that term, do you take those vehicles you mentioned earlier or do you take them all to auction? How does that work? Mike Olari: 07:13 Well a lot a lot of them will keep their old vehicles because they’re still running. So they say, no, I’m just going to write you a check. I’m not trading nothing in. And that’s mostly what I’ve been dealing with. Do they trade them in? Yes. most of the time they are going to be the auction vehicles. Cause you’ve got 250, 300,000 miles on a vehicle. John Haggard: 07:36 Is there any one question that customers ask you, Mike? A lot to clear up confusion on what they thought or understood or do understand or they’ve heard about? Maybe they’ve never done a fleet purchase, but just a typical question or two that most people will ask you. Mike Olari: 07:52 Well, most of the questions I get asked is what’s the difference between commercial and fleet? You kind of run those two departments. You say, I, you know we’ve got a commercial fleet department. Well, the commercial side is, it’s going to be your heavy trucks. Your 350s, 450s, 550s is 3500s it’s 4500s 5500s now with the fleet, what a lot of people think is, well, I’ve got a full fleet of five. Well, if you have less than a fleet of 15 there’s some manufacturers that go, well that’s not a fleet of five is not a fleet unless you buy them all in one year, and that’s what a lot of people don’t understand it as. They go, I have five in my fleet, I should get a number. Well, it’s hard for me to say no, I can’t give you that number, but I kind of have to at a point in time, they got to understand that there’s, you have to have a certain amount of vehicles to be a fleet account. John Haggard: 08:49 All right. To qualify as what you’re seeing there, Mike Olari: 08:51 Yes sir. John Haggard: 08:52 Got You. Now everybody of course looking for discounts if they buy in volume. It’s kind of like, you know, the more I buy the better price I should get. Tell me about discounts on parts and service with fleets. Mike Olari: 09:04 Well, we have, we have a program that goes through Ram that what they do is they have a thing called business link. And what business link does is that gives you 5% off of your parks and 5% off your labor, your service, but it gives you an extra added bonus with, you get the next available bay when you do bring your vehicle in. John Haggard: 09:26 What about pickup and delivery service for fleets? Mike Olari: 09:29 I will do that, and again, if they are signed up for business link, I will actually take a vehicle to them, let them use it and I will bring it back and then take my art, take our vehicle back. So we do have a program that that sets that up. Makes it a lot easier on the customer. Now if it’s just an oil change, normally they sit and wait, and that’s fine. They’re fine with that. But if it’s something that we got to have the truck for, you know, a day or two to fix something on it or we have parts that we’ve got to order, I will put them in in a vehicle to where their business is not down. John Haggard: 10:03 So for Miracle Ford, is it pretty much the same in terms of the discounts and the way that’s done? Just like Miracle Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram. Mike Olari: 10:12 They do have a similar program. Yes, they do. John Haggard: 10:16 Hey, just a curious question. When you think about the Miracle family, is there anything that’s there I guess or something that’s unusual or something that’s like, here’s something that’s really neat about Miracle? If most folks maybe don’t know about, unless they come here. Mike Olari: 10:32 Being that I’ve worked here as long as I have on the Ram side, I’ve worked under the Galvin’s for quite a while in my head and they do care about their community. They have shown that to me and if something needs to be fixed, they do everything in their power to fix it. They’re a family owned business and to me, they run it like that. John Haggard: 10:54 And so what is it that just makes you get up out of bed every day that says, you know what, I love this business. I want to go, I want to go do this. What is it that gets you going? Mike Olari: 11:03 Knowing that I’m going to be able to help somebody out if, whether it’s a new business or a business has been there for 50 years. What gets me out of bed is I do love my job. You know, helping out people that that’s the biggest thing. John Haggard: 11:16 So what’s the one thing about Mike Olari? What is the, what is the one thing that people would be very surprised if they knew about you? Mike Olari: 11:24 I guess I could say the one thing is, is came real close to going professional baseball. A lot of people don’t know that. John Haggard: 11:31 Really. Okay. So tell us a little bit about that. That’s interesting. You said real close. So obviously you were very good to get up to the point to even be considered. Mike Olari: 11:40 I was, I was a decent pitcher. I don’t, I don’t pat myself on the back, but you know, I pitch between 96 and 98 and had seven pitches. So my pitching coach taught me very well. John Haggard: 11:55 What about your prediction for the Tennessee Titans this season? Mike Olari: 12:01 Oh, well, the way they looked last Sunday, if they keep that up. They’re gonna, they’re gonna go far John Haggard: 12:07 And you think they can make it, you think you can make it at least to the playoffs? I mean, what, what do you see out there? What do you see the positives and the negatives on what you’ve seen so far? Mike Olari: 12:15 I do think they can make it to the playoffs this year. Long as they can keep the quarterback healthy and keep him in the game and his head in the game, I think they will do very well and they will at least make it to the playoffs. John Haggard: 12:31 All right. You heard it folks. That’s the prediction for Michael Olari. Now he’s the commercial fleet manager at Miracle Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram. Also at Miracle Ford. Join us again right here for other topics on the podcast. Throughout each month. Our goal here is to help you purchase lease service and maintain, accessorize and sell your vehicle, or if it’s fleet that you need to do as well for the highest resale value possible. When you’re ready. John Haggard: 12:55 By the way, Mike, is there any one tip you would give those who own a fleet now that they’ve gotten from you? How do they get that highest resale value possible? Any quick tips that you would say, hey look, you know, when it comes time, if you’ll keep these things in mind, your vehicle will be worth more money. Mike Olari: 13:12 Well, the biggest thing I tell people is, you know, take care of your vehicle like you take care of yourself. Give it a tune up, do all the oil changes, everything it needs to have. Just keep it, keep it, keep it up and you’ll get a higher resale value. John Haggard: 13:27 All right. Just treat it like you treat yourself. I think that’s pretty good advice. That’s Mike Olari, everybody. Once again, the commercial fleet manager at Miracle Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram in Gallatin and also Miracle Ford. I’m your host John Haggard. We’ll see you next time.

EP012 - Electric Vehicle Analyst at EVAdoption, Loren McDonald http://www.vehicle2.getspiffy.com Episode 12 is an interview with Loren McDonald, Electric Vehicle Analyst at EVAdoption; recorded on July 1st, 2019. Loren and Scot dive deep into the world of EVs, including such topics as: The growth of total EV market share in the U.S., broken down by state. Exploring Loren’s CARMA EV adoption framework. Breaking down lithium-ion vs solid-state batteries, as well as their 7-year cost trajectory. Emerging companies like Rivian and Workhorse, who are pushing for EV usage in non-traditional segments. The expansion of EV charging infrastructure, including where charging stations are growing and where they’re still needed. Tracking federal EV tax credits as they begin to phase out. Check out Loren’s work at EVAdoption.com, as well as his book Gas Station Zero! If you enjoyed this episode, please write us a review on iTunes! The four pillars of Vehicle 2.0 are electrification, connectivity, autonomy, and changing ownership models. In the Vehicle 2.0 Podcast, we will look at the future of the auto industry through guest expert interviews, deep dives into specific topics, news coverage, and hot takes with instant analysis on what the latest breaking news means for today and in time to come. This episode was produced and sound engineered by Jackson Balling and hosted by Scot Wingo.   Transcript: Scot: [00:56] Welcome to the Vehicle 2.0 Podcast. This is episode 12 and it's being recorded July 1st, 2019. Welcome back Vehicle 2.0 listeners. Uh, we're recording this here in early July. Hopefully this has given you some content for your July 4th travels. Uh, in this episode we have a real exciting treat for you. We're excited to welcome on the show, Loren McDonald. He's the author of the book "Gas Station Zero", editor and contributor to EVAdoption.com contributor to Clean Technica and an all around EV expert. Welcome to the Vehicle 2.0 Podcast. Loren! Loren: [01:31] Great. Thanks for having me, Scott. Really excited about the conversation today. Scot: [01:35] Yeah, me too. We've, uh, I've, I've been a f a Twitter follower and, and read a lot of your content. Um, you know, I think what I've found as I've dug into, I come from the ecommerce world and as I've dug into this world, uh, there's, there's not many people that actually have original content. There's a lot of republishing of the same kind of stuff. And, uh, what I love about your content is, you know, very originally sourced and in a lot of unique thinking there. Before we dig into that though, um, let's talk about your career path. What, what got you into this automotive motive space and writing on this topic? Loren: [02:10] Yeah. So I, I'm, you know, complete outsider, if you will, to the, the automotive and in EV world. I started my career in marketing and PR way, way back in 1984. So 35 years into kind of my, my marketing consulting career have been, uh, you know, CML marketing executive consultant at, uh, a variety of companies over the years. Mostly sort of BDB professional services. But the last a sort of 15, 20 years in the marketing technology space, um, and really kind of the last 15 years spend functioning as a, as a marketing evangelists are flying around the world. Uh, speaking at conferences, meeting with clients, doing a lot of writing and research and stuff. And ultimately that's, you know, kind of the transition to what I'm, I'm doing in the electric vehicle space. Uh, about five years ago I started a blog where I was writing about all things green. Loren: [03:04] The use the, the name Loren Green. If, uh, you, uh, older people on this, they'll get the, uh, the connection there with Lauren Green, the old a actor from the high chaparral. But, uh, what I was doing was writing about a bit of everything and sort of the green space, everything from how to reduce, uh, you know, packaging and, uh, increase recycling and reduce use of water. This was back in the days of, uh, the drought in California, solar power and electric vehicles. And what I quickly found was as I couldn't sort of be an expert on all of those topics and I decided, uh, to sort of pick electric vehicles and that was the one that I was sort of most intrigued by about how are we going to sort of solve this problem, right? Well, what is going to drive people to actually want to, uh, uh, you know, transition to electric vehicles. Loren: [03:58] So that sort of when I started about three years ago, uh, the Evie adoption site and as you mentioned also sort of riding for clean, technical, etc. And so really have, you know, taken my career as sort of a marketer and consultant and strategist and somebody focused on research and data and have tried to focus, uh, on that aspect of them solving the problem, using data of when, you know, when are consumers going to, uh, you know, adopt, uh, electric vehicles, uh, in a, in a really significant way. Well, and is this your first full time gig now or are kind of still a hobby? Wish it was Scott. I'm working towards that. Um, but, uh, it, it is something I do is sort of, uh, on the side, if you will. So a lot of, a lot, a lot of weekends, uh, uh, and, and, and evenings and things like that. Loren: [04:55] But, uh, you know, instead of, uh, instead of being out working in the yard or, or riding a bicycle or spending time with my wife on weekends, I'm uh, you know, chained to my laptop, writing articles and doing great research. But I have to ask, uh, do you drive an Evie? I do. At the moment we actually have two Tesla model essence. Uh, so, uh, got our first one, two and a half years ago and actually just picked up or actually it was delivered to our house. Uh, the second one last, last Sunday. And I've gone from the low end model s which had, uh, about, uh, 200 and a little under 210 miles of range to one that now is 335 miles of range. And so I'm really excited to, uh, put that to the test on road trips when we take our daughter back to us college in southern California later this summer. So a show, we'll, we'll, we'll dive into these and road trips a little bit later in this conversation. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, I'm a, Scot: [05:58] I had a model s or a pretty early on in 2012 and then a side graded to a model three, so, so also live in that as la UV lifestyle with you. Loren: [06:07] Nice, Nice. Scot: [06:09] Cool. We're here on the podcast. We have a framework for the Vehicle 2.0 framework where we talk about the four big changes coming to the auto industry. We talk about connected car changing ownership models, uh, autonomy, and then of course, uh, evs. So we want to spend the bulk of our time with you talking about evs. I thought it'd be good to kind of, you know, talk about kind of from a timeframe perspective, uh, where you see things today in the u s and then we can kind of expand from there. Loren: [06:36] Yeah. So we're, we're really quite, quite early for any, uh, sort of, uh, techie geeks. I, I refer to this, we're probably in the palm trio phase. I don't know. Scott, did you ever own a palm trio? Uh, I did. Yes, you did. Yes. And you'd know what I'm talking about, right? We're, we're in that phase of, of where primarily sort of early adopters and I, and I use technology and, and I'm a big fan of, of um, uh, the sort of that w what's commonly known as the technology adoption curve. This idea of how consumers, basically, with any sort of new technology product, they start off kind of the innovators, uh, you know, really, uh, only, uh, for geeks people that are willing, uh, and can afford to sort of pay more for products they want to, uh, own or drive, whatever the latest and greatest thing is. Loren: [07:29] And then it Kinda goes up ultimately into, um, what's called sort of the, you know, early majority, late majority then, then, then laggards. And in, in most markets in the u s and around the world, we're still in that sort of innovator phase of, you know, kind of under two and a half percent. Um, it obviously varies dramatically by market, but in, in the u s today across the u s worried about 2%, meaning, uh, two out of every 100 a new vehicles that are purchased across the US today are electric vehicles. And when I say electric, um, I'm including in that both what we call PHEV plug in hybrids. Those are things like the, the Chevrolet volts and the um, the Ford fusion energy where it has a small battery pack and you can uh, uh, drive on a what's typically anywhere from sort of 20 to have a little under 50 miles range on electric. Loren: [08:30] And then gas engine kicks, kicks in, but you can then recharge that battery, um, by, by plugging it in at home or the workplace or whatever. And then a, what we refer to as be evs, battery electric vehicles. And those are things as you and I talked about, the Tesla model s uh, and three, the Chevrolet Bolt, uh, many, many other factors that, uh, only have electric motors and battery packs is so fully electric. And, um, so again, where we are today in the u s is, uh, is about 2%, but then when you break the country down, it is sort of, we have a fascinating picture, Scott, in that it varies sort of dramatically by sort of state and market. So California finished 2018 at just under 8%, meaning, uh, you know, that almost, and we should hit and we actually hit the 10% in the last few months of, of 2010, we'll probably finish 2019 little under 10%. Loren: [09:31] But in essence, in California, across the entire state, one out of 10 of every new vehicles purchased, uh, is an electric car. And, uh, and most of them, in fact, about 40% of them are, are the Tesla model three these days. But then if you go to a state such as, you know, Oklahoma or Louisiana or whatever it is, it's like 0.2, 2%. And so literally what we have is we have this sort of huge dichotomy and chasm in the United States where you have California, where people are literally buying evs at a rate of 40 to 50 times that of people in, in sort of southern states. And so it's, it's sort of really fascinating. And then if you break that down even further in a, in a city like Palo Alto, which is obviously a sort of a wealthy higher income, high tech community, we're approaching 50%, literally one out of every two cars being purchased there are, are electric. Um, and now where I live in, in the bay area, in the suburbs, we're at about 15%, 20%. And so, you know, that's a long answer to your question Scott, but, but fundamentally, no, across the u s we are still really, really early. But if you look at sort of individual markets, we are sort of well down in the path of adoption. Scot: [10:53] Yeah. Very cool. Um, and then I've seen, I think I've seen Tesla or I can't remember who talked about it, but there's a certain definition of a car where, where they're one of the top sellers where, you know, I think they put the model three into a, uh, you know, a price range, and then it's like a four door, and then in that category of they're outselling the BMWs and Mercedes, the Honda's and the, you know, so another interesting slice where you're starting to see, you know, the, a fair amount of adoption within a pretty narrow definition. Loren: [11:22] Yeah. If you look at sort of the, that sort of luxury sedan market, if you will. So the, the, uh, as you mentioned, sort of, you know, the, the, the BMW three series, Audi a fours, uh, the Mercedes c class, uh, the, the, uh, Lexis, yes. I believes in that market and stuff. The Tesla model three is actually crushing it, right. In sort of that, uh, sort of, you know, 30 to 40, you know, 30 to thousand dollars, depending on what configuration you get of those different vehicles. The, you know, the model three is, uh, uh, is, is, you know, outselling all of those cars by a pretty significant way. And so what's, what's interesting about that, Scott, is that, well, we're seeing the most of the u s and Japanese automakers still sort of laggards on, on launching new models. The German car makers get this right because they're the ones that are actually seeing sort of direct competition from Tesla. I actually start to eat it into either end of the market share and I know we're going to sort of dive into that a little bit more, uh, in a bit. But