Podcasts about SAS

Bruh. I know some of y'all be like “How do you have all these dope cousins?” Fair question. And the wildest part is that I didn't grow up with any cousins nearby. None. And that is part of the reason I love social media so much; because I have been able to build relationships with so many of them.

EP281 - Mark Mahaney, author and top internet analyst  Mark Mahaney is Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI, Research Division, he's one of the original and longest lasting internet analysts on Wall Street. He recently published “Nothing but Net: 10 Timeless Stock-Picking Lessons from One of Wall Street's Top Tech Analysts.” We cover a variety of fun topics including the beginning of his career with with Mary Meeker. His initial evaluation of EBay. His long positions on Amazon, Netflix, and Priceline, and butting heads with Jim Cramer over Google. We also discuss what's next for Amazon, and where the best investments of the future might be. Episode 281 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, November 18th, 2021 http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:00] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 281 being recorded on Thursday November 18 20 21. I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:16] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners. Jason as you and the listeners know I am a huge scene in b.c. junkie and you can't turn on CNBC Durning Earth during earning Seasons without seeing Mark mahaney he is one of the top internet analyst. He was actually on recently talking about the artist previously known as Facebook meta Mark has a new book out called quote-unquote Nothing But net and is joining us tonight give listeners an early peek of what is sure to be the best seller in the bookmark covers some of our favorite companies including Amazon Apple Facebook / meta Google Netflix Twitter and Uber Mark welcome to the show. Mark: [0:56] Thanks for having me on guys. Jason: [0:58] Mark we are thrilled the chat with you is you know Scott is a huge Amazon fan boy so I anytime he gets a chance to talk Amazon he's excited. And I'm super excited because after tonight show I'm going to be smart enough to get rich like you and Scott so that's pretty pretty exciting for me. But before we jump into all that we always like to give listeners a little bit of a feel for our guests background and in your case I know I think you're officially the the oldest analysts on Wall Street is that true. Mark: [1:29] Well that's the oldest and longest lasting internet analyst on Wall Street but I don't look the part so how about we do that yes I've been covering Internet stock since 1998 do a series of bank said I started, working with this tremendous analysts her name was Mary Meeker her name is Mary Meeker and started the first Friday I was on Wall Street I got a call from the CFO of this tiny little online auction company that sold Pez dispensers and was looking to see whether any banks would be interested in their IPO that company was eBay so I wasn't there at the beginning of the internet but I was there pretty close to the beginning of the commercial for the public market to internet and it's been a fascinating ride and I thought there were a lot of lessons I could draw both from the successes the market and failures in the market and my personal successes and failures as a stock picker. Scot: [2:20] Cool what's so name some of the firm's so in my recollection you've probably worked at six firms like how many firms have you worked out over or that career. Mark: [2:30] Yeah now I don't want you to think I you know I jump around too much but I started off at Morgan Stanley also worked at Citibank Royal Bank of Canada. A small boot wonderful Boutique called American Technology research and I'm currently at evercore isi but I've been doing nothing but net. Hence the title of the book that's been my email tagline or always online is one of those two it's been my email tagline for 25 years but nothing but net and that's just doing my best to try to stay ahead of these internet stocks the early ones the the eBay's the Amazons the Yahoo excite if you might remember them infoseek. And then and then AOL and then and then later on some of the more Dynamic ones came out ended up with names like uber including most recently one you talked about Warby Parker so it's been a fascinating span and arguably one of the most dynamic. Parts of Wall Street I guess if you were working as an analyst on Wall Street. Or portfolio manager portfolio manager if you could have picked two sectors to be a part of to track over the last 25 years one of them has to have been the internet just how explosive it's been a been plenty of – explosions in there but there's been some wonderful wealth creation the other sector would probably be software just just too wonderful Industries I got lucky I was I was part of the internet. Scot: [3:49] Yeah I'm glad you didn't pick Mall Focus treats that would have been a bad choice. So you know as Jason mentioned there's kind of this auspicious title that you have of the oldest I would say wisest and most longest lasting internet unless. Tell us about some of the as you reflect in the book is kind of got some really good stories and you've been kind of on the front row seat of a lot of cool stuff maybe tell us what was your worst pick and best pick in the span of the career there. Mark: [4:22] Well I had a sale on Google it close to its IPO I was brought on to CNBC show and told by none other than Jim Jim Cramer that I was an analyst with a three-egg omelette on my face because of my cell phone call he was right I was wrong so you know one doesn't pretend one doesn't tend to forget moments like that on public television being told that you know you're pretty much an ass. But it does happen you know there are axes and then there are you know others and so I made plenty of mistakes I had to buy on Blue Apron although the lessons from that turned out to be different than I thought I got the call wrong but the lessons were different than I thought I kind of dissect that a little bit in the book. So those are some of my some of my worst calls I think my to my three best calls have frankly been sticking with a buy on Amazon for pretty much the last 15 years Netflix for the last 12 years and Priceline and now now booking for. [5:18] For a solid 12 years both Netflix of all three of those were really decades-long S&P 500 Best in Class stocks for a variety of different reasons and in the book I try to call out what were those reasons what were the what's that what's the pattern recognition so that you know we as investors can find the next Netflix and the next Amazon doesn't mean and Amazon and Netflix can't perform well from here but what are the things you can see in common that can help you as a stock picker you know kind of see ahead what really kind of started a lot of the the insights the idea of the book was this wonderful book that was written in 1980 called that one up on wall by Peter Lynch kind of a Bible or primer for anybody really looking to invest invest in the market with some wonderful advice and I really had any wrote it based on some wonderful examples of successful stocks and companies of his generation and I thought somebody needed to write one about our generation and you know these phenomenal money-making we know wealth-creating stocks that have. [6:19] That have soared the charts top the charts over the last 20 10 5 and even two years that have been dramatic dramatic winners from the covid crisis to I try to keep it long term in duration and frankly that's one of the big lessons I have in my book is. Is you know long-term I've found stocks do follow fundamentals they just do companies get bigger more Revenue more profits their stocks go higher almost always that's the case if you're a patient long-term investor so you can make money just investing you don't need to day trade and I think that was the last thing that really inspired me to write this book there about 15 million new. [6:53] Trading accounts that have opened up over the last two years you know the mean Traders the Robin Hood accounts and I just wanted to step back and say look you can have very good returns in the markets by buying high quality companies especially Tech and growth companies you don't have to day trade you can sleep better at night I got plenty of examples of companies that created wonderful. Shareholder returns over time and their stories you can take your time and really understand and stick with and anyway that's it this is this book is a little bit of little bit of personal Memoir but really more of a history of the Great. Companies and the ones that failed and then what are the lessons you can draw to apply going forwards. Jason: [7:32] Got it so I know it's not in your coverage area but you would have a buy on GameStop is that what you're saying no. I Nostalgia requires me to ask though I am staring right now at a pets.com. Puppet still in the box that's like sort of a Memento I have on my on my desk like we're you covering like those guys at the at the. Dot-com boom. Mark: [8:00] No no I didn't but I refer to that in the book and I make this I draw the comparison you know pets.com and smoke you know pets.com went public with trailing 12 month month revenues of 5 million I don't know if you heard that right five million dollars. [8:16] Trailing 12 months they had been an operating company for under two years I mean how that thing got out you know in hindsight is is is pretty shocking but wait a second go you know go forward 15 years and what came out. To e.com chewy.com went public with 3 billion in trailing sales and you knows the same sort of basic value proposition to Consumers it's just that the market was a lot bigger it allowed for a lot more scale and a bunch of other things came out o like cell phones smartphones cloud computing which allowed companies to scale up at much lower costs and so the markets really were proved out at that you know the time of pets.com there were three unknowns is there really an internet Market are there really good management teams and other really good business models today the first question is emphatically yes they are huge Market opportunities and they've been proven in in the Internet space advertising retail entertainment a lot of different ways you can cut it and there's some business models have generated enormous amounts of free cash flow and then there are yes of course there's always a few select excellent management teams who find that right combination it can be it's proven to be a great path to making money in stocks and chewy has been a stock that I've really liked since its IPO even though it's the next pets.com and that's the cynicism that people be placed in front of it when they went public. This was a very different puppy. Jason: [9:39] Yeah it does it seems like timing it seems obvious but timing is such a big. Part of all that you referenced Peter Lynch and I know you know there's. There's all the old Netflix stuff I actually started my career at Blockbuster entertainment and so in my in my industry everyone makes fun of Blockbuster that we got Netflix stand and all those sorts of things and I always have to point out. You know we sold Blockbuster for 18 billion dollars in 1995 like five years before Netflix was invented. Then it was a good business with a good exit you know every every business has it it's it's moment and it's time and you know the the railroads aren't the investment that they once were either. Mark: [10:28] Netflix is a fascinating story so let me let me let me jump to it a little bit you know one of the things the punchline of I asked people if you're going to remember one thing for my book I hope you'll still buy it but if you're going to remember one thing from my book it's dhq it's not DQ That's Dairy Queen dhq is dislocated high-quality companies and. You know time you mentioned timing I was thinking in terms of stock timing I thought those were your going to take us I think it's very hard to the time stocks but you know you can clearly see when stocks are dislocated I either traded off twenty Thirty forty percent so that's usually you know time if you think it's high quality asset and it dislocates them they all dislocate from time to time even the best highest quality names. That's when you can kind of Step In add the positions by the stock knowing that you in a way mitigated some of the valuation risk as investors your tries an investor you're trying to do two things mitigate valuation risk and mitigate fundamentals risk you know the chance that Revenue falls off a cliff margins get crushed the way you mitigate that fundamentals. Risk is to focus on companies with large Tam's excellent management teams great product Innovation and superb customer value prop and Netflix screen so well for me on those four things I'll just take this off super quickly if you don't mind. [11:42] The industry Vision so let's see Reed Hastings invented or started Netflix back in 1997 Netflix the name itself sort of implies that somehow we're going to be doing some streaming thing and this is a 1997 when it would have taken you four hours to download the first five minutes of Terminator like there was no streaming Market there but yet. [12:02] That was the premise of the company in 10 years later you know you look at the first initial interviews with Reed Hastings I mean this is where he was going to take the company all along so I was just giving him kudos for industry vision and the fact that he was willing to cannibalize his existing DVD business first dreaming business very few entrepreneurs can do that so management you know checks My Box customer value proposition the best way to tell whether a customer a company has a great value proposition is do they have pricing power will do people love it so much that they'll pay more for starting in 2014 Netflix started increasing pricing just about every other year and there's some ads accelerated that's a compelling that's evidence of compelling value proposition third is this product Innovation and you know they just don't have a lot of things not just streaming but there's a lot of these little tweaks that the side like binge watching you know kudos to Netflix for just rolling out new series all at once I mean practically invented binge-watching and of course you know they sort of invented the streaming thing or the people who founded music really did that but but Reed comes in a close close second on that and then you know I'm finally in terms of Tam's large Tam's total addressable markets. [13:13] You can add it up a couple of different ways but you know home entertainment video consumption it's it's a couple of hundred billion dollars in total you know Market opportunity and then who knows these things come along like smartphones and all of a sudden the majority of usage is on smartphones that tells you that these markets could be a lot bigger than we traditionally thought just like Spotify blew out the market for what really could be music advertising revenue and music subscription Revenue Netflix is did the same thing with me with Video subscription Revenue they blew up the tan they made it a lot bigger so that's right you know I love that story about the stories about Netflix I gave him a tremendous amount of Kudos I think the sometimes people under appreciate just because it's kind of a singular company just you know video video streaming I think they I think they don't get enough credit for what they've done and what they could still do because I think there's still one more one more trick up Reed Hastings sleeve and I think it's gaming and he's reached they've received such so much skepticism about this pivot or missing expansion in the gaming but you know management team to figured out dvd-by-mail streaming original content International expansion mount give them the benefit of the doubt that they can figure out an Innovative new way. To deliver gaming and therefore further increase their value proposition you'd want to stick with a company like that I stick with the stock like that. Scot: [14:34] Ever kind of a random question let's say there was I'll pick something at random a company that was Reinventing Car Care and making it mobile and digital would you call that a dhq. Mark: [14:45] I think that yes yes absolutely. Scot: [14:51] All right leading the witness. I do have to give you Kudos because in the Netflix section you do have a Star Wars reference you talk about the Disney death star which is which is appropriate because they now own the Death Star it's got a part of there is one of their IPs. Mark: [15:09] But by the way that was you know there were a couple of Netflix there's a rocky stock Rocky stock here that's right that's a that's a rocky stock for you it's had there were two times they miss Subs because of uncertainty over the price increases and they got some pushback it was an obvious that they had pricing power but they proved it over time and then they've got this great competitor risk with Disney and I think what the market missed on that this is just kind of leaving aside the book of just talking about stock picks is you know people are going to sign up for multiple streaming services now not now not five six or seven but they'll sign up for two or three if there's original content and they have original content I mean there's some things you will you have to sign up for Disney Plus for if you if people are like use God and you know dramatic. [15:52] Star Wars fans of course you can sign up for Disney plus but you know there's because its original content if you want to watch squid game there's one and one only place you can go for that and you know there's going to be another squid game or you know another show that just kind of breaks through the site-geist and by the way that's where Netflix is so I'll leave Netflix aside but I'm so struck by is this company shapes the Zeitgeist whether they can cause a run on chess board sales worldwide with the Queens Gambit a year ago where they can cause more people start studying Korean on Duolingo a language app which I actually like is the stock because they can you know they've introduced this show squid games like when a company reaches the Zeitgeist when they when they become almost like a lucky lexicon like they become a verb like I'm gonna google that or you know it's the Uber of this that or that you know that's that's something special and those are usually stocks that have gotten very long runways. Scot: [16:44] Yeah and I'm here in North Carolina and we have all these MBA we have all these universities and I was actually speaking earlier this week at MBA class over at Duke. And you know I have this whole little joke track that I do where I talk about my first company was profitable and I learned I could never raise VC because get the TV season that's a your profit we don't invest in property companies so yeah I often joke that I've been doing it wrong and ever since then I haven't made a dime. And I kind of thought it was those funny because you kind of. The internet sector was kind of early before SAS where and you point this out where there's kind of you know what we learned is there is an investor that loves Revenue growth and in a way that the opposite side of that coin is it can actually hurt you if you start to make profits maybe share with listeners that that you know probably many of them come from traditional businesses where that sounds nonsensical maybe maybe explain kind of what happened there. Mark: [17:41] Well I want to be I want to be on to get nuanced here which is you know I that chapter that says the most important thing out there is revenue revenue revenue you know for tech stocks and growth stock. But of course earnings and free cash flow matter it's that sometimes the public market is a lot longer term focused than people give it credit for Netflix is a great example that also is Amazon. I mean those those businesses had if you look at near-term valuation PE metrics price to free cash flow there's no way you would have bought those stocks. But what I think long-term growth investors realized is there's this you know when these get these assets that can grow their Top Line twenty to thirty percent Plus. From scale for multiple years like that can that creates an enormous amount of value over time and it's so rare I came up with something of a 20% rule you know it's one to two percent of the S&P 500 that can consistently grow at from scale their Top Line 20% which is like five times faster or six times faster than Global GDP growth so it's rare for good reasons but those companies dramatically outperformed the market because they're rare and it's not like growth and scale solve everything but geez they solve a lot of things I've yet to see it's got you know you go way back on this I'm sure you had these comments like Amazon will never turn a profit my first year on the street. [19:04] There's a person who's not one of the most influential investors out there put his finger in my chest. And said you know Amazon will never be profitable and you know I guess he must have been writing he was so smart but he was wrong because he didn't realize just what how powerful Amazon could be as it's scaled over time I mean you generate billions and billions in revenue and you can you can run over a lot of your fixed costs as long as you're not selling dollars for 95 cents you know if you're you know if you're selling them for a dollar and two cents and then you get scale against your fixed cost yeah scale will solve just about anything and I look at what happened with Amazon and I've looked at more much more recently its bring it up to up to date to Uber Uber just printed its first free cash flow quarter ever even though it's Rideshare businesses like down 40% since Pre-K covid levels how the heck did they do that because it took a lot of costs out of the business and then they had this delivery business that really scaled so look earnings matter it's just that when we look at tech stocks and growth stocks you know especially early on is IPOs they rarely go public. As profitable businesses the question you have to answer yourself is can they be profitable long-term are there companies that are already you know similar business models that are already are that's one way or their segments of the business that are already profitable. [20:19] Is there a reason that scale can't drive profitability for the company and the fourth what I call profitability Action question that detail this in a book is yo Are there specific steps steps that the management team can take to bring the product the company to profitability so I've yet to see a company. [20:36] And I'm sure there are some but I've yet to see one that hit the public markets that couldn't scale itself to profitability now some blew up. Well you know that's because they couldn't hit the enough scale so that's that's kind of my answer to the question of yes of course earnings and free cash flow matter at the end of the day that's what they're going to be valued on but just watch these companies that they really execute well they can take what looks like really aggressive valuations and overtime those valuations can turn awfully awfully attractive and a lot of times the stock wealth creation goes from point A to point B it doesn't start at point B. Jason: [21:10] Yeah the you know it's you mentioned then the Netflix. Effect on the cultural zygous fun fun stat on Queen's gamut it drove the sale of millions of chessboard and caused hundreds of people to start playing chess. I do one of the things that comes out strongest in in the book to me and that you alluded to upfront is sort of the difference between trading and investing. You know I always have people come up to me and they're like hey you know a lot about these retail companies what's a good investment and I'm like. I have no idea can you can you talk a little bit about sort of what you mean by sort of fundamental investing versus trading. Mark: [21:56] Well I sum it all up in the pithy expression don't play quarters I find playing quarters is almost a Fool's game the number of times I get questions you know what should I buy for the quarter and for little sophisticated institutional investors that could be I've got a position in. [22:15] Amazon or Google or Twitter and you know do I should I be you know heading into the position prior to earnings or you know facing back and adding to it more afterwards okay that's a different setup but if you're just playing a company for that quarter pop the problem is quarterly earnings reactions there's two things that drive them. Fundamentals great get the fundamentals right that it's expectations so the quarter trades are really about expectations you may get the quarter right you may be right that Nvidia or Roblox are going to have super strong quarters because I see how many of my friends kids are all over Roblox you maybe well right on that but you have to know you know what the market is actually expecting and numbers can go Revenue can accelerate but if the bar is higher than that then you're going to see these stocks trade off it happens a lot so I just unless you're unless you're a pro less you're in day in and day out. You know working working these stocks and really have a sense of where the expectations are. I think it's just a Fool's game to play play stocks just four quarters instead you know you want to stick with stocks for the you know you want to find an asset that you think is going to be. [23:29] Materially bigger in two to three years down the road and you think it's high quality based on some of the screens I threw out then stick with that name and don't try to play around the quarters and it's in fact sometimes you can use weakness or strength around the quarter to adjust your position but don't use it too initiator close out a position at the then you fall trap to these expectations game that is very hard to participate in if you're just a regular you know retail investor and you can make just as much money just staying invested in some of these great assets. Jason: [23:59] That is great advice and it's I certainly resonate with the sticking with the Investments I am curious though on the other end of that on the really long Horizon you mentioned you've you've been had a buy on Amazon for like 15 years. Wait. Like are you going to have a buying them for the next 15 years is that how I mean like does there come a point when they achieve their potential and you have to start worrying about them getting on the other side of the Hill. Mark: [24:26] Yeah I think you can I think you can one look for the fundamental towel and so I'm going to I'm going to spin over to another stock I talked about in the book Priceline. Which is actually the single best performing S&P 500 stock for like a 10 year period 2005 to 2015 phenomenal stock travel name everybody knows it William Shatner excetera although they're real secret sauce with what they did in European markets but. But that's a company that you know sustained premium growth like they were growing their bookings in the revenue 40 percent year over year for years and years and years and years and that's what powered that that that stock and when it stopped materially ah performed Market was when the growth rate decelerate it below 20%. [25:10] And so I don't want to you know create a hard and fast rule but I do feel strongly about this twenty percent rule 20 percent you know we're close to it you know don't don't Nick me at 19.8% you know could close to twenty percent is unusual rare growth. [25:23] And the markets usually pay up for that and when you see a company over time either because of Miss execution it happens or Market maturity and their growth rates you know kind of slide below 20% then that's when you reconsider your position that's a simplistic rule as a lot of caveats to that when I see with Amazon here is despite the size of this business I think they're still growing 20% for the next five years so in that if that's the case. [25:48] You know the simple rule of thumb is companies that can grow like. They can I like to see stocks that can double in in three years in order to do that you kind of have to do you know 20 to 25 percent earnings growth that's what a Maps out too. And you know you can double a stock in 3 years your handily beating the market in almost all time periods. And so when I see what it'll change my opinion really on Amazon is if I believe that this company is going to go X growth it's going to go you know well below 20 percent Revenue growth I just don't see that in the next couple of years given how much growth they have in retail in NE ws and cloud computing and in some of these really newer areas that I'm really interested in whether they really can crack the code on groceries and they can that's a large opportunity and business supplies Industrial Supplies I think that's a very underappreciated part of Amazon's business so I don't see myself changing my opinion on Amazon although you don't want things that we talked about this earlier that I love to see your founder LED companies that's no longer the case with with Amazon so that's you know at some level I've got slightly less conviction than the in the by case but I'm going to stick with it as long as the numbers prove out right and long as I can see this path that's consistent 20% Revenue. Scot: [26:59] Yeah and this is kind of breaking out of the book thing but since you brought up Amazon it wouldn't be a Jason Scott show if we didn't kind of double click on that what did any thoughts on the Q2 and Q3 earnings feels like they're slowing down a bit and feeling some of the labor and see what we call Supply pain on the show are you are you getting nervous about it or you think it's just a little one of their little kind of investment phases. Mark: [27:23] I called the six billion dollar kitchen sink that's how much lower their guidance was for operating income in the December quarter then then what the street was looking for like she was looking for close to eight billion and they guided to billions six billion dollar kitchen sink and they threw it all in there wage inflation you know you right you drive that route 95 on the east coast and you'll see Amazon Amazon is hiring Billboards up and down the East Coast Seaboard I did it recently so yeah they're aggressively hiring at higher wages that's impacting their margins there still some covid related cost shipping they're just not able to a sufficiently source and bring in product and so they have to bring in product into the the ports that aren't optimized for their distribution Network so just a lot of. [28:14] Positive blowing up now the question you have to ask yourself as an investor is are those are those cost increases elective structural discretionary temporary it's kind of like which of those are they the more that you can make a determination that the cost bikes are temporary the more you stick with the name if you think there's something structurally changed about Amazon okay that's different I don't think there's anything structurally changed about Amazon and certainly not its competitive position and then the last thing what I really like to see. [28:44] Frankly is this company. I mean the level of investment this company is making its distribution Network you know you talked about Facebook earlier they're dumping 10 billion into the metaverse which I think there's a there there but I don't know Amazon is dumping billions and billions into its own Logistics Network like they're doubling down on their core competency you bet I'll stick with that and what they're going to what's going to come out of that is even faster and faster delivery and they're going to prove out this concept what I call shipping elasticity the faster you ship the more that people are going to use you in a more of their of the more of their wallet and per-share you're going to Amazon's going to get so we're going to actually going to Super up one day delivery and then they're going to Super up super same day delivery and I think they'll be able to just grab more and more and offer more and more products to people so I like those kind of investment initiatives so I think a lot of that margin pressure by the way it was really due to these kind of elective investments in the infrastructure they added more distribution capacity the last two years than Walmart has in its history. That's how aggressive Amazon is being an eye you know my guess is that third we're going to see dramatic market share gains from Amazon in the next 12 months so I like those companies that kind of really lean in bendin and the double down on our core competency that's what the Amazon is doing now. Scot: [30:00] Yeah. The Press is making a lot of noise around Shopify versus Amazon and Shopify is kind of amplifying that with they're arming the rebels and everything. Jason Connor makes our I won't say his thing but he's not a believer in that I think it's kind of interesting in there's definitely no love lost between the company's what what's your take on that is that a real battle or is that just kind of genda by to kind of raise awareness for Shopify. Mark: [30:26] You have a quick point of view on that Scott. Scot: [30:29] I think Shopify becomes a Marketplace adjacent thinks that's crazy Jason what do you what I'll let you state your own opinion. Jason: [30:38] Yeah I mean I think Shopify is a phenomenal company and a good executor so I'm not throwing rocks at Shopify. They're to me they're not a competitor to Amazon they don't acquire customers they have no traffic there there. Piece of infrastructure and a great valuable piece of infrastructure but a piece of infrastructure. Doesn't draw any customers in so I call these people that are like oh man they're like Amazon they have all this aggregated gmv and they could sell ads to it and they can you know recruit more sellers because they have this this audience and all these things will they don't have any of those things they don't have a single b2c marketer. In their company and I would argue that's that's been one of Amazon's Court competencies is they've they use the flywheel to build this this huge audience that they get to sell all the. Their goods and services to so I just I don't think. They compete in any in any meaningful way and I think if Shopify were to try to become a true b2c company like Amazon. It would just be a phenomenal pivot it would be you know. Can't you know obviously they have the resources to fund trying for it but I'm not sure that's the best move for them. Mark: [31:57] Yeah I don't so I Do cover Shopify I've been really impressed with them I don't know them as well as I know Amazon but I've been super impressed. With them and terms of the product development and they are just providing more and more services to small Merchants so I think there's an are now bigger than eBay in terms of GM vo but I can never there's not enough disclosure to figure out so where's that GM D coming because I think some of that probably does come through eBay so a little bit of double counting that goes on in there but it's really impressive what they've pulled together whether they can actually aggregate demand in a way that Amazon has I think that's I think that's unlikely I think that's a very hard thing to do it's possible they do have a shop app I just, yeah I guess that's the action question we often ask ourselves do you think you're going to use the shop app to shop. [32:45] I don't think so I don't think people are going to do that but you know if they can get enough people to do that boy they will have really they will have some really circled it that you know because they got the infrastructure okay they're talking about building out fulfillment and doing fulfillment for people and spending a billion dollars on it sorry my friends you're gonna have to spend a heck of a lot more than a billion if you if you really want to you know compete. Because the bar is getting higher it's not getting lower it's getting higher in terms of funeral the speed of delivery eBay learn this the hard way and so shockfights Memphis spend a lot more than that so anyway there's a lot of wonderful things about Shopify and I don't know whether if you listening to slammed on by if you think they can build up an aggregate an audience I don't think they can so does it make doesn't make it a slam dunk by it's it's you know it's a deep three point shot put it that way. And you're not Steph Curry. Jason: [33:41] I think we're going back to the basketball references in the book. Yeah it you know I tend to agree I'm not I don't think the shop app you know has attracted an audience that uses it for shopping yet it's a shipping trapping tracking app at the moment. But the it is funny like there are lots of companies that facilitate huge amounts of gmv so I think of like. Excuse me and Akamai is a. Is a CDN that's that used by almost every retailer to help help sell stuff right and so if you said well what's the CD the gmv of Akamai well it's bigger than Amazons. Um but that doesn't mean that Akamai can compete with Amazon so yeah I don't know. [34:28] I do want to go back to Amazon earnings just briefly because I you know I think a lot of the Slowdown is kind of a covid blip and I don't know if you ever think of it this way but. They're there their times in history when. It feels like the external factors aren't a big influence and and you know some companies perform really well and other companies struggle so you know there could be a year when you see Home Depot doing really well and lows struggling and you say. There's something special about Home Depot that I might be interested in investing in at the moment it feels like the external environment for retail is having a. [35:07] Sort of a consistent effect on everyone right and so you look at the industry average is you look at all of them is on Spears and they all have sort of the same shape of deceleration. That Amazon has so it's to me it's hard to attribute that to some. Some fundamental flaw in Amazon but there is one thing I noticed this quarter that it was interesting and I wanted to get your opinion about because I know as an investor you like seeing companies that have pricing power. And you know of course Amazon famously raise the price of prime a while back and seems like that was wildly successful this quarter. They've raised the price for grocery delivery there now charging ten dollar delivery fees even for Prime members. And then this week we saw that they made a pretty substantial increase to the cost of f ba which is you know the fundamental service used by almost all marketplace hours and they they just raise the price of that by like five percent and I'm curious do you look at that as a good sign that hey. They have pricing power and they're doing so well that they can command those prices or to me it's a potential warning sign because I feel like Amazon is so. Zealous an advocate of the flywheel in the flywheel is all about driving costs down to get scale up I just was surprised to see some of these like price increases in in you know. Especially grocery which isn't super mature yet. Mark: [36:33] Well I'm not sure really of the answer to your question Jason it's a it's a it's a really good thoughtful question on the on the groceries I think they raised it because the unit economics were just not working for them in terms of grocery delivery that's that's my guess they also you know yet to have that get to really crack the code on the grocery business and so I sort of see that as they tried it and it just can't right size the economics of they got to charge more for it so I read that kind of negatively what did the raising fees to sellers. But my guess is it's a mixture of things but it's largely driven that my guess is that this largely driven off of Just Rising. [37:17] You know Rising infrastructure costs have been rising shipping costs I mean Rising the two costs that they called out specifically on the earnings call my recall is correct is our steel costs because of all of that dish construction they're doing with their fulfillment centers and trucking services and so my guess is that they've they're doing is not necessarily the right size the economics is I think the economics are working but because they want to try to keep their unit economics relatively intact. And that's sort of the way I think they thought about the raising the price of prime it wasn't they did it because they could. It's they did because they sort of had to like the costs are rising it's just that what I found interesting in terms of pricing power is van acceleration in in Prime ads you know post that price increase like that and so does Netflix to me Netflix is essentially raise fees use the fees to you know generate more Revenue by more content is like a flywheel that they've worked with their make the service more bringing more users allows them to get a little bit raised money just a little bit more so it's not so much raising fees to extract excess profits it's raising fees to further accelerate growth and the value proposition is strong enough that they can do that and not lose customers that's that's that that there's this is subtle nuance and maybe it's too salty but but I think it's an important it's important difference it's not it's no it's raising pricing not to raise margins it's raising pricing to fuel growth. [38:46] And when you so either way it's good I happen to think you you want to the the better one is the latter one is a more impressive the latter one is more impressive because you're raising pricing just to Goose your margins you know you just put a Target on your back. Scot: [39:03] Reading the book made me nostalgic and maybe we'll do a little bit of a lightning round but one of the companies you wrote about that I kind of forgot about and those interesting was Zulily I remember when they came on the scene and we were all like. They were all blown away by how fast they could just get product up right they had this thing where they could. They could have most of those kids so they'd get like all these little kid models in there and throw some clothes on them take a picture and then like changed outfit take another so they could do something like you know thousand different products an hour or something. What's your recollection on Zulily. Mark: [39:40] She really is that was one of my calls that didn't work and. So I and I learned some lessons from that I think to me the lesson I drew a to do with value proposition they had wonderful cohort disclosure in their S1 when they went public I mean it was truly impressive. And you know the they also raise kind of an analytical question because the first it's not too dissimilar to stitch fix today the first three or four million customers were extremely happy the question is. Were there another three to four million customers that could be extremely happy and the problem that Zulily faced is that it customer value proposition had one major flaw which is that you couldn't return product if you didn't like it they didn't they didn't accept returns oh I'm sorry there were two problems and there was no Speedy Delivery you know you could get stuff in seven days and 20 days. That was good for the first day of the first three to four million customers who are fine with that you break into the mainstream and you mean I can't return something if I don't like it you mean I gotta wait how many days until I get something like that ended up. [40:45] And it was very hard being the survey you really had to go with gut instinct on that to realize in advance that they were going to hit a wall in their growth. Geez when you saw what happened to their growth rate when they went public it was Triple digits six quarters later they were doing 10 percent Revenue growth they hit the wall because the value proposition. Wasn't strong enough and then they end up going going private that to me was kind of a lesson which is you know the. [41:10] Growth was impressive but that value proposition if it's not if they hadn't they didn't have it nailed down and you knew from the beginning I knew from the beginning what the two Falls were I just I didn't know when it would hit them and hit them earlier than I thought so you know it gives us another reason to really focus on how compelling do you think this value proposition is how many you know will that can the can a customer base double given the existing value prop. And that's one of the big lessons if I spin it a little bit I mean that's to me is and Scott you look through this entire history like you know the first decade of the internet the king of online retail wasn't Amazon it was eBay and they had like six times seven times the market cap of Amazon that's completely changed and why is it change and I think in part it's because of the value prop I mean Amazon just beat him on price selection and convenience year in and year out and that really mattered but a more recent example in my book. [42:02] In literally and figuratively is doordash and GrubHub and that's example many people will will know but grub have that great business model wonderful investor Centric business model High margins and doordash had this you know generating tons of losses but they had the better value prop because they had more restaurants selection and the end of the day that they want and they were able to scale up and generate serve reasonable profits over time that was the case where my quick tag line is you know customer-centric companies. Beat investor Centric companies most of the time in market cap and market share Amazon versus eBay, GrubHub versus doordash those two examples really drilled that less than to me. Jason: [42:48] Yeah I've been fighting those companies because you know there. They're like increasingly overlapping with a lot of my Commerce clients and like you know a big. A big sort of disruption and commerce right now is all these ultra-fast delivery services and you know it seems pretty clear that doordash and Uber are both gonna want to play directly in that space so it seems like some of those those sectors are on a collision course to chase that Tam. Mark: [43:15] I think you're right Jason I also think Amazon I mean you're talking about logistics like that's Amazon's competency so whether you need to. Whether you're going to vertically integrate and do that or whether you going to do that virtually you know Foo you know a gig economy Network. I don't know which which is going to work better long-term but yeah and you know it's going to raise the bar and make it more and more expensive for anybody to operate in that in that segment I have a bias that Amazon in the end wins that but it's big enough of a market it's so early stage that you can have multiple winners for the next five years I don't know that you can have multiple winners for the next 10 years. Jason: [43:56] Yeah there was a funny question in the Amazon earnings call someone asked about ultra-fast delivery in the CFO kind of I thought brilliantly threw some shade on it he's like. He said something to the effect of we like where we are and ultrafast like we have one hour delivery on about 178,000 skews right now and we're you know we're going to continue to scale that and I don't know how many people follow this but all of the competitors in this space are are desperately trying to figure out how to do one hour delivery for like 7000 skus. So so like they're you know they definitely are gonna be able to leverage the infrastructure there and I'm sure they're making some big investments in that space too. Another area that's that's been kind of interesting lately and I know you've been following this little bit is obviously there are all these privacy changes and the depreciation of the third-party cookies and especially the IDF a you know mobile privacy changes. That Apple has instituted and that obviously had a pretty pronounced impact on the value of some companies like Snap recently A View you have a opinion there is that. Is that a blip or is that a systemic change. Mark: [45:08] I think it's a big pothole in the road. But it's not there but the but the it's a big pothole in the road but it's not a bridge that it's not a collapsed bridge that get that mountain out. Yeah so poor that hey yes. Yes it is yeah that's it that's pretty I mean that's a big pothole that idea Fay allowed Facebook to offer amazing attribution to millions and millions and millions of businesses and now that's gone and and and to their credit to Facebook's credit they warned about it for a year two snaps discredit they didn't warn about it ever and so that's why their stock went off you know 22 decline 25 percent whereas Facebook stock even the numbers came in weaker than expected you know kind of fell off to the 3% and by the way then is traded up above where it was at earnings time so what I mean very intrigued by is I think it will be a son of that idea of a. [46:12] You know child of idea say I like I think there's so much at stake here both from the advertising platforms like Facebook you know and Google's to some extent a little bit and Snapchat but also for you know the millions of marketers out there who you don't you were able to thank thanks to Facebook use of people's privacy data you know from right or wrong I mean that's what that's what they they did I mean this help Merchants really know which of their campaigns worked and allow them to you know run creative and that creative could be automatically you know a be tested abcdefgh like 8 times 8 different ways in which ever those creatives work best. You could actually beat successful one of them then you can just pivot all of the dollars behind that one campaign you know campaign h for campaign be your campaign e.e. and that's just a wonderful way to help these small businesses you know really succeed and that's been taken away now you know there's I think there's first a little bit of shock shoot I can't get the attribution I had I'm going to pull a my marketing dollars but marketers got a market. [47:13] And I think you're going to see those dollars come back and my guess is that Facebook and other companies are going to find some way to do. Better targeting they may not quite get to idea that a type of levels but they were going to be able to do some sort of audience targeting they also have a lot of first-party data but they'll be able to do it in a way that doesn't that you know respect people's privacy and yeah you'll see those dollars come back so that's why I referred to as a pothole I it's a big pothole it's but it's not that it's not a bridge that just collapsed you know you're going to be you can they can they got stuck in that pothole more than anybody else but you know the cranes there whatever they're getting a tow trucks they're they're getting out of it they got to do some nobody work they'll fix the car and it'll be back on the road in part because they've got the talent to do it but in part because there are millions of small businesses that are given to going to give them the incentive to do it because they'll get those marketing dollars back once they figure out some of the idea that a. Jason: [48:09] Yeah I always like to remind people that are like The Skys Falling on the advertising industry that you know. It wasn't very long ago that we had much worse targeting than than we have in digital even with idea of a I mean targeting used to be deciding which publication you were going to print your ad in. And they still got a lot of money in the advertising industry so like I kind of suspect that that marketers are going to figure out you know the best ways to invest their money even if it maybe isn't quite as. As real-time as people got used to for a short while. Mark: [48:42] I think you're right Jason. Scot: [48:45] So Mark you in the book you recap kind of this awesome 25-year career and you know one of the things I've learned is if you're in the game of making predictions you know that it's kind of humbling but then you kind of slowly but surely get better at it right you never get to kind of you know a hundred percent but over time you get better and like like for example you learned the lesson of. The companies that are customer focused to do better than investor focused think founder based in that kind of as you as you take those backward 25-year learnings and project them forward what are some of the things that you get excited about looking out the next five or ten years. Mark: [49:23] Well in terms of Trends even the next year or two I think whoever solves. Marketing attribution is going to be worth a lot more in two years than they are today just because there's so many businesses so many marketers that will pay for that. So I you know so that's that's kind of a debt that whoever whoever fills in the pothole that's going to be a very valuable company it's going to be a lot more valuable to years and it is today my guess is that there's gonna be Facebook so I'm interested in that then there's thing this thing called The Medic verse which I don't know this is just virtual reality just renamed do a Google Trends search on metaverse just watch that just spiked up in the last love so you know you kudos to the person who came up with that idea may be excited maybe Jason or Scott maybe was you I. Jason: [50:09] It's just a rebranded second life. Mark: [50:12] Okay and. But but you know the fact that it was two things that kind of struck me there's some pretty big companies throwing a lot of big money at metaverse you know Facebook Microsoft there's a bunch of others and then there's this Roblox generation people young people who are perfectly comfortable living in the meta verse in virtual reality and. [50:38] You know participating in concerts safely and you know and shopping and communicating and entertaining and learning. [50:49] And learning through the metaverse and so you know we knows 8 18 year olds you know get out into the real world you know they're going to be perfectly comfortable in the meadow verse maybe not the way you know not the way that we will naturally be but you know though they'll help us figure it out and so so I'm really intrigued by the metaverse I think it is going to take 5 to 10 years because that to really develop and I'm trying to trying to figure it out who the big winners are but but I'm very intrigued by that. [51:18] Yeah I'm also got one of those oculist you know I've gotten two different versions Generations the it's the iterations of the Oculus Rift and you know i-i've always it's kind of like when I first saw the Kindle you know the first Kindle I ever got was pretty darn kludgy but you know I just love the idea that you could just download any book on the your kludgy device will you know whenever you whenever you were in a Wi-Fi area and and I and you and you just saw how that device got better and better each iteration and so I just think about that with these with these virtual reality headsets I mean they're clumpy their clunky their kludgy it's kind of embarrassing to be have a picture of you taking them but you know just you can imagine already know how much they've improved over the last couple of years and just think ahead is it possible the next five to seven years it's going to be just it's going to be like putting on a pair of sunglasses I think that's what we should be thinking about if you can easily put on a pair of sunglasses and and enter the metaverse and have you know share a virtual you know in presence experience that sounds but that sounds odd or not but you can do that, I think a lot of people will do that and you know the education the work applications around that so I'm very intrigued by that. Jason: [52:28] So you're saying that that could be chewy.com to Google Glasses pets.com. Mark: [52:36] Yes yes I love that yes I hadn't thought about that way yeah and by the way I've got my Google Glass here you know I'm. Got that I got that early version I got the Amazon Fire Phone you know but just be the the early failures sometimes see these I mean they're kind of in the right direction I don't know exactly what there's a there's a backstory to Google Glass that we only partially know but anyway they have the concept is there and and you know the big iterations that these products do get better and as they get better easier cheaper lighter cooler you know like Main Street cooler not Silicon Valley cooler then then markets can appear. Scot: [53:17] I think that's something the three of us have in common I think the three of us are probably the only people that ordered and probably still own an Amazon Fire Phone. Jeff Ellis. Mark: [53:29] And I've Got My Socks.com puppet to it's in my office I put the hits I got it as a warning. Scot: [53:31] I have one of those too yeah we all I guess we all have one of those too. Jason: [53:36] That that puppet ended up being the most valuable asset from pets.com sidenote like I don't know if you followed it but there was there was there was a whole intellectual property fight with Triumph the comedy dog and all that stuff yeah. Unattended value unintended value creation. Scot: [53:53] Mark were you you know we've used up about an hour of your time we really appreciate you coming on the show to tell us about the book when's it come out where can people find it do you do you want them to order from that Seattle bookstore that we've been chatting about. Mark: [54:09] So yeah and thanks Scott Jason I've always enjoyed listening to your show I did tell you it beginning I your analysis recently all birds and Warby Parker I took the heart because I initiated Warby Parker as an analyst but I after after I've seen what your thoughts were on it. So thanks for having me on the show and to talk about the book nothing but Net 10 Timeless stock-picking lessons from one of wall Street's top Tech analyst I just like to nothing but net on a big Hoops fan. And my kids are hoops and that's been my email pack lines there's a lot of meaning for me in that that title it is available wherever fine literature is sold it is available on Amazon it's the it's a top bestseller now and in the business category so I've been I've been just it was just a it was a labor of love for me and throw like a chance to talk with both of you about it because you've lived through the sister just as much as I have and it's fascinating the lessons we can draw from. Jason: [55:01] Well Mark is been entirely our privilege and it's a great sign that you know just halfway through your career you had enough material for an amazing book so I can't wait to read the the sequel after the next half. Mark: [55:13] All right I will talk with will do it again in 25 years. Jason: [55:18] I'm booking it right now. Scot: [55:20] Bring our sock puppet are and pets.com puppets in our Amazon Fire Phone. Mark: [55:24] That's. Jason: [55:25] Yeah everyone else will be living in the metaverse at that point in no one's going to get it but it's cool. But Mark really appreciated your time and until next time happy commercing!

Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs, but a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care, and Hey Check It is here to help- Hey Check It is a website performance monitoring and optimization tool- Goes beyond just core web vitals to give you a full picture on how to optimize your website to give your users an optimal, happy experience- Includes AI-generated SEO data, accessibility scanning and site speed checks with suggestions on how to optimize, spelling and grammar checking, custom sitemaps, and a number of various tools to help youStart a free trial today at heycheckit.comAUTOMATED TRANSCRIPTColleen Schnettler  0:00  Good morning, Michelle. Hey, Colleen, it's early here in California. But I am here for you.Michele Hansen  0:42  It's late here in Denmark, it is dark. It is not even five.Unknown Speaker  0:47  My goodness.Colleen Schnettler  0:48  So I think this week, I would like to talk to something I talk about something a little more serious. And I want to talk about you. Because you have been going through some stuff.Michele Hansen  1:02  Yeah, I have. It kind of occurred to me this week that I I don't I don't know, I might be going through burnouts. Or at least I have, like, way too much stress. Like, like, I feel like I'm DDoSing myself.Colleen Schnettler  1:22  I love that line, by the way. So first of all, I guess your best friend and podcast host has been telling you this for like eight months.Michele Hansen  1:33  Like, we're like you're gonna burn out. I'm like, I'm fine. And then our friends of ours were like, you know, after like, I launched something like, you know, especially infoproduct people, they're like, I went through like a depression after that I really burned out like, and I was like, I hear you but like, I'm special. I'm not gonna that's not gonna happen to me. You know, all think we're special. We all think we're special. And we all are special. But there are also things that everyone goes through. Um, yeah, I have so much going on in my life right now. And, and I think this, I mean, I Okay, so you've known this for a long time. But like, I I think it really started to become apparent to me that like, given everything I'm doing I have really like down prioritized taking care of myself. That was something I got really thinking about at founder Summit. And it's not just like a work life balance problem or a, you know, need to like join a gym problem. Like, I think it's like, bigger than that. But I don't really know, like, how do you unburn out? How do you do though?Colleen Schnettler  2:43  Let's take a step back. When you say you haven't deprioritize taking care of yourself, what did you use to do that? You don't do like you have stopped doing over the past year. And like what led to that. I'm curious how you got to where you are.Michele Hansen  3:00  I mean, so I really don't first of all, like I really don't work out as much like and I used to be someone who was like super active, like, I used to run to work, bike to work, play tennis, do gymnastics, soccer on top of that, like super, super active and have really become less active. And I don't know if that's the pandemic or like moving countries and my habits like change, you know, you have to establish entirely new habits. As I was talking to people about it founder summit who are nomads, they were saying that they didn't realize until COVID and they were forced to stay in one place. how stressful it had been to like, move places every couple of months and have to like refigure it all over again. Like oh, like where's the grocery store that I like? And like, can I get the food I like and you know, where's the gym that I like? Where can I work? Like all those kinds of like basic everyday questions become sort of stressful. Like I definitely feel like that like I didn't go to the dentist for 18 months. Mostly because it's like so like hack I have a package I've been trying to mail for three months and I'm just so overwhelmed by the idea of like figuring out the Danish postal system that it's still sitting at my desk. So like basic everyday things become really overwhelming when you're abroad. Yeah, I think like one of my habits changed but then I think I just have so much going on also that like you know I think the great thing about working for yourself is like if you want to take an hour lunch break and read a book like you can do that but like I have been feeling like I don't even have time to eat I don't have time to make myself healthy food like the idea of just like even cooking a piece of salmon or whatever like seems overwhelming and so like I have really allowed my health to like totally slip because I just feel like I don't have time for it but I also don't have those like sort of habit triggers I guess that I used to have you know if I was in my environment I was in you know, do Two years ago, for sure. And I think with everything that I have going on, that's like become really acute.Colleen Schnettler  5:09  So and you would lump. I mean, that's your physical health. But also you said you don't read books for pleasure. I mean, I think that's what you just said. So that's not that's your whole, not just do it like I do. Okay. Yeah. I mean, have you also, like, what about your, your mental health are you also are you still not having time to do the things you used to love that brought you joy.Michele Hansen  5:33  So I differentiate that, and I think this is like I've been, you know, so I'm obviously not an expert in this, I'm just somebody who's going through differentiating between burnout and depression, where, like, I actually feel like my mental health is pretty good. Like I've done I've done a lot of work on my mental health the past couple of years. Um, and, you know, depression is like, when you try to, you know, you try to get the energy to do the things that you liked, and then you don't get any enjoyment out of it, it's like the dopamine just doesn't even fire. Or if it does, it only lasts for a second. So whereas you know, a non depressed person, maybe you can go for a walk, and, and then you or you see a friend, and it kind of brightens you for the rest of the day, and at least helps you get through it. You know, when I've gone through depression, it's like, that enjoyment you get from that, like, you get like 30 seconds of enjoyment out of it, and then it's just gone. And you even feel worse than you did before, because you were expecting to make you feel good. And then it didn't, and then it just like spirals. I'm not in that state right now. It's more just like this constant feeling of stress. And like, I don't have enough time for anything. And feeling exhausted by that constant stress. But it's also not anxiety, either. Because an idea I guess I'm not I don't really know how to explain this. But like it's, it's not like worrying. And it's not like a tension, or No, I don't, I don't know how to explain it. But yeah, it's kind of it's gotten me to Google X. It's like, I don't know what this feeling is. And then I kind of, you know, I mentioned it to some friends of ours. And they're like, that's, that's the burnout. We were telling you was going to happen. And I'm like, oh, and then I'm like, so like, what is like the plan to like, get out of this? Like, is there like, what does your schedule look like when you were getting out of burnout? They're like, yeah, that's kind of like, you're trying to, like, make a schedule of it. Like, right. And one of our friends was, like, I Googled, you know, how to be a type B personality when I was going through.Unknown Speaker  7:49  It's amazing.Michele Hansen  7:51  Um, yeah, but I think it's kind of it's kind of weird. I was like, I don't even talk about this on the podcast, because it's like, I don't have a solution here. You know, I almost feel like, you know, I should have some sort of solution to give people but I don't I'm just kind of stuck in the middle of it. And, and just sort of talking it out, because I also, I don't, I feel like if people heard met, people mentioned, like having burnout, but like, and I guess if people know of like a good podcast or blog posts on the experience of burnout and how someone got through it, I would really love to read that. Because I feel like we don't really talk about it enough. So I'm kind of, I guess, trying to talk about it as a way of giving visibility to this thing that it turns out, a lot of my entrepreneur friends have gone through.Colleen Schnettler  8:46  Yeah, well, I think it's, I mean, as much as you're comfortable, I think it's good that you're talking about it. I you know, the one of the things. One of my takeaways from founder summit was I actually talked to quite a few people who went through massive burnout. And it seems to be just something that happens to us in our field in modern day, a lot, probably because we can work anywhere at any time. So we could theoretically be working all the time. But also, I, again, I think it's I'm sure it's a very personal journey to get out of it. But I feel like you need to take like, a month off. Let's talk about that.Michele Hansen  9:26  Yeah, and I think that's really where I'm struggling because I feel like I can't and but I'm also sort of, you know, somebody who's drowning and like, people are saying, hey, stop flailing. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, that like, and that just makes me panic even more. But like, so where I, you know, the stuff I have going on, like, you know, so we have to co do and like, I want to stress that like, I still really enjoy working on geocode do and I think actually Mateus and I were talking about this last night, and he's like, you know, we've been running this for almost eight years. And he's like, I'm even still surprised that we still find it interesting, we still find it challenging, we still enjoy working on it we enjoy the customers we work with, we enjoy, you know, helping them and like, it's still a problem we're really, like, excited about solving. And, you know, it does not feel like a drag. And so like, so I have to do going on. Of course, there's this podcast and all of my book stuff and like, and that's a joy. But also, I've been putting pressure on myself to sell it when I don't really have to, like, you know, like that. Like, there's not like I purposely didn't pitch it to a publisher, I purposefully didn't want someone telling me, you need to sell this many books, and you need to go out on this book tour and like, do all these things like I wanted that, you know, that decision for myself of how much time I spent on it. But now I'm in this situation where I feel like I have to justify all the time I spent on it some spending all this time promoting it. SoColleen Schnettler  10:56  let's go back. So yeah, so my my business partners, you haven't even gotten through the whole list. But sure, yeah. Okay, so let's go back a little bit. So my business partner Sean has, in the past experienced incredible, massive burnout. And one of the things he said to you yesterday was, like, the number one symptom of burnout is thinking, you can't work less. Like, there's no way around it, I can't solve this problem, because I cannot work less. So I challenge that, first of all, okay, but I don't know if we're here to problem solve, or if we're just here to talk. SoMichele Hansen  11:32  we're kind of a mix of both. But I mean, so I think so here, let me get through the full list of things.Colleen Schnettler  11:36  Okay, keep going. So just to go do,Michele Hansen  11:38  there is what I term my extracurriculars, which is the book like this podcast being on other podcasts, like, you know, the fun business stuff. Um, and then there's also I'm in Danish class all day, Monday and Friday. Right. And then also, I have a family and, you know, another stressors on top of that is, you know, I'm in a foreign country, and, you know, again, talking to people founder Summit, you know, talking to other people who moved abroad, during the pandemic, there was a universal Zero out of 10, do not recommend on that. And then also, you know, we're in a pandemic, so like, there's all sorts of reasons to be burned out. But then the reason why I feel like I can't do less is because like, just I mean, quite frankly, like, for immigration reasons, like I have to be in Danish class, and I have to be working full time. And so I'm squeezing in basically, a full work week, you know, on the edges on Monday and Friday, and then working as much as I can, to say, Wednesday, Thursday, plus, you know, like, replying, the email, you know, when I wake up in the morning, and you know, at night, you know, normal entrepreneur, lack of boundaries with email stuff. And so like, that's why I feel like I can't work less because like, my life necessitate necessitates that I'm in language school twice a week, which feels like a part time job. And then, like, just for legal immigration reasons, like I have to be working full time at the same time. So I feel kind of backed into a corner almost. And then so then, like, the last thing to let go, because obviously, I can't drop family off of that. I guess one benefit of being somewhere where I don't really have a lot of friends in daily life is it like social is, you know, there's, there's zero there. So there's really nothing to drop. But I'm like this, doing this podcast and the book and everything. Like, that's the easiest stuff to fall back on. But that's the thing I like, really enjoying. And so I guess I could sensibly work less and not do this, but like, I quite enjoy this. And like, I enjoy talking to people on their podcasts. And I enjoy doing stuff about my book, and I enjoy talking to you and doing this podcast. And so like, so the only thing I'm left with is, you know, the taking away the thing I enjoy the most and I, you know, like, I wish I could only be in Danish class one hour a week, but that's just not an option. And I think that's the thing. That's the biggest drag on myself. But also there's just the general I mean, stress of the pandemic, right, like, you know, you've probably heard that Europe, several European countries are locking down again, like so it's like, are we facing another lockdown, where I have to balance between working and feeling like a bad parent, because I'm like, you know, balancing homeschooling and working and everything. And so that's like, even stressing me out even more because it's like, Oh, my God, I have to get even more out of each day when I already feel like I'm getting trying to get so much out of each day. And I think just all of that is just kind of making me feel just sort of stressed and exhausted. Just likeColleen Schnettler  14:57  that's a lot. I mean, especially the foreign country. To me, we move to California. And it's so annoying slash stressful. Find a new doctors and dentists. And we're in the same country, they still speak English,Michele Hansen  15:08  they tend you're in like constant sunlight. Oh, that makes aColleen Schnettler  15:12  huge difference. By the way, everyone should move to California, because I'm happy every day because the sun is shining every day. But no, that's a lot, Michelle. I mean, you end this has been so prolonged for you, right? Because it was the pandemic, and then you move to a foreign country. That was that was a lot to take on at once you left your friends you left, you know, the place where you were comfortable and you loved you left the language. You left the healthcare system, like everything that that was really American healthcare system youMichele Hansen  15:42  like it's, it's terrible, but at least at least they knew how it worked. Yeah, at least you know how to go to the doctor, I could go to the doctor and feel confident I could communicate with the brain. But I wasn't like going, like practicing, you know? How to say, you know, yes, sure. I floss my teeth. You know?Colleen Schnettler  16:03  The change over the past? Gosh, is it been two, three years now? How long has this pandemic been going on? The, the amount of stress you have taken on is tremendous. And I feel for you, because it's just it sounds really, really hard.Michele Hansen  16:29  And everybody who said they went through burnout, like they're like, the thing I did was, you know, I fired all my clients, and I didn't work for two months. Yeah, or I didn't work for a year, like I just lived on savings for a year. And I'm like, I don't feel I can do that. And like also, like people, like, you know, I traveled or whatever. And it's like, I have a family. So I can't just like do nothing all day. Like, even if I wanted to, like I have responsibilities like that, you know, do not change regardless of how I'm feeling. And then, like, legally, I have to be working. And so I feel I mean, I don't know,Colleen Schnettler  17:10  it sounds to me like you feel stuck, or trapped. Yeah. And the situation superMichele Hansen  17:14  stuck. And I don't know how to get unstuck.Colleen Schnettler  17:19  So it seems like the first step is decrease your stress level. Yes. I mean, here's the thing, you're in the middle of it. And so don't freak out. But let's just let's just think outside the box. Okay. So you're in the middle of this super, super high, intense, stressful situation. But I'm going to still say that a lot of it is of your own making. And yeah. And I understand that you don't want to give up the book promo, or you don't want to do our podcast less because these are things you really enjoy. But your health, you know, has to be your happiness. That should be number one.Michele Hansen  18:02  But like why do I take away the things that make me happy? Oh, IColleen Schnettler  18:06  didn't say take them away. You aren't ready for Collins great ideas. Oh, God, what is Collins great ideas. Okay, so I'm just gonna throw these things out there not to scare you. Just to and I don't want you to problem solve or tell me why you can't do them. Just to show you that. Like, there are options even if they seem absolutely crazy. Okay,Michele Hansen  18:28  are you ready? Okay, okay, I will I will play along. Okay, just play along with Romani. Okay,Colleen Schnettler  18:33  you could move back to the United States. Now listen, one, okay, could sell geocoder do and take two years off and you don't work at all. You could hire someone to be you. And I know the onboarding of that you had you don't want it. You've told me a million times. I know you don't want to hire someone. But if you could get a system in place where you only work, you don't have to work on geocode do you'd still be working full time in the eyes of the Danish government? But you yourself wouldn't have to be managing the contracts and putting in the hours. There's like they don't you know as long as you're they think you're working ish. The full I have toMichele Hansen  19:12  be working. Hello. Danish government people listening.Colleen Schnettler  19:17  I wait. I mean, I would be working because you would be managing okay, you would be working. Because you would be managing a person who was doing the things for you? What if you just stopped doing what would happen? If you did nothing for God? Oh, except like legally required things like, like, you What if you just on your website, you go to your website today? You say we are not taking any more customers for six months. Shut it down. I mean, don't shut it down. But like, what if you were just like, No, no one else gets to come on six months. I mean, there's options. I know these sound crazy to you. Okay, no idea. Okay. I'm just trying to I'm just like trying to help you see that, like, roll their eyes.Unknown Speaker  19:57  You're like, I see it. See?Colleen Schnettler  20:03  You and I know you love promote. And so then of course, then there's the smaller things, but I don't think not like depending on your, your rate of promoting the book. Yeah, you could just totally stop again, it's a book, it's not going to go anywhere, totally stop for six months. Right? All this stuff will be here, once you are recovered, but your health and your happiness that is your life, this is your life. And Michelle, you have made it. And you, you're so stressed. And that makes me sad.Michele Hansen  20:36  You know, I remember I always remember hearing, you know, money doesn't buy happiness when I was a kid. And, you know, he always interpreted that to mean Oh, yeah, you can't just you know, I don't know, go buy yourself something and then feel happy. And they don't tell you how bitter it is, when you're in a situation that can't be solved by money.Colleen Schnettler  21:02  Yeah, that's intense,Michele Hansen  21:05  even when you could have it and, you know, I mean, money by as, you know, therapy and coaches and, you know, help with cleaning the house and or, you know, employees for that matter. You know, whatever else, but you know, money truly doesn't buy happiness. And that is a bitter pill to swallow.Colleen Schnettler  21:25  Yeah. Yeah. And there's a lot of other small things you can do, which may help but they might just be bandaids. And so I really think you need to take a good look at like you, you're so happy in in what you have built with your husband, the work your work environment, and what you are building with the book like, but it doesn't seem right now. And it's been this way for a while, right? This hasn't been a month, this hasn't been two months, it's been this way for a while where it doesn't seem like it's bringing you overall happiness to the extent maybe you thought it would, and it might just be have too much going on. But like, I'm worried about you. That's there. I said it.Michele Hansen  22:09  I think the fact that I have so much going on right now is like bringing these other issues to the fore like we have talked in the past about how I really struggled with work life balance, and like, if like, like I really love working on giuoco do and both of us like we're not selling the business, we we both really enjoy working on it and working on it together. Like, but if I could work 12 hour days on do co do and book stuff like I would do that and be totally happy to do that. Yes, I could blame this on Okay, the extra stress of spending 10 hours a week in language school is like, really adding a lot of stress to this. But I don't think that gets to the bottom, like, like, I don't think I'm being honest with myself. If I say that, that is the problem like that is just like the straw that's breaking the camel's back here. That's, like I struggle with work boundaries. I struggle with, you know, prioritizing myself, like, and giving myself a break and feeling like I deserve a break. Like I think this is this conversation here is like, I don't feel like I can take a break. I don't feel like I deserve a break. I don't feel like it's something that's available to me. Um, I definitely consider myself a recovering workaholic and somebody who wrapped up way too much of their self worth and self identity in work. Which is not as bad as it used to be but like, like, I feel like those things are the real issues and like you know, we kind of talked about how doing that exercise at like well that exercise at founder summit, but also like when it comes to like business like I'm like super competent, and like confident and and like I just make decisions and I feel very self assured and I find it easy to move forward. You tend to like doubt yourself and do a lot of research and feel stuck and like really struggle with that but like when it comes to taking care of yourself and your work life balance and your social life and your your health and everything like you are like so decisive and confident and just make decisions and implement things and do things. And I'm like totally the opposite. Like we're completely opposite.Unknown Speaker  24:38  Yep. On these two things,Michele Hansen  24:40  and you're like, you have to have better work life balance and I'm like, like, how, how do like what's like, I don't know what that means. Like, I think I need to read a book on how to relax like, you know, like, Where where is this guide? Where is this schedule of like,Unknown Speaker  24:59  I can Please be the episode of this. I need to read a book about how to relax. Please title the episode like, that's amazing.Michele Hansen  25:07  Seriously, like, I feel like if you ever got to a point where like you were like I'm too stressed out, like you would immediately cut back on working and feel no guilt or shame or reservations and like just make it work.Colleen Schnettler  25:21  Yeah, absolutely. I think maybe my I mean, I think my experience is a lot different from yours being a military spouse with three kids. If I can't, I have to take care. I mean, they're older now. But like when they were little, like if I wasn't healthy, mentally, physically, whatever, I could not care for all these little people. And so I think part of it is I learned that years ago, like, if I don't have my shit in order, this whole thing falls apart. Because Nick was gone all the time. My husband, you know, he travels a lot for a long, long, long period of time. So I have learned over the years how important it is to prioritize myself really. And it's my life. Right? Let's get back to that. Like, this is your life. Like, how do you want to live it? I mean, right. Not the way you're living it right now. Not with this incredibly burdening like anvil of stress on your shoulders.Michele Hansen  26:19  Yeah, I mean, I feel I like something you said to me at founder Summit, one of our I don't know if this was our debrief knife, when we we ordered guacamole at midnight, I did some self pampering so good. That like you're like, you know, I met all these people who are super successful, and their businesses are where I want to be. And they're, like, I'm happier than them. Like, they're all miserable. Like,Unknown Speaker  26:47  I'm a little embarrassed that you shared that on the podcast, but I did. So we can love you all, thank you for chatting with me. Because not all of your character.Michele Hansen  26:59  Not all of them were miserable. But like they had a lot of, you know, business problems. And it created a lot of like, personal problems, and you didn't want to have those problems, like the stress of managing employees and just, you know, all this other stuff like, but like, you know, you're saying how like your work life balance is really good. Your family life is really good. Like, you've talked about how you're hesitant to work more because you don't want to disrupt how good your personal and then like family life is. And like Yeah, I like I just, I don't even I don't even know how to wrap my head around that. So that's it my family life is bad, or I don't like them. Like I do. Like it's just I don't know, like, it'sUnknown Speaker  27:48  a lot. You're like, well, I you know,Michele Hansen  27:51  what if there's nights when you know, Nick wanted to hang out, and then I'm working and I'm like, What is this world where like, the default is not like, one of your like, is that what you thought? Like I said, your laptop? Like what is that? Like, I was just like, that's like so normal for us that like, you know, one of us has some sort of work to do we have to do all the time. Like and we're better than we used to be but like Yeah, and like, I don't know, hanging out with your spouse. Like I just I don't I don't even know like I don't know. i Our marriage is so funny. Our marriage is very different. Um, I just really I don't know, I feel very stuck. And I feel like all these solutions everyone is giving me I'm still like, Well, that was work wouldn't work because this and this wouldn't work. Isn't that like, I'm still I don't know what yeah, that but I'm being very obstinate. I'm not being very, very compliance person to be helped.Colleen Schnettler  28:53  That's what I think that was Shawn's point about, like, when you say I cannot change anything, that's when you know, you need to change something.Michele Hansen  29:00  Yeah. Yeah.Colleen Schnettler  29:04  Yeah, yeah. And it's a whole mindset shift. So actually, I was talking to my other business parent, partner Aaron about this yesterday. And I said that same thing where I was like, I feel like I'm happier than most people. And he was like, Why do you think that is? And I had a couple I had many reasons, but like one of them to like, again, as, like we, as a military spouse, like our friends actually die. I mean, that's like, in real life, like people die. Close friends of ours have died. And I think, you know, when that happens, like my good friend down the street is a widow. She was widowed at 29 with two kids. That really gives you perspective. I mean, you know what I mean? Like, I think that really, really helps. I think I'm really good at keeping perspective because I live in this world that is so much more dangerous than everyone else's world. It's like what is really important. You get one life, you don't know how long it's going to be. How do you want to spend it?Michele Hansen  29:57  It sounds like you take that perspective. Not as you know that your problems don't matter because you're not dead, or that your spouse isn't dead, it's more, which I think is often how that comes across. But it's more so that being surrounded by death, or having it, surrounded by it, but yeah, that was a little. Having it, having it be this kind of looming part of the community kind of like having having it be a presence in the community in a way that it's really not in mind. Like, it forces you to reevaluate those things, and to not take your time for granted. Which, you know, I mean, like, I mean, and, and I don't know, and he's also sort of an ADHD person thing, where, like, we struggle with the concept of time, and like, there's these great talks about how like, ADHD is this disorder of how you perceive time, and like, Hmm, you know, we let things expand to the amount of time allotted, and then some and so we need, like, deadlines for this stuff, like, and so if I feel like there's no deadline on me feeling better, or prioritizing myself, or whatever it is, like I just, I will just fill that time with other things because, and it has been externally set deadline to like, if I make up my own deadline, like, I will blow through it, like, it just, it's like, it doesn't exist, because I know it's made up, like I like outsmart the deadline, like, to my own detriment. Um, you know, but that doesn't, that time doesn't last forever. And it sounds like you get reminders that, you know, none of us are guaranteed any amount of time.Colleen Schnettler  31:38  So, and to be fair, like, on the other side of that coin, I sometimes I'm not, I want to say convinced, but I am sometimes concerned that like all of my businesses will not be successful, because I'm not willing to sacrifice everything else in my life. And, you know, so there's two sides to that, right? Like, I might always have a SAS that makes $1,000 a month and just hang out here, because I'm not willing to work 8090 100 hours a week to make it happen. So you know, trade offs, butMichele Hansen  32:10  I also I don't feel like I'm sacrificing everything because I still do have like, like, family life is also something I'm not going to sacrifice because I think it's something that I did in the past. And now I don't you know, I mean, like today's like, kind of a totally packed day for me, schedule wise. And I was like, you know, tonight, I'm just gonna, like, put our daughter to bed and probably, like, fall asleep with her. Like, but you know, we hadColleen Schnettler  32:41  her, but it is 530 Your time right now already. So, you know, I have something after that. Right. And you're going to do another podcast as soon as we get off this podcast. So and I know a lot of that is timezone stuff. ButMichele Hansen  32:53  which suck. I hate them. Yeah. Like not being able to do anything with customers until like 8am at the earliest, or at sorry, like 2pm if they're an early riser, usually 3pm Six, if it's California, like, yeah, that isColleen Schnettler  33:11  rough. Okay, so let's go back. Let's circle back circle back to you. Because we got a little distracted. And how we get the circle back. I know we're running out of time to solve all your problems. So in 30 minutes,Unknown Speaker  33:30  I think we have five minutes left till your next podcast.Colleen Schnettler  33:35  But seriously, like, what what is your? I'm so happy. Okay, so when you brought this up yesterday with our group, I was so happy to see that, because it showed me that you were fine. You were finally seeing it. And so what is your plan?Michele Hansen  33:52  Dude, I don't have one. I we I'm stuck in the middle of this like,Colleen Schnettler  33:56  so you don't know. You're still young? No idea, I think. Yeah.Michele Hansen  34:00  I mean, I was like, trying this week. I was like, maybe I can like, you know, dude, you could do stuff like Tuesday, Wednesday, and then do extracurricular stuff Thursday, but then it kind of ended up meshing together. And I'm like, actually, I really need to, like, sequester myself and like, get several focused hours of work done on like, Monday afternoons, like, I don't know, that just sounds like more like planning and scheduling. And when it does sound like that sounds like you know, sort of optimizing within the current bounds rather than like actually stepping back and taking time to like, reflect and focus on myself, which is just I think that's the bigger thing is I don't know how to do that. Like, well, and I was like, should I hire a coach, but then I was like, I feel like I don't have time for more meetings. Like, you know, it's just like a coach. IColleen Schnettler  34:51  hire a relaxing coach. How do I relax, coach? Yeah, I think you're right, like trying to over optimize your schedule is not the solution. You have to fundamentally changed the box, right? And I knowMichele Hansen  35:02  the paradigm is wrong. And I'm just working within the current paradigm because I don't know anything else. I just got it. It's not working.Colleen Schnettler  35:11  Right? Like, I know those ideas I threw out, I know you're not going to sell the company or hire someone or move to the United States. But my point is like, you could I mean, there are other options that are available to me. So try to think outside the box because you have to change the box because the box is not working for you. Yeah.Michele Hansen  35:31  Yeah. Well, that's a lot for me to,Unknown Speaker  35:37  you're gonna think about it. You promise?Michele Hansen  35:39  I'm gonna think about it. I'm gonna buy some books about stuff. I don't know. I don't know.Unknown Speaker  35:52  Okay, I was giving myselfMichele Hansen  35:53  homework not the solution, either.Unknown Speaker  35:55  That's not not the solution is read a book about how to relax, read a book about how to stop writingMichele Hansen  36:02  about relaxing, right? Like, it's not like, relaxing without meditating. Like,Colleen Schnettler  36:06  it's not the right word. You know,Michele Hansen  36:08  I already meditate anyway. Like, it's not like it's, yeah, it's I don't know, I don't know what it like, I don't know anybody listening. You've gone through burnout. You have some the, I feel like at this point, I less need like solutions from people. And I more need, like, hope thinking about it, if that makes sense. Like framing a problem. Right? Yeah. So anyway, if anyone's gone through this, like, let me know, and you want to, you know, DM with me or something about it, and, or you have a book that like really helped you when you went through it. I feel like burnout is I've gathered that's very different for everyone. And the solutions are very different from everyone. So think I'm intentionally not asking for solutions, because that needs to be something that I figure out, right? Otherwise, because I'm just gonna sit here. Yeah, no, it's gonna work. That's gonna work and then I'm not gonna do what the problem, right? I need to I don't know. I need to think different think outside the box. You did new box.Colleen Schnettler  37:13  You need a new box. Okay, well, I wish you luck. Keep me posted on how it goes. And I think with that, we will wrap up this week's episode of the software Show podcast. Please reach out to Michelle on Twitter. If you have any advice or you yourself have gone through burnout. I think those would be welcome conversations. And let us know what you thought of the show. We're at software slash pod till next week.Michele Hansen  37:40  This episode was also brought to you by tele tele is a browser based screen recorder. For videos that showcase your work and share your knowledge. You can capture your screen, camera and present slides. You can also customize your videos with backgrounds layouts and other video clips. Tella makes it easy to record updates for your teammates, launch videos for your followers and demos for your customers. Record your next product demo with tele visit tele.tv/software Social to get 30% off tele proMichele HansenThis episode was also brought to you by Tella.Tella is a browser-based screen recorder for videos that showcase your work and share your knowledge.You can capture your screen, camera, and present slides. You can also customise your videos with backgrounds, layouts, and other video clips.Tella makes it easy to record updates for your team mates, launch videos for your followers, and demos for your customers.Record your next product demo with Tella.Visit tella.tv/softwaresocial to get 30% off Tella Pro

Brian Roland is a Social Entrepreneur and Founder of Abenity, the 6x Inc. 5000 Company that's powering corporate perks for top brands including U.S. Bank and MasterCard. And while Abenity provides millions of subscribers with private discounts, the company's social mission is fighting extreme poverty with every program they deliver. Abenity recently exceeded a million dollars of total giving and hired a CEO to accelerate growth with their fully remote team. Brian lives in Scottsdale with his wife and 3 daughters and is investing his time in efforts that help like-minded entrepreneurs establish a social mission of their own.   Most passionate about In 2006, my brother and I built a SAS company (software as a service) that helps large corporations offer employee perks and benefits to their people. We've negotiated discounts on everything from pizza and the zoo to movie tickets, oil changes, car rentals, and hotels. We put it all in one spot for our clients and brand it to look like the company and the employees saved coupons all over the United States and travel offers across the world where they can enjoy special corporate perks. When we founded our business, we really wanted to stand for something outside of our industry. So, we built our business with a social mission. There was an output to our cause for every input into the business. That is what gives me the most passion and mission at this point in my career. Brian's career and story As a third-grader, I was making laminated folders because my folders would tear apart. I started playing the trumpet when I was young. It teaches you to be the entrepreneurial solo artist, where you're running the show and everybody's looking at you. It teaches you to be a team player, where you're sitting in the symphony and blending in so that nobody notices your contribution, but they hear it, they see everything. That led to teaching trumpet lessons, which led to making a CD and moving to Nashville to go to school, which led me to sell cell phones—having the a-ha moment that the music industry is actually not that entrepreneurial. In that role, I discovered this gap: Companies would love to offer perks and benefits to their people but they had a hard time finding the perks to offer and vetting the purchase to make sure they were good. That's how we built Abenity. We've probably built five or six businesses inside of it. This is what led me, two years ago, to realize that the business had grown to a certain level of maturity where the number of businesses that I could launch within Abenity reached its peak in terms of what the team could have accomplished in a healthy way. There was this moment when it was like our business didn't need an entrepreneur anymore. It needed people to help execute and set standards and focus on growth. Those are areas that fell outside of my passion areas. So, there was time to put the right people in place to take the business to the next level. And that's what we did. Today I'm kind of the chief evangelist for the brand, which allows me to be available here talking to you. Best advice for entrepreneurs As an entrepreneur, you're really in a testing experimental process all the time. This means you have to be really sensitive to what is, and isn't, working. You have to be really present to what people's needs are. Part of the discovery process of becoming an entrepreneur is looking for gaps and thinking, ‘How can I fill that gap? How can I bridge that gap?' Wherever you are, you're looking for gaps. That's the makings of entrepreneurship. When you see a gap, how do you fill it? Think about how to fill it and if you're equipped to fill it. That's really step one for entrepreneurship. From there, it's being willing to take the risk, to take that first step and go for it. The biggest, most critical failure with customers A lot of failures looks like trial and error. It's an...

A lot of businesses use one designated person to come up with their ideas. What if, instead of one, a business had four different perspectives working together on an assignment or a task? Ian Garlic talks to Will Burns, the Founder of Ideasicle X, about his new SAS platform designed specifically for four people to work together on ideas. Will discusses how this model is important and beneficial to the improvement of any project. He also discusses how he convinced RadioShack to invite his agency to a pitch with 20 other agencies, where he ultimately won. What You'll Learn:The Magic of a Group of FourHow the Wrong Ideas Lead to the Best IdeasThe Idea Generation Software That Will Improve Any AssignmentHow Will Convinced RadioShack to Invite His Agency to a PitchConnect with Will:Ideasicle XLinkedInWillB@ideasiclex.com Resources:Connect with IanBook a Discovery Call Today with Our ExpertsSubscribe to the YouTube Channel See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The reputation of Australia's elite Special Air Service, the SAS, has been seriously undermined by disturbing allegations of war crimes in Afghanistan. The allegations shocked the nation, and led to an Australian Federal Police investigation, and the Brereton inquiry into war crimes. Paul Barclay speaks to ABC journalist and author, Mark Willacy, whose Gold Walkley award winning 4 Corners program included video footage of an illegal killing.

-- Sas and Rone are reporting live from Minneapolis: reviewing the mall of America, steroids, rhythmic breathing, shooting guns, Gruen, Bryce Hall, & more -- Full episode also available on YouTube -- New merch coming soon

Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs, but a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care, and Hey Check It is here to help- Hey Check It is a website performance monitoring and optimization tool- Goes beyond just core web vitals to give you a full picture on how to optimize your website to give your users an optimal, happy experience- Includes AI-generated SEO data, accessibility scanning and site speed checks with suggestions on how to optimize, spelling and grammar checking, custom sitemaps, and a number of various tools to help youStart a free trial today at heycheckit.comAUTOMATED TRANSCRIPTMichele Hansen  0:00  Hey, welcome back to software social, I am super excited to have a guest with me this week. It is Matt wensing, who is founder of Summit, which is a tool for financial modeling. Previously, he was founder of risk pulse, which was acquired in 2019, which was an enterprise SAS. I'm also the co host of out of beta. Matt, welcome. Thanks, Michelle.Matt Wensing  0:31  I'm really excited to be here, too. I'm a listener. And I just love it. So this is fun.Michele Hansen  0:37  So I have been wanting to talk to you for a really long time. And there is one tweet that you sent out in particular, that made me really want to talk to you. So in January, you tweeted out some notes you had taken from customer research that you did for Summit. And you were working with what the jobs to be done world calls the forces diagram, which is basically this diagram we use to show the different pushes and pulls and anxieties and habits people have around the tools they use, and why they might be looking for something new, but also why they might stay with what they're doing right now. And I am so curious to hear kind of like how this came about, and how you have been using customer research as you explore summits. So can you kind of like take us back in time to when you first started researching Summit?Matt Wensing  1:52  Yeah, absolutely. So it's funny that there's actually an overlap here between even knowing what jobs be done enforces progress is and that initial research. So I attend the business of software conference each year in the States, so there's one in Europe and the States, but every October, in Boston, folks get together, at least pretty COVID and cross fingers soon. And Bob molesta is a regular speaker there as well, who is not sure the godfather of the forces of progress framework in a lot of ways. And I just remember being this is probably Oh, man, time's flying, right. So let's just say five years ago, I wanted to say three and like now, it's not three, it's probably five years ago, I listened to him interview, an audience member, kind of a mock customer interview, live about purchasing a car. And the way that they were able to take a dialogue and really parse it into a framework that you could then take away from that, and then keep doing that with more and more conversation. It just was like, Okay, this is definitely a tool that I need to add to my tool belt like this is, this is amazing. What's interesting is then fast forward into Summit, like by that time in the history of my previous company, I was doing sales, enterprise sales, mostly it wasn't doing a lot of customer research, at least in terms of the early sort of genesis of the product. So I don't know that I got to use it a lot. Back then it was mostly just listening to like we did do enterprise deals where there were custom features involved. But really, I got to use it fresh, you know, when you're second time founder, a lot of times you're like, Oh, I'm gonna do this the right way, this time around and actually use more tools and framework things I've learned. And forces progress is one of those. So I wanted to build this tool to do financial modeling. But that is such an ambiguous target that I knew I needed to figure out the value proposition. What does that really mean? What do people want? So funny enough, I gave a talk at business a software as a lightning talk in 2019. And I kind of use that as a launching point. I didn't frame it as, hey, I'm selling a product. I didn't even have a product. I had a little prototype, basically. But I use that talk to share. Really, the problem, socialize the problem space, if you will talk about, hey, this is this is a challenge, isn't it? Like this is a pain. Here's a little tool I made to kind of deal with that pain. And I really tried to draw some business lessons out of it. But really, at that same time, I started to have conversations with potential customers and prospects. And as they talked to me, I started cataloger file their feedback into these different kind of buckets, right, kind of the tool that I had learned previously and yeah, I just kind of did that every you know a few months would kind of refresh my understanding of what they were saying and built up this. This list organized list of feedback which I guess I'll put a bow on it and say it really think helped me understand the product strategy, like what did the product strategy need to be, for me to go into this space that was otherwise very nebulous? Like, how do I have opinion? Like what should my opinions be about the tool and what it needs to do? Right?Michele Hansen  5:19  Mm hmm. It's really it's really interesting that you use basically that talk as sort of a, I guess, sort of, in a way, sort of what Patrick McKenzie would call a friend catcher, to attract people to you to talk about the problem. But then because you had that experience with the forces of progress and with seeing Bob Maestas speak who, by the way, his his book, demand side sales actually has real customer interviews in it that are all broken down by the forces. And it's like, it's so good, like it should be on everybody's shelf. And then, but you you were able to process that. And I think that's so important, because sometimes there can can feel like there's this gap between for people who are new to research of how do I go from talking to people to actually designing value? And how do I figure out okay, I've talked to these people, I know what these problems are, I know what I'm interested in. But then what is the product? And it sounds like you were able to bridge that? So I'm curious if you can kind of dive into when you went from this point of understanding the problem space socializing the problem space, you kind of had a prototype, but like, how did the prototype sort of snowball with that? And how did you figure out where it was valuable?Matt Wensing  6:48  Yeah, so to put a timeline on this, this was, what you're describing now is essentially the journey from late 20, October 2019, through probably April, May of this year, so you know, almost almost two years, essentially. And during that time, I've released multiple versions of the products, really knowing that this was not going to be it. Now I'm a developer, a full stack developer who can build full, I can build applications top to bottom, not as strong as they used to be on the front end, but like it works. And what I was essentially trying to do was understand, okay, so there are few risks of the business. And funnily enough, Patrick McKenzie was one of the first people I pinged about this idea, because was his work at stripe Atlas and stripe. And just in general, I knew that he would have interesting opinion. And his thoughts were okay, financial modeling is interesting. But it sounds like it could be transactional, like, somebody has a need, they do it. And then they're gone. And I knew I wanted to build a SAS. And so that was like, Okay, that's a great point. Because a lot of times, the use cases that would come up when I talked to people were, oh, yeah, I have this investor meeting, or Oh, yeah, I have this fundraiser. Oh, yeah, I need to figure this thing out. And it sounded like it had a pretty finite shelf life of utility. People come they use it, then they go away. I was like, okay, that's not a great recurring revenue business, you know, because it sounds like something you could just sell for $50 one time, and then people don't ever need to keep paying you anything. So I recognize that pretty early on that engagement was a key risk to the business being a sustaining recurring revenue model. And engagement is tricky, because as much as you want to do, you know, mock ups and kind of smoke tests and things that are not you don't want to over invest in engineering, it's very hard to de risk engagements with a paper mock up or a screenshot or a prototype, like, how do you know that they're gonna come back to it unless they actually get to use something. So I basically spent those 18 to 24 months, releasing, what I knew were really technically debt laden, let's put it that way versions of the product, where all I cared was that the front end was communicating what I wanted it to like, this is what this is, this is what this does for you. If you click this button, this happens, and it works, how it works less important. So I built a lot of basically throw away versions of the product, which was expensive, but I felt like it was the key to knowing would people actually come back and reuse it? And I guess let's pause there. That was my approach. And that was why I took that approach to de risking or, or getting more valuable feedback from people than just like, a conversation or interview right? And then I think I paired that with, do you use Excel to use sheets, you know, how do you do this today? But I learned, I just want to point out, I learned from both the usage of the early versions and the customer conversations.Michele Hansen  10:12  I love how you underscored there, how the customers intrinsic behavior and their intrinsic needs, drive usage of the product, like there's only so many sort of engagement hacks that you can do to make someone come back to a product. But like, if they only need to raise money every 18 months, then there's nothing that you can do that will make them come back daily or weekly, because their fundamental underlying need for the product is infrequent. And I'm reminded of the pain and frequency framework from Dez trainer, which, you know, he said, you know, that that most, you know, painful and frequent is sort of the best quadrant to be in, because people have an underlying need for something and they're annoyed by it. But infrequent and painful, can be kind of a danger zone, it can be a space for good products, you know, I think, you know, I sort of think of like buying a house and getting a mortgage is very expensive. And it's so complicated. And it's, you know, expensive to get it wrong, but it's very infrequent. But other things that are infrequent and painful, you know, can maybe not be a great business, which it sounds like you had some indications that the underlying need for this, what you were originally thinking would not be frequent and and therefore people would not have a subscription. And so rather than staying with that, and going down the path, and then a year from now being like oh my god, I have this churn problem. How do I keep people to stay around? You pivoted towards something that was more frequent.Matt Wensing  11:58  Yeah, that's exactly right. So I often use the metaphor for the first version as like, because I didn't know what else to build. So I just bought, I just built, I built the version that I knew people would use at least that first time, right? Because then I knew it was gonna fail. I felt like it was gonna fail. But I was like, okay, but I have to figure out the bridge from here to there. Like, I have to take a step. And so I'm going to give them at least gonna give them that initial thing and then just see, will they tell me like, you know, what else would be great is if, you know, like, what else could I learn by doing this? And so I built kind of that coin operated version, I call it like a vending machine for a financial forecast. Because my original thought was, yeah, people need a forecast. That was the value proposition, how fast can I get them a forecast that that works. And people use that. But then again, it was the churn problem, it was the going away, it was the it was hard to build, you know, that raving fan base, that you need to get something off the ground? Because it just wasn't sustainable. So I realized that to build a SAS in this space, I was going to have to figure out what did they do regularly? You know, like, Okay, if you only close your books once a month, or even your maybe you don't even do that, because you have a bookkeeper or accountant that does that for you. If you only raise money every 18 months, like what is it that you do? That's close to this that is more frequent? And that's really how I got drawn into more of the modeling space meaning like, Okay, but what, tell me about what you do regularly, and if you look at what these founders made, if I would just have them, show me what you made, show me what you made, I basically got into this thing of like, you are spending time somewhere. Where is that? What are you doing, right? And they would show me, the spreadsheets that they were making, that were very ephemeral, like they were very, they were throwaway products, if you will, they would make this like, I gotta figure out if I can afford this higher. And so they would just come into a G sheet G sheets, not new, right? Create a little spreadsheet and then use it for like a day, and then go away. But then it's like, well, how many of these do you have? Say, Oh, well, I mean, I probably do that, you know, once a once every other week, once a week, twice a month, like sometimes multiple times. And I'm like, wait a minute. So you don't build like a giant, you know, official forecast all the time. But you are using spreadsheets a lot. And you are doing things with money in spreadsheets a lot. Like Tell me about that. And that started to inform our strategy of Wait a minute, you know, there's really two customers here are two potential users. There's the CFO, if you will, or the analyst who builds those. That's the founder, even if it's a founder that's a hat they were where they do it like every once in a while I have to get serious about finance and do this proper thing. And then there's the non CFO founder, I just need something to solve my question or answer my question, person persona, who actually kind of does this work that they don't show to anyone else? They're really embarrassed. They know it's not, you know, they know it's not. Right, like with a capital R, right. But they're doing it a lot. Like they're doing this to make all the little decisions about pricing and metrics and goals. And how much can I afford to pay this person, like, I'm like, wait a minute. Turns out, you're actually doing a lot of modeling, you just don't talk about it. And you don't, you don't show it to anybody because you're embarrassed, right? It's this like dirty little secret almost that you have that you build these things and make decisions. Because of course, you use numbers, nobody doesn't use numbers, but like, you just don't call this some financial model. So that was a key insight, realizing that there were these two personas that were actually living within the same person. And they had compartmentalize those very cleanly, but I was much more interested suddenly in the other person, right.Michele Hansen  16:13  That's so interesting. Like, you know that what you just showed there is, I think it's such a key, a key point and activity based design, which is the idea that we're designing for activities that people do and not for a specific person. And so in my book, for example, I talk about, you know, everything is a process, and everything is an activity. And the activity of you know, for example, one person might both have a Carraig pod coffee machine, and have a French press. But they use the Carib pod coffee machine when they're trying to get the kids to school in the morning, and they're rushed, and they're doing a million other things. And they use the French press on the weekend when they have a friend over to chat. And to them. Those are two very different activities that they're doing. But they're being done by the same person. And so if you design for the person, that wouldn't make sense to you that they would own both, and would try to pigeonhole them into one. But really, they're a person who's doing many different activities with many different goals. And so you have this one activity where I need to create financial models for official purposes, to share them with other people, maybe for compliance reasons, maybe for sort of me in my official capacity reasons where other people are reviewing this. And then there's also this activity of, I need to make a decision that involves numbers. And it's basically this sort of like there's the official activity. And then there's the back of the envelopes activity, which is where this kind of I've heard people describe summit as like a whiteboard that does math. Yes. And that is also where that activity comes in. And that's more so replacing those those millions of spreadsheets and which other really fascinating about this is that so often is the core thing and jobs to be done. So often the competitors to a product is not actually another piece of software or another product product. It's somebody doing it. It's them making a spreadsheet. It's something in Google Docs, it's like them doing it by hand like that is as much a competitor as another piece of software. It's like, there's so many pieces. Yes, this is great.Matt Wensing  18:37  Oh, yeah. And that's why, you know, I try to explain, like, this is such a journey, because you, we joke within the company, like, gosh, we did you know, we were so dumb a week ago, like how we thought we were so smart, but we knew nothing. And when I started this journey, you know, you just so in the dark, and then you take these steps and you realize, wait a minute, wait a minute. And so it is kind of a weird thing that you have this perennial sort of optimism as a founder that there's something here and you can you want to figure out that if you're wrong, you're wrong, but at the same time, people are not telling you. You know, and this is the thing I think so key like this is a skill to develop is people are not what people don't say is as important as what they do say and like learning to find out that wait a minute, we were we were standing in this room, if you will, in your mind talking about financial modeling. And here I am thinking that this is where the gold is, you know, this is trying to get all my answers. And you're telling me next door you've got like 12 spreadsheets with numbers and money in them and you're you didn't tell me about like, how did I How was I so close but yet like you didn't you know, like if I had just if I had given up them right. I would have missed the room that actually had all the gold in it right? But it was literally connected but in their mind at what it was a different room. It's like oh, you're asking Give me about this. But, you know, you're not asking about that. And so that's what's so kind of vexing for like, in hindsight, I just laugh because stumbling across the actual value is is something that you, you partly luck part skill and getting people to. And really I'll cut my rambling short by saying I think observation is more powerful in those cases than just question and answer because the real key for me was when I said, Show me, show me what you have today. And they had to, you know, at that point, they couldn't say, like, Why have nothing. But they did have to say, Oh, well, let me open up the store over here and show you what I have today, because I haven't been through a fundraiser, and I haven't, whatever, but I've got something. And it's only when I said, Show me that I got to see like, wait a minute, there's this whole other room here, that is exactly where I want to be. So we pivoted our strategy towards that other space. And it's been very fruitful.Michele Hansen  21:12  And there's two really important skills for entrepreneurs there, that you just sort of, underscored without really stating them outright, that I want to, I want to hone in on for a second. The first one was basically thinking about how much of an idiot you were a week ago, and thinking about that, and not being embarrassed about it, but kind of being like, delighted that you have learned something, and that you have added to your understanding of customers. And, and kind of being able to like, not laugh at yourself, but almost sort of look at it with like this, this sort of it's almost a pride in a way of being like, man, I was such an idiot six months ago, like, and it's kind of delightful to have those moments of realizing how much you didn't know, but to be delighted by that, and not be embarrassed by that. And kind of as a company being able to say, like, Yeah, we had no idea we're doing. And now we six months from now, we're also gonna say we, you know, we don't know what we're doing. Right? Like, but you know, we are aware of that. And then also the curiosity, the combination of that approach to learning and being excited by learning and looking for surprises, and then allowing yourself to be curious when you talk to the customers, and not just accepting what they're saying at face value. But saying, Well, can you? What's what's in this closet over here, like, and just, but like, you can only get to that point if you have really built trust with them. Because as you said earlier, they were embarrassed by doing this back of the envelope math, they were embarrassed by their legions of spreadsheets of whether they can hire people because it wasn't real official forecasts done by a BI team, like maybe they they're so small, they don't even have a BI team. Right? Like, exactly. So. And so they don't want to show this anyway. But when you did the interviews, they trusted you enough, which tells me that the way you ran the interviews was when you ran them really well, because they were willing to let you in and poke into what you thought was a little closet. But it turned out they were like pulling out a books and a book. And then the whole bookcase like turns around. And it's like their secret lair full of spreadsheets.Matt Wensing  23:36  Exactly, exactly. Was that they had made like yesterday, and then this one from today and that one from a week ago. And I'm like, wait a minute, you're not just doing this, like once every you're doing this, like, this is enough, guys, this is enough, you know? And like, what if you actually enjoy doing this? Like, oh, wow, you know, and so then it was like the opportunity to switch that negative emotion to a positive one and say, let's change embarrassment to fun and joy and just, let's embrace the informality of it by letting you do it this way. But we're going to level you up like we're going to make it better and faster and take out the tedium. So that's where I went back into my forces of progress. And I said, Okay, for this non CFO founder, what are their thoughts? And you know, they say stuff like, I'm embarrassed by my spreadsheet. I'm not very good at this,Michele Hansen  24:29  right. Also, their spreadsheet, like they love playing in the spreadsheet. TheyMatt Wensing  24:33  do love to play exactly. So they like the act of playing with it, right? It's almost like a child who's like, I love to finger paint and create things. But then it's like the kid who's embarrassed to show his parents or teacher whomever like well, you know, this is just for me. And so it was a very, like private activity. And so I was like, wait a minute, so this is an opportunity to say, Don't worry, we've got your back. Like, we'll make sure the math is right. We'll run the team will do the tedious parts for you. We'll make it look really well designed without you having to do the work of making it look professional. And we'll even help you use smarter, you know, building blocks to do this work. So you might not, you still might not use it to do that fundraiser, get that for an evaluation or whatever, like, you're still gonna have to create a spreadsheet, perhaps, for all those little decisions. Like, that's where summit wants to start, like, we want to be your tool for that, right? And I think over time, we can grow into the, oh, hey, you're really, you're really skilled at Excel? Are you really good at G sheets, and you have total, you are like, really confident and proud of your work? We'll get to you, but like this, then give us that shape of adoption that that's okay. Like, there's enough people. And in fact, there's more people. It's a bigger market of people who are a little bit embarrassed, a little shy and a little inexperienced, frankly, with this stuff than the other one. And oh, gosh, guess what team? Like, the feature requirements are completely different. Like, instead of having to build the enterprise, incredible version, that's going to win people away who are like veterans, right? We get to start with, like, the people who need the simplest things, you know, like that was the other exciting part is that, wow, you're just doing addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, basically, right? Like, okay, great. You know, I don't have to like, cuz I will say, you know, I don't want to leave this part out, like there was a pivotal moment in those 18 months where I was, hadn't decided yet that this is where we were going to go. And I found myself torn, trying to build more and more sophisticated tools and analysis for that really confident diehard user. And they were so demanding, and so exacting, and I was just barely getting, like, I'd say a b plus, with them. And it was causing me to almost have to go, Okay, this is going to end up being a consulting business, if I'm not careful, because I'm going to end up having to do a lot of bespoke work a lot of custom work for them, I'm going to end up, you know, having to get into the models that mean, I have to become a data scientist, like it was just so intense, that I realized, okay, this is not the business I want to build either like, this is just a bad fit from a, you know, I want a high margin, self serve SAS business. And I might come back to y'all. But this is not where I'm going to start. I can't I can't start here, because there's only one of me. At that point, there was one of me so. So I made the decision, then, okay, we're going all in on the other side. And that also allowed us to say, wait a minute, you know, all these opinions, we were baking into the product, all these best practices, all these things, we kind of need to like, lower that not come across as so proper and formal and the right way to do things, you know, you can only do things the right way, right? We actually need to be more invited, it changed our whole brand, right? We went through a rebrand where we said, instead of being serious and professional and discipline looking like Wall Street kind of style branding, you know, traditional financial branding, we actually said, what if we were playful and inviting and inclusive, and, you know, just warm and friendly with our branding, that would actually resonate more with these people who treat this stuff as their playground, right, like you said, and so it didn't just affect your product strategy, you know, really changed our whole positioning and brand identity, once we realized that this was the this was the side of the person we wanted to go after. Right?Michele Hansen  28:48  Hmm. It's so interesting that there were multiple inflection points there. Were you really stopped to think like, is this the business we should build? Whether that's from a product perspective? Or from a, you know, like a business perspective? Like, is this the business I want to be in? And when those points came? In sounds like you were quite reflective about them. And, you know, you know what, when you're at that point where you realized, you know, that, you know, that people were not doing the modeling, you initially thought they were on the frequency that you hoped they would be. You could have been threatened by that discovery. And you could have decided to, you know, give up or dig your heels in on it. And you didn't, and I think that it's such an important mental shift that needs to happen in order to really do customer research well, is to be open to what you're going to hear and to follow it wherever it's going to take you. And so you initially thought You were building a serious financial modeling tool for, you know, say startups, CFOs, and founders that is polished and professional, and they can give it to their boards or whatever. Yep. And, and then it turns out, you're actually making this fun private playground for them to make decisions in, in a way that helps them do it faster, and maybe doesn't use all of the skills they have about, you know, you know, decision support systems they learned in business school, but instead, it's somewhere that's like, safe. And yeah, for them. That's a very different business than you thought you were building. And you allowed yourself to be, you know, sort of led by the customer, still applying your own, you know, analysis on top of that, still asking yourself, you know, of all of these different directions that customers leading me in, or I could allow them to lead me in, you know, are those businesses I want to be in? Are those products I want to build? Is that is that the future I want for myself and for this company? And you allow that answer to be No, right? You didn't just force yourself into it. But you said, No, and we're going to do something else. Because there's something else that's interesting here, like there's still something here. Yeah. And maybe that's not it, but there's something else, but allowing yourself to sort of just just sort of to go with it, but still be steering it at the same time. And I don't I don't know if I'm quite conceptualizing that very well.Matt Wensing  31:40  No, yeah, it describes, you know, basically describes, I would say, December of 2020, in January 2021, where we just realized that I realized that this was not the right segments, this is not the right value prop for the right, you know, hats that people were wearing. And we were able to charge more money, but it wasn't going to grow the way I wanted to. So we rebuilt the darn thing, again, for hopefully the last time in April, May and June of this year, and then release the beta version in July. And it's really exciting. Now we've had three months of growth, we've had three months of consecutive growth, which had never happened before. Right. So revenue up each month, and retention. So we've actually had negative net negative retention each month, which has never happened before, either. So it turns out these people love it, it's doing what they want to the prices, right? And there's a lot of them. So I'm like, This is great. You know, you know, we have that we have a business and I will come it's funny, full circle, we now have some of our users who are founders, saying, hey, one of them, it blew my mind, he shared a screenshot of a zoom call with his board, where he did show summit on the call, which he never would have done with the G sheet that he created. Right. But because it looks like rigor, it looks rigorous. It's actually doing justice to his thoughts. Like he's a super smart person. But I think the problem before was like a mismatch between, you know, the tools that he had to express his logic and his thinking and his, his conceptual gifts, right, like, very, very talented, but like, you put them in front of a spreadsheet, and he would, you know, that just wasn't his native tongue. Right. It wasn't where he wanted wasn't the right tool for him to express those thoughts. Now that he and they have that they are starting to share them more on tweets, and with board meetings and like, which is great for us. But I think it's a testament to the fact that they're proud of their work now. Right. And that's really exciting for us. So yeah, it's it's a journey.Michele Hansen  34:01  It sounds like it has been, I mean, an incredible journey so far. I'm I'm super excited to see where this takes you. i You know, I've had a little bit of experience with with you know, with working with analysts myself, because I used to work in sort of the the financial space and I definitely knew a lot of people who love their spreadsheets and, you know, like genuinely reveled in making discounted cash flows and excel and very proud of your macros. Yeah, thing. And, yeah, yeah. Like, just like, and I mean, I feel like I have a little bit of that where I like, you know, genuinely enjoy, like playing in a spreadsheet. Yeah. And it's been so cool to see everything that you're sharing about different kinds of things that you could do with it, but also people doing it for their own personal budgeting and like, you know, founders, like founder financial situations are always so like weird and different and like, figuring out whether, you know, can I? Can I do this? Can I send my kid to this school? Can I, you know, can I buy a house, you know, all of those sorts of different things. Um, really, really exciting stuff. And, and, you know, I noticed you tweeted recently that you feel like you're getting to that, that point where it's really, it's really starting to take off and have that. You know, you know, you feel like you have found the product, you have discovered the products, which is the hardest part, and that you're getting those rabid fans. And actually, I told you this already, but I was at a wedding a couple of weeks ago. And these table I was sitting at like the, you know, there are two guys who work in finance sitting across the table from me. And like one of them was like telling them like about summit and how awesome it was and how he had to get access to it and all this like stuff you've built with it, you know, and I was on the other side of this huge table, and I wasn't really part of that conversation. But I was like, What are they talking about what they think I think, you know, wow, like, Oh, my God, like the internet in real life happening at this table at wedding.Matt Wensing  36:12  Founders delight right there. Yeah, yeah.Michele Hansen  36:16  But I think there's, I think we're gonna be hearing a lot more of people using summit and stuff so you can do with it. It has been an absolute delight talking to you today. Thank you so much for giving us some insights into your customer research and product discovery process. I really appreciate.Matt Wensing  36:38  You're welcome. Thanks for having me, Michelle.Michele HansenThis episode was also brought to you by Tella.Tella is a browser-based screen recorder for videos that showcase your work and share your knowledge.You can capture your screen, camera, and present slides. You can also customise your videos with backgrounds, layouts, and other video clips.Tella makes it easy to record updates for your team mates, launch videos for your followers, and demos for your customers.Record your next product demo with Tella.Visit tella.tv/softwaresocial to get 30% off Tella Pro

Nick is a highly successful athlete across a broad spectrum of physical and mental disciplines. He has won competitions internationally across a range of events including sprint triathlons, ultra mountain races and has successfully endured the harshness of long expeditions with multiple events across the world with the Special Forces. In this podcast, Nick tells us about his time as a 23 SAS operative whilst serving in the middle-east. Read 'Eating Smoke: One Man's Descent into Crystal Meth Psychosis in Hong Kong's Triad Heartland.' Paperback UK: https://amzn.to/2YoeaPx Paperback US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0993543944 Support the podcast at: https://www.patreon.com/christhrall (£2 per month plus perks) https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-our-veterans-to-tell-their-story https://paypal.me/TeamThrall Sign up for my NON-SPAM newsletter and FREE books: https://christhrall.com/mailing-list/ Social media Links: https://facebook.com/christhrall https://twitter.com/christhrall https://instagram.com/chris.thrall https://linkedin.com/in/christhrall https://youtube.com/christhrall https://discord.gg/yqvHRUN https://christhrall.com 

Ben Pronk is the Managing Partner of Mettle Global, a premium corporate advisory firm specialising in establishing and developing organisational resilience and preparing companies for the volatility and uncertainty of the contemporary world. His first career spanned 24 years in the Australian Army, with the majority of that time spent in the Special Air Service (SAS) Regiment. In this capacity, Ben served on multiple operational deployments and was decorated for leadership in action. He concluded his service as Commanding Officer of the SAS. This was a great chat with a great bloke, who's now working with us regular civilians, helping us navigate life with greater awareness, understanding, resilience, skill and joy.

