Podcasts about scott yeah

Those who listen to this show likely either manage or invest in rental properties. There are several different types of real estate to choose from, but have you ever considered self-storage units? In today's episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with the “OG” of self-storage real estate investing, Scott Meyers to talk about an opportunity to invest in real estate without the common challenges of residential properties. You'll Learn [01:22] Switching from residential investment properties to storage units [08:35] Investing in self-storage without the management [12:15] Pros and cons of self-storage [14:51] Self-storage education Tweetables “When you have just a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” “Be honest with yourself, and sometimes the best cook in the world can't fix a broken recipe.” “Once you get behind in habitational real estate and rental real estate in general, you know, it takes double the effort to get caught back up again.” “The more valuable you are to your property management business the less valuable your property management business is to everybody else.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Scott: Self-storage really found me instead of me finding self-storage. Which I just felt it's a simple, predictable business model that you can replicate over and over again without as many moving parts and that human factor.  [00:00:11] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:28] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. [00:01:09] Now let's get into the show. All right. So. I'm hanging out here with Scott Meyers. Welcome Scott.  [00:01:18] Scott: Thanks. And so good to see you again. How are you?  [00:01:20] Jason: Good. Good. It's good to have you. So, why don't we get into your background, how you kind of into this, but Scott, you're a self storage investment expert. Is that fair to say? [00:01:33] Scott: That's fair to say. They call me the OG in self storage now. And I guess I can step into that role.  [00:01:38] Jason: All right. The OG, the original gangsta. All right. So tell us a little bit how you got into this.  [00:01:44] Scott: So like many people got into real estate by buying one single family rental house. Of course, this is a back a little ways now back in 1993, I bought a single family house. with an assumable VA mortgage on it. So I took out a home equity loan from my own home and bought this one, no money down, just like Carleton Sheets, the other OG in the real estate space taught me how to do. And so I bought that house, we rehabbed it to refinance it, rented it out. [00:02:11] So the BRRRR method before everybody called it the BRRRR method. And then we went out and bought two more. And then that turned into four, six, eight, and my wife and I got married along the way and brought my wife into this hobby. I was working for a fortune 500 company at the time, and this was really just to supplement retirement until it kind of took on a life of its own. [00:02:29] And that was because in 1999 with the dot com crash, when all of our tenants were then able to buy a house shortly after that, because the presidential administration at the time reinstituted the Community Reinvestment Act and allowed anybody who could basically fog a mirror to buy a house while all our tenants left and they were doing so. [00:02:49] And so at that time, we were now rehabbing a second time so that we could sell our houses just to be able to keep up with what the market trend was at the time. Well that just about broke us. And so we decided then to get into multifamily and all we needed to do was get some economies of scale, work a little harder, work a little smarter, and we'll make this all happen. [00:03:08] But really what I found is that we just had more doors, we had more tenants, we had more toilets. And to be honest with you, Jason you know, we made a lot of money in residential real estate and growing that side of the business. I mean, we were very big, we got up to just shy of 450 doors. But I realized that I don't think I was cut out for this. [00:03:24] I understood the math, you know, the real estate math and everything that went into it. But I found even though we had property managers and property management companies, I was finding that I was becoming less loving of my fellow man and women, because they were destroying our properties and stealing from us, as well as our contractors and some of our staff. [00:03:40] And so at that point, I began to look around the landscape and, you know, we love real estate because of all the reasons to love real estate. It appreciates, we can depreciate it. We can borrow money to buy it. And then our clients pay down our basis. I mean, there's no other investment like that. So as I looked at the landscape and real estate, that really only left parking lots and self storage if I really didn't like the tenant and toilet business. [00:04:01] So. I looked into storage and loved what we saw in terms of the fundamentals of the historical, the track record of performance of the asset class. And it was right under my nose all the time. It's just this ugly, you know, stepchild of commercial real estate that nobody was really talking about. So I researched it and spent a lot of time understanding the nuances bought my first self storage facility in a partnership. [00:04:22] And then yeah, the light bulb went off and recognize after owning it from the operation standpoint, that It was truly what everybody had said that it was. And what we found is it was all the benefits of real estate without the hassles of tenants and toilets and trash. And so we began simultaneously selling off our houses and our apartments and then going forward into self storage. [00:04:41] And here we are today at about just shy of 5 million square feet of self storage, 28, 000 doors nationwide and growing. And then along the way, also built a sizable education and consulting and mentoring and coaching and event business that only not only teaches people how to get into the business, but also became a funnel, a conduit for a lot of partnerships and a lot of deal flow into our organization. [00:05:01] So that's either the long winded version on a podcast or the short winded version however you want to look at how we got started in the business.  [00:05:07] Jason: Yeah, love it and qualify yourself help everybody understand like where are you at right now with storage and rentals. I mean you got some impressive numbers. [00:05:17] Scott: Yeah, so we're sitting at about we've done over 5 million square feet We're sitting at about three and a half just maybe three and three quarters million square feet right now assets under management So we're right now jason, we're basically a syndication company where we're a financial services company that raises capital and layers that on top of debt and then deploys it in nothing but self storage. [00:05:37] And so many of these projects, these partnerships, these joint ventures in our funds, they have a shelf life and they expire in four to five years because that's when we can capitalize and pull our chips off the table, if you will. And we have a capital event by way of sometimes a refinance, but usually a sale of the property or properties within that fund. [00:05:55] And then we just go out and buy more. So it ebbs and flows when some are going out the door, we have more projects coming in the door as well. I only own two residential properties. One of them is an Airbnb and the other one is the one that I live in. And that's it. Everything else is 100 percent self storage at this point. [00:06:10] Jason: Got it. How many units of storage do you represent then?  [00:06:14] Scott: Yeah, so 28 to 29, 000 overall is what we've invested in and we're sitting at about 20, between 20, 000, 21, 000 right now in asset center management. Awesome.  [00:06:25] Jason: Wow. Okay. So for those listening that are in residential property management, and they're listening to you what would you say to them? [00:06:34] Like, maybe there's some of them that they're like, "man, I don't want to deal with toilets, tenants and trash anymore." And, you know, "I'm starting to love humans less. And I love real estate," but what's kind of your message?  [00:06:49] Scott: You know, in the education side of our business, Jason, of course, when there's a room full of folks interested in self storage, it's really easy to say that you know, I think everybody should have a self storage facility, one in their portfolio, if you're in real estate and, you know, all roads lead to self storage eventually, because I think everybody gets to that place where they do get frustrated and it could be just a day. [00:07:06] It could be, you know, in terms of, "wow, that was a whole lot coming at us." But it doesn't mean that, you know, my recipe is the catch all, you know, when you have just a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And I'm not saying that anybody should go out and do what I have done because we made a lot of money you know, on the residential side and commercial multifamily. [00:07:21] I just found for me, that this self storage really found me instead of me finding self storage. Which I just felt it's a simple, predictable business model that you can replicate over and over again without as many moving parts and that human factor. And so for a knucklehead like me, I think it was the perfect fit to be able to go out and just master this practice and that business model and the standard operating procedures. And then just at scale and at speed go out and just make a go of it. And we grew really fast and never really get over our skis. It was just it's a manageable model as well. And so it just fit for myself. But I would say Jason, when business gets so difficult that it's just absolutely no fun anymore, and it's drudgery... I see many people doing it right now, they're just throwing good money after bad. Well, you know, be honest with yourself, and sometimes the best cook in the world can't fix a broken recipe. And if they find that is the recipe is your business model or just your business in general, then get help. [00:08:13] Or, you know, maybe it's time to take a look at some of their asset classes like self storage.  [00:08:17] Jason: So if somebody's an investor and they're wanting to get into this, there's probably a learning curve. There's probably potential pitfalls. So like, yeah, I've tried my Airbnb. That was kind of difficult. I didn't like having to mess with pricing constantly. Like maybe I should try self storage. I'm curious about what you would say to them and then, you know, if somebody's just an investor and they're just looking to just invest, but they're not wanting to really actually manage storage units, then what path would you recommend? [00:08:45] Scott: So sure. Two paths, but also some folks just take a one and end up achieving the same result. So if this is something that you're looking to do actively you know, of course, Jason, I own, you know, I run an education company. And so we're always going to tell you to get education because the cost of not, you know, you pay the dump tax. [00:09:03] And sometimes we've seen people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the dump tax. And that just means that they've gone out and they've watched a couple of videos read a book and all of a sudden they're experts in masters and this is commercial real estate. There's a lot of nuances to it, no matter what the asset class you pick within commercial real estate, but also because it's commercial real estate, there's lots of commas and zeros to profit from it, which is fantastic. [00:09:23] But also if you make a mistake. Those mistakes in underwriting and in other areas also come with commas and zeros behind them as well. And we've seen many a good investor that maybe it was a little prideful or maybe thought that, "Hey, this is an easy asset class compared to what I've been doing. You know, I can do this with one hand tied behind my back." And then they find out that this is an operating business on top of real estate. And there's more nuances to this and they need to dig in and understand what that looks like, because as you know, once you get behind in habitational real estate and rental real estate in general, you know, it takes double the effort to get caught back up again, and if that goes on for a quarter, sometimes people just can't recover. So, you know, we can go into all the reasons why and the mistakes that people have made, but I think just understanding you need to educate yourself. Now, if you're looking to do this passively, in other words, you don't want to take on the credit risk, you don't want to take on, say, the construction risk or a lease up risk of a turnaround or a development project then you can invest passively. [00:10:20] There's a number of REITs out there and we have funds and individual syndications and joint ventures that we do with folks where they come in as a limited partner. They still get equity. They still have ownership. They have a piece of ownership of this property. So they get the depreciation, they get a share of the cash flow, and then the profits upon the sale. [00:10:38] But they don't take on the lease up risk, the development risk, the risk of a project going south no matter what, and or have to go out and create a business, you know, and a team to be able to do so. And along the way, many folks, Jason, they start as passive investors either with one of our projects or others, and by, by just following along, you know, you get that education. [00:10:59] You know, we hold webinars once a quarter and we send out monthly reports and we send out updates as to what's happening with our projects. And so by def facto, our passive investors are getting an education and they earn while they learn the business.  [00:11:11] Jason: Got it. Earn while they learn. Like it. [00:11:15] And that's probably a better path to start out as is to first explore doing it passively to figure out should they jump in and do it more actively.  [00:11:24] Scott: I don't know better. That's not my decision to make. I think some folks, if they have a team in place, you know, they can make that pivot just by learning the business, but it just really depends on where they're at. [00:11:34] I would say that it's It's certainly the safest. And if you have a small amount of capital to set aside to invest in a project, that's the best way about doing it. Because once it comes time to do your own, it's going to take a larger chunk of capital to be able to do so unless you're raising private equity. [00:11:49] So you know I can say that is the best and probably is for most people, but not everybody.  [00:11:54] Jason: Got it. Yeah. Well, a lot of people listening already have some sort of business, a lot of them, they won't just throw it in, jump right into storage units, maybe. But I think a lot of them, it would resonate with them. [00:12:06] "Hey, then maybe this is another way to diversify my portfolio, another way to invest. I would love to do, try it out passively, and then maybe even get some education." for those that maybe heard the beginning of this and they're like, "Man, I don't have to deal with toilets, tenants, trash, and it's real estate. And it sounds so easy." What are some of the things that maybe they have a blind spot to? That somebody, you know, they would learn once they start doing this, it's not all, you know, stars and rainbows and roses with this as well.  [00:12:38] Scott: Right. So, you know, outside of the front end and the due diligence that needs to be done just to make sure that you've bought a solid property from an operational standpoint, which is what you're referring to, you know, what we found is that, you know, a million bucks, 5 million bucks goes a lot further, meaning you buy more doors you buy more square footage and it allows us more doors because these are metal boxes on concrete slabs and they're not, you know, multifamily that has drywall and plumbing and, you know, a lot of HVC, it just goes further. [00:13:03] So that means that there are more units to be able to keep track of. You know, the good news is there's software and we do have property management companies and property managers to handle that and a lot of it is automated, but at the end of the day, you know, it's a large amount of units and a large amount of rental tracking that needs to be done to make sure that the dollars come in the door. On the flip side of that, just because I am a bright side up, kind of guy, you know, we have the ability with our leasing structure within self storage that, you know, it's a 30 day lease automatically renewable. And so anytime that we want to raise the rates, we don't have to wait. It's not an anniversary. It's not an annual lease. It is a month. And so that means on month seven, if we see that the market is changing and the demand is higher and there's a whole lot of development going on, then we can raise the rates in seven months. [00:13:46] We can do it in four months. We can do some nuisance increases in between, you know, either way, and we're very flexible when it comes to that. But then also, the good news is even if people do fall behind in the rent, you know, we have the ability to, or we have the power behind us of the lien laws instead of habitational or versus habitational real estate in which you have tenant and toilet courts. And so when I used to walk out of there, I had a pink piece of paper and very little ability to be able to get my money back and to be able to you know, execute on getting that the money back in the door. [00:14:18] But with self storage and the lien laws. We can put a lock on their unit, lock them out and we don't have to go to court within 60 or 90 days depending upon the state, my manager or an auction company will cut the lock off and open it up for bids on the date that we have an auction and I can recoup my back rent to my late fees and, you know, we are the judge and jury so we don't have to wait. [00:14:36] I know you asked for the pitfalls but, you know, the good side is that you know, even though there's a lot of units to manage the, just because of the nature of the industry and the safeguards that we have in place, it's much, much easier and simpler to handle.  [00:14:48] Jason: Awesome. Cool. Well, yeah, this is very informative. [00:14:51] Tell us a little bit about your education company, what you do there and and maybe how people can get in touch if they're curious.  [00:14:58] Scott: So on the education side, you know, when I got into business, you know, there wasn't an education company out there. There wasn't anybody that I could go to to learn the, you know, the A to Z to the nuts and bolts of the business. [00:15:10] I could certainly go to the trade shows and some of the industry events and I can learn about doors and how to build these facilities and some of the, you know, the bolt on property management software. But there wasn't anybody teaching about the investment side of the business. And so, you know, we scraped as much as we could, you know, leaning on and building on the foundation that we had in commercial real estate already by owning multifamily and office buildings and warehouses. [00:15:30] But just digging into this business and talking to as many people as possible. And I hired a consultant to fill in the gaps and spend a day with him touring his facilities and others that he managed for other investors. And, you know, that's how we grew our you know, bank of knowledge and created our standard operating procedures, at least the foundation of it. [00:15:48] But then after we got into the business a little further down the path and buying facilities I used to run the Real Estate Investor Association here in Indianapolis. And we had 600 folks in the association. And about 300 of them wanted to know about self storage after they saw what we were doing. [00:16:04] And so we started holding workshops and then some of the agents that represent the national speakers in the industry, again, there wasn't a person speaking and experts on the industry. And so they contacted me and one of them assisted me in setting up presentations, the ability to sell tools and resources for folks, and then helped us to create a live events, and thus, our education industry was born. It was really just out of a, I guess, like any good entrepreneur, you see an opportunity in the marketplace and a hole to be filled, and we stepped in and filled that. And so it's evolved from just a home study system, which is, you know, that's such a guru, you know, term to use that what we developed, what we put together was a very extensive business plan with all the tools, the resources and links and software, you know, and everything you need to find, manage, purchase a self storage facility. And that is the name of our home study system. And then that evolved into live events, three day events, which is an immersive workshop and then also for folks that are looking for either one on one or a group coaching and mentoring, you know, begin offering that. And to this day, still offer that. And so we have you know, we're the nation's leading education company in the space. [00:17:14] We've taught more people how to get into the business and grow and scale the business and than anybody else out there in any other organization out there and still going strong at this is what we'd love to do is, you know, we love to take people from zero to 55 miles an hour in storage. [00:17:26] And then in our mastermind and in our other areas, we like to take them from 55 to a hundred and build partnerships and do syndications with them as well. Awesome.  [00:17:35] Jason: Yeah. Sounds very much like our goal here at DoorGrow for the residential space. So what's the name of your education company?  [00:17:44] Scott: Self Storage Profits is the name of the education company. [00:17:46] SelfStorageInvesting.com is the website for all the tools and the resources, a ton of free information, pull downs, white papers, a whole lot to not only just dip your toe in the water, but really to help you get started, and then anything else that you would want or need with regards to coaching, mentoring, attending our live events, it's all located on that page as well, including access to our passive investments as well. [00:18:11] Jason: Very cool. Awesome. Cool. Well, I appreciate you coming on the show, hanging out with us here on the DoorGrow show. It sounds really interesting. I think there's a lot of our clients that are involved in different types of management. And so this may be another one that everybody should maybe take a look at that could be interesting. I think it's fantastic. Or as to do management, you know directly so very cool. Scott, thanks for coming on the show. Appreciate you.  [00:18:39] Scott: My pleasure, Jason. Good to see you again  [00:18:41] Jason: Good to see you. All right So if you are a property management entrepreneur and you're dealing with frustrations, you can go start a storage unit business as well. So appreciate Scott for being on the show. If you would like our help in cleaning up your business so that you don't hate it and getting you out of that first level of exit of doing the frontline work and getting out of the next exit and the next exit until maybe eventually you decide to sell that business, we can help you with that because the more valuable you are to your property management business the less valuable your property management business is to everybody else. And what I find with clients is as we ascend them through these levels of exit, It becomes more and more business that they would enjoy keeping perhaps And so let's see if we can ascend you and get you past that first exit at least, maybe the next exit where you're out of managing the people in the team and you've got an operator and things are really smooth and so if you would like our help here DoorGrow reach out to us at DoorGrow.com And until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:19:45] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:20:11] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

In today's episode of the IC-DISC show, we had Scott Abels on the show to discuss his work as the owner of Precision Valuation Services. Scott has been in the business valuation game for over a decade and has helped over a hundred companies with business valuations. He fills us in on his two-part strategy for boosting a business's value. First, Scott runs the numbers to give owners an accurate picture of where they stand today. Then, he guides them through personalized steps to substantially increase that worth over time. Beyond the valuation nuts and bolts, we also dig into Scott's role as a business coach. How he really takes the time to understand each client's unique situation and goals. Plus, Scott keeps things straightforward with transparent, flat fees. All in all, If you want to learn how assessing and growing your business from the inside out can pay off big time, give it a listen.   SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Scott Abels specializes in business valuations and operates Precision Valuation Services, aiming to increase a company's value through a two-step process. We discuss Scott's expertise in conducting over a hundred business valuations and his 13 years of experience in the field. Scott's approach involves a formal valuation to determine current business worth followed by a strategic process to enhance that value. We cover Scott's background as a CFO and how it provides a unique perspective on business valuation compared to traditional CPA views. Scott shares real-life examples, such as identifying profit leakage due to incorrect pricing and over-delivering on customer service. Scott details how a comprehensive valuation and growth coaching can help businesses plan for a more profitable future and prepare for potential exit strategies. We explore the value of Scott's flat fee structure for his services, which helps eliminate surprises and empowers clients financially. Scott offers an initial consultation to deeply understand client needs and is willing to invest his own time to assess the potential to help them. Scott is open to answering listener questions about his services and expresses a strong passion for helping entrepreneurs grow their businesses. We highlight the joy of working with business entrepreneurs and the fulfillment that comes from helping them succeed and contribute to economic growth. LINKSShow Notes Be a Guest About IC-DISC Alliance About Precision Value Services GUEST Scott AbelsAbout Scott TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Dave: Hi, my name is David Spray and welcome to another episode of the ICDisc Show. My guest today is Scott Abels. Scott owns a company called Precision Valuation Services and they work with privately held entrepreneurial companies who are wanting to increase the value of their organization. Scott does it with a two-step approach. The first is he does a formal valuation to see what the current value of the business is, and then he has a process that he takes his clients through to help them increase their enterprise value. It was an interesting conversation. Scott's got a great background and he's laser focused on helping entrepreneurs be even more valuable and have more valuable companies. Good morning Scott. Welcome to the podcast. Good morning Dave. It's good to be with you. So are you in the mountains somewhere or are you here in Texas somewhere? Scott: No, I'm just bragging about my summer trip to the Smoky Mountains. Here as the background, I'm talking to you from Flugerville, Texas which is just outside of Austin. Dave: Awesome. Well, I'm glad that you could make it. So let's get right to it. You are. I believe you call yourself, or some of your clients call you, a enterprise growth coach, or did I butcher that description? How do you describe yourself? Scott: Yes, the growth coach. That's exactly how I describe it. And what does that? Dave: mean, do you help them, like go to the gym and lift weights and get bigger and stronger, or is there something different? Scott: Well, it's kind of lifting weights for your business. Is that maybe a way to finish that analogy? So what I try to do is to help business owners first of all figure out what their business is worth today and then figure out how to make it worth more in the future. And this is especially helpful, as you can imagine, for a business owner who is maybe planning to exit his business. You know, eight or 10 years, whatever down the road, that's going to be his retirement, and so he knows what he wants his retirement income stream to look like. But maybe it's not quite there today, Maybe the value of his business is not quite where he needs it to be. And so the growth coach program is to help business owners like that or any other business owner who just wants to take his business today and grow it and make it more valuable in the future. Dave: Okay, and is it a whole comprehensive program, or can they just start by having you do the valuation first and see where it goes from there? Scott: Yes, dave, usually where we start is with the valuation to see where the business owner is today, and then the growth coach program is done on a month by month basis, but there is a structure to it where we walk the business owner through working on the key drivers of their business that drive value, that either improve value or that help to eliminate negative value, if you will. So it really is done on a month by month basis. It's not a long-term commitment or anything like that, and I find, dave, that really puts the focus on me helping them to achieve results quickly. So if they're not seeing the results that they want, they don't have to continue with the program. But it is very helpful and it definitely helps business owners to get to where they want to be Okay. Dave: And so if they want to just start with the valuation and then go from there, they can right. Scott: Yes, and actually a lot of clients do come to me for the valuation first for various reasons. It could be to buy or sell their business, it could be to transfer shares of interest to family members or to key employees. It could be for any variety of reasons, and often what happens is the natural discussion that we have about hey, here's the value of your business, mr Business Owner, and here's a couple of things that I see in your business, using my CFO background, that if we could improve these, your business could be worth even more. And oftentimes then it involves into, it evolves into a growth coach program or a growth coach opportunity. Dave: Okay, and it seems like one of the biggest complaints of that our clients have shared with me when they have the valuation done is that it just seems to take forever. They needed the valuation yesterday. They really don't have 60 days to do it, which I understand that 60 days is kind of a normal turnaround time, but do you have any options where you can have, like an expedited turnaround time? Scott: Yes, absolutely, and so I should go back, I think, first Dave, and just also add so my background is really as a CFO, as a leader of a financial leader, a executive of a business division of a larger business, so really in corporate America Dell and Motorola. So my background is kind of unique in that I approach that business valuation from the perspective of a CFO as opposed to the perspective of a CPA, who may be a tax CPA or something. To answer your question, the typical turnaround time you're right for the industry is probably 60 to maybe even 90 days. But we really strive to be able to provide expedited delivery to these business owners because oftentimes there's some kind of an event, there's some kind of a deadline that they have. So I offer pricing that is pressing for a standard valuation with a 45 day delivery timeframe, and then I also offer pricing for expedited delivery as little as two weeks, and of course the prices is more when you need that kind of option, but it is there for the business owners who need it and who are really pressed for time. Dave: Okay, well, that is good to know. Okay, so have you done many valuations? I mean, is it a couple, is it a dozen, is it more than a hundred? I mean, is this your first rodeo at doing this valuation stuff? Scott: Actually, I've done more than a hundred of these things and I've been doing business valuations for about 13 years, when I originally I left corporate America after about 25 years, started my own business and initially I started out as a fractional CFO and I enjoyed that work. What I found was it was very competitive and very price sensitive, very much driven by the price. But I had clients who needed help with business valuation and so I went off and got the CPA credential which is essentially a CPA for business valuators went off and got the credential and started doing business valuations for some of my clients and figured out a couple of things. I really enjoy doing these. The valuation is like a business puzzle and having a CFO's mindset. It just naturally fits with what I enjoy doing, and there's also not nearly as many people who can do these things and do them well. There are some folks who dabble in these, but there's very few folks like myself who do nothing but business valuation. That is solely what I do, so I spend almost 100% of my time working on either business valuation or the growth coach which evolves out of that. Dave: Okay, so what are the characteristics of a company, who you are best positioned to help and add value? You're either kind of revenue size or other characteristics that somebody's listening to this they think, oh, he's describing me. Scott: I need to call Scott, so I would say that the size, the kind of the sweet spot is maybe from two to $10 million, is where I see the revenue yes, that's annual revenue. That's where I see the majority of my clients, but I see some there smaller for sure, and I see a number that are bigger as well. This is for the valuation is usually driven by some kind of a need that the client has and again, like I said, it may be a buy-sell need, it may be a tax-driven need, it could be a divorce, it could be any number of reasons that they need that. So oftentimes it doesn't so much matter even the size of the business if they really have that need to get the business valued and they have to have a third-party valuation. That's what really kind of drives the valuation side of things On the growth coach though what we're really, what we really are most successful there is. As I said, business is probably between two and $10 million generally, but they could be larger and businesses that are maybe doing good today, but they'd like to do even better, and ideally they're looking down the road and saying, hey, my business is $2 million in sales today, but I'd like to get it to $10 or $20 million and more profitable than it is today. How do I do that? And so growth coach is a perfect solution for those types of business owners who maybe they're doing okay, but they'd like to figure out how to do better, especially with an eye towards the future. Dave: Okay, that is helpful. Do you have an example