that's sort of a, a fascinating sort of side effect of, of Tesla success. Scot: [12:33] Cool. And then, um, I know you've done a lot of really interesting research kind of putting on your, your consumer marketing hat about, you know, what I guess what's, what's driving adoption in, in areas like California and Palo Alto, and then, you know, what's slowing down adoption, what are, what are some of the consumer insights you've drawn from that? Loren: [12:53] Yeah. So, you know, fundamentally, again, what I came up with this framework, uh, about three years ago that I called Karma c a r m a the sort of as a way to kind of think about, um, what are the different factors that that will ultimately drive mass adoption of electric vehicles and, and you know, sort of the, the letter Stanford charging range and speed, affordability, range model availability and awareness and understanding and well, fundamentally that's why the Tesla is sort of, is, is doing so well and that it's, it's pretty much solved most all of these problems, right? So first and foremost, as we all know, consumers that, that are thinking about, uh, potentially. And in Evie you're considering it or just learning about it, there's sort of first, you know, common concern is his range and what we call range anxiety, right? Mo, most cars available in the u s today, especially with sort of the, you know, SUV as larger SUV have north of 400 miles of, of a range and the gas car right and sort of varies anywhere from about three 50 to almost sort of 500. Loren: [14:08] And so consumers have been trained that their car should go, you know, roughly three 50 to 400 miles on a, on a tank of gas. And so their expectation is, is that an electric car should sort of match that. Right. And so know that's where sort of, you know, again, Tesla has done really well in sort of reaching that sort of higher income market that has been able to afford their luxury cars with over 300 miles of range or in some cases a little bit under that. But, uh, and they're going to come out, uh, the, the rumor is by the end of this year with a model s that we'll actually have 400 miles of range. So they're sort of getting to that point of you, at least from a range perspective, consumers who can afford the electric cars will, will not be able to sort of use sort of the, the lack of range of an issue, but fundamentally w you know, range is sort of sort of that, that sort of first starting point. Loren: [15:06] In other words, if you're, if you're going into a car dealer and considering a car, that is sort of the sort of the first step that, that people have to get over. The second one, uh, is, is, uh, I think, um, you know, just sort of affordability, right? And again, the, the challenge today with, uh, sort of both sort of supply and demand of electric vehicles is, is because of the, the cost of the battery packs is still pretty significant and it tends to be about a 20 to 30% of the cost of the vehicle. And so the, the battery pack prices are coming down significantly, but there's still, you know, too high as a, as a percentage of the vehicle. And so when you're looking at comparable vehicles, so if you're looking at a particular car model that has both the gas, uh, uh, you know, motor and an electric motor, and there are several on on the market like that where you can actually get different sort of powertrains, it's often anywhere between five to $20,000 difference. Loren: [16:10] Right. And so in a case like that, it's sort of very apparent to someone that, you know, electric cars sort of cost significantly more. So we've got it, you know, yeah. Get the cost of them down. That's sort of the second, second big thing. And again, we're gonna, we're gonna get there probably in about seven years. That's what McKinsey and, and Bloomberg and many other, uh, research organizations have sort of predicting as that, that sort of cost comparison, that cost parity will come in probably around 2025, you know, plus or minus years that, you know, that's sort of the third piece of this is just making cars that, that people want. And so, as, as you know, Scott pickup trucks are really, really popular in, in, in the u s you know, the Ford, uh, F-150 is the top selling vehicle in the u s the sort of the top six vehicles sold every year in the u s are either SUV slash crossovers or pickups, right? Loren: [17:12] And there just aren't a, today there aren't any electric pickups and B, there aren't really any sort of affordable, uh, crossovers that can compete with something like a Toyota Rav four and stuff like that. And those are sort of the hot markets, right? And so, you know, we're just, there's not sort of competitive vehicles, um, uh, available. And then, you know, I would, uh, just sort of talk about kind of awareness and understanding, right? People just still don't even know what evs are and they think there's sort of something, uh, you know, kind of from the future and, and, um, and, and that's really where the neighborhood effect comes in, right? That's why they're doing so well in markets like California where people just like solar. There's been a lot of research around solar, right? You put solar on your house, your neighbor is more likely to go solar. Loren: [18:03] And that's what's happening in markets like California where people just see all the Teslas and electric cars running around and they become more comfortable. If it's okay for my, it's okay for me. And so we've just, you know, got to sort of do a better job of, of making them available and, and, and making people aware of them and that, that they actually really are a good fit for them. And then the last piece, um, is, is, is charging speed, right? I've talked to a lot of people, I've talked to everybody I know about, you know, when you will, uh, think you might be willing to go. And a lot of people will say, I will not consider electric car until it, it charges in the same amount of time that it takes me to refill my car. Right. Which is about five minutes. And we're, we're a long ways away from that. And so people are going to have to accept the charging is, is, is sort of very different, uh, than, uh, you know, that sort of refueling. Got It. Scot: [19:01] Cool. So the, um, so the main cost difference is the batteries and um, you said about seven years we should get to some kind of parody. Is that because battery production kind of gets to where it needs to be or, or, or what is the driving factor on that? Loren: [19:15] Yeah, it's a combination of things. Scott one, as you mentioned, it's just, it's like any sort of product, right? It's sort of volume, right? So right now, you know, there's, there's a last year worldwide, about 4 million evs were sold. And again, that's across both the, you know, the, the, the full battery electric vehicles and plug in hybrids and stuff. And so that's relatively speaking, you know, there was like 80 million vehicles sold last year in the world. That's sort of a small volume. And so the first part of it is, is just like, you know, smart phones or computers or refrigerators. Any other kind of product like that is, is that the price will come down when sort of the battery production sort of scales up. That's the first part of it. The second part of it is, is just um, improving, uh, manufacturing efficiencies, improving the actual, uh, makeup of, of, of the battery packs and selves. Loren: [20:10] We probably don't, don't have time to go sort of deep in into today, but there, there continues to be a lot of um, uh, improvements and developments in, in the actual sort of battery cells themselves. We're seeing in the, in the, in the future we're going to have something called solid state batteries, right, which were moved sort of the liquid in the batteries. And Long Story Short, Scott is that's going to probably double or triple in essence, the energy density of those batteries, which will a obviously, uh, mean that you can produce, you know, a three, 400 mile range battery for, you know, let's say half the cost that, that we, that we are today. So part of it is just sort of, it's, it's still a relatively new emerging technology, if you will. And it's just going to take, you know, five, seven, 10 years to kind of to get there. Scot: [21:00] Do you think lithium ion is going to be kind of the underlying technology that we bet on or do you think some other technology has a shot? Loren: [21:08] Yeah, so lithium ion is obviously the sort of the, the, the goto today, but, but again, I think we're, we're going to see a solid state battery sort of being the, uh, I think sort of the next wave and the next successor. Um, and, and again, it's just a, a sort of a variation if you will, on the lithium ion batteries that it removes that, um, sort of the, the liquid. And so the dendrites don't build up as much. And so basically, uh, you know, you just, you have sort of a higher, higher energy density. There are, there are other sort of technology's out there being, being talked about, but, but I think solid state seems to be the one that most people think is, is ultimately going to kind of be the, be the winner. And again, that's, that's probably, um, seven years, uh, seven to 10 years from being, um, like in electric cars that we would buy. Again from those perspective, it's just, it's a manufacturing and scale perspective that they already have sort of the technology. They just don't have the ability to mass produce those, those batteries yet. Scot: [22:17] Well, who's a, where could we learn more about solid state batteries? Is there like a certain company that's doing this or, or is it like out of a university? Loren: [22:26] Yeah, there, there's several of them. Uh, I've, I've, I had the, the pleasure to interview, uh, one CEO of one company called uh, uh, solid power out of Colorado. They were sort of spun out out of University of Boulder. Uh, Toyota is, is, is working on solid state battery. Dyson, the vacuum cleaner company for lack of a, a better term is walking on one. There are several other, are the universities and companies working on them as well. But those are some of the kind of the, the leaders, uh, Toyota, you know, is claiming that there are solid state battery next year. But, uh, I'm a little little bit dubious on that and think that, uh, showcasing it and actually putting it in a, in a car is, are two different things. Scot: [23:20] Cool. And then a on the lithium ion side. So Tesla built or, or as you know, has built a portion of the gigafactory in, uh, Nevada I believe. Uh, and then aren't they starting a factory in China as well? We'll those two factories kind of, um, you know, give them enough capacity to keep growing and, and kind of, you know, drive up the adoption at least on the Tesla side. Loren: [23:42] Yeah. So you're correct. So it's a, the, the, the gigafactory one like they call it, which is up outside of, of, of Reno, Nevada is a joint venture with, with Panasonic. And the challenge they've had there is just as you say, is they have not been able to actually keep up with demand. In fact, if you're familiar with some of the Tesla energy products, they have the, uh, the, the power wall and the power pack, which are sort of the, the backup battery storage, both for residential and commercial. And they basically had to take the production that was planned for those two products. And actually, but, uh, towards the model three and I'm actually, and so, yes. So the sort of the, the supply of battery packs continues to be sort of the, the biggest alums market. Um, and as you mentioned, China has actually completed the building of their, what they're calling gigafactory three in, in China insurance. Loren: [24:49] And, um, now they're actually, uh, working on, uh, building out the inside of the factory and installing equipment and stuff. They literally, it was sort of amazing that they built this, this factory in six months from literally a literally buying the property and, and getting up is pretty amazing. But those batteries are going to be battery packs and that factory are from everything we know going to be just for the Tesla model three in the model wise that will be sold in China. So that's probably not going to help solve any problem, uh, for, you know, for other, our other markets you up and, and the u s and stuff. And so that week does not go by when, uh, one of the, the, the OEMs, uh, you know, announces yet another, uh, either partnership or plan building a new battery factory. Several of them, uh, are, are being built down in the, in the south, in the US, uh, as an example. But, uh, yeah, so scaling up those, those battery factories, uh, is today literally the sort of the single biggest challenge to sort of growth of the market. They just can't keep up with supply or with demand. Excuse me. Scot: [26:03] Interesting. And then on the models, you talked about a pickup trucks and Teslas working on one. A lot of people are skeptical if, you know, given they're there, they're always announcing things and not delivering on time. Uh, but another one that we've been watching closely as Rivian, um, have you, you think they'll get to market first with their pickup truck? Loren: [26:21] They probably will. There was, and the, you know, there's not another company called work horse out of the Midwest that was been working on a, uh, on a, on a, uh, pickup truck. Uh, but they've been having some financial issues and stuff lately, so it's, uh, unclear what's going to happen with them. But yeah, ravion is a, is a really exciting company and Amazon and some other companies invested a $700 million into them. And, uh, as well as Ford has, is, is now invested in them. So they're at a really sort of exciting company to watch, unlike sort of Tesla and, and faraday future and some of the other sort of evs startups. They sort of remained in stealth mode for, for, for many, many years. And then finally came out and showed their sort of, uh, you know, concept, uh, versions of their pickup truck and an SUV and they're actually gorgeous and, and, uh, you know, really sort of amazing looking. Loren: [27:23] They've designed them literally from the ground up as evs. So there's like spots where you can put golf clubs through the side of the vehicle, uh, add on camping accessories to tap into the battery power. So they're, they're, they're very exciting. The problem with them is that, you know, they're basically, you know, 70 to a hundred thousand dollars pickup trucks. And, um, and so, well, their sort of dream pickup trucks, they're not gonna take the Midwest by storm, which is ultimately what what we need, right? So these are going to still be a lot of, you know, Silicon Valley and people on the coast who, who might've purchased a, you know, a Tesla or similar sort of electric luxury vehicle. Now getting excited about being the first one on their block to own a, a, a Caribbean electric pickup truck that, you know, that I think is, is actually going to be amazing, you know, three to 400 miles of range and just just, uh, amazing features. Loren: [28:22] But I think, you know, it's, it's, it's gonna prove that you can build an amazing pickup truck and that'll, that'll sort of pushed some of the other auto makers to sort of speed up it, but it's only going to take away sales from, you know, the very end highlight Ford Raptors, right, that are in that sort of 70, $80,000 range, thousand dollar range. In other words, it's not, it's not going to directly compete with that $40,000 kind of Ford F-150 or you know, or Chevrolet Silverado or whatever it is. So it's a, it's exciting. I expected to do really well with Amazon and Ford and others behind it. There doesn't seem to be any, uh, uh, you know, issues about will they survive. It's just that, how quickly can, can they scale and ultimately build pickups. An SUV is that maybe reach, you know, kind of below the luxury market. Scot: [29:22] Cool one. Um, uh, you talked about costs and for a while there we had a, a national subsidy. And then I think those have gone away, but there's still some state subsidies. We're, where are we on subsidies for, for enticing people to jump into the pond. Loren: [29:38] Yeah. So, so actually, no, so the, the federal electric vehicle tax credit is, we sort of commonly commonly refer to it is still, uh, it's still available. The way, the way it works is that, uh, it's based on each, uh, manufactures. So, uh, the, and, and the amount of the federal tax credit varies by the, the, the, the IRS basically has a, uh, a formula for it. But, uh, if the battery pack is of kind of a certain size, so it can be a plugin hybrid or a full electric, um, the maximum tax spread and get a $7,500, um, and then, uh, the, the smallest I think is about 1,750. I forget the exact amount, sort of, uh, for some, some vehicles and sort of everything in between. Again, sort of based on that sort of battery pack size. But once a, an auto maker sells 200,000 electric vehicles beginning from 2010, it starts kind of a, a complicated, uh, phase out, right? Loren: [30:49] So that get too into the weeds. But basically, uh, that tax credit phased out over, uh, nine quarters, if you will, and gets cut in half. And Tesla actually as of today, uh, their tax credit was cut, uh, uh, in half. Uh, and so it's down now to, or I think it's been cutting twice, half now. So it's down now to God, I forget the amount, but it's like 1,350 or something like that. Uh, I should know that, but it, but bakes look getting, it's been cut in half twice. And so this is the last, um, two quarters where you can get any kind of tax credit, uh, on Tesla models. Chevrolet also reached the General Motors also reached the $200,000, uh, threshold. Um, but they're, they did it a couple of quarters behind so you could still have several more quarters for their models and there's basically nobody else close. Scott Nissan and Ford are still about, uh, 80, 90,000 vehicles away and they don't have sort of any volume of EBS. Loren: [32:00] And so the tax credit in essence for the other 30 manufacturers or whatever is, is still sort of widely available and will be for many years. Um, but, uh, and then at, as you mentioned at the state level, by the way, I should, I should mention there, there's a lot of, uh, momentum to either by a certain people in oil companies that are to get rid of that federal tax credit and then by proponents of it to actually change it in an extended and, and change how it's actually calculated so that there isn't that 2000 sort of threshold. Um, but then as you mentioned, um, a lot of states actually have, uh, either rebates or tax credits. California for example, where I live has one, um, you Lotta utilities, uh, also have them. So like the Pacific gas and electric here in California, in southern California, Edison, et Cetera. Loren: [33:04] I'll have different ones, but it's Tenley tends to be about like $500. Uh, many states have tax credits of say, $2,500, or you know, a thousand, something like that. And then there are also many other sort of incentives or benefits such as access to the eight year v Lane, uh, and, and things like that. So there, there's still a lot of opportunities to in essence reduce your, your overall cost of that electric vehicle through, uh, through these various incentives. Very cool. And then, um, I've heard some states are considering actually, uh, you know, the opposite