Are you looking to start your transition to the role of agency CEO? David Anderson started living the entrepreneurial dream more than twenty years ago when he started Off Madison Ave, a full-service marketing agency he founded with his partner after getting fired from his agency job. After two decades as a business owner, David has experienced success and failure. Having learned from many successes and the hard knocks of business and life. In his conversation with Jason, he talks about the many challenges and mistakes that helped him learn, why taking a step back from day-to-day operations is a marathon, not a sprint, the importance of building your leadership team and letting them make their own mistakes, and what he has learned after many agency acquisitions. 3 Golden Nuggets Taking a step back is a process. After many years in the business and finally being able to take a step back to being his agency's CEO, David admits that he made many mistakes along the way. The first time, he recalls, he hired someone from the outside and did not have a solid onboarding process for that person. That fell apart quickly and they even ended up losing clients. Later, he had a leadership team implement EOS, which he highly recommends, but he chose not to be the innovator and integrator. It fell apart and he had to step in to fix the situation. Finally, he brought somebody up through the ranks, worked on a transition plan, clearly defined authority, and is holding that person accountable. “It's a process,” he says, “and you will have your failures in it.” Allow leaders to learn from mistakes. David has figured out a leadership team system that works for his agency. There were mistakes along the way, however. One of them was tying the head of the team's financial bonus to their financial income. He later changed that and now their bonuses are tied to the overall performance of the agency, not of an individual. Also, what business owners need to do is let go as they bring on those senior people. You don't hire senior people and micromanage. They don't want to be told what to do. With that, you also have to accept that there will be failures and things that don't work. If you want to grow your team, you need to let them make mistakes. On mergers and acquisitions. With 24 years in the business, our guest has seen his fair share of acquisitions. So, what does he look for in a potential purchase? In their case, as a full-service agency, they look for businesses that can complement their services. So they've purchased agencies that allow them to gain a deeper focus on some aspect of the business. On the financial side, they are definitely looking at the EBITDA. He's also made some mistakes on this front, and his advice is that, when it comes to people who will help you evaluate a potential acquisitions organization, they need to understand the industry. The person selling won't mind if you're uneducated, but you will surely overpay. Sponsors and Resources Sharpspring: Today's episode is sponsored by Sharpspring, an all-in-one revenue growth platform that provides all of the marketing automation, CRM, & sales features you need to support your entire customer lifecycle. Partner with an affordable marketing automation provider that you can trust. Head over to sharpspring.com/smartagency to enjoy an exclusive offer for podcast listeners. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Building Your Leadership Team & Letting Go of Day-to-Day Operations is a Marathon, Not a Sprint Jason: [00:00:00] What's up, agency owners? Jason Swenk here with another amazing episode and amazing guest. We're going to talk to an eight-figure agency owner who's going to talk about how he really kind of transitioned out of really doing everything and transitioned more to a leadership role where he doesn't have to make all the decisions, which I think a lot of us like. We're also going to talk about M&A, growth, getting bigger, so sit back and let's get into the episode. Hey, David. Welcome to the show. David: [00:00:35] Hey, Jason. Thank you for having me. Looking forward to it. Jason: [00:00:38] Yeah. Excited to have you on. So tell us who you are and what do you do? David: [00:00:42] All right. So Dave Anderson, I live here in sunny Arizona, where it's still a hundred plus degrees here, today when we're recording this anyway. I am in Arizona. I have been an agency owner for about 23, 24 years now and worked at another agency for a good three years before that. The name of the agency is Off Madison Ave. We are a full service, kind of going back to the old terms, full-service agency that does everything from creative media, public relations, social media, digital. All of the kind of stuff that we've had. We're about 35 full-time people but our business model is really evolved to where we're with a plethora of great talent out there now of how we're using a real combination of full-time people and people with specific skill sets to do our diverse client work every day. Jason: [00:01:41] And so tell me kind of how did you guys get started or why did you start? David: [00:01:45] Ah, that's a great question. So I have one business partner. Roger Hernie, a great friend of mine. So we were both working… Jason: [00:01:52] Still, still business partner? David: [00:01:53] Still business partners, 23, 24 years in October years later, still business partners. And I can, I can give some insights if you like, why I think that has worked overtime. But we were both working at the same agency. And to be honest with you, I got fired one day. First time I'd ever been fired in my life from a job. Um, my wife and I were one month pregnant with our first child on the way. I still remember going and telling her and picking her up at work. And she said, how'd the day go? And I said, well, they got fired today. That'll stress out your wife in any situation. Jason: [00:02:26] Was it Friday? David: [00:02:27] Uh, it was Monday. I started the week off the right way for her. So… Jason: [00:02:33] I've always been fired on Fridays. David: [00:02:35] Yeah, no, this was a Monday. And it's a story that needs to be told over alcohol. The agency kind of turned into, um, the culture was bad and the CEO asked me one day why it was bad. And I told him my honest opinion and I didn't last long after that. So I come from the PR side of things. Background in politics, PR. My business partner worked for McCann Erickson, he is the creative guy. And we just working together, saw the value… Again, I'm an old guy way back then were PR and creative, but didn't really work well together, they were more siloed. And we really wanted to bring that together to bring a total marketing picture. So yeah, 23 years later, we've done three small acquisitions over the years to help us grow. And like every one of you, we've had our best of days on our absolutely worst of days. Um, I'm a lot grayer now, but you know, we've survived. Jason: [00:03:32] Very cool. And, um, tell me what's been the process…? How long did it take you? Or if you kind of remember some of the key elements or key things that happen to get to a point where you don't have to be in the day-to-day operations anymore. David: [00:03:50] Yeah. It's a great question. And I'm going to be honest with you. I severely messed it up two times before I got it right. And it's a thing that I work with kind of both other business owners now, and agency owners. The process of working on the business every day, not in the business. And then ultimately be able to move where I am now today, where I don't really have any day-to-day role in the company. I'm still involved from a financial side. If we do an acquisition, like we did last November, I'm very involved. Um, but I work directly with our GM. So the first time I messed it up, I hired a person from the outside who supposedly had a lot of agency experience, bigger agency actually. And after going through the process, what I did horribly wrong was I didn't have a solid onboarding process for the new person that was coming on. Honestly, I kind of said, this person's hired, he starts on Monday. And by Monday afternoon I was like, good luck! You know? And within six months, we've lost clients. Most hurtful was I lost, I think, three of our top-five leadership team members because of that person's leadership style, how they were doing. Just a bad, bad time. So I had to come back in and fix that. The second time, I had a leadership team and we implemented EOS to be honest with you, which I'm a big fan of. But I chose not to be the visionary or the integrator and I left it to our executive team and the partners that were involved in the business. And that went really bad too, because when you kind of pick the integrator to lead, the other people didn't agree. There was no solid decision-making. There was not clear definition on when to bring it to the owners or me as the owner of decisions. And, again, it completely fell apart and I stepped back into fix it again. Now this time, I think I have finally gotten it right where we brought somebody up through the ranks, worked on a transition plan, clearly defined authority. I am holding that person accountable. The biggest thing where I failed was lack of accountability as I kind of turned the day-to-day operations over to others. Now there's a level of accountability. I still am very involved at times on the EOS part of it on our rocks and making sure where we are. And we are more than a year into it now and the person who runs the bay, they, her name is Sasha has done a fantastic job. The agency is growing. Our clients are happy. Our culture has improved. So what I would say is it's a process. It's a marathon, not a sprint, and you will have your failures in it. Jason: [00:06:47] Is your agency struggling to deliver real revenue growth results to your clients? You know, agency marketers can consolidate data and align marketing and sales teams goals to achieve real results for your agency and clients using revenue growth platforms. SharpSpring is an all-in-one platform built for agencies like yours to optimize digital marketing strategies with simple, powerful automation. Manage your entire funnel all in SharpSpring. Now for a limited time, my smart agency listeners will receive your first month free and half off onboarding with SharpSpring. Just visit sharpspring.com/smartagency to schedule your demo and grab this offer. That's sharpspring.com/smartagency. Now I've seen it all kinds of different ways where… There's two ways I've seen it work out well. One is to bring in… One of the first guests actually brought in someone as a consultant to work with the team and to really kind of get to know them. And then eventually they hired that person as the CEO and it was kind of like, oh, well, you're part of us. You've been working with us for six months. That kind of stuff. I've seen that work. And it's a good test. And then I've also seen kind of going through the ranks. But a lot of times what people struggle with is if you don't have people through the ranks, what do you do? And that's why I wanted to kind of give you option number one, that I've seen work. I've also seen it not work where they brought in someone temporarily, and then it doesn't work, but that's fine. They're not the CEO yet. You're testing out the waters and then you can kind of go… Let's talk about a lot of times when agency owners get over the couple of million mark, right? Like you can get to the million mark by accident, I feel. And then you can kind of get to the 2 million mark by accident and a lot of luck. But then to really kind of take it up from there, you have to build out a really good leadership team. So let's talk about how did you build out your leadership team? Like not particular names, but what were their roles? What did you learn from that? Like, what did you… what didn't work? David: [00:09:05] Yeah, so great question. And again, I feel we're in a good spot now, but lots of mistakes along the way. So how we do it, we call them group heads in our organization and we put people at the lead of like our account service team, our creative team, our PR team, and our media team and creative team. So we put a person at the head of all of them, and then I made them the leadership team that they were the ones to work collectively. Um, you know, we're not big enough to, and never have been. And I, quite frankly, I don't think I agree with having people that are just managers and not… So they're working directors is what we call them. They were directors that head of their group, group heads. But they were the ones who were responsible for making sure we weren't siloed and the workflow and functioning like that. And that has worked very well with us. But as agency owners know, actually any CEO leadership knows… The challenge there is managing the personalities, the issues, the finances. You know, one of the biggest mistakes I made was tying my group head's compensation to the financial bonus to their financial income. And then it was a question of how much money do I get? Because I get to put more in my pocket on that. And so what I did was their, and still is, their compensation of bonuses and stuff like that is based on the overall performance of the agency, not of an individual. Otherwise, you'll always have people looking out for their own personal wellbeing that they go through. So it's really that… Now also as a business owner, agency owner, what you need to do, two things is one is you need to let go as you bring on those senior people. You don't hire senior people and micromanage. They don't want to come in and be told what to do, but you as an owner have to relinquish that. And with that, you have to accept, there's going to be failure. There's going to be things that don't work. These are how people learn. And we as owners, when the first time something goes wrong, we jump back in to save the day and tell everybody else what they did wrong. And believe me, I, you know, if you can see me, I've lots of gray hair. This is how I got to that point. But I think, and I've seen, you know, in entrepreneurs, business people as general, we hate to fail we're as competitive. But I believe if you really want to grow your team and you have to let them fail, just like our kids, you know, you have to learn lessons the hard way. So I hope that's helpful. Jason: [00:11:39] Yep. What was your first leadership role that you hired and second and third? David: [00:11:44] I still remember that when it was Roger and I. Well, the first full leadership role that I hired was in our media group because it was the area that we were most knowledgeable in. Roger being a creative guy, me being a PR person. So we brought that media expertise and was one of the very first things. Jason: [00:12:06] Gotcha. And why the media role if you guys had expertise in it? David: [00:12:11] Well, we really didn't. We were faking it. We were using a lot of outsiders to do the work for us. And when we got to a certain point in billings of media, we realized that we needed that expertise of not only just for placing and all of that, but the analytics behind it. And that's where we really needed the expertise. That's why we started there. Jason: [00:12:35] Gotcha. I always like to see when, uh, when people are like, well, so many people hire based on things that they don't know. And I'm like, I think the best thing is, is like hiring on the things, you know. Cause then you can actually, you know, are they full of shit or not, you know? Going there. Kind of switching focus a little bit… This focuses on growth, mergers and acquisitions and buying agencies. You know, with our agency Republics, that's how we've been able to grow, we've done 10 acquisitions so far in the past year and a half, and just had tremendous growth. So, and you've said you've done some MNA as well. So what do you look for? What's worked what hasn't worked when you bought agencies? David: [00:13:21] Yeah, that's a great question. Our philosophy right now is to find things that complement the services. We aren't necessarily looking for another full-service agency. That's going to come in with creative teams, PR teams, all of that. Like the acquisition we did, um, in November of last year was a PR agency based out of San Francisco. And we wanted to really bolster our PR capabilities. It was also a step in over 20 something years and probably something I would do different, maybe do different is… We've always been more of a generalist agency. We've had some core areas of focus and we really want to move to a much deeper focus in two areas specifically. And this was a great way to bring in a book of clients that fit into that area where we want to be more specific. So I would say is, you know, an M&A there's two types: financial, which you're just adding revenue dollars, and they're strategic. And we're looking more strategic with the one we just did. The one before that allowed us to get deeper into technology. How do we use technology more in our marketing? As a result of that, we've also started another startup, um, a SAS-based product in the marketing space that we've also done that. And if I go way back to the early two-thousands, we were a very traditional agency and we didn't have the digital capabilities that the whole marketing world was going to. And we made an acquisition to get us really deep into that space also. So they've almost all been very strategic for us. Jason: [00:15:05] Awesome. And when you're looking at buying an agency or when you bought these agencies, is it a roll up? Is it cash? How are you evaluating them? David: [00:15:18] Yeah. You know, we do the typical valuations stuff that we have. And I'm sure you've seen more than once or twice that people in their minds have a much greater valuation for their agency than what the numbers… I can tell by your face you've seen that a couple of times. And I've had, you know, while we've done four acquisitions, I've probably had 20 where we got to a serious conversation that we do. So we really look at the numbers. I'm actually a finance major coming out of school. But then you also have to take the intangibles into it. So it's always, usually a combination of some upfront money earn out that, you know, goes with it from there. Jason: [00:16:01] How do you evaluate how much they're worth? Is it on EBITDA? Is it on top line? What are some of the factors that you put in there? David: [00:16:08] More EBITDA. More is EBITDA. And then, you know, you play the whole add back game of what to, you know, really kind of goes to… From my country club membership, to my Ferrari, to my vacation home in there to get to where, it's a game. I mean, you know, as well as I do, it's a game. What I would tell… and I'm sure you've had similar experiences use people who can help evaluate a potential acquisitions organization who understands our industry. One of the big mistakes I made on the first acquisition that we did is I used my regular attorney who knew nothing about the marketing industry. I overpaid without a doubt because of that, the, you know, you know what you're doing. Because it does, it does become a game with add backs and you know… How owners are willing to structure their compensation. Jason: [00:17:04] Well, if you're selling you don't mind, if the person buying you is uneducated. Make sure you tell us that lawyer so all the sellers can use that versus David: [00:17:14] Yeah, I totally agree with you. The other thing, I had this happen once as we went through a whole valuation. We were moving forward and then it came back and I had this owner. It was a PR agency said… I think the valuation of their company came back and like 1.5 million, something like that. You know, pretty small agency. And the agency said, well, just our contacts are worth a million dollars alone. Who we know in the media is worth just a million dollars alone. So I would never sell for less than $4 million. And I was like, well, I guess we won't be moving forward. Jason: [00:17:47] Yeah. I always like to tell that person I'm like, well, you can wish in one hand and crap in the other, it gets filled up first. David: [00:17:53] I love that. I'm going to steal that if that's okay. Cause that's very well said. Jason: [00:17:58] Yeah, Well, I stole that from cousin Eddie on Vegas Vacation. David: [00:18:04] Love it. Absolutely love it. Jason: [00:18:06] Well, this has all been great, David, is there anything I didn't ask you that you think would benefit the audience? David: [00:18:11] No. Well, a couple things. One is, you know, as agency owners and entrepreneurs, make sure you have a great network around you of advisers is what I would say. Find like-minded… I'm a member of EO Entrepreneurs Organization. It's, you know, provides the CEO forum. Vistage. I was part of Vistage. Get people around you who know more than you, have more experiences that you, that you can experience share. Because that's how we learn and grow. And that's what we do best. I would also say, do whatever you have to do to work on the business every day, not in the business. And I fully understand when you're a smaller agency crossing that first million-dollar mark, $2 million mark, and you're finally making good money. And then the thought of hiring a six-digit leader, a six-figure income. Oh my gosh, that's going to set me back again. That's how you grow, you know, and it's just what you need to do um… If you want a growth the company. If you want a lifestyle company then, you know, that's perfect. And neither one is right or wrong. It's just, you have to marry it up with what you want to do. And the whole process I went through of getting out of the day-to-day, it's absolutely a marathon. It's not a sprint. I would say you need at least 18 months to plan properly for that. That's just my experience to do it in the right way. Jason: [00:19:36] Awesome. And, uh, what's uh, the agency website people go and check you guys out? David: [00:19:40] Uh, Off Madison Ave. A V E, not avenue. So offmadisonave.com. Jason: [00:19:46] Awesome. Well, thanks so much, David, for coming on the show. It was awesome. And I totally agree with you on surrounding yourself with amazing people that are further ahead, so they can actually help you and see the things… And kind of setting me up for that, that was perfect. I want to invite all of you to go to digitalagencyelite.com. This is our exclusive mastermind just for experienced agency owners. So I understand that there's other groups out there that have all kinds of different industries. But if you want to be surrounded by amazing agency owners on a consistent basis, I want all of you to go to digitalagencyelite.com. And until next time have a Swenk day.

The guys are back again with an all new episode! Listen in and Tap that SAS!

The guys are back again with an all new episode! Listen in and Tap that SAS!

Prezidentka republiky odkázala Hegerovej vláde, slovami Igora Matoviča, že ak sa nevie dohodnúť na reformách, nech ide radšej od toho. Krátko na to dokázali OĽANO, SaS a Za ľudí aj bez hlasov Kollára pretlačiť v parlamente reformu nemocníc do druhého čítania. Čo to znamená? Dokáže teda koalícia presadiť reformy, ktoré si dala do programu? Bude ich už teraz riešiť všetky bez Kollára a hnutia Sme Rodina? A kedy uvidíme novú daňovo – odvodovú reformu? Vláda chce sprísniť aj protipandemické opatrenia. Čo má teda v pláne a pre sú mäkšie ako navrhovali odborníci z konzília? Pôjdeme teda cestou premorenia štátu aj za cenu straty tisícok životov, alebo je ešte aj iná šanca? Braňo Závodský sa rozprával s predsedom hnutia OĽANO, vicepremiérom a ministrom financií Igorom Matovičom.

"Reformy treba urobiť, ale nie touto formou. Keď si myslia, že tú reformu prinesú a hodia na stôl a my povieme áno, tak sú na omyle. Tie regióny pýtajú niečo iné. Ja som pevne presvedčený, že keby si urobili domácu úlohu a nerobili to od stola z Bratislavy a neboli by arogantní a hlasy regiónov by počúvali, tak by tento problém nemusel byť a už dávno by sme boli dohodnutí. Nemôže byť reforma taká, že sa s tými, čo sa ich to najviac dotkne nebude komunikovať," hovorí predseda Sme rodina Boris Kollár o tom prečo jeho strana nepodporuje žiadnu z troch veľkých reforiem.  "Štrajkujú študenti, rektori, vysoké školy. Tak asi niekde robíme chybu, keď všetci štrajkujú. Nemôže byť chyba aj v nás? Týmto my koalíciu zachraňujeme, lebo spoločnosť je polarizovaná, rozoštvaná. A ešte priliať do tohto to, že im zrušíme nemocnice a súdy, a ja neviem čo všetko, tak to tiež nie je v poriadku. Týmto zachraňujeme koalíciu a pevne verím, že sa nakoniec dohodneme," dodáva Kollár.  Má zmysel takto fungovať v koalícii? Čo hovorí na kritiku SaS, že sú populisti a majú podporiť reformy? Ide sa súdiť s vyšetrovateľom Čurillom? Pozrite si rozhovor s predsedom Sme rodina Borisom Kollárom.   –  Ak máte pre nám spätnú väzbu, odkaz alebo nápad, napíšte nám na podcasty@sme.sk –  Všetky podcasty denníka SME nájdete na sme.sk/podcasty  –  Podporte vznik podcastu Rozhovory ZKH a kúpte si digitálne predplatné SME.sk na sme.sk/podcast  –  Odoberajte aj denný newsletter SME.sk s najdôležitejšími správami na sme.sk/suhrnsme  –  Ďakujeme, že počúvate podcast Rozhovory ZKH. 

Recorded October 1, 2021 | The moment everyone has been waiting for is finally here. Son of a Boy Dad x Bussin' With The Boys pod. Intro: (0:00 - 7:00) Sas + Rone episode begins: (7:00) Sas & Dave Portnoy's beef, and Rone's role as a mentor: (16:22 - 19:00) Will's memorable night out with Jelly Roll (24:40 - 28:50) Lil Sas's back story & why Sas hates Tik Tok: (30:10 - 44:00) Sas's broke his arm from tripping on his lunch box (57:00 - 1:02:50) Sas opens up about why he hates high school, kind of (1:05:45 - 1:13:35) How Rone & Sas found each other (1:18:48 - 1:25:22) Will's sperm troopers (1:36:20 - 1:39:50) Will fight im Rough 'N Rowdy (1:46:46 - 1:57:00) Naturally, Will opens up the podcast by: 1. Shouting out the Titans and 2. Telling himself that Nebraska is still the best 3-win team in the country. Then we get into one of the most anticipated interviews of all time. Will quickly gets it out of Sas that there is beef between him and higher ups. We learn that Sas did indeed come up with the term "Saturdays' are for the Boys' as well as "numbies" both of which Dave stole from him. Then we get into how Rone and Sas linked up and started the Son of a Boy Dad empire. After the boys reminisce about their high school days we come to find out that Sas has a lot internal issues with going back to visit his high school. Will exposes himself a little bit in the next segment because after a brutal night out with Jelly Roll, let's just say Will blamed Waffle for something she 100% didn't do. We move onto the Rough'N Rowdy scene and Rone wastes no time gauging Will's interest and playing matchmaker for him. Who do you think the boy should fight?? ----- EARN YOUR WOLF: Want to be featured on our Instagram Story? Screenshot this episode, tag @bussinwtb, and share it to your Story. The Boys will take care of the rest... ----- SHOP: https://store.barstoolsports.com/collections/bussin-with-the-boys FOLLOW THE BOYS Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bussinwtb Twitter: https://twitter.com/BussinWTB Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BussinWTB Website: https://www.bussinwtb.com ----- SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS: Chevy: Chevy Silverado - The Strongest, Most Advanced Silverado Ever. Georgia Boots: Head over to https://barstool.link/GeorgiaBoot and use code BUSSIN for 20% off Hooters: Visit https://barstool.link/HootersBarstool and use code BARSTOOL for $10 off $50+ orders Rhoback: Go to https://barstool.link/bussin and use the code “BUSSIN” for 20% off your first order! Roman: Go to https://barstool.link/RomanBWTB you can get your first month of Swipes for just $5, when you choose a monthly plan. Sling TV: Go to https://barstool.link/Sling to sign up now and get your first month starting at 10 dollars.

Ant Middleton and Clint talk about SAS and SBS, rugby, head shots versus center mass, how Ant ended up in prison for assaulting a cop, bouncing back from rock bottom, keeping a sense of humor in the face of adversity and much more. All this plus a natural disaster.... Ant Middleton is a British adventurer, writer, television personality and former soldier. In 2018 he climbed Everest for the TV show Extreme Everest with Ant Middleton. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

飛碟聯播網《飛碟早餐 唐湘龍時間》2021.11.08 週一閱讀單元 燎原出版主編 查理 《精銳戰士：從斯巴達到阿富汗戰爭的2500年歷史》 ※主題：《精銳戰士：從斯巴達到阿富汗戰爭的2500年歷史》/ 雷諾夫．費恩斯 / 燎原出版 ※來賓：燎原出版主編 查理 ◎節目介紹： 人類的文明發展史總是與戰爭脫離不了干係。一個國家與另一個國家的交替、更迭，往往是戰爭在其中扮演了催化劑。在歷史長河的關鍵時刻，總會有那麼一支精銳戰士所組成的部隊挺身而出，為自己的生存與土地而戰，奮起抵抗，殲滅威脅。他們改變了歷史，形塑了我們的世界，他們英勇奮戰的故事，直到今天依然為世人所津津樂道，在歷史留下印記。 他們是精銳中的精銳，這些超級戰士的英勇事蹟經常現身於電影大銀幕或電玩世界中。精銳部隊的故事總是從默默無名的過程開啟，最後卻以石破天驚之姿告知世人他們的存在。無論是在戰場上戰鬥、衝入要塞和城堡、營救人質，還是暗殺敵方領袖，這些人都必須承擔最高風險。 不同於他們為人所知的豐功偉業，精銳戰士充滿了神秘感，作者雷諾夫‧費恩斯爵士梳理了所有精銳戰士的起源，研究他們的武器和戰術，最重要的，還有他們背後的秘辛和對歷史進程的影響。他們的組成與訓練，他們的秘技與戰略，都在本書一一細述。看看他們彼此如何一個勝過一個，成為地表最強悍代表的奮戰過程。 作為曾是特種部隊一分子的作者，費恩斯找出25支縱貫超過2500年歷史的精銳部隊作戰史，揭露從斯巴達戰士到現代反恐特種部隊的歷史，融合作者在險地冒險犯難的探險經歷以及費恩斯家族史，敘說精銳戰士如何練就一身好膽，又如何在歷史留名。作者以其絕佳的說故事本領，帶著讀者了解人類發展史中影響深遠的一群戰士。 ◎作者介紹：雷諾夫．費恩斯（Ranulph Fiennes） 1944年出生於英國伯克郡，是一名著名的極限探險家，擁有多項耐力紀錄，被《金氏世界紀錄大全》譽為世界首屈一指的探險家。是史上第一位經陸路到過南北兩極的人類，也是第一位徒步穿越南極洲的人。2009年5月，以65歲最高齡紀錄，經過人生第3次嘗試才成功登頂聖母峰。大學畢業之後，他選擇加入父親的舊部隊——皇家蘇格蘭灰騎兵團擔任少尉軍官，之後加入空降特勤團（SAS），專長爆破和炸藥。後因誤用炸藥而離開SAS。但最後以英國軍官的身分加入阿曼陸軍，於1971獲得了該國的英勇勳章。他是唯一同時獲得南、北兩極獎章的人士。費恩斯帶領了30多次探險活動，其中包括史上第一次的極地巡迴探險。 ▶ 《飛碟早餐》FB粉絲團 https://www.facebook.com/ufobreakfast/ ▶ 飛碟聯播網FB粉絲團 https://www.facebook.com/ufonetwork921/ ▶ 網路線上收聽 http://www.uforadio.com.tw/stream/stream.html ▶ 飛碟APP，讓你收聽零距離 Android：https://reurl.cc/j78ZKm iOS：https://reurl.cc/ZOG3LA ▶ 飛碟Podcast SoundOn : https://bit.ly/30Ia8Ti Apple Podcasts : https://apple.co/3jFpP6x Spotify : https://spoti.fi/2CPzneD Google 播客：https://bit.ly/3gCTb3G KKBOX：https://reurl.cc/MZR0K4