that you could share with someone, either just on the peer valuation side or the growth coach side, somebody who came to you with a challenge and you were able to, you know, add value? Just, I just find personalizing and having stories helps the whole message resonate better. Do you have a success story or two you can share? Scott: Yeah, I've got a couple I've got one on each side there today that I can share. Let's talk about the growth coach side first. So I think about a client recently that has a service business, and they are here. They were here in Austin and it was an established business that was making several million dollars a year. They had a couple of different product lines or service lines, I should say and they had been pretty profitable for a number of years. And just over the last 18 months or so their profitability had just started to dry up and they were doing more revenue than ever. So the business owners came to me and they said hey look, our revenue is growing and we got this new cool service that's really profitable but for whatever reason, we're just not seeing the bottom line profit. Can you help us figure this out? And so by doing some analysis for this business, we were able to quickly help them figure out a couple of things. Number one this new service that they were really touting and trying to sell as much of this as they could. It was not priced. It was actually priced at below break even. Dave: Oh no. Scott: And the reason was because, obviously, the business owners are not cost accountants, so they figured out what the direct costs were that were related, you know, the technicians and their time, but they didn't factor in any of the overhead or some of the other indirect costs, and it was a pretty significant amount that they were missing, and so they weren't fully collecting the you know the fully burdened cost for this service. And so the answer and they're busy bidding these projects as fast as they can, and so the answer was really very simple. For that we were able to calculate a new, better hourly rate. They would bid these projects based on the number of hours and an average hourly rate. We were just able to say, hey look, your hourly rate was X, and so you need to add this much to it, and if you do, then you're going to be profitable again. The second thing that they had going on, though, was on the other revenue stream, the old revenue stream. They had one customer that was pretty big part of that, and this was their quote, unquote their great customer, you know their cornerstone customer, and what I found out is I did the analysis was I found out that they were selling this customer a certain level of service, maybe here, but the actual service they were providing was way up here and as you talk to the actual technicians and the folks who served that customer, you realize that the customer is getting whatever you want to call it deluxe level service, but they were paying for standard level service. So this customer is really not profitable at all. Dave: No wonder the customer, no wonder the customer loved them so much, no wonder they're their favorite, most happy customer. Scott: So I was able to show them, you know, that this customer was really not again, was not profitable, and they thought this was their poster boy, if you will, customer. And this had just happened over time. Is what we noticed, dave, was that over time, you know, the technicians or the folks who serve these customers had just kind of been, you know, just generously adding in a little bit of this and a little bit of that, a little bit more of my time, and so over time, this customer really evolved into an unprofitable account. So the combination of those two things made a huge difference for this business and they quickly found their profitability again, even better than it was before, and as they were growing, you know, their profits really accelerated quickly. So that's an example on the growth coach side of things. Dave: That's great, I can give you one on the valuation side please. Scott: This was a lot quicker. So I had a client who the client was the I guess it was the surviving children. The father had owned a business interest it was like a 1.9% interest in a successful electronics business there in Houston, and so the father had passed away and the children were just simply trying to liquidate his interest so that they could just divide his estate up and close out the estate. Well, the business had some super high-powered attorneys I think it was Vincent and Elkins actually was their attorneys and they came back to this family with a value for that interest of like $40,000. That's what they wanted to pay him. And so the family said, okay, well, if that's what it is. And so luckily, their attorney talked them into getting evaluation and what I found very quickly was the value that business interest was over $400,000. So it was a 10x difference in value. Dave: Maybe it was an honest mistake. Maybe they just forgot a zero. You know those honest mistakes never seem to be to the benefit of the person not making the honest mistake. Scott: Well, I'm not going to say that there was ill will, there was negative will there on the side of the business, but I will say that the difference was huge and for the cost of evaluation, for a few thousand dollars, they were able to realize a 10x return on that, which was a fair return in the first place. So you know, stories like that are there especially make you feel really good when you're able to really help people that they wouldn't have been able to do this on their own. Dave: Sure, yeah, those are two great examples. I like that. That first example their most profitable line and their most profitable customer that they're so excited about, turned out to be not their most profitable customer and not their most profitable service line. Scott: Yeah, and you know, dave, the thing that I find in working with business owners is, like I said, that unprofitable customer evolved over a number of years so that customer started out being their best customer. Maybe they're only customer, I don't know, but over the years it just the pricing and the service, the way that they provided the service, just got a little sloppy. And a lot of businesses that I see don't have a lot of discipline in the way that they price their services. They priced it at whatever it was priced at 10 years ago when they made it up, and plus 10% or something. But they haven't taken the time, maybe lately to go through there and really say, okay, what should it be priced at today? Is it at a reasonable price or not? And maybe if their bottom line is positive, relatively positive, they may feel like it's that it's where it needs to be. But a lot of times when you do that kind of analysis around pricing which is one of the things that we would do in the growth coach program you may find areas of opportunity there that they didn't even know existed. Dave: So it sounds. I hear your enthusiasm and passion for this work. What is it about this? You know, just aside from the dollars and cents, did you find so satisfying about serving these clients? Scott: Well, I like I may have said this earlier to me this is a business puzzle and I just enjoy the challenge of being able to unravel what may seem like a really complicated thing to the business owner, but to unravel it for them, to explain to them what's going on and then to help them, to help them to be better off at the end of the day. And so part of it is just, intellectually, I enjoy the challenge of these, of the business puzzle, if you will. And secondly, it's just it's nice to be able to to walk away from helping a client knowing that you've done something for them that is added value, that they're ecstatic about, that they couldn't have done for themselves. And so, just like you and I, would go to a specialist for whatever it is that we might be doing, business valuation for a lot of people is a specialization that they really need. They need somebody on their side, somebody to help them understand this stuff, and I just enjoy doing that. Dave: Yeah, that really resonates with me because that's how our business is, that, yeah, we add value. But the part I find most satisfying is just the sense that you've made a difference, you've helped. And, of course, my heroes are entrepreneurs. So the fact I get to work with entrepreneurs all day is I find to be just very satisfying that I feel like I'm helping the heroes of the economy. You know, just do a little bit to help them, be a little better at it. Scott: Yeah, let me add. I want to add on that too, dave, I completely with you on that. You know, having spent 25 years the majority of my career really in corporate America, I saw some really sharp people and some hardworking people. But I can tell you now, having spent 13 years with business entrepreneurs, people who they don't get a paycheck from some company on a, you know, bi-weekly basis, they have to go out and do it themselves, and I can't tell you how enjoyable it is to work with these types of people. They're usually, they're usually intelligent or they're, you know, studious people. They're driven and passionate about what they do. They're very positive and upbeat people and it just feels like a good crowd to hang with. Right, I mean, it's a positive, uplifting experience working for these clients, as opposed to, you know, working in a post office or something like that. Dave: Right, yeah, just being a cog. Scott: Exactly, I can really understand your point about working with these entrepreneurs and just how, how enjoyable it is. You know, it's just good to work with people like that. 0:19:01 - Dave: Yeah, and I think, if I'm correct, I think the data shows that the vast majority of new jobs in this country come from those smaller entrepreneurial companies. It's not the Fortune 500 companies that are creating the net jobs, and I hesitate to think that an additional government job is progress towards anything. Scott: Yeah, agreed. Dave: So what's the best way? If somebody wants to reach out to you, can they reach out on LinkedIn? Is that a good way to? Scott: LinkedIn is a great way. I've got all my email and the phone numbers and things on there on email on LinkedIn, on my profile page. That's probably the easiest way. I've also got a website that they could visit precisioncfosolutionscom, and that's, like I said, linkedin is probably the easiest way to reach out to me. Dave: If they just want to cut to the chase and just give you a call, what's the number they should call? Scott: 5.30 and that's my cell number. It comes directly to me, okay. Dave: Now, if somebody calls you, though, do they need to be careful that the clock's going to start ticking after the first minute and they're going to get a big bill for you if they only talk to you for half an hour? Scott: 45 minutes, no, and that's another pet peeve of mine, Dave. I think you and I may be on the same page on this one too. I don't charge for the initial consultation and, frankly, I don't charge the client until we both agree on the scope of work, whatever that is, and we both agree that we want to do it. And oftentimes that means that I have invested some of my time already to get there. Things like an initial phone call just to understand whether or not I can even help them with what they've got, or whether we need to maybe refer them to someone else if I can't. Things like initially looking at their financials. So oftentimes, to figure out the fee structure for the particular client, I need to see what the financials are and ask a few questions about what's going on there, how complex is the business entities and that sort of thing, and I don't charge the clients for that. So the other thing that I really I think is really beneficial to my clients as well is everything we do is based on a flat fee Okay what the fee is going to be, and it will never be more than that. It may be less than that, but it will never be more, and I think this really empowers the client because they know what they're going to spend. It's not going to be a penny more unless we both agree that we want to add something to the scope of the work. But otherwise I believe the flat fee structure really empowers the client, gives them a good feeling that they know what the cost is going to be. The other thing is it does. Is it really? Again, I think it incentivizes me to get my work done as efficiently as I can. But ultimately, like your original question, there's going to be there'll be a fair amount of conversation I may have with these clients before we ever even talk about what the fees are and the fee actually starts Okay. Dave: And if you're anything like me, that's probably your. Maybe the favorite part of your day is getting a phone call from somebody out of the blue that starts with hey Sunso, gave me your name. They said you might be able to help me. All right, don't you love those calls because you're like what's going on? Tell me what's up, what's the story, drill down, figure out if you can help them or not. Scott: Yeah, exactly Exactly. I enjoy getting those kinds of calls and you know, dave, I just tell my clients look, if a 10 minute conversation with me will save you a couple of hours trying to figure it out on your own, I'm happy to do that. Whether it's on the front end of engagement, whether it's on the back end of an engagement later on, or whether it's a client that I'm not even going to do work for, I'm happy to give a few minutes of my time because I think it. Number one, I just enjoy being able to help people solve problems and number two, you know, as we know, it all you know evens out. In the end it all kind of pays, pays itself forward. I think when you do the right thing for the clients, they can't wait to tell their friends hey, this guy did this for me and he didn't even charge, you know. And ultimately, you and I are looking for happy clients who get what they need done. Dave: Yep, I agree. Well, as we're around in the home stretch, I've got a couple of questions for you that I'm hoping will be a little bit curveball likes. I'm hoping to kind of put you on the hot seat. All right, go. So the first one. It's real simple, it's one sentence. I'm not going to clarify what I mean. You just have to give me your gut answer. Okay, tax max or barbecue? Scott: That is really close. I'd say tax max. But barbecue is probably 1B, so yeah, tax max. That's where I usually go for on the weekends. Dave: The best answer I received to that question. I'm going to get who it was and they said it depends. If I know it's going to be like top 10 percentile barbecue, I'll take the barbecue. If I know it's just going to be average, I'll take the Mexican food, because the tax max has more tolerance for imperfection. Would have to agree with that. Scott: It sounds like an engineer's answer to me. Dave: I mean a tough old piece of brisket. That's like chewing an old piece of leather. Scott: I mean no matter how tasty it is. Dave: it's not a great experience, but, heck, I can go to Taco Bell and make do right, if I'm hungry. It doesn't have to be world class, okay well, that one was pretty easy. This one's a little tougher. This one may make you think so. If you had a time machine and you could go back in time and give advice to your 25 year old self with the knowledge that you've had over the last you know, few decades, what advice might you give to yourself? You? Scott: know I get to do that, something similar to that, with my kids who are of that age now. The advice I would give to myself is I would have started my own business much sooner, when I was younger, you know, before I had kids to provide for and such. Start early building the value of that business. Whatever it is, you're going to learn so much from that. You may fail along the way You're going to learn, but you're going to learn a tremendous amount and by the time you get to be our age now, the benefits of that would just pay off dramatically. I think my background in corporate America is really good, but a background as a business owner, I think, is it cannot be matched. If you want to do the things like you and I, you want to run your own business and ultimately, if you want to generate wealth. You need to own your own business right Because if you're working for somebody else you're generating wealth for them, and then you have an income stream that will end when you stop working. And if you own a business, you have generated wealth and you have other options. You can. You know you could sell that business if you want and take the equity you built. But yeah, I would. That's what I would do. I would have started my own business much sooner and learned the ropes. Dave: That is probably the most common answer to that question oh, interesting, yeah, they had struck out on their own sooner. Well, I think we've covered a fair amount. Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you think we should talk about? Anything that you think we should have? Scott: I think we've covered. I think we've covered most everything and I appreciate you having me, having me on the podcast with you here, and I would love to you know, to help any of your listeners If they've got questions, however big or small, I'd love to be able to help them with that or point them in the right direction. So thank you so much for having me and my pleasure, I enjoyed it. Dave: My pleasure. I appreciate you carving time out of your day and I hope you hope the rest of your day is great and I'll look forward to catching up with you another time. Thank you, Dave. Thanks for having me All right. Special Guest: Scott Abels.