of subsidies, which would be increasing, uh, effectively a targeted tax, I guess, on, on evs. And I think their argument is we're losing all this tax income from the markup and gasoline. Have any states enacted that or are they just kind of chattering about it at this point? Loren: [33:56] Uh, it's, it's a little bit of both. There's, there's a lot of chatter. Uh, I think it was Illinois proposed like a thousand dollar registration fee. And then I think just like a week ago, it was, uh, it did not pass. Um, but there are some states that have past ones of like, it's like sort of double the registration of sort of a gas vehicle or they've added additional hundred or $200 and things like that. So yeah, you're, you're absolutely correct. There are, um, uh, some states that, um, are, are an acting anything from sort of small to fairly significant, uh, ways either sort of, typically it's sort of a registration fee. There's sort of increasing that, um, at basically it just as you said, as a way to say how do we recapture sort of the, the gas tax, uh, you know, w uh, gas taxes that we get to fund, uh, infrastructure, roads and bridges and things like that. Loren: [34:58] And that's actually a topic that, uh, I'm really gonna sort of dive into pretty significantly over the next couple of months, Scott. Cause it's, it's one that really fascinates me cause there are, there's about a half a dozen different models that people are talking about. Uh, but, but none have sort of emerged and this is not just the US and state issue. This is a global issue, right? Like nobody has actually figured out what is going to be kind of the most equitable, fair way and makes everybody happy to do this. And some of it sort of big brothery like people are talking about, they would track your mileage. Other people talk about you take your car in for an annual checkup and they'd look at the mileage thing, you'd be assessed a fee. Uh, there's electricity taxes, there's just flat registration, there's tire, you know, tire taxes. There's like all these things being floated and um, you know, none have, none have actually sort of emerged yet. And so meanwhile you're seeing just what you talked about Scott, which is states and sort of some states are just saying we don't know what the right answer is, but we're gonna, we're gonna Start, uh, taxing more. It's charging these fees because we know even though it's only a couple percent of, of the new vehicles that it's coming and we need to start, start generating that, that sort of revenue, recapturing that lost revenue in some way. Yeah. It's funny cause it seems so misaligned with, you know, Scot: [36:23] they'll try to be green and reduce carbon footprint. Everything did that you would create a disincentive for going EV. It just kind of, Loren: [36:30] yeah. And, and that's, yeah, that's a really good point in that, you know, depending on how you view of the world, right. Many people think that, that, that in fact, yes, we should look at sort of the, the actual impact that the internal combustion engine has, that we're actually not charging for it, right. Everything from, you know, sort of air pollution to, uh, carbon emissions and things like that. And so, you know, then that gets to a sort of a whole nother sort of complex, uh, way of sort of thinking about it. But, but you're right. And so you have this sort of like everything in the world, in the u s today, everything is sort of, you know, red and blue or black and white and this sort of, you know, it's hard to sort of bring people into the middle to find a, a, a good common and simple solution. Scot: [37:21] Cool. Um, last topic on Kinda like adoption rate. Um, where are we on charging infrastructure and is there, is there some metric we look at like chargers per population or just like the number of charges out there and any trends on that? Loren: [37:35] Great question. Yeah, I sorta, you know, to kind of back up for a little bit. Um, you know, the, the thing that, that people who don't have an Evie and, and as, as someone who's, who's on your second Evie, you absolutely understand this, right, is that, you know, when we think about refueling our gas or diesel powered car, we think about, we get in our car and we'd drive to a gas station or we stop off on the highway at a gas station going in, refuel, and then, you know, Kinda get back on the road or whatever it is with, with the electric cars, people have to sort of be re taught how to kind of think about charging. And that in a, for, in, in, in, in most parts of the world, in the u s you're looking at about 60% of people live in some form of a single family homes. Loren: [38:27] So they can install an Evie charging station in their house from anywhere from, you know, 500 and $1,500. Uh, which again is not necessarily a small number for a lot of people, but basically you drive in as you know, and you plug in your car at night just like you do your smart phone, you wake up in the morning and it's charged. Uh, maybe you drive to work and you, if you were lucky enough to have a, an employer that has charging stations that work and there are a lot of them out here in Silicon Valley. I know there's a lot down in places like Atlanta and probably where you are in Raleigh and stuff, but that's sort of another source, a target and Walmart have uh, hundreds and hundreds of charging stations that they've, they've built many of them, Tesla superchargers and other ones as well. Uh, Tesla has this what's called destination charging program where literally there are thousands of hotels and resorts around the world that have installed what's called the Tesla Wall charger. Loren: [39:27] So you can go stay at their hotel and just sort of plug in while you're sleeping at night there as well. The, the, the two biggest challenges, Scott, to kind of the charging infrastructure is solving the problem for renters, if you will. Or people that live in, you know, condos or, or high rise downtown in New York or something like that. Right? Where you can't just drive home and, and, and, and easily, easily plug in. So that's the first big a charging infrastructure challenge we have to solve. And that part of that's going to be solved by, uh, workplace. Part of it's going to be solved by the sort of, you know, urban charging centers and, and charging it at target and Walmart and places like that. Um, longer term sort of the apartment owners and managers and stuff, we're going to have to step up to the plate. Loren: [40:20] Most of them do not want to yet. They don't feel like it's their responsibility to be, to build out the sort of the refueling centers. But, so that's sort of the first part of kind of where we are is, is, you know, if you're a homeowner, it's, this is, this is a piece of cake. Uh, it's, it's those sort of non homeowner homeowners that we would kind of have to sort of focus on, on, on building out. The second piece of it is road trips, right? It's like most of us probably only do a couple of long road trips per year, but that is the biggest fear of most people in an, in, in buying an Evie, I'm going to Disneyland Disney world, going to see grandma two states away. It's a 500 mile trip, where am I going to starch? And, and Tesla understood that early on and so took the, you know, had the foresight to build out their Tesla supercharger, uh, network to sort of solve that problem. Loren: [41:19] And if you've ever been to sort of, you know, California and driven from like the bay area down to southern California, literally there's, you know, like where I live to down to la, there's like seven or eight different supercharger stations. You have plenty of options to sort of stop and charge that. So we have to sort of build that out. Electrify America, which is the, uh, the diesel gates, a subsidiary of Volkswagen, uh, that basically they've committed to $2 billion to building out, uh, the charging infrastructure in the u s both those sort of a road trip chargers as well as it apartments and in sort of a, an urban locations and stuff. And they're building out really pretty quickly there several other charging networks that are, uh, uh, ego and, and chargepoint et Cetera, that are sort of, uh, building out and, uh, you know, it, the thing that is sort of, we're, we're still not at that is that I believe is sort of the other, uh, automakers haven't really sort of stepped up to the plate, at least in the u s sort of help build that out. Loren: [42:28] And so I think that that's something that, that we need to need to see more of, uh, going forward. But to your question around the metrics, yeah. I, I tend to look at, uh, things like, uh, the number of, uh, uh, charging locations per number of electric vehicles. In other words, if you think about that, like fundamentally we need to scale the number of, of uh, electric charging stations in locations, uh, you know, at the same rate or ahead of the rate of, of people buying them. Um, and, uh, right now we're, you know, in most markets we have sort of a pretty, pretty good ratio. Um, there tends to be anywhere from about 15 to 30 electric vehicles per charging location and that seems to be okay. We probably need to get that down to closer to between 10 to 15. Uh, and then the second metric that I like to look at is the number of charging stations. Loren: [43:36] And this is the language we use in this industry is really bad, uh, because it's very different from gas stations, right? We say charging stations, which is actually means those sort of plugs the connections. Um, but a key metric to me in that area is, um, the number of those connections per location, right? And Teslas at almost 10, meaning if you go to their supercharger station, the average one has just under 10 connections. So 10 cars can plug in and charge at the same time. They have some that have as many as 40 connections. A lot of them now are, are 12, 12, 15, 20 et cetera. Um, but most of the other networks are only at two to four. So we've, we've got to build these sort of what I call sort of super centers, right? Where literally as, as the number of electric vehicles scale and they're driving down, you know, the east or mid West or the southern California, whatever it is. And you can have, you know, literally 50 cars stopping in at one location and, and all charging and being able to charge in 15, 20 minutes and get on their way. Scot: [44:46] Cool. Um, do you happen to know how many just total plugs there are in the United States? Loren: [44:52] There's about 65,000, what we call level two. Uh, that's like the level to sort of like what you plug in for your washing machine, that sort of, you know, two 20 capability and then, uh, what we call DC fast chargers, right? Those sort of superchargers that charge it really high rate. And you sort of combine those two together. We're at about 65,000 today in the u s um, but again, you know, Scott, if you think about that metric, that metric doesn't include the, you know, about 900,000 that are in people's homes. Yeah. Right. And so that's, you know, that's sort of the other, uh, other sort of, you know, key metric that almost everybody that buys an Evy obviously install some sort of a charger in their home and that that basically takes care for most people, uh, about 95% of their charging needs. Right. The only time you kind of, if you have a home that you can plug in the, that you have to go outside that is for those sort of either sort of mid or long road trips. Scot: [46:03] All right. So let's, uh, so that's a really good status of kind of where we are today and what's keeping people from adopting evs. Um, when you project forward, when are we going to cross that chasm and see evs become a much more material part of, of vehicles being sold? Loren: [46:19] Yep. Yep. Great question. So I use a, and thank you for using that sort of crossing the chasm. That's one of my favorite sort of terms and, and many, many of your listeners would probably feel are familiar with the book from many years ago, but the crossing the chasm refers to that, uh, technology adoption curve. I, I'm, I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast around, uh, when you basically go from early, early adopters and cross into that sort of early majority, which is 16%. So I like to be sort of very specific around, uh, the, the concept of when we will go mainstream. And so I use that 16% and I've, my prediction is that across the u s we will cross that 16% chasm, uh, in 2028. Um, but, um, uh, in California, uh, I believe it will be there in 2022. So just, uh, what three years away, cause we're, we'll probably be, as I mentioned at about 9%, uh, hopefully close to 10% by the end and of this year. Loren: [47:27] Uh, but what that also means, Scott, that when we hit that 16% across the US in 20, 28 or thereabout, it means that we might only be at, you know, 8% in Louisiana or something. So again, you know, and by that point, California might be, you know, 30, 35%. So we're still going to have sort of this, this, you know, in the u s and around the world is adoption is, is very, very market specific. And even cities specific, if you will, nursing, well, the, uh, California grid be able to handle that many evs. Yeah, great question. So that's, that's one of the things that a lot of people sort of talk about. One, you know, is the, is the during grid, right? The, with, with, uh, being used coal and natural gas, etc. And, and, and, and be, can grid actually handling. So, you know, a couple of things are happening in, in parallel, right? Loren: [48:24] And so the, in fact, the move to renewable energy solar and wind is actually happening at a faster rate than electric vehicle adoption in the u s so in other words, w w the grid is a getting cleaner faster than we're buying electric vehicles. And B, uh, the concept of sort of battery storage and micro grids is, is also sort of taken off. So as the cost of batteries declined for, for electric vehicles, they're also declining for that sort of what, what's called Keke storage demand. Right. And so you have this situation where, uh, you know, take, take a market where it's, you know, it's 100 degrees in the middle of the summer and everybody comes home at six, seven o'clock at night, fires up their air conditioner and stuff. And that's where we, we have, uh, you know, Brian House blackouts, et Cetera. Um, uh, and so the concept of peaker plants, so, uh, in particularly natural gas has been used, used for that in recent years. Loren: [49:31] So basically they fire those up to meet that specific, uh, demand rallies with sort of a battery storage. We can store all that excess, uh, solar and wind energy that's being created sort of during the day and throughout the day and those batteries and in literally a Nanosecond, those that battery storage can be tapped into sort of hit that sort of peak demand. So the reality is that at how we charge and when we charge is, is actually going to be monitored by abilities and you will like, I don't know Scott when you charge, but I charged my, my cars like at two o'clock in the morning, I get a lower rate. Nobody's, you know, nobody else's sort of using electricity at the time. And so it, it doesn't have that impact. Right? And so the utilities and software and AI will sort of manage when and how we charged the sort of make sure that not everybody's charging at the same time. And again, we'll have this sort of, uh, battery, uh, backups that are to manage that sort of peaks and stuff. So I'm not concerned at all about, um, the grid handling it. Technology will sort of solve that and sort of the growth of, of, of renewals. And battery storage. We'll, we'll take care of it. Scot: [50:52] Cool. Uh, I could go another hour, but I know we're kind of bumping up against time here and want to be, uh, you know, really appreciate you. You've given us a, an hour of your time. Um, any other last thoughts on, so I would love to talk about connected car and some of the ownership models and avs. Um, I kind of view, you know, Evie is kind of a, an underlying kind of platform for the, some of those things. It's just kind of kind of happen along with those. Um, or, or if you'd like to spend our last couple minutes talking about what's going on in other countries around evs. I'm, I'm open to either topic, whatever's interesting to you. Loren: [51:25] Yeah. I mean, I could, I could go another nother three hours, but, uh, yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll put quick, quickly on, on both of them. So, you know, globally, uh, you know, China is, uh, has the Chinese government is basically recognized electric vehicles as a business opportunity. So you look at, uh, many, many countries, France, UK, uh, uh, Netherlands, Norway, et Cetera. And they're looking at electric vehicles from kind of the, we need to reduce, uh, carbon emissions and climate change and air pollution and et cetera. And so we need to transition. China's sees that as well, but they also see this as perhaps the single biggest business opportunity potentially in the history of China. In other words, they see that, uh, that they can sort of dominate, like they've done in consumer electronics. And so most of the battery packs, uh, battery factories in the future are going to probably be the majority of them in China. Loren: [52:33] They see it as a massive opportunity. And so they're doing a lot of things to sort of take the lead there. And so we could, we could spend an hour on tariffs and all this sort of the politics of this, but, but China, uh, you know, many of our cars that, that you and I will purchase in, you know, seven to 10 years are probably going to be made in China. So that's sort of that, that sort of first part of it. Um, uh, but then sort of back on kind of the, uh, you know, connected and autonomous vehicles. I mean, obviously, uh, autonomous vehicles are primarily going to be powered by electric cars just because if you have, you have these sort of abs sort of, you know, running around the Robo taxis and stuff without a driver and you look at the maintenance costs and everything like that, it's sort of a natural natural with electric vehicles. So those two, uh, things I've obviously go go hand in hand. And so, um, yeah, the, you know, again, the, the uh, the, the intersection there is, is, is sort of a, uh, ideal. And, um, while we, you know, today we're seeing sort of a mix of those in the, in the next couple of years, we're going to see most all of the ads being made on, uh, electric platforms. Scot: [53:51] Awesome. Uh, and then, uh, last question, uh, you know, if folks want to find you online, where are the best places Loren: [54:00] so they can go check out a, the website and blog Evie, adoption.com just like it sounds. And follow me on Twitter at EVAdoptiontweet. Ah, those are probably the two best ways and they can a sign up for my email newsletter or a on the website as well. Would love to have them opt in. Scot: [54:19] Awesome. Well we really appreciate you taking time to be on the podcast. I jotted down 50 things I learned and hopefully everyone else learned a ton as well and uh, we'll have to get you back on. I know you're always doing research and things like that, so I'd love to get you back on the next time you update your models and get an update from you. Loren: [54:36] Great. Thanks. I really appreciate it. This was a lot of fun.