Andrew Warner has been part of the internet startup scene since 1997. Andrew and his brother built a $30 million per year online business, which they later sold. After taking an extended vacation and doing some traveling, Andrew started Mixergy. Mixergy helps ambitious upstarts learn from some of the most successful people in business.Andrew and I talk about his new book, Stop Asking Questions. It's a great read on leading dynamic interviews, and learning anything from anyone. We also talk about longevity and burnout as an entrepreneur. Andrew gives me feedback about my interviewing style, the direction I should take the podcast, and much more.In this episode, you'll learn: Why you need to understand and communicate your mission How to get your guest excited about being interviewed What to do instead of asking questions How to hook your audience and keep them engaged Links & Resources ConvertKit Gregg Spiridellis JibJab Ali Abdaal The Web App Challenge: From Zero to $5,000/month In 6 Months Groove Zendesk Help Scout Jordan Harbinger Noah Kagan Bob Hiler Seth Godin Morning Brew Alex Lieberman Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) Notion Sahil Bloom Ryan Holiday Brent Underwood Ghost Town Living Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator Damn Gravity Paul Graham Y Combinator Nathan Barry: Authority Ira Glass NPR This American Life Barbara Walters Richard Nixon interview Oprah interview with Lance Armstrong Matt Mullenweg Chris Pearson Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue Peter Thiel Gawker Nick Denton The Wall Street Journal Rohit Sharma SanDisk Jason Calacanis Dickie Bush Sean McCabe Daily Content Machine Jordan Peterson Tribes Warren Buffet Sam Walton Ted Turner GothamChess LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda.com) Inc.com: Selling Your Company When You're Running on Fumes Chess.com Mark Cuban James Altucher Rod Drury Andrew Warner's Links Andrew Warner Stop Asking Questions Mixergy Episode Transcript[00:00:00] Andrew:The top 10 interviews of all time are news-based interviews. We, as podcasters, keep thinking, “How do I get enough in the can, so if I die tomorrow, there's enough interviews to last for a month, so I can be consistent, and the audience loves me.”That's great, but I think we should also be open to what's going on in the world today. Let's go talk to that person today. If there's an artist who's suddenly done something, we should go ask to do an interview with them.[00:00:32] Nathan:In this episode, I talk to my friend, Andrew Warner, who I've known for a long time. He actually played a really crucial role in the ConvertKit story in the early days, and provided some great encouragement along the way to help me continue the company, and get through some tough spots.We actually don't get into that in this episode, but it takes an interesting turn because we just dive right in.Andrew's got a book on interviewing. He runs Mixergy. He's been, running Mixergy for a long time. We talk about longevity and burnout, and a bunch of other things. He dives in and challenges me, and gives me feedback on my interviewing style. Where I should take the Podcast, and a bunch of other stuff. It's more of a casual conversation than the back-and-forth interview of how he grew his business. But I think you'll like it. It's a lot of what I'm going for on the show.So anyway, enjoy the episode.Andrew, welcome to the show.[00:01:25] Andrew:Thanks for having me on.[00:01:26] Nathan:There's all kinds of things we can talk about today, but I want to start with the new book that you got coming out.This is actually slightly intimidating; I am interviewing someone who has a book coming out about how to be good at interviewing. Where do we even go from here? You were saying that you have thoughts?[00:01:47] Andrew:I have feedback for you. I have a thoughts on your program.[00:01:51] Nathan:I'm now even more nervous.[00:01:52] Andrew:I've been listening, and I've been following, and I've been looking for questioning styles. Is there feedback I could give him? I mean, I've wrote a whole book on it. I should have tons of ideas on that.I don't. Here's the thing that stood out for me watching you. There's an ease and a comfort with these guests, but I'm trying to figure out what you're trying to do with the Podcast. What is connecting them? Are you trying to bring me, the listener, in and teach me how to become a better creator who's going to grow an audience and make a career out of it? Or are you trying to learn for yourself what to do?How to become closer to what Ali Abdaal doing, for example, or Sahil Bloom? Are you trying to do what they did, and grow your audience? Or is it a combination of the two?I think the lack of that focus makes me feel a little untethered, and I know that being untethered and going raw, and letting it go anywhere is fine, but I think it would be helpful if you gave me a mission.What's the mission that Nathan Barry's on with the Podcast. Why is he doing these interviews?[00:02:56] Nathan:Oh, that's interesting. Because it's probably different: my mission, versus the audience members' mission.[00:03:05] Andrew:I think you should have a boat together and, but go ahead.[00:03:08] Nathan:I was going to say mine is to meet interesting people. Like that's the thing I found that, podcasts are the pressure from two sides, one as a creator, as an individual online, like I'm not going to set aside the time to be like, you know what, I'm going to meet one interesting person a week and we're just going to have a conversation riff on something like that.Doesn't happen the times that, you know, the years that I didn't do this show, I didn't set aside like deliberate time to do that. And then the other thing is if I were to set aside that time and send out that email, I think a lot of people would be like, I kind of had to have a busy week. I don't know that I've, you know, like yeah, sure.Nathan, whoever you are. I did a Google search. You seem moderately interesting. I'm not sure that I want to get on that.Like a, get to know[00:03:58] Andrew:They wouldn't and it would be awkward. And you're right. The Podcast gives you an excuse. I think you should go higher level with it though. I think you should go deep to the point where you feel vulnerable. I think what you should do is say something like this, isn't it. You have to go into your own into your own mission and say, this is what it is.And just, so let me set the context for why this matters. I think it helps the audience know, but it also helps you get better guests to give better of themselves. I talk in the book about how I was interviewing Greg spirit, Dallas, the guy who created jib, jab, you know, those old viral video, it was a fire video factory that also created apps that allowed you to turn your yourself into like a viral meme that you could then send to your friends.Anyway, he didn't know me. He was incredibly successful. He was, I think, person of the year, a company of the year named by time. He was on the tonight show because he created these videos that had gone viral. And yes. He said yes, because a friend of a friend invited him, but I could see that he was just kind of slouching.He was wearing a baseball cap. It wasn't a good position. And then he said, why are we doing this? And I said, I want to do a story. That's so important. That tells the story of how you built your business. Yes. For my audience. So they see how new businesses are being built online, but let's make it so clear about what you did, that your great grandkids can listen to this.And then they will know how to great grandfather do this and put us in this situation. And that's what I wanted. I wanted for him to create that. And he told me that afterwards, if he had known that that was a mission, he wouldn't have put his hat on. He said that after that, he started thinking about the business in a more in depth way, visualizing his great grandchild.And then later on, he asked me for that recording so that he could have it in his family collection. So the reason I say that is I want us to have a mission. That's that important that yes. You could get somebody to sit in front of the camera because you're telling me you're doing a podcast, frankly.Right. You're with ConvertKit they're going to say yes, but how do you bring the best out of them? And that's it. And so that's why I'm doing this. And so one suggestion for you is to say something like.I'm Nathan, I've been a creator my whole life, but I'm starting from scratch right now with YouTube.I've got 435 people watching YouTube. It's not terrible, but it's clearly not where I want to end up. And so what I've decided to do is instead of saying, I've created the book authority, I wrote it. I'm the one who created software that all these creators are using a ConvertKit. Instead of, instead of allowing myself to have the comfort of all my past successes, I'm going to have the discomfort of saying, I don't know what it's like.And so I'm going to bring on all these people who, because maybe I've got credibility from ConvertKit are going to do interviews with me. And they're going to teach me like Alia doll and others are going to teach me how they became better creators, better business people. I'm going to use it to inform my, my, growth on YouTube.And by the way, You'll all get to follow along. And if you want to follow along and build along with me, this is going to come from an earnest place. Now I've obviously gone. Long-winded cause I'm kind of riffing here, but that's a mission. And now we're watching as you go from four to 500, now we care about your growth.Now there's someone giving you feedback and more importantly, there's someone who then can go back years later and see the breadcrumbs. Even if the whole thing fails and say, you know what?Nathan made it in virtual reality videos. And he's amazing. But look at what he did when YouTube was there. He clearly didn't do it, but he aspired right. I could aspire to, if I don't do it, I'll do it in the next level. That's that's what I'm going for with it. I talk too much sometimes and give people too much, too much feedback. How does that sit with you?[00:07:14] Nathan:I like the idea. I particularly love anytime a creator's going on a journey and inviting people along for it, right. When you're sitting there and giving advice or whatever else, it's just not that compelling to follow it unless there's a destination in mind. So I did that with ConvertKit in the early days of, I said, like I called it the web app challenge said, I'm trying to grow it from zero to 5,000 a month in recurring revenue.Within six months, I'm going to like live blog, the whole thing. people love that another example would be also in the SAS space, but, the company grew, they did a customer support software and they, I think. They were going from 25,000 a month to 500,000 a month was their goal. and they even have like, in their opt-in form, as they blogged and shared all the lessons, it had like a progress bar.You'd see, like MRR was at 40,000,[00:08:08] Andrew:Every time you read a blog post, you see the MRR and the reason that you don't remember what the number was is I believe that they changed it, you know, as they achieve the goal, they, they changed it to show the next goal on their list. And yeah, and you've got to follow along now. Why do I care? The groove, HQ or groove is, is growing a competitor to Zendesk and help scout.But now that I'm following along, I'm kind of invested now that I see how they're writing about their progress. I really do care. And by the way, what is this groove and why is it better than help scout and the others? Yeah. I agree with you. I think that makes a lot of sense. I think in conversations also, it makes a lot of sense.I think a lot of people will come to me and say, Andrew, can I just ask you for some feedback? I'm a student. Can I ask you for support? It's helpful for them to ask, but if they could ground me in the purpose, if you could say to somebody I'm coming to you with these questions, because this is where I'm trying to go, it changes the way that they react.It makes them also feel more on onboard with the mission. I have a sense that there is one, I'm just saying nail it, you know, who does it really good? who does a great job with it is a Jordan harbinger. He starts out his each episode is almost if you're a fan of his, it's almost like enough already. I get that.You're going to do an opt-in in the beginning of the Podcast. I get that. What you're trying to do is show us how to whatever network now and become better people. But it's fine. I'd much rather people say, I know too much about what this mission is. Then I don't.[00:09:26] Nathan:Do you who's afraid anyone else tuning in? What, what is Jordan's mission? What would he say is the mission that[00:09:32] Andrew:It's about, see, that's the other thing I can't actually, even though I've heard it a billion times, he's adjusted it. It's about, self-improvement making me a better person better, man. And so the earnestness of that makes me accept when he brings somebody on who's a little bit too academic who's, Jordan's interested in it or a little bit too practical to the point where it feels like I'm just getting too many tips on how to network and I don't need it, but I've got his sensibility.He's trying to make me a better person. And so I think with interviews, if you, if you give people the, the mission, they'll forgive more, they'll accommodate the largest and it does allow you to have a broader, a broader set of topics.[00:10:14] Nathan:Yeah. I'm thinking about the mission side of it. Like all of that resonates. and I love when an interview is questions are Like are the questions that they specifically want to know? It's not like I went through my list and this seems like a good question to ask instead. It's like, no, no, no, Andrew specifically, I want to know what should I do about, this?And I'll even call that out in a show and be like, look, I don't even care if there's an audience right now. Like this is my list, you know?[00:10:41] Andrew:Yes.[00:10:41] Nathan:But the, like if we dive into the mission, the one that you outlined doesn't quite resonate. And I think the reason. I think about, creators who have already made it in some way.And it starts to lose that earnestness. Like, honestly, I'm not that interested in, in growing a YouTube[00:11:00] Andrew:I don't think that that's I don't think that that's it for you. It's true. That's a little bit too. I don't know. It's it's a little, it's a little too early in the career. There is something there. I don't know what it is and it can't be enough. It can't be enough to say I need to meet interesting people because that's very youth centric and I'm not on a mission to watch you, unless you're really going to go for like the super right.And we're constantly aspiring, inspiring. the other thing it could be as you're running a company, you're trying to understand what's going on. No Kagan did that really well. I actually have the reason that I know this stuff is in order to write the book. I said, I have all my transcripts. I can study all the ways that I've questioned, but I also want to see what other people have done.And so Noah Kagan did this interview with an NPR producer. I had that transcribed to understand what he did and what he learned. One of the things that he did in that, that made that such a compelling interview is. He was a podcaster who wanted to improve his podcasting. And he, I think he even paid the producer to do an interview with him on his podcast so that he could learn from him.Right. And in the process, he's asking serious questions that he's really wondering. He's trying to figure out how to make a show more interesting for himself. Now. Clearly someone like me, who wants to make my Podcast more interesting. I'm like mentally scribbling notes as I'm running, listening to the podcasting.Oh yeah. The rule of three, like what are the three things you're going to show me?Well, yeah, at the end he did summarize it and he did edit. I don't like the edits at all because the edits take away some of the rawness of it and the discomfort which I personally enjoy, but I see now how he's editing it out.And it's, it's interesting to watch that progress.[00:12:32] Nathan:Yeah, I'm thinking through. The different angles that I could take with this. cause I like it and I feel like there's a, a thread that's not quite there. And I felt that on the show. Right. Cause people ask, oh, why are you having this guest on versus that guest? and it is that like, I, I find them interesting.There's also another angle of like probably half the guests maybe are on ConvertKit already. And so I want to highlight that. And then the other half of the guests aren't and I want them on ConvertKit and so that's an, you know, an incredibly easy, I can send you a cold email and be like, Andrew switched to ConvertKit.Right. Or I could be like, Hey, you know, have you on the show, we could talk. and we've gotten great people like in the music space and other areas from just having them on the show and then[00:13:18] Andrew:Can I give you, by the way, I know it's a sidetrack and I give you a great story of someone who did that. Okay. it's not someone that, you know, it's a guy who for years had helped me out. His name is Bob Highler every week he would get on a call with me and give me advice on how to improve the business.And then at one point he said, you know what? I need new clients. I want to start going after people who are, I want to start going after lawyers, helping them with their online ads, because lawyers aren't, aren't doing well enough.He started doing all these marketing campaigns because he's a marketer. And so one of the things he did was he got these cards printed up.He said, they look just like wedding invitations, beautiful. He, he mailed them out to lawyers. He got one, two responses. Like nobody would pay attention to a stranger, even if they were earnest and sending those out. And he goes, you know, and then he gets on a call. He doesn't even know what to say to people.If he just cold calling goes, I'm going to try to do that. And Andrew, I'm going to do an interview show for lawyers. He picked bankruptcy lawyers. He started asking them for interviews. They were all flattered because they also want another good Google hit. Right. And so they said yes to him and he asked them questions.Then I started learning the language. I forget all the different terms that he learned about how, about how they operate. But he said, inevitably at the end, they'll go after it was done. And say, by the way, what are you. And then he'd have a chance to tell them. And because he's built up this rapport and they trust him, they were much more likely to sign them.He signed up his customers, just like that, just like that. It's a, I think it's an, it's an unexplored way of doing it, of, of growing a business, taking an interest in someone, shining a light on them, helping them get that Google hit and helping them tell their story. And then by the way, will you pay attention to the fact that I've got a thing that if you like me, you might like also,[00:14:50] Nathan:So a few years ago, I was in New York and Seth Goden had come out to speak at our conference and he'd ever said, Hey, if you're in New York and want to make the pilgrimage up to Hastings on Hudson, you know, of outside the city, like come up and visit. And so I did that and it's so funny, cause it is like this pilgrimage to you, you like take the train up along the river. You know, I don't know what it is an hour and a half outside of the city. and I was asking Seth advice at his office, about like how to reach more authors. I think that was the question I asked him specifically and he just, he was like, well, what do authors want? And I was like, ah, I, some more books I guess.And he's like, yeah know. And so like we went through a series of questions, but he's basically what he came to was, find a way to get them attention so that they can grow their audience to sell more books. And he was suggesting a podcast is the way to do that. What's interesting is that's the side, like that's the other half of it, right.I want to meet interesting people. I want to, Like get more of those people that I find really interesting on ConvertKit pushed the limits of like, our customer base in, in those areas. And then the third thing is I want to do it in a way that's high leverage in my time. Write of, I want to do it.That creates something, for people watching and listening along so they can follow the journey. But I still don't see,I would say two thirds of that is about me, right?[00:16:18] Andrew:It's not only that, but all these things are byproducts more than they are the clear goal. You're going to get that. No matter what, if you just talk all day about what? No, not talk all day. If you do, what was it? I'm the founder of morning brew does nothing, but like a 15 minute, if that sometimes five minutes.[00:16:37] Nathan:Alex Lieberman.[00:16:38] Andrew:Yeah, just what, what goes on in his life now it's changed over the years or so that he's done it, but it's just, here's what we were thinking about today. Here's how I'm deciding to hire somebody BA done. He's just doing that. That's enough to get attention enough to also broaden his audience enough to bring us in and then so on.So I think if you just did nothing, but get on camera and talk for a bit, you'll get that. But I think a higher leverage thing is to tap into that personal mission and let all the others come through along the way and all the other benefits, meaning that you will get to meet people and change the way you think you will get to get people to switch to convert kit.And so on, by the way, that's such a, like an impressive thing for you to admit, to say, I want to have these guests on because I want to assign them up. I think a lot of people would have those ulterior motives and[00:17:23] Nathan:Oh, no, you got to just talk about, I mean, that's something you and I, for as long as we've known each other have been very, very transparent in both of our separate businesses and our conversations and it's just, everyone wants that. Right? Cause they're like, I think I know why Nathan is doing this, but he wants.And that would be weird, but if we go to the mission side of it, there's mission of like this, I'm going to improve the world side of mission, which definitely exists that can protect you. And I got my little plaque behind me. It says we exist to help creators are living. And so we can take that angle of it, thinking of like the, the goal journey side of things, since we're just riffing on ideas.One way that might be interesting is to make like a top 100 list of the top 100 creators we want on ConvertKit. And the whole podcast is about interviewing those people and reaching them. And, and so it could be like, this is what I'm trying to accomplish. And you're going to learn a whole bunch along the way as a listener, but you, you know, we check in on that.And then another angle that we could take that would be different is the, like we're going together. We're going to help the creator make the best version of their business. And so you make it more of a.We're both peers diving in on your business, riffing on it, you know, how would we improve it? that kind of thing.[00:18:43] Andrew:I think helping creators create a business, seems like something others have done, but not quite your approach, your style, the way that you will go and carve something is this is the thing that's over your head that says create. Is that something you carved in your wood shop? Then I saw on Instagram.Yeah, right. The sensibility of I've got to create it my way. Instead of that's a pain in the ass, I got a business to run who like, right. You're not going to see, for example, infusion soft, go, we need a plaque. Let's go to the wood shop. No, you're not. It's just not their sensibility. Right. Coming from a sensibility of someone who cares about the details, who every button matters in the software, everything behind your shoulder matters to you for yourself, even the stuff I imagine.If you look forward would have a meaning there, it wouldn't be random chaos. Is it random chaos in front of, on the[00:19:32] Nathan:The desk is random chaos, but there's a sign that says the future belongs to creators up there. And[00:19:38] Andrew:Okay. I think I might've even seen that online somewhere. So I think that coming, coming from the business point of view, With a sense of creator's taste, I think is something that would appeal to a lot of people. For whom seeing, for example, my take on business would be completely abhorring. All I care about is where the numbers are and what it's like.Right. Well, even allium doll's take on, it would not be, would not be right, because he's much more about every movement needs to matter. He can't just have a checkbox in notion it Ellis has to fire off five different other things that notion because otherwise you're wasting time. Why type five things when you could type one, right.It's a different sensibility. And I think you've always done really well drawing in that audience. I remember talking to a competitor of yours who started around the same time, also done really well about why you were, you were really growing tremendously faster. and they said he nailed it. He nailed who his audience is.It's the bloggers. It's these early creators who, who didn't have. Who didn't have anyone speaking for them. And you did that. And I think maybe that's an approach to saying, look, we are creators. And the business of creation is, or the business of being a creator is evolving and we want to learn about every part of it.And then it's interesting to hear how somebody growing their audience in an interesting way. How is somebody thinking about writing? I love that you asked Sahil bloom about how long it took him to write. I know he talks about it a bunch, but it's, it's interesting to hear him go with you about how it is like a five hour, seven hour writing job for him, right.To write fricking tweets. He's writing tweets, right? You've got people just firing off the tweet. He's spending five, seven hours on it. And, and he's also not a guy who's just like, right. It would be something if he was still in school playing baseball, and this is his intellectual, whatever. No, he's now running in investments.He's making decisions. He's helping promote his, his portfolio companies and he's spending five hours writing and he's doing it like one a week instead of one an hour. Right. It's all very interesting. And that approach, I think, ties completely well with ConvertKit.[00:21:41] Nathan:Okay. So where does that take us on like the mission or the hook for the show? Cause we're.[00:21:48] Andrew:Okay. Here's what I would do. I would, I would just keep riffing go. My name is Nathan Barry. You probably know me from convert kit. I'm doing this podcast because I like to meet interesting people. And here's the thing I'm trying to do or I'm I I'm doing it because I'm compelled to talk to these people who I admire.And I also want to learn from them about how they create and just riff on it. Like every week, even have every interview have a different one, until you feel like, oh, that's the one that feels just right. But if we just here, I want to have this person on, because I'm trying to learn this thing. I want to have this on because secretly I'm trying to see if I can get him to be at, see if I can get Ryan holiday to actually be on convert kit.Right. Boom. Now, now we're kind of following along as you're figuring it out. And that's also[00:22:29] Nathan:Yeah.[00:22:29] Andrew:The way, is Ryan holiday going to be on here or what?[00:22:31] Nathan:On the show,[00:22:33] Andrew:Yeah.[00:22:34] Nathan:Probably we were just talking the other day. We have a shared investment in a ghost town, So we, we often talk about that,[00:22:40] Andrew:Oh yeah. I've[00:22:42] Nathan:Other thing[00:22:43] Andrew:That ghost town. Oh, that's a whole other thing I've been watching that[00:22:45] Nathan:I need to have speaking of the ghost town, I didn't have Brent Underwood on because that Is an insane story of everything going on with town, but it's just been building this massive audience.[00:22:58] Andrew:Who's doing YouTube videos from there? He[00:23:00] Nathan:Yeah. And he's now got 1.2[00:23:01] Andrew:Yeah,[00:23:02] Nathan:Subscribers on YouTube, like 2 million on[00:23:04] Andrew:I had no idea. I watched him in the early days of the pandemic go into this place by himself. Almost get trapped, driving his car to get there. Right. I go, this is fun content. And usually when you watch someone like that and good morning, America go, and I'm going to jump out of this thing.And I've never jumped before, maybe whatever. I don't know.Yo, the producer's not going to let you die. It's fine. Here you go, dude. Who's just trying to get attention for this thing. Cause he has some investors who he wants to make sure get what they want. Yeah, you could die. What the hell is you doing?What? Like I'm going to, I'm going to go down this hole and see if there's anything over you yet. Dude, you could[00:23:41] Nathan:Yeah. It's, it's pretty wild. I actually, some of the weeks that he don't, he, that he didn't post the videos. I'd like, texted him, be like, Brett, you're still alive because you know, the video was the way that we knew every Friday, like, okay, Good Brent. Still alive, everything. Everything's good. Anyway, I got to have him[00:23:58] Andrew:All right. If you do talk to, if you talk to Ryan holiday, I feel like you totally nailed his writing style, where you, you said in one of your past episodes that he can take a whole historical story, sum it up in two sentences to help clarify the moment that he's writing about. And it's like a toss away thing, right? Just toss it away and then move on and go, dude. That's a whole freaking book. In fact, just turning the whole thing into just two sentences to fit in there would take silo, bloom five hours. You put it in a book with other, like there a bunch of other sentences. So that's good. But here's what I think you should talk to him about.Or here's my, my one suggestion. He has not talked about Marketing since he created, trust me. I'm a lot. Trust me. I'm lying, which was a phenomenal book that then I feel like he distanced himself from when he became more stoic and more intellectual. Fine. He is still a great, great marketer along your style, your tasty.And in fact, he's becoming the people who I can think of that are very, ConvertKit like philosophy in their creation plus promotion. He nails it, right? Art that takes so much pain that you've mentioned, and we've all seen it. He has boxes of index cards to create these sentences that most people would just throw away, not pay attention to, but are super meaningful.And at the same time, he knows how to promote. He knows how to get his ideas out there. He knows how to sell a coin that says you're going to die in Latin, that people put in their pockets that are more than just selling a coin. It's selling this transferable viral, real life thing. Right. So anyway. And is he should be on a ConvertKit too.[00:25:29] Nathan:He is, he is[00:25:30] Andrew:Okay. Good.[00:25:31] Nathan:Half of his list started in Berkeley. The other half are in the process of switching over. So, you know,[00:25:36] Andrew:Okay. Yeah, that's the hard part, dude. I I'm with infusion soft. I can't stand them. If you understand how much I do not like them. I do I ever talk negatively about anyone. No. Bring up politics, Joe Biden, Donald Trump. I got no strong opinion about anything you talked to me about, about infusions. Ah, but the problem is it's so hard to wean yourself off of these things because once you're in a system, that's it[00:25:56] Nathan:Well we'll make it happen. W w we'll figure out a way, but the new book landing page for it, I went on there and inspected element. It's definitely a ConvertKit for them. I was pretty happy about it.[00:26:06] Andrew:Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So truthfully it was, I said, I'm not going to school around here. It would have probably been easier for me to go with, with infusion soft because then we all we'd have to do with tag people who were interested. And then I could, I don't want that. I don't want that nonsense because it comes with overhead.That becomes an obstacle to me, communicating with my audience by, by overhead. I mean, they've got historic legacy. Requirement's that mean I can't do anything right. You I'm on my iPad. I could just go in and send a message out. Or actually I haven't sent a message out. Someone else has sent a message out.Our publisher sent a message then from damn, ah, damn gravity. But I, but if someone says there's a problem, I can go in and see it.[00:26:44] Nathan:Right.[00:26:44] Andrew:And make adjustments. The whole thing just fricking works. Right?[00:26:47] Nathan:So I want to talk about the book more. Let's talk[00:26:49] Andrew:Sure.[00:26:50] Nathan:And now I have you here.[00:26:52] Andrew:Ben needs, us to talk about the book. He's the publisher.[00:26:54] Nathan:We'll get to that, then don't worry. Ben, we've got it covered. so you were giving unsolicited feedback, which by the way is my favorite kind of feedback. Okay.So as you've been listening to the show, what are some other things that maybe you recommended the book, maybe like as you set people up for interview questions, any of that advice that you would give beyond?We started with the men.[00:27:15] Andrew:I'm going to suggest that people who listen to you do pay attention to this. One thing that they should, I I'm interrupting you in a roadway now there's some good interruption that I write about in the book and I can tell you how to do it. Right. And I also have to say that there's some new Yorker that's built in, even though I've left New York a long time ago, that I, I always interrupt when we need to get into the bottom line.Okay. Here's one thing that I think people should pay attention with you. You don't just ask questions. You will, at times interject your own story, your own, take your own experience. And I find that a lot of times people either do it in a heavy handed way. It's like, look at me, I'm equal to you. I deserve to be in this conversation too.And that doesn't just happen on Mike. It happens at dinner parties or it's more like I have to be reverential. So I'm asking questions and it's me asking about them. And one of the things that I learned over the years, Getting to know someone interviewing someone, whether it's like you and I are doing in our podcasts and shows or doing it, in a, in a dinner conversation, it's not asking questions.It's not about saying here's my next thing. Here's my next question. It's overwhelming and draining to do that. You do need to say, well, here's me. You do need to sometimes just guide the person to say, now tell me how you wrote the book. Now tell me how long it takes to, to write a tweet, right? Whatever it is, you need to sometimes direct the person.And so I call the book, stop asking questions because that counter intuitive piece of knowledge is something that took me a fricking interview coach to help me accept that. It's true, but it helps. And you do it really well. And here's why you do it. Well, you interject something personal. Somehow you do it succinctly.You don't get rambling off. Maybe you edit that.No, no, because the videos are there. Yeah. It's, it's not edited. It's just you saying here's, here's my experience with this. And then when you come back and you ask something. It informs the guest about where you are and what they could contribute to that. It lets them also feel like this is a dialogue instead of them being pounded with demands of, in the forms of question.[00:29:15] Nathan:Yeah. Yeah. I think that for anyone listening and thinking about starting a podcast, it's really like, what's the kind of thing that you want to listen to. And I like it where the host is like a character in the, in the Podcast, in the episode where they're contributing content and it's not just like, oh, if I listened to Andrew on these 10 shows, I'm just going to get Andrew.Like, I want it where it's like, no, I'm getting the blend between these two people. And the unique things that come from that intersection rather than, you know, I've heard this[00:29:46] Andrew:Yes.[00:29:47] Nathan:I've heard about it.[00:29:48] Andrew:I think also it took me a long time years of, so I started doing this in 2007, give or take a year and I think. No one needs to talk about, I don't need to talk about myself. They don't care about me. They care about, you know, Paul Graham, who I'm interviewing about how he found a Y Combinator, someone.And I would get tons of emails from people saying, tell us who you are. Tell us a little bit about yourself. And I would argue with them and say, no, but I understand now on the outside, when I listen, I don't know who you are. And it feels very awkward to hear it. It feels very much like, I don't know why, where you're coming from.And so I don't know why I should listen. It's kinda, it's it's counterintuitive.[00:30:29] Nathan:Yeah. I think it just comes with comfort over time. Like, I, I don't know this for sure. If I bet if I listen back to my first podcast episodes, the ones that I did in like 2015. I have a different style because I bet I'm less comfortable or more worried about like, make sure that I shut up quickly so that the guests can talk more because people came here for the guest and then over time you just get more comfortable.[00:30:53] Andrew:So you wrote authority and I remember you, I remember buying it and I remember you bundled it with a bunch of stuff, right. And oh, by the way, it's so cool. I was listening to it on a run and I heard you mention my name in the, in the book I go, this is great and I'm running. but I remember you did interviews there.I don't remember whether the style matches up to today or what, but you did interviews in it. Right.[00:31:15] Nathan:I did.[00:31:16] Andrew:And what you had there that I think is always important to have with all, all interviews is you had a sense of like, well, the sense of mission, I knew what you were going for, because you were trying to say, here is this book that I've written on this topic.I'm want to bring these people in to bring their, their take on it. We were all kind of working together. And I feel like, when I look at my earlier interviews, I listened to them. The Mike sucks so badly. I was too ponderous. Cause I wanted to be like, IRA glass from, from NPR, from this American life.And you could hear the same rhythm, the same cadence, like I'm copying him. Like I'm his little brother trying to learn how to be like a real boy. but I had this real need. I was trying to figure out how these people were building companies that work to understand what holes I had in my understanding to see what was working for them that I didn't know before.And you could see that and it, it helps. It helped me continue. Even when I was nervous with the guest, it helped the guests know where to go. Even when I wasn't doing good job, guiding them and help the audience keep listening in, even when the audio stopped, because there's this thing that Andrew is trying to understand.And you almost feel like you're the sense of vulnerability. If it doesn't scare you away, then it makes you want to root.[00:32:40] Nathan:Yeah. And I personally love that style because I want to follow someone going on a journey and, and trying to accomplish something specific. But let's talk about the not just the book, but asking questions or in this case, stopping it, stop asking questions. What are the things that not even just specific to this job, what are the things that you listened to interview shows?And you're like, okay, here are the three things that I want to change or that I want to coach you on in the same way that I was coached on.[00:33:10] Andrew:Okay. So what I started to do is I go through my own transcripts. I mean, I had years of transcripts to see what worked and what didn't I already done that. So I said, I need to now add to it. And so I went back and looked at historical interviews, like when Barbara Walters interviewed Richard Nixon and got him so frustrated that he didn't want to ever talk to her again.Or when Oprah finally got to sit with Lance Armstrong, how did she do that? I think. You know, you know, let me pause on, on Oprah and Lance Armstrong. She got to interview him after he, he was basically caught cheating and he was about to come out and do it. Great. Get, I think the fact that she interviewed him, there's a lesson there for, for all of us who are interviewing, interviewing the top 10 interviews, I think of all time.And you go back to Wikipedia and look it up. You see art or interview podcast or interview, sorry, our news-based interviews. We as podcasters, keep thinking, how do I get enough in the can so that if I die tomorrow, there's enough interviews to last for a month or whatever, so that I can be consistent in the audience loved me.That's great. But I think we should also be open to what's going on in the world today. Let's go talk to that person today. If there's an artist who suddenly done something, we should go and ask to do an interview with them. If there's a creator, if there's someone. So for me, one of the top interviews that people still it's been years, people still come back and talk to me about is when Matt Mullenweg decided that he was gonna pull out Chris[00:34:35] Nathan:Pearson.[00:34:35] Andrew:Per Pearson.Pearson's, themes from WordPress. And I got to talk to both of them at the same time and I published it and it went all over the internet with all over the WordPress internet. So hundreds of different blog posts about it, eventually all the people in the WordPress world write a lot of blogs, but also it became news.And so we don't do enough of that.[00:34:57] Nathan:I remember that interview because I was in the WordPress community at that time. And I remember you saying like, wait, I'm in Skype and I have both of you in two different things and you pull it together and not to pull Ryan holiday into this too much, but that's where he ended up writing the book.Was it, he realized he was one of the only people who was talking to like both Peter teal and, who's the Gawker guy.Yeah. Anyway, people know, but, but being in the intersection of that, so you're saying find something that's relevant on the news[00:35:33] Andrew:Yeah. Nick Denton was the founder of Gawker. Yes. Find the things that are relevant right now. And when people are hot right now, and they know you and you have credibility in this space, they trust you more than they trust. Say the wall street journal, even right, where they don't know where's this going.I think that's, that's one thing. The other thing is I think we don't have enough of a story within interviews. If we're doing S if we're doing at Mixergy, my podcast and interview where we're telling someone's story, we want them to be somewhere where the audience is at the beginning and then to have done something or had something happen to them that sets them on their own little journey.And then we make this whole interview into this. Into this a hero's journey approach. So I think better when I have an actual company in mind, so, or a person in mind. So last week I was interviewing this guy, Rohit Rowan was a person who was working at SanDisk, had everything going right for him. His boss comes to him and says it, you're now a director, continue your work.But now more responsibilities he's elated. He goes back, home, comes back into the office. Things are good, does work. And then a couple of days later he's told, you know, we mean temporarily, right? And he goes, what do you mean? I thought I got, I got a promotion. No, this is temporary. While our director's out you're director of this department.And then you go back, he says, the very next day, he couldn't go back into the office. He sat in his car, just, he couldn't do it anymore. And so he decided at that point, he'd heard enough about entrepreneurship heard enough ideas. He had to go off on and do it himself. And so we did. And then through the successes and failures, we now have a story about someone who's doing something that we can relate to, that we aspire to be more.[00:37:13] Nathan:So, how do you, you, your researchers, how do you find that moment before you have someone on? Because so many people will be like, yes, let me tell you about my business today. And oh, you want to know about that? How'd, you know, you know, like, as you,[00:37:27] Andrew:Yeah,[00:37:28] Nathan:That hook in that moment? That actually is a catalyst in their own dream.[00:37:33] Andrew:It's tough. It's it takes hours of talking to the guest of, of looking online of hunting for that moment. And it takes a lot of acceptance when it doesn't happen. One of my interview coaches said, Andrew, be careful of not looking for the Batman moment. And I said, what do you mean? He goes, you're always looking for the one moment that changed everything in people's lives.Like when Batman's parents got shot. And from there, he went from being a regular boy to being a superhero. Who's going to cry, fight crime everywhere. His life doesn't really work that way. There aren't these one moments, usually the change, everything. So I try not to. Put too much pressure on any one moment, but there are these little moments that indicate a bigger thing that happened to us.And I look for those and I allow people to tell that without having it be the one and only thing that happened. So if Pharaoh, it, it wasn't that moment. It could've just been, you know what, every day I go into the office and things are boring. And I think I have to stop. What I look for is give me an example of a boring.Now he can tell me about a day, a day, where he's sitting at his desk and all he's doing is looking at his watch, looking at his watch and he has to take his watch, put it in his drawer so that he doesn't get too distracted by looking at his watch all day. Cause he hates it. Now was that the one moment that changed everything?It was one of many moments. It might've happened a year before he quit, but it's an indication. So when we're telling stories, we don't have to shove too much pressure into one moment, but I do think it helps to find that one moment that encapsulates their, why, why did they go on this journey? Why does someone who's in SanDisk decide he's going to be an entrepreneur?Why did someone who was a baseball player decide that he had to go and write a blog post? Why is it? What's the thing that then sends them off on this journey? It helps. And I would even say, if you can get that moment, it just helps to get the thing that they were doing before that we can relate to. So what's the thing that they did before.So anyway, we have two different types of interviews. One is the story-based interview where we tell a story of how someone achieved something great. And so that hero's journey is and approach. The other one is someone just wants to teach them. All you want to do is just pound into them for an hour. Give me another tip another tip another tip of how to do this.Like pound, pound, pound, pound pound. If you want the audience to listen. I think for there, it helps to have what I call the cult hook because I said, how do I, how do cults get people to listen to, to these people who are clearly whack jobs sometimes. And so studying one called I saw that what they did was they'd have a person up on stage who talked about how, you know, I used to really be a Boozer.If you came into my house, you would see that there'd be these empty six packs. I was so proud of leaving the empty six packs everywhere to show myself how much alcohol I can drink. My wife left me. And when she left me, she just told me that I hadn't amounted to anything in my life. And I was going nowhere.And I just said, get I here. Instead of appreciating that this was just like terrible. And I ran out of toilet paper and don't even get me started with what, what I did for that. And so you see someone who's worry worse off than you are on this path of life. And then something has. They discover whoever it is.That's the cult leader. And they say, now I've got this real estate firm I encouraged by, oh, by the way, all of you to come over and take a look at that at this, I couldn't believe it. My whole life. I wanted to buy a Tesla. I now have the Tesla S it's amazing. It's just so great. And I did it all because I changed the way I thought once I came in and I found this one book and the book told me, I mean, anyways, so what we try to do is we say, if you're going to have somebody come on to teach how they became a better blogger, let's not have them start over elevated where everything they do is so great that we can't relate, have them start off either relatable or worse.I couldn't write here's my grammar, mistakes. My teacher told. Right. And now what's the thing that they did. They pick them from where they were to where they are today. it's this real set of realizations. Now I want to go into that.Let's pound into them and see how many of those tips we can get. Let's learn that I want to go from where he was to where he is.[00:41:28] Nathan:Yeah, I liked that a lot. Cause my inclination would be like, okay, we're we're doing the, educational, tactical conversation. I'm going to facilitate it. Let's dive right in and let's get to the actionable stuff right away. So I like what you're saying of like, no, no, no. We need to, even though this is going to be 90% packed, full of actionable material, we need to dive in and set the stage first with the story and making it relatable.And I like it.[00:41:55] Andrew:Yeah,[00:41:55] Nathan:Oh, yeah. I was just, just in my own head for a second. Cause I say, ah, that makes sense a lot, so much so that I've had three different guests or listeners email me and say like, just don't say that makes sense as much would, now that I'm saying it on the show, I'll probably get more emails every time that I say it.Cause that's like my processing, like, oh, oh, that makes sense. As I'm thinking of the next question and all that, so[00:42:22] Andrew:I do something like that too. For me. It's IC,[00:42:25] Nathan:Everyone has to have something.[00:42:26] Andrew:I can't get rid of that and yeah.[00:42:28] Nathan:So what systems have you put in place on the research side so that you're getting this, are you doing pre-interviews forever? Yes. Are you having your[00:42:38] Andrew:Almost every single one, some of the best people in some of the best entrepreneurs on the planet, I'm surprised that they will spend an hour or do a pre-interview. And sometimes I'm too sheepish to say, I need an hour of your time and I need you to do a pre-interview. So instead of saying, I need you to do a pre-interview.I say, here's why people have done it. And I've paid for somebody to help make my guests better storytellers of their own stories. And truthfully people will go through that. Pre-interview even if they don't want to do an interview, they just need to get better at telling their story for their teams, their employees, their everyone.Right. and so I say that, and then they will take me up on the pre-interview and say, yes, I do want to do the pre-interview. and so what I try to do is I try to outline the story. Ahead of time in a set of questions. And then what we do is we scramble them up a little bit based on what we think people will tell us first and what will make them feel a little more comfortable.And then throughout the interview, I'll adjust it. So for example, no, one's going to care about the guest unless they have a challenge. No guest wants to come on and say, I'm going to tell you about what's what I really suck at or where I've really been challenged. If they do, they're going to give you a fake made up thing that they've told a million times to make themselves seem humble.So we don't ask that in the beginning. We don't even ask it in the middle. We save it till the very end. Now they've gotten some time with us. They've gotten some rapport, they trust us. Then we go into tell me about the challenges, what hasn't worked out for you. And we really let them know why tell people the higher purpose you want the audience to relate.You want them to believe you. You want them to see themselves in you, and to learn from you. We need. They tell us, and then I have it in my notes as the last section, but I use it throughout the interview. I sprinkle it. So the goal is to get the pieces that we want and in whatever order makes the most sense and then reshape it for the interview Day.[00:44:33] Nathan:So on the interview itself, you would, you would flip that and you know, okay, this is what I want to start with and, and dive in right[00:44:41] Andrew:Yup. Yup.[00:44:43] Nathan:Lose. They already told you about that. And so now, you[00:44:46] Andrew:Right,[00:44:46] Nathan:In and start with.[00:44:47] Andrew:Right. That helps. Now, if there's something I want to ask someone about that they're not comfortable with. One thing that I do is I, I tip them off. So Jason Calacanis invited me to go do, interviews with, with investors at one of his conferences. It was just a bunch of, investors. And I looked at this one guy, Jonathan tryst, and he looked really great.But he, what am I supposed to do? Ask him about what startups should do to run their businesses. He's never run a startup. His, he hadn't at that time had a successful exit. As far as I knew, like mega successful exit. He's just a really nice guy. You can tell he was going places, but that's it. And the money that he was investing came from his parents.So what is this rich parents giving their kids some money. Now he's going to tell everyone in the VC, in the startup and VC audience, how to live their lives. So I said, I'm either not going to address it, which I think most people are, or I have to find a way to address it where I'm not going to piss them off and have them just clam up on me and then go to Jason and go.This guy just is a terrible interviewer, which is not true. So what I decided to do was tip him off. I said, look, Jonathan, before we do this, before we start talking to the audience, I have to tell you, I saw it, that you don't have much of a track record as an investor. Your money came from your parents and you're not like a tech startup, like people here.If we don't talk about it, people who know it are going to think, oh, this guy, Jonathan, look, who's trying to pass him soft self off. I don't have to force it in here, but if you allow me to, I'd like to bring it up and let's talk about, and it goes, yeah, absolutely. If it's out there, I want to make sure that we address it and sure enough, we talked about it and he had a great answer.He said, no, this came from my parents. It's not my own money. I don't have as much experience as other people, but I took my parents' money. I invested it, fat parents and family and so on. We've had a good track record with it. And now have raised the second Fallon fund from outsiders who saw what I was able to do with the first one.And by the way, I may not have this mega exit as a startup investor, as a startup entrepreneur. But I did have this company that did okay. Not great. Here's what it did Here's what I learned And that's all informing me. And that's where I come from now. You've got someone talking about the, the, the thing that matters without pissing them off so much that they don't say anything else.And you feel like you feel superior as an interviewer. I got them. But in reality, you got nothing[00:46:57] Nathan:Right.[00:46:57] Andrew:Cares.[00:46:58] Nathan:I think that's a really hard line of talking about the things that are difficult and like the actual, maybe things that someone did wrong or lessons that they learned without just like barely dipping into it for a second. And I liked the format of tipping them off in like full transparency.So on this show, I had someone on who I really, really respect his name's Dickie Bush. He's one of the earlier episodes in this series and in it, he, okay. Yeah. So in that interview, one thing that I knew is that his, the first version of his course plagiarized text from another friend, Sean McCabe, actually Shaun's company edits is Podcast and all that.And I've known both of them for, for quite a while. I've known Sean for like, I dunno, six, seven years or something. And I was like, struggling with how to bring that up. And I wanted from the like founder, transparent journey, that sort of thing I wanted it brought up because I, I actually like, I'm happy to talk about like some pretty major things that I've screwed up and what I've learned from it.And I just think it makes a better conversation. And then from the interview side, I don't feel good, like doing an interview and not touching on that, but I didn't tip Dickey off to it. And I, that was one of the things that I've regretted that he gave a great answer. He talked about the lessons that he learned from it.It was really, really good, but I felt bad that I didn't set him up for the most success in like in setting up. And part of that, part of it is because even at the start of the interview, I was still wrestling with now, I'm not going to bring that up that, ah, maybe I should, it wouldn't be an authentic interview if I didn't like wrestling with that, I hadn't figured out my own, like made my own decision until we were in the middle of it.And so I didn't, I didn't set anybody up for success. And so it's an interesting line.[00:48:52] Andrew:It happens. And it seems like I'm now in the point of your transcript, where you, where you ask him, it's a 31 minutes into the interview. I think his response is great. He came in and he took responsibility for it. He says, yeah, that, that, that was a dramatic mistake, or a drastic mistake on my side and caught up in it.He wasn't the most articulate here and he'd repeated words. Like I, I, a couple of times, so I could see that he probably was uncomfortable with it. but I think his answer was great. I think, I believe that we all are broadcasting out, whether we know it or not, our intentions and where we're coming from, as some people are really good at faking it.And so I'm not going to talk about the outliers and some people are so uncomfortable that they're messing up the transmission, but for the most part almost. broadcasting our intentions. If you walk into that, Nathan, with the, I got to get him because he, he got one of my friends and I need him to finally get his comeuppance.He's going to pick up on that. And truthfully, it's such a small thing for a person like you who's, who's already a likable person. You have a lot to offer people, right? As far as like promotion and everything else, it will be forgiven, but it'll be picked up on, it's also something that people could pick up on, which is Nathan really want to know this thing.It's been bothering him for a while. And if you could, just, before you asked the question, say, where am I coming from with this? And know that the audience will mostly pick up on it. And obviously people are gonna like read in whatever they feel like, but trust that the vast majority of us understand, I think it'll work[00:50:21] Nathan:Yeah,[00:50:22] Andrew:You don't have to even tip. You don't have to tip off, but it does help. It, it definitely helps.[00:50:26] Nathan:It's interesting. I was watching an interview with, Jordan Peterson who wrote 12 rules for life. He's like a very controversial figure. And I was just often these controversies pass by, on Twitter and other places. And I realized like, oh, I don't understand them. And rather than jumping on one side or the other, at least try to like dive in a little bit and understand it.So watching this interview, and I can't remember, I think it was some major Canadian TV show or something, and that you would tell the interview was just trying to nail him it every possible chance, like whatever he said, just like dive in. And, so I think you're right, that you see the intention, like in that case, you would see the, the interview, his intention was specifically to try to trip him up in his words.And then in other cases where it's like, This is something that, you know, if you take the other approach, this is something that's been bothering me, or I want to talk about it. Like I genuinely want, you know, to ask or learn from this. It's a very different thing.[00:51:20] Andrew:I think people pick up on it. I remember you, you mentioned Seth Godin. I remember interviewing him when he wrote the book tribes back before people had online communities. And I didn't just say, okay. All our heroes, all the best entrepreneurs just run their businesses. Then don't run a tribe. I brought out books.I said, here's a book about Warren buffet. Here's the book by Sam Walton. The Walmart here's a book by Ted Turner became a multi-billionaire to creating all these, these media empires didn't have communities. They don't have tribes. And now you're telling me that in addition to my job, I also have to go and build out a tribe.It feels like, you know, an extra job. That just seems right for the social first. This just sounds right on social media and you could actually see. He's watching me as I'm saying it, and he's smiling, he's watching it because he's trying to read me, is this like what I get wrapped up? Is this going to be some kind of thing where some guy's going to try to be in the next Gawker media?Or is, is this a safe place? We're all doing that constantly. And then he also saw, okay, this is someone who really wants to understand this. And he's challenging me. I like a challenge. And you could see him smile with like, this is what I'm here for. And so I think when you come at it from a good point of view, people can see it and then you can go there and you can go there and you can go there and it will be shocking to you and them and the audience, how far you go. But when you're coming from that genuine place, they get, they get it.They want it.[00:52:44] Nathan:Yeah, that's good.I want to talk about longevity in like the online world. I think that so many people that I started following in say 2007, 2008, nine, and then I didn't start creating myself until 2011. most of them aren't around anymore. Like a lot of the big blogs, Yeah, just so many that I can think of.They're not around anymore. They're not doing this. You're at a point where like you started messaging in some form in what? 20, sorry, 2004 to somewhere in there and then interviews.[00:53:17] Andrew:Yeah, I keep saying 16. It's like, yeah. 2004 is when I started the interview started 2007 ish somewhere there. Give or take a year. yeah, long. I, I will say that there are parts of my work that I am burned out on right now. This year has been that, but I'm not on the interview. And the reason I'm not is because I do enjoy conversations.I hated them for a long time in my life because I just didn't know how to have them, how to have it make sense. I also didn't give myself permission to take the conversation where I wanted it to go. And it helps now to say, I can talk to anyone about anything. That's an opportunity that, that feels fun because I know how to do it.It's an opportunity to, it feels like, like, you know how everyone's so happy. You can go to YouTube and you could get the answer to anything. Well, I could go to anybody and I could get the answer to anything and talk about how they didn't have a customized to me, YouTube, not customized thing to me, I'm watching Gotham chess on YouTube.He's teaching me how to play chess, but he will not customize to the fact that every time I get into a car con defense, all the pieces like bunched over to my side. But if he and I did an interview, or if I do an interview with an tomorrow's entrepreneur, it's going to be about, here's the thing I'm trying to deal with.How did you get past that? Talk to me about what you're up to there.[00:54:31] Nathan:Yeah, that's definitely energizing. Okay. But what are the things that you're burnt out on? Because I think a lot of people are seeing that burnout. And so I guess first, what are you burned out on? And then second, we can go from there into like, what are you changing and how are you managing.[00:54:46] Andrew:I'm burned out on parts of the business behind, behind Mixergy I'm burned out on. I was aspiring to like unbelievable greatness with the, with the course part of it, with the courses, it didn't get there and I'm tired of trying to make it into this thing. That's going to be super big. I'm tired of that.[00:55:10] Nathan:His greatness there, like linda.com? Like what, what was that?[00:55:15] Andrew:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. Yeah. She was one of my first interviewees and, and so yeah, I saw the model there and I am frustrated that I didn't get to that and I, I don't have a beat myself up type a perso

Adam Peaty joined us in Series 5 with an inspiring insight into his mindset, key takeaways and direction that has led him to 8 world titles, 16 European titles, and breaking the world record on five occasions. Jake and the Professor dissect this clip about the power of acceptance after Adam received some memorable advice from a former SAS soldier. Listen to the full episode with Adam: https://pod.fo/e/dc641.......Pre-order our new audiobook ‘High Performance: Lessons from the Best, on Becoming Your Best' : https://adbl.co/3xQQSCF High Performance Live Podcast Tour 2022 - Sign up here - thehighperformancepodcast.com/signup Get a special signed copy of our first book, out Dec 9th: https://bit.ly/3kCqhFpPre-order link: http://smarturl.it/hv0sdz See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

My guest today is an internationally famous adventurer, writer and award-winning TV broadcaster. He has served as a soldier in the SAS and has starred in numerous TV survival shows, where he has taken stars such as Julia Roberts, Roger Federer and Barack Obama into the wild. His new book is titled ‘Never Give Up'. I am talking today with Bear Grylls.. The Positivity Podcast sees Paul McKenna interview some of the world's most interesting people. From film stars, to entrepreneurs and entertainers, you'll learn the tips and tricks that the best in the business use to stay positive. Don't forget to rate and subscribe to the podcast and share your best bits from the episode online. Paul McKenna Twitter: @ImPaulMcKenna Paul McKenna Instagram: @IamPaulMcKenna

This week we take a deep dive look at using Decks of KeyForge and SAS as a tool in your KeyForge arsenal. This will be great for newer players not fully aware of the possibilities that DoK provides, as well as some insight for those who rely on that final SAS score. Hope you enjoy, and we would love to hear your thoughts on this subject. So @ us below when you share your views on this. // If you wish to donate to HFFS here is our Patreon link: https://www.patreon.com/hffspodcast • Please subscribe if you enjoyed this episode, leave a review on Apple with your thoughts, and share it on your social channels. We appreciate any and all support. // If you wish to connect with us through social media @HFFSpodcast on Twitter & hffspodcast@gmail.com. Connect with Sydnie on Discord: SCSteele#9355 // Alex on IG & Twitter: @ScuzzyGruen // Blake on Twitter: @blvdblake & YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSgDdfWvcRbCC3l7CnvOJhg

Grab your parkas, put on those winter boots, don't forget those big ol mittens and hang out with us tonight as we head to the place where the coldest temperature on earth has ever been recorded, a mild -89.2°C (-128.6°F). Maybe we should bring swim trunks instead, eh? Well, aside from the coldest temps known anywhere, there is also possibly Nazis, maybe a hole to the center of the earth, a blood waterfall, and giant sea spiders with legs ranging up to 70cm, and for those of you who aren't sure if that's big or not cus we're a bunch of archaic buttholes that don't do metric… It's big.. Like close to 28 inches big… oh and how could we forget… the Penguins!! Lots of penguins! Well, if you haven't figured it out yet, we're heading to Antarctica! We're going to be discussing the continent and find out a little about it and then we'll talk about some creepy natural things going on and of course creepy conspiracies. It should be a fun one so let's get going!!!   So let's learn a little about Antarctica first off. Antarctica, on average, is the coldest, driest, and windiest continent, and has the highest average elevation of all the continents. Most of Antarctica is a polar desert, with annual precipitation of 200 mm (8 in) along the coast and far less inland; yet 80% of the world's freshwater reserves are stored there, enough to raise global sea levels by about 60 metres (200 ft) if all of it were to melt. The temperature in Antarctica has dropped to −89.2 °C (−128.6 °F) (or even −94.7 °C or −138.5 °F, as measured from space), although the average for the third quarter (the coldest part of the year) is −63 °C (−81 °F). Organisms native to Antarctica include many types of algae, bacteria, fungi, plants, protista, and certain animals, such as mites, nematodes, penguins, seals and tardigrades. Vegetation, where it occurs, is tundra. Wanna know some fun facts… Well, tough shit negative Nancy, we're gonna tell ya anyways.    Antarctica holds most of the world's fresh water An incredible 60-90% of the world's freshwater is locked in Antarctica's vast ice sheet. The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest on Earth, covering an incredible 14 million km² (5.4 million square miles) of Antarctic mountain ranges, valleys and plateaus. This leaves only 1% of Antarctica permanently ice-free. Some areas are ice-free in the summer, including many of the areas we visit on the Antarctic Peninsula.   At its deepest, Antarctica's ice is 4.5km (2.7 miles) thick – that's half the height of Mt Everest! Again, If it all melted, global sea levels would rise about 60 m (200 ft).   As mentioned, Antarctica is a desert With all of that fresh water held in the ice sheet, how could Antarctica be a desert?   When most of us think of deserts we think of sand dunes, cactuses and sizzling temperatures, but technically a desert doesn't have to be hot or sandy, it's more about how much precipitation the area receives as rain, snow, mist or fog. A desert is any region that receives very little annual precipitation.   The average annual rainfall at the South Pole over the past 30 years was just over 10 mm (0.4 in). Although there is more precipitation towards the coast, the average across the continent is low enough to classify Antarctica as a polar desert.   So, while Antarctica may be covered in ice, it has taken an incredible 45 million years to grow to its current thickness, because so little rain falls there.   As well as being one of the driest continents on Earth, Antarctica is also the coldest, windiest and highest.   Antarctica used to be as warm as Melbourne Australia! Given that the coldest ever land temperature was recorded in Antarctica of -89.2°C (-128.6°F), it can be hard to imagine Antarctica as a warm, temperate paradise. But Antarctica hasn't always been an icy land locked in the grip of a massive ice sheet. In fact, Antarctica was once almost as warm as Melbourne is today.   Researchers have estimated that 40-50 million years ago, temperatures across Antarctica reached up to 17°C (62.6°F). Scientists have also found fossils showing that Antarctica was once covered with verdant green forests and inhabited by dinosaurs!   The Antarctic Peninsula is one of the most rapidly warming areas on Earth The Antarctic Peninsula is warming more quickly than many other areas on Earth. In fact, it is one of the most rapidly warming areas on the planet. Over the past 50 years, average temperatures across the Antarctic Peninsula have increased by 3°C (37.4°F), five times the average increase on Earth.   This has led to some changes, for example where and when penguins form colonies and sea ice forms. It also means that the lush mosses of the Antarctic Peninsula have a slightly longer growing season.   There is no Antarctic time zone The question of time in Antarctica is a tricky one. At the South Pole the lines of longitude, which give us different time zones around the globe, all meet at a single point. Most of Antarctica experiences 6 months of constant daylight in summer and 6 months of darkness in winter. Time starts to feel a little different without the normal markers for day and night.   Scientists working in Antarctica generally stay in the time zone of the country they departed from, but this can cause some issues. For example, on the Antarctic Peninsula you can find stations from Chile, China, Russia, the UK and many other countries. You can imagine that if all of these neighbouring stations keep to their home time zones it could get a little confusing trying to share data and resources without accidentally waking one another up in the middle of the night!   For travellers with Aurora Expeditions, they generally stay on Ushuaia time – unless they're travelling to the Falkland Islands and South Georgia. Then they adjust to their local times, changing as they travel.   Every way is north! If you stand at the South Pole, you are at the southernmost point on Earth. It doesn't matter which way you look, every direction is north. So why do we talk about the Antarctic Peninsula as being in West Antarctica, and the section directly south of Australia as East Antarctica?   It's based on the prime meridian, an imaginary line which passes through Greenwich in the UK at 0 degrees of longitude. If you stand at the South Pole and face towards Greenwich, everything to your left is west Antarctica and everything to your right is east Antarctica. Got that?   Antarctica has active volcanoes Antarctica is home to several volcanoes and two of them are active. Mount Erebus, the second-highest volcano in Antarctica, is the southernmost active volcano on Earth. Located on Ross Island, this icebound volcano has some unique features such as ice fumaroles and twisted ice statues that form around gases that seep from vents near the volcanic crater.   The first ascent of Mt Erebus was made in 1908, when a team led by Australian scientist Edgeworth David, and including Douglas Mawson, completed an arduous and very chilly five day climb to the steaming crater.   The second active volcano is on Deception Island, a volcanic caldera in the South Shetland Islands. Once home to a thriving whaling station and later a scientific station, it was abandoned after the most recent eruption in 1969, and today it is a fascinating place that we visit on some of our Antarctic Peninsula voyages.   Antarctica has its own Treaty When humans caught their first glimpse of Antarctica in 1820, it was the only continent without an indigenous population. Several nations quickly made claims to the continent, which led to significant tension. While some countries argued that Antarctica was rightfully theirs, others heartily disagreed.   As tension mounted, everyone agreed on the need for a peaceful resolution. In December 1959, 12 countries signed the Antarctic Treaty, an unprecedented international agreement to govern the continent together as a reserve for peace and science. Since then, 41 other countries have signed the Treaty and participate in annual meetings, where decisions are made about how human activity in Antarctica is managed. All decisions made within the Antarctic Treaty System are made by consensus, with collaboration and agreement as the central pillars. Today, the Antarctic Treaty System has expanded to include strict guidelines for commercial fishing, sealing, and a complete ban on mining and mineral exploration.    We got those fun facts  from Aurora expeditions. Com   So let's look at some of the weird natural phenomena that goes on in Antarctica.    You guys like weird sounds? Well we got weird sounds for you. Scientists and researchers at the Ross ice shelf have recorded a slow seismic hum being generated by wind whipping across the Antarctic ice shelves. The scientists also discovered that the frequency of the vibrations changed in response to changing weather conditions on the shelf — when the temperature rose or fell, for instance, and when storms resculpted the shelf's snow dunes. The firn was "alive with vibration," Douglas MacAyeal, a glaciologist at the University of Chicago, said in a written commentary that accompanied the paper. "This vibration was found to be driven by the wind blowing across the firn layer and interacting with the intrinsic roughness of the surface called sastrugi." MacAyeal also offered a more poetic description of the sound, comparing it to "the buzz produced by thousands of cicada bugs when they overrun the tree canopy and grasses in late summer."   Julien Chaput, a geophysicist and mathematician at Colorado State University in Fort Collins and the leader of the research, told NBC News MACH in an email that the sound was "a little like yodeling, except with 10 people all singing in dissonance. It's a little eerie." But the singing ice is more than a sonic curiosity. Chaput and his colleagues argue in their paper that it might be possible to tap into seismic data to help monitor the health of ice shelves, which have been thinning in response to global warming — and causing sea levels to rise around the world. so that's all pretty crazy. Antarctica is singing to us. (Play sound)   Ever hear of a solar pillar? Well you're about to. The air in Antarctica is frequently very dry. The low temperatures mean that little or no water vapour is held in the air, instead it freezes and falls out, or builds up on surfaces as frost. Sometimes however, depending on the particular atmospheric conditions, the frozen water vapour remains in the air as suspended ice crystals. In these conditions the crystals can reflect sunlight in a variety of ways forming atmospheric phenomena of different types.   One of these phenomena is the "Solar Pillar" in the picture. The sun is reflected very strongly off tiny suspended flat ice crystals in the air which are oriented at or almost horizontally, so that the reflection is almost as bright as the sun itself. Like a rainbow, this sight depends on the viewing angle, where the light is coming from and where the observer is standing. The pillar appears to move when the observer moves, but always remains directly below the sun because the ice crystals are found throughout the air but only act as mirrors for the sun at the correct viewing angle.   Most of you have heard of the northern lights, but did you know there are southern lights? The Southern Lights, commonly known as the Aurora Australis, is one of the world's greatest wonders. The Southern lights are much more elusive than their Northern Hemisphere counterpart-Aurora Borealis. There is significantly less land mass in the Southern Hemisphere and fewer ideal viewing spots to see the Aurora. However, the Southern Lights are just as, if not more, impressive. Boasting a breathtaking colour palette that goes beyond the green and blues commonly seen at the Northern Lights, to include pinks, purples, oranges and golds.   Here's a little nerdy science for ya: The Aurora Australis phenomenon occurs when charged particles from solar winds bombard the Earth's atmosphere and interact with gases in our planet.   These highly energised particles are emitted from the sun and smash into the Earth's magnetic field at more than 6 million kilometres per hour.   For the most part, Earth is protected from solar winds by the magnetosphere, which sounds like Magneto from the X-Men franchise's bachelor pad. The magnetosphere is a region of space that surrounds the Earth's magnetic field and has a primary purpose of preventing cosmic rays, such as solar winds from entering Earth's atmosphere. However, occasionally, at particular times of the year, a few charged particles from solar winds make their way through the magnetosphere into our atmosphere. The charged particles move along the Earth's magnetic field lines towards the south and north pole. When they reach the each pole, they collide with atoms in the atmosphere, particularly nitrogen and oxygen, and become increasingly charged. Once the electrons settle back down to their normal level of excitement they glow, creating the magnificent light display, we know as an Aurora.   One more fun natural thing for you guys and probably the creepiest. BLOOD FALLS! THIS FIVE-STORY, BLOOD-RED WATERFALL POURS very slowly out of the Taylor Glacier in Antarctica's McMurdo Dry Valleys. When geologists first discovered the frozen waterfall in 1911, they thought the red color came from algae, but it's true nature turned out to be much more spectacular.   Roughly two million years ago, the Taylor Glacier sealed beneath it a small body of water which contained an ancient community of microbes. Trapped below a thick layer of ice, they have remained there ever since, isolated inside a natural time capsule. Evolving independently of the rest of the living world, these microbes exist in a place with no light or free oxygen and little heat, and are essentially the definition of “primordial ooze.” The trapped lake has very high salinity and is rich in iron, which gives the waterfall its red color. A fissure in the glacier allows the subglacial lake to flow out, forming the falls without contaminating the ecosystem within. If you've never seen the falls it's pretty awesome and metal. We'll post pics for sure.   Ok so enough of the sciency and nerdy stuff let's get into the crazy shit.    The first one is a fun one. In 2020 a clip from Google Earth was loaded onto youtube showing what appears to be an ice ship! So what exactly is it? Well friends, it depends on what you want to believe. The video sparked a conversation of epic conspiracy proportions! Some think that the "ship" is something connected to a secret Nazi base, which we'll get to later. Others claim ties to the secret elite and illuminati.    “I was told a couple of years ago that there are ships built underground somewhere on upper east coast (like the ones in the movie 2012) to save the rich and powerful when canary islands get hit with massive earthquake that will take out east coast,” one commenter wrote.    Other theory's range from military and government cover ups to some claiming it to be Noah's ark. The mundane exfoliation is that it's our minds playing a trick on us… but that's fucking lame and we're going with the fact that it's something creepy and crazy!!   Another fun thing found by Google Earth is a giant mountain sized alien face. Yes you heard right. And if you don't think this is leading to crazy talk… You are seriously mistaken.    Conspiracy theorists Blake and Brett Cousins – of YouTube channel thirdphaseofmoon – shared their thoughts on the Google Earth image.   "It appears to be a massive, ancient structure of some kind of face that is being revealed for the first time on Google Earth,” Blake said in his video.   "I would have to concur that whatever we're looking at resembles some sort of megastructure."   Brett added: "Could this be something that was left behind by the ancient civilisations of Antarctica?   "Ice melting could be revealing structures that would baffle the world."    There it is folks, a giant alien face structure hiding a civilization under Antarctica. Can't argue with the facts. I mean I guess you could say that it's just a case of pareidolia but that's not really that fun so… You know… Alien civilization it is.    Speaking of aliens, A video posted to an “alien" sub-section on Reddit shows how zooming in on a certain area of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands reveals a mysterious vast section of disturbed snow. It shows what looks like something that crashed into the snow and skidded some 3000ft. Of course that brought out the nut jobs, and moody, claiming that it is a ufo crash site.    Reddit user Hey-man-Shabozi captioned the post: "What's over 200ft long, casts a shadow of 50ft, and appears to have crashed on an antarctic  island, moving so fast that it slid over 3,000ft?”   The island, located near Antarctica, has a strange snow formation in the area near Mount Carse.   It looks very similar to an avalanche but the video posted on Reddit goes into detail about how it could be more than what it seems. The main point of contention for the Reddit user is that there appears to be a long thin object that has created a lengthy straight track away from the disrupted area as if it crashed at speed. The Reddit user estimated that the tracks were more than 3,000 feet long.   He also claims to have worked out that the object responsible was 200 feet long.   Let's be honest… If you can't trust a reddit user… Who can you trust these days? Of course most people will say “oh it was just a big rock falling during an avalanche”, but everyone else who actually knows… They know it's a ufo. And they all know that the claims of a rock falling during an avalanche is just another global cover up to hide the fact that there are aliens.  Another one comes thanks to a visual grab from Google Earth, which seems to suggest that there might actually be a tall building standing on the ice in Antarctica. These findings have been uploaded to YouTube Channel MrMBB33 (who coincidentally was also responsible for finding the ice ship we discussed earlier) and the conspiracy theorist who runs this channel suggests that this structure is as much as 2,000 feet in height and the width spans six football fields. Viewers are clearly interested in what they are seeing. “Strange that all countries want to take over land but no country claims Antarctica. I think there is something they know that we don't," comments a user Lorrie Battistoni. Another user suggested that something on the lines of the Project Iceworm was active in Antarctica—the Project Iceworm was a then top-secret project of the United States Army which attempted to build a network of tunnel based and mobile nuclear missile launch sites under the ice sheet in Greenland. Equally, there are sceptics who suggest this is nothing more than a block of ice, albeit with a slightly different shape.     Since we brought up tunnels, there's supposedly an air vent on top of a “metallic shield” in a no-fly zone on the icy continent. Estimates are that the area is over 150 feet wide — based on measurements using Google Earth tools. Its two distinctive features: a pitch-black “opening” and a metal-like “shield.”   "That looks like some sort of vent, a thermal vent that goes underground. You can tell that the snow is darker than any other snow in the surrounding area,” one person said “That would imply to me that there is heat transfer going on” and suggests the top section is some metal or metal alloy man-made structure “over an opening that goes underground.   Someone else points out there is no volcanic activity nearby: “It is just there all by itself.”   So what is it? Just a cave? A man made structure hiding a secret underground base? Should we just go back to aliens for this one? What do you guys think? Ok how about Hitler and the Nazis? Well since people believe there are Nazis and maybe even Hitler himself still hiding out in Antarctica. This theory originates from a story about a Nazi expedition to Antarctica.  The story says that while exploring and mapping the area, they uncovered a multitude of underground caves and rivers.  One of the caves was particularly large and was turned into a large city that would be home to both Nazi's and other powerful groups, like the illuminati.  Along the way, the Germans either came across alien technology or made contact with the aliens.  The Germans learned how to use the technology and were able to build a number of weapons.  This belief is extraordinary because there is no evidence that the Nazis ever did, or were even capable of building such a base.  Geologist and Oceanographer, Colin Summerhayes, partnered with journalist and historian, Peter Beeching, to examine evidence about Antarctica and the Nazis. In  support of this claim is the fact that the Nazis did at one point carry out an expedition to Antarctica in 1938.  Many conspiracy theorists claim that this was a large-scale expedition, with militarized and scientific ships. Another bit of evidence for this theory is about the Nazi's agreeing to The Antarctic treaty.  The treaty makes Antarctica a research zone and states that Antarctica cannot be targeted in any way by bombs or missiles.  Conspiracy theorists jump on this and say why would Nazi Germany sign this agreement?  The claim is that they signed this agreement to deter other nations from visiting Antarctica and stumbling upon their base and the research being done there.  There has been no evidence found to corroborate that point.  Additionally, some claim that Hitler himself is actually in Antarctica.  The evidence for this idea is based on the claim that a German ship arrived at an Argentinian base located in Antarctica after the war ended.  Another popular conspiracy theory is that Hitler escaped to Argentina at the end of the war, and so therefore he was picked up by a German ship, and sent to Antarctica to live at the secret bunker.  However there is no evidence that Hitler ever made it to Argentina or that the supposed German boat ever went to Argentina's Antarctic base… At least that's what they want you to believe! Since there have been other strange military activity there such as supposed German boats coming or the U.S. project “Operation Highjump”, since people really think that this is a feasible thing. Of course These strange events, and the lack of information around them, often lead people to conclude that it must be because there is something going on there that the government doesn't want us to know about.  Many of these beliefs actually come from Flat Earth.  Flat Earthers often propose that it is illegal to go to Antarctica and has a constant military presence, that's why none of them can go investigate if the ice wall is out there.  There is a subgroup of flat earth who believes that part of the reason you “can't go” to Antarctica is because of the Nazi base there. So think about that one...flat earthers believing there are Nazis bases in Antarctica… Good Lord. In 1978, Miguel Serrano, a Chilean diplomat and Nazi sympathizer, published El Cordón Dorado: Hitlerismo Esotérico [The Golden Thread: Esoteric Hitlerism] (in Spanish), in which he claimed that Adolf Hitler was an Avatar of Vishnu and was, at that time, communing with Hyperborean gods in an underground Antarctic base in New Swabia. Serrano predicted that Hitler would lead a fleet of UFOs from the base to establish the Fourth Reich. In popular culture, this alleged UFO fleet is referred to as the Nazi flying saucers from Antarctica. Oh boy. We really gotta figure out if the Nazis are on the moon or in Antarctica!   How about pyramids… You like pyramids? We got pyramids… maybe. THE oldest pyramids on Earth are hidden away under the deep cold snow of Antarctica, conspiracy theorists have shockingly claimed . Ancient alien theorists who are certain secret pyramids are concealed all around the globe, think some may be hidden on Antarctica. Conspiracy theorists, in particular, point to a pyramid-like structure near the Shackleton mountain range on the icy continent. The “pyramid” in question, when viewed on satellite imagery, does appear to have four steep sides much like the Great Pyramid of Giza. Conspiracy theory author David Childress told Ancient Aliens there is a distinct possibility the Shackleton pyramid is the oldest of its kind on Earth.   He said: “If this gigantic pyramid in Antarctica is an artificial structure, it would probably be the oldest pyramid on the planet and in fact, it might be the master pyramid that all the other pyramids on planet Earth were designed to look like.” Another conspiracy theorist agreed, saying: "All the way around the world we find evidence of pyramid structures.   "We should start looking at the possibility there was habitation on Antarctica.   "Was it a lost civilization? Could it be ancient astronauts?   "And just maybe, the earliest monuments of our own civilization came from Antarctica.”    But the theory was challenged by Dr Michael Salla, author of Exopolitics Political Implications of the Extraterrestrial Presence. The alien expert argued the Antarctic pyramid is just one node in a global network of power-generating pyramids strategically placed around Earth.   A popular pyramid conspiracy claims the triangular structures act as power generators of sorts, built for the purpose of transiting vast amounts of energy wirelessly.   Dr Salla said: “There has been extensive research done on pyramids throughout the world, in terms of their structure and what they really are.   “One of the theories is that pyramids are power generators and so if you have these pyramids strategically placed around the world generating a charge, it's possible to create a general standing wave around the world that is a wireless transmission of energy.”   Also There is a claim that the British set up a base called Maudheim-1 (there are no records) in Dronning Maud Land during the war to observe the apparent Nazi base, this was supposedly attacked by the Nazis in July 1945 followed by SAS led (failed) retaliatory attacks from October to December that year.   How about a couple quick hits:    Some think that the remains of a  Motte and Bailey castle were uncovered. Motte-and-bailey castle is a European fortification with a wooden or stone keep situated on a raised area of ground called a motte, accompanied by a walled courtyard, or bailey, surrounded by a protective ditch and palisade. Relatively easy to build with unskilled labour, but still militarily formidable, these castles were built across northern Europe from the 10th century onwards, spreading from Normandy and Anjou in France, into the Holy Roman Empire in the 11th century. The Normans introduced the design into England and Wales. Motte-and-bailey castles were adopted in Scotland, Ireland, the Low Countries and Denmark in the 12th and 13th centuries.    The structure is about 120m across which makes it of the appropriate size range and has two sort-of circles, though the whole thing appears to be more or less completely flat rather than having any significant raised earthworks which in part define a Motte and Bailey castle, the mounds of such castles in towns, cities and in the countryside in Europe are particularly enduring across the centuries. There's a scientific explanation for it but that doesn't stop people from believing what they want.    Then of course you have the flat earthers . There is a weird conspiracy theory that Antarctica and the South Pole do not exist. This belief is most common among flat-earthers who claim that our planet is flat. Flat-earthers believe that the North Pole is at the center of the world while the South Pole surrounds the Earth. According to flat-earthers, Antarctica is actually a thick wall about 30 to 60 meters (100 to 200 ft.) high that surrounds our planet. The wall stops everything from falling over the edge of the Earth. Flat-earthers say we cannot confirm the existence of the wall because world governments and the United Nations have strict no-fly and no-sail zones around Antarctica. Conspiracy theorists believe that the British Captain Cook is one of the few humans to have ever seen the wall apart from government agents. Supposedly, Captain Cook reported seeing the huge wall during the three voyages he made to Antarctica. The wall covered the entire coastline, and he could not land anywhere because it was just too tall to climb.   Speaking if stupid, we touched on this not long ago so we'll just mention it in passing… But apparently there's a hole at the south pole that is the entrance to the hollow earth...I mean… Come On people… Is this where we are as a society??   Going along with this theory of a hole at the pole, there are people that think the world is hiding that fact with a fake south pole. So when people go to the spot that is thought to be the south pole is actually an arbitrary random spot chosen by the powers of the world to throw everyone off the trail of hollow earth.    Some people also believe that there is actually a tropical region that is  hidden in Antarctica. Yes, a tropical region. Some say it is in the no fly zone that is also attributed to the spot where the hole to hollow earth is… we think these guys should fight it out. To the death. Like, no survivors. On the other hand there is recent evidence that there used to be rain forests on the continent so maybe the believers aren't as crazy as we think. Just kidding. They're nuttier than squirrel turds.   Some other crackpots also really believe Antarctica is the Land of The Ancient Race of Super-Beings With Big Angular Heads. Some of them tried to leave many years ago and made it to Easter Island where their enormous weight made them sink into the ground and a simple common bacterial infection turned them to stone. The bacterium cannot live in Antarctica so they continue their highly sophisticated secret society under the ice, dude we can't make this stuff up. Maybe it was Medusa… see, we can make shit up, too!   And finally… Is Antarctica really the lost city of atlantis? The theory that Antarctica is Atlantis is a relatively new one, dating back to the mid 20th Century.   According to Charles Hapgood's 1958 book 'Earth's Shifting Crust',  the continent of Antarctica was in fact originally much further north than its current position. Due to the shifting of the Earth's crust, the continent was displaced, and the climate of the continent, which had been mild, plummeted to below freezing.   This shift in location and temperature has led some to argue that an ancient Civilisation existed on the continent, which was subsequently destroyed by this monumental geographical realignment.   In 2016, faint credence was given to this claim with the revelation that remains of a human settlement had been found under the Antarctic ice.   One report claimed, 'the pictures, taken using remote sensing photography for NASA's Operation IceBridge mission to Antarctica, show what online sleuths believe could be a city.' Ranker list of best winter thriller movies https://www.ranker.com/list/thriller-movies-set-in-snow/ranker-film

In this episode, we will continue with part three of a four-part series looking at Responsible AI (Listen to part one: Alternative Data in Risk Modeling and part two: Explainable/Interpretable AI). “Fairness in AI” is getting a lot of attention, especially related to credit decisioning, not only for onboarding but throughout the credit lifecycle. This episode explores the intersection of fairness and trust, demonstrates why defining - much less ensuring - fairness is more difficult than it sounds, and provides strategies organizations can use to enable fair and trustworthy AI. Learn More: From Crisis to Opportunity: Redefining Risk Management | SAS Speakers Preeti Shivpuri, Head of AI Strategy and Governance, Deloitte Canada Preeti Shivpuri is a leader in data and analytics strategy helping organizations effectively manage data and information assets to generate insights, elevate customer experience, drive growth and operational efficiency, while meeting evolving regulatory demands. She advises clients on execution strategies and sound governance, enabling them to realize benefits aligned to their business goals throughout their data insights journey. She leads Trustworthy AI and Ethics within Deloitte helping organizations to operationalize and scale AI solution responsibly with the right balance of innovation vs controls. Kimberly Nevala, Strategic Advisor, SAS  Kimberly Nevala is a Strategic Advisor at SAS. Kimberly provides counsel on the strategic value and real-world realities of emerging advanced analytics and information trends to companies worldwide. Kimberly is currently focused on demystifying the business potential and practical implications of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). ----------------------- Over the years, GARP and SAS have worked together to bring risk practitioners unique insights on a variety of topics related to financial risk and have partnered on this episode of our COVID podcast series. About SAS As a leader in analytics, SAS has more than 40 years of experience helping organizations solve their toughest problems. Our unrelenting commitment to innovation enables banks to modernize and sustain a competitive edge. SAS provides an integrated, enterprise-wide risk-management platform for managing risk in an organization, from strategic to reputational, operational, financial or compliance-related risk management. Learn more about how SAS is driving innovation and business value for risk and finance professionals at www.sas.com/risk.