Scott Dennis, Assistant Superintendent of the Maryland Division of Rehabilitative Services (DORS), joins Carol Pankow in the VRTAC-QM Studio and tells us about how Maryland DORS increased recruitment and decreased resignations by raising salaries to compete in the regional job market. Learn how they opened the door and proved the case.   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   Music} Speaker1: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management, Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow.   Carol: Well, welcome to the Manager Minute. Scott Dennis, assistant superintendent of the Maryland Division of Rehabilitative Services or DORS, is joining me in the studio today. So thanks for joining me. How are things going in Maryland, Scott.   Scott: Things are going well, Carol. I appreciate the opportunity to join today's podcast. Excellent.   Carol: So a little background for our listeners. I did have some familiarity with Maryland DORS. I had worked with Sue Page. She was the former director and a national level. We were on the executive committee together and Sue and I also did a couple panel presentations and that was super fun. And I was so disappointed, you know, when she had retired in '18, I had just worked with her. And then like the next week she goes, I'm retiring. She had sent me a note and I knew you had been her deputy and I think you were named right in 2019 to replace her, was that right?   Scott: Yeah. I came into this position an acting role in 2018. Sue left in June of 2018 and I was named, the Acting. Was permanently placed into the position in January of 2019.   Carol: Gotcha.   Scott: Almost five years now.   Carol: Nice. Well, it was really fun because early in '19 you and I, we were working on that RSA workgroup around Rethinking Performance. So I liked getting to know you and realizing, Oh, you're the fiscal guy too. You were the fiscal guy for the agency. So it's been fun to have that kind of a little lens into your agency. So I know you've had some unique challenges that we're going to get into later. And I understand that there had been some previous runs at trying to get employee wages increased, which, you know, had failed. So this was all prior to you being at the helm. And the state of the recruitment and retention issue nationally has been front and center for every VR agency, I think. And you were able to more recently secure a rather significant employee pay increase. So I am sure our listeners are on the edge of their seats and are anxious to hear, How did you make that happen? So let's dig in. So Scott, can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, like how long you've been with DORS and how have you got to the position you hold today? What's kind of the path you took?   Scott: Well, sure. I kind of happened into VR. I was working in a private sector in retail and was looking to do something different than that. And as anybody who's ever worked in retail, there's a lot of long hours that are very odd and so forth. So I was looking to do something different and happened to come across an advertisement in the paper for a director for this program called the Business Enterprise Program for the Blind.   Carol: Oh, wow.   Scott: It kind of struck me. And so I said, Well, I've got a retail background, I've got a business background, let me get my shot at it. And so I put in my application and went through the interview process. And about four months later in 1990, I became the director of the Maryland Business Enterprise Program for the Blind, which was kind of unique because my background was not in the area of either VR or in blindness, but I did bring that business background, which is what the agency at the time was looking for. It was a great experience. The business enterprise programs for the blind bring their own unique challenges and so forth, and trying to operate a business environment inside of a state government. And you've got some real challenges in trying to do stuff fast and an organization is trying to slow you down. But it was a great experience. I was the director for BEP for six years and then our state director, who was Bob Burns at the time, said, I need some help over at DDS. And I went, What's a DDS? Because my focus had been strictly on BEP. And so he sent me over to the Disability Determination Services as the assistant director over there, and I oversaw sort of the administrative side of the DDS and did a number of activities over there. We moved into a much larger facility. We also at that time moved off a state legacy system onto *Levi. And for any of those who have been around a long time and have a program, you understand how far back that went. After about five years of DDS, moved over, back over here to the side of the shop and became the director of business services, which included all the administrative functions of the agency and sort of the financial piece of it. And so I was that until 2018 when I became the assistant state superintendent.   Carol: Very cool. I had no clue. Your days started with BEP. That is amazing. Good for you. You have a definitely a great broad history there. Paint a picture for our listeners about DORS and what agency you live under. What's your designated state agency and how many staff do you have in VR? And you already said you had DDS, but is that service under your purview as well?   Scott: Yeah, we're  housed within the Maryland State Department of Education. We're probably one of the first big divisions of the Maryland State Department of. We were created in 1929 and we at that time the division had two employees and a budget of $15,000. And the only reason I know any of this is because we've got the enacting legislation sitting out in the hall. We had two employees and $15,000 worth of state appropriation at the time. And of the two employees, one was the director of the agency and the other one was his secretary. He was also the counselor at the time as well. So obviously but we've been here ever since. The Division of Rehabilitation Services is comprised of two main programs that we operate are the VR program, obviously, as well as the program. In total, we've got 648 employees in total, of which 416 of them reside in the VR program and the remaining 232 reside in the DDS program. Within that VR program operates an Office of Field Services, which is very much operated the way the general agencies operate and then we have an Office of Blindness and Vision Services, which operate very much as a blind agency. And so we have a director of each one of those offices. They have their own budget and own staff and so forth. Then we also operate our Workforce and Technology center, which does a lot of our training and so forth, as well as a number of community based services out in the field and so forth. So yeah.   Carol: Yeah, you have a large operation. Holy cow. I didn't realize all of that. That's a bunch.   Carol: So let's talk about your unique position as far as the state. You border other states, as does every state. You know, people probably think duh, but there's something special about where your state is positioned in this country, because I always hear people say that you're the training ground for people that move to RSA. Can you talk about like what that geographical situation has played for you as far as your staff?   Scott: Yeah, and appreciate that. It does provide a unique situation for us. We border Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia as well as D.C. We do have some challenges, especially when we're competing with the federal government. And so because of the federal agencies that are housed here, it has become a real challenge because obviously the states don't pay as much as the federal government does, in particular around the Washington, D.C. area. The salaries are much higher than what we as an agency was able to offer. I mean, in some cases we'd have staff leave and they would nearly double their salaries as a result of that. In some cases, you just can't blame them. It has been a challenge having some of that federal government around, you know, as especially the presence of it, you know, large presence and so forth.   Carol: So we all know about this great resignation, you know, that's been talked about in the news. VRs experienced that itself. So how has that impacted what was happening in your agency? What were you facing for vacancy?   Scott: We were facing a high level of resignation. It was almost I hate coming in in the morning and turning on my computer and opening my email to see how many people resigned that particular day or week. And so we got hit pretty hard. We had about 40 counselors and supervisors, so it was about 30% of our workforce. We had vacancies in and that's on the VR side, on the side. You know, for those agencies that operate that, we had 59 vacancies and our examiners, which was about 45% of that. And, you know, the big culprit was they were going elsewhere, both private and public, to organizations that were paying them substantially more money than what we could afford, at least at the time. It hit us bad.   Carol: Well, I know your number's up there. I'd heard from some other directors talking about you like a 60% turnover in counselors and all these crazy numbers. It's hard to imagine how the work is able to get done. So obviously, you've got this geographic situation, you've got the great resignation going on, and you decided to embark on a journey where you wanted to get these wages increased. Can you tell us more about what went into that?   Scott: It was more than just me. I mean, it was a total agency effort. And I'm talking about from the top. In 2021, we got a new state superintendent who was from Texas. And so he was obviously very new, very young and high energy. And so being one of the large divisions and he wanted to have a one on one with me. And so we sat down and we talked. And what he wanted to know what DORS was to begin with and what VR was because he'd always been in education and so forth. And so we, you know, we talked and his first question, you know, real serious question was, what's your biggest challenge? I said, I can't hire, I can't retain because our salaries are so low. And I gave him an example. I said, we've had a recruitment out for three weeks now and we've got one person who is applying and they don't even meet the qualifications down in Montgomery County and Prince George's County, which are two largest counties in the state as far as population, but they're also the two counties that encircle Washington, D.C. And so the obviously the wages down there are extremely high because of the federal government. And so getting any staff at the wages that we were paying was next to impossible. We couldn't recruit, period. That was just the part of the problem. And so, you know, after I told him what the wages were, he even coming from the south out of Texas, even by his standards, the wages were low. So he put together, you know, he tasked the senior management, not only of the Maryland State Department of Education, but also of DORS to start working on a salary adjustment. Obviously, with something like this, it takes all hands on deck because it's just not one person who's doing all the work and guiding this. And so he tasked us and so my staff started doing feelers out to other states to find out what they're going for. We looked at the federal government and some of the positions that they were hiring for that had sort of equal entry level requirements. We looked at our counties. Some of our counties were paying way more than what we were. And so we took all that into consideration in looking at what is it that we wanted our salaries to look like. The other piece of this that was probably sort of the saving grace for us. Our counselors are in a classification series in this state that's only unique to DORS. It doesn't cross other state agencies or anything. And because of that, our Department of Budget and Management allowed us to do what they call an off cycle adjustment. Typically when they take a look at their salary adjustments and so forth and see whether they need to rescale them, they're looking across all the state agencies. They've got to balance who's got money and who doesn't, money when they start to raise salaries for, you know, let's say, an office secretary. Well, every agency has an office secretary. So they've got to have to balance this all out. When they say, okay, we're going to raise the office secretary's levels, well, they only had to look at us. They didn't have to compare us to anybody else, which made it a lot easier. And because a lot of our salaries, the way the state funds us, they put most of our state match dollars into our case services budgets. And so we've got just a small amount that actually goes towards salary. And so when we kind of pulled this together and say, okay, where can we go with this? We said, Hey, for a little bit of investment from the state side, we've got more than enough appropriation and federal funding over here. We can support this without any problem. So the meeting started in September. We kind of got going in earnest just after the Christmas holidays. We spent basically from October through December polling just gathering information. And then in from about January on, we started writing this up, getting everything put together. And then by late April we had the package ready together and we presented it to our Office of Budget and Management and Director of State personnel, and we suggested a threshold that we thought we could go to. They didn't quite agree with that. So there was some negotiating with the Department of Budget and Management, but we landed on a on a figure that was acceptable that they could live with that wasn't so far off that they were going to have problems with other state agencies as well, once they learned about what we had done. Our superintendent really wanted to push our salaries. He wanted it to be the highest in the nation.   Carol: Wow!   Scott: And he was pushing very hard to get us there. Didn't land there.   Carol: So how far did you get? How high did you get to go?   Scott: We got a substantial pay increase for them. We got, depending upon where they started, it was well over 20% pay increase for our counselors and examiners, which really stabilized it. I mean, it kind of gives you an idea, our salaries, starting salaries for what we call our VR counselor ones, which are individuals who come in with just a bachelor's degree, no experience. So we kind of have to build them up. We were starting at like 41,000 between 41 and 42. Our VR 2-counselors are individuals who have come in with a master's degree, no experience or some experience. And they were starting around 44,000 at the time and we were able to get them up. I mean, today our starting salary for counselor one is 57,000 and a couple of months with the new fiscal year will go to 58. Our twos were starting them at 60,000 and they'll go up to 62 in July. And then we have a technical specialist series and these are for individuals who again, have master's degrees, have been here a couple of years. They're starting in the upper 60s and low 70s now.   Carol: Yeah, good for you. That's pretty amazing. So were there other positions included? So it's not like your examiners or counselors. Were there any other types of positions in the agency include?   Scott: Well, we had to go back and do a readjustment because it affected both our counselors and our supervisors because it's a series of counselors, one, twos, technical specialists and supervisors. Then we have our regional supervisors and our regional directors. Well, because of it went up by grades and steps. Basically our regional supervisors were making the same thing as our office supervisors now. And so we had to raise them. When we raised the regional supervisors, they were making the same thing as the regional directors. So we had to raise the regional directors, but it had to happen over the course of time. The first push was the counselor series and so forth, and then we had to come back about a month later and do the rest of the others and so forth. So yeah, it's been sort of a work in progress and we still have some other classifications to take a look at as we kind of move down this path.   Carol: I wondered about that. If you had some work left to do.   Scott: Yeah, yeah, we do. We have to kind of go back. I mean, our support staff, we've got to go back and we've already started that work already to start looking at that group as well, because again, those classifications go across all state agencies, so we have no authority to raise those salaries. So we have to go back and do what we call a reclass them, which means we have to take a look at their classifications, see whether or not it still fits the job duties and so forth. So that's the only way I can raise that series, those individuals up. I just can't do what we did with the counselors. And in some cases, those salaries and all that are all controlled by the union.   Carol: Yes.   Scott: And so you've got to kind of have to work through all that stuff. So those positions take a little bit longer to kind of get through.   Carol: That makes good sense. So how long did that take you for this?   Scott: The first like I said, we started in 20. We started in September when I first met and we started in September. Late October.   Carol: Was that 2021?   Scott: Right.   Carol: Okay.   Scott: And then the pay raise went into effect on July 1st of 2022. So it took us nine months to kind of get it all put together and work through all the processes and doing the negotiation and so forth. So yeah.   Carol: And it's interesting because you are a union state as well. I came from a union state too, so there's extra things that go into play because I know some other folks have been successful across the country, but they didn't have that added complexity to it. So it was good to see you were able to do this in that environment.   Scott: Yeah, well, I mean, one of the things is even though we're part of a union, because the series is strictly DORS, we brought the union in once we had kind of got everything kind of worked through and said, okay, here's what we've done. They could have said, Yeah, no, we don't want you getting a pay raise. We worked at it that way just because and we had to cross even within our parent agency, if our parent agency, the Department of Education had a classification series and some of the stuff that they did, this would have never happened.   Carol: right.   Scott: Because of that uniqueness, we were able to get it done.   Carol: Yeah, the stars were aligned for you, for sure. So how have these increases impacted your staff recruitment and retention?   Scott: Oh, yeah. Big. I mean, it's like I mentioned earlier, we couldn't find staff or if we did, our supervisors and directors were making the decision of, I got to have a body, and so in some cases you're just getting a warm body. This has nothing to do with the person or anything like that. But they were probably individuals that this may not have been the best fit. But because you're sitting there as a supervisor and you've got 3 or 4 empty caseloads sitting on your desk, at least if I can get them in and get them do some work that's less work that I've got to do and so forth. So we were making some decisions on trying to sort of balance whether this was the right fit for people, but also looking at the number of people that are actually applying for the job was extremely low. I mean, we might come up with 4 or 5 individuals that make like really good candidates. And then when you made salary offer to them, they went, Uh, no thanks. In some cases we actually had made salary offers to individuals who had interned with us and wanted to work for us. And then we made the salary offer and they went, no thanks.   Carol: They're like, I can go work at Target instead.   Scott: You're exactly right. Because the salary, especially down in Prince George's and it is extremely high. Maryland has the highest median income in the country. You know, it's driven by about 3 to 4 counties in this state that drive that. And so that kind of shows you how tough it is in some other jurisdictions to find people and retain people is extremely difficult. Like I said, you know, one of those recruitments was just before we put out the salary change where we had gotten one individual. We got the permission to start publishing the new salary and we went from 1 to 40 in about two weeks.   Carol: Wow. Good for you.   Scott: For example, we had a recruitment out for this for about a month and maybe have gotten 25 to 30 applications. We re-advertised and got 170 in 3 weeks. So we went from 30 people to well over 200. So it obviously had a tremendous impact. In fact, I just had a regional director in talking with me earlier this week, talking about the quality of individuals that we're now seeing, because I haven't seen this high level of quality of people that we've gotten in years. So yeah, the impact has been immediate.   Carol: That's terrific. Have you had any staff want to come back? Maybe that left?   Scott: Well, actually, funny you asked that. We went back out to we had several staff. members who left 3 or 4 months earlier, and these were good staff. Sometimes you have staff leave and you go, thank God. Other times, you know, you see staff go out the door and you go, What a loss. And so we had about a half a dozen staff that had recently left that were sort of, oh, man, I hate to lose them. And so we reached back out to them and we were able to get four out of those six back. We almost got five back. But when they went to talk to their new employer, they went, Oh, we'll give you a pay raise. So she ended up getting a pay raise out of it because we told her what we were going to give her and they went higher. That's the benefit of a private sector situation versus, you know, state government type of situation. So we were able to get some seasoned staff back really quick. I mean, literally within weeks after the new pay plan went into effect. So yeah, it's stabilized. I'm seeing right now what I would consider sort of normal turnover. Now you're back down to 5 to 6% turnover rate versus 25 to 30% turnover rate. It's really made a made a difference in the world. It's stabilized the agency. We have a wait list. We had to basically shut it down because we had so many vacancies. I mean, we have had one and we were bringing people off the wait list. We just had to literally just shut it down. We couldn't handle. The individuals that were coming in the door that met the criteria for Category one. We were struggling with that along with our pre-employment. We just couldn't handle. We couldn't do it. So we shut it down.  Once we got stable. Our regional directors and director of Office Field services came to me and said, We can handle bringing people off the waitlist now. And so we've been able to start bringing people back off the waitlist now.   Carol: Good for you. That is terrific news is a big win all the way around. I just wondered if you had any advice for other directors and leaders across the country as there may be interested in doing something like this in their state. What advice would you give them?   Scott: The biggest advice is you've got to get buy in from your senior secretary, superintendent, whoever is your most senior, most person in the agency, because at the end of the day, they're the ones that are really going to have to go to bat and particularly when you start dealing with the counterparts over at your budget office who are always going, Oh, that's going to cost us a dollar. No, I don't think so. That's where you really need to have sort of that political clout to kind of push some of this stuff through, because it's not, it's not easy. And again depending upon the environment, to some degree, we benefited from the environment itself because obviously we weren't the only state agency losing people. And so the state, I think, recognized that they had to do something. Because even other state agencies around us couldn't hire people because of the state wage. And so I think we kind of hit it right at the right time, so we were able to do it. So I think the combination of two. One, we had a superintendent who had no problem to go banging on the secretary of budget management's door and say, I need this in order for this program to function and opening the door and then letting the rest. of the team go to work and prove the case.   Carol: I Like that you said that, prove the case. So if folks wanted to reach out to you. What would be the best way for them to contact you? Because a lot of times our listeners will say, I want to talk to Scott Dennis about what he just said.   Scott: Yeah, I mean, anybody can reach out to me. My email address is Scott Dot Dennis (D e n n i s) @maryland.gov.   Carol: Excellent. I really appreciate you joining me today and congratulations on the win. I just wish you continued success as you're working through your other positions. This is very cool. Thanks, thanks much.   Scott: Not a problem. Thank you, Carol.   {Music} Speaker1: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time, brought to you by the VR TAC for Quality Management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening!