Tiki: Modern Tropical CocktailsBy Shannon Mustipher Intro: Welcome to the Cookery By The Book Podcast with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City, sitting at her dining room table talking to cookbook authors.Shannon: My name is Shannon Mustipher, and I am the author of Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails. When I'm not working on writing and developing cocktails, I'm the spiritual advisor, a.k.a. beverage director of Glady's Caribbean, which is a rum-focused bar in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. I also work as a consultant and educator on the spirit of topics and cocktails.Suzy Chase: This is the first cocktail recipe book written by a working, African American bartender and released by a major publisher in more than 100 years. When you decided to write this book, were you aware of that statistic?Shannon: Yeah, I was. Just a little background. I'm a big history buff, always have been, and I want to say maybe a decade ago, I became aware of a book called The Ideal Bartender by Tom Bullock, who published in 1919 and worked at the Pendennis Club in Louisville, Kentucky. He was the first and the last to publish this book, African American bartender to publish. There are a lot of bar books floating around, but that one, I just didn't ... I wasn't hearing of it, and my peers weren't reading it, and I just thought it was fascinating that it was like this little nugget of history. When I decided to write my book, it was five years ago, and I didn't know when it was going to be published based on the negotiations I was going through with my publisher, Rizzoli. For it to come out in 2019, a 100 years after Mr. Bullock's publication, just feels like there's something about it that was meant to be.Suzy Chase: I'm probably the only person in the world, but I never knew that Tiki was a huge category of cocktails. For some reason, I thought Tiki was like a vibe or a mindset. Talk a little bit about that. Shannon: It's all those. In regards to Tiki being a cocktail category, it's helpful to keep in mind that when Tiki came about in the late '30s, I mean the first Tiki bar was a spin-off of hinky dinks and that became Don the Beachcomber. Don the Beachcomber, his name was Ernest Gantt, was kind of a world traveler, rum aficionado. Came up with this idea of creating an escapist experience in his restaurant because this is at the end of the Great Depression, and people were looking for some relief from the day to day. The type of cocktails he came up with differed from every other in that you could blend a couple different spirits in one cocktail. That had never been done before. You could also blend a few different juices as opposed to most recipes that would have one or two at the most and various sweeteners and things of that nature. Those features of cocktail you're not seeing other styles of cocktail, and that's ... The recipes are like the core of what makes it different. Then there's other elements like the attention to vessels and presentation and things like fire and orchids and all this craziness that just not ... you're not seeing it in other styles of cocktail. From I would say a structural standpoint where the recipe concerned, there are some clear differentiations. Then of course in the presentation, you don't see that outside of Tiki. Suzy Chase: Last week Grub Street mentioned you saying you're a central figure in the Tiki renaissance in New York City. It's all about the appearances the element of surprise. Do you think this is a misunderstood tradition or a forgotten tradition or both? Shannon: I don't it's as misunderstood as it was when I got my start five years ago. I had to qualify in that on the west coast where Tiki originated, it never fully disappeared. Right? There was a moment where there was only a few bars that still had the authentic recipes. The reason for that was there was secrecy around those recipes, and they were coded because the restaurants and bars that served Tiki in the '40s were very popular, and the information regarding those products was considered propietary. It be like, think of the recipe or formula for Coca-Cola. That's proprietary. Right? When the people that created those recipes and worked in those restaurants retired, they didn't necessarily share the knowledge. This sort of knowledge begins to die off, and then add to that in the late '60s and '70s, American mixology in general was on the wane. It was associated with a generation that was a little bit older. Younger kids, the hippies so to speak, weren't interested in drinking cocktails like their parents did. They preferred recreational experiences. You know what I mean? Yeah, from the '70s through the '90s, there was no information really. You had Tiki tea in California and Los Angeles and Tonga Hut remained open, and there are other places. Outside of a handful of bars, people didn't really know the recipes anymore. The few that did, they weren't talking about it or giving out those recipes because that was just a culture, to keep them under lock and key. When Jeff Beachbum Berry began writing his book about 15, 20-odd years ago, he did the most extensive research into Tiki, went to all those bars, and looked for the rum bottles and scoured any document he could find and was able to reverse engineer and figure out what these drinks actually were. As his books became more popular, and people were more aware of what he was doing, then Tiki started to make a comeback. It wasn't reduced to oh, it's a sweet, tropical drink with an umbrella in it. People began to see the workings and the mechanics of this style of cocktail and understand and appreciate the level of craft that goes into taking eight or 10 ingredients and balancing it in a cocktail. Now, the cat's out of the bag. Right? We have the Jeff Beachbum Berry books. We have Smuggler's Cove, which does an excellent job of talking about not only the history of Tiki and showing us those recipes as well as Martin Cate's newer recipes. The information is out there now. Maybe there are people that still misunderstand it, but it just doesn't have to be that way anymore. Whereas 20 years ago, there just was scant means to educate yourself about it. Suzy Chase: Give us the short history of rum. Shannon: Yeah, sure. Rum is a byproduct of the sugar industry. When European powers began to colonize the Americas, the top priority was to find a cash crop or some other resource that would provide a large stream of revenue, big stream of revenue. Initially the thought was gold, and that didn't really work out. There was experimentation with various things, rice and cotton. Sugar was the one, especially in the Caribbean, that had the highest yield. Just some context, the kind of revenue that was coming out of just Barbados or Jamaica alone by the late 19th century, was on par with oil boom or the gold rush and what took place in Silicon Valley more recently. There had never been a moment in the history of the world where there was such a big shift in the economy. It's important to remember that rum is not just a style or a category of spirit that came about because that's what someone wanted to make. They had this idea in mind of a flavor profile and certainly wanted to craft. It's a byproduct and another way to add revenue to a sugar plantation, their operation. For who are less familiar, in order to produce rum you need molasses or you could use fresh cane juice, but rum as we know it in the Caribbean came about when planters were looking for a way to utilize molasses which was regarded as a waste product. They discovered that you could ferment it and then distill it. This began in earnest around 1705. Prior to that, in the earlier part of the 17th century, there was a little bit of rum production on the islands, but it was basically moonshine. It wasn't packaged. It wasn't bottled. People didn't regard it as a spirit category in the way that we look at spirits today. It was just, this is what we have to drink in terms of alcohol because we can't make beer here. It's too expensive to bring over wine. In fact, the wine doesn't really travel well in the heat. This all began to change, and rum started moving towards how we think of it in a modern sense in 1650 when Jamaica was taken by the British. The British adopted rum as the liquid that they will give out in their daily ration, which became a form of payment in addition to a supplement to the really poor diet that the sailors had on board. By 1750, the Navy had grown to such an extent that they could no longer source the rums themselves from the islands, but they hired an outside firm called [ED & Man 00:11:08]. This firm would source the liquid from various islands and then take them over to London. They created a proprietary blend, and they would age it there. Meanwhile, for those of you who don't know, brands the way we think of them today, they didn't exist back then. A distiller didn't have a face or a label. They didn't make liquid and put it in a bottle and sell it. They'd make liquid and sell it to brokers, and the brokers would create the brands and sell the products. At this time, there was a robust business around that in the scotch and port and sherry categories in London. These merchants caught on to the rum, and they realized that it was par on with single malt scotch, especially the rums from Jamaica which are highly prized, because they had a really special aroma and heavy body due to their production processes. By 1820s, this is when you start to see rum appear as a commercial product in Europe. To this day in the Netherlands and in Germany, the preference for rum [inaudible 00:12:23] Jamaica styles that haven't differed too much from that time. By 1860s, then you start to see rum become a big global business, do brands like Bacardi. Where we are today is we are getting back to looking at the earliest styles of productions of rum. We want what we consider to be more authentic expressions that haven't had sugar added and are made on stills or in facilities that have been operation for 200 or 300 years. It's a really great moment for the category, especially where Tiki is concerned, we can make the recipes the way they were intended. There was a moment in the '70s through the early '90s where the rums that were in the original recipes were not available in the U.S. You could attempt to make the drinks, but you were not really going to really hit it. Now, we can make those drinks again. Suzy Chase: In opinion, what's a good rum to start off with if you're not familiar with rum? Shannon: Well, here's the thing. Rum is a huge category. You can make it in over 90 countries. I compare it to wine in that ... Let's say you look at gin and whiskey. Sure, there are some variations and different brands and styles, but it's not such a huge spectrum of rum. You can get something that's like really light and dry and clean, or you can get really fruity or earthy and funky or on the sweeter side depending on how it's produced. To answer that question, I'd say you have start at least five, because if you are trying to pick out a starter, there's so many places to start. If you take one bottle or one style, you're not ... It doesn't really capture what rum is about. With that in mind, I would suggest picking up a spectrum of rums. Right? On one hand, you want to start with say a lighter rum. For that, I would suggest Rhum Barbancourt [bonk 00:14:33] from Haiti. It's made from fresh pressed juice. Has a little bit of a delicate gassiness and fuller element to it. You can sip it neat. You can put it in cocktails. It's really easy to work with and to enjoy. From there, I would suggest picking up a bottle of an un-aged overproof English style rum, and that would most likely be Jamaican rum. That could be Rum Fire or Wray & Nephew. If you're lucky enough to go to Grenada, I really love the River Antoine. What that bottle is going to do for you is you're not necessarily going to drink it by itself. If you want to have more intensity, then you'll need a rum like that. In terms of something that's just more like everyday drinking rum, cocktail or otherwise, I would suggest picking up a Barbadian rum or a Bajan style rum, because those strike a nice balance between being fuller bodied and rich, but also really clean and smooth and elegant and super easy. The drinking culture in the islands differ from the island to island. That's reflected in the styles. In Barbados, they have this pastime called liming, which means that you gather with your friends at a little shack called a rum shop, and you sip rum all day. Maybe you use mixers, but for them it's not ... rum isn't cocktailing. Rum is just spending time with friends. Right? Then from there I would suggest you would want pick up a rhum agricole from Martinique or one of the former French territories. Those are really cool. They're made from fresh cane juice like the Barbancourt I mentioned, but their standards of production, they have a DLC around it. They're very particular about what you're going taste in the glass because they want to highlight and emphasize the [tarare 00:16:27] of their respective geographic areas. There's also a lot of influence from Armagnac and Cognac production there. With the agricoles, you get to see a really high level of production and crafted. You don't typically associate with rums, but I think trying those will shift your perception around what you think rum is in a positive way. Lastly, some people prefer what they would call a smoother, rounder, richer type of spirit. I find that people that prefer whiskey have a tendency to enjoy Spanish-style rums which undergo more time in the barrel because the Spanish approach is more influence by wine and sherry where the base liquid is not what's emphasized, but what's emphasized is a barrel regimen and the house style and the skill of the blender. That's what they want you to taste in the end. Suzy Chase: Yeah. I read in the book that for example, Jamaican rums have kind of grassy notes, and that's something you wouldn't even think about with rum. Shannon: That's why I love it. Prior to opening Gladys and working in that program five years ago, I was into a pre-prohibition era cocktails and gin and whiskey and all that stuff. I still enjoy it on occasion, but if God came to me and told me that from here on out I was confined to only drinking one spirit category, I'd happily choose rum because there's one for everybody and for every mood or hour or what have you. If I want something that is really dry and light and crisp, I can find it in the rum category. If I want something that's big and bold and chewy or even smokey, I can find that in rum as well. If I just had gin for instance, the spectrum of options is limited. Suzy Chase: In Tiki, chapter one kicks off with foundational cocktails. What are those? Shannon: Where rum is concerned, there's what we call the holy trinity, which is rum, sugar, and lime. They just work really well together in the earliest rum drinks. The Navy grog, that's rum, sugar, and lime. The Caipirinha, it's made with Cachaça so it's not technically rum, but the Cachaça is sugar and lime. The same is true for the [Dakaiti 00:19:00], which rum, sugar, and lime. In those foundational drinks, we walk through those cocktails so that you can taste the different styles of rum and get a sense for how those rums behave. The underlying elements are more or less the same. Also, those drink a base template for others cocktails that follow, and so the bulk of Tiki drinks have those three elements and them build from there. Suzy Chase: There's a technique in the book called fat washing spirits. What does that mean? Shannon: It's an infusion. It was pioneered by Don Lee who is a partner in Existing Conditions currently and got his start at PDT. With fat washing, you take an oil. It could be derived from an animal. Don Lee's was smoked bacon fat. I do a lot of vegan fat washes, so I love coconut oil. Essentially you I guess steep or infuse the liquid with the oil for a 12-hour period at room temperature, and then you freeze it so that the solids separate. They come to the top. You skim it off. You strain it. What happens is that the liquid is now, it has those fat molecules in it. It takes on a different texture and a creamier mouth feel. Milk punches utilizes the same principle. They're very labor intensive. It requires multiple steps and a number of ingredients and a couple days to achieve that result. Yeah, milks punches which were popular in the 18th century, have made a little bit of a comeback in the modern bar, is where that idea is derived. Fat washing with oils is much faster and more consistent. Suzy Chase: You created a cocktail inspired by a reggae song. Tell us about that. Shannon: It's one of my favorite cocktails actually. It's called the Kingston Soundsystem. I was approached by Punch Magazine to pick a reggae song and make a cocktail. I really love Skylarking by Horace Man. It's a really chill, laid back, kind of lazy day kind of song. I was like, okay. There's a bird reference here. I love the Jungle Bird. I'm going come up with an unusual twist on it. The idea was kind of like a white angelonia. I wanted to make a white Jungle Bird. For those who are not familiar with the cocktail, they Jungle Bird has aged Jamaican rum. It has Campari, lime, and pineapple. I looked at each of those elements and went on the other end of the spectrum. Rather than aged Jamaica rum, I used an un-age higher proof Jamaica rum. It's call Rum Fire. Instead of Campari, I used a gentian liqueur called Suze. I love that stuff. A consumer right now, the American public is not too hip to it, but I think it's wonderful. I use it kind of in a way, a lot of people have used St. Germain in the past, which is elderflower liqueur, but way too sweet for my tastes. I want something dryer. That's stands in for the Campari. Rather than pineapple, I wanted to again reference Jamaica so I use Soursop. Soursop is a large fruit about the size of a big cantaloupe, and it has little prickles on it. Kind of think of it as a prickly pear. It has a really wonderful, delicate, floral aroma in the nose. It's delightful for those who have not tried it. Then again, not very sweet. Kind of tastes cross between a pear and an apple, but it has a really clean, dry finish on it. There's really nothing else like it. Then of course, there's a lime. The result is a drink that follows the Jungle Bird template, but takes it in a dryer, more herbaceous direction. Suzy Chase: Do you think we can find these ingredients in our local grocery store or liquor store/Whole Foods? Shannon: It depends on where you live. Soursop, you'll find it in Caribbean stores or Asian stores. If you can't find the juice, you can usually find it as a frozen concentrate. That would be Goya or [lafame 00:23:43]. Then where Suze is concerned, yeah, if you live in an area where you can get to a decent liquor store that has Craft products, you'll find it. Suzy Chase: As a bartender, what's the most annoying request you get the most?Shannon: I don't. I like bar-Suzy Chase: Nothing? Shannon: You know how some people are like, "Oh my God, you're ordering a Mojito now. It's