Ben Garwood is a former member of 22nd Special Air Service Regiment (22 SAS) and founder of HR4K, Amanda Vernalls is a veteran spouse & CrossFit mum, former nightclub promotions manager and art tutor. Amanda is also the owner of The Galloping Gallery - raising funds for charity. Ben and Amanda are co-hosts of Own It - a series of short films promoting physical and mental well-being. Become a H-Hour Patron at https://patreon.com/hkpodcasts

Our first look at the Western Conference this season, discussing each team in the West in a loose alphabetical order over almost 2 hours. Timestamps: DAL (6:40), DEN (14:27), GSW and MEM (20:52), HOU (35:40), LAC and POR (43:03), LAL (54:45), MIN (59:26), NOP (1:07:50), SAC (1:17:00), OKC (1:25:56), PHX (1:35:10), SAS (1:40:43), UTA (1:46:18).  If you like Dunc'd On, you or someone in your life might like my wife Aislinn's analytical approach to yoga. Check out her streaming service, Yoga With Aislinn, free for a week. Subscribe to our new weekly mailing list for free bonus content and all the info you need to keep up with the latest from Nate and Danny!  With Nate Duncan (@NateDuncanNBA) and Danny Leroux (@DannyLeroux). 

2021 marks the 80th Anniversary of the SAS and 30 years since the first Gulf War and deployment of 'Bravo Three Zero' behind enemy lines in the Iraqi desert. SAS Bravo Three Zero is the new book from Sunday Times bestseller, Damien Lewis, with SAS Gulf War veteran Des Powell. In this episode of the Versus History Podcast, we are joined by SAS veteran and author of this very book, Des Powell, for an in-depth interview about his experiences in the Gulf War. For terms of use, please visit www.versushistory.com

Show notes:Links:Garrett DimonMinitest HeatHeat Map Reporter for MinitestReviewStarting & SustainingSifter AppAutomated transcript (only about 70% accurate)Ben  Welcome to FounderQuest, this has been Today, I'm interviewing Garrett Diamond Star and josh are taking the day off and I get a chat with Garrett, who's a longtime friend of mine and fantastic entrepreneur and all around great person in the world, so I'm excited to have you here. Gary, Thanks, Garrett  thanks for having me. Ben  It's always fun catching up with you. I think the last time we chatted was business of software a few years ago, wasn't it? Garrett  Yeah, not frequently enough, Ben  so that was, yeah, definitely not frequent enough. One thing I most remember about that business of software was that was when the hurricane was coming through and so I was standing out there in boston with all the wind and the Garrett  right, having grown Ben  up in the south, that was kind of ironic that I was there in the northeast and getting a hurricane. Mhm. So have you been Garrett  three, so just uh probably about the same as everybody else man, you know, just kinda one day at a time and keeping it going um and yeah, I just kind of dabbling and exploring and for once the last year just kind of let myself be undirected and just kind of followed what was interesting and pulled on threads and uh a little unnerving but also kind of nice and refreshing, I don't know, you know, so kind of bouncing around like a ping pong ball. Ben  Well, that's, that sounds pretty cool. Well, let's talk about that in a minute. I want to catch people up so I'm sure most people know you, but just for those who don't. So Garrett again, it's been a long time entrepreneur I think. I think I first bumped into you with doing sifter, your, your, your app from a few years ago, you built that from scratch solo entrepreneur and then you sold that. Then you're, you're at post uh, postmark for awhile for that. Right. Garrett  Well, wild bit at large, but primarily on postmark. Yeah. Ben  Okay. Right. Right. So you're a while, but for a while and then I guess it was a couple of years ago now that you've left wild. Garrett  Yeah, it's been about . years, I guess. No. Okay. Ben  Yeah. And so I guess also during that time you kind of did the starting and sustaining books slash video series slash thing. That was cool. Garrett  Yeah, I've been dabbling in all that, trying to share my battle wounds so that other people can maybe avoid them or less than them. Ben  Yeah, that's awesome. I remember, I remember buying that. It's good, good stuff. So also linked in the show notes. Maybe we'll get a sailor to uh, you spoke, you spoke at Microsoft a few times or at least once that I can remember Garrett  I can't even keep track now. Microsoft spoke once attended a couple of times. Yeah. Ben  And so now you're doing some, some interesting stuff. So I remember, remember when you left a wild bit, you were, you're really interested in getting started on helping amputees have a community and so you started adapted, right? So, we're gonna talk about that for a second, and then we can talk about, you know, how that plan kind of changed for you with the passage? Garrett  Um, I mean, so I'm a left below knee amputee. And when I was trying to make that decision, I couldn't find any information on what life is really like as an amputee, um, let alone specific information about, can I play basketball still, if so, how does that work? Or what other activities can I do? And there's just not a lot of detailed information, and with disability, even just within amputees, the range is incredible, like above me and bologna makes a complete difference in how you function and your body mechanics, and so I just couldn't find this information out there. And so that kind of planted the seed that obviously it's not out there and, you know, it's woefully under informed, which at first was kind of scary, it's like, oh, I guess nobody does any of this stuff Garrett  and for me, the whole, ironically, the whole point of amputating was so that I could get back to doing things because of my ankle fusion was horrible and all that, it's just hurt and was miserable and through the whole thing, I was blogging about it, and what would happen is people would email me because they'd go on google and search for amputation, ankle fusion, that kind of thing, and then they'd ask me like, I'm, because I was the only person that came up and I would get these emails, you know, it kind of varies and go ebbs and flows, you know, to a month, once a week, you know, so frequently enough. Um, and uh, one uh, young woman that reached out to me, she actually amputated and then just won a couple of gold medals in the paralympics and like, Garrett  it just blew my mind is like, how do you find the answers to this stuff? And uh, after being an amputee now about five years and trying stuff and just kind of figuring it out. Uh, my hope was originally, I was like, well, I'm a software developer, I'll build a platform so people can share that information, um, you know, and I figured I was really optimistic about that specifically, because, well I built sifter and rails has gotten way better and I learned a ton from sifters, it'll be way easier this time around, but I didn't really account for was now I've got a family and I'm  years older, uh and so it's been more challenging at the end of the day, I'm just tapped on software because I'm doing that all day and my brain is fried. Garrett  Um, but I've been doing videos kind of explaining this stuff to people about how legs work and the logistics of like how they change your body mechanics and um, how to do things like go to the beach and deal with sand in your foot and that kind of stuff. Uh, and I did that more is like an exploratory whimsical thing because that was the kind of content I hope people would create and put on the platform. So then you could filter and say, here's my disability, here's the activity I want to do. Give me all the information about that specific thing. Um, but I did it and it just kind of left it for a year, but it just kept going and then more people have been contacting me and so now what I'm doing is kind of Garrett  stepping back from the software side of it and I'm just gonna keep recording videos for the next short term, um, and having them produced and that kind of stuff and hopefully increasing the quality and the depth and then doing interviews with other amputees and really kind of getting into more stuff, um, and then eventually circling back to building a platform to help people find the right things that meet their needs and that kind of thing. Um, so, you know, it's, it's, it's been tough. I think the toughest thing is realizing that nonprofit side projects are the hardest thing to make time for, um because it's never going to offset my income or anything. And so like Garrett  now I've kind of been thinking, I guess I need to build a business again. So I've got more ironically more free time um, just because Sassen recurring revenue all that's so great that it would give me the flexibility to do that and to spend more time helping people and building um software and all that. So kind of just juggling things and figuring it out. And that's kind of where a lot of the exploration has come in. I haven't really prescribed where I'm taking things and uh um spending a lot of time dabbling and ruby and getting kind of deeper into it than I ever have previously. And uh exploring video and trying to help people with that stuff. So just kind of playing around and tinkering and trying to make ends meet at the same time and I'll figure it out, I guess Ben  that's cool. There's a whole lot to unpack in there. So let's, let's talk about some of that. So, Some of the, some of the themes, well, at first, I guess I should say I can totally relate to you with the whole, you know,  years later and now, there's. yeah, there's more demands on your time. There's less energy in the body and there's, you know, less energy in the brain probably is more importantly. Um, I've had that, that same thing I recently started picking up some side projects, you know, and like, yeah, they're just, you have fewer hours in the day that you really feel like being really into that kind of mode, you know, that your brain stuff and, Ben  and I've noticed that uh I can tell like when my blood sugar is getting low and now we're like, I've I've used up too many brain cells, I gotta go back and recharge, you Garrett  know? Uh Ben  So it's interesting that dynamics, like, I don't quite have the appetite that I used to have to just dive in and, and, you know, slog away at the keyboard for hours. And then Garrett  for me, it's also been awareness, like, I recognize it more now when I, when I was younger I would push through and be like, oh, grind and hustle and you know, and now I'm like, ok, I need to stop, this isn't, you know, if I don't stop, I'm going to be a complete mess tomorrow and not want to work and not be able to think. And so I catch it earlier and I just stopped and I hate it because I still, like, interested in whatever problem is in my head is still tugging on it and, you know, it's trying to and it's really hard to just turn it off and walk away. Um but I've gotten better at that a little, Ben  One of the things that I've noticed as, as I've gotten older in this tech world. So I guess I've been doing it  years or  years or so, is that, um, uh, so that that energy for doing all the things is not there? Like it used to be, but it seems like the deep thinking is more refined is more home. So like you said, like you're going to be, you know, you're just not going to have the energy, you're not going to be wasted the next day. And I think I've seen that too. And I think it's not just from like the energy of working, it's from the energy of thinking deeply about what's the right solution here, right? Ben  It's not so much like just powering through it. Okay, I'm gonna build this stuff and I'm gonna backtrack and I'm gonna redo and backtrack and redo now. It's like, oh, I'm gonna think about this and I'm going to get it right right? And then you apply that precision cut I guess. Garrett  And for me, the struggle is having the wisdom to recognize they should stop, but I can't turn off the excitement or the interest, right? And so I do still want to work on it. I just know better. And it's hard when those two don't align. Yeah, that's, that's been a struggle. Ben  Yeah, I've seen saying the same thing, but I think my living experience so far has been like the, the eventual outcome is better, even even when I have that, you know, I want to do more, but I don't know, I don't have the energy to more, But having that time to reflect more when I do sit down next time and have that  minutes an hour or whatever, like that time is much better spent coming up with the right solution rather than Garrett  just uh just the other day. I was and I mean, I think we've all had this happen a million times, but this just happened. I don't know, friday, I think banging my head on the desk for an hour and a half on this thing. That just makes no sense. There's a ruby thing like this doesn't make sense. What am I missing here? Like is there some really quirky ruby behavior I don't understand. Um And hour and a half and finally was like, I've got to give up, I've got to stop, this isn't getting anywhere. And it was only like , right? So I still was like, I had time in the day, I was like, I just got to stop The next morning. I sat down with in  minutes, Garrett  like solve cold, right? Like there's no, that was from the time I sat at my desk at the time, I solve the problem and it was just, you've got to step away and clear your head or you know, it just doesn't go well, Ben  yeah, yeah, I've had that same experience so many times and uh I think a lot of times you hear people say yeah just take a break, go for a walk whenever you're like yeah what everyone's gonna power through it but it actually does work Garrett  well for me. Walking doesn't cause then I'll just fix it on it too much and like I need to let go like my brain has to let it go. Um And so for me usually it's more getting a getting a night of sleep um is what kind of resets it for me at least from what I've found. But I've probably every three or four months. It's one of those where like This is going poorly and the next morning less than  minutes it's solved. Uh Ben  Yeah I have that too, like a good night. So definitely goes to reset. The one. The one problem I've had with that though is that then I will wake up at four a.m. I have the solution in my head, I'm like I got to go do it, Garrett  I do that too and for better or worse I don't even fight the sleep anymore, I just get up and go start working. Um And then if I need a nap later or something I just Ben  so be Garrett  it. Uh But like that's so much of that like We're so indoctrinated that like  is when people work. And that's been a really hard thing to let go of two and not feel that way every day and to basically, it's not about like working when you feel like it, but it's not like pushing back when the urge to get something done strikes, like go do it and then circle back, yeah, you know, and get some either for rest or whatever. Um you know, take a long lunch or whatever it is. Uh and that's uh I've found that to be helpful to just to try and not forced to work, but do it when it's fresh in my head and just go, Ben  yeah, yeah, I love having that flexibility as a, as an entrepreneur or business owner and being able to work when it's most effective. So You know, if it's  and then I take a break and maybe come back in a couple hours in the afternoon and then I'm done for the day, that's, it's cool. Right? So I wanted to hit on one other thing from, you're talking about there about with adaptable and you know, I love what you're saying about there's a, there's a software solution here, let me go build that, right? And then over time. Like uh maybe not. And I can totally relate to that because I feel the same way. It's like, oh if there's something missing in the world, there's, there's obviously assad's there that can satisfy that need, but Ben  but in reality like salad, you don't have to go all the way to says, right, you can uh, you can start with, you know, youtube videos or uh, maybe even just a reddit, right? Maybe maybe you're hanging out in the community and on offering back and building up that stuff that you want to see in the world. Garrett  Uh, so there's definitely still an element of that with what I want to do and uh, a lot of it is like, right now I'm focused on videos and more mechanics and uh, you know, here's things to think about if you want to get into mountain biking as an amputee or things to think about with snowboarding or, you know, whatever it is. Um, but there's this whole other facet or many facets really, um, of like limb care and recovery and you know, when you beat your leg up doing something active in a carbon fiber socket all day Garrett  and then you get home and it's destroyed, uh, you know, you got to take care of it. And so there's things like that and there's a financial aspect that like insurance only helped so much with prosthetics and they help with basic, like daily kind of day to day prosthetics, but they don't help if you need more advanced prosthetics, um, for certain activities. And so for that, you're either on your own or you need to find financial assistance and there's a ton of great organizations out there that help with that, but they're all non profits and their websites are less than stellar and less than informative. Um, Garrett  and in a lot of ways it's difficult to find the one that is right for you that will cover the type of equipment you need based on, you know, just your disability fall into the disabilities that they cover. Um, and so there's all these different requirements and details and it's difficult or you forget right, like life happens and some organization has an annual grant cycle and it's in october and then october blows by and you're like, oh crap, I totally forgot to apply for that grant and now you got to wait till next year. And so, you know, my thinking is that it's not just a tool to like educate people and help people find the information. They need something to proactively help reduce friction and remove the barriers that stop people with disabilities from being active. Garrett  Um, and that could be everything from pain to financial stuff to simply, you know, needing somebody to talk to who's done it. Um, and there's just, there's so many solutions and everybody, even within a category of disability is unique, even if they're not unique from the disability perspective, the activity they want to pursue might be more unique. Um, and so it's just really difficult to make it all work and to find answers and you kind of just gotta go try and you know, from experience the first couple of times I try new activity is miserable because I'm just figuring it out and that takes a lot of the fun out of it. And a lot of people like this isn't for me and you know, until you learn Garrett  kind of about that learning curve and how it exists and how it's a lot steeper than it is without a prosthetic or what have you. Um it's tough and it's easy to give up because it hurts and it's inconvenient and you know, there's just you're worried about your prosthetic, right? You've got this $, prosthetic that you need to survive day to day and you're like, oh I'm going to go paddleboarding, so what if it gets wet, can it get wet? I don't know, and there's just so many questions and so many easy reasons to give up or be intimidated and Garrett  you know, it doesn't need to be that way because more more importantly, like once you're in that situation is more important than ever to be active and to stay active and to not let it just lock you down on the couch or something. Um but it's not easy, you know, it's way harder than before and I don't think it needs to be, it doesn't need to be as hard as it is. So yeah, I'm hoping could help people get answers and you know, do their thing, whatever it is that moves them figuratively and literally Ben  yeah, yeah, that sounds like a tagline for the website Garrett  actually. Right. Ben  Right. Garrett  Yeah. Ben  Yeah. I I have uh so we have in our in our family some some experience with a kind of obscure medical issues like uh which is kind of similar to, you know, go into a prosthetic situation, right? Where all of a sudden you're into this community where you have to, you can get the speed really quickly on what does life look like now. And how do I do the things that I want to do and where do I go to find that information? And so often it seems that in our in our experience is that the only people who really know much of anything are the doctors that you're working with or the therapists or the nurses, right? And and they can connect with resources. But like if you just happen to have the wrong, you know, chemistry, Ben  you know, with with someone or you don't just happen to the right person, you can just feel pretty isolated. And uh so I thank you for having having resources for, for that is is so helpful because I've told my wife a number of times like you could write a book on on all the things that you've learned, you know, through this experience. And and then my my my brother's family there was a significant motorcycle accident that left someone with, you know, just a lot of parallelization from the waist down basically and his his, you know, going through all the things that he went through two surgeries and the rehab. And so to get back to a point where he could walk, you know, uh, which was, which was assisted so much by the great people that he had around him. Ben  But fortunately he had them right for those that don't, it's got to be a much, much harder rodeo Garrett  and it's just all over the board. Um, amputations really interesting is what most most frequently right into with people is there surgeon doesn't want them to amputate and is constantly trying to talk them out of it. But after you go through it, I saw my surgeon, I mean, my surgeon, I had to switch surgeons. Um, but he saw me twice after my amputation. He's never seen me with a prosthetic. He has no idea what I'm doing now. And so these people are asking their surgeons about amputation. The truth is the surgeons, unless they're actively helping. Um, you know, in other contexts and volunteering. Uh, they have no clue what life is like after amputation. They might read some stuff, Garrett  right. And you know, there's plenty of paralympians that are amazing. But then you wonder those people edge cases or you know, can anybody run and do that stuff again? Maybe not at that level. Um, and the, your surgeon just doesn't know. And so people are asking the surgeon because that's supposed to be the expert and then the surgeons giving them, I don't want to say bad information but incomplete information. And so it's tough for people because you can't get those answers, you know, and again, every disability so different how it affects people and how your doctor, what their background is in terms of how they understand like being active or you know, doing more than just day to day functioning. All right. Yeah. There's so many layers to it all. Mhm. Ben  So, one thing I wanted to go back to was talking about, you know, the time that you spend on that, obviously it's it's tough when you've got a family, you're the breadwinner. You know, you're trying to build a nonprofit thing. And at some point it sounds like you realize, you know what, I just gotta I gotta do some work. I got to bring the money in the door, right? I can't spend all my time focusing on this this nonprofit platform. So it sounds like you're doing that in your spare time and that you're you're paying the bills of freelancing doing a bunch of bunch of rail stuff. But as you've been doing that, you've actually built some tools that I want to talk about. So it sounds it sounds like Ben  you've been doing this work and this work has prompted you to build the review thing you've been working on. And also the heat map thing for many tests, let's talk about that a little bit. Garrett  Uh Yeah. So the nice thing, the one the only intentional thing I've done the last . years is to try and make sure that whatever I'm doing at all kind of syncs up somehow um and for the most part that was always leading back to ruby and or rails um and you know, so a lot of my client work is helping with legacy apps that are profitable now, but they built the app quickly and there's some, you know, legacy pain that needs to be fixed, re factoring that kind of thing. Um And then there was adaptable where I was starting with a Greenfield fresh modern rails app um and one of them was fun and the other one wasn't and I'll let you guess. Mhm. And so a lot of what I started thinking more about was like how does an app that Garrett  has all this legacy craft get from there to a point where it's not miserable to work on and you know, there's a lot of ways, there's a lot of paths, there's a lot of great books on re factoring um and a lot of that kind of stuff, uh what I started getting more interested in was how we've got all these great letters and static analysis tools for um security for syntax for just cleaning up code, right? And a lot of little auto correct and format stuff for you. Uh and the more I I dabbled with the tools previously but they were always so difficult to use because they're all command line um you know and they all have different syntax, different names for the same flags that do the same thing like Summer Garrett  auto, correct, some are right, some are, you know, and so like you gotta then remember the quirks, they're using the wrong flags with the wrong tools and it just gets tedious, right or like you know, you want to use a dozen tools, but if you run them all at once, like it's going to take  minutes to run through your whole project when really all you want is like just look at the files, I'm about to commit or uh you know look at the files, I just committed and let's do a pass it like with Robocop or whatever, clean them up and then I'll commit a separate one that's just pure clean up, you know, all these kind of things and but it was so tedious, I love these tools but I just wouldn't use them because there was too much friction. Garrett  Uh and so with adaptable and like when I start a Greenfield project, I was like I've got to use these tools from the beginning to make sure that never gets into a bad state because once that ship sails it's too much effort to go back and too much risk to like make those kind of wholesale changes and uh so it started with just that it's like how can I make it easier to use these tools and remove the friction so that they're enjoyable to use and kind of in the back of my mind was because like Guard does a lot of this, right, if you're running guard constantly. Uh But Guard also drove me nuts because it would my fans would spin up and make so much noise and I couldn't concentrate. Um Garrett  and so kind of and I still like guard, but my thinking was what if the tool could be so convenient that you didn't feel like you needed to use guard to watch files as you changed them and that you could do more than just have your automated test front, right? So like what if and I mean there's there's integrations for like Robocop and stuff, but like what if you change five files and you could just run a tool that will automatically run all of the relevant things you have against those files that you updated and potentially auto correct them if you want or um you know, this is all theory and it's it's come together and I'm using it on itself but it's not ready to like use in other projects yet. Um that's kind of the next step. Uh Garrett  But yeah and that's what I just I wanted that I want to be able to take it on a project that's raw and has a ton of craft and then every time I commit basically start cleaning up there and just make sure it doesn't regress, right it only gets better, you know and basically it makes it easier to or hopefully it will make it easier to just make constant steady improvement, right? It's not you run it and then it's like you know the tool just throws up its hands, it's like this code base is a mess, Ben  don't even Garrett  use this tool. Um Instead I want it to be you know what okay make some progress, let's start there and eventually, you know, over the course of a year, two years you're gonna touch so much of the code and eventually it's gonna get cleaner and it's gonna get better right? And it's not just formatting but like you've got things like brake man and things that are for scanning for security issues and all this stuff and there's so much bundler audit right and all these things to make sure that your dependencies and you know there's a lot of great tools out there like code, climate for reporting. But what drives me nuts is when I commit and then it gets to see I Garrett  and then the ci finds the mistake because the tool you don't run it locally like okay well now I've got to fix it and I gotta wait for ci again and like I want all these tools to be so frictionless to use, it never even makes it to see i like CS board because it never has anything to complain about because by the time it gets there it's already perfect. Um So yeah, so that's kind of the that's a reviewer um and it'll hopefully be more like the end of the year. Um And then I've also been obsessed with many tests lately because I used to use ours back and I just it never messed with me. It was too, I don't know, it's Garrett  the way I've always described, feels like it's the only thing in ruby that I feel like is simultaneously very ruby and very un ruby and it's just never worked with my head. Um And all the I'm very dependency averse from years of you know dependency breaks or has a security issue and the chain reaction of things that need to be updated and can't be updated because and so I'm very dependency averse. Um and uh so that's another reason I've gone with many tests because it's just there there's fewer dependencies, it's simpler. Um But many tests output even with all the formatting options out there just always, I felt like I was doing way more work than I should have to to figure out what failed what went wrong and how to fix it Garrett  and so what I've done is really over engineered to test reporter for many tests to uh when a test fails, it kind of catalogs what file was in the stack trace what line number in that file. Um and so what it's doing is in the background, it's kind of building up a heat map of everything that triggered a problem. And it's also differentiating between like failures and exceptions because if your test fails, okay, that's interesting. You want to start with the assertion, what was the assertion that failed? But if there is an exception, then the assertions kind of irrelevant. You want to go dig into the exception. But what if the exception came out of the test, Garrett  then you don't want to waste your time and source code just fix the test. Otherwise you're not. And so it differentiates between failures, a broken test and an exception. And it presents the output differently to kind of guide you in the right direction based on those. And if you've got anything that's failing or broken, it's not going to harass you about skipped tests or slow tests, right? It suppresses those until everything's fixed. And it's like, hey, by the way, you've got four tests here that you've skipped, you need to go right? Those, uh, and actually won't bother you about slow tests until all your skip tests are fixed, Right? Garrett  Uh, and so it kind of lets you focus on what's important at the time without reminding you of the fact that you've got a lot going on that is pending and problematic or whatever it is. Um, you know, so there's a lot of little things like that and like when you make that one change that breaks  things across your whole project, you're renaming a class or whatever it is. Uh And then it's just you will go from like a perfect test suite  failing tests like crap. Okay. Where do I even start? Uh And so the heat map will show you like look all of these problems come back to this one file, you know, whatever it is so you can get to the heart of the matter instead of having to like Garrett  visually scanned through  failures and try to find and recognize a pattern. Uh So it's kind of uh a proactive pattern matching reporter. Um you know with a few other tweaks to just help uh nudge and simplify kind of the output so that you can my hope be, you know, you see a test failure and you know exactly what you need to do to fix it before you even go back to your text editor because you've got enough context. Um And obviously that's not always possible, but more often than not and definitely more often than with just the generic reporter. Uh That's been the case and has been really helpful and saves me a ton of time fishing for what needs to be fixed and what what's worth fixing first and that kind of thing. So I have to think a lot less. Garrett  I just have to go fix it. Ah And so both of those combined are going to kind of I'm hoping work in a way that you know you type R. V. W. And it's just smart and it says here's all your problems. You're like oh my gosh, everything's perfect. But you could stand to improve your documentation here in this file, you're like okay I can do that real quick. Um You know so it kind of nudges you in the right direction without like wearing you out about how horrible your code is. Um Because when you're one of those tools just raw, that's basically what it feels like. It's like oh my gosh I'm horrible. I have no idea, I have no business writing code. Uh Garrett  And that's not a good feeling but if it's like hey you can fix this, here's how okay I can do that. Um You know there's a lot of really interesting ideas. There are like you know you ever run your test suite and it fails and you run it again and it passes. They're like oh crap what was the seed that it used when it failed? And uh so what reviewer does too in the background, it's recording a bunch of history. Um And so it will remember that last failed seed and so you can you be able to type our VW rerun and it would rerun just the failure and let you zero in on that and focus on fixing that. Um So there's a lot of little things like that that Garrett  I just want to make it easier. I mean there's bisect and some great tools out there. Um, but sometimes they're overkill and slow and they take you out of the zone and I want to make it easier to stay in the zone and get things done and get back on track. Ben  That sounds sounds really cool. Yeah, we um, remember having done some a few major rails version upgrades with the honey badger card base, you know, go from  to  or  or whatever it is. And like all of a sudden half your tests, you got thousands of tests and like thousands of them. It's the Garrett  most defeating feeling. You're just like, oh, okay, I quit for today. Ben  Yeah. And then, and then, you know, you dive through all those things like, okay, these all look the same. It's all the same. It's all the same and go and try this thing here and that thing there and oh, I made this one change and now half of those failing tests are now passing okay. Now, you know? So yeah, having the heat map I think is uh, it sounds like a great idea. And then of course, you know, you mentioned, uh, if it's an exception, you know exactly where to go, like it sounds like honey badger, right? You get the context that you need to know what to fix, right, yep. Yeah. Although I must say I'm, I'm an I respect fan Ben  have been for a long time and I've tried, you know, going back to many tests because I'll start your rails app like this, this new side project, I started a few a few months ago, like it's a new rails happen to me, you know, let me try any test again because that's the default and so I'll get in there for a bit. But then like one of the things I've come to realize is that I, what I love about our spec is despite how, you know, I can feel you about the dependency aversion, but at the same time our spec is kind of like a batteries included kind of thing. Like Ben  you've got the mocking right? Not the stubbing, you don't have to worry about what I do. I do, I do many test mock or do I do mocha, you know, like all that's kind of rails itself, right? It's kind of kind of its own duck and it has everything included. So you don't think about, you Garrett  know, and don't get me wrong, I don't dislike our spec, it just doesn't work with my head and like, I just get overwhelmed with how much it has. And so for me with many tests, like you're like, oh, which marked thing to use neither. Like if I feel like I need to mock something, I need to re factor it so it's more easy to test efficiently and directly. Um, because like marks, I mean that has all has its own issues, right? Like uh and so for me uh and and it was very much a mental thing. Like I just fully embraced accepted many tests limitations and now I use that as kind of a nudge to be like, all right, if this is really difficult to do, Garrett  then it's not that I need better testing tools. It's that I need my code to be organized in a way that lets me test this appropriately And efficiently without getting to set up  unrelated models so that it won't fall over. Uh And so that's kind of been more of a philosophical thing for me because previously when I drive many tests, that's exactly how to drive me nuts. I'm like, how the hell do I do any of this? Because my brain what little I did understand of our respect. I had learned to think that way about things. And so then I found myself doing all this like how do you mock in many tests and how do you, And it's like you don't, you know, use mocha or you know what have Ben  you. Garrett  Uh and so kind of accepting that and just saying, you know what, When it, when many test pushes back, I'm going to listen and I'll just re factor. Um and at first was a little painful. But now it actually has been really, really nice. Uh But I will say to a lot of that goes hand in hand with like I've been doing a lot of like deeper deeper reading on ruby and thus kind of understanding patterns, you know being able to see more patterns to re factor like oh this is why this is hard to test really. Just need to re factor using this pattern and take this approach instead or whatever. Um And so that's helped because otherwise I feel like I know I need to change this but I don't even know where to start. Um Garrett  So you know, that's definitely been a philosophical thing I had to accept. Ben  Yeah, that makes sense. So you mentioned code climate and I know, you know in the early days when kokonas started like it was basically a wrapper on top of flay and flaw right and eventually break man and stuff. Right? They assembled all these open source tools and put a nice ui on top of it, which is fine, you know, but you could just run off tools yourself, right? Um But review sounds pretty cool because you're basically giving that code climate kind of experience, but it's on your own right, in your own cli and you could I mean conceivably you could even use it like with left hook or something to do get pre commit kind of thing which might have its own problems but still it's an option. Garrett  It's definitely on the radar, there's a lot of get integration that I'm planning on. So you can do like our VW staged and it'll just look at the staged files or R. V. W untracked, it'll just looked at your file that you haven't staged, That kind of thing. Ben  Super handy. So do you do you see a path where review because there's some sort of commercial component to review or do you think it could always be pure, Garrett  there's, I've got a bunch of ideas that I think could um I mean the core one is just gonna be an open source jim. Um if I do follow any model um you know, it's probably going to be something more like sidekick where there's the core thing that is helpful and useful and free for eternity. Um and then there would be more advanced, either team functionality or kind of sharing of configuration files. Um There's a whole ton of tools that I've thought about building to to um things like if you have an existing app, it kind of auto detect and suggest, hey you might want to use these gems, these tools um obviously it's built in ruby but the idea is that it has to be ruby centric. It's really at the end of the day, it's just a wrapper for command line tools Garrett  that gives you some kind of either pass fail or score output. Um and so like if you've got  tools set up, like one reviewer, I've just gone overboard. Like I'll use everything because I want to kind of test it, you know, and dog food it um And so like if one fails it doesn't bother running the rest of them. And so the idea is if you can figure in the order of priority, like start with bundler audit right? Because if you've got a gym that's out of whack, then you need to fix that because that'll ripple And so it'll just stop there, so you have to wait  minutes for a whole suite to run on a huge project, it just fails immediately, insist fix this and then you fix that and then it runs Garrett  um and then two and this is all theoretical at this point because I haven't played with it, but I've got some, I'm really excited about the idea potentially. Um and I hate to make it ruby three only, but playing with tractors and some some threading and stuff so that you can have Robocop running in parallel with, you know, especially with multi core processors picking up and all this kind of stuff, I feel like there's a lot of potential Like what if you could run  tools in parallel and have the whole thing run in seconds instead of minutes and that could be really cool, There's other challenges there, but um you know that reporting obviously um like code climate, I feel like that's one of code climates really big things, Garrett  but for me the reporting is gonna be more an afterthought, I wanted to be a local thing that you can use friction free and then if people like it, which I hope they will, I mean I'm really excited about, I love using it to build itself, it's been wildly helpful. Um you know, then yeah, I'd start thinking about, you know, what other options are there for, how it could be better um and do even more cool stuff for teams or people who are just really serious about using it or you know, what have you? Ben  Mhm Yeah, I think, I mean I love, I love the sidekick model uh you know, give that great open source core that has great functionality and then build on top of that, you know, things that are useful to people who are going to use it more intensely and I think, I think the psychic definitely has that sweet spot, if it's it's an operations kind of thing where you're gonna be, you're gonna be running this forever in your production environment. So you want to pay that licensing fee, you know, every month, every year or whatever. And then there's also like the ASCII corp model, right? Where they have very, very good open source tools, you know, you can use Packer or Terror Form or whatever, Ben  you know, never paying them a dime but they also have great team collaboration tools if you want to move to their platform, you know, and coordinate your Terror Form running or you know, your console, you know, or your vault or whatever, right? They have a pro or enterprise offering for every one of those that can do additional stuff enhancing it, you know? So yeah, some great options there, Garrett  yeah, you know, I will say to a lot of my Garrett  thinking since selling sifter has been, I don't really want to run a sas app again, uh and I'm sure you can guess all the reasons uh at the end of the day, the simplest thing um and I mean I knew it when I was running sifter but I didn't fully appreciate it was the degree to which I let it change me to notifications and alerts of problems and a never ending fear that as soon as I went camping or hiking out of cell service was the day it was going to fall over in a bad way and uh like it wasn't this like huge thing, but it was just in this like ever present anxiety and after I didn't have that anymore, it was just such a like epiphany Garrett  that was like, I don't really want to go back there and if I build a SAS up, it needs to be something that can be designed in such a way that it's resilient and I know that, you know, if it goes into a certain state and it's like that for six hours or something, nobody's gonna be too upset. Um and I couldn't think of anything and uh so yeah, so then I just started building these gyms and I was like, I'm just gonna build the gyms and see where that takes me. I mean really, I feel like I'm just kind of pulling on a thread right now based on my personal curiosity and then just trying to also keep in mind like let's make sure this would also be useful for other people at some point, wherever that is. Ben  Yeah, I'm of course totally with you on the whole like it's tough to run this as because yeah, it is and yeah, I think about this the other day as this, this side project, I'm working on it, like, well it's it's actually right now just for fun, but of course it's like well how would I how to make money on this if I wanted to? And I could run a sad and this is a sad thing, it integrates with GIT hub. And uh so it's it's definitely a web based kind of stuff you do. Um Ben  but you know, if it went down for a few hours, people wouldn't be screaming like screaming about honey badger going down for a few hours. So like that's like that's okay. And then on the other hand, it's like, well it's it is very tightly integrated to get hub. So I could do a self hosted, here's a doctor image kind of thing, you go run this and it talks to your get up enterprise installation behind your firewall. Right? Ben  So I think, yeah, it's really good for entrepreneurs today who are so low to be thinking about that because there are a lot of options. There's the, you know, there's a psychic model. We just give one some someone some code, right? They license it, they run it and it's it's all them right. Or maybe you build a SAAS app that is also a docker image that they can deploy themselves. Maybe the codes available, you know, as maybe it's an open source thing, even like a matter most right, you can they have a hosted option, they have an open source options, have a self host adoption. Um Yeah, I think really good to be thinking about these things as you're, you know, deciding what you're doing day to day because it does, does affect quality of life. Like Ben  my first thought was, and I was when I think about this says I was like this side project, as I says, I was like, well then I got to have the laptop in the night time because Garrett  I'm like, I think I would much rather have an imac, but like as long as I'm involved in anything that can go offline, I don't think I can survive with just an imac, I've got to have a laptop and like yeah, I don't like that, feel like, I don't know, I mean, I don't think anybody but uh Yeah, Ben  Yeah, well that's, and I sometimes I think about a kind of metal level like oh that's a problem to solve, like how do you help? So the entrepreneurs run saAS operations without having to be, you know, always on like yeah, that's an unsolved problem. If someone solves that, that will be I think worth some. I mean Hiroko has done a pretty good job solving that problem, but it's not % solved yet. Garrett  So Well there's Ben  for me, Garrett  like I built a job board for our community here in the valley um because tourism based economies like the turnover and stuff is high and ah and so like for me I was staying with that and I haven't done this because it's just not critical enough. Um but the only thing I thought it would be like with a job board, if you could have it fall into read only mode where it's basically heavily cached on the front end and that's something that could work. But most apps where you're interacting with them because posting jobs, it's not like you constantly post jobs, you post a job and if you can't post a job right now you can come back in six hours and that's fine. It's not the end of the day, you know, into the world. Garrett  Uh but that's the only thing I've been able to come up with that has felt like it wouldn't be a huge issue as long as you designed and built it, right, so that I could do that. But everything else I'm like, nope, that won't work, That won't work. Like, I think that's why haven't start another business yet is because I've become really picky, like after selling stuff to, I'm like, what do I really want to do and not do again? And so much of the sad stuff while it's great. Um it was just like, it took a toll. Like, it made me not want to do so many things that now I love doing, like camping and hiking and like getting out of cell service. Um, and so I don't want to give that up anymore. Ben  So I guess the moral of the story is do all that kind of stuff when you're in your twenties have plenty of energy, right? You don't hate it yet, right? And then try to come up with something different by the time you're in your s, Garrett  use the experience to uh more wisely choose your battles. Ben  Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Well, this has been total fun. Yeah. Yeah. Garrett  Glad, Glad to catch up. Ben  Is there anything that we should have talked about that we didn't? Garrett  Oh, probably a ton of stuff. Uh, no, I mean, I wish this stuff was all in a better state. Many test heat is good to use now, I need to add a little bit more exception handling because now every now and then something goes wrong with many test heat and like you can't see your own test failures because it fell over. Uh so that's kind of my next step is to add some resiliency to that so that if it breaks, it says, hey many test heat fell over on this, but your things fine and have some like simple output. So you at least can see something because every now and then I have to go disable it and switch back to the regular reporter so I can actually see the the failure. Um but uh you know, it's ready to use, I'm using it Garrett  every day on all my projects now. Um and it's been pretty, pretty fine. Today was the first time in like a week that I've seen any kind of issue that didn't work so that people can use it. It definitely needs some tidying up and improvements, but that's forthcoming, then reviewer will hopefully be the end of the year will kind of see how, how things shake out with the holidays and all that, how much work I'm able to get done, but um I'm optimistic because I want it, I want to use it on other projects, like every time I go work on reviewer, I'm like, I really wish I had this for my other projects where I've just got dumb scripts that just run the same commands in order and you know, it's close, but it's not the same. Um Garrett  you know, I'm really excited about how much I know it's going to help my day to day work flow and I'm hopeful anybody else that's using rubio find those same benefits. Um And hopefully other languages too. I don't know. I haven't really tried, I mean in theory, javascript and a lot of that stuff will work like with the rails app. Um and like er be learning and and what night. Um So hopefully, but I haven't tried anything wholly outside of a ruby project to see if it could be useful there, but it should be, it's just a wrapper around command line, right? Strings. So hopefully Ben  and then next step V. S. Code plug in right where it's all just running all the time Garrett  code, right? Ben  Yeah, maybe that's your thing you sell. I don't know. Garrett  Yeah. You know, I haven't thought about that too much because most of them you can plug in on their own. Uh But then that gets overwhelming when you're trying to edit your file and it's like just yelling at you about everything. Like just let me think first, then yell at me after the fact after I've like figured it out. Yeah, I'm excited about it. It's kind of the most fun I've had programming in a long time. Um So we'll see. Ben  I love it. Well, scratching your niche is always fun and if you can make some money while you're at it. Hey, even funny Garrett  right? Well and so like that's the thing, like just kind of circle back and wrap it up, like part of it is in order for me to really pursue adaptable, I've got to have some kind of automatic income and like with sifter that would've been perfect, you know, it's recurring revenues, Great. And uh so a lot of it too is like, I'm really gonna unlock adaptable potential. I need to not be, you know, have an income tied to hourly rates. It's got to be divorced from how much time I'm actually sitting at my computer and uh so that's kind of been a driver too, but again, more just wandering and figuring it out, hoping it all comes together somehow. Ben  That's, we're all in the same boat. Garrett  Right, Ben  well, we will definitely link up uh the heat map and review and uh definitely get some people check it out if you're ruby ist and we'll link up your twitter so people can follow you and keep track of what you're doing. Uh Thanks again, yeah, hanging out with, Garrett  thanks. Great to catch up Ben  and thanks everybody for listening Again, you've been listening to found request from the founders of honey badger. We're excited to continue to bring you exciting episodes on podcast and a fantastic product, honey badger of course. So check us out on the bed, radio and you know, as star always says, review as if you like and don't review us, if you don't like, have a great one. 

Blamáž. Čaká Slovensko politizácia vysokých škôl a návrat pred rok 1989? Môže zlepšenie slovenského vysokého školstva, vedy a výskumu priniesť ovládnutie univerzít politickými nominantmi a zníženie ich finančnej podpory? Celá slovenská akademická obec jednomyseľne odmietla návrh nového vysokoškolského zákona. Akademici hovoria, že sa cítia ministrom školstva Branislavom Gröhlingom (SaS) oklamaní a zneužití. Ich dôveru stratil a vyzývajú ho na odchod. O situácii vo vysokom školstve v špeciálnom podcaste denníka Pravda rozprávajú redaktor a vedúca domáceho spravodajstva denníka Dominik Hutko a Lívia Černická.

Kórónuveirufaraldurinn lék flugfélög heimsins grátt vegna mikils samdráttar í farþegaflugi. Skandínavíska flugfélagið SAS er eitt þeirra og segja sumir sérfræðingar að félagið fari í þrot takist ekki að endurskipuleggja reksturinn. Þetta ræddu Björn Þór Sigbjörnsson og Bogi Ágústsson í Heimsglugga vikunnar. Í síðari hluta þáttarins ræddu þeir valdarán en í ár hefur her velt ríkisstjórn í fimm löndum heims. Lýðræðið á í vök að verjast, jafnvel í Evrópu þar sem einræðistilburðir nokkurra ríkisstjórna hafa veikt grunnstoðir þess.