Ever wanted to know what it takes to create a TV pilot? In this special episode, Anne is joined by Scott & Miranda Parkin to discuss Comet Casino. Comet Casino is a story centered around found family. It talks about those relationships & friendships that grow so near and dear that they feel like family. Scott & Miranda voice two of the characters, but were heavily involved in the creation of the show. From planning out the story to animating, Miranda was in charge and excited about this mid-century modern tale. After two year, the pilot episode is ready & shipped out to all the right people. So what's next for the duo? There may be more planning, creating, and meeting taking in their future…but you have to listen up to hear the whole story.    Transcript   It's time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere Business Owner Strategies and Successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a BOSS, a VO BOSS! Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.   Anne: Hey everyone, welcome to the VO BOSS podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and today I am so excited and pumped to have the Comet Casino team here with us, special guests Scott and Miranda Parkin. You guys, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. Yay!   Scott: Thank you so much for having me. You were an early supporter of this. (inaudible) merch on your show, you donated money, and now we're in the pitch phase. So we really owe a great debt of gratitude to the VO BOSS.   Miranda: Yeah, seriously.    Anne: Well, thank you. Thank you. I mean, it's not hard to support and love what you guys are doing. So for those BOSSes out there who may not be familiar with the famous Comet Casino team, I thought we would start with a little bit of an introduction of each of you so that the BOSSes can get to know you a little bit better. So let's start with Scott,‘cause he's older. (laughs) So Scott, I mean actor, amazing improv instructor, voice actor, I mean everything. Tell us how you got started in the industry and where it's going (laughs) and your life.    Miranda: And your social security number.    Anne: Yes.    Scott: No, that's horrible. That's horrible advice.  I'm from Sacramento, California, and I started in radio when I was in college. I interned at KCAP, the home of rock. When I was around 20, 18, 19 in that sort of range, I was able to weasel my way onto the air with a guy named Kevin Anderson. He got fired, but he made a tape of the time we were together, sent it to Tulsa, Oklahoma. They had us come out for an audition. They asked me if I'd ever been to Oklahoma. And at the time I said, uh, the furthest east I've been is the Nevada side of Heavenly Valley, dude. And that is literally how we all spoke in Northern California. You were more like this, like, are you gonna put change on your car before you go to Tahoe?    Went out there to Oklahoma and did that. And then I got fired again. Came back to Sacramento, got a gig in Dallas, was there for 11 years, got married, got — moved to Los Angeles in, I wanna say ‘98. Had a kid in 2000, got divorced in 2003, done voiceover and writing for television and acting, and I always say you gotta hit it from every angle possible, so I'll do most of the stuff that they'll pay creative wise. So Miranda's been raised on TV sets and in voiceover lobbies and all that. And she started in the business when she was about five.    Miranda: Pretty crazy.    Anne: So, yeah. So Miranda, let's talk about that because you did grow up in the business. Yeah. I'm so excited again to actually see you and talk with you. And so tell us how you kind of got started, and was this something that, because you were around it for all the time when you were small, is it something that you loved right away, or did you kind of grow into it?    Miranda: Well, I mean, I feel like I loved it first because I was like, oh, I just really love reading. Like I love reading out loud. Like that very much fun.    Scott: Nerd!   Miranda: Shut up.    Anne: That was me too. That was me too.    Scott: Yeah.    Miranda: I liked reading out loud. So when they were like, “hey, do you wanna read this thing out loud,” a little five year old? And I was like, yeah, of course I wanna read that thing out loud. So I did. And then I was like, oh, oh, they like it when I do that. That's cool. I like that. You know, I was five, so I didn't really know, but it just made me feel happy, you know? Like I've always loved reading out loud. And then I got paid to talk about SeaWorld, and I'm like, I love animals and I love talking about whales, like of course I, I'm gonna do that.    Anne: Was this when you were five or a little bit later on?    Miranda: A little bit later on because I started when I was five, and then it was kind of went until eight or nine I think. I think nine was when I, I got the --    Scott: When the hammer got dropped.    Miranda: Yeah. Yeah. I got the job of, uh, Lucy in a direct to DVD Peanuts movie. And my mom was like, no, you can't do that. So I was like, oh, alright. I really like reading out loud. I really like the Peanuts.    Scott: But her dad was a voiceover actor, and anything that had something to do with me was --   Anne: Ah.   Scott: Yeah.   Anne: Okay. So there's the six degrees here I think because you said Lucy, right? You read for the —    Miranda: Right.   Anne: Okay. So my maiden name is Lucy. Okay?   Scott: Excellent. Is that true?    Anne: Yes, it's very true. It's very, because people called me Miss Lucy when I was a teacher, and then they would sing, Miss Lucy had a steamboat. The steamboat had a bell. Exactly.    Scott: I forgot you were a teacher. My mom was a teacher for 35 years. I have I have so many teachers throughout our family.    Anne: Well, so that's number one. And number two is that when I was young, when I was about six, when I was in kindergarten, I love to read out loud as well. And here's where my claim to fame, my creative claim to fame is that I wrote books. I wrote books about Nibbles the Rabbit. And as a kindergartner, I read them to the first graders. So that's my claim to fame. I mean, I --   Miranda: Kind of a power move.    Anne: I mean, so Miranda, if I could only be half as good of, and I illustrated and wrote, and you know what I mean? Which is, that's incredible.    Miranda: That's, that's amazing.    Anne: You do everything. And so I just feel like the apple doesn't far fall from the tree there, I think; the writer, artist, voice actor, actor.   Scott: I can't draw a stick figure without uh, without help. So.   Miranda: That's true. He can draw a palm tree and a lightning bolt.    Anne: There you go. Very good.    Scott: And I can draw an oak tree too though.    Miranda: And an oak tree. Oak tree. Sorry, forgot about that. One of the three.    Scott: Yeah.   Anne: I got good at drawing a rabbit as a kindergarten. But other than that --    Miranda: Nibbles the rabbit.    Anne: — that's kind of where it stopped. Although I always was in awe of people who could draw. And so I want to actually talk about Comet Casino because that's really why I wanted to bring you here so that we can talk about the whole process. Because BOSSes out there, if you're listening, the whole concept of Comet Casino is BOSS from start to as it evolves. Because you have encompassed all areas of the creative arts, all areas of funding, of marketing, of starting something and seeing it grow and seeing it evolve. So I love the evolution of Comet Casino. So before we do that, let me show the BOSSes a little preview of what we have here. So let's do this first.    Scott: Can we set it up real quick?    Anne: Yeah. Let, we're gonna set it up right now.    Scott: This is not a trailer. There's no voiceover or anything like that. This is the first 90 seconds of the pilot, and the shuttle attendant is the lovely great Delisle Griffin. And we love it. And so you get an idea of where our story takes place, who are the principals, and what's going on in the first 90 seconds. The whole thing, the whole pilot presentation is just over 10 minutes. There you go.    Miranda: Yeah, there we go.    Anne: All right. We're gonna give you guys the first 90 seconds. All right. Here we go.    >> Attention passengers. We will be landing shortly on Luparif Omari, please return to your seats. If you've morphed during the flight, please regenerate and buckle up. Okay? And remember, as long as you look like you're gambling, they gotta keep bringing you drinks. Good luck.    >> Luparif Omari. Everybody knows it as the loop. Number one adult playground in the galaxy and the armpit of the fucking universe. Everyone is thrilled when they get here and broken, disillusioned when they leave. That's just after a weekend. I spent the first 18 years of my life here. On the loop, after high school, you pretty much have three choices: bartending school, dealer school or alcoholic gambler. I wanted something more. So I went to law school on the nearest planet. After graduation I took a really good job as a defense attorney. It's difficult and none of it comes easy, but okay, it's somewhere else, and that's all that matters.    So what am I doing back here? My dad, owner of the formerly luxurious Comet Casino passed away. How? Uh, he just stopped breathing while a guy was choking him to death, which on the loop is considered natural causes. The loop is 100 miles of casinos, clubs, and general debauchery crammed into a thin band of oxygen. Everything else is toxic. My dad used to drop off associates in the desert when it was time for them to die of natural causes.    >> Hurry. Hurry, everyone.    Anne: Haha, awesome. I love it. And can I tell you that honestly, when I first heard it, I love the beginning, right, with the introduction. But Miranda, when you start telling the story, I teach like storytelling to students for years. And you have such a beautiful, wonderful presentation of storytelling in that, like it is so damn impressive.    Miranda: Hey, I used to love reading stories out loud. Now I do it all the time.    Anne: If Scott knows me, I don't say that lightly. I love, love the performance.    Scott: That's not — this whole thing, this has been two years in the making, and we directed all these legends who are friends of ours and have always supported Miranda. And if Miranda wasn't able to hold their own with these legends, it doesn't work. All of what we've done, it just doesn't work. So.   Miranda: That was one thing that I got scared about. Like I know literally like after we like got all these people to do it, and they were like, all right, now it's time to record your part. And I'm like, oh, I have to actually, I have to go up against these — oh my God. Not, not go up against, but like work with, like be in the same cartoon as, and I'm like, oh my God, that's like a dream come true regardless of where this thing goes.    Scott: Yes. And frightening as hell. And same for me. ‘Cause Miranda actually does video games and animation. I don't do so much of either of those. So after asking these people and then having to, you know, what was really cool was that we recorded our parts at SoundBox LA with Tim Friedlander. So first Miranda and Tim directed me, and then we switched, and Tim and I directed Miranda. So that was really, it was really cool. And he's been so supportive and known Miranda for a very long time. So it was, it was just really cool to do our parts at Tim's with Tim directing.    Miranda: Yeah. ‘Cause he's such a good friend and such a great dude. And he supported it all the way through. It just seemed like a natural fit.    Anne: So let's talk about, how did it all start?    Miranda: Ooh, ooh, ooh. I've got this one.    Anne: Okay.    Scott: Keep it tight and bright.    Miranda: So essentially it started as an FBI agent gets teleported into space and works off her debt at a space casino. So that was like our initial idea. And I wanted to do something    Scott: That was all Miranda's --   Miranda: Yeah. And then I was like, okay, well the FBI thing is kind of silly, stupid. Let's just go with a mother-daughter story about a girl that actually lives in the casino and went to the casino and like lived at the casino, and her mom was the boss and she had to come back. And then we were just like, okay, let's cut the mom. Because I don't know how to tell a mother daughter story. I know how to tell a father-daughter story. So let's make a father-daughter story about a dysfunctional --   Scott: Well Miranda, you have to be honest, Ed Jager, our head writer and 23 year veteran television writer came in and said, I'm killing the mom. There's no story there. It's a father-daughter story. It's all about the daughter. Going away. Wanting to get the hell outta home, and then having to come back and then finding out that, ah, you know what? I hate this place, but I work here. It works. I have a connection here, and I'm really good at all the jobs I'm doing. It's the Joan Didian. You can't go home but you, maybe you can kind of thing.  Does that make sense?    Miranda: See the thing is like at the beginning of it, it morphed and switched. But I always wanted to make it a space casino. Always, always, always.    Anne: But then, let me backtrack here. So you're telling me the beginnings of the story, but what's the beginnings of the idea, Miranda? Was it something that you said, I wanna create? So not many people in this industry, and I know BOSSes out there, this is the whole enchilada, this is the writing, the artistry, the production, the casting. So did you just one day say, I wanna make a show like (laughs)?    Scott: We pitch ideas back and forth and have written a bunch of stuff, but Miranda always said that whenever they go animated shows, they have an episode at a casino. But I forget how you said it, M, I'm sorry.    Miranda: So like in a lot of sci-fi media, there's always like a one-off episode with a casino. Like in Cowboy Bebop, there's a one-off episode with a space casino. In Star Wars, they go to a space casino in one of the newest Star Wars movies. In like Rick and Morty, they go to a Dave and Busters type thing called Blips and Shits. And I'm just like, why don't you stay there? There's so much potential. You have beings from all over the galaxy. You know, you have people that go to Vegas for conventions. You've got people that go to Vegas in sororities. You have gangsters and mobsters and bachelor parties    Anne: I love it.   Scott: Corporate convention. Always bringing different people. And if you put it out in space, 200 years in the future, the hell knows what --   Anne: Right. So many stories. I mean, I think so many stories can evolve from that. So yeah, there's longevity there. Yeah.    Scott: The other thing we really liked was the found family because Miranda's been, was at my house from age 16 on solo and moved out two years ago. So big on found family. At my house growing up there was always an extra person. Somebody that just got divorced or some teenager had been kicked out of their house. So we're big on found family. A found family is such a lovely story. You can take in so many different directions, and in Miranda's situation, it's right here, found family.   Miranda: But also it's relatable to everyone. Whether you have a good relationship with your parents or not, you always have friends. You know, friends are the family that you choose. I know it's cheesy, but everyone can relate to it. Everyone has a friend that you feel like you're a sibling.    Anne: So then you had this idea that you wanted to do this. The two of you were bouncing ideas and then you said, yes, this sounds amazing. Let's get a writer. Like what happened after that? Just get a writer involved.    Scott: Like I said, we've had multiple ideas, and I think they're very solid ideas, but Miranda is a voracious performer and artist. They like to keep going and going and going. So if we didn't get something with legs on it early, it got set aside and fan art and something else, or voiceover or her life just got in. But this was much more substantial. And it has something that Miranda really likes is retro futurism and 50's --    Miranda: Like mid-century modern atomic age type stuff, Jetsons style.    Anne: Yeah, absolutely.    Scott: They really enjoyed drawing. So it was very inspirational. And then I showed it to my buddy Ed. We had made a little video presentation and it's 1000 degrees different than that, than the thing that we first made. But he goes, this is great. We showed it to Swampy Marsh, the creator of Phineas and Ferb, who's sort of Miranda's mentor and my good friend. And then we all got together with a couple of the writers from Gary Unmarried, that show my buddy Ed wrote about my life that was on CBS, and other writers that I'd worked with on their pilots. And we all got a room and sort of hammered out a thing.    