busy." For me, I'm there to serve the guests and I'm delighted to do it. You're there to get what you want, and that's why I'm there, to give you what you want. Case in point. I was doing a pop-up, and it was Tiki drinks. Someone wanted a Martini. I was so excited because she was getting what she wanted. I made a her what I hoped was a really good Martini. I really enjoyed it and so did she. Suzy Chase: They're more than 60 beautiful color photographs in this book. You call Tiki a theater for the senses, and you get such a good feel for that with Noah Fecks' photos. Tell us about your friendship with him. Shannon: It's a beautiful one. We met through a mutual friend, Nicole Taylor. She's the author of the Up South cookbook. Suzy Chase: She's amazing. Shannon: Oh, God. I want to be her when I grow up. Suzy Chase: Me too. Shannon: I met her a decade ago. She's just so dynamic and has forged her own path. She's totally Nicole and just ... I don't know. I can't go on enough about her. I had a birthday party and she invited him to tag along. She predicted that we would quote unquote ride off into sunset together. We hit it off that night, and we're chatting. He approached me shortly thereafter about doing some test shoots at Gladys because he shoots a lot of food. He wanted to added some liquor and cocktail content to his book. The shoots went really well. I worked in the photo industry for the first five years of living in New York as a style and prop assistant. I knew procedures of how a shoot would go. It was really smooth and the images were beautiful. Shortly after that, he suggested that we do this book with Rizzoli. Suzy Chase: I don't know how long this book took you, but there is a full color photo with every cocktail in this book. I can't even imagine the work that went into that. Shannon: Well, I mean, had I know how much work was going to go into it, I don't know if I would have agreed to do it. Suzy Chase: I mean, just looking at it I just think, wow, that's a lot of work, but it's gorgeous. Shannon: I mean, to be fair, I believe that that work is not just what I did in the two years that I was writing it and producing a book, but in the years prior that I spent studying visual art and practicing as an artist, I went to [Ritzies 00:26:52], studied painting and art history. I started drawing when I was five. I was always making things. The book was really exciting in that not was I able to share my recipes and more importantly, my approach to flavors and ingredients, but also could indulge that part of me that wanted to create images. That was the intention behind the photography in the book. Now, you look at a lot of cocktail photography and it follows a formula. It's like, okay, here's a drink on a bar or against some kind of backdrop or what have you, and that's pretty much it. Because we're working in Tiki, we wanted to go beyond and create vignettes that would evoke a story. Suzy Chase: Well, you did it. It feels like it's a culmination of your fashion background and your mixology background. This is all of that in one book. Shannon: Oh, yeah. When I closed my studio shortly before I moved in New York 12 years ago, I had a lot of friends around me who were dismayed because, "You're so good. Why are you doing this?" I had various reasons. I didn't think that what I refer to as the art industry was for me. One of my biggest reservations around it was the accessibility of that work and the class issues around it. Right? Where do most people go to see art? They go to galleries. They go to museums. Museums are wonderful institutions, but there are a lot of people that can't afford to go to a museum, or culturally it's just not an inviting place for certain individuals. When you go deeper than that, when it's time to buy artwork, that's again confined to a class of people. Taken further, when a collector acquires a work, doesn't necessarily get seen. I think the statistic is that 70 to 80% of all the artwork is in storage. This idea of making this thing for a select few is probably just going to sit in a dark room. That's not where I wanted to put my energy, and that's not how I want to share what I had to say in the world. With that being said, being able to make a cocktail book where my creativity could be there and it was very accessible to people. I mean, a cocktail is like 10 or 15 bucks. Most people can do that every once in a while, was really gratifying. Suzy Chase: Now to my segment called my last meal. What would you have for you last supper, and what cocktail would you have with it? Shannon: I'm a pretty simple person. I would have ostrich steak. Suzy Chase: That's simple? I thought you were going to be, "I'll just have a taco." You say ostrich steak. That's so interesting. Shannon: It's so delicious. You ever had it? Suzy Chase: No. Shannon: It's going to change your life. Okay. Suzy Chase: Where do you get that? Shannon: Okay, so I had it in South Africa. I think that if you live in Africa or certain parts of the world, I mean, I think you can get ostrich here. The whole point is in South Africa, it's not a big deal. That's the meat that they have. Right? Like we have cows, they have ostrich. It's like a steak, but the texture ... I don't know. I can't even tell you why it was so good. I'd do that and pair it with a nice glass of wine. Suzy Chase: Not rum? Shannon: No. Suzy Chase: Wow. What kind of wine? You're just throwing me off today. Shannon: What kind of wine? Probably a Zen or ... No, that's too sweet. I don't know. Something kind of dusty, maybe [Linwood 00:31:00]. I used to work in wine. I still enjoy it. Yeah, I mean, rum's great, but I just don't if it would go that good with the steak. Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web, social media and in Brooklyn? Shannon: My website, Shannon dot ... shannonmustipher.com. It's not a dot. That's my email. On Instagram, same thing. Just Shannon Mustipher. I don't have an alias. I'm like, no ... I want you to find me. It's not like, what's her handle? Just my first, I say. Put it into Google. You'll find me. Suzy Chase: It's M-U-S-T-I-P-H-E-R for everyone out there. I also want to remind everyone that we're going to be doing a free live Tiki talk and book signing at Lizzyoung Bookseller in Cobble Hill in Brooklyn on Thursday, May 30th. Look for more information on my Instagram and Shannon's, and we we hope to see you there. Thank you so much, Shannon, for coming on Cookery By the Book Podcast. Shannon: Suzy, it was a pleasure. Thank you for taking the time, and I look forward to seeing you next Thursday. Outro: Follow Suzy Chase on Instagram at Cookery By the Book, and subscribe at cookerybythebook.com or in Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening to Cookery By the Book Podcast, the only podcast devoted to cookbooks since 2015.

This episode is the third installment of the three-part series on “Homelands and histories.” Liz Harris is the co-founder of the Glass City Goat Gals and Sean Nestor is the co-chair of the Lucas County Green Party. They discussed food access and land use in Northwest Ohio, sharing how local organizations are working to address food-related issues in our communities. Transcript:   Speaker 1:                               From Bowling Green State University, and the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, this is BG Ideas. Jolie Sheffer:                          Welcome to the BG Ideas podcast, a collaboration between the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Jolie Sheffer, an associate professor of English and American culture studies and the director of ICS. This is the third and final episode of a three-part series on Homelands and Histories in which we talk to people making big impacts on local communities through their work on land use and cultural heritage. Jolie Sheffer:                          The word homeland can evoke comforting feelings of patriotism or cultural identity for some, but it can also be used to attempt to justify expulsion or even genocide. Similarly, the word histories is meant to call attention to the many points of conflict, debate, erasure, violence, and silencing that accompany efforts to describe and interpret the past. Today, we are joined by Liz Harris, co-founder of the Glass City Goat Gals, and Sean Nestor, co-chair of the Lucas County Green Party. Jolie Sheffer:                          The Glass City Goat Gals is an agribusiness located in a densely urban area of Toledo. The Goat Gals have established a goat farm and community garden, and their mission is to provide affordable produce and education regarding wellness, healthy eating habits, and environmental sustainability. Jolie Sheffer:                          The Lucas County Green Party is lobbying for the city of Toledo and surrounding area to enact policies that support local urban agriculture. And Sean has personally advocated on behalf of community gardeners facing resistance from local government. Jolie Sheffer:                          Both of these activists are here to discuss how food access and land use figure into the history of our own homeland of Northwest Ohio. I'm very pleased to welcome Sean and Liz to BGSU. Thank you for being here. Liz Harris:                                Thank you for having us. Sean Nestor:                          Yeah, thanks. Jolie Sheffer:                          One of the things that we've been interested in is how different modes and methods of activism can address pressing social issues from a variety of angles. Can you introduce yourselves, tell us a little bit about how you got involved in urban food activism in Northwest Ohio, and how your current projects are supporting that work? Liz Harris:                                Okay. I got involved, I actually worked at Toledo Grows. But prior to Toledo Grows, working there, I took the urban agriculture courses at Owens Community College. And really just saw a need in my community to create a healthier climate in my community. So took some courses, graduated, worked with Toledo Grows, and really got to get to know the community, got them out gardening. Just wanted to take a step further. Liz Harris:                                And so right around where I live, there was a bunch of abandoned homes. We tore those homes down, started very small, few raised beds. I mean the response for the community, you would see families come up with little a grocery bag, picking up some vegetables for dinner. And so we expanded that. I brought the goats in as a source of income to sustain the farm. And so we started there. And it grew. And it's so far so good. Liz Harris:                                And now this is the fourth year of providing, we have a 4-H there for early childhood, and we also provide jobs for young adults during the summer. We have a summer teen employment program where they can learn soft job skills, get a little jingle in their pocket, but also contribute to their community, which goes along way. Sean Nestor:                          My involvement in kind of stems back to 2013. I helped to start a garden in the old West end of Toledo called the Collingwood Garden. And also that same year I ran for city council unsuccessfully. But one of the things that I did was part of my platform was trying to create some new urban agriculture laws. And even some of my friends were kind of like, oh, we don't really need those. There's nothing really specifically to address it, but there's also nothing specifically stopping it. So why fix something that's not broken? Sean Nestor:                          But a few years later, a guy by the name of Thomas Jackson started some very creative urban agriculture work in his neighborhood after acquiring vacant lots near his house. And he began attempting to remediate the soil by using wood chips instead of conventional compost, trying to cut down on the possibility of odor and offensive things. Sean Nestor:                          But some neighbors still complained. And it made its way up to a little bit on the city council. And then eventually into the neighborhoods department, and he was fined $30,000 for having wood chips on his lot. And the actual citation was for having waste or refuse that he was not removing. So they were classifying these wood chips as garbage essentially, and telling him he had to remove the garbage from his property. Sean Nestor:                          And they didn't quite get that he was trying to remediate the soil with the something that is actually functionally urban agriculture. There was head scratching it. Why would anyone put these big piles of wood chips on their property? Well anyways, as he was facing that, he was pointed to me by somebody in the urban agriculture community. And I met with him and talked, and I ended up becoming an advocate for him. Sean Nestor:                          And as the court case went on through all of its twists and turns, I would help publicize what was happening, and made sure that his side of the story got out at least a little bit. And around that time, a lot of people in the urban ag community who were rallying to support Thomas were talking about how maybe it is time to be proactive. And hey Sean, you were kind of talking about that before too anyway. Sean Nestor:                          So an ad hoc group of about a dozen people in the urban ag community from different gardens and entities kind of we work together to draft some urban ag policy, which is now evolving into something called the Urban Agriculture Alliance. So it's growing beyond those dozen folks, and it's becoming pretty much anybody involved with urban ag, or community gardening in the Toledo area. Sean Nestor:                          Basically our goal is to try to make sure that something like what happened to Thomas doesn't happen again. That we are able to provide some education to our policymakers as well as pushback, and also some guidance and advice on policies that they can enact. That's kind of how I got involved with all this. I've been the facilitator for the Urban Agriculture Alliance, helping it spin off and become its own thing so I can step back a little bit. But that's kind of my story. Jolie Sheffer:                          So both of you have been involved in projects that start one way, and then grow and develop in new directions. So could you talk about what you think are some of the strategies for being involved in a movement, or beginning a business that develops and sort of survives past that first year, first flush stage. Liz Harris:                                Right. Sean gave a good word for this. I'm going to let him introduce that new word or concept, but basically being able to adjust to the adversities. Having a clear cut vision is one thing I always suggest, even for the smallest garden. But when you want to do something to have an impact on the community, a clear cut vision or mission statement is very necessary. And then also taking account the cause and the effect. Liz Harris:                                But I want to use your word Sean. You have to have a rhizomatic approach to this. You explain what rhizomatic is. Because you have to have a rhizomatic approach because sometimes the problem is materials. Sometimes the problem is a volunteer, and just a labor support. Sometimes, I mean, you just need water. And so you have to, I said this earlier, farming is something where you're constantly problem solving. And so that's one thing as urban farmers we have to do is problem solve on a day to day basis, and adjust to what's needed and what's not needed, and make sure we were effective. Sean Nestor:                          All right. So yeah, I come kind of from an organizing background. I organize in a lot of capacities, and in different ways. And one of the things, philosophically when you talk with other organizers, people always go back and forth. And the conventional model is, is this more of a vertical organization where there's some strong leadership that kind of sets the tone and everybody just follows that. Is it very horizontal where everyone's more or less treated equally? And there are pros and cons to both of those approaches. Sean Nestor:                          There's a term I heard somebody use once that I respect a lot, and it is rhizomatic. And it's based on the idea of a rhizome- Liz Harris:                                Love it. Love it. Sean Nestor:                          ... from a plant that isn't necessarily going to grow up or sideways. It's going to grow based on where it needs to go in order to thrive. Because plants are adaptive. They're some of the most adaptive things on the planet. And so to internalize that, I think what it really means, I think it's a good goal because it means your horizontal where you need to be, your vertical where you need to be. Sean Nestor:                          But how do you determine that? Well, you do that by looking at the situation you're in, and what makes the most sense at the time. And constantly reevaluating that. Which takes some experience. It takes some critical thinking skills. Liz Harris:                                And some patience. Sean Nestor:                          Yeah. And it takes communication. It takes a lot. But when you can do it, it's beautiful. And I think that most of the movements that have really lasted, have done so because they were elastic enough, they were responsive enough, they were adept enough, they were rhizomatic. Sean Nestor:                          And what we're trying to do with the Urban Agriculture Alliance is very much like that. We started small intentionally because we didn't want to take on too early this big organizing of everybody in the world, trying to get meetings scheduled with dozens of people's competing availabilities. And also because at first there was a lot of interest in maybe bringing in some local politicians. In the first few meetings, there were a couple people who said, I'm good friends with so-and-so on city council. Maybe we should invite them to a meeting. Sean Nestor:                          And I had to kind of push back and say, "I think that if we do that, it's going to end up becoming just automatically kind of a vertical thing because there's a deference to authority that comes with a politician." In my experience, politicians are glad to fulfill that role, but they're not always capable of following through with what they need. Sean Nestor:                          Because at the end of the day, they're the people who cast the votes. They're not really the people who write the laws. It's a common misconception. They usually have legal teams who work for the city to do that, or they have other resources. So I had to kind of implore people, "Hey, let's wait before we bring the city council people in. Because if we trust our own experience in these early formative stages, and we develop what we want, we can hand that over to a policymaker on a silver platter, and say, 'Go ahead and execute this for us. But we wrote the substance. You just take it to that last section on the finish line.'" Sean Nestor:                          And that works out a lot better in