About ChrisChris Williams is a Enterprise Architect for World Wide Technology — a technology solution and service provider. There he helps customers design the next generation of public, private, and hybrid cloud solutions, specializing in AWS and VMware. His first computer was a Commodore 64, and he's been playing video games ever since.Chris blogs about virtualization, technology, and design at Mistwire. He is an active community leader, co-organizing the AWS Portsmouth User Group, and both hosts and presents on vBrownBag. He is also an active mentor, helping students at the University of New Hampshire through Diversify Thinking—an initiative focused on empowering girls and women to pursue education and careers in STEM.Chris is a certified AWS Hero as well as a VMware vExpert. Fun fact that Chris doesn't want you to know: he has a degree in psychology so you can totally talk to him about your feelings.Links: WWT: https://www.wwt.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mistwire Personal site: https://mistwire.com vBrownBag: https://vbrownbag.com/team/chris-williams/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by Honeycomb. When production is running slow, it's hard to know where problems originate: is it your application code, users, or the underlying systems? I've got five bucks on DNS, personally. Why scroll through endless dashboards, while dealing with alert floods, going from tool to tool to tool that you employ, guessing at which puzzle pieces matter? Context switching and tool sprawl are slowly killing both your team and your business. You should care more about one of those than the other, which one is up to you. Drop the separate pillars and enter a world of getting one unified understanding of the one thing driving your business: production. With Honeycomb, you guess less and know more. Try it for free at Honeycomb.io/screaminginthecloud. Observability, it's more than just hipster monitoring.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Vultr. Spelled V-U-L-T-R because they're all about helping save money, including on things like, you know, vowels. So, what they do is they are a cloud provider that provides surprisingly high performance cloud compute at a price that—while sure they claim its better than AWS pricing—and when they say that they mean it is less money. Sure, I don't dispute that but what I find interesting is that it's predictable. They tell you in advance on a monthly basis what it's going to going to cost. They have a bunch of advanced networking features. They have nineteen global locations and scale things elastically. Not to be confused with openly, because apparently elastic and open can mean the same thing sometimes. They have had over a million users. Deployments take less that sixty seconds across twelve pre-selected operating systems. Or, if you're one of those nutters like me, you can bring your own ISO and install basically any operating system you want. Starting with pricing as low as $2.50 a month for Vultr cloud compute they have plans for developers and businesses of all sizes, except maybe Amazon, who stubbornly insists on having something to scale all on their own. Try Vultr today for free by visiting: vultr.com/screaming, and you'll receive a $100 in credit. Thats v-u-l-t-r.com slash screaming.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. One of the things I miss the most from the pre-pandemic times is meeting people at conferences or at various business meetings, not because I like people—far from it—but because we go through a ritual that I am a huge fan of, which is the exchange of business cards. Now, it's not because I'm a collector or anything here, but because I like seeing what people's actual titles are instead of diving into the morass of what we call ourselves on Twitter and whatnot. Today, I have just one of those folks with me. My guest is Chris Williams, who works at WWT, and his business card title is Enterprise Architect, comma AWS Cloud. Chris, welcome.Chris: Hi. Thanks for having me on the show, Corey.Corey: No, thank you for taking the time to speak with me. I have to imagine that the next line in your business card is, “No, I don't work for AWS,” because you know a company has succeeded when they get their name into people's job titles who don't work there.Chris: So, I have a running joke where the next line should actually be cloud therapist. And my degree is actually in psychology, so I was striving to get cloud therapist in there, but they still don't want to let me have it.Corey: Former guest Bobby Allen is now a cloud therapist over at Google Cloud, which is just phenomenal. I don't know what they're doing in a marketing context over there; I just know that they're just blasting them out of the park on a consistent, ongoing basis. It's really nice to see. It's forcing me to up my game a little bit. So, one of the challenges I've always had is, I don't like putting other companies' names into the title.Now, I run the Last Week in AWS newsletter, so yeah, okay, great, there's a little bit of ‘do as I say, not as I do' going on here. Because it feels, on some level, like doing unpaid volunteer work for a $2 trillion company. Speaking of, you are an AWS Community Hero, where you do volunteer work for a $2 trillion company. How'd that come about? What did you do that made you rise to their notice?Chris: That was a brilliant segue. Um—[laugh]—Corey: I do my best.Chris: So I, actually prior to becoming an AWS Community Hero, I do a lot of community work. So, I have run and helped to run four different community-led organizations: the Virtualization Technology User Group of New England; the AWS Portsmouth User Group, now the AWS Boston User Group; I'm a co-host and presenter for vBrownBag; I also do the New England AWS Community Day, which is a conglomeration of all the different user groups in one setting; and various and sundry other things, as well, along the way. Having done all of that, and having had a lot of the SAs and team members come and do speaking presentations for these various and sundry things, I was nominated internally by AWS to become one of their Community Heroes. Like you said, it's basically unpaid volunteer work where I go out and tout the services. I love talking about nerd stuff, so when I started working on AWS technologies, I really enjoyed it, and I just, kind of like, glommed on with other people that did it as well. I'm also a VMware vExpert, which basically use the exact same accolade for VMware. I have not been doing as much VMware stuff in the recent past, but that's kind of how I got into this gig.Corey: One of the things that strikes me as being the right move with respect to these, effectively, community voice accolades is Microsoft got something very right—they've been doing this a long time—they have their MVP program, but they have to re-invite people who have to requalify for it by whatever criteria they are, every year. AWS does not do this with their Heroes program. If you look at their Heroes page, there's a number of folks up there who have been doing interesting things in the cloud years ago, but then fell off the radar for a variety of reasons. In fact, the only way that I'm aware that you can lose Hero status is via getting a job at AWS or one of AWS competitors.Now, the hard part, of course, is well, who is Amazon's competitors? Basically everyone, but it mostly distills down to Microsoft, Google, and Oracle, as best I can tell, for Hero status. How does VMware fall on that spectrum? To be more specific, how does VMware fall on the spectrum of their community engagement program and having to renew, not, “Are they AWS's competitor?” To which the answer is, “Of course.”Chris: So, the renewal process for the VMware vExpert program is an annual re-up process where you fill out the form, list your contribution of the year, what you've done over the previous year, and then put it in for submission to the board of VMware vExperts who then give you the thumbs up or thumbs down. Much like Nero, you know, pass or fail, live or die. And I've been fortunate enough, so my vBrownBag contributions are every week; we have a show that happens every week. It can be either VMware stuff, or cloud in general stuff, or developer-related stuff. We cover the gamut; you know, people that want to come on and talk about whatever they want to talk about, they come on. And by virtue of that, we've had a lot of VMware speakers, we've had a lot of AWS speakers, we've had a lot of Azure speakers. So, I've been fortunate enough to be able to qualify each year with those contributions.Corey: I think that's the right way to go, from my perspective at least. But I want to get into this a little bit because you are an enterprise architect, which is always one of those terms that is super easy to make fun of in a variety of different ways. Your IDE is probably a whiteboard, and at some point when you have to write code, I thought you had a team of people who would be able to do that all for you because your job is to cogitate, and your artifacts are documentation, and the entire value of what you do can only be measured in the grand sweep of time, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.Chris: [laugh].Corey: But you don't generally get to be a Community Hero for stuff like that, and you don't usually get to be a vExpert on the VMware side, by not having at least technical chops that make people take a second look. What is it you'd say it is you do hear for, lack of a better term?Chris: “What would you say ya, do you here, Bob?” So, I'm not being facetious when I say cloud therapist. There is a lot of working at the eighth layer of the OSI model, the political layer. There's a lot of taking the requirements from the customer and sending them to the engineer. I'm a people person.The easy answer is to say, I do all the things from the TOGAF certification manual: the requirements, risks, assumptions, and constraints; the logical, conceptual, and physical diagrams; the harder answer is the soft skill side of that, is actually being able to communicate with the various levels of the industry, figuring out what the business really wants to do and how to technically solution that and figure out how to talk to the engineers to make that happen. You're right EAs get made fun of all the time, almost as much as consultants get made fun of. And it's a very squishy layer that, you know, depending upon your personality and the personality of the customer that you're dealing with, it can work wonderfully well or it can crash and burn immediately. I know from personal experience that I don't mesh well with financials, but I'm really, really good with, like, medical industry stuff, just the way that the brain works. But ironically, right now I'm working with a financial and we're getting along like a house on fire.Corey: Oh, yeah. I've been saying for a while now that when it comes to cloud, cost and architecture are the same things, and I think that ties back to a lot of different areas. But I want to be very clear here that we talk about, I'm not super deep into the financials, that does not mean you're bad at architecture because working on finance means different things to different folks. I don't think that it is possibly a good architect in the cloud environment and not have a conception of, “Huh, that thing seems really expensive if I do it that way.” That is very different than having the skill of reading a profit and loss statement or understanding various implications of the time value of money calculation that a company uses, or how things get amortized.There are nuances piled on top of nuances in finance, and it's easy to sit here and think that oh, I'm not great at finance means I don't know how money works. That is very rarely true. If you really don't know how money works, you'll go start a cryptocurrency startup.Chris: [laugh]. So, I plugged back to you; I was listening to one of your old shows and I cribbed one of your ideas and totally went with it. So, I just said that there's the logical, conceptual, and physical diagrams of an environment; on one of your shows, you had mentioned a financial diagram for an environment, and I was like, “That's brilliant.” So, now when I go into a customer, I actually do that, too. I take my physical diagram, I strip out all of the IP addresses, and our names, and everything like that, and I plot down how much it's going to cost, like, “This is the value of the EC2 instance,” or, “This is how much this pipe is going to cost if you run this over it.” And they go bananas over it. So, thanks for providing that idea that I mercilessly stole.Corey: Kind of fun on a lot of levels. Part of the challenge is as things get cloudier and it moves away from EC2 instances, ideally the lie we would like to tell ourselves that everything's in an auto-scaling group. Great—Chris: Right.Corey: —stepping beyond that when you start getting into something that's even more intricately tied to a specific user, we're talking about effectively trying to get unit economic measures of every user, every thousand users is going to cost me X dollars to service them on average, on top of a baseline of steady-state spend that is going to increase differently. At that point, talking to finance about predictive models turn into, “Well, this comes down to a question of business modeling.” But conversely, for engineering minds that is exactly what finance is used to figuring out. The problem they have is, “Well, every time we hire a new engineer, we wind up seeing our AWS bill increase.” Funny how that works. Yeah, how do you map that to something that the business understands? That is part of what they do. But it does, I admit, make it much more challenging from a financial map of an environment.Chris: Yeah, especially when the customer or the company is—you know, they've been around for a while, and they're used to just like that large bolus of money at the very beginning of a data center, and they buy the switches, and they buy the servers, and they virtualize them, and they have that set cost that they knew that they had to plunk down at the beginning. And it's a mindset shift. And they're coming around to it, some faster than others. Oddly enough, the startups nowadays are catching on very quickly. I don't deal with a lot of startups, so it takes some finesse.Corey: An interesting inflection that I've seen is that there's an awful lot of enterprises out there that say, “Oh, we're like a startup.” Great. You mean with weird cultural inflections that often distill down to cult of personality, the constant worry about whether you're going to wind up running out of runway before finding product-market fit? And the rooms filled with—Chris: The eighty-hour work weeks? The—[laugh]—Corey: And they're like, “No, no, no, it's like the good parts.” “Oh, so you mean out the upside.” But you don't hear it the other way around where you have a startup that you're interviewing with, “Ha-ha, we're like an enterprise. We have a six-month interview process that takes 18 different stages,” and so on and so forth. However, we do see startups having to mature rapidly, and move up the compliance path as they're dealing with regulated entities and the rest, and wanting to deal with serious customers who have no sense of humor about, “Yeah, we'll figure that part out later as part of an audit document.”So, what we also see, though, is that enterprises are doing things that look a lot more startup-y. If I take a look at the common development environments and tools and techniques that big enterprises use, it looks an awful lot like how startups were doing it five or ten years ago. That is the slow and steady evolution of time. And what startups are doing today becomes enterprise tomorrow, and I can't shake the feeling that there's a sea of vendors out there who, in the event that winds up happening are eventually going to find themselves without a market at all. My model has been that if I go and found a Twitter for Pets style startup tomorrow and in ten years, it has grown to become an S&P 500 component—which is still easier to take seriously than most of what Tesla says—great.During that journey, at what point do I become a given company's customer because if there is no onboarding story for me to become your customer, you're in a long-tail decline phase. That's been my philosophy, but you are a—trademarked term—Enterprise Architect, so please feel free to tell me if I'm missing any of the nuances there, which I'm sure I am because let's face it, nuance is hard; sweeping statements are easy.Chris: As an architect, [laugh] it would be a disservice to not say my favorite catchphrase, it depends. There are so many dependencies to those kinds of sweeping statements. I mean, there's a lot of enterprises that have good process; there are a lot of enterprises that have bad process. And going back to your previous statement of the startup inside the enterprise, I'm hearing a lot of companies nowadays saying, “Oh, well, we've now got this brand new incubator system that we're currently running our little startup inside of. It's got the best of both worlds.”And I'm not going to go through the litany of bad things that you just said about startups, but they'll try to encapsulate that shift that you're talking about where the cheese is moving so quickly now that it's very hard for these companies to know the customer well enough to continue to stay salient and continue to be able to look into that crystal ball to stay relevant in the future. My job as an EA is to try to capture that point in time where what are the requirements today and what are the known detriments that you're going to see in your future that you need to protect against? So, that's kind of my job—other than being a cloud therapist—in a nutshell.Corey: I love the approach. My line has been that I do a lot of marriage counseling between engineering and finance, which is a fun term that also just so happens to be completely accurate.Chris: Absolutely. [laugh]. I'm currently being a marriage counselor right now.Corey: It's an interesting time. So, you had a viral tweet recently that honestly, I'm a bit jealous about. I have had a lot of tweets that have done reasonably well, but I haven't ever had anything go super-viral, where it was just a screenshot of a conversation you had with an AWS recruiter. Now, before we go into this, I want to make a couple of disclaimers here. Before I entered tech myself, I was a technical recruiter, and I can say that these people have hard jobs.There is a constant pressure to perform, it is a sales job that is unlike most others. If you sell someone a pen, great, you can wrap your head around what that's like. But you don't have to worry about the pen deciding it doesn't want to go home with the buyer. So, it becomes a double sale in a lot of weird ways, and there's a constant race to the bottom and there's a lot of competition in the space. It's a numbers game and a lot of folks get in and wash out who have terrible behaviors and terrible patterns, so the whole industry gets tainted—in some respects—like that. A great example of someone who historically has been a terrific example of recruiting done right has been Jill Wohlner. And she's one of the shining beacons of the industry as far as how to do these things in the right way—Chris: Yes.Corey: —but the fact that she is as exceptional as she is is in no small part because there's a lot of random folks coming by. All which is to say that our conversation going forward is not and should not be aimed at smacking around individual recruiters or recruiting as a whole because that is unfair. Now, that disclaimer has been given. Great, what happened?Chris: So, first off, shout out to Jill; she actually used to be a host on vBrownBag. So, hey girl. [laugh]. What happened was—and I have the utmost empathy and sympathy for recruiting; I actually used to have a side gig where I would go around to the local recruiting places around my area here and teach them how to read a cloud resume and how to read a req and try to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to actually have good conversations. This was back when cloud wasn't—this was, like, three or four years ago.And I would go in there and say, “This is how you recruit a cloud person nowadays.” So, I love good recruiters. This one was a weird experience in that—so when a recruiter reaches out to me, what I do is I take an assessment of my current situation: “Am I happy where I'm at right now?” The answer is, “Yes.” And if they ping me, I'll say, “Hey, I'm happy right now, but if you have something that is, you know, a million dollars an hour, taste-testing margaritas on St. John island in the sand, I'm all ears. I'm listening. Conversely, I also am a Community Hero, so I know a ton of people out in the industry. Maybe I can help you out with landing that next person.”Corey: I just want to say for the record, that is absolutely the right answer. And something like that is exactly what I would give, historically. I can't do it now because let's be clear here. I have a number of employees and, “Hey, Corey's out there doing job interviews,” sends a message that isn't good when it comes to how is that company doing anyway. I miss it because I enjoyed the process and I enjoyed the fun, but even when I was perfectly happy, it's, “Well, I'm not actively on the market, but I am interested to have a conversation if you've got something interesting.”Because let's face it, I want to hear what's going on in the market, and if I'm starting to hear a lot of questions about a technology I have been dismissive of, okay, maybe it's time to pay more attention. I have repeatedly been able to hire the people interviewing me in some cases, and sometimes I've gone on interviews just to keep my interview skills sharp and then wound up accepting the job because it turned out they did have something interesting that was compelling to me even though I was reasonably happy at the time. I will always take the meeting; I will always at least have a chat about what they're doing, and I think that doing otherwise is doing yourself a disservice in the long arc of your career.Chris: Right. And that's basically the approach that I take, too. I want to hear what's out there. I am very happy at World Wide right now, so I'm not interested, interested. But again, if they come up with an amazing opportunity, things could happen. So, I implied that in my response to him.I said, “I'm happy right now, thanks for asking, but let's set up the meeting and we can have a chat.” The response was unexpected. [laugh]. The response was basically, “If you're not ready to leave right now, it makes no sense for me to talk to you.” And it was a funny… interaction.I was like, “Huh. That's funny.” I'm going to tweet about that because I thought it was funny—I'm not a jerk, so I'm going to block out all of the names and all of the identifying information and everything—and I threw it up. And the commiseration was so impressive. Not impressive in a good way; impressive in a bad way.Every person that responded was like, “Yes. This has happened to me. Yes, this is”—and honestly, I got a lot of directors from AWS reaching out to me trying to figure out who that person was, apologizing saying that's not our way. And I responded to each and every single one of them. And I was like, “Somebody has already found that person; somebody has already spoken to that person. That being said, look at all of the responses in the timeline. When you tell me personally, that's not the way you do things, I believe that you believe that.”Corey: Yeah, I believe you're being sincere when you say this, however the reality of what the data shows and people's lived experience in the form of anecdotes are worlds apart.Chris: Yeah. And I'm an AWS Hero. [laugh]. That's how I got treated. Not to blow my own horn or anything like that, but if that's happening to me, either A, he didn't look me up and just cold-called me—which is probably the case—and b, if he treats me like that, imagine how he's treating everybody else?Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by something new. Cloud Academy is a training platform built on two primary goals. Having the highest quality content in tech and cloud skills, and building a good community the is rich and full of IT and engineering professionals. You wouldn't think those things go together, but sometimes they do. Its both useful for individuals and large enterprises, but here's what makes it new. I don't use that term lightly. Cloud Academy invites you to showcase just how good your AWS skills are. For the next four weeks you'll have a chance to prove yourself. Compete in four unique lab challenges, where they'll be awarding more than $2000 in cash and prizes. I'm not kidding, first place is a thousand bucks. Pre-register for the first challenge now, one that I picked out myself on Amazon SNS image resizing, by visiting cloudacademy.com/corey. C-O-R-E-Y. That's cloudacademy.com/corey. We're gonna have some fun with this one!Corey: Every once in a while I get some of their sourcers doing outreach to see folks who are somewhat aligned on them via LinkedIn or other things, and, “Oh, okay, yeah; if you look at the things I talked about in various places, I can understand how I might look like a potentially interesting hire.” And they send outreach emails to me, they're always formulaic, and once in a while, I'll tweet a screenshot of them where I redact the person's name, and it was—and there's a comment, like, “Should I tell them?” Because it's fun; it's hilarious. But I want to be clear because that often gets misconstrued; they have done absolutely nothing wrong. You've got to cast a wide net to find talent.I'm surprised I get as few incidents of recruiter outreach as I do. I am not hireable and that's okay, but I don't begrudge people reaching out. I either respond with a, “No thanks,” if it's a particularly good email, or I just hit the archive button and never think about it again. And that's fine, too. But I don't make people feel like a jerk for asking, and that is an engineering behavioral pattern that drives me up a wall.It's, “So, I'm thinking about a job here and I'm wondering if you might be a fit,” and your response is just to set them on fire? Well, guess what an awful lot of those people sending out those emails in the sourcing phase of recruiting are early career, and guess what, they tend to get promoted in the fullness of time. Sometimes they're no longer recruiting at all; sometimes they wind up being hiring managers in different ways or trying to figure out what offer they're going to extend to someone. And if you don't think that people in those roles remember when they're treated poorly as a response to their outreach, I have news for you. Don't do it. Your reputation lingers long after you no longer work there.Chris: Just exactly so. And I feel really bad for that guy.Corey: I do hope that he was not reprimanded because he should not be. It is clearly a systemic problem, and the fact that one person happened to do this in a situation where it went viral does not mean that they are any worse than other folks doing it. It is a teachable opportunity. It is, “I know that you have incredible numbers of roles to hire for, all made all the more urgent by the fact that you're having some significant numbers of departures—clearly—in the industry right now.” So, I get it; you have a hard job. I'm not going to waste your time because I don't even respond to them just because, at AWS particularly, they have hard work to do, and just jawboning with me is not going to be useful for them.Chris: [laugh].Corey: I get it.Chris: And you're trying to hire the same talent too. So.Corey: Exactly. One of the most egregious things I've seen in the course of my career was when that whole multiple accounts opened for Wells Fargo's customers and they wound up firing 3500 people. Yeah, that's not individual tellers doing something unethical. That is a systemic problem, and you clean house at the top because you're not going to convince me that you're hiring that many people who are unethical and setting out to do these things as a matter of course. It means that the incentives are wrong, it means that the way you're measuring things are wrong, and people tend to do things out of fear or because there's now a culture of it. And if you fire individuals for that, you're wrong.Chris: And that was the message that I conveyed to the people that reached out to me and spoke to me. I was like, there is a misaligned KPI, or OKR, or whatever acronym you want to use, that is forcing them to do this churn-and-burn mentality instead of active, compassionate recruiting. I don't know what that term is; I'm very far removed from the recruiting world. But that person isn't doing that because they're a jerk. They're doing that because they have numbers to hit and they've got to grind out as many as humanly possible. And you're going to get bad employees when you do that. That's not a long-term sustainable path. So, that was the conversation that I had with them. Hopefully, it resonated and hits home.Corey: I still remember from ten years ago—and I don't always tell the story, but I absolutely will now—I went up to San Francisco when I lived in Los Angeles; I interviewed with Yammer. I went through the entire process—this was not too long before they got acquired by Microsoft so that gives you some time basis—and I got a job offer. And it was a not ridiculous offer. I was going to think about it, and I [unintelligible 00:24:19], “Great. Thank you. Let me sleep on this for a day or two and I'll get back to you definitely before the end of the week.”Within an hour, I got a response rescinding the offer claiming it had been sent by mistake. Now, I believe that that is true and that they are being sincere with this. I don't know that if it was the wrong person; I don't know if that suddenly they didn't have the req or they had another candidate that suddenly liked better that said no and then came back and said yes, but it's been over a decade now and every time I talk to someone who's considering something in that group, I tell this story. That's the sort of thing that leaves a mark because I have a certain philosophy of I don't ever resign from a job before I wind up making sure everything is solid—things are signed, good to go, the background check clears, et cetera—because I don't want to find myself suddenly without income or employment, especially in that era. And that was fine, but a lot of people don't do that.As soon as the offer comes in, they're like, “I'm going to go take a crap on my boss's desk,” which, let's be clear, I don't recommend. You should write a polite and formulaic resignation letter and then you should email it to your boss, you should not carve it into their door. Do this in a responsible way, and remember that you're going to encounter these people again throughout your career. But if I had done that, I would have had serious problems. And so that points to something systemically awful at a company.I have never in my career as a hiring manager extended an offer and then rescinded it for anything other than we can't come to an agreement on this. To be clear, this is also something I wonder about in the space, when people tell stories about how they get a job offer, they attempt to negotiate the offer, and then it gets withdrawn. There are two ways that goes. One is, “Well if you're not happy with this offer, get out of here.” Yeah, that is a crappy company, but there's also the story of people who don't know how to negotiate effectively, and in turn, they come back with indications that you do not know how to write a business email, you do not know how negotiations work, and suddenly, you're giving them a last-minute opportunity to get out before they hire someone who is going to be something of a wrecking ball in the company, and, “Whew, dodged a bullet on that.”I haven't encountered that scenario myself, but I've seen it from other folks and emails that have been passed around in various channels. So, my position on this is everyone should negotiate offers, but visit fearlesssalarynegotiation.com, it's run by my friend, Josh; he has a whole bunch of free content on his site. Look at it. Read it. It is how to handle this stuff effectively and why things are the way that they are. Follow his advice, and you won't go too far wrong. Again, I have no financial relationship, I just like what he's done a lot and I've been talking to him for years.Chris: Nice. I'll definitely check that out. [laugh].Corey: Another example is developher—that's develop H-E-R dot com. Someone else I've been speaking to who's great at this takes a different perspective on it, and that's fine. There's a lot of advice out there. Just make sure that whoever it is you're talking to about this is in a position to know what they're talking about because there's crap advice that's free. Yeah. How do you figure out the good advice and the bad advice? I'm worried someone out there is actually running Route 53 is a database for God's sake.Chris: That's crazy talk. Who would do that? That's madness.Corey: I can't imagine it.Chris: We're actually in the process of trying to figure out how to do a panel chat on exactly that, like, do a vBrownBag on salary negotiations, get some really good people in the room that can have a conversation around some of the tough questions that come around salary negotiation, what's too much to ask for? What kind of attitude should you go into it with? What kind of process should you have mentally? Is it scrawling in crayon, “No. More money,” and then hitting send? Or is it something a little bit more advanced?Corey: I also want to be clear that as you're building panels and stuff like that—because I got this wrong early on in my public speaking career, to be clear—I built talks aligned with this based on what worked for me—make sure that there are folks on the panel who are not painfully over-represented as you and I are because what works for us and we're considered oh, savvy business people who are great negotiators comes across as entitled, or demanding, or ooh, maybe we shouldn't hire her—and yes, I'm talking about her in a lot of these scenarios—make sure you have a diverse group of folks who can share lived experience and strategies that work because what works for you and me is not universal, I promise.Chris: So, the only requirement to set this panel is that you have to be a not-white guy; not-old-white guy. That's literally the one rule. [laugh].Corey: I like the approach. It's a good way to do it. I don't do manels.Chris: Yes. And it's tough because I'm not going to get into it, but the mental space that you have to be in to be a woman in tech, it's a delicate balance because when I'm approaching somebody, I don't want to slide into their DMs. It's like this, “Hey, I know this other person and they recommended you and I am not a weirdo.” [laugh]. As an old white guy, I have to be very not a weirdo when I'm talking to folks that I'm desperate to get on the show.Because I love having that diverse aspect, just different people from different backgrounds. Which is why we did the entire career series on vBrownBag. We did data science with Ayodele; we did how to get into cybersecurity with Christoph. It was a fantastic series of how to get into IT. This was at the beginning of the pandemic.We wanted to do a series on, okay, there's a lot of people out there that are furloughed right now. How do we get some people on the show that can talk to how to get into a part of IT that they're passionate about? We did a triple series on how to get into game development with Dennis Diack, the founder of Apocalypse Studios. We had a bunch of the other AWS Heroes from serverless, and Lambda, and AI on the show to talk, and it was really fantastic and I think it resonated well with the community.Corey: It takes work to have a group of guests on things like podcasts like this. You've been running vBrownBag for longer than I've been running this, and—Chris: 13 years now.Corey: Yeah. This is I think, coming up on what, four years-ish, maybe three, in that range? The passing of time, especially in a pandemic era, is challenging. And there's always a difference. If I invite a white dude to come on the podcast, the answer is yes before I get the word podcast fully out of my mouth, whereas folks who are not over-represented, they're a little more cautious. First, there's the question of, “Am I a trash bag?” And the answer is, “No.” Well, no, not in the way that you're concerned about other ways—Chris: [laugh]. That you're aware of. [laugh].Corey: Oh, God, yes, but—yeah. And then—and that's part of it, and then very often, there's a second one of, “Well, I don't think I have anything, really, to talk about,” is often a common objection here. And it's, yeah, if I'm inviting you on this show, I promise that's not true. Don't worry about that piece of it. And then it's the standard stuff that just comes with being me, of, “Yeah, I've read your Twitter feed; you got to insult me here?” It's, “No, no, not really the same tone. But great question; throw the”—it goes down to process. But it takes constant work, you can't just put an open call out for guest nominations, and expect that to wind up being representative of our industry. It is representative of our biases, in many respects.Chris: It's a tough needle to thread. Because the show has been around for a long time, it's easier for me now, because the show has been around for 13 years. We actually just recorded our two thousandth and sixtieth episode the other night. And even with that, getting that kind of outreach, [#techtwitter 00:31:32] is wonderful for making new recommendations of people. So, that's been really fun. The rest of Twitter is a hot trash fire, but that's beside the point. So yeah, I don't have a good solution for it. There's no easy answer for it other than to just be empathic, and communicative, and reach people on their level, and have a good show.Corey: And sometimes that's all it takes. The idea behind doing a podcast—despite my constant jokes—it's not out of a love affair of the sound of my own voice. It's about for better or worse, for reasons I don't fully understand, I have a platform. People listen to the show and they care what people have to say. So, my question is, how can I wind up using that platform to tell stories that lift up narratives that are helpful for folks that they can use as inspiration—in my case, as critical warnings of what to avoid—and effectively showcasing some of the best our industry has to offer, in many respects.So, if the guest has a good time and the audience can learn something, and I'm not accidentally perpetuating horrifying things, that's really more than I have any right to ask from a show like this. The fact that it's succeeded is due in no small part to not just an amazing audience, but also guests like you. So, thank you.Chris: Oh no, Thank you. And it is. It's… these kinds of shows are super fun. If it wasn't fun, I wouldn't have done it for as long as I have. I still enjoy chatting with folks and getting new voices.I love that first-time presenter who was, like, super nervous and I spend 15 minutes with them ahead of the show, I say, “Okay, relax. It's just going to be me and you facing each other. We're going to have a good time. You're going to talk about something that you love talking about, and we're going to be nerds and do nerd stuff. This is me and you in front of a water cooler with a whiteboard just being geeks and talking about cool stuff. We're also going to record it and some amount of people is going to see it afterwards.” [laugh].And yeah, that's the part that I love. And then watching somebody like that turn into the keynote speaker at a conference ten years down the road. And I get to say, “Oh, I knew that person when.”Corey: I just want to be remembered by folks who look back fondly at some of the things that we talk about here. I don't even need credit, just yeah. People who see that they've learned things and carry them forward and spread to others, there's so many favors that people have done for us that we can only ever pay forward.Chris: Yeah, exactly. So—and that's actually how I got into vBrownBag. I came to them saying, “Hey, I love the things that you guys have done. I actually passed my VCIX because of watching vBrownBags. What can I do to help contribute back to the community?” And Alistair said, “Funny you should mention that.” [laugh]. And here we are seven years later.Corey: Well, to that end, if people are inspired by what you're saying and they want to hear more about what you have to say or, heaven forbid, follow in your footsteps, where can they find you?Chris: So, you can find me on Twitter; I am at mistwire.com—M-I-S-T-W-I-R-E; if you Google ‘mistwire,' I am the first three pages of hits; so I have a blog; you can find me on vBrownBag. I'm hard to miss on Twitter [laugh] I discourage you from following me there. But yeah, you can hit me up on all of the formats. And if you want to present, I'd love to get you on the show. If you want to learn more about what it takes to become an AWS Hero or if you want to get into that line of work, I highly discourage it. It's a long slog but it's a—yeah, I'd love to talk to you.Corey: And we of course put links to that in the [show notes 00:35:01]. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me, Chris. I really appreciate it.Chris: Thank you, Corey. Thanks for having me on.Corey: Chris Williams, Enterprise Architect, comma AWS Cloud at WWT. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with a comment telling me that while you didn't actively enjoy this episode, you are at least open to enjoying future episodes if I have one that might potentially be exciting.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