And then the found family thing, or how each of the casino employees used to work at the casino as a crooner or a fighter or something like that. And now the old man me has hired him to work on the, on the thing because they're no longer viable as performers. So we had that, and then Ed just took it off and built this great daughter goes away and comes back to save the found family sort of thing.    Miranda: And it was so well done and well-written. And we pitched on jokes, and I would be like, oh, this character probably wouldn't say that, or this and that. But most of it was Ed really. He just brought this huge heart to it.    Scott: Ed started on Roseanne and worked on Darma and Greg and so many great shows. And I was a joke guy, so you know, we were able to make the jokes crackle, and then you just crank it, crank it down, crank it down until it's tight. And then we hired Swampy Marsh and Bernie Patterson at Surfer Jack to do the staging animatics. So each time they go through, it's single line, really rudimentary, but it gives you a good idea of where everyone's going and what it will look like. I think they did four passes there. They hired Miranda to work on small projects. So Miranda got to work on her own pilot there.    And then I think after we had our thank you party last summer at Tim's, Miranda said, I want it all to be -- I have so many ideas. I want more characters, I want some different backgrounds. This would be funnier if a chop from above. And so Miranda said, I wanna do all of this. So she redid everything. And so every frame you see in the thing is her character's shirt background, a couple backgrounds. We hired her roommate Lauren to do, really wonderful stuff. But almost all of it is Miranda's vision. So there you go. And then laid in all the sound. Tim West at Rebel Alliances donated hours and hours and hours of time. So the sound design is really good. Adam Gutman, Miranda, you can talk about.    Miranda: Yeah. He's like a, he's a Disney composer. He does like all the music for these Star Wars land rides, and Amphibia, and he's worked on Greatest Showman and all these things. And I did a lot of work with him during the lockdown, and he had this like musical project, and I was able to do some animatics for him. And then after that, you know, we kept in contact and then he was like, if you don't let me do the music for Comet Casino, I will be very sad if you don't let me just do it. You know. And I was like --   Scott: Of course, of course.   Miranda: He had all these like great kind of almost hotel lobby tracks from like a Star Wars thing that he worked on. And he's just like, I can tweak this and do this. I'm like, that is so cool. It was crazy.    Anne: So a few things that I wanna point out to the BOSSes out there, because again, I think a lot of people that listen to the VO BOSS podcast they're thinking very much in just voiceover. And again, the scope of this project is so amazing, and I'm hearing a couple of things that just keep coming back to me. Number one is having a great network, right? And having a wonderful team to help put this together. And so I think that networking is such an important thing to have a successful --   Scott: Without, without it, this wouldn't exist.    Anne: Yeah.    Scott: I called in and asked every favor I had to get us at this point.    Anne: Yeah, absolutely.    Scott: Listen, I don't constantly work for free, but I work with friends and things I like mm-hmm and everyone liked all these people that are in this, Maurice Lamar, Billy West, Tara Strong, Luray, Newman, Mindy Sterling — all of them have known Miranda since about three years old because I was asked to be divorced when Miranda was three. So I had her with me, and they all sort of watched her grow up and watched her. So when I said, hey you guys, this is what we're doing, would you be willing? And they all said the same, some version of yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Tara Strong's like, just tell me where to talk. They didn't owe me anything, but I, we asked favors.    Miranda: And one thing that I was so happy about is they've always been, ‘cause we're, you know, a lot of us are at the same agency. So like from being a kid, like not not a kid, but like, you know, in my 20s, early, early teenage years, they were always like, if you make something, if you make something, you know, put me in it. Please. So, you know, and then we finally followed through with an idea, and now it was like, I can do that. I can ask these people and they'll say yes. And that's just a such a great feeling to have, to have such a great support network of all these incredible talented people. I'm really honored.    Scott: And Miranda designed each of the characters for each of those actors. Aunt Maisie was designed for Tara Strong. Gary Anthony Williams is Hendrix. So that's kind of a cool thing too. But you definitely have to be willing to work with -- I mean I've worked on so many pilots that got shot and didn't get to air. I don't get any money from that. I just get the experience providing and supporting. So when I have something, I call those guys and they're like, yeah, let's get together and write this.    Anne: So then yet another thing that I wanna talk about that I think is so important in the development of this is you're still pursuing this, you're still getting funding for this. And so --   Scott: We've just started this phase.    Anne: Right.   Scott: We, it's taken two years to get up to that.   Anne: Yeah. And I think that there's something to be said for the level of commitment obviously, that you have to have for this. I mean in my brain, there's no way that it can't not be successful for you guys. I mean that's the way I feel. I don't know.    Miranda: I honestly think it's successful already. I am just, I am happy to be involved with these incredible people. I'm happy to have this part of my portfolio, and I'm ready to get this, this art in front of people who work in amazing studios. Like all these studio people are going to be seeing my art. So that was like the goal from early on was to get my art in front of studios, and whether it gets made or not, it's just a step in the right direction regardless.    Anne: I love that.    Scott: The beginning premise was to get experience at storyboarding character design and backgrounds. So when we hired Surfer Jack, the idea was that Miranda would sit on Bernie's shoulder and watch him staging storyboard. But then Swampy screwed that up by hiring Miranda before they even started on the pilot to be head of small projects there. So the idea was to get all of her stuff in front of as many people as possible. And because of Ed -- his theatrical representation is APA — they saw that 90-second trailer and called us in for a strategy meeting. So now we're actually represented by APA.    Anne: Love it. That's huge.   Scott: They're not only showbiz adjacent, but they represent people like 50 Cent, Mark Ruffalo, you know, that kinda people. So now, next week the pilot goes out to every animation studio and every streaming service, full support of the head of animation at APA. And they'll bug them to watch it and then hopefully take a meeting. So we already won because all of that stuff is in front of them. And Miranda -- by the way, she's like, in my early twenties — these are your early 20's; you're 28 (?) until next week, you know.   Anne: That's phenomenal. Miranda, I love that you said that it's already a success because it truly is in my eyes, and that's why I feel like it can't be anything but a success already. I've seen it evolve, I've seen it progress, and to me I'm in awe. I think it's amazing. I love the evolution, I love the whole creative process. And I think that it would help BOSSes to maybe wrap their heads around the whole production process of a creative project because I think it will help us to become better actors, become better business people, understanding the networking that you guys are going through and the process to get this produced and and get this out and see if — it's like a big huge audition. Right?    Scott: It is. The other thing is, I told you I don't book animation. So what we did was build a pilot and write ourselves into the pilot. So if I book animation, it'd likely be something that we wrote then Miranda drew. So I think that's a really important thing for anybody getting into it. Don't wait to be asked to the dance. Get out there and start dancing.    Miranda: I also think like the thing about networking that you said like Swampy, a friend of ours, you never know who you are going to meet or who's gonna hire you or who's gonna be your friend and let you work on their project or whatever. ‘Cause like, you know, I hired my roommate to work on some of the backgrounds for Comet. And the networking is so important in this industry, especially with animation, the way that it is right now. ‘Cause animation is very weird and not an incredible industry to get into right now. ‘Cause everything is very up in the air.    Scott: What do you mean, not a great industry? Do you mean it's uncertain?    Miranda: Yeah, it's very uncertain and there's lots of things.    Scott: Voiceover and acting --   Miranda: No, no, but like animation in particular, a lot of animated projects are getting canned. Like they took so much off of HBO Max and Netflix. Like all these animated projects on Netflix.   Scott: That happens in every facet of the entertainment --   Miranda: Right. That's true.   Anne: Ebb and flow.    Scott: It's building your house on mud and hoping for the best.    Miranda: Yeah.    Anne: Yeah.    Miranda: But you know, like you just never know who is gonna hire you. You never know who's gonna be part of your story next. So.   Scott: It's also a good reason to be nice to everybody.    Miranda: Exactly. It costs some money.    Scott: ‘Cause you never know. And that's why I always say, hey people, I know we have, we're represented by an agency, but please if I sent you the pilot and said, hey, send it to creators that you know, it's always great when something comes to the same point from different connections.    Anne: Sure. Absolutely.    Scott: Oh, this is the pilot. Oh this is the guy that Apple, the Apple guy sent me this. So I believe you gotta get as many lines in the water as you can.    Anne: Absolutely. And that networking completely helps that. And I think that it's just something that's so important for us to know as we progress in this industry because this industry's uncertain, voice acting. Oh, oh my gosh. You know?   Scott: Also the other thing is Miranda's not stopping. She's doing Comet art for the pitch deck. Should we get the meeting, I feel confident people are gonna say, hey come in. We like it. We'd like to chat, doing that. But she's also prepping a bunch of stuff to submit for Smiling Friends. She just had a meeting with the storyboard director from Mitchells and the Machines. So you know, you can't just go, well, we've got our pilot. Let's just sit back and let the money roll in.   Miranda: Not over until it's over.    Anne: That's not over.    Miranda: It doesn't start till it starts.    Scott: Ah, I like that one.    Anne: Yeah. Now lemme ask you, Comet Casino, what's next? What's the next step?    Scott: Next week. Well, Miranda's doing art for the pitch deck. Hopefully it goes out to all the stupid buddies, the the titmouses, the --   Miranda: Bento boxes, the tornates, the 20th Century Fox.    Scott: It's gonna go out to every relevant animation company and every streamer, Amazon, Apple, all of those. And then we clear our schedule because we'll be just meeting so many people and having a bidding war on the Comet scene.    Anne: There you go.    Miranda: One would hope. One would hope.    Scott: We still, did you get one of these, Anne?    Anne: I did not get a bag.    Scott: We wanna send you a bag as a gift from the Comet Casino.    Anne: Oh, I love it.    Scott: And we'll put one of the lucky chips in there too.    Anne: Oh, I love that.    Scott: I always keep 'em in my pocket when I audition and I booked three commercials with one ofthese in my pocket.    Anne: Well, thank you. So let me ask you guys, before we go, first of all, how can somebody buy Comic Casino merch? Where do they go?    Miranda: They go to the Comet Casino gift shop, and it's the first thing that comes up on Google. I'll also send you the link so you can put it in the description of whatever podcast.    Anne: The Comet Casino gift shop. And guys, I have a few things. I have a few things from the Comet Casino, but I do not have a bag, so I would love that.    Scott: We'll send you the retro airline bag.    Anne: Thank you.    Scott: Cool thing where you put the cardboard on the bottom, and they put hard glasses in the bottom.    Anne: I love it.    Scott: And then we still have a bunch of shirts. We don't have a lot of stuff. We got hit pretty hard. Oh, we do have some of these handmade pendants that are really, really cool. We only have a -- I think there's only five of those left. They're really, really, really stunning.    Anne: That's very cool.    Scott: Our friend Lori Magna is this artisan in Boston, and she made, she does all the little -- I mean --   Anne: Oh, I love it.    Miranda: Aren't they so cool?   Anne: I love it. So Comet Casino gift shop.    Miranda: Yes, indeed.    Anne: And how can someone follow you, Miranda?    Miranda: Oh, well my Instagram is Parkinart, Parkinart. No spaces, no caps, no nothing. No, no underscores or dots or dits or numbers.    Anne: Perfect.    Scott: You can see me on a Tide commercial    Anne: Ah yes.    Miranda: And his Instagram. His Instagram --   Scott: Hang on, I forgot to say we just got these, the premade --   Miranda: The booklets.   Scott: Big comic books with all the concept art. They're 22 pages, and we just got these. There was a misprint. We got to help with the pitch and they did a misprint --   Anne: Will you be signing?    Scott: We're signing. Miranda will sign. I'll sign it. It doesn't really matter if I sign it, but Miranda's gonna sign it, and then if you get other cast members to sign it, you got something there.    Anne: Very nice.    Scott: That'll be up on here very quickly as well.    Anne: Very nice.    Scott: Anne, thank you so much. So sweet of you to have us on.    Anne: Thank you, guys. It was amazing. So much fun. And I'm looking forward to interviewing you again after it gets picked up and you guys --   Scott: Absolutely. And remember, we're voice first, and we have a very long memory and we remember everybody that was so supportive and helpful. And believe me, we'll be working hard. We don't know who's gonna buy it or what the situation will be. They may buy it outright, tell us to go away, you know what I mean? So we have no idea what that looks like. But if we have any say in it, we're gonna bring people to audition. Everybody gets up to bat, we're gonna write your names as a character, spread the wealth.    Anne: Love it. And your cat wants to say hello. I love it. You know, I have three cats, so I'm all about that. Well fantastic, guys. Thank you so much again. It was amazing. So much fun. Love, love, love what you're doing.    Miranda: Thank you so much for having us on.    Anne: Absolutely.    Scott: You've been so supportive, Anne. You jumped on the bandwagon and gave away merch very early on. This was an expensive proposal, right? Hiring an animation company to do four passes, and then I was sending random money to not take any other work while they worked on this thing. So it's really, really helpful to have such support. The main thing is, it's just really fun to see the cool logo and all the great art on it. It's very nice.    Anne: Absolutely. All right, well BOSSes, here's your chance to use your voice to make an immediate difference in our world and give back to the communities that give to you. Besides giving to Comet Casino, you can go to 100Voiceswhocare.org to find out more and commit. And also big shout out to our sponsor, ipDTL. You too can network communicate like BOSS. Find out more at ipdtl.com. You guys, have an amazing week and we will see you next week. Bye!   Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voBOSS.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies, and new ways to rock your business like a BOSS. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via ipDTL.