most situations with things like this, especially where there's possible contention between the city government that the council kind of inherently has to work with, and people in the city who ultimately I think everybody is supposed to be accountable to. So we had that kind of rhizomatic experience of do we imitate this conventional model because it sounds easy, and it sounds kind of right, or do we kind of follow a different approach that really evaluates is this appropriate at the time? And maybe let's do that later. But for right now, let's take this other path. Liz Harris:                                To piggyback on that, sometimes we adapt. Like for example, we follow a lot of Cleveland's ordinances. And I've always said every city has its unique culture and climate that we have to adjust to. So that's why it's important that we have that real time data from the actual growers in the community to adjust. We're not Cleveland. And so that's why it's very important that we modify those laws and those policies to what's needed in Toledo. Sean Nestor:                          Right. Like for people who don't know, Cleveland got some national recognition for passing some laws to essentially promote urban agriculture. And early on, the kind of ad hoc group of growers that I worked with to develop policy examined those as sort of a starting point because we knew it was good. Sean Nestor:                          But we also looked at it through the lens of does this make sense for Toledo? And there's a lot of things that are really cool, like they have three different levels of green space that are base zoning. We're not sure if we even need one. We had these kinds of debates because it just didn't make sense to us, or something that was a felt need at the time. We thought we'll keep that in the back of our minds so if later urban ag grows and develops, and it has these new challenges, well we can go back and revisit it. But for right now it's, we're just not there. Liz Harris:                                Yeah. I got my shepherd's license from Cleveland. I was in Cleveland when I was just getting education, and just gathering resource. I was up there all the time and Chateau Hough is up there, and they have a sheep grazing next to a hotel. And I have my shepherd's license, but I'm still waiting to use it. So we'll see. Jolie Sheffer:                          So what do you say to young people who are passionate about issues, whether it's the environment, or food access, or something else entirely, but they feel like they don't know where to begin. What would your advice be for how to get involved, and how to support their passion project, or their social issue that interests them? Liz Harris:                                I personally think any youth, and when we're talking youth, I'm thinking of elementary education, high school, start small. Start with your community, your school, your school lunches. I mean, you don't have to change the world in one day. So really start small, and see where you can make the difference. If that be a recycling program, or just accessing fruit, or making sure the school lunch is a little healthier, or accessing more healthier foods at lunch. Start small, but really find that need. When you ever you find the need, and you serve the need, you make a great difference in the community. Sean Nestor:                          Yeah. To reiterate some of that and to underscore it, my advice to people who are like, where do I start? I just say start anywhere. And never be afraid of feeling like, oh, this is too small. And years ago I went to the OSU for a conference called the National Student Power Convergence. It was a number of student activists from all over the country, and some international. This is in the summer of 2012. Sean Nestor:                          And one of the coolest things I saw there was, at the time, I don't know if people know this, but in Quebec, the student unions there are actually organized as labor unions would be here. Which means that when they threatened to raise tuition, the students go on strike. They stopped going to class. And they will strike until they're like, no. And because of that, and because they've had a culture of that for over half a century, their tuition rates for a public university are the equivalent of 1,500 US dollars a semester, whereas most are five or six thousand. Sean Nestor:                          And they got that because they're willing to strike. And I got to see a presentation from organizers from organizations called CLASSE. And it was one of the coolest presentations, and the most inspiring. Because at that time too, they were in the middle of what was ultimately a nine month strike. Because the federal government was intervening and insisting that these students in Quebec start paying more. Sean Nestor:                          And the students went on strike. They had rallies. They were teargassed. And these are students who are organized. And you have to remember at a college or university, students are constantly graduating and moving on. So there's a constant churn. And people asked, how do you keep organized for decades when every four or five years it's totally new set of people. Sean Nestor:                          And what the woman said was, "Well, when I got involved, it was student lunches." They were going to raise the cost of the lunches in the cafeteria by 15 cents. And they had a big organizing campaign against it. And there were people who are always saying like, "Oh, that's so petty. There's so many bigger problems in the world. You're stupid. Why are you wasting your time on such a small issue?" Sean Nestor:                          And the counterpoint they always made was, look, if we never learned to organize and win on small issues, how can you ever ask us to go out and organize on these bigger issues? You're not letting people walk before they learn to run. And so that cynical attitude of, oh, that's too small. That's too petty. You have to push back against that. And if you're guilty of doing it, you've got to stop having that mentality. Because people need the ability to try and experiment with organizing that may be small, but it does get results. And when you get those wins, it really builds up. And that's huge. Liz Harris:                                Yeah. And that's also a reason that Glass City Goat Girls has a youth focus. Because youth are the future. And like you said, that organizing is so good when you see a demonstration with the youth, and really because they're heard. A lot of demonstrations, at least you're seen and you're heard. So that was a good story, good example. Sean Nestor:                          Right. And the one other thing I would mention that people always, it's not just that people think, oh, that's too small. When they were organizing to get their tuition to be 1,500, to retain a $1,500 roughly a semester rate, students from other provinces were like, "Oh, you guys pay way less than us." They were jealous. Like, why are you so upset about paying a few hundred dollars more, you're still paying way less than us. And the response is, "We pay less because we organize. And you guys could do it too if you stop sitting there and lecturing us. But actually started doing what we do." And that really got me motivated to think, they're right. Liz Harris:                                It's got me thinking. It's got me thinking. Jolie Sheffer:                          Liz, you're a BGSU grad, and you've lived in Northwest Ohio for a long time. What have you seen change about how people in local governments approach some of these land management and food access issues in that time? Liz Harris:                                I've actually seen them more visible in the community, I would say. I've seen Mike DeWine on my street. I mean we've seen the mayor. I mean they're actually more visible. But I wish they would be a... what's the word I'm looking for? I wish they were accessible on that [inaudible 00:17:17] because you see them the one time, and it's a media thing. And I definitely like to see them more. And not for my sake because I really, like I said, I have a focus on youth engagement in the community, and I'd like them to know that their law makers and politicians care about their future as well. So that's one thing. I've seen them, but accessibility is not as easy as just seeing them for that one day. Sean Nestor:                          Right. I think that when it comes to changes in how land management has maybe focused over the last 10 years, following the 2008 economic crisis, there was kind of a big boom in community gardens. But a lot of them followed this kind of nonprofit model where they would go for these big grants and pay staff people. They weren't volunteer-driven, they weren't as grassroots. I mean they'll say they're grassroots, but they were still dependent on these grants. Sean Nestor:                          And after a few years when certain parts of the economy got better, and certain parts didn't, the money just wasn't there. Our state government was not really eager to hand out money to people doing community gardens for whatever reason. So a lot of the nonprofit type land management, and the nonprofit type of a community gardening kind of went to the wayside. A lot of CDC's, for example, have since folded. CDC's that were doing incredible work, just they aren't funded. And so it's gone. And so there's that shift away from that. And I think what has been filling in the gap somewhat, although not to the degree that the nonprofits could, has been more grassroots, just people in the community doing stuff. Sean Nestor:                          The other thing I've seen change is the attitude from local politicians, and some good and some bad. So Toledo has all of this vacant land because it's a Rust Belt city with a declining population. And I've talked to certain people on city council. And when I talk about one of the smartest things we can do is repurpose this land for urban agriculture, a lot of people agree with that. But I've heard also, well when we start getting more people, when the population starts reversing and growing, we want to be able to develop that land and sell houses. Sean Nestor:                          So there are people still really holding onto that because Toledo has shown some signs of recovery. And I think people are getting really eager, like, oh, we're going to be on this new path. And I'm skeptical about that. I think we need to assume a continuing decline in population, and more ways of leveraging that land for agriculture purposes rather than trying to speculate on it, and turn it into more houses. Jolie Sheffer:                          Well and that speaks to the need when starting a new initiative to really build that local community support. Right? That there may be a tendency to go big, get the outside money, like bigger is better. But in fact, businesses or organizations that have the greatest influence are those that really are connected to the community, and have a strong base of support. Jolie Sheffer:                          And you've talked, both of you, a lot about partnering with other organizations and other institutions, that kind of the collaborative approach to change. What do you see with, we've talked about some of the opportunities, what are some of the current obstacles to innovation in the region? Liz Harris:                                One, funding. Two, really the soil in the urban setting. The soil, the [inaudible 00:20:31] content is a very serious issue. And it has had effect on youth in the past. And I think it's something that, one, we need to educate the community, because a lot of people got the garden bug, but they don't realize that growing in that soil, you want to be aware of what you're growing in, and how you're growing in. And we want to make sure that we're teaching our community how to grow healthy, and also how to be aware of issues that they might come across growing. Sean Nestor:                          Right. I think one of the obstacles I've run into is the policymakers. Because many of them are not experts on urban agriculture. And while they might be really good with certain other aspects, or tangential matters, there's always this disconnect. Sean Nestor:                          So for example, one of the big problems we have in Toledo is trying to build high tunnels, which are just, they're fairly simple structures. And if you want to do one legally you have to pay a $600 engineering fee, and have an engineer stamp it, like a PE. And that is at least twice as much as it usually costs for the actual materials to construct it. Sean Nestor:                          And the differences, like out in Cleveland, which follows the same building code, well, they don't have the same problem, I guess our local building department interprets some state law that's a little ambiguous differently, and they err on the side of being conservative, and saying, well, just to be sure, we want you to actually have to get an engineer, which is really not affordable or really economical. Sean Nestor:                          So it's just kind of we need to find a way to get that to change, to get them to understand that it doesn't make sense to request an engineering drawing for something that doesn't even have a foundation. It's just something you stick in the ground and have a cover over. But those kinds of gaps where everything looks good until, well, the rubber hits the road. Sean Nestor:                          The biggest thing with the plan commission right now that we're going head to head with is the plan commission in Toledo is really against the idea of being able to put up a table on residential property and sell vegetables that you grow on vacant land there. They're like, "Oh, this is going to bring all this traffic into the neighborhood." They're treating it as a commercial enterprise, which to them may as well be a corner store. Sean Nestor:                          But urban agriculture is unique. It may technically kind of be a commercial enterprise, but it's very much not like a corner store, and you're not going to have those same problems. So helping them understand that this is unique. It does warrant special attention. It shouldn't be lumped in with all these other types of activity. That's what we're really trying to do is get them to adapt. And we're doing that collectively as a group to make sure they understand that the urban ag community, which has a lot of support in Toledo, really demands this change. And we demand that they work with us to find a solution. Liz Harris:                                Yeah, I think the policies should be incentives as of now. The communities are just land sitting there. And so also I hope the policies encourage people to go out and put up a market stand up in their community because it's necessary. It's needed in one. Just in my experience with the neighbors being able to see how I grow the food. They see when I use the compost, when I apply it, they see that. And now they understand, and they know where their food comes from, which creates more dialogue as to what is access to healthy food. Liz Harris:                                In my neighborhood, we have no restaurants. We have one supermarket, I think in a, no two, in about a five mile radius. But people don't have transportation. And all this stuff, it needs to be addressed as far as how is it affecting the health in our community, how's is it affecting, even with the vacant land, you don't want people to come in and start squatting on land. And these becoming trash receptacles for littering and things. So I think we should be very proactive in the policies to help the growers. Jolie Sheffer:                          Well, what you're talking about is how these systems are so deeply enmeshed in other systems, right? That food is not separable from health and community wellness, and socioeconomic concerns, and all of these things. And too often it seems like the policies that exist deal with these things in isolation. And so part of the projects you both are involved in is a more holistic approach to how you're transforming whole communities. And sustainable practices are one piece of that, but it ripples outward from there. Liz Harris:                                Because now I think about it, most of us growers are all in different parts of the Toledo. We are kind of equally spaced out. And I'm in the Cherry Street area. I know we have University Church, we have Toledo Grows, the Collingwood, what's I called, the Forest Garden? I love that garden. Yeah. Liz Harris:                                And so we're all over the place, but each one is so significant where they're orientated. I also work a lot with the Greenville Apartments, started a gardening club there. And believe it or not, I can't be more... these gardeners two years ago, because like I said, when you get people to garden, it has to be authentic relationships, are still gardening. We planted trees over there. We planted fruit trees over there. And to this day, families are still affected by that, those things that are going in there. Jolie Sheffer:                          We've been talking about a lot of the local context, but you've mentioned Cleveland and some other areas. What other organizations, or programs, or initiative are you aware of elsewhere in the country that you see as models of providing good ideas that could be adopted that you'd like to see worked on for our community? Liz Harris:                                Rid-All, they're doing a aquaponics demonstration here in May 19th, Wayman Palmer. Also Rid-All, Chateau Hough. I got to meet him. He was featured. He used an abandoned acre to create wine. He grows grapes, creates wines. His wife is from Toledo. Just a lot of models that I think all of them are not necessarily good, or can be applied to Toledo, but most of them can be applied. They can be micro enterprises that I think would really benefit our Toledo style. We're just the coolest city with great restaurants, great eateries. Downtown is vastly changing, and taken on a new identity. So I think everything is on time. Sean Nestor:                          Policy-wise I think Cleveland is a good basis for a model, although it shouldn't be copied exactly. Try to be rhizomatic, you have to understand certain things of it are going to work well in Toledo, and certain things might not. But as far as some of the practical land use, I think one of the cooler things would be like, I think it's in Portland, maybe Seattle, they've done food forests. Sean Nestor:                          And that's what the Collingwood Garden wants to eventually do, using permaculture practices, which largely become kind of self-sustaining. They want to develop fruit trees, and kind of plant in such a way that they strategically support each other. So even without human beings to go in and weed or do things, it kind of just sustains itself. And also provides food that anybody can just go, and take and eat. And it's healthy, and it's free. Sean