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Our guest today is Eric Crowley, a tech investment banker with GP Bullhound. With investments in companies ranging from Spotify to Whoop, and clients such as AllTrails, Pinkbike, and Lingoda, GP Bullhound provides transaction advice and capital to many of the leaders in the Consumer Subscription Software space.On the podcast we talk with Eric about his 2021 report on Consumer Subscription Software, the truth about LTV calculations, and the new era of organic user acquisition.In this episode, you'll learn: Was 2020 just a “COVID Bump,” or a shift in consumer behavior? Are the Bumble & Duolingo IPO multiples justified? How savvy developers are adapting to Apple's App Tracking Transparency The truth about LTV The new era of customer acquisition Links & Resources Spotify Whoop AllTrails Pinkbike Lingoda Bumble Duolingo Instacart Match Group Netflix Noom Weight Watchers Tinder The Dyrt Day One Journal Automattic Tech Crunch Scribd Pandora Eric Crowley's Links Follow Eric on Twitter GP Bullhound GP Bullhound insights Eric's LinkedIn GP Bullhound 2021 CSS survey Follow us on Twitter: David Barnard Jacob Eiting RevenueCat Sub Club Episode Transcript00:00:00 David:Hello, I'm your host. David Bernard. And with me, as always, RevenueCat CEO, Jacob Eiting. Our guest today is Eric Crowley, a tech investment banker with GP Bullhound. With investments in companies ranging from Spotify to Whoop, and clients such as AllTrails Pinkbike, and Lingoda, GP Bullhound provides transaction advice and capital to many of the leaders in consumer subscription software.On the podcast, we talk with Eric about his 2021 report on consumer subscription software, the truth about LTV calculations, and the new era of organic user acquisition.Hey, Eric, welcome to the podcast.00:00:56 Eric:Hey, David, Jacob. Thanks for having me back. It's always a pleasure. 00:00:59 David:Yeah. Every year you release this report, so we had to get you back. This is the third annual Consumer Subscription Software Report, and I wanted to kick off just asking you a little bit about the motivation, and where your headspace is in thinking about creating this. Who the target is, and what kind of questions you're asking yourself as you prepare this report.00:01:24 Eric:Yeah. The report is the GP Bullhound Consumer Subscription Software Report. I call it CSS, which is kind of a playoff SaaS. This is the third year I've been writing it, and it started back in 2018. I worked with a company called AllTrails that was starting to monetize really well by selling subscriptions.It was like a light bulb went off in my head. I was like, this is a phenomenal way to provide a consistently improving product to consumers, where the margins are pretty good. It's easy to access a ton of different people globally through the app stores or through the web, and I just got really excited about it.I started putting some notes down on my own, and then GP Bullhound really supported me in saying like, “Hey, this is actually a pretty big trend. There's gonna be some amazing companies built around this space,” and companies like RevenueCat, that are supporting CSS companies, are just as exciting.So, we've been slowly educating ourselves. The goal behind the report is really just to force me to do some thinking about the space. What it looks like. What it will be. As a banker, you can quickly focus on transaction, transaction, transaction, and not really do any long-term thinking about where the world's going.It's putting myself in your guys's shoes. You guys are building RevenueCat not for what the world looks like today, but for what the world looks like in three to five years. I try to take the same approach with CSS, and think about where's the world going to go. So I talked to a lot of smart people as I put the report together. Entrepreneurs, investors, get their opinions.You guys can see their interviews in the report, and then ultimately we publish it. The audience I like to think about is entrepreneurs, people that are thinking about starting a CSS company, or already launched one, and they're looking to improve their metrics, or think about their target audience as entrepreneur-rich.By partnering with them, investing in their businesses, it takes them to the next level. The other way I like to think about it, it's my own personal scoreboard. I love to flip back two years ago and see, was I right about this company? You're publishing in public, so people can always come back to you and say, “Man, you were way off.” So, I look forward to that.00:03:26 Jacob:I remember the F finding the first one, the 2018, I guess, reporter 2019, whenever the first one you put out,00:03:33 Eric:2019, I think that's how we met actually.00:03:36 Jacob:Did you reach out to me or? I think I found it, or I don't remember what it was, but00:03:39 Eric:We've had a mutual friend, Nico introduced us and said, Hey, you guys should talk about this. and then I think we just went off on a two hour tangent.00:03:47 Jacob:But yeah, I remember being, it's still, there's still not a ton of like really focused research or writing on this space. and I think that, that, you know, this will probably won't be true for very long, right. As long as it continues to grow, but like going back to like who it's for. I mean, I imagine it as some, you know, end of the day, if you're employing.Pushing into some kind of lead gen. Right. But it does provide a lot of value for, you know, even if you're not interested in a transaction or whatever, just. Some like holistic data on a space. Cause like, I, the same, I mean, Eric, you said we're, we're thinking three and five years in the future. It's like, I wish like a lot of times I'm thinking like three to six weeks in the future.Right. and so it's even useful, I think, you know, even if you're, you know, I, you know, we're, we're in a bit of an interesting place as a infrastructure provider to be at kind of a bird's eye view, but it. Founder on one of these CSS apps, you know, like it is useful for you to know, like what's the meta environment, how's it evolving, you know?And if nothing else to like connect you with other people who have experimented with things and stuff like that. So, yeah, I think it provides beyond, beyond the, the, the lead gen aspect of it. It provides a lot of value for people. So I'm glad, I'm glad you're, you're still doing it. 00:05:04 Eric:Yeah. And just for any of the listeners, it is free. So you just go to the GP, bullhorn.com website. It's all easy to download and then you can see all our past reports as well. So 00:05:12 David:Yeah, and we'll drop it in the show notes. but, yeah. And, and, and speaking of all that, you know, it, it's something we as RevenueCat want to get more into as well. I mean, just seeing how much value you've created in producing these reports, and we're kind of sitting on a, you know, Processing over a billion dollars a year in, subscription revenue.We've got a lot of interesting data that, that we, that I'm very personally excited to share that we haven't, kind of had the infrastructure to, to do yet, but are, are getting there. And, so hopefully we'll, we'll have our own kind of, state of subscriptions that dives into the data and some of the trends and stuff in a different way than, than your kind of, strategy and higher level look at things.But when one thing that has happened, in the actually. It was announced before your last report, but actually implemented since your last report. And that's the app tracking transparency and iOS 14, which didn't actually ship till iOS. What was it? 14.4 or five or something. So, so we're kind of just now starting to see the impacts of it.And, and, you know, you took a couple of slides in your report to start discussing it. And it really is kind of one of the biggest topics and top of mind for subscription app developers, because it really is a huge shift in the landscape. So I want it to. Start with talking about that. And one of the things you shared in the, in the presentation is that you feel like it's a short-term pain, that's ultimately going to lead to a long-term gain.So I'd love to hear your thinking around what that pain is, but then also what you see the long-term game being.00:07:01 Eric:Yeah, it's a, it's a, great point. And, you know, anytime apple or Google make changes to their, their, their app stores, right. It's a seismic shift throughout the industry because it's something that impacts everyone. And so everyone has to be aware of these changes and then ultimately have a plan for them.And so I think that the change you're talking about David is really the. The implementation of, removing tracking for a lot of, a lot of these businesses specifically, like. And so what the change did with IDFA, is it, it really deprecated the ability for, for marketers within some of these CSS businesses to really accurately target people, specifically using Facebook or some of these other social networks.And so what it's doing is it. It's impacting the conversion rates on, CSS, CSS, businesses, marketing to consumers. And so if you just can't find that person that just is in love with, for example, biking, if you're a Strava marketer, it just takes you a lot longer to find that specific subscribers you might have to market to 10 people now to find two subscribers versus before you can market to five people and find two subscribers.And so it just means marketing efficiencies going down. And that can mean. Growth rates. It can impact conversion rates and ultimately impact just financials of these businesses. And so it's a pretty important consideration for any, CEO marketing team on how they go out and get their, their business in front of consumers.If Facebook's no longer as efficient, they have to find other ways. And so. So my, my thought is like, this is a short-term problem, right? It's something that's going to take people two to three months to adapt and find a new way to reach consumers. But ultimately my hope is for the space is you see the long-term game, which is what I was referencing.People really focus on organic ways of acquiring customers. Right? So instead of just pumping ads through Facebook and trying to find someone who fits a profile, you spend a lot more time really narrowly targeting your demographic, your niche, and then finding ways for them to find your product organically either.You know? So like a company that I work with, we sold a company called Pinkbike and so what they do is they partner with, the trade associations for mountain. And those trails associations now act almost as the marketing partner of pink bike to let consumers know about the fact that all the trail details.Is on, is on the pink bike app or it's called trail forks. And so that's, that's a really powerful, organic customer acquisition tool that they don't have to pay for. And so you're seeing, seeing the same thing happen with, like Strava is doing this, pre.com recently partnered with the NFL. So if your team's got a last fourth quarter fuel goal and you need to get something kicked, you can go to pray.com and submit a prayer for your kicker. I wish I was joking. It's a pretty brilliant idea. So I think this is really good for the sector overall, but yeah. Happy to dive into it. It's it's a fascinating00:09:37 Jacob:We it's a callback to a sub club podcast content, but, Greg, this, the plant app, this is something that they were doing, which is like, we're partnering with, plant nurseries. Yeah. To like, get their app into people's hands. And, yeah, I don't know if it's an earned media or. Bought media, but this is more like this is earned, right?This is like building an audience. You've seen it in the maker community, actually a lot, like in the indie SaaS community, more it's a different game when it has to be consumer scale. Right? Like there's a little bit different. You have to build maybe a bit more than you would in like, oh, just blog about.Built this thing and that's enough to get Indies, but you can apply the same thing, right? It's like produce content, produce something like low investment for users to get engaged with your brand because you're not building an app unless you have some, I mean, maybe you are, but you're not going to build something with very high, like multiples.Like if you're, if you don't have something unique to offer in the first place, but put that into like a more like lightly consumable format, start to build that audience and then make that an on-ramp and yeah, I agree. Like that's, that's something you own, right? Like your brand is. your brand doesn't exist on the app store, right?Like your brand can exist outside of these, like shifting sands and regulations and whatnot, and ultimately is like, you know, going to get reflected in your asset value if that's something you care about. Right. So, 00:10:53 Eric:Yeah, that's a key thing we talk about, right. If any business that we look at that's potentially selling or, or thinking about raising capital, right? It's like, how are you finding your. And if you're, if you're one channel is Facebook, and then consequently, like doing Facebook ads or apple ads on the, on the app store, that becomes pretty challenging.And so you want it to be such a good product, right? So it involves more work upfront. And just as you're talking about Jacob, the product's gotta be better. It's gotta be more efficient. It's got to reach consumers where they are with the problem they have. it becomes a lot more viral and a lot more sticky.So I think, I think it's going to be good for the sector.00:11:26 David:You wouldn't want to name names of course, but I am curious if. Had any clients, or just talks about anybody in the space where they were very reliant on Facebook specifically, and then, and have really struggled as things have changed. You know, I've been seeing some tweets around the, the consumer packaged goods space where some of these CPG companies are really struggling.And so I'm just curious. You know, without naming names, if, if there's any kind of high level things you could share around, apps that have struggled in this new paradigm. 00:12:02 Eric:Yeah. I mean, I definitely can't name names, you know, obviously I keep everything confidential with my clients, but even non-clients, you've seen CACs go up 20, 30%. you see, like, if you think about like conversion rates from installs to subs, That's a big metric of actual intent. Did you find the right user, right?Did someone just click on it and download it? Great. But if they're not actually subscribing that wasn't a successful transaction for you. And so the way I think about this, David is it's the app stores made tracking a lot harder, so it's harder to find your right consumer. So imagine if you're a CPG company, you walk into a grocery.And instead of stuff, being laid out perfectly across the shelves at the right height for you, they just tossed everything in the middle of the store and said, find what you want. Just go pick it out. Right. You're going to have much lower conversion. You're going to have much lower purchase rates because people aren't being targeted with the stuff they want to see.And so I think now you have to find, you know, it becomes more of a specialty situation where you're walking into a store that has stuff for just outdoor gear or very healthy granola. Right. And you're going specifically to that store for that. That's probably better in the long term, for a lot of these companies, 00:13:01 Jacob:Yeah, but there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of folks that have benefited from this ease relative ease, right. And any sort of market disruption is going to be painful. I was like, anecdotally, I mean, David, we've heard on this podcast and elsewhere people who have just like straight up pause acquisition, who are like all re scrambling because yeah.You get it tuned to this very fine knife edge. And I imagine for like consumer physical goods, like DDC stuff, it's even worse because their margins are thinner than software. Right. 00:13:28 Eric:And you've got inventory and everything. Yeah. It's a totally different. 00:13:31 Jacob:But, you know, as you do like you, the market reshuffles and the people, I can figure it out, the fastest are gonna are going to come out the best.So. 00:13:39 Eric:There's going to be a shift though. So people under this is like that seismic shift that just shows how much of your reliance is on maybe one or two channels. Right? Two, two major tech companies sitting here in San Francisco. If you're super, truly relying on those and you're doing great, fine.But if a bump happens, right, how exposed are you? And so like, this will be a benefit. Right. I think it's going to be a huge benefit for Tik TOK. Right? I think people are finding really good ways to acquire customers through tic-tac. And so that's a very interesting channel. I think it'd be really good for influencers, right?If you have people that are very passionate about a certain space and then they go out and, you know, have a very core customer base that loves what they do specifically. It's going to be pretty powerful for them to.00:14:18 David:Yeah, and I was just gonna say, anecdotally, you know, we haven't done a super deep dive in our data, but at a, at a high level, I was. Bracing for our numbers to take a big dip. Like I, I mean, Jacob and I had talked about it in the spring about, you know, how, what is going to look like for RevenueCat, you know, are some of these subscription apps just going to completely unwind and people are apparently figuring it out because you know, it keeps going up until the right. 00:14:49 Jacob:I mean the consumer, the consumer need hasn't disappeared. Right. So maybe if they just weren't driven, you know, it's not going to, it can't just disappear overnight. Right? Like if you never, if you, if you are a Coke fan who never saw Coke out again, and it's like, you're still gonna buy it. Right. Like there's, there's, there's a certain amount of demand.That's just going to find the supply. But, but yeah, no, I mean, it's hard for us to, to definitively say looking at our data and aggregators. Cause there's so much, but they're definitely. Like this summer was definitely slower than we've had in the past. Like on my, as I'm writing my investor updates of the year and each month and stuff looking at it.But yeah, it wasn't like this catastrophic, you know, macro thing. And they were talking about a lot of like, you know, probably outliers that we hear about people who were affected, you know, more than others, but overall. I, I don't think our, I don't think our prediction last year of, of a potential recession was necessarily false.Like it doesn't, it definitely doesn't feel like it's sped up the ecosystem. Right. But it doesn't necessarily feel like a depression, right. Maybe, maybe a slight recession or just the normalization. 00:15:49 David:Looking at our data in aggregate that, some folks use this to their advantage and actually, and, and accelerated because they knew it was coming and they did focus more on product and organic and other things. And so for whatever, you know, losses, there were. Other folks more than made up for that.And that's it kind of the interesting thing about working with so many, I mean, we're closing in on 10,000 apps on revenue cat. And so, you know, you kind of have a pretty broad basket where you, you know, there are going to be winners and losers, but in aggregate subscription apps are just continuing to tick along and do really well. 00:16:26 Eric:David it's like you read directly from bullets on my report. I, I, I completely agree with you.00:16:34 David:Another thing I wanted to dive into was the, the COVID bump. Cause that's, that's another thing that's kind of been on everybody's mind is simultaneous to this. I was 14 and, and this is something we've talked about again internally, with revenue cat, is it. This summer was the, everybody who was vaccinated and, and Delta hadn't kind of bumped yet.And so, you know, may, June and July, there was a big shift socially. kind of it felt like it, especially in the U S that we were coming out of the pandemic. and, and so simultaneous to the app, tracking transparency, going into effect, we had these like societal shift. And then now we're kind of back into it a little bit with the Delta surge, but just curious what your thoughts are on how much of the boosts we saw in 2020 really was dependent DEMEC and then how much of that will actually linger as kind of shifting consumer preferences and shifting consumer spend.00:17:36 Eric:Yeah. I mean, there's, there's absolutely a companies that benefited from us is called the removal of inf in in-person conversations. Right? So like Bumble and DuoLingo, two companies that both went public, right. They both benefited because their, their business model is designed around, not meeting in person for the first couple of conversations.Right. And so. There's no way to say that they didn't benefit. the way I think about it, though, in this, in the CSS space, it's very similar to like the overall e-commerce space, right? Is consumers looked around to find a solution for a problem they're having right. Instacart you couldn't, you couldn't go to the grocery store or maybe you felt less comfortable going to the grocery store.So you tried an Instacart for the first time. Maybe you were, you know, thinking about meeting someone, you know, long-term but you never, you never wanted to try online dating or you couldn't go to the bar. So you tried online dating for the first time and sorry. What the pandemic did was it really opened up people's eyes to other options from what they'd been doing for the last 20 years, 50 years, whatever it was.And so they had to find other solutions to, you know, their demands, their needs. And so I don't, I think it's absolutely a COVID bump, but I still look at it as really as an accelerant of people adopting new products and services that they would have tried in three to four years. but the pandemic kind of pushed them to try something, to move out of their comfort zone and try something new.So, you know, I absolutely think you'll see a little bit of a downshift in, in some of these companies that had a really big boom, right? Like language learning. People had nothing to do for four to five months, especially over some of the winter times. So people tried new hobby, tried language learning, you know, that'll probably go down a little bit, but overall, if you look at it from like a five-year trend, It's going to be up substantially from where it was in 20 17, 20 18, 20 19, and 2020, you know, made it look like a little bit of bump, but eventually I think those companies will continue to grow and surpass what anything they did in 2020. 00:19:21 David:Yeah, that's really interesting.00:19:22 Jacob:I'll back that up as well with the, the unreleased, Jacob looks at graphs and then gives a, gives a hand wavy descriptions of them. But we, yeah, we, we were, I was kind of bracing for it as well. And then I would say this summer was slow and like, David was. We're not sure why. I think it was, I think it was a number of factors things have since picked up again.But I think generally summers are slow for software a and then B. Yeah, I think we were seeing kind of like a little bit of the payback for, for COVID perhaps it's a, it's a vial. I think it's a plausible theory. We don't, it's really hard to prove. but we have not seen, you know, we, we saw our COVID experience was really drastic.And we have not seen. Similar, like back off from that, like, it has been like, it has been like we just compressed six months and I'm saying partially, this is just revenue casts, individual story because of where we were last year. But then I think also it's, it's indicative of the system in general.It's like, I think, yeah, we just compressed a whole bunch of, like consumer behavior change into like a very short period of time. And yeah, we're not gonna be able to keep that up. Right. We're not gonna be able to continue. To, to crunch that in, or we'll run out of consumers eventually. But, but it doesn't look like everybody's, you know, because, you know, I think the story for CSS in general, it's like we've delivered value for people, right?Like it's, it's a good, it's a good product, right? The whole line, not every product is good, but in general it's like a it's, it's a decent deal. And so I, I think more people discovering that. Yeah, it can only get bigger, right.00:20:55 Eric:Yeah, I think we talked about it in our first year, our first time together, right on the last podcast, which is if these businesses are truly making consumers' lives better, this is going to be a very long-term.00:21:04 Jacob:Yeah. 00:21:05 David:And speaking of that, and the two companies you just mentioned, in the, Time since we last spoke, but Bumble and DuoLingo went public and some other consumer subscription, apps went public. so tell me a little bit about your, your perspective on the, the public investor. Excitement for CSS.I mean, we're seeing pretty high multiples in the both of those IPS did, did very well. so what are you seeing in the, in the public investor space?00:21:33 Eric:Yeah, I think, I think the public market has really woken up to this business model, the power of it and understanding, you know, it's public markets. They do a lot of pattern matching, right? If they've seen something be super successful, they look for something that looks similar to that. And so I think a lot of people are waking up to, how powerful Salesforce is not waking up.They're well awake, very aware of SAS businesses. But I think they're seeing that same pattern starts to take, hold on, CSS. It just has different metrics. Right? And so, you know, Bumble's now public, the match group's been public for quite some time. Once I spun out of IAC, you've got Netflix and Spotify, which are fantastic examples of the international global reach of Content, and how consumers are very sticky for something they love.And so. These businesses who can get to scale really quickly, like you nuMe, right, is a competitor to weight Watchers. Weight Watchers has been around for decades, but Newman built a better mouse trap and they acquired customers at a really quick rate. And, you know, they're well over 400 million in revenue and ready for the public market.So I expect them to go public. Pretty soon. And so I think there's going to be a lot of businesses that follow them that are using this, this metric. So, and then that'll cascade all the way through, from public market investors as, as exit opportunities all the way down to, you know, series a series B investors, seeing this business model work and scale.00:22:47 Jacob:Yeah. I mean, I guess my, like, what's your, like, I, I, when, when we started seeing these go public in the last, like couple of years, so, well, I mean, honestly, it's like, Since we started RevenueCat, like was actually the, kind of the first unicorns, even like, I guess Bumble might've been passing unicorn when we got started, but like there weren't a ton and now it's like every, every month there's a funding announcement for a CSS company.That's a, that's a university. I mean, partially that's just like valuations going up and stuff like this, but like, how do you see. The evolution of this market. Long-term, you know, so DuoLingo pops becomes the first, you know, are they going to be like Salesforce and just be dominant in that space forever?Or do you see it being maybe more dynamic than sasses?00:23:31 Eric:I think it's a little more dynamic than SAS for, for a couple of reasons. One, new consumers like to try stuff, right. And so if it's with like a Salesforce or something, right. That integrates into your day to day operations from a business model perspective, right. So if something breaks there, right.Your business. 00:23:47 Jacob:Is very high. 00:23:48 Eric:Yeah, it's a little higher, right. And it's not just you using it. It's your entire business. Right? So you've got 10 people using this product or 20 people or 5,000, depending on the size of your company. Right. In CSS. It's it's you, maybe you and your family. Right? So it's a little bit of a different switching cost.So that's, that's one. However, these companies can scale a lot of. and they can, they don't have like the heavy, heavy cost and, you know, on the sales and marketing side. So I think they have an ability to actually get to profitability a lot faster, especially if they have an organic customer acquisition engine.And so I think that's going to be a big difference between that, between CSS and SAS. 00:24:23 Jacob:So, yeah, you mentioned the metrics are different. What are, what are the metrics that folks are, public investors are looking at for these companies that it might be different from a SAS company?00:24:33 Eric:Yeah. I mean, a lot of them are the same metrics, but the numbers that are like good are different, right? So like on a SAS business model, right. Revenue growth is just as attractive as a CSS business model revenue growth. Right. Everyone wants to see high double digits, triple digit numbers on revenue growth.But like an interesting thing is net revenue retention. Now that's very different, right? In CSS, you typically don't upcharge people or have additional seats be filled because it's just one person. Right. So, you know, maybe you get an. 00:24:59 Jacob:It's not much expansion opportunity. 00:25:00 Eric:Yeah, you can, you can do maybe some, some packages, upgrades, and people are starting to experiment that you can pack it and you can experiment with bump, bundling 00:25:07 Jacob:But it's certainly never going to be greater. It's never going to be net positive, right? 00:25:11 Eric:No, you're never going to see a net positive number where a lot of the SAS businesses, right.People are looking for net revenue, retention, numbers of north of one, 20, 120% net revenue retention 00:25:18 Jacob:I mean the opposite of churn, right. Which if you have a CSS business with opposite, Congratulations. like 00:25:25 Eric:Yeah. You're doing something well, and I haven't found it yet, but yeah, 00:25:28 Jacob:You might be the only one 00:25:29 Eric:Yes, I think that's right. 00:25:31 David:Quick, point though, to counterpoint to what y'all were both just saying, of all the apps, dating app, it's totally slipping my mind. 00:25:40 Jacob:Tinder. partnership. David, look at us. We're like on a wavelength. 00:25:46 David:They, they have in-app purchase. They have consumable in-app purchases to boost your, profile. They're one of the few that I've seen that could potentially actually have a. A a positive, net revenue retention. whereas most subscription apps are just a subscription. it's going to be interesting to see if other subscription apps can pull off that sort of model that you could actually generate a, a net net revenue retention. 00:26:19 Eric:I think you nailed it, David. So that's coming from. Right. I think people first experimented with, Hey, how do I get someone to buy my product every year or every month? Right. And now is how do you make it even better? So they're starting to listen to their core users. And we talk about this a little bit on the LTVs.And what do these people want and what makes this experience even better for them. And I think you nailed it with Tinder, right? It's the most, it's the easiest thing to convince people to, to encourage more is more, you know, more relationships, right? People love more relationships and people are willing to pay for that.And so, you know, then what else, what else could this go down the path of, right. What other options could people pay for additional services? Or what we've seen is like marketplaces or transactions spinning on. Right. So if you have a really passionate user base and they're going out there doing, camping, for example, like on, on the dirt, it's a camping site, right?What about doing a marketplace to buy and sell use tents right now is not a subscription, but now if someone's paying, like, okay, now they bought something through your marketplace and you get 10% of that purchase price. So there's going to be a lot of stuff. I think that happens there, to encourage that, to encourage that LTV numbers start rising, I just haven't seen a ton yet, make it happen above 00:27:26 Jacob:It's a scale problem. I need to do that either be at such scale for that to make sense. So I was going to say for anybody, listening to this, that hasn't reached 20 million in ARR, probably north of that do not add a marketplace to your 00:27:37 Eric:I totally agree with that. Very, very much focused focus, focus. And so I would even say like closer to 50 00:27:43 Jacob:Yeah. I mean, until you're like, how do we get this thing public? Or how do we show, like, how do we show like N plus one revenue streams, right? Like it's kinda more what it's about than it is necessarily the revenue generated. 00:27:53 Eric:I'm just a dreamer though. You're just a realist. I'm here, I'm here. And you're just telling me all that stuff that could go wrong. 00:27:58 David:One of the things you just kinda touched on that I wanted to dive deeper into was, was a truth about LTVs. And I love this slide on the, on your presentation, kind of defining these two cohorts, which I've never heard, defined this way. And I really loved the analogy and I'm going to start sort of stealing it from you and use.And crediting you of course. but in the presentation you define, tourists and locals, and then talk about kind of the importance of identifying these different cohorts. So tell me about Who the locals are and why that matters and who the tourists are and how companies can start, analyzing their data to understand this and better target marketing, better, craft the experience in the app and, and those sorts of things. 00:28:46 Eric:Yeah. So we're going to geek out here guys, and, really go deep into STSS. Right? So this is where, this is where my brain goes sometimes on a Saturday night, which is just exciting. but so the way I've been thinking about CSS a lot, and so the LTV component of CSS, which is lifetime value, Which I'm sure all your listeners are very, very well aware of is kind of like how much money can you make from this consumer over time.Right. And it's a function of your pricing and it's an, a function of your turn rate. And so, a lot of people are very focused on this metric as investors or buyers, right? Because it's effectively, how valuable is your customer? So it's an extremely important metric. The problem with this metric and lots of other metrics is it's, it's derived from an app.Right. It's looking at all your users that come into your, in your ecosystem is paying customers. And then how do they perform over time? and it's, it's driven, it's driven off an average of all your users. And so when I've gone through some of my client's data and you look at their user base, right, we, we quickly discovered there's a, there's kind of two different profiles.And I won't use any names here, but let's just, let's just say it's, a walking company, right? So you're, you've got people that go out and they, they sign up, you have a hundred people that. And 20 of them start walking every day and they're, and they, this is what they love and they're tracking, they're walking and you've got another 40 that do it for like a month or two.And then they kind of drop off and then just like, I'm going to go do biking or skateboarding or something. And I switch and you've got another people that sign up. They subscribed to it because their friend pressured him into it and they hate walking and they're never going to walk again and they turn off immediately.Right. So you kind of have those three different groups, some that are just going to do whatever. Some that do it for two to three months and then leave. And then some that do it the first month. And then say, forget this. I'm never going to use this again. And so the problem is your LTV of each one of those three groups are very, very different.And so what, we've, what we've been guiding investors and entrepreneurs, as they think about their growing their businesses, really find out who those locals are, who those people that are going to come and use your app every day, every week, every summer, whatever, whatever the metric is that you're looking.And find ways to measure that, right? Because ultimately that's who you need to bring to your community. And one, those people make the community run more robust, right? Cause they're constantly contributing feedback into the. To, they're much more likely to stay around with you guys. And so you need to find those tools that they're looking for.Right? Like seeing around the corner and saying like, okay, this person loves walking. What else can I provide them? What about a weather forecast? So now that they are about to go out and walking, you know, what does the weather look like? And, oh my God, this is now, this is my one-stop stop for, for walking.And so I think w we've been guidinGP Bullhound's like if you use the averages as a broad metric and that's great, and you should, because investors are going to want to know that, but, but really dig deep into your, your cohort and understand like who's using this every day, all day and what do they need. And so if you can really identify that and show that LTV to, to invest in.I think you can get people a lot more excited than just like that average LTV, right? Cause this shows them potential of what it can be over three to five years, which is really important if you're two or three year old company. Right. And try to convince someone to invest in you showing them that lifetime value of the tour or the locals is going to be a lot more valuable than that average.00:31:46 Jacob:I mean, if you think about just as the, you know, I think it's one of the, you highlighted one of the hard parts of assessing these businesses early on, is that yeah. Your cohort, your total subscriber base is very heavily biased on like your most recent cohort, because often you're also growing, right?Like that's often, like your most recent cohort might be the size of your first five, you know? just because, and for that reason you can really have scurry looking data. but you know, if you think five years from now, mostly. Those other two groups you mentioned there they'll have turned out from most cohorts.Right? And then the only ones remaining for four years of cohorts will be these locals and these long-term retention. And then your total subscriber base is gonna look very different than it does today. Right. And yeah, I'll admit revenue. I've tried to solve this problem in the product. And we still are trying to solve this problem in the product.It's how do we like show people? Cause you're, you're dealing with a mixed population, right? And like you, you can also also run into a problem with begging the COO or like doing very, like, look, you got to invest in and say like, look, look how great my retention is. If I just ignore them. Bad users. Right?Like, let me just look at the good ones. Right. But there is something there in that. What you're talking about, Eric, that long, that very long-term view is that if these users really do retain for a long time, eventually they will be the lion's share of. Subscriber base. And that churn that we talk about, like, you know, if you're adding 1% of your total user base, the most you can experience off of that as like 1% of churn, right.Versus when you're adding half, you know, if you have 110,000 subscribers and you add 10,000 in a month, that's going to be a huge effect to your overall subscription subscription base. Right. so yeah, I think, I think, you know, we certainly have a lot to build on the tooling side. Right. And I think it goes to what you're talking about.Air. We're very early. Like, I think we've just kind of solved infrastructure, like infrastructure. I mean, I would even say kind of, cause there's a lot for us that we need to do yet. but as far as like data science and actually yeah. Being able to outside of a spreadsheet, understand this stuff. It's it's, it's not trivial.It's not trivial. All 00:33:51 Eric:It's extremely hard. And I think like, cause there's so much more you could do once you've broken those two cohorts into tourists and locals, right? Like how do you acquire the locals versus how do you acquire the tourists? Are tourists coming through like Facebook, apple store and the locals are coming from referrals.Okay. So maybe your Facebook spend, is that even worth doing the spending on right. If they're, if they're turning off after a month or two, you know, subscribers is a vanity metric, right. If they don't. All right. You can grow. We talked about this in our 2020 report. We have like this cheetah versus thoroughbred.Right. And it's really easy to show a ton of growth. And you've got all these subscribers and everything is fantastic. Right. But if those subscribers get tired and they turn off right away, you kind of probably wasted money on them. Right. Maybe you got paid back in a month, right. So you didn't lose like on the CAC spend right in here, but you're not building your business.Right. You're just gonna you're pinching pennies. 00:34:36 Jacob:But not a lot of work. Right? Like it's not actually getting translated into business 00:34:39 Eric:Exactly. So is it better to kind of focus on the product, right? Figure out what those, those, tourists are using and spend less time on the marketing side and really nailed the products like, Hey, you'll probably grow slower, right? And That's an issue. That's a risk you have to take, but maybe you can grow more efficiently, more capital efficiency.00:34:55 Jacob:Capital's free now, so that's not a 00:34:58 Eric:That's a fair point of half my fault, I'll take full responsibility for some of that. Right. 00:35:03 Jacob:I think it's interesting how this like feeds into, you know, kind of going back to targeting and ad targeting how often. Optimized Facebook campaigns on like trial conversion. And that doesn't even that doesn't, that's all your tourists and your locals. I mean, maybe some of those that never even start a trial would be cause, but there's a lot of tourists in that group that started trial right.Or convert a trial. And a lot of people are targeting off of that. Right. And so as these methods become less. Good. it will force it'll force developers to yeah. Maybe do one of these scary things actually talk to users, right? Like actually like find those locals, like go in your analytics. And I think just the thing as you were talking about, I just want to point out that, like, I don't think you necessarily need to define this off of monetization retention either could just be retention, like pure usage retention, but it could also be engagement.Yeah. I think about the way Facebook, Oriented their growth teams very early on, which was like findinGP Bullhound that connected, like that was a really key step for them in their product, was to get people to make like three or four. I forget there's some number of friends and they oriented all of their growth efforts around that.Find the thing that people do in your. Shows that they're engaged and give them opportunities to show that. And then, you know, you can use that as an indicator. Okay. Talk to those folks and actually talk to them, right? Like find out, always put something in your app that lets you reach out to them in some way.And like, have you can get on a zoom call. I've done. It's easier now in SaaS land because like, I, I, I, people I'm an app. People like I know how to talk to them, but when we were, when I was working in consumer. Phone calls were more awkward, right? It was different. You're not going to books like outside of computer land, but still like just incredibly valuable.And, and, and, and I think like, you know, if we want to talk about the way to build the way to fully realize how CSS is going to, I'm just going to go all in on your turmeric, by the way, I said, I'm going to, 00:36:57 Eric:That.00:36:57 Jacob:I'm going to push it. We're going to standardize. But 00:36:59 Eric:It's not trademark, but knock it out. 00:37:01 Jacob:All right. So to fully like, to fully realize the potential to like help problems for people.Like, I think we need to lean into this more of this model. Right. Rather than I've always kind of like had an uncomfortable relationship with how our RevenueCat fits into the like hyper fast monetization stuff. Right. I'm like, get users, check your CAC, put more money into Facebook. Right. And so, the more the industry gets away from that. The happier I am. I don't know. Like you said, maybe it doesn't go quite as fast, but I think the overall Tam will be larger. Right? If we take that approach,00:37:33 Eric:Think that's right. And, you know, I mean, I've talked to a bunch of founders that haven't raised capital. Right. And they build something that like their users love. Right. Like, so I don't know if you guys saw the deal with day one that got bought by automatic braised almost as your outside capital.Right. He built. 00:37:46 Jacob:Big fans that they won. 00:37:47 Eric:Yeah. Yeah. I was a big,I got it's an awesome business and he did that exact same thing. Right. He just listened to his users. He didn't care about vanity metrics grew really nicely. Right. And it wasn't like, you know, he's not getting tech crunch publishing, but that's fine. Right. You know, on an amazing business.And then, you know, I've got a fantastic exit out of it. So I think, I think people are really waking up to that's a very much a possibility here in the.00:38:08 David:Yeah, one thing I wanted to highlight too, in that graph that you made, and for people that are listening to this, you can go to the show notes. We'll have links to the, Eric's presentation and you can find this chart, but to visualize it00:38:25 Jacob:Page 18. it open right here. 00:38:27 David:Following along at home, the, line for the locals drops.So, you know, even, even for locals, you're going to have some turn early on, but then it essentially flat lines. and I'm sure you did that very purposely to kind of illustrate how. How long term some of these, these, this retention can end up being, and it's something we've actually been talking on the podcast about recently is that we're so early in the space.We don't even really know what, how to measure LTV. Cause you're going to have people who ended up subscribing for decades. and years and years and years, if not decades. And so, and, and then, you know, to your point about the cheetah versus thoroughbred, another great chart in the patient number, Jacob Page number00:39:16 Jacob:I 00:39:17 David:Cheetah versus thoroughbred but in that tuna versus thoroughbred, The other aspect to locals, and we're kind of touched on it earlier is that those cohorts start to stack. So when you identify this cohort, that is going to be a very long-term cohort. That's going to stay subscribed and have very low churn. You, you acquire a hundred thousand this year, and then they're still there next year.And you put a hundred thousand on top of that. And those are still there next year. And by year three, you know, you just continue to grow this pie of people who are very, very sticky in the product. And I think that's part of what. you know, what you're talking about with delinquent and Bumble and other companies is like, we're still just starting to understand even as different as this is from SaaS.We're starting to see similar dynamics as far as. Early on the churn is so high, but then you do have this really strong stickiness over the long-term that, that, that can build a really healthy business of people who really love your, your product and really are invested in it and are going to stay for a really long time.So yeah, I just wanted to point that out that, that I, I love that aspect of the chart of how flat that line is for the locals. 00:40:35 Eric:I mean, you, you can see it in your own spending patterns, right? Like how many of you guys have subscribed to Netflix or Spotify for more than five years? I bet it's a good chunk of your listeners. Right? So, I mean, if I look at my phone, right, I'm going to subscribe to all trails for the next decade, 00:40:47 Jacob:Yeah, I've got CSS. I I've started subscribing to in 20 13, 14, like as 00:40:52 Eric:Yeah. 00:40:52 Jacob:It was a thing, 00:40:53 Eric:I've, been a script user for four years and I still download audio books or download other books from like the San Francisco library. Cause I'm probably the cheapest banker of all time. but you know, I still use script 00:41:04 Jacob:It's finding margin, Eric you're finding margin. That's what that is. 00:41:07 Eric:Exactly. I've pinched counties all day.But yeah, so I mean, I, I think those tails David to your point are still being written. And so that's the whole point, right? If you use average LTV and you say, all right, well, we have 30% churn that math means you lose every user in three years, and that's just not how it works. And if with really good businesses that are delivering value, right?And so then once you convince people of that, right, the investment case becomes a very different company.00:41:30 David:And speaking of that, you, you had a great, slide on investor benchmarks. And so I wanted to get to that real quick, tell me about how you, how you thought. These different metrics. And what, and how investors think about these metrics? Because you know, we're talking about LTV and in there you have LTV to CAC of you, you know, for a really strong app, that investor would be super excited about.You're closest to. Six X versus less than three X, you start to cool off. So, yeah. Walk us through each of these metrics and kind of how you think about it, how you think investors think about it, And even how that's kind of maturing as we understand the space better. 00:42:10 Eric:Yeah. And just to note like these metrics are all different for different types of businesses, right? If you've been around for a year, these metrics are very different versus if you've been around for 10 years, right. If you're in high growth, you know, venture back, spending a lot of money, these metrics look very different than if you're a bootstrap business, you know, just trying to inch out.You know, 10% growth a year. Right. So they can be very different. And the important thing is how does the story of your business and what you're trying to accomplish tie to these metrics? Right. So that's what we spent a lot of time talking to founders about is, is what's good based on what you're trying to do.Right. So it's just how you, how do you tell your story through the metrics? but yeah, so a couple of your points on the S on the slide, we talk about like user growth rates, gross margins, LTV to CAC, churn rates, free to paid conversion rate, and then sales efficiency. and then, you know, just to talk about something different, we, we talked about LTV a little bit earlier, but maybe talking about, churn, right.And so like how quickly do people churn off? Right. And so that's, there's a couple different ways to interpret churn, right? It's one, they didn't find your product. Too. They thought it was really expensive. or if they're not turning, they really love something you've put together. Right. And they decided to pay you multiple times for that either monthly or annual.And so what we just try to do is try to tell the story of where the business is at and where it's going by looking at these metrics. And so, you know, that's why it's so important to truly understand these metrics, because if you don't understand the metrics, it's hard to tie that to the story. so we spent a lot of time with any client or even non-clients just talking about this stuff to truly understand, you know, what investors care about.And it's, you know, if someone's buying the business, they may care a very good. They may care about very different metrics for someone who's investing your business for growth, right? So someone's going to put 40%, $40 million on your balance sheet to go grow. They may be focused less on LTV to CAC now because your LTV is not formally formed, right.They don't know how good it is, but they will focus very heavily on churn, which is a reflection of how good your product is and how good you're finding consumers that love your product. Right. So those, those are metrics that they may focus. They made me more comfortable spending a lot of money in the next two years.Right. So your CACs going to look a lot worse because they watched, you acquire a lot of users to make the platform a lot better. Right. And a lot of CSS businesses, right. UGC is a, is a, is a spinoff of user activity on the post. Beautiful uploading photos reviews. They're adding new new items on, on the platform for other users to use.And so it's worth spending more money to get those people in the first two to three years because your platform becomes that much better and that much more valuable, right? So you may be willing to burn down to a, an LTV to CAC of three X or something like that in the near term, or sometimes even two extra one X, because it's a land grab for those.Once you're on their platform right now. You want to see that LTV to CAC, start to move up a little bit, right? So you start to put it to four or five, six X, LTV to CAC. So it's all about where your business is. It's each different stage, but it's important to have a story and a message around why your numbers are, what they are.00:45:03 Jacob:Of the, I have the slides up in third slide, 37 for anybody who's following along at home. all of these as a veteran SAS CSS person, every annual user growth rate, gross margin to be cash I'll clear me, sales efficiency ratio. Can you talk about that one? Cause that one's, that one's, not as a little foreign to me. 00:45:22 Eric:Yeah. It's, it's a, it's more of a metric that's come out of SAS just to be honest. So it's thinking about like, it involves like how, how many users are you gaining? It's how much revenue you're gaining versus how much money are you putting out there? So it's a little bit of a different metric. and most CSS businesses don't get to that yet because they typically don't have heavy sales team.And so we've included it because you're starting to see some of these CSS businesses really start to grow. And so how much revenue gaining versus how much revenue you're losing and how much is it costing you to do that? And so that's when you're starting to get into like the tens to $20 million of, of, marketing spend a year, it's, it's, important to understand like how efficient is that spend being, and this is the best metric 00:46:00 Jacob:We, it says called sales, but you actually throw in marketing, spend in there as well. So it's like all go to market spend 00:46:07 Eric:Yeah. Are using head count, not just like the ad dollars. right. 00:46:10 Jacob:Right. 00:46:11 Eric:It's like a fully loaded CAC number, like 00:46:13 Jacob:Your, all of your people telling Facebook what to do, 00:46:17 Eric:Yep, exactly. Exactly. 00:46:18 Jacob:Content graders, like all that stuff, right? Yeah. 00:46:20 Eric:If you've got a hundred people running around campus, right. Promoting your app. Right. Okay. How much those people cost. Right. So it's an important way to think about how much you grow. And it's a way to think about like how well can you grow a capitally efficient capital with limited amounts of capital.So it's an important one. We look at it, it's typically a later stage, right? So you've gotta be like north of 20 million of 00:46:40 Jacob:So he's going to be super high when you're small, right? Because you're, you're your. 00:46:43 Eric:Sir. Request important. 00:46:44 Jacob:People are discreet. Right. And that you can't, you're not continuous. So, and also your, your, your revenue just grows less because of like, you know, you're smaller, you're less, well-known like, you're less is momentum is things like this. 00:46:56 David:Well, we're starting to run low on time, but there's so much more I want to talk to you about, but just to hit one last thing. I also love this chart you did, of Pandora versus Spotify. It's such a. And encapsulation, really everything that we've been talking about on this podcast is to see how well Spotify revenue has compounded over the past few years versus a Pandora, which, which look was the juggernaut.You know, when, when, when Spotify started. so, so walk us through this chart. And in how and why you think, you know, Spotify was able to, to grow the way they did while Pandora really struggled. And obviously there's a ton of, you know, other business factors and execution and other things. But, but I think overall, this does speak to the power of CSS.00:47:54 Eric:Yeah. And this is, this is something we did back in 2020 when we were just trying to decide like, Hey, what's is this CSS thing real? And, and a big question you get from, from investors. And listen, I think a lot of them have stopped asking this question because the case studies are out there is why would someone pay monthly or annually for something they can get for free?And by get for free, it means listening to, or watch. Right. And so I wanted to see like, alright, graphically or like actually numbers to will people, more companies make more money by making that really hard decision and say, pay me for what I'm giving you first. I'll give you something for free and exchange every half hour, you watch two minutes of ads, right?That's a really hard question to say, because it involves you putting a lot of value in your product. And so entrepreneurs, you know, product developers have to. Is this worth money or am I giving something out to people that, Hey, they'll kind of use it if they get it for free. Right? So it's a, it's a gut check for people to say, like, did I build something that someone will buy?That's hard. That's really challenging. Ask yourself, especially if you've started with advertising. and Spotify, you know, listen, they were a small company based in the Nordics, right. Versus Pandora US-based juggernaut and, and raised a lot of money. Right. That's a tough challenge. And so they took a really tough thing and said like, Hey, we're going to get.And make people pay for our product and we're going to make it better. But the crazy thing that happens though, right, is you make so much more on a user from subscriptions than you do from average. Right on advertising. You're trying to pick up pennies per subscription on some or pennies per user on the subscriber.You're making 10, 20 bucks a month, depending maybe maybe $60 a year for a subscriber. So the amount of users you have compounds so quickly, and then if you have that heavy retention, all of a sudden, you've got these really thick layers of cashflow that come in every year, use that cashflow. You invest it back in.He invested back in product and you do it again and again and again, and all of a sudden you've got a better product. And if you have a better product, people will come to it. And if it's something that they're using daily, right. Why would you not be comfortable like paying five bucks? Right. If I think about like how much my Netflix subscription is, right.It's $11 a month or something like that. Right. Well, I probably watch 10 hours of Netflix a month, right? So I'm paying a dollar an hour to be entertained. Pretty good deal. And so, like, I think if people, people start doing that math and you start to see like how powerful that that subscription is for user versus an ad driven, it becomes pretty interesting.And so I think you've seen this case study play out over and over and over across CSS, where if you build a good enough product, you know, a 10 X product versus the free option, people will pay for it. 00:50:24 David:And Spotify does double dip as well, which is interesting is that they have a good enough free tier and people can listen for free. But they choose to spend, even though they can. And so, so Spotify is a great example of, of double-dipping with a great freemium tier, but then a good enough product in a compelling enough reason that people will pay.00:50:47 Jacob:Yeah, another dimension. I don't know the specifics of Pandora and Spotify. It's like fundraising history, but if you have like the subscriber. Subscription revenue momentum makes capital more easy to access. And you look at some of this. I think of some of the strategic stuff that Spotify has done. Like they got the Beatles on Spotify pretty early on and lets up, they spent big on partnerships and Content and stuff.And if you have momentum, if you have hard dollars, it's a lot easier to go to an investor and be like, Hey, like I want to raise X million dollar. Revenue growth. I have, like, this is very clearly a business. I can remember raising money in the pre revenue is everything era or like trying to raise money.And it was like a lot harder. Right. Cause it was just like hand waves and we're going to grow and like, and now it's like, yeah, for better or worse, you go over the curtain and you show something. Right. But the big benefit too, I think for founders, it's not just for investor, for founders. It's like, yeah, you build a great business.You're building a safety net, right? Like if you can't fundraise, it's not the end of the world. Like you have options. And I think that's part of the reason why also, I mean, now we're getting into fundraising like macro, but that's part of the reason the funding environment is crazy because businesses are sturdier than they've ever been.Like they need capital less than they've ever needed it. Right. And so like, that's why it's gotten cheaper. or, you know, evaluation's gotten higher same thing. Right. So, Anyway. Yeah. And this is a fascinating to put this. I already was not on here, which was my horse. And I was like really pulling for them.And then it gets to a whole different story of why that's not on there. But, but yeah, it's fascinating.00:52:11 David:Well, I think that's a really fun place to end the story of Spotify, one of the biggest juggernauts in the space. We're going to include in the show notes a link to the report, a link to your LinkedIn and Twitter to follow along.Anything else you want to share as we wrap up? 00:52:27 Eric:No guys. Always a pleasure to join you. One thing for your audience users, we are trying to make the GP Bullhound CSS report a resource for founders. This year, for the first time ever, we did include a link to a survey.So, if you want to contribute your data, what we'll do is aggregate everything, anonymize it, and then we'll provide back a summary to users to say, “Hey, here's your LTV to CAC. How does this compare to other founders at this stage?” We are trying to be a resource. I'll probably give you guys that link, if you don't mind. We'd love to have as many people as possible. No pressure.Of course, all of it would be anonymized. This isn't a marketing tactic for us. It's us giving back to the community. We'd love people to take a second to do the survey, but if not, don't hesitate to email me, tweet at me, hit me on LinkedIn with questions, comments, and specifically stuff We got wrong. Absolutely love to hear where we can learn.00:53:22 Jacob:Yeah. 00:53:23 Eric:Because we're not building, we're just talking about what you guys are doing.00:53:26 Jacob:By the time you print this thing, it's like, stuff's changed, right? Like it's changing so fast.00:53:32 Eric:The whole Apple thing when we were publishing was happening everyday. And I was like, this is unbelievable.00:53:36 Jacob:And wait to...00:53:36 Eric:Since July, and I have to change every minute. Yeah. I had to change a PowerPoint. You guys had to change code. So I think one was a lot harder.00:53:44 David:Well, it was great having you on, Eric, and we'll have to make this an annual thing.00:53:49 Eric:Sounds good.You're welcome.00:53:51 Jacob:Yeah, we'll see you next year. 00:53:52 David:See you in 2022.00:53:54 Eric:All right. Thanks David. Thanks Jacob.

One of my biggest "ah-ha's" and "takeaways" from day 1 of our highest level mastermind. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com ---Transcript--- What's up everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Seekers podcast. I'm in a good mood today. I'm in a really good mood today. I hope you are as well. We relaunched my Inner Circle. We opened a new level called the Category Kings. We had a chance to meet with him yesterday, and actually I'm driving to downtown Boise, because I'm going to be hanging out with that group again for the next two days and then my Inner Circle for the next two days after that. And so this is like a week of hanging out with my favorite people in the world, and so I'm excited. I've got some long car rides back and forth this week, so you'll probably get some episodes of me talking about what we're talking about, what's happening. And I'm doing this for a couple reasons, number one is I want you to learn from some lessons and the key takeaways that I'm getting from these events. And number two, hopefully it will inspire you to want to set as a goal someday to be in my Inner Circle, and eventually to send up with the Category Kings and things like that. So there you go with that said I'm going to cue the theme song, when we come back I'm going to share with you guys some of the cool aha I had from our meeting yesterday. All right everybody. So yeah I'm driving downtown Boise here, about to go hang out with my Category Kings, which is a small group mastermind I have with some of the Category Kings here inside of the Click Funnels universe, which is fun. When I decided, as some of you guys know I've run my Inner Circle mastermind program for seven or eight years, and then two years ago, about six months before the COVID lockdowns I decided I needed a break. And so I paused Inner Circle. I shut it down, whatever you want to call it, and decided to take a two year hiatus, actually I didn't know how long it was going to be at the time. So decided to take a hiatus and maybe it was going to be forever. But over the last two years, I missed it. For me there're different ways to learn, like you can learn from a book, you can learn from a course, you can learn from a seminar, and for me I've done all those things. I'm a voracious reader. I go through everybody's courses. I love going to seminars, but eventually for me it gets harder and harder to like mine the gold out right? Because you just are more aware of things. And I've been doing this game now for almost 20 years. And so I've been to more seminars than most of you guys probably even knew existed in our industry. So for me it gets harder and harder to find like that gold nugget. And I was in, I remember my very first mastermind group I ever joined was Dan Kennedy and Bill Glazier's, which some you guys heard we recently acquired their company, which is such a cool thing. But in those groups it was interesting because it wasn't like I was learning, it wasn't like here's course curriculum. It was like the mastermind group, we get together, we all get share and talk, and ideas. And like that's where I started getting these nuggets of things that were just like, oh wow, I can apply that. Oh I can apply that. It was a different type of learning I never experienced before, but I fell in love with it. And I was in Bill's mastermind group for six years. And then when he retired and sold his company I wanted to go see if I could find another mastermind group to join. And I ended up joining all of them. Like all the ones I could find in my world in similar markets, I would join them all. And I never got the same experience. I didn't know why. And that was about the time I decided to launch my Inner Circle. And I think the reason why most of the masterminds I tried to join was like you join them, and there were a whole bunch of internet marketers in the group. And so everyone, I don't know, it was just, it never felt awesome. But what was cool about the Inner Circle I launched it, because we have ClickFunnels we didn't just have internet marketers who are using the platform, we had people in every market you can dream of. We have 100 and something 1000 active members now. And again, there's people that are chiropractors, dentists, doctors, people in curing cancer, wellness, health filled, people in marriage, family, counseling, relationships, dating, every market you can dream of are using ClickFunnels. And so when we opened the Inner Circle, it was crazy, because it wasn't just like, oh a whole bunch of internet marketers joined to talk about internet marketing stuff. It was like the best people in each industry joined it. And it was so cool, because now in this mastermind I was learning like what's working now in the relationship market? What's working over here in the supplement market? What's working here, because we had such a such wide variety of people. And man for me it lit up. And if you've read, specifically the Expert Secrets book, the Expert Secrets book was written in the middle of when the Inner Circle was at its peak. When people like Brandon and Calum Poland and Alex Hormozi and I could list all, the most of the names you guys know in the ClickFunnels community today were in the Inner Circle during that time. And it was fun, because I was writing that book, I would like test ideas and then I would test it on my business, have some success, I'd share it with the entire Inner Circle and within hours it was being tested in 40 different industries. And we got feedback and course correction, and tweaks back and forth and back and forth. And really the Expert Secrets book was born from that testing process inside the Inner Circle. It was so cool. Anyway, I digress. So for me after two years of having it closed down I reopened it, specifically because I missed learning. Like I've been in a weird spot where we've been growing, we've been acquiring companies, we're doing things, but I don't feel like I've been personally growing and you know growth is a big value for me. That's why I have so many books that I study so much, is I'm looking for ways to grow all the time. And so I reopened it with the excitement to start regrowing again with a small group of really cool people. So the Category Kings have 15 people in it. Each of them spend $150,000 a year to be part of it. And then the Inner Circle is $50,000 a year, and there's a 100 people in that one. And so those are the two groups, the Category Kings one was funny, I thought that was going to, I was like there's no way people are going to spend that much money. That one sold out in two days and Inner Circle, man we ended up from Funnel Hacking Live, we only presented it to people at Two Comma Club. We had a special luncheon. And from that I think we had 60 or 70 people join during the luncheon. And so anyway, so there's some context to what it is, why it is, why it's exciting, why I'm so passionate about it. So with the Category Kings, to kick off kind of this new group some of you guys have read the book Play Bigger, which teaches you how to become a category king. And I thought, how cool, and it's funny, because half of our, the Category King group are actually women. So as of yesterday I'm calling it the Category King and Queens, because there's as many Queens in the group as there are Kings. But anyway I digress, I thought it'd be really cool to have one of the authors of that book come and actually present. And so Dave Peterson came and he presented on how to like design your category. And it was interesting, because I've read the book multiple times, I've referred it to, I think he told me I was probably the top refer of his book, because I told everybody about it. And so it was interesting, because as we were preparing for this I had it in my head what he was going to do. He was going to use the principles in the book. We're going to map it out. We're going to category design. Like I thought, I really thought that was the direction we were going to go. It was interesting, because he told me, he's like, you know everything I've learned about category design for the most part happened after I wrote the book, we wrote the book based on these principles and he's like, we've been coaching for the last decade now. And he's actually now doing it in a company again. And he's like you know most of what I've learned about category design, I have learned since the book. And so there's a lot of things that are different. And so anyway, we had a four hour workshop with him and what was fascinating to me was we didn't cover most of the things in the book. In fact the first hour was all spent on something that seemed so simple. I'm almost nervous to tell you guys this, because you'd be like, oh that's so simple Russell. But me and 15 other people in this room of arguably Category Kings in their industries, none of us were able to really answer it. And that's what I want to share with you guys today. So the question and it's interesting, because like the way that I, the lens that I view the world at typically for me is like, okay I'm going to go find, who's my dream customer? And then I'm going to create an offer for them. That's like for me, like ground zero, that's where I begin this process. And then if you've read Extra Secrets, you know it's like, hey do we make an improvement offer? Or a new opportunity? Create a new opportunity. There's this whole thing around like down that rabbit hole. And that's where I begin. That's where I kind of start running with. And I always knew that when we're creating offers and creating products, and services and things like that, where like our goal to solve a problem. But what was interesting is that Dave asked us, he's like, what is the problem that you solve? And he showed a bunch of the big companies you're aware of. Like the billion dollar brands and most of them have like a really simple, less than 10 word statement on the problem that they solve for the market. Like for example the wetsuit guy, I don't know who it was, but like his problem he's trying to solve is I want to swim in cold water longer, but that was it. I want to swim in cold water longer, eight words right. And like, what is a wetsuit? Oh it helps people swim in cold water longer. What was the problem you try to solve? Boom this is a solution and billion dollar brand. And every company had something like that. And then he was interesting, he said that he would go to, or he was talking about some of his friends that have big companies. And he said that he started doing this exercise with them, when he'd get in the car with them, and he'd be like, Hey how's it going? How's business? Real quickly, what do you think the problem is you guys as a company solve? His friend would tell him the answer and he'd write it down, and next time they hung out three or four days later he'd be talking, he's like, wait real quick, what was the question? What is the main problem you solve again? And the guy would be like, oh, he'd tell him again, and then he'd do it again, he'd do it five or six times over the next month and a half or so. And eventually the guy came back and said, you know the seventh or eighth time he asked him, he's like, dude you got to quit asking me this. Like you keep asking and I keep telling you the problem we solve. And then Dave came back and said, actually what's interesting is I've been writing them down. He's like every single time I've asked you that question, you've given me a different answer. And the guy was like, oh my gosh. And he started looking at him and he was disagreeing with himself, not knowing it. But if you look at like, he's like I solve this problem, I solve this problem. And I solve this problem. And they kept changing around. And he said a lot of times he'll do consulting with people and they're in category design, and he'll ask everybody in the executive team, what is the problem you solve? And everybody's answers different. And then he'll ask the employees and everyone's answers different. And he's like, this is the foundation. Business is all about solving a core problem for an industry. Like what is the core problem? And what's interesting he said that if you figure out the problem correctly, he said, the category will take care of itself. Like you don't have to go and figure out the category and design, all kind of stuff. He's like it all relies on this one thing, is what is the problem you solve? And it was interesting, because as he said that, instant I'm like oh sweet I can answer this. And then I was like, wait a minute. I could answer this seven years ago when ClickFunnels first came out. That was the problem we were solving seven years ago? It was that entrepreneurs couldn't code. And so we had to make this easy drag and drop builder, oh sorry this is the solution. The problem is that entrepreneurs aren't coders, that's the problem right? And so we built ClickFunnels, because someone like me who's an entrepreneur who needs funnels, I can't code. And so it was like this simple thing. And so that was the problem we solved. Now fast forward seven years later, that's not the market problem anymore. There's a million ways that entrepreneurs can code something. There's a million Wix's and WYSIWYG editors, and WordPress and Shopify, and Etsy and Amazon, like there's a million ways to do it. So, that's no longer the core problem. Although, that's the problem that we solved initially. And so it got me thinking, what is the problem we solve today? Like the problems change in a market and an industry over time. In fact, I asked someone, I was like, does the core problem stay the same forever? And he's like, no, no. He's like there's a core problem, and you got to figure out and identify that, because that'll define the category and everything else. But he's like markets shift, markets change. And he showed this graph of the CRM industry over the last 50 years or 60 years, initially he was it was business cards. And then it was some dude figured out you could take a business card and type it into a data processor. Now you had a digital business card, and then the next wave was like... Sorry, we can come back to the problem. So the first problem is like I needed contacts. So business cards became the thing. That was the problem. And then next thing I have all these business cards, I don't know how to manage them or track them. And so someone made a program where you could type it in. It's like, oh I have a digital version, I can look at it. And if my book of business cards burns up I don't lose my business. So problem solution, and then a little while later it's like, okay this is tough I hate typing in these things. And so the next wave of that industry was card scanners, where you take a business card, you scan it and boom it's in your computer now, you've got it there. And that solved the next set of problems in the industry. And then later it was I don't just want a business card. I want a business card, but to be able to take notes. And if I talk to somebody and things like that, and it was like the first version of CRM, and he showed, was it Seabolt and showed how they became the Category Kings and they dominated. But then eventually it was like well, first Seabolt was really hard to install and all these kind of things. And that's when Mark Benioff came out with Salesforce, which was not software, it was hard and confusing and you had to have people come install it and set up. It was just web based software. And he was the very first to do SAS based software. And so like that became the next thing. And he kept showing them the industry shifting, because the problem shifts over time. And it was interesting, because in your market if you're not shifting your problem over time, someone else is going to solve the problem and that's when you lose the category. That's when the person passes you, which is so fascinating. And so the question came down to, what is the problem you solve? And so that's the thing I want to identify for you guys. And the problem that us entrepreneurs have is like, oh we solve a ton of problems. We do this and this and this, and this and this, and this and this, this and that is the wrong answer. You don't solve a whole bunch of problems. You've got to solve one problem for the category. And by doing that, by creating that, by understanding and identifying and framing that problem from there the category is built. And then we got deeper and talked about POV statements and things like that, it got deeper from there. But that was the core foundation, that again, if I was teaching, I'd be like step one find a problem, step two, what is the offer? And then like you know, and I'd go directly into that, but it's like, no, no, we got to step back to the foundation, which is really what is the problem that you're solving for the industry? When you figure that out the category will take care of itself, which was so fascinating. And again, he said, try to keep your problem statement to under 10 words. And that's hard to do. I spent 45 minutes talking about, 15 minutes work shopping it, and then I spent the next four hours like noodling on it, like try to figure this out, like what in the world, especially as I know some of you guys know we're launching ClickFunnels 2.0 soon, so like with this whole new launch, this new thing, what is the problem we're trying to solve? How do I identify? How do I structure? How do I make it so simple that it keeps us as the Category King? So anyway I hope that's helpful. Obviously there was a lot of stuff yesterday that was really, really cool, but that was the one that was like the biggest insight. It was funny, because we came back from the first workshop, I raised my hand initially, I was like, all right I don't know if it's just me, but that was really, really hard. And I looked around at everybody else, every other Category King and Queen in the room looked back and said, oh, then Kevin's like, we're so grateful it was hard for you Russ, that was really, really hard for us and we thought we were the only ones. I'm like, no, I'm going to be vulnerable here too. That was really hard. And then it was fun, because it opened the dialogue with us all trying to figure it out and work with each other. And Annie Grace, a lot of you guys know her, she spoke at Funnel Hacking Live two years ago, she actually wrote out mine and my POV statement and all these things for me, it was like I think this is what yours is. And like, anyway it was magical. So anyway that was the first half day of Category Kings and Queens. And so I'm heading into the event room now, I'm getting close actually. And I'm excited because I was up till two o'clock last night working on my presentation, because I'm going to, based off of what we learned yesterday with the problem I'm going to take that as the foundation point and then show everybody over the last seven years how ClickFunnels has built to the place it is. We've got over half a billion dollars in sales, well over that now, we built the category, we've done these things. So I'm going to kind of show the next phases for me to the group. I'll probably spend two or three hours going deep into that, which I'm so excited for. And this is like Russell raw, like if you guys see me live, I'm Russell polished where I'm, I've got slides, I've got things. Russell raw you get me and a black marker and that's about it. So I'm excited for these guys they're going to, for those who haven't been with Russell raw this will be my first hardcore doodle session with them going through the principles of how we build ClickFunnels into the category king it is. Things I've learned along the way, the pros, the cons, the ups the downs, and yeah stuff I don't get to talk about typically. So, that's the cool thing about these groups, if you look at our coaching programs we have all the base level stuff. And then if you come in one funnel way and courses and all that kind of stuff, but when you decide to ascend up and get into coaching with us, the first is our Two Comma Club X coaching program. The goal of that is to get somebody from where they are today to Two Comma Club. After you get done with Two Comma Club and you've made a million dollars inside of a funnel, that's when you get invited into the Inner Circle and then from there into category Kings. But it's interesting because the reason why we break it up like that, we used to always have it all together and everyone would be dumped in one coaching program. And it was tough because, or one mastermind group, but it was tough, because there're different conversations that happen at different levels. Like the conversations I'm having with people that spend $150,000 to be in a group, they have to make a minimum of five million a year, and have had to sold over 10 million. They had to have won at Two Comma Club X award. The conversations they have in that room are different than the conversation that happen in a room with people who just passed the million dollar mark. And they're different than the conversation I've going to have with somebody who is in a startup mode trying to get into Two Comma Club. So it's just fun, because again these are things I don't get to talk about, or share ever. And so the place it gets to happen is here inside Category King. So for you guys who are looking to say, okay this is the path, I'm going to hit Two Comma Club X. And then from there Inner Circle, then Category Kings, just know we do record these things and there's a private members there. So when you get to Category King some day, come in here and watch Dave Peterson's talk on Category Kings and watch my presentations from the next day. And you'll have a chance to kind of see where I went from there. So with that said, thanks for listening. This is a long episode because I got a long ride. Hopefully you guys enjoyed it. I miss doing stuff like this, I'm going to try to... We have some fun updates to the podcast coming that I'm doing a few things more long form, I'm going to have someone come and interview me on some topics, because I think those make fun episodes and yeah it's going to be anyway... I'm going to be spending more time with you guys here, is my plan and my goal. So with that said, thanks so much for everything and we'll talk to you guys all again soon.

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-- (0:00-18:57) Sas & Rone Weekend Wrap-Up: Rone was in four cities and sang live in his band in two of them. Sas ended up at the SNL after party with Jason Sudeikis, the Please Don't Destroy guys, and an anonymous NHL team's coaching staff. -- (18:58-48:47) Interview with Bryce Hall: we discuss Jackson Mahomes, getting pressed while eating nachos, squashing the beef with Gruen, celebrity roast battles, negging Bieber, sex dungeons, balding lax bro's, slamming edibles, dropping $10K at the strippy, fighting in Rough N' Rowdy, & more -- (48:48-1:15:16) Bonus Riff: Sas & Rone discuss Harry Styles, Lorne Michaels, Alec Baldwin, Timothee Chalamet, & others, War Dogs, plans for Europe, black coffee, halloween, & more -- Full episode is also available in video form on YouTube -- Behind the scenes of live shows, new sketches, and a full new merch collection- all coming soon