Travis Scott, born Jacques Bermon Webster II, is a prominent American rapper, singer, and songwriter who has made a significant impact on the music industry. Known for his distinct style and energetic performances, Travis Scott has gained a massive following and critical acclaim throughout his career. With his unique blend of trap, hip-hop, and alternative sounds, he has created a signature sound that resonates with fans worldwide. Travis Scott's music is characterized by catchy hooks, immersive production, and introspective lyrics that often touch upon themes of fame, success, and personal struggles. His breakthrough album, "Rodeo," released in 2015, propelled him to mainstream success and established him as a force to be reckoned with in the rap scene. Since then, he has continued to push artistic boundaries with albums like "Astroworld" and "Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight," earning him numerous awards and accolades. Beyond his music, Travis Scott is also known for his collaborations with fashion brands, his philanthropic endeavors, and his ability to create immersive live experiences for his fans. With his innovative approach to music and unwavering dedication to his craft, Travis Scott has solidified his position as one of the most influential and exciting figures in contemporary hip-hop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today I'm talking with Dr. Scott Griffiths. Scott is a senior lecturer in the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne. He leads the Physical Appearance Research Team, a multidisciplinary group of researchers and health professionals who investigate body image, appearance related stigmas and discrimination, appearance enhancing substances, appearance enhancement and appearance related psychological disorders such as eating disorders and body dysmorphic disorder.I wanted to talk to Scott about the phenomenon of muscle dysmorphia, a disorder that sits somewhere between a body dysmorphic disorder and an eating disorder that tends to impact cis boys and men. It's sometimes characterised as the male anorexia. Of course cis boys and men get anorexia too, but muscle dysmorphia is a bit different. It's sometimes known as Bigorexia. It's when an individual doesn't believe that they're big enough or sufficiently muscular to the point that they devote their lives to gains and progress in the gym. They might follow extremely strict diets which prioritise protein and cut out a lot of carbohydrates, and in some cases men can turn to using anabolic steroids, which have some really serious long-term effects for both physical and mental health as you'll hear us talking about. A lot of Scott's research is about the ways that social media, and particularly TikTok feeds people who are vulnerable to eating disorders or muscle dysmorphia, more and more content that upholds unrealistic body and image based ideals, and actually fuels eating disorders.It's really interesting research to hear about, but as a parent and as someone who works with eating disorders, it's really terrifying.Find out more about Scott's work here.Follow his work on Twitter here.Follow Laura on Instagram here.Subscribe to my newsletter here.Here's the transcript in full:Scott: When you're on your feed and TikTok is delivering videos for you to consume, all of the reference points you are getting from content that it's popular and influential and that people are responding to it. It's so divorced from reality that you've got a greater pool of people comparing and feeling poorly about themselves and now investing in the general necessity of looking better.INTROLaura: Hey, and welcome to Can I Have Another Snack? I'm Laura Thomas, an anti-diet, registered nutritionist, and author of the Can I Have Another Snack newsletter. We're having conversations about how we nourish ourselves and our kids in all senses of the word in the hellscape that is diet culture.Today I'm talking with Dr. Scott Griffiths. Scott is a senior lecturer in the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne. He leads the Physical Appearance Research Team, a multidisciplinary group of researchers and health professionals who investigate body image, appearance related stigmas and discrimination, appearance enhancing substances, appearance enhancement and appearance related psychological disorders such as eating disorders and body dysmorphic disorder.I wanted to talk to Scott about the phenomenon of muscle dysmorphia, a disorder that sits somewhere between a body dysmorphic disorder and an eating disorder that tends to impact cis boys and men. It's sometimes characterized as the male anorexia, which of course cis boys and men get anorexia too. But muscle dysmorphia is a bit different. It's sometimes known as bigorexia. It's when an individual doesn't believe that they're big enough or sufficiently muscular to the point that they devote their lives to gains and progress in the gym. They might follow extremely strict diets which prioritize protein and cut out a lot of carbohydrates. And in some cases men can turn to using anabolic steroids, which have some really serious long-term effects for both physical and mental health as you'll hear us talking about. A lot of Scott's research is about the ways that social media, and particularly TikTok feeds people who are vulnerable to eating disorders or muscle dysmorphia, more and more content that upholds unrealistic body and image based ideals and actually fuels eating disorders.It's really interesting research to hear about, but as a parent and as someone who works with eating disorders, it's. Really terrifying. So you'll notice that this episode has a slightly different vibe to some of the other episodes this season. I'm asking Scott more about his research on muscle dysmorphia rather than his, you know, personal story. And I'm curious to hear what you think of this episode and get some feedback from you as to whether you'd like more interviews with academics, researchers and practitioners with a particular kind of expertise or on a particular topic like this, in addition to hearing people's lived experience. So if you want, you can drop me a comment over on Substack underneath this episode, um, which you can find at laurathomas.substack.com.And while I have you here, just a reminder that Can I Have Another Snack? is entirely listener and reader supported, but in order to be able to cover the costs of admin and people and pay guests and contributors. A lot of my time is devoted to other work outside of the newsletter. That means I have less time to bring deeply researched essays as well as thoughtful interviews here on the podcast. I'd love to be able to devote most of my time to the work and the community that we're building here, but that means I need a lot more of you to consider becoming a paid subscriber. I also know that that's a big ask right now. So for the month of March, I'm running a one off spring sale on Can I Have another Snack subscriptions. They are 20% off, so for this month only, if you subscribe, you'll pay four pounds a month or 40 pounds for the year instead of five pounds a month or 50 pounds for the year, which is a bargain. I'm not going to be running this good a deal for the rest of the year, so now is the time to cash in. If you've been sitting on the fence it's time to make a move. I'll put a subscription link in the show notes. You can also gift a subscription to a friend or family member or a coworker and get that same deal. And remember that if you want to sign up with some pals or like your NCT group from five years ago, you always get 20% off of group subscriptions. So I will also link to group subscriptions in the show notes.Okay, team, I appreciate your support and hopefully one day we can make this work more sustainable, so I can give up my side hustles. Thank you so much for being here. Here is my interview with Scott Griffiths.MAIN EPISODELaura: All right, Scott, I would love it if you could start by telling us a little bit about how you got interested in studying appearance related psychological disorders like body dysmorphic disorder and eating disorders.Scott: When I was a teenager, I worked at a cinema and someone who worked there who was kind of a friend of mine, a young woman, she had anorexia, and I remember at the time being completely mystified by her ailment and predicament. And it's probably quite stigmatizing in retrospect because it seemed to me as a, you know, kind of a fool, that the solution to her problem was readily at hand.Like she was really thin and, and just needed to eat. And that kind of set my thinking in motion about the really complex feelings and beliefs that folks can have about their body and their eating, et cetera. And it was when I was in undergraduate doing a, a Bachelor of Psychology that I had a couple of friends, both young men who would say things to me that would remind me of that young woman who had anorexia in the cinema and things they would say were similar, but the manifestations of them were different. The kinds of eating and, and training and the bodies that they wanted for themselves were all different, but it's core, it seemed like the same kind of issue and disorder. So I think that was what got me interested. And it's developed a lot since then.Laura: Yeah, it's so interesting. I think you know that I work with people with eating disorders and something I often hear from them is like, well, it just, how misunderstood that the disorder is, and from the outside, especially to anyone who knows nothing about eating disorders, it seems like, yeah, it's really simple just to eat more food.But I think you've been on your own learning journey with that and, and come through the other side and realized it's, it's a lot more complicated than that. These people would, you know, if, if it was just, just as easy as eating food, they would do it. But unfortunately that's, that's not the case.Sorry, that was a little tangent cuz I think you were touching on something that I know is really important to those with lived experience of eating disorders. And then kind of moving further along, it's really interesting that you saw the parallels between anorexia nervosa and then what I think you would probably characterize as body dysmorphic disorder. Which is the same but different. And maybe the same is too much of a stretch. But it's similar, but also different. So I'm wondering for people who are unfamiliar with body dysmorphic disorder, can you tell us what exactly it is and maybe some of the, the des describing more of the parallels between something like anorexia nervosa or what we would consider to be a more traditional in inverted commas eating disorder versus what we see in the BDD presentation.Scott: When I was talking with those, those friends, those young men when I was at university the disorder that would best capture what was going on for them is something we call muscle dysmorphia, which is a subtype of body dysmorphia disorder, which kind of sits alongside eating disorders. They are distinct, but they're often comorbid.They both have body image often as a central element. So body dysmorphic disorder, the cardinal symptom is you believing there is a defect in your appearance. It can be completely imaginary or it can be real, but the severity of it in your head is almost always much more severe than it is in actual objective reality.And in the context of muscle dysmorphia, which many people, including myself, see more as an eating disorder than body dysmorphic disorder. The defect in appearance is guys, some girls, but often guys who objectively are, are very large and muscular, but when they look in the mirror, what they see reflected back to them is someone who is scrawny, out of shape or overweight.Just a big difference to how they actually are not at all dissimilar to anorexia where we have people, often young women predominantly, but also some men who look in the mirror and see someone reflected back to them who is very different to how they actually look.Laura: It's interesting that you said that you characterize muscle dysmorphic disorder as more similar to an eating disorder than to true body dysmorphic disorder, and I'm curious to hear a little bit more about why you feel like it fits more into that category.Scott: Yeah. To be fair, when people debate about whether muscle dysmorphia ought to be a body dysmorphic disorder as it currently is classified or an eating disorder, it feels a little bit like a semantic exercise.Laura: Absolutely.Scott: The real push and importance in research as far as I'm concerned, is trying to understand both disorders and develop better treatments and trying to figure out which, which category where there's so much overlap between these two categories already, it belongs to, feels a little like a moot point, but to, to answer the question. For me, it's because when you look at the central pathology that motivates folks with muscle dysmorphia, the low self-esteem, especially around appearance, the kinds of things they believe with respect to why they have to look a certain way in order to have worth and be loved.The attention given to dieting and to exercise and the inability to tolerate deviations from that, the need to constantly progress, the perfectionism, it's all there. It all feels like different sides of the same coin. And when I speak to people, including yourself and your audience, it feels to me like explaining away muscle dysmorphia as one manifestation of an eating disorder, kind of like anorexia, or the reverse of it is just an easy way to see how it is that eating disorders are so much more than just thinness, that they can manifest in all sorts of different ways depending on the types of bodies that people feel compelled to achieve for themselves.Laura: Yeah. Oh, that's so interesting. And I'm, I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about sort of, you know, maybe not with going with, without going into tons and tons of detail that might be upsetting to hear, but just tell us a little bit about, a bit more about you know, how would you know if someone had muscle dysmorphic disorder? You know, I'm thinking about parents who, you know, what are the signs and symptoms that someone might want to look out for that are sort of red flags, if you will.Scott: Got you. So, when you're trying to identify red flags, some muscle dysmorphia, a useful starting point is to recognize that almost everything that is common in muscle dysmorphia can exist and be benign. So you can train five, six days a week every day of the week if you want. And it's completely fine, as long as it's working for you.You can diet right, and it can be fine. Not a psychological disorder if it's working for you. It's not encouraging people to go and do it, but it's not a psychological disorder to do it in muscle dysmorphia. It's when there is a preoccupation and that preoccupation is causing impairment. So it could be that your training and dieting have become so strict that when you feel that your training or dieting are about to be compromised in some way, maybe there's an important social occasion that you have to attend, and it means that you don't get to stick to your diet or go to train or something unexpected comes up, and you have to prioritize that other important unexpected thing.If that brings you anxiety and guilt makes you angry at yourself, then you are in the territory of massive dysmorphia as opposed to just behaviors that are otherwise benign with respect to disorder.Laura: Yeah, so you're just highlighting here that you know, the behaviors in and of themselves are not pathological. You know, plenty of people go to the gym, you know, they are super careful with their diet. Where it runs into kind of hot water is when, you know, that becomes almost like all encompassing.It takes over your life. It doesn't allow for any flexibility. It becomes very rigid. You can't go to your mates birthday party or just like, go pick up a pizza after work because it's a mess. So that flexibility in eating, that flexibility in your social life, but also I suppose kind of the feelings of guilt, remorse, stress, that might come up if you do do those things.Scott: That's right. And the deteriorations tend to come from many places. They don't just come from one. So maybe you find that on the days where you have to rest where you can't be in gym training, cuz you've gotta have a couple of rest days to recover, you don't feel so good on those days. Maybe every time you don't progress in the gym, so you're not adding on to the weight, you're not getting stronger, it makes you feel like rubbish.Whereas when you first started out, maybe all of those things made you feel really good. Maybe your relationships are starting to suffer. Maybe your partner has had four or five conversations with you now about how they don't like how it's so challenging to go out to a restaurant, et cetera, etc.There's going to be no one thing, but the things tend to all come. Together. And what's challenging as you would well know in the eating disorder space is