Nestor:                          And that's something that we could do as a public use kind of thing. We're used to parks that have ornamental, or decorative plants. But why don't we have parks where you can go and just eat some of the food right off the tree. So that's something that a food forest can kind of do that I think it would be really cool to do in Toledo. Jolie Sheffer:                          Could you talk a bit about your educational background, and how the skills or approaches that you learned in school have shaped the way you approach problem solving today? Sean Nestor:                          Sure. So my background's in engineering. And I actually, for my day job, I work as a network engineer. And engineering really teaches you to look at systems of complex machinery that all work together to create an end product. And when things aren't working on a systemic level, it teaches you to kind of look, okay, this does this, which goes here and does this thing. And if you're getting this outcome, it's probably because this piece isn't working right. Sean Nestor:                          So it kind of teaches you to look at the whole picture, the holistic view, if you will. But also to be able to narrow down and say, hmm, this might be a bottleneck, or this might be a problem, and let's work on this guy here. And I've used that a lot to examine what current obstacles are. And I try to apply that in my kind of rhizomatic organizing approach. Because I think it's difficult to know where to adapt unless you have the analysis ability to say, well the system's supposed to work like this, and if we tweak it here, it'll work a little bit better for this specific outcome, or that outcome. And that's kind of just how I approach it. Liz Harris:                                My educational experience is a little different. I played basketball, All American Basketball all the way to the collegiate level. And so team effort is what I do. I look at everything from a team aspect. And so when you take that into the community, you learn how to rally the troops in the community, and really leverage support. So I think that's one thing that I've taken from my education. Liz Harris:                                And the other is I'm a part of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated. And we are built on sisterhood, scholarship, and service. And service being the most important part of that. It's like the grease to the wheel of a community volunteerism. And just get people to give back without always looking for a paycheck. Liz Harris:                                I think so many times people tell a kid to go fill out an application, but it's become so impersonal now, that volunteerism is one way that you can see as, do I like this field, or do I like what I'm doing? Is there passion there? If not, go somewhere else. If so, then you found your niche. So I think that service is what I do as well. And that's what one thing that I've taken from my education. Jolie Sheffer:                          We've talked a bit about young people, and students, and getting involved. And what would be your piece of advice for anyone in the community as a way to first get started in better understanding maybe food issues, and becoming part of the solution? Liz Harris:                                What's really caught on in my neighborhood is actually growing vegetables in their flowers, and in their landscaping, and teaching them like... it's really, they're addicted to growing vegetables now. It's so funny. My cousin, I mean he's like, "I can't stop planting seeds. I got peppers in my front yard." But they're just so amazed by the yields, what they get. Liz Harris:                                And then I just see people, like Toledo Grows gives away growing books. They're just fascinated by growing. But you also see with the father is teaching his son, and his son is teaching his friends. And so it's kind of a chain effect of how people are learning how to live healthier just by one simple garden. Jolie Sheffer:                          Well, there's certainly a way in which our modern lives divorces us from those processes, right? Like, where does fruit comes from? The grocery store. You ask a kid, where do you get your food, and they're likely to say, the grocery store, not- Liz Harris:                                Tomato trees. Jolie Sheffer:                          Right? Where does it come from? What grows on a tree? What grows out of the ground? So certainly becoming more aware of how these processes work. You also had both talked before about the importance of volunteering. Could you say more about some of those ways of getting involved? Liz Harris:                                Well, never be afraid to go out and ask any nonprofit organization for assistance, especially when there's youth. I have this belief that youth should be included in every aspect of their community. When cleaning, when improving law policies, and lawmaking, they should be. So you'd be surprised if you reached out to your local Boys and Girls Club, your local YMCA's, your local Girl Scouts, how much support you would get from those organizations to assist you with those community driven ideas. Sean Nestor:                          I think you just find an that's doing something you're interested, and you show up. I can't stress enough. It sounds so simple and so mundane. But really just showing up and listening. And always listen at first, and find an opportunity, and hey, I might be able to help with that. Even if it's something like just setting up the chairs after an event. Things like that. And before you know it, people come to know you, they think of you when there's opportunities. Sean Nestor:                          That's the rhizomatic way, I think, is just showing up, listening, and responding when an opportunity presents itself that fits. And it takes time. And I think that's something that a lot of kind of our current culture, really just the dominant culture in America, is very like, if it's not happening right now, I'm done. You got to be willing, just like with growing, you got to be willing to be patient. Give it time to grow, to develop, not rush it, or get mad at it because it takes its time. And if you are willing to give that patience, you're going to see the outcome, and it's going to be beautiful. Liz Harris:                                Right. I'm so proud to say the Goat Girls since we started, crime has been reduced by 50%. In fact it's reduced so much that I can't get a camera that I want. So I mean, you may not see the improvement one way, but there's other aspects of reducing crime and reduction of litter, youth truancy. I mean all these things are affected by just being a healthy community. So look at the effects of it in more than just fruit and healthy. It's health, it's safety, it's community, it's neighbor, it's neighborhood, it's all of that. Jolie Sheffer:                          Any last words, or any other pieces of advice you'd like to share? Liz Harris:                                I just want to thank you for having me out here today because anytime I have a chance to speak on stewardship, which is just taking leadership in your community, or over your land, it's just important to me to explain to others that you should do the same as well in your neighborhood. Whether you are in an apartment, or whether you're in a multifamily home, you can always take leadership in your space. So do so. Sean Nestor:                          I would get a little more specific, and just urge anybody interested in urban agriculture specifically to look up the group, Toledo Urban Ag on Facebook, and join it. And if they happen to hear it before this event, we're going to be meeting on Friday, March 9th at 6:30 PM at the SeaGate Food Bank, that's the Urban Agriculture Alliance that's formed. We highly encourage anybody. And you don't have to be in Toledo for it. If you're just in the region and interested, we'd love to have you out there and be part of our group. So hopefully that'll get some more people out. Jolie Sheffer:                          Great. Well thank you so much for being here. It's been a pleasure talking with you both. Our producer today is Chris Cavera. Special thanks to our co-sponsors for this event, the College of Health and Human Services, the Stoddard and O'Neill Fund in the School of Cultural and Critical Studies, and the Center for Community and Civic Engagement. We'd also like to thank the Office of Campus Sustainability for their work as well. Thank you very much. Liz Harris:                                Thank you.

I’ll have what she’s having….. Right? Where do you find pleasure? Is it in intimate settings? The smell of Mama’s cooking? The touch of silk? This episode uncovers all the ways we can engage in pleasure and ecstasy and how they serve our Big DREAM mission.  Get ready for a delicious episode! Grab a buddy and download your Free Dream Sheet for this week’s “Rock OUR Dreams Experiment”- and special song of the week just for YOU! Join me LIVE at 11:11am MST Every Manifesting Monday and Thankful Thursday to Launch the 7-Day Rock OUR Dreams Experiment  https://www.facebook.com/djvalerieblove/ Join me LIVE for Q and A at 11:30am MST Every Thankful Thursday BIG DREAM SCHOOL FB Tribe https://www.facebook.com/groups/bigdreamschool/ BIG DREAM SCHOOL IG https://www.instagram.com/djvalerieblove/

In this value packed episode you'll learn 3 actionable strategies on How To Raise Your Profile As A Leader Through Speaking.This is an amazing interview with Laura Henshall. Laura is an international speaker, storytelling expert and speaker coach at Speakers Little Secret. If public speaking is on your agenda, THIS is a lady to listen to and to get in contact with.You'll also learn:Laura's story and how she became an expert in public speakingWHY working on your professional voice is so important if you want to raise your profile as a leader and what you can achieve when you do it rightWhere most people go wrong and the 3 BIGGEST mistakes3 strategies you can implement straightaway to improve your speaking performance dramatically Have a listen and make sure to subscribe to my channel!Laura's Website: https://speakerslittlesecret.com/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/speakerslittlesecret/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/speakerslittlesecret/

In this value packed episode you'll learn 5 actionable strategies on How To Dress To Impress As A Leader. You'll also learn: Helen's story and how she became THE personal brand expert Why personal branding is so important and what you can achieve when you do it rightWhere most people go wrong and the 5 BIGGEST mistakes Have a listen and make sure to subscribe to my channel! Resources: Helen's Website: http://www.helenrobinett.comLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenrobinett/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leading.style.australia/For a FREE Image Audit, Email Helen at: helen@helenrobinett.com

True Believers! Don't believe the Terrible Lie that the Comic Book Characters have left you Down in It. It's Heresy! Another Version of the Truth is that we've learned Discipline and let The Becoming news happen before we cover it. And, as the calendar is Getting Smaller, we've come to offer you A Warm Place to get caught up on all the latest geek news! Highlights from this issue include: The Avengers: Endgame trailer is Right Where it Belongs Is NASA gonna save Stark? Or will it bite The Hand That Feeds? Black Panther up for a Golden Globe?! Yes, Please! Captain Marvel goes Into the Void with her second trailer Shang-Chi is soon to get All the Love in the World It turns out Love is Not Enough to save Daredevil! (I Do Not Want This) We sneaked a peek at Spider-verse, but we won't be a Ruiner You Know What You Are? A casting corner! Featuring a duck, a Reptile, and a rogue Looks like (Big Man with a) James Gunn Came Back Haunted! Also, some big anime titles looking to be Beside You in Time shortly It's the time of the year where The Line Begins to Blur on the temperature. That's What I Get for buying the “Mr. Self Destruct” brand of thermometer. So bundle up, slap them headphones on, and press play. You get us Closer to pod! We're in This Together! ...Hurt!!

Steve Larsen: Hey, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen, and you're listening to an epic episode of Secret MLM Hacks Radio. So here's the real mystery. How do real MLMers like us, who didn't cheat and only bug family members and friends, who want to grow a profitable home business, how do we recruit A players into our downlines 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. What's up guys? Hey I'm very excited for this episode today. I have a super cool little thing here for you. I've often told you guys before, in fact, I've told many of you this before. I've created a lot of info products now, in my life. I've seen a lot of offers. One of the things that I teach is offer creation, right? You know, with ClickFunnels, and I am one of the coaches for their new two comma club coaching program. It's a program that I helped launch about a year ago, a little over a year ago, and I was the only coach. I had 675 students, and I was the only coach. My job was to go through all of their offers with them. Help them create a very sexy and attractive offer based on the person they're trying to sell and get them out there making money for a lot of them, for the first time in their life. We had tons of awesome success stories from that. We had people make anywhere from their first thousand bucks to six million. Lots of stuff. I had a chance to ... Anyway, the only reason I'm bringing this up is, it makes me sound like I'm ... that makes me feel like I'm really egotistical. What I'm trying to say is, after going through so many of these people, and after I've had a whole bunch of people come into the Secret MLM Hacks program, after I've had another group of like six or 700 people come in to do it again, I'm coming up on a lot of people that I've done this with. I had the opportunity to do that again this morning for several hours with some students, kind of one on one with them, and go through and help figure out part of what it is they're actually selling. There's some things that I always run into people. This roadblocks that I always see people will run into. And doing that many times, it's hard not to notice the patterns, right? So I thought what I'd do for this episode is kind of show or share with you one of the patterns. It's so extremely simple, okay? It is so extremely simple, but it ends up being like their entire business plan. I don't know if you guys have ever created a business plan before in the sense that school usually has you go through it, like business school, right? We'd write these massive like 15-20 page business plans, and I don't know. There was still like no plan on how to actually ... Anyway, what I want to share with you today is, in my mind, one of the easiest ways to sidestep, having to go through this massive business plan writing. I think business plans, in the sense that they're taught, are usually pure garbage, right? Unless you need massive cash for like some VC funding, which I'm also very against, because in my mind, if you got something of worth, if you got something that's actually solving problems for people, like, you don't always need VC funding. I know that will cause some polarities, I say that, but that's okay. I actually am very against VC funding. Very few scenarios I can ever think of ever where someone should actually get it. Anyway, so, what I want to do is I want to walk through, just real quick, just a very simple process to figure out what your business actually is and what it's doing. So you're thinking about your MLM, right? You're thinking about your downline thing. There's several aspects to it, right? Number one, you are selling people into your opportunity itself. That's great. Absolutely love it. I've got some cool systems to do that for me. We just passed our 200th person applying to join my downline, someone I've never met before, right? That's amazing, okay? That's what I teach inside Secret MLM Hacks, if you guys have never heard of that yet or hadn't a chance to see it, go check it out. It's had a chance to bless a lot of lives. Actually, it's been really fun. Had a lot of cool success stories in there. It's been a lot of fun. The other avenue though, other business avenue that you've got is this area, where you're selling your MLM's actual product, right? I have a system for eventually getting people to both, but at the beginning, I only focus on one or the other. I'm only selling the product, or I'm only selling the opportunity. At the end, they promote each other, but not at the beginning. I lead with one or the other. Okay. Anyway, here's the framework. Here's the framework. This is how I do what I do, and this is the framework that I use for people to go through and get more clear on who it is that they're selling. You see, one of the things that I ran into early on inside this business is, a lot of guys know, I literally ... I wanted to be successful in MLM so bad that I walked down Main Street. I was so ... Guys, my pride was on the line. You might actually be the same, where you have a whole bunch of people who's been telling you, "Oh is this just another one of those things again?" and that hurt my pride. That made me feel like I was an idiot. That made me feel like I had nothing. You most likely have had something like that happened to you. I mean, I don't know anyone who's in business, who's actually successful, who's actually never had a naysayer. You know what I mean? We all have them. We all have them. I was feeling it hard. This was four, five years ago, something like that. I wanted this to be successful so bad that I literally was walking down Main Street pitching people. I would down and be like, "Hey," and my pitch was bad, and I didn't know what I was doing. I was fumbling through it, and I went through, and I was getting people like, "Come on. You should buy this. This is so cool." I didn't know what I was doing. I got some people who said, "Yes," and I had a ton of people who said, "No." I ended up recruiting a lot of people. What are the issues that I ran into, which you most likely have run into as well, is, I was like, "Oh my gosh. This is so cool. I worked my butt off. I was literally walking down Main Street. I recruited some businesses. I did recruit some friends and family. I did recruit some total strangers." It wasn't that many. This is the first time I'd ever done anything in MLM ever at that time. I really, really did not want to fail at this. I felt like I had failed at so many things before, which now, in hindsight, makes me realize that's what actually led to all the success, which has been so cool, but it's hard to see that when you're in the middle of it, right? And you most likely have been there as well. You might be right now. In fact, I was looking at some old pictures. I was looking at some old pictures of when my wife and I got married. We had hardly any