Follow Rosie! https://twitter.com/rosiesherryCheck out Rosieland: https://rosie.land/Michele Hansen  0:01  This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Reform.As a business owner, you need forms all the time for lead capture, user feedback, SaaS onboarding, job applications, early access signups, and many other types of forms.Here's how Reform is different:- Your brand shines through, not Reform's- It's accessible out-of-the-box... And there are no silly design gimmicks, like frustrating customers by only showing one question at a timeJoin indie businesses like Fathom Analytics and SavvyCal and try out Reform.Software Social listeners get 1 month for free by going to reform.app/social and using the promo code "social" on checkout.Hey, welcome back to software social. I am so excited this week to have with us the woman the myth, the legend, Rosie Sherry. Hello. So excited to have you. So you were I founder of Ministry of Testing, lead community at Indie Hackers, which is probably how many people listening know you, currently leading community for Orbit. Also have your own thing going on Rosieland, which is a community about community. So excited to talk to you.Rosie Sherry  1:30  Thank you, thank you. It's good to be here.Michele Hansen  1:33  So I want I want to start out with something something I noticed when I think about your background is how you've kind of gone between being a founder yourself, and intentionally working for other people also having sort of other things going on. And, you know, on the show in the past, we've kind of talked a little bit about how sometimes there's this perception that there's this sort of like staircase of an entrepreneurs career where you start out working for other people, and then maybe you have an info product, and then maybe you do consulting, and then you do an info product, and then you have a SAS and then I don't know, and it's like this sort of like staircase. And there's this sort of like implied increase in virtue throughout all of that. And then if you're taking backwards steps, that's seen as like, literally like a step backwards. And it's like this ladder rather than being this kind of what I'm more see in people's actual careers, which is kind of moving between different things as their interests lead them and as their life leads them. I feel like I see that in your career. And I'm kind of curious how you think about these shifts you've made between working for yourself and working for other people? And like, like, kind of all of that.Rosie Sherry  2:45  Yeah, it's kind of like steps going up and down, right? Or going up and down or left, I guess, an elevator? Yeah, I mean, I have like, no idea what I'm doing. But I guess like, I kind of go with the flow. When I when I stepped back from Ministry of testing, I had been doing that for 10 years. And I thought, like, as I was stepping back, I thought I'd never work for someone else's, like my plan was to take some time off and just like, take it easy for it. And just, I don't know, see what I wanted to do. And I knew I kind of wanted to, like focus in on community, but I wasn't sure how. And then, like, the opportunity with indie hackers came up. And I was like, Oh, you know, this could be fun. This could be interesting. I think I could learn a lot from how courtland has built community there. It's similar to ministry testing, in some ways, but yet, it's, it's really different. So I kind of just jumped on that, like, you know, earlier, earlier than I had planned. I was I was a contractor there for the whole time. And I was there for two years as a contractor. And basically, we just kept renewing the contract, like every three to six months. So it wasn't like it was the plan, stay there. And apparently surprised that I stayed there for two years, I thought I wouldn't last I thought I wouldn't be able to kind of work for someone else after like doing my own thing for 10 years. That was interesting. There's a lot of benefit, especially, I think, perhaps more these days where everything just seems I just feel like there's so much opportunity out there. And there's a lot of things that I didn't like about running a business. I didn't necessarily want to manage people, I didn't want to do the accounts, I didn't want to worry about money or worry about, you know, the future of, of the business. So yeah, I mean, this, you know, loads of things about running a business that I think people try to glorify, they try to hide, they try to not talk about it. But you know, it can be stressful. And I think my realization after running the Ministry of testing, is actually I don't, I don't want to run a company and employ people. I don't want to be responsible for someone's wages at the point of life that I that I am in at the moment. might might change over time, but right now Yeah, I'd rather like I guess, do something more for me something more, you know, focusing on, like my interest in things that that I need. And yeah, and I guess like contracting, bringing home a paycheck, that's great. But you know, for me, it's been, you know, it was great, I saved up a bunch of money, I didn't actually spend any of the money that I made in the hackers. So that was like a nice, consistent income for me to like, you know, get our family more and more of a safety net. Now, my Uber and I never, ever considered working for a startup people have it. Yeah, it's, it's new. For me, it's different from me. But this negative, there's a lot of pros as well. So I try to kind of be mindful of all of that. And, you know, there's days, I just want to pack it all in and say, I can't be bothered, I should just go back to being independent. But there are other days where I'm just like, no, this is actually really good. I'm enjoying what I'm doing this, you know, there's a great team that I'm working with. And again, you know, I get paid well, I don't have to worry about money, I don't have to invoice people the money every month in my bank account. And I'm like, Oh, this is nice. This is, you know, this nice not just to show up and do the work.Michele Hansen  6:11  You mentioned how it was stressful, being responsible for people's paychecks. And I totally relate to that. I think it's one of the reasons why we haven't really, you know, formally hired here, right? Like, I have a VA, but you strike me as someone who you know, and this comes through so much in your work for indie hackers in your work on community who like deeply cares about other people, and supporting them and encouraging them and helping them reach their goals, and you know, and be that person they want to be. And I wonder if that almost made it harder to be running a company and responsible for people's income when you felt so responsible for those outcomes and really invested in them as people?Rosie Sherry  6:57  Yeah, I mean, it's actually interesting, because I still own in ministry, testing, or co owner, when you're founded, you kind of like, I guess, the foundation of everything that comes later, to a certain extent. So like, the fact that I worked when I wanted, the fact that I had five kids, the fact that I just like took time off when I needed to the fact that I defined, you know, decided my own hours, all of those things, ended up becoming how things were done administrator testing, and it's become more apparent, I guess, as the team, I think about eight or nine people at the moment, at first, you know, I was only one with kids. And, you know, I was very much family friendly person, I would support, you know, everything about me is like, we need to live our own lives as well. We need to have flexibility, you know, work shouldn't stop us having having a family and doing things that we want to do. And at first, it was like, just me it was kids. But then like, as the years have gone, I think last year, there were three new babies born within the company, and as a team with like nine people that's like, oh, wow, how are we gonna manage this as like, as a company, even though it's not my responsibility anymore. There's a CEO running it. But he very much took on the philosophy of like, well, this is how Rosie has always done it. So this is what everybody else gets to do as well. So we let the mothers choose what they want to do. We let them you know, take the time off that they need to take time off, and have a say, and there's no there's no judgment for any of it. And we listen, and we care and we try to make good decisions, even even if it costs us money, right. And like, as a small company, and you have three of your people off on maternity leave is a big kind of hit. But it's not something that feels wrong, it very much feels right and like allowing everybody just to choose the time that they have off and pay in the world. And you know, making sure that they get a fair deal when they're often on maternity leave is to me, you know, I couldn't do it any other way. Because it would feel hypocritical. And for me, it's just like, I can't have once that rule to me and like different set of rules for For everyone else, even if I never took maternity leave properly. I believe like, you know, everybody else should have had that right to do that. I guess.Michele Hansen  9:20  It sounds like a bit like Golden Rule management, like treating others as how you would want to be treated.Rosie Sherry  9:26  Yeah, I don't understand why companies can't do that. can't comprehend it. And it's probably why I haven't. It took me I guess it's probably why it took me a long time to actually end up working for other people. Because without listen to the pandemic, because just like nobody was truly flexible enough in their thinking about how people showed up for work. And I've been working from home all this time on my own rolls, and then the pandemic comes along and I'm just like, still working the same way that I was working before. This ain't nothing changed for me day to day, but for everyone else. Or, you know, like a huge majority of people, life change and companies rethought their processes and what was acceptable and what wasn't acceptable. And the fact that we can all work from home now I think is is great, but at the same time is unlike Well, why couldn't we do this before we could have. But companies, you know, I guess like it wasn't urgent enough to think of our needs until the pandemic came along.Michele Hansen  10:26  And, you know, you mentioned how your life didn't change all that much with the pandemic. Yeah, I want to detour for a second because I understand that so you have five children, and you unschool them and it would just be interesting for a moment just to talk about not only what does that look like but also you know, you mentioned your whole life didn't change much. And I'm kind of curious what does that home life look like between you and your husband with this sort of unschooling elements layering on top of also like your, your work life? Like how does all of that work together?Rosie Sherry  11:02  Yeah, it's tough. I think like unschooling, I think the toughest part about unschooling, I think is, or even homeschooling is about making that kind of adjustment to life, like trying to instead of like, you know, if if kids go to school, you know, you have the six, eight hour block of time to kind of get work done and you can plan things around that with unschooling is like, well, you kind of have to plan for your kids. And then you have to plan your work around your kids, and you have to juggle things. With me, it's with my husband, we like have equal share on like, the kids in the house. And I just think that's the hardest part is like most people, probably, I guess I feel I feel privileged to be able to do that at the moment. But like, I guess, like, the thing I do is like, we're having this chat for me, it's in the morning. And that's like, not my normal schedule. So the like, normally like I'm online from midday till eight, and I'm with my kids from when they wake up until midday. And then at midday, me my husband swapped over. And that's those are the, that's the deal we have right now, to make things work. And so, in the morning, I would normally take my kids to a class that they have or a group that they go to, and it works, I guess, to try and to split that time, it changes all the time as as my work changes, or as my husband's work changes, we find ways to adapt and I guess that's the magic of unschooling, I guess like unschooling is like, we're always, I guess, we're always looking for things that our kids want to do to keep them active. So every day, especially our younger ones, who are between the age of three and 10. You know, getting them out out the house once a day is like basically our goal. And that happens in different ways at the moment, except for school, beach school, art class, sports, or football. And then other days that we hire, or we pay a friend to take them out for the day. She's like a single mom, and appreciates extra bit bit of income. It's tough, it really is tough. And it's like we have to say no to things a lot of the time, but I think at the same time, I think like the pandemic has kind of worked in my favor as well. Now that everyone's online, I feel like what's the right word? I guess previous to the pandemic, I felt like I was only one needing to have the flexibility. But I think like these days, it's it's more more acceptable. I guess, everyone's more accommodating, like having kids in the background is okay. Pre pandemic, that was not okay. You know, stuff like that, you know, despite COVID I appreciate how the world has changed. We feel it feels weird. I don't know. What do you think it feels? It feels weird to? Yeah, to say that. But I think you know, actually, there's been positives from COVID.Michele Hansen  13:57  I think it's forced us to reevaluate things and maybe shifts that were happening very slowly, like you mentioned, you know, more work from home and maybe more flexibility shifts that were happening very, very slowly, or only in very specific corners of the economy were kind of thrust on everyone all at once, which was both traumatic and also sped up things that needed to happen to at the same time at great cost to everyone involved, Beto as you said, like, you know that it's acceptable to have children in the background or even a dog barking, like I remember two years ago, you know, before COVID, and I was having a call and my dog barked in the back because the mailman was there or whatever. Like, I always felt so embarrassed on the call. And, you know, I remember sometimes, you know, the people, you know, whoever I was having a, you know, customers having call with, or one of them being like, Oh yeah, you know, we have a dog friendly office too. And I was just like, Yeah, like, dog friendly office, you know, that whole thing of like being a really small company and not wanting? Yes, I'm actually like working from home like that being kind of like something to be sheepish about, you know, like that you were working from home because it was like, What? Like, can you not afford an office? Are you not legit enough to have an office? Like, do you not like it used to prompt so many questions, most of them not very, like, positively reflecting on the company. But then all of a sudden, you know, so many of us, you know, who were lucky enough to be working from home, everybody was working from home, everybody, you know, had kids in the background dogs in the background cats on their keyboard, like, you know, and we all just had to learn how to be a little bit more understanding with one another.Rosie Sherry  15:41  Well, human right, I think like, we, we've learnt to appreciate and see that we all live in different circumstances, and we should adapt to that, and we should make sure it's okay. You know, almost like, I guess, like, the whole diversity movement, I guess, in the past few years is, you know, crept up. And, you know, to me, this is also like, part of it is like, we're all human, we're all people, we have different circumstances, that the sooner we can make that, okay for everyone to just like, be who they are opt in, opt out things, be able to, you know, not have shame for, for whatever it might be, I think like, the better the quicker, we can just like, move on and like, kind of focus on our work and get and get things done.Michele Hansen  16:38  Using shame, just there kind of reminded me of what we sort of started this conversation with, which is, you know, in your career, you have sort of intentionally and consciously moved between contracting and, and being a founder and working for other people. And when people come to a situation where they realize that maybe consulting isn't working for them, or they're trying to get their own SAS off the ground, and it's not working, and the finances are tight, and they're thinking about, you know, going out and getting a job. Yeah, it seems like people often feel a lot of shame around that. And then that feels like failure to them. And I think what your story shows that, you know, it's not linear. And, and I'm just kind of curious what you would say to someone who is kind of maybe at that point, who is wondering, you know, just, you know, that thing, things aren't, things aren't working, or the finances aren't there. And they've they've got to go back and, you know, get a job, like, what would you say to them?Rosie Sherry  17:56  I definitely felt this, like in the indie in the indie world, like, being immersed in that world. And, you know, people want to make it they want to be full time, indie hackers. And it almost becomes, like, a thing of like, what if you're not a full time indie hacker, then, like, you know, you're not a success really are there's only one way. And, you know, I almost, you know, thought that, you know, I thought even just like working in India, because I thought I wouldn't last I thought, you know, people, you know, I wouldn't make an impact. I wouldn't enjoy working with courtland, or all that kind of stuff. And even even when I joined indie hackers, the opportunity came up as a result of courtland looking for some social media help. And I was just like, at that point, I was just looking for something else to do. And like when I reached out to him, he was like, Yeah, but you're overqualified for this. I was like, Yeah, I know. But I'm, you know, I'm still like, yeah, I could do it. And, you know, I, I personally felt like I could learn from indie hackers. And that role ended up being more like of a community manager community lead role that he that he offered me. But did I feel shame, like doing that a little bit, but at the same time, as I, it doesn't matter, you know, I need to, you know, I really wanted just to have an excuse to do something else. And so yeah, I work for CEO, founder to social media and community manager, which is a step back, right? You know, on paper, it's a step back. But actually what it did for me was was huge, is like, before I joined India, because no one in the indie world really knew who I was. There's a few people here in there. But what it did for me was was massive. So I say I think a lot of the time choices, I guess, perhaps is that it's not all about money. It's not all about job titles. And we can dismiss job titles is not important. That's, you know, I think sometimes they can be but I think I think, if we think about, or like, the way I think about it is like, well, I want to do stuff, I want to learn stuff, and I want to work on things I care about. And does it matter if it's starting your own thing? or working for someone else? I don't think it really does. I think, at least for me, it's like, you know, five, finding, finding the right people to work with is, is key. And yeah, I mean, there's a lot of jobs that I'm sure would be sucky. And I see I definitely see people struggle, working for companies and being like, part indie part, like, working for companies. So yeah, I don't think like anything is necessarily Perfect. Perfect solution. But I guess it's like more about like, finding your fit what's right for you? How do you get to do the work that you do? Enjoy? How are you growing personally? And, like all, but I think I'm growing a lot personally. And also in, in my, I guess, desire to kind of impact the community world, I think I'm doing that. And I get access to stuff that I wouldn't, if I was trying to do all, all of that kind of stuff on my own. So yeah, there's definitely like, the pros and cons. So yeah, but but it's easy to think because when I joined, obey, it was at the back of my mind is that oh, my God, what will people think? I've been indie for, for 15 years. You know, should I actually take this job? Is it is it in conflict with, with who I am? Those are all that was definitely in the back of my mind, I can't, I won't lie about that. Yeah, I was nervous about announcing that. I'm not sure what people would think. But I think, at the end of the day is like, I'm still sticking to, to who I am, I'm still sticking to my values, I'm still pushing for the things that are important to me in all of it. And if I don't get those, and it's going to become a problem. You know, say, I'm still being me, in every, every space that I show up. And, and that's what's important to me, is that, and if I can't get that, then that's where it becomes a problem. For me, I think, Patrick, my boss,Michele Hansen  22:52  I noticed that you just said how you had this conflict around identity. And I feel like that's running undercurrent of a lot of time when people are having this struggle, is identifying as a founder, and all of the things that come with it, identifying as an indie hacker, identifying as someone who, you know, runs their own things and whatnot, and shifting identity into something else into, into, you know, who am I if I am not somebody who runs their own company? What does that say about me? Just who am I as as a person, I think in a world where we wrap up so much of our identity and what we do for work. That's a, that's a massive and can be quite a, you know, debilitating sort of shift and psychological process to go through. And yet what I also heard you say several times throughout the, the conversation is a reason why you took the job with indie hackers, or the contract with indie hackers, is because you wanted to learn and, and I wonder if that transition is a little bit smoother. When you think of, you know, there's you have this identity as an indie hacker, as a founder, you also have an identity as someone who likes to do other things. And one of those, I think, for you that really comes through is somebody who's curious, and who likes to learn and letting another identity almost kind of supplant that, that founder, one that's sort of, you know, taking a backseat.Rosie Sherry  24:40  Yeah, it's interesting. It actually brings me back to like minister testing and like when I stepped back, it was like, Oh my god, like, Who am I? Who am I going to be now I've been this testing person, this person, leading the testing community for so long. I'm almost leaving behind. And much of that, obviously they I still keep in touch with people, but I'm not in that world anymore. Yeah, it was, it was hard, it's hard to shift away from that and to figure out how to how to kind of redefine your life and who you want to be. And how do you get people to, I guess, to see that to know that and, and yeah, it's, it's tough and I guess like, right now with the indie stuff like, you know, I do Rosi land stuff on the side. But even that, I feel like oh, you know, I see a lot of the indie stuff happening, I still keep an eye on indie hackers. But, you know, at the same time I miss in the hacking as well, I don't do nearly as much as I would love. And, you know, I struggle with that. So it's like, how much of these different people can I be? How do I? How do I separate that? Do I need to separate that? And I mean, I was I was employed over it was no full well, knowing that I had all this stuff on the side. And that that had to continue to exist when I joined over it. But yeah, I feel like I definitely feel less a part of the indie world. Because just because I don't have the time to spend in it. And that makes me feel sad. Definitely sad. And I want to do more, but I can't just because because of time. But yeah, I don't even know where I'm going with this. But this constant shift of identity moving on, almost like shedding skin. All right, is that I shed my skin from history testing. I'm shedding my skin a bit from indie hackers, but not quite. And, you know, moving through life, I think, like, I think we almost become different people as we grow up. I mean, I think I'm in my early 40s now, and am I the same person? I was 10 years ago. So yes, but no. And that's okay. Yeah, I don't even know where I'm going. But yeah.Michele Hansen  27:31  It's interesting you say that I love how you dove into the identity shifts of that. And you're like, so even though you're no longer with, you know, indie hackers proper. I still think of you as the mama bear. The indie world is my head but like that's, that's it's you know, Rosie, Sherry mama bear of the indie hackers.Rosie Sherry  27:59  Well, I like that. I'll have to put that on my Twitter. But it's interesting, right? People will always remember you for different things. So there'll be people from the testing community who will always remember me for ministry testing, and things I did, and nothing will probably change as much in a ton of indie hackers out there will remember me as being the mom of their I love it. Yeah, and like, the more I do all of it, orbit, the more people associated me not with being indie, but being more all about community. And that's okay, as well. Right? And what does it mean is that, I don't know. But But I think like, I mean, you know, I guess it goes back to trends, life, the world changing, no one has careers for life anymore. And this is you know, probably I guess a proof of it is like, let's, you know, change as we grow, let's be okay with, like, actually discovering things. As we learn about ourselves, and as we learn about the world around us, and, and adapt and we should Yeah, I think we should all be able to do that and make make it feel okay. And make it you know, not not feel like step backwards, is you know, it's not a step backwards. It's just like, as you as an individual, you you're doing what's what's right for you at any point in your life. And that's, you know, that's okay.Michele Hansen  29:45  I'm reminded of the Walt Whitman, quote, I contain multitudes and, and I feel like what you're saying is, is about that we have many different identities and even the identities of us in other people's minds may be different than what we think of ourselves as or reflects a version of us in the past. And, you know, you're that that identity that you had as a founder, the identity you had, as the community person for indie hackers. As rosy land, as community person at orbit, like, all of those are valid, and they all exist, regardless of you know, what you're currently we're doing. And I feel like, what you're saying is, you don't really have to choose one, you know, you can still you can still have all of those pieces and so many more pieces of yourself. And, and it's okay to shift and change and grow.Rosie Sherry  30:54  No, think like, as as, I guess, like an unschooling approach to things we encourage, everything we do is like child led learning. And, like, I live that, that same philosophy in life is like, you know, I think like, like, as I get older, I just, I just can't spend any time on anything I don't enjoy. And then when I look at my kids, I'm like, why should they have to spend any time on the things that they don't enjoy, we should, like, you know, focus, focus all our energy as much as is possible to do the things that we love, because that's, that's like a really special place to be. And, like, at the moment, like, like, you know, I've been working for 23 years of my life, when I started out, working. Man, it was just like, a different place. And like, where I am, now, I'm like, this is just such a better place to be doing work that, that I love that I appreciate that, that, you know, I believe I can have impact on. And if I look back at myself, like 20 years ago, and see see where I am now, I say, I would have like, I guess, never, never imagined that this kind of life is possible. The life I had then was about working in jobs that I didn't really enjoy that much, or for companies that I wasn't really, that interested in what they were doing. And now it's like, everything's flipped to like, I'm working for a company that I believe in what they're doing, I enjoy the day to day work, we're aligned in the things that we want to do. And that's just like, Whoa, you know, how, you know, how great is that, to be a part of that. And regardless of the outcome, whether, you know, I continue to rise up in the company where they continue to get pay raises, whether whether orbit ends up, you know, growing massively in IPO, and that that doesn't matter. To me, it's like what matters is, you know, being able to do do what I love, right now.Michele Hansen  33:22  Follow the things you love, even if those things take you from entrepreneurship, to working for other people and changing your identity. And, yeah,Rosie Sherry  33:34  I look at Patrick, my, one of the cofounders I see some of the things that he has to do as a founder. And I'm like, I'm so glad I'm not doing that. And like I can see it as the founders because like, not not to the same extent, you know, they've raised money, it's a different game. But you know, that the same principles applies, like, I don't have to do any of that stuff. And I'm very happy about that.Michele Hansen  34:03  It sounds like you're in a good place. Now. I want I want to thank you for for joining us today. You know, we again, in this sort of indie world, we talk a lot about building in public and you know, I talked about writing in public. But something I am really valuing lately is when people are willing to be vulnerable in public. And I feel so much from that of that from you. And not only in on on Twitter, and your support of other people, but also here today. And, and I have a feeling that your story today is it's gonna make somebody at least one person feel feel less alone and feel feel better about their journey. Hopefully you know, less shame about Going from entrepreneurship to employment?Rosie Sherry  35:06  I hope so. I hope so. I try. I think it's, it's hard, I guess. I mean, I don't know what your experiences but like women in tech when in business, whether it's like, I guess it's hard to stand up to certain things and be open about the challenges that we have. And so yeah, I try my best, I think my confidence increases over time. I will say, I don't give a damn anymore, like what people think. I don't know if that comes of age. But like, you know, I definitely wasn't this open about everything before. So, yeah, part of me like does it to, to help other people see, I think it's important, like, who I am a woman, five kids on schooling. I kind of want to show people that. Yeah, yes, I'm a bit obsessive with the things that I want to do. I'm, like, you know, switched on, like, all the time, pretty much. But But I spend lots of time with my kids as well, you know, I managed to make it work. And I guess that my hope is that in time, like more people can be like this, if that's what they choose, you know, if they, if they can see the possibility. You know, it's done me a lot of good. And I guess, like, there must be more people out there that want something like this. And for them to be able to see an example. I guess is, is what's in the back of my mind when I tweet when I write when I do my things? Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you. Yeah,Michele Hansen  36:59  thank you so much for yesterday. I've really enjoyed this conversation.Rosie Sherry  37:05  Thank you, Michelle. I appreciate catching up.Michele Hansen  37:08  If you enjoyed this episode, please let Rosie and I know on Twitter. You can find us at software social pot. Thanks

If you're looking for some inspiration to help you find your Super North Star, let Floyd Woodrow DCM MBE be your guide. Floyd is Managing Director and founder of Chrysalis Worldwide, a world-leading values-based organisation and owner of Quantum group. But as you may have guessed from his post-nominal letters he hasn't always been a businessman. Floyd spent his formative years first in the Parachute Regiment before joining the Special Air Service at the age of 22, where he was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his work in Iraq and an MBE for his work in Afghanistan. While he was serving, Floyd realised the importance of continual learning and wanted to continue down this path of pursuing excellence when he left the military. And that's precisely what he's done. He's also written several books including Learning to Learn, and more recently, The Warrior, The Strategist and You in which he outlines the “Compass for Life model for leadership and life”.In today's episode Floyd discusses the idea of having a Super North Star and how a compass provides the framework you need to achieve balance and point toward your Super North Star. He also talks about the importance of mindset, and he succinctly sums up, in 30 seconds, what it takes to be an amazing salesperson. This is a fantastic conversation with Floyd, we hope you enjoy it as much as we did.  On today's podcast:Finding Your Super North StarThe four cardinalsSumming up selling in 30 secondsLearning through hostage negotiationLinks:Podcast - Floyd's leadership journeyBook - The Warrior, The Strategist And You: How To Find Your Purpose And Realise Your PotentialBook - Elite!: The Secret To Exceptional Leadership And PerformanceTwitter – @floydwoodrowLinkedIn – Floyd WoodrowWebsite – Floyd Woodrow

This, my friends, is a conversation that I've been looking forward to sharing with you for quite some time. In this episode, I'm joined by Drs. Marah Vanderzell and Erik Jacobson from the Upstate Cerebral Palsy Center.  As you'll hear right out of the gate, we started the episode off by attempting to operationally characterize the Boy Band pop music genre. You read that correctly... but, don't worry if you're not a fan of Nsync or 98 Degrees... there's a lot of fantastic insights into the clinical leadership model in this conversation.  And if you are indeed interested in organizational and clinical change on a big scale, this is the episode for you. As Erik and Marah describe, residential and day treatment centers have historically provided treatment from a care model. Over the past few years however, the leadership at UCP has been busy changing this philosophy to an active treatment model.  As such, they've made considerable investments in bringing in various thought leaders in the field to implement things like Essential for Living, Pre-school Life Skills, the BALANCE program, Skills-Based Treatment, and much much more. In our conversation, we discuss what they've learned from this process, and where the organization is going moving forward.  We also went down a few unexpected rabbit holes here and there, so you'll want to check out the entire conversation. One of those included Marah telling us about what it was like to be a student of Ted Carr. That's a segment you definitely don't want to miss.  If you're a Patreon subscriber, well, you're not listening to this feed as the ad-free subscriber feed was published last week. That episode also featured an additional 15-20 minutes of content at the end of the interview, where the three of us discuss things like running, cross-fit, and health/fitness more generally. So if you'd like to learn more about this, please check out patreon.com/behavioralobservations. Last but not least, I'd like to thank Dr. Tony Cammilleri, the Director of Education at FTF and all around great guy, for his help in crafting the questions and talking points for this conversation. Here are the links to the things we referenced in the show: Carr and Durand 1985. Carr 1977. Upstate Cerebral Palsy. UCP YouTube Clinical Playlist. Practical Functional Assessment. FTF Behavioral Consulting. Essential for Living. DoBetter. Pyramid Educational Consultants.  The Daily BA. John Kotter. Adam Grant. Motivating Human Resource Staff, Reed and Parsons, 2006 (*disclosure: Amazon Affiliate Link). This episode was brought to you with the support from the following sponsors: The Secret Agent Society Small Group Program helps kids 8 to 12 years old crack the code of emotions and friendships through an animated ‘secret agent' theme.  Now with flexible face-to-face or telehealth options, services who have used the SAS program for many years are blown away and excited by the new digital health solution. Mention this podcast for a free Secret Agent Society Assistant Short Course to sample the SAS program. Also, if you're interested in learning more, there will be a free SAS demo on November 2nd. Institutional Tier Patron Greenspace Behavioral Technology. Greenspace behavior offers cutting edge supervisor coaching, performance and competency-based trainings, and organizational supports for new BCBA and trainees. Find out how you can optimize your supervision practices, improve clinical outcomes, and increase employee satisfaction at Greenspacebehavior.com. HRIC Recruiting. Barb Voss has been placing BCBAs in permanent positions throughout the US for just about a decade, and has been in the business more generally for 30 years. When you work with HRIC, you work directly with Barb, thereby accessing highly personalized service. So if you're about to graduate, you're looking for a change of pace, or you just want to know if the grass really is greener on the other side, head over to HRIColorado.com to schedule a confidential chat right away.

In this episode, Jay Appaji (@jappaji4) is joined by Rohan Bhatt (@i2ohan) as they reflect on the first two games of the Mavs 2021-22 season: The loss in Atlanta and the win in Toronto. They talk extensively about the contrast between the Mavs' offensive struggles and defensive successes. They analyze what worked and what didn't work in the first two games, and ultimately make their suggestions on how the Mavs can build on their positives going into the second week of their season. Up next: 10/26 vs. HOU, 10/28 vs. SAS, 10/29 @ DEN. Follow us on twitter @MavsFilmRoom --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/mavsfilmroom/message

Richard Sulík (SaS) a Ladislav Kamenický (Smer-SD) by Na telo s Michalom Kovačičom

UPCOMING EVENT on November 11th (Veterans Day): If you'd like to attend a Q&A session on November 11th with Combat Story's Ryan Fugit, please fill out this form (https://tinyurl.com/552ewmu5). Today we hear the Combat Story of Wes ‘H' Hennessey, a retired Australian Special Forces Commando and 20 year veteran who deployed on numerous occasions to Afghanistan, Iraq, East Timor, Somalia, to name just a few. He fought for years at the upper echelons of the Australian special operations community and was on joint operations with US-equivalents like DEVGRU in critical missions. He was later recognized with two US Bronze Star Medals, one with Valor, for his efforts, in addition to the coveted Australian Conspicuous Service Medal. Since leaving the military, Wes has gone on to become a sought after brand ambassador, public speaker, and, most importantly, Veteran advocate. He stands out from the crowd with a down to earth, honest, and truth-to-power personality and I hope you enjoy his combat story as much as I did. Find H Online: Instagram @seven.horses.co LinkedIN https://www.linkedin.com/in/wes-hennessey-860b1235/ Find Ryan online: Follow on Instagram @combat_stories https://www.instagram.com/combatstory Follow on Facebook @combatstoryofficial https://fb.me/combatstoryofficial Send us messages at https://m.me/combatstoryofficial Email ryan@combatstory.com Learn more about Ryan www.combatstory.com/aboutus Intro Song: Sport Rock from Audio Jungle Show Notes 0:00 - Intro 1:05 - Guest bio for Wes “H” Hennessey 1:55 - Interview begins 3:41- What US State is Queensland like? 6:24 - Aussie Commandos vs SAS 16:32 - Communication once in the elite units 30:14 - The Commando pipeline 32:46 - Kit check was a favorite 38:26 - Can you tell who will make it through selection? 47:28 - The weight of leadership 51:35 - First deployment: Somalia 56:59 - First mission outside the wire 1:03:29 - Left a boy. Returned a man. 1:12:57 - Sent to Kandahar 1:24:04 - Honing the American accent 1:27:56 - Surviving a helicopter crash 1:56:49 - When the near death experiences build up 2:01:06 - Seven Horses Co and H's next mission 2:10:55 - What did you carry into combat with you? 2:11:45 - Would you do it all again? 2:13:07 - Listener comments and shout outs!

Eric and Steve-O are back while Matthew plays on the beaches of Hawaii for an all new SAS! Go on, get Lei’d and TAP THAT SAS!

Eric and Steve-O are back while Matthew plays on the beaches of Hawaii for an all new SAS! Go on, get Lei'd and TAP THAT SAS!

Show notes:Links:Sweaty StartupHook RelaySpider seasonWrite for HoneybadgerAutomated transcript (only about 75% accurate)Ben  So I've been, I've been using Hook Relay over the past week and I got to say, there's nothing as useful as using your own product to make you see places where the product can be improved. So I've, I've opened a couple of issues. Yeah, yeah. And uh, I mean, they're not, they're not major things, but it's like, oh, it would be nice if this was different, would be nice if that was, you know, different. And it's been, it's been good. So I'm, I'm looking forward to having those things done making the product better. And we, uh, you know, we talked about spending some more time, uh, development time on really the other couple next coming weeks and months because I've had some, some customer requests coming in. So Ben  it's always a good feeling like when people are actually using it and saying, oh yeah, I like it, but couldn't do this like, Oh yeah, I could do that. It's fun. I love it. I love being developer and just building stuff. So much fun. Yeah. Josh  Yeah. Looking at our, our dashboard, we've got uh, got a few New year's is coming in. Got some a little bit more revenue than last time I looked at this, so that's cool. Starr  Yeah, that's good stuff. You know, it's the season for it. The, the pacific Northwest summer is long gone and we're just into the dark, wet now. We've gone through a spider season. Yeah, I mean, right, you've got um, yeah, you've got the summer, you've got spider season, you've got dark with it. Josh  Is that from that like list of pacific Northwest Seasons or whatever, that's like . Starr  You can, you can call me out on that. I was hoping to um, I was hoping to plagiarize. Josh  We should, we should put that in the show notes if we can find it though. That's a pretty good one. Starr  Yeah, that's a good one. Josh  I don't remember them all, but Ben  I'm definitely, definitely more productive in the winter time because like, I'm not outside playing, I'm inside hunkering down from the rain, the cold, so I'm like, I might as well do some code. Josh  Yeah, Starr  I mean, personally, I kind of um like I kind of stopped going on my morning walks in the summer because there's too many amateurs out. Yeah. And I started again once the fall comes, once it starts getting dark and drizzly and those are my favorite morning walks. Josh  Nice even in the rain. Starr  Yeah, especially in the rain, get out. Yeah, that's why you have a nice like Gortex raincoats and my scoots. Yeah, it's all about the gear. Yeah, it's uh, I don't know, this is very pleasant. I like it. The, yeah, the summer here, like it's nice, but after a while, the sun just, just starts getting to me. It's just like, I can't escape it. It's just boring into my eyeballs. Ben  It is truly a thing around here when the sun has been out too long has been to many is people do get a little so crazy. Like I need some wet and so the first rainy day comes, you can just feel the relief. It's just, it's just, I don't know how to describe it. It's just a sense of community, like relieved that things are back to normal. There's, there's precipitation again. Starr  Yeah, I came up with a theory and I have no idea how valid the series, so I'm just going to throw it out there because it's unfounded and I'm wondering, so like I realize this, this winter, this, yeah, this fall as I'm going out. It's like, okay, like the reason I, like this is because like everything is more muted, right? And I get over stimulated very easily. So, you know, noise and late and all that just kind of does it to me. Starr  And but when it's like dark and gray, like for like, I don't know, this may just be my, my perception, but like the water vapor like mutes the sound a little bit or something. It's not quite everything. Like all the edges are more round and pleasant, nothing is quite as sharp and stab. E And so yeah, and Seattle Seattle is like the pacific northwest in general. It's just like, it draws in like all the computer nerds, all the, all the people who just like it here and like that kind of environment. So it's like, oh do we all just, you know, we all have like sensory issues. I don't know. Josh  That's why all the tech companies are in Seattle. Yeah, probably. I think I need to get an office still because I think like, I think, I think Ben's right, like I I also would be more productive in the winter, but like working from home in the winter with with uh like Kindergartners is a a different experience than working at home in the dark by yourself. It's a bit of a challenge. So yeah, Starr  when you turn on the lights while you're working, you don't just leave them off. Josh  Yeah, sometimes I leave them off. Oh yeah, Starr  that's because you're a real hacker, I've been doing more marketing stuff lately. So I turn the lights on. I use light mode. Josh  I mean you probably forgot how to touch type, you know, and use them with you shut up, Starr  shut up. Shut up, you shut up. I get to say that. Not you. Josh  So you have to have the lights on. I'm sorry. Starr  Yeah, I don't have one of those keyboard with a blank key caps. Josh  Like truth be told. I've been um doing a lot less programming than I used to as well. And it's, it started to bother me a little bit lately. So I've been trying to find ways to get back into it because I'm like, if I'm gonna like forget how to build a rails app if I don't, if I don't like, you know, do some do some work. Ben  We do have like  items in our backlog for Honey badgers. It's true. She can find something to do. Yeah. Josh  I don't know, it's just weird like having like a legacy rails out for so long um Like even when you are working, like even when you do work in it, it's still like, I don't know, like your, it's, you know, I'm like not utilizing a lot of the knowledge that I built up like, like we we all built up working on client projects, like where you're constantly solving new problems and like building things out. Like a lot of those decisions are already have long been made in a honey badger app. So it's like, yeah, it's, it's weird. It's a little bit different. Ben  That's been nice about having the side project because like starting a new rails app and making new decisions and trying the new things and new toys like hotwire and you know, stimulus reflex, all kind of stuff. Like it's, it's been, it's been fun. But hey, you know, maybe uh you know, talking about client work like, hey, take on some client work, right? It could uh do something completely different and take on Josh  an option for sure. Yeah, I thought that could be fun. Ben  Good old days Josh  build a green field, a green field ap Yeah, Josh  this I mean, I think we're talking about like the problem of like what to do with your time when you're, you're like app is like nine years old and stable and, and you have all this time on your hands and you know, want to still build new things, right? Starr  Yeah, I've got a question like for, I mean, y'all probably don't know because you haven't been freelancing for a while. But to all the freelancers out there, do do people still um do people still higher developers to build like, you know, facebook for x. Like it's like, I just remember working on so many like facebook for so and so um facebook for um nurses, facebook for, you know, whoever and it turned out the facebook for all those groups with facebook, Josh  right? Was that before facebook groups. Starr  I think so. Yeah. Yeah I think so it was. Yeah. It's just weird Josh  because it's like I was our era I mean like for sure like our era freelancing was the facebook for ex Yeah Starr  because like the social media like the social network had just come out that movie about facebook and so I really wanted to be the next facebook by copying facebook for some vertical. Ben  I was just I was thinking back to the are kind of projects that we built you know, talking about the facebook for X stuff and uh I think I was like what was my favorite project and the one that I can remember maybe so I guess it's probably my favorite because when I remember the most and remember the most kindly is the Montessori project that we did. That was a lot of fun. Yeah. Remember started a lot of work on Josh  that project. Still around you know. Ben  Yeah, it's like still making bank. Mhm. It's gonna be like  years older now by now or something. Yeah. That's awesome. I wonder if it's still on rails too. Josh  Yeah Caitlin was doing some shopping for the kids last night and she was looking at Baden kids brand. There are many many Baden and I don't know if that name rings a bell with you Ben but it doesn't because they were one of the they were one of the affiliate shops with today shop flashbacks man. I'm much. Yeah I have all these like I've had all these like kids kids clothing brands like just like programmed into my brain for the last  years now. And now that I actually have kids like they're all resurfacing. So Starr  that's where that was like another that was like another um era which was the um it wasn't the facebook for X. It was the product aggregator. Like we're gonna make we're gonna make a website that aggregates lots of products across you know for different companies and we're just gonna be like an affiliate. We're gonna be really good. S. E. O. Josh  Yeah it was like the um and and that trend was like kind of I mean amazon was definitely around then but it was like I think these days like amazon is now where everything is pretty much aggregated like that. So this was like I don't know it seems like pre pre amazon like at least in their current scale. Starr  Yeah I mean amazon missed out on that. Sweet sweet. A sai Buri affiliate money though. Uh huh. Or it's like you got I don't know what it was like  or  bucks if he was an affiliate could like sign somebody up first. The scam a sai buri like subscription service. Well what it was just affiliates but it was a scan because it was recurring charge and people weren't familiar with getting recurring charges. Yeah so um well you don't Josh  want to boost your health just once. Oh no. And then lose out on all those benefits. So you're really I mean that's like in the that's in the interest of the customer star. Starr  Exactly. One of my friends worked um back then worked at a ah the call center for a bank and like half of her calls or just people like what the hell? Like why am I keep getting charged for this? Josh  Like all of your support requests or start with what the hell you work in a bank. Ben  Yeah. There's a lot of fun things to do when the projects are new and it's all green field. But then, you know, there's also fun things to do when the projects are nine years old. You know, like I was pleasantly surprised on monday morning to find that our database server had failed on sunday morning. You know, it's like, Oh really? That that happened. But our our high availability set up actually worked and the fail over happened and it's just like nothing, nothing happened. I mean these days of course you? Re wild, you would not even set that up, right? You just use already s or you would, you know, there's there's like a gazillion post graze as a service services out there now. But you know, back in my day, you know, we had to push the bits uphill both ways. Right. Mhm. Josh  So yeah. Imagine if the database server failed in like year two. Yeah, back on, back on snickers. Starr  Yeah. Yeah. Well our servers were named after candy bars. Candy bars were Josh  still I love that. We're still on first name first name basis with all of our old servers. Ben  Uh My favorite tricks though, Josh  tricks. Yeah, Starr  I mean it makes sense why that whole hosting platform didn't really work out for us because Trix are for kids been. Ben  I know, I know, but then my kids were young enough then it made sense. Josh  Yeah, these drinks, we should build a we should we should do a client project just for fun. I mean and obviously Starr  obviously right, Ben  your friends but of course is gonna be for money. Yeah. Josh  The great thing about client projects is like you get to build them and then and then you get to like, never see them again. Ben  It's like, it's like, it's like being grandparents right where you can send the kids back to the parents like oh we'll have some fun, will spoil the kid and then send them back to be the parents so you can grow this little rails app and you can have some fun with it and then send it off, you know? And Josh  yeah, yeah. And then you're like, you're like, oh I wonder what happened to deteriorate. Starr  Like a couple of years later, you were like, oh, I wonder what happened to little timmy and see a google him and he's dead. Uh huh. Josh  Yeah. Four little timmy. Mhm. Yeah, there's um I unfortunately I think a lot of my old client projects are in that category, but I think that's just kind of the way it goes. Ben  But you know, I remember the primary struggle that we had the with the ones that didn't, one that weren't reported means I was like, what do we do with it now? Because we like to building new things, but we didn't really like running them, you know, we didn't wanna be on the hook. And so it was like, it's great, you have this new app go enjoy, right? And they're like, yeah, but you know what about something breaks? It's like, oh, well, good luck, you know? Yeah, I Josh  was thinking about that recently, like, like does that still fly? Like what do people do these days? Like, I don't know. Ben  I would like to know Josh  if you have a non technical, like, I don't like, to be honest, um you had a knack for like finding those people that seem to been because like, you find these people that are just like nontechnical. They they just have an idea like, you know, they're like, like Star said, like the whatever facebook facebook for X people, but like, they just have you just build it for them? And then yeah, they would kind of just be like, now I'm I'm like, I'm a tech founder now, Starr  can I tell a funny story about um So I used to live in Tulsa Oklahoma is where I went to college and live there for a little while after and one day I was at like a local coffee shop and there was this guy who actually, I saw a couple times at the coffee shop who just um was chatting up the brief, such adding up everybody around him about this app idea. He had um called the love button, which is just, oh my God, like that, that name, but it's called the Love button. And uh basically it's not, it's not a dating app though, which is like, you know, you're winning when you have to explain that your product name isn't what people think it is originally at first glance, it's not a dating app. It's a uh Starr  it's about like you can put in like what do I love to do? I love carpentry so I can press the love, but you have to press it, it's important. And then it um he didn't say this, but I was sort of imagine like a slot machine type, you know, spinning type thing, like whirling and then it pops up the people nearby you who also love that thing so you can stalk them. Uh huh Ben  uh huh. I was with you right up to that Stockport. Starr  I mean, well, I mean that's I had at that part, but I mean, it's like we've seen what happens to the internet, we've seen having to go, Josh  it just like has their contact information. Like it's a Starr  yeah, it's just, it's like, it's a way for, yeah, it's a way for people to have uncomfortable interactions. So it's like, Ben  it's like chatroulette but in real life, Starr  in real life. Yeah, I'm just sitting there like why the hell would anybody ever consent to that ever? But maybe I wasn't the target market, you know, Ben  mm maybe, maybe not just trying to think. You definitely want to involve a map of nearby welded locations for people to meet up. Josh  Maybe you just don't love anything enough to press the button. Yeah, maybe you like really have to be into something Starr  and then it just shames you. It's like, hey, what's the matter? Josh  I mean like to be fair like craigslist exists and like people, people do like respond to all kinds of things on craigslist and I'm sure are not in well lit locations. So you know, maybe this, maybe this love button app has like a, you know, has like a pivot or something. Starr  Yes, I mean, I don't know, maybe he was going to pivot it to grinder, who knows? Ben  Yeah, Well, you know, another option to just building apps would be buying apps right? We could hang out on micro require and, or flipper or someplace and uh, you know, for these for these developers who built the thing and don't want to run it. You can just buy it and then we can run, Josh  no, I think there's, I think there's probably something there potentially for us because we, we have some of the experience now that maybe they don't, they didn't um, you know the people that someone that just build something to a certain point. So, and we have a marketing engine so we could potentially like acquire something and then plug it in to our existing systems. So that could be fun. Like, you know, I mean like this is like instead of, you know, like, like I got a friend in construction and him and his dad like flip houses, you know, like that's the, the thing they do but are, are flipping houses is like flipping flipping SAs apps I think because you know, that's like our, maybe someday you'll be um flipping saps with your, with your boys. But Ben  mm hmm. Uh huh. We'll have a show on tv about that, you know, let's take it to the next level. Instead of just buying zaps and flipping it. Let's, let's get investors. Let's get some, some, some of the partners up in here and we can use their money to go buy the apps and then we'll run them for a while. Then maybe sell them. Then we can be like those cool kids that are out there like buying all these as apps and doing the investment thing, right? Josh  Yeah, I like it. These are good ideas Starr  are private and private equity firms. The cool kids. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I guess you're right for some value of cool, right? Ben  If you ask the private equity firms, they will say yes, they are the cool kids. Starr  Yeah. Josh  There's a lot of new types of private equity these days. It seems Josh  okay. Yeah. We need to take stuff. Ben  Yeah exactly. Take advantage of this new micro pipeline like you know, tiny seed and calm fund, right? We need to, we need a pipeline like okay, those are the feeding into the pipeline and then we do some magic somewhere along the process, right? And then outcomes bigger companies and we make money somehow. It's kind of funny but I think we can make it happen Starr  if you just took all those platforms up to each other in a circle, you get uh infinite motion machine, right? Oh. Mhm. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger until somebody goes to jail. Josh  I thought you got like an R. Burrows. So I hear you pronounce that the snake eating its own tail. Starr  Yeah. Ben  Or we could go in a completely different direction. I saw a tweet from Patio  this morning where he was uh he was referencing a tweet from sweaty startup and if you don't, if not familiar sweaty startup, you really got to go check that out because that's, that's some cool stuff. Like he hangs out and read it, his cool beans. We'll put some links in the show notes if you can check it out. But somebody started up dude uh he bought like a storage company, self storage company and like applied software to the process because like they were still like, you know, pushing paper around or whatever. It was old school and then really like juice that business and made it pretty cool investment and so Ben  thinking, yeah, we could, we could do that, we could go, we could go old school and get all these old school businesses that are not online and apply our our marketing juice and Josh  tear it up. I'm down to buy like a brick and mortar. Yeah or something. Um Just first of all though, you can't introduce what the startup guy as sweaty startup guy. He's the tomato guy right? Like this is the guy that was like trying to sell like it was like bragging about how he could like whatever like like grow a tomato farm to like a billion dollars. But he Ben  was sweating startup guy before he was tomato guy. Josh  Well because that was, you don't start that was an epic troll. Did you did you catch that at the end? Like it's it's pretty amazing like. Yeah, it turns out that guy really like that. Really not like he knows his shit apparently. And I mean like probably also know like I'm like having like followed him a little bit like seen some of the things he said like I might be inclined to like listen to him on the tomato thing, Josh  Maybe I can make a fortune of tomatoes, you know. Mhm. Ben  Mhm. As long as you don't live in Seattle where it rains nine months out of you. Ben  Yeah, no sweat. He started like I've been following him on Reddit for the longest time and I just love, obviously not every idea is genius, right? But I do love his approach. Like get in there, do the work, do the work that other people aren't willing to do or that people are just haven't really caught on to yet. Like one of his, one of his classic things is like just go start a pressure washing company right? Go knock on your neighbor's doors and see if they want their driveway pressure washed and then and then pressure wash it right? And then you do that and you get some gaming experience and you provide a quality service and lo and behold now you've got a business, right? So I think I just like his his ethos of just go in there, Ben  do the work and try to make it happen as opposed to right, You know. Mhm. Sit back and complain or whatever. You know, it's just kind of like the I just like that I would Josh  I would hire that person by the way um because I could use some pressure washing like the moss around my house is just out of control Ben  really. Again pacific northwest Yeah, Josh  you know that's pretty cool. Um And I like the just the thought of like I mean they're so it feels like there's so many um little I mean there's so many business problems out there that are in the real world that will they need a software solution and um will eventually happen. Um It just like it seems like in order to solve those problems you have to have some sort of like actual like proximity to the problem. So like maybe the way to like get into those problems is just to go out and start doing more stuff in the real world and see where you know like see where the pain points are. Ben  So you're saying if you want to build software for dentist you've got to become a dentist. Josh  Yeah. I don't know like at least like yeah work it in reception or something or have a lot of cavities just go like do stuff for oh yeah, just be a repeat customer for this. Ben  Yeah. Yeah. I just I just love how there's so many ways to make money on the internet. It's amazing. Starr  Yeah but the sai buri opportunities are long gone. That started a long time ago unfortunately. Josh  I think we'll see more. We'll definitely see more internet scams in the future though. So hope is not lost. Ben  You mean like thank goodness. Josh  Oh shots fired. Josh  I like I really want to see just like a like a smart contract. MLM. I mean like I think there might be something out there, but like, I want to see one. I just want to see one succeed, you know? Um Ben  Okay. You have to, you have to be the change that you want to see in the world job. Uh huh. That means you have to do it yourself. Josh  I know. I don't know if I can, I just don't understand that world. Like, I don't know. Like, I'm sure I could go like build, yeah, like comprehend the technology. But I just, I don't know. I'm just not motivated to at all. Like I've kind of tried a little bit, but Ben  yeah. Yeah. I'm still the old guy shaking fist at cloud stage of N. F. T. S. I'm like, I don't get it. Get off my lawn. Yeah. Josh  Well, there will be something there. I'm sure the FTS necessarily just in, in the, in the technology in the future. Ben  But my one of my sons who's really into tech and keeps on top of these things every time I say N. F. T. He's like money laundering. I think that's a really Matic response. It's like, well, okay, I'll trust you Josh  get that kid. A twitter account. Ben  Yeah. That's, that's interesting. Things like my kids not into facebook, not into twitter, you know, there's not Starr  social network for old. Tiktok Ben  absolutely hate Tiktok. Yeah, It's like, it's the opiate of the masses. It's like, well, okay, that's technically. True. Starr  Yeah. I don't know. I really like to talk. It really depends on like, where um like what like you follow and all that. It's, you know, it's just like twitter and that really? Josh  Yeah, yeah, I, I signed up for a Tiktok account recently just to check it out and see like what, where the rabbit holes go and um kind of scared me a little bit, but I mean maybe that's because I was like trying to see how bad it was versus how good it was. So maybe I should do a different experiment where like, I only Starr  like the trick is to take on cat videos or whatever trick is to like follow the things that you like and then you'll get more of those and all the things you don't like, you'll get more of those, Ben  yep. So you said it was scary was more or less scary than kid Youtube. Josh  Uh I haven't really, I don't know like, I mean just the whole idea of Kid Youtube is scary, so it might be just different kind of different things, but just like the algorithm, like the algorithmic bubble that Tic Tac seems to create. Like, I mean, all of these, all of those services have that, but like maybe it's because like the videos are so short and there's so many like strangers that you can end up following or whatever, but it just seems like you could like someone who doesn't understand how that works, could easily end up in some sort of like alternative universe. Uh you know, Yeah, yeah, again, I have Starr  used as um I don't know, it's interesting to me because it's like much more than other, much more than other services. You can really see the algorithm at work. Like be like, okay, you're, you're like testing me to see if I like this um carpentry videos where people take these very expensive, expensive looking hand planes and then like play like take minute lee thin shavings of very expensive looking wood. Um So you watch the whole video, so I'm gonna give you like three more of those. We're gonna see how you do on those. And um and then like sometimes it gives you things that you're just like, nope. So it's like, I just don't want the algorithm just just see that I'm watching this, so I'm just not even gonna try. Josh  Yeah. You have to like, you have to tend to tend your algorithm. Yeah. But in order to do that, you have to understand that that's what you're doing. I think we're in a good position to do that. Yeah, Starr  But also just like the tactic, the tactic, What am I saying? The content on Tiktok? I think it's in my brain, it's I'm just nothing I say is like everything I say is it's going to become some variant of Tiktok um the content I found it's like, I don't know, like, I I and much happier, like looking at Tiktok because it's like you know, I don't know, I guess I'm just looking at happy or content. The Josh  content is so like the whole like the niche aspect of the content, like you said, like the narrowest type of video, like, like a hobby but where people are like, you know like whatever creating very thin strips of wood and there's some sort of like, you know, just like they can feed you very specific types of videos to see like and then you can get into that like specific like subset of like whatever woodworking video. It's not you're not even into woodworking at that point. You just ended this like very like Misha part of it. Starr  Yeah. I don't know. That's well, see I'm sure I'll get bored bored with it eventually. Josh  I don't think you will. Starr  You know, it's ever renewing stream of just Josh  delicious content. I trust trust algorithm, you trust, Starr  I trust in the algorithm to josh to Josh  keep you to keep you engaged. Yeah. Yeah. Starr  Okay um you all have been listening to another episode of founder quest if you want to um review us on apple podcast or whatever it's called these days, go for it. Um You want to write for our blog and we've got to write first page on there at honey badger to I  slash blog um scan for the right for us link, that's your first assignment. Um Until yeah. Until then. Um See you later. 

Today's guest on Danger Close is former SAS operator Mark “Billy” Billingham.  From 1983 to 1991 Billy served in the UK's  Parachute Regiment before joining SAS where he was a Mountain Troop specialist conducting operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, South America and Africa.   He is a certified SF and Counter Terrorist Sniper Instructor, an Advanced Evasive Driving Instructor, a Combat Survival/RTI Instructor, a Tracking/Jungle Warfare/Navigation Instructor, a Demolition/Sabotage Instructor, a Ski Mountaineering/Rock Climbing/Abseiling/Ice climbing Instructor, a Counter Terrorist Instructor.  He is also a philanthropist and highly sought-after speaker.  He is the author of The Hard Way: Adapt, Survive and Win and the new book Call to Kill: The Enemy Is Everywhere. Following his career in the military, Billy served as a personal bodyguard for high-profile clients including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Sir Michael Caine, Jude Law, Hulk Hogan, Kate Moss, Russell Crowe and Tom Cruise.  Since 2015, Billy has been one of the lead instructors on the television series SAS: Who Dares Wins. You can learn more about Billy at markbillybillingham.com or follow him on social @billingham22b. Featured Gear:   Ten Thousand Tactical Short   Ten Thousand Interval Short   Kevin Aerolite 30 Sleeping Bag   Boot Campaign x BRCC Altama   Sponsors:   SIG Sauer: Today's episode is presented by SIG Sauer.   Ten Thousand: Today's featured gear segment is brought to you by Ten Thousand. Ten Thousand is offering our listeners 15% of their purchase! Go to tenthousand.cc and enter code DANGERCLOSE15 to receive 15% off.

-- (0:00-30:20) Interview with Dave: his thoughts on the podcast, numbies, tiktok, SNL, getting arrested at the super bowl, & his plans for a stand-up special -- (30:20-1:26:44) Sas & Rone discuss parenting methods, Rone's trip to DC, conspiracy theories, thrifting, Sas' body re-comp, plans for more live shows, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, our plans to monetize war, & much more -- Tickets for our show at Laugh Boston on 11/3 will be on sale this week, new merch coming soon as well!

BE WARNED: It's LuAnna, and this podcast contains honest, upfront opinions, rants, bants and general explicit content. But you know you love it!On LuAnna this week: a new puppy and a goodbye to a beloved family dog, we're all sleep deprived, Anna's Night at the Museum, Lu backpacks on her opinions on gender reveals and goes and hosts one, Lu for SAS and death shags. Plus, Adele's back and bringing back the convo around divorce, the nurse who blamed her incessant farting on the paranormal, two weird weirdos, a rant and a lot of digressions. Remember, if you want to get in touch you can:Email us at luannathepodcast@gmail.com OR drop us a WhatsApp on 07745 266947

-- Sas & Rone discuss the Rock, Eric Clapton, Vinnie Hacker, 1000 ways to die, the world's strongest animals, melatonin addiction, Rone's run-ins with the law, Sas' similarities to Beethoven, & much more

UPCOMING EVENT: If you'd like to attend a Q&A session in November with Combat Story's Ryan Fugit, please fill out this form (https://tinyurl.com/552ewmu5). Today we hear the second round of our Combat Story with Dan Pronk, a former Australian SAS officer and medical doctor who completed four tours to Afghanistan. In round one we covered Dan's first calling as a triathlete until he found himself in medical school, and, eventually, SAS selection. We covered some of his initial deployments. In round two we move into the more difficult deployments Dan faced when things started getting darker, as they so often do. We also discuss Dan's newly released book - Resilience Shield - which takes SAS resilience lessons and applies them to everyday life to thrive, much as Dan has. Dan went on to found a multi-million dollar company - TACMED - and has written two other books: Arterial Tourniquets and Average 70kg D**khead. Dan is the most unassuming doctor you'll ever find and I hope you enjoy this second round interview Down Under as much as I did. Show Notes 0:00 - Intro 0:57 - Dan Pronk intro and bio 1:52 - Interview begins 4:12 - The Afghanistan pull out 10:58 - Desperately wanting to get back into combat 15:00 - Find Fix Finish for Psychological Trauma 20:43 - Third deployment “hugely kinetic” 24:43 - The Suckmeter 27:38 - The build-up of PTSD 45:36 - How to make resilience insights to bulletproof operators 55:50 - Dan's first classic car purchase and how not to make your wife happy 1:09:00 - The Unforgiving Sixty podcast by Dan Pronk's Resilience Shield Co-author 1:09:46 - What did you carry with you into combat every time? 1:11:57 - Would you go back and do it all again? 1:15:43 - Listener Comments and Shout Outs #combatstory #SAS #specialoperations #danpronk #deltaforce #jsoc #australianSAS #pathfinderjacket #killkapture #markwales Find Dan online: Website Resilience Shield LinkedIN Dan Pronk Instagram @danpronk Book Average 70kg D**khead Book Arterial Tourniquets Book Resilience Shield TacMed Delta Automotive Find Ryan online: Follow on Instagram @combatstory Follow on Facebook @combatstoryofficial Send us messages at https://m.me/combatstoryofficial Email ryan@combatstory.com Learn more about Ryan Intro Song: Sport Rock from Audio Jungle