money. It was three weeks into our marriage, and it was Christmastime. We had no money. We were so poor. Guys, I literally took a piece of like butcher paper and I thumbtacked it to our wall. It was totally empty in there because we had no money for furniture, and I literally took a Crayola crayon, and I drew a fireplace next to our tree that was like a foot tall. We put it on this little stand, so I was a little bit taller. Then we put like a present or two underneath from each other. These are like ... You know what I mean? This is the cherishing moments you remember at the beginning of marriage. We just had nothing. Anyway, we really had nothing, and I really, really wanted to make this work. I felt like I've been trying tons of stuff and nothing had been happening, nothing had been working. And externally, yes, that's the thing that I really, really wanted. Internally though, it was a pride issue like, "I can do this." You know, I really wanted to prove it. "I can do this. I can totally ... This is something that I can go do. Look at me like a provider. Look at me ... " You know what I mean? I'm sure that we've all had that kind of feeling before. It's something that really affected me, so I feel like I wasn't. Women get their identity primarily by the way they make a home, right? A lot of studies have shown that. Men get their identity in a sense of self-worth by with their occupation, right? And so, for a man to go through and say, "I can't provide," really detrimentally hurts their insides. And so, I was feeling that. So anyways, I'm walking around, and I was so stoked because that first month after walking down Main Street and doing all this stuff, unless you guys have been on the free Secret MLM Hacks training, secretmlmhacks.com, if you guys want to check it out. But if you guys have been on it, you've heard the story. And I was so excited. I got those first 13 people in, in that first month. I think it was like five weeks, but you know, whatever. So I had 13 people, right? I was so pumped. What's funny is nobody did anything, but that's not what my thought was. I was like, "Oh my gosh. It's going to be crazy. This is going to be so cool." If that person gets 13, that person gets 13, that person ... oh my gosh. The biggest problem we're going to have is, like, "What do we do with all this money? I'm going to go blow my nose in 20s now. Oh my gosh. What private island should I buy?" Right? And that was my mentality at the time. That's what I was thinking anyway. I was like shocked. I was appalled that no one did anything. I was like, "Do you not see? Can you not see? Can you not see the opportunity that we have in front of us?" It's like, "What's going on?" Okay. Fast-forward five years, fast-forward to now, where there are people applying I've never met before. In fact, a ton of them, by the hundreds now. I've got cool systems that are out there. It's the exact same thing I teach inside Secret MLM Hacks, exact same thing I teach for my personal downline. It's what I do, and it works incredibly well. What changed? This is what changed, and this is what I walk people through when I'm coaching them, okay? When I say this, do not dismiss it, because even if you've heard what I'm about to say, I guarantee you may not have heard it in a way that I have than I'm about to teach this, okay? Number one, you have got to figure out who your dream customer is, not who you could be selling to. That's one of the biggest problems we all run into as entrepreneurs. We see the solutions we offer. We see the value that we deliver out there, and we start saying phrases like, "Well that person could buy it, and this person could buy it." Let's say you're selling water machines. I had somebody who literally walk up to me once, and they were selling water machines. I was like, "Who do you sell to?" They were like, "Well everybody needs water, so I'm selling everybody." I was like, "That's the definition of nobody." I'm not talking about who could you sell to. I'm saying, "Who is your dream customer, the lay-down sale, the person that's so easy to sell to you barely have to open your mouth?" They're like, "Oh my gosh. Yes, I want that," and they pay premium price to do so. Right? That's who you want to sell to. That's who you want on your team. Okay. Identify the dream person, and you put them down, your dream client. You write them down, and you bring that person to life, and you sit down, and you start thinking, "You know what? I want a person who's already been done something in business before. I want to do something. I want the person in who's not afraid to talk to people, so I have to deal with that issue anymore. You know what? I want ... " Or rather, if you're recruiting, or let's say you're selling product. Let's say ... I don't know. Let's see you're selling ... Keto products are big right now, right? Let's say, "I want to go sell somebody who's already purchased supplements in the past, so I don't have to teach them the first time to take on something like a supplement. I want to get an individual who is ... " Does that make sense? Get that dream client down. Know who they are. That is step number one. Who is the dream customer, not who could you sell to. That's a different category, and usually, it causes a lot of angst, a lot of headaches, and they're freeloaders, and usually, they're terrible to work with. It's just the truth. Okay. I hope we all got all thick skin here, because ... Right? Just the truth. Somebody doesn't want your thing, you should not sell them. Do not sell people who have a need. You sell people who want it. People who have a want, so much better. Oh my gosh, that's a better client, customer. Okay, so, that's the first thing. Number one, who the heck are you selling to? The dream person. Number two, where do they hang out? Where can you reach them? Is there a group of them that all hang out together? Maybe they all hang out in the same Facebook group. Maybe they'll hang out in the same forum. Maybe they all listen to the same podcasts. Where are they? Right? Where are they? Where are they actively? I am not a huge person on Instagram, but I'm actually really getting into it now. Whenever I learn something, I drop little nuggets on there. If you guys want to follow me, totally would love that, and it's been a ton of fun. It's been a ton of fun to go through and build that up. But before, for quite some time, I was not actually on Instagram ever. People go to the same places to consume their information. So where is your dream customer hanging out? Maybe it's an existing business owner. Well where do all the successful existing business owners get their information from? Maybe they all subscribe to the same magazines. Maybe they all listen the same kinds of content. Maybe they all go to the same YouTube channels. Does that make sense? Where are they? Answer that question. Who is the dream customer? Not, who could you sell to? Who's the dream client? The one, just the one. It's funny. When you actually end up searching after the one, you actually get a few of the fringes. If you don't have it though, you don't get any you don't get fringes or the dream customer. Actually, you get headaches and projects. I got enough products in my life. I don't need a person as a project. Someone who's not figured out other things inside their life yet. Does that make sense? Does that make sense? So number one, who's your dream customer? Number two, where are they? Where do they consume their information? And number three, what could you say to them, or what could you give to them? Maybe it's a sample for the product. Maybe you have your own little ebook that you wrote that would serve them in their business. What's the bait? That's the question you're trying to ask. What bait do you have that will get them to come over to you? Notice what I said. What will get them to come over to you? Not, you go to them. What's so powerful about this is that when you reach out and you start dropping pieces, little pieces of bait that turns somebody towards you, what you're doing is, it means you don't have to go through heavy and hardcore sales tactics or techniques anymore, because they know. They're like, "Oh my gosh. Steve Larsen's dropping so much crap of amazing stuff on his podcast. That's amazing." That's exactly what I'm doing, everybody, right? I'm just peeling back curtains so you know. This podcast is a piece of bait, and it has brought incredible people to me, incredible people from my downline, amazing people inside my products, right? Both my personal ones and my MLM ones. Does that make sense? I hope this is making sense. What bait, what can I actually solve for them? What can I say to them? Whether it's a product or something that you're saying, or maybe your sample really is so good that when you hand it to somebody, it sells them. That rarely happens I found out though. Products don't make sales. A sales message makes sales. Anyway, different topic totally. Okay. So that's number three. Who is the dream customer? Number two, where are they? Number three, what bait can I use to get them to come to me? Right? So I can persuade them to come to me rather than me go convince them. That's the benefit of using that. What bait ... That might mean that you create something. I will tell you it's one of the highest leverage things you need to go create though, okay? Don't get scared by the fact that you might have to make something, because I answer that question. Then, number four, where are you trying to take them? Just one place, not two. This is usually why I only sell, first of all, a product and then eventually talk about the opportunity, or I'll sell the opportunity only and then eventually talk about the product. I never do both at the same time. Maybe that's just personal taste, but usually, the human brain can only handle one thing at once. And so, anyway, does that make sense though? Just that four-step process that will clean up a ton of stuff that you're doing in your business. It will help you identify who the best person is for your business. That's why I have so many amazing people. Because I've done this process so many times, I know exactly who I want in my downline. I know exactly where they are. I know exactly what bait gets them to come to me. I know where I'm taking them, right? I know where I'm taking them. I'm taking them to this beautiful place of automation and sweet funnel automation and marketing, using the internet. Then I hand off the same systems to them. That's crazy. It's like the first actual duplicatable thing I've ever found in my life. Does that make sense? Anyway, hopefully, that helps. That's my four steps to identifying. Frankly, it's the four steps to getting my dream customer, to getting a downline that I actually like. Does that make sense? Because I know that we've all created downlines. Most of us have probably got someone on downlines, and we're like, "I don't know if I like my customer," right? Just to be real with you, right? "I don't know if I like my customer today. I don't know if I like the people in my downline right now. I don't know if I like that I have to babysit everybody and put a cattle prod to their back to get him to do anything." So I said, "I'm not going to do that anymore," so I don't. I did that by upgrading and getting more specific on the dream person. Now, I get a few of others and that's fine, but now, there's another support system. The people that are inside my downline are rockstars. I'm not the only rockstar in there. Everyone's a rockstar. So when we get someone who might be struggling a little bit, there is a ton of support. Now, I'm not alone. This thing's actually duplicatable. Does that make sense? That's why I crafted this. That's why I did the whole ... That's why I left job to come do this, because I started seeing this putting all together, and I was doing it for these other people, and I was like, "Wait a second. I know I could do that." You can too. Anyway, hey guys, thanks so much. Hopefully, that was effective for you. And please write those down. Number one, who's my dream customer? Number two, write, where are they? Number three, what's the bait I can use to actually get them to come to me, so I don't go to them? And then, number four, write, where the heck am I going to take them? Do I want to lead them first to product? Am I going to lead them first to opportunity? Maybe it's my own third party info product that I create. And, you start putting those things together to figure out how to actually answer that question. That one little simple four question formula right there will drastically increase the quality of both your customer and your downline and will start solving problems for you. Problems that you didn't know were problems because of the quality of the individual and the state of the individual who's actually coming to you now. It has changed everything in my business, and I absolutely love it. I actually like MLM again. Does that make sense? For a long time ... I know I said too much, "Does that make sense? Does that make sense?" I should not say it so much. But for a long time, I didn't. I was like, "Blah. MLM. Serious? I really got to do this again?" Network marketing, direct selling, whatever you want to call it. I like MLM again, and it's because of the way that I treat this process. Guys, thanks so much. Appreciate it. If you hadn't a chance to check out secretmlmhacks.com, please go do so. Would love to have you on that free web class there. It'll teach you the three-step system I use to automate my recruiting. It's the three steps I used to auto I ought it's the three steps I used to auto recruit my downline, without my friends and family even knowing that I'm in MLM. Guys, thank you so much, and I'll talk to you later. Bye. Hey, thanks for listening. Please remember to rate and subscribe. Whether you just want more leads or automated MLM funnels, or if you just want to 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. 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.

Brad Post, Create the Movement: Welcome to Create the podcast. My name is Brad Post. I’m sitting here with Josh Rich. Josh Rich, Create the Movement: Hello, everyone. BP: How are you doing Josh? JR: Doing well Brad. How are you? BP: Good. It’s been a little while. JR: It has been. BP: But, Josh, you wrote this amazing blog post. And I’ll put the link in the show notes. But it’s basically talking, kind of, about the difference between local and organic results. Right? You wrote that post? That was your good stuff right there? JR: Yes. Yeah, that was me. That was me. Yeah. So, this is like one of the more confusing topics that we kind of have to deal with a lot of times with our SEO campaigns. So, when we say local results, we’re talking about, I think it’s three, or is it four results? BP: The ‘three pack.’ JR: The three. Yes. It was four, now it’s three. BP: Right. JR: It was four, now it’s three. The three results that pop up in the map when you do Google search. And it won’t always pop up. But if you search, especially if you search, you know, like a service, or an industry in your town, then you’re almost always going to get it. So, if search for like, you know, like an oil change place in your town, or an upholstery cleaner, or something like that, you’re going to some local listings there. BP: As long as you have your Google My Business listing JR: Right, right, yeah. The search something’s going to pop up there. So, then the organic results are just like your regular run-of-the-mill results that pretty much, you know, the local results only on the front page. And then everything else past that it’s going to be organic results. Typically, 10 per page. Again, we’re not including the ads in this either. This is just purely unpaid search results here. And so, something that’s really confusing about this is that a lot of times you’ll have a different order. So, say that we’ve Company A, B, and C. Right? And so, say in a local result they pop up in that order: A, B, C. But in the organic results sometimes they’ll pop up like: B, C, A. So it’s confusing. Why is A showing up first in the local results, but then third in the organic? So then, it’s very confusing to think that they’d correlate. But the reason that they don’t is because they’re pulling different information. So, the Google algorithm sophisticated enough to just scan different information. So, it’s almost like two different search results. There’s definitely a lot of cross-over there. I’d probably say it’s about 60% cross-over, then 40% is independent. Which is where that variation comes in. Right? And so, there’s three things really affect this disparity between the two results. The first one is going to be the difference between the citations and links. So, citations those are anywhere on the web where like your name, address, and phone number are, and your url, are listed. So, a lot of times that’s going to be different directories like Yellow Pages, or Foursquare, or Brownbook, Angie’s List, whole, long slew of these. Right? Where the backlink is just a link to your website on someone else’s website. And so, the backlinks are what you want for organic results. That’s going to get your domain authority. It’s going to make you look like a credible website through Google. Whereas citations are what you want for your local listings. BP: Okay. JR: And you want to make sure that whenever you have your name, your address, your phone number, and your website, that it is all identical. So, if you put, like, if you spell out ‘avenue’, but then you put ‘ave’ in another one. BP: a-v-e JR: That’s going to hurt you. So, make sure that like, find one way to do it, and then just run with it. And makes sure that it’s unanimous across the board. So, that’s one difference there. The citation for local, backlinks for organic. The second thing that’s going to influence that is just the way your Google Maps listing is configured. The best advice here is j...

Holy cow, it's two episodes in one week! Are we doing it because we love you, or because we missed publishing our episode last week and we didn't want to fall behind? ONLY TIME WILL TELL. Thrill to chattery like: Brian eats a popsicle as Paul reflects on swelling up like a fleshy, jowelly ballon! Brian is making fake meats out of flour now! Bernie Sanders gives a non-concession speech, for some reason! Under what circumstances could Bernie possibly get the DNC nomination? ALIENS? A bunch of other political stuff! Is John McCain a pussy? Terrorism! Right? Where my third party at? Possibly other things, too! If you like the show, you should totally review it (favourably!) on iTunes! And follow us on Twitter (@paulfidalgo, @dotboom, @thinkerypodcast)!

SO you see a Tragedy and react??  It hurts- I get THAT..  But why are we waiting!? Why are we Passive!? #Hillary wants us all to get along.. #Trump wants to go a different path.. firm, harsh, uncomfortable.. WHO is Right? Where do we go? How do we mix the FEELINGS we feel right now with the FOCUS we need to have? Tallking about it NOW, ASAP, as in - did you tune in already?????   

Episode 74 - Right Where it Hurts

Episode 74 - Right Where it Hurts