that the person who is in the thick of it is sometimes not the best judge of how extreme and rigid what they are doing is, and not uncommon at all to have folks who've come out the other end of these disorders look back and say, oh man, I can't believe I didn't see just how crazy it was for me at that.Laura: And that's a really important point, and I'd like to come back and think a little bit about how particularly a parent might address this or raise their concerns with you know, maybe their teen who they know is becoming super fixated on the gym and really rigid around that.Maybe we could come back to that because I feel I still wanna characterize a little bit more of what might be going on for people with muscle dysmorphic disorder. And a big piece that I feel like we haven't talked about yet is the use of anabolic steroids.So yeah, could you tell us how that and maybe any other kind of diet aids and things fit into the picture of muscle dysmorphic disorder?Scott: Yeah, sure. So, if you wanted to be thin and skinny and you were going to abuse drugs to get there, you might use laxatives and diuretics. If you wanna be big and muscular the drug that will typically be abused is anabolic steroids. So the most basic anabolic steroid is just a synthetic form of testosterone, the sex differentiating hormone that men tend to have more of than women, and it helps to synthesize muscle. So if you wanna be bigger muscular, if you've been influenced by, you know, famous fitness influencers, many of whom are using steroids, it may be something you're tempted to turn to and unlike with laxatives and diuretics, where if you take them, they don't have any substantive impact on the calories that you absorb (another way of saying they don't work very well). anabolic steroids, unfortunately do work very well. It's a bit of a public relations disaster, really.Laura: Can I just put a tiny caveat that for people who abuse laxatives and diuretics, in terms of, I just wanna highlight that they are still really dangerous and they can cause electrolyte imbalances. Just because I know people with eating disorders will listen to this podcast and I've worked with eating disorders for long enough to know that they will hear that and think, oh, okay, that means they're safeSo, I just want to highlight that it can cause problems in terms of your intestines. There can be problems with, I'm forgetting the terminology now, but basically twisting your intestines because it just messes with your digestion so much.I'm thinking about laxatives here, but also it can cause dangerously low electrolyte levels in the body, which can cause fits and seizures. So they're not benign, and I don't want anyone to walk away with the message that they're benign. But that's aside from what you're talking about, which is that yeah, you know that people with muscle dysmorphic disorder are more likely to abuse steroids.So, yeah. Could I pass it back to you now?Scott: Of course, and steroids on top of being effective, which makes them very attractive in terms of, you know, as a temptation they also have rather significant health consequences, especially in the long term. But why I bring up the fact that they are effective for building muscle into such a significant degree that you have outfits like the International Olympics Committee who test for doping.The use of things like steroids in sports is because once you're on them, you will experience the progress that you've been craving and to a very significant degree. So folks will get on them, they will put on a lot of muscle, they might even lose some body fat at the same time, which is incredibly challenging to do if you are not on these substances.And of course, they feel. for a time, but they still have the core beliefs and attitudes and thinking so that high doesn't last for very long. But now not only are they not satisfied with their current size often, but to drop in size by coming off would trigger the kinds of intense feelings and distorted thinking that you also see when folks with anorexia are going through recovery and are, you know, weight restoring.So it's incredibly challenging. And what ends up happening is that you have to then treat both the muscle dysmorphia, which is very much a psychological disorder, and the anabolic steroids and their effects, which is an endocrine impactor. And dealing with these in combos is challenging.Laura: And, I was just wondering if you could talk a little to the, the longer term side effects of of the steroid use.Scott: Sure. So the longer term side effects tend to focus on increased mortality and morbidity from, from cardiovascular events, heart attacks, enlarged hearts. The endocrine effects focus predominantly on the capacity of your endocrine system to resume a normal amount of testosterone production endogenously, so from within, subsequent to stopping steroid use.Because when you flood your system with anabolic steroids or synthetic testosterone, the reason men's testicles shrink is because most of the function of testicles is to make testosterone. So the body says, oh, I'm full of testosterone. Now I'm not gonna make any more myself. But when you doing the injections of the tablets and you don't have that testosterone coming in, the body has to restart that system from scratch. And as we've learned, it is not very reliable at doing that. And it is very unpredictable how well that is gonna happen. And there's many, many, many instances of men as young as 23, 24, who will be on testosterone replacement therapy for their entire life, and who have their fertility are greatly compromised now because their bodies have not resumed normal testosterone production.Laura: Yeah. What you're describing is really similar to what happens when once this women are taking the contraceptive pill and then they come off of it and they might not restart their period for five or six months after, hopefully all going well. But what you're talking about, I think in muscle dysmorphic disorder, where there's an abuse of these drugs that those, as I understand it, the doses are much higher than a typical physiological dose.And so the impact, the effect is much, much greater and could last a lot longer, you know, if function is ever fully regained.Scott: Yeah. To give you some context, a beginner's of anabolic steroids, a beginner steroid cycle, if you will, might prescribe something like 500 milligrams of testosterone enate, a really commonly available steroid. I'd wager a bet that it's most widely available in the UK, certainly is in Australia. That beginner's dose is already five times higher than the maximum that a healthy male would produce on their own. And that much testosterone, flooding a system is beyond the bounds of what the human body is used to dealing with. Laura: Yeah. And, and you mentioned you know, the UK context there and there were headlines a couple of years ago that suggested that first of all, that predominantly steroid users in the UK were were using steroids as an appearance or an aesthetic related, you know, for aesthetic reasons rather than for purely like bodybuilding lifting reasons.Although I, I can imagine those things get kind of murky to tease apart and. At that time, I think this was about 2018 the, the reports were that there were about a million steroid users in the UK for, you know, for aesthetic reasons. Is that an accurate reflection? Do you know? Like, is that likely an underestimation, an overestimation, or do we have any, any real sense of what's going on?Scott: I'd say there's a great chance that's an underestimate. Steroid use is incredibly stigmatized. It's heavily criminalized and users are extremely loath to admit even to health professionals that they use anabolic steroids. And you see these schisms even in fitness communities online. So Instagram, TikTok, where there's this constant accusations that someone is using steroids or is natural or bloody for short. So, it's all very underground and it means that whenever you do get an, an estimate based on data that is credible. So in Australia that would be visits to needle and syringe programs as one example, to get injecting equipment for steroids. You can be almost certain that that's just a fraction of what's actually going on out there. And all the evidence we have, at least in Australia suggests that anabolic steroid use is increasing in prevalence and it's gone from something that used to be the purview of just athletes through to professional weightlifters to now those only being a minority. It's very much an aesthetics driven thing.Laura: So tell us what we know about who Muscle Dysmorphic Disorder impacts. You've alluded to that it's mostly cis men. But can you elaborate any further on that?Scott: Sure. So itt's mostly cis men because cis men are the largest pool who would want to be muscular. But you see certain subpopulations of men who are more vulnerable. Gay men are more vulnerable to muscle dysmorphia and to using anabolic steroids because of the heightened appearance pressures in that space. Younger men. So it does tend to be something that has its onset in younger years similar to anorexia.Laura: Sorry, I was gonna ask you, we know kind of what age do boys start becoming vulnerable? Because we know in anorexia it can be as young as like eight or nine sometimes, and that age is getting younger and younger.Scott: Yeah. And you see the same thing in muscle dysmorphia. So the first vulnerability factors can appear there. Studies have been done with action figurines and you have young boys asked which one do they prefer more? And they're able to, to, they have their preferences in line with what you'd expect, and they'll expect a preference for their own bodies to look certain ways, as you'd expect, given media messaging.So the vulnerability factors are there. In terms of muscle dysmorphia on setting tends to take quite a while. You'd be familiar. It's not the case that you hear a couple of messages, you get a mean comment about your appearance, and then suddenly you have it . It's years of internalizing and a bunch of factors that come along, and then it might strike in your teens or your early adulthood.And we see that in muscle dysmorphia too. Steroids often come into the piece a little later, so early adulthood to mid, and it's because they're expensive and they're hard to access.Laura: Yeah. You need to be kind of savvy also. Yeah. I can imagine kids who have figured out the whole cryptocurrency thing. I'm sure that they, you know, would get in there if they could, if they had the means. So you're saying gay men are more at risk. What, are there any other sort of subpopulations that you know, you're particularly worried about?Scott: Men who are in sports for which body weight or some aesthetic element around body weight is a key part. So not uncommon to have guys with muscle dysmorphia say that a lot of some of these thoughts came about because they had to weigh in for their sports. Maybe they were, they were boxes or fighters, something like that. So it just primed them to be in the space of being anxious about the number on the scale and how their fitness was progressing. Things like that.Laura: Do we know anything about racialized groups and, and who might be most at risk?Scott: There is some evidence though, it's not great in terms of its quality as of yet, that folks in predominantly white countries who are not white themselves may be at greater risk for both muscle dysmorphia and steroid use. Data we produced in Australia that was specific to gay bisexual men of, of various races suggested for example, that, you know, if you were an Asian gay man in Australia, that you might be more likely to use anabolic steroids and to succumb to muscle dysmorphia.And in talking with Asian gay men in interviews in qualitative research, part of it is because, you know, if you are an Asian gay man in Australia, then you are often stereotyped as being more feminine. You're not able to be part of the masc for masc subculture, which is still quite dominant and exclusionary and anabolic steroids are a way to compensate for those other aspects of your appearance that are diminishing your masculine capital. You can see something similar happen for men who are shorter. If you go to spaces online where men are complaining about being short to other men, they'll often see, just hit the gym, just get jacked. It's a way to compensate for those other elements that are not helping you to embody that masculine archetypal, conventionally attractive male.Laura: Hmm. Okay. A while back, you talked about pressures from the media. And that has, you know historically, particularly in anorexia research, been held up as a huge antecedent, I suppose, to eating disorder precipitation, but now there's this whole other layer of social media on top of things. How does, and I'm thinking about the fact that young people in particular hang out on TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and maybe less Facebook these days I don't know. I don't go on Facebook. So what do we know about the influence that social media is having on aesthetic and appearance based pressures?Scott: Social media makes people more vulnerable to eating disorders, including muscle dysmorphia. And if you are vulnerable, it can make the transition to having one of these disorders shorter. It can intensify it. And I think it can also assist in maintaining them for longer as well. So the reason why media messaging can be so problematic and damaging in terms of vulnerability for and experiencing eating disorders is because you end up with all these idealized reference points and what social media does is expands that limitlessly so that when you're on your feed and TikTok is delivering videos for you to consume, all of the reference points you are getting from content that is popular and influential and that people are responding to. It's so divorced from reality that you've got a greater pool of people comparing and feeling poorly about themselves and now investing in the general necessity of looking better.Laura: So this is an area that you've been researching. Am I right?Scott: Yeah, that's right.Laura: Can you tell us a little bit more about, you know, specific studies or experiments that you've done, that you're excited to share a bit more about?Scott: So, you know, studies of social media, including of TikTok, generally what they will do is have an experiment and you'll show people some images or videos from social media platforms that you're worried about and see how people respond. Or you have people answer a survey question that will amount to, how often do you use, say, TikTok, Instagram, and you correlate that with some measure like how you feel about your body.And that's all well and fine. But where the real explanatory power is, in my mind, is in big data and getting access into exactly what people are seeing and viewing so you can map their social media experience. So what we've been able to do is to take a group of people with eating disorders and a group of people who, we call it our healthy controls, that don't have eating disorders. And see their entire TikTok algorithm from the day they installed it to the day we requested the data. And that means we can track exactly every video that's being delivered to them, the comments, the likes, all with their consent, I'll just say, of course not being done without that. And we can see what is happening.What it means is we can show things like if you are someone with an eating disorder, your TikTok algorithm that decides what videos you see every time you log in is 50% more likely to deliver you an appearance oriented video for each and every video that you see compared to someone without an eating disorder.And the amount of videos that these folks are seeing, the average is around 2000 a month. So if you are someone in weekly therapy for an eating disorder, If you're a clinician and you have someone who you'reLaura: Oh my God. I'm just sitting here thinking about like some of my clients. I'm like,Scott: That's 500 videos on average that they are seeing between each session. And when we run studies to compliment these on new phones with fresh TikTok accounts that we manage, it only takes three minutes to get an appearance oriented video.You get 17 in the first 20 minutes. So it's not that people are seeking this content out. It happens anyway. And when we look at the rate of liking that folks with eating disorders have for this content versus folks without. It's not that the folks with eating disorders are looking for this content, they're liking it at the same rate because what's algorithm is doing is not taking what you like to determine what you want to see. They're interested in engagement, whether it's Facebook or, or Instagram or TikTok. It's what keeps you looking and what keeps you looking isn't just what makes you happy. It's what makes you anxious or what makes you upset. It's what makes you mad. And if you are someone who is really unhappy or worried about the way you look, it knows which videos will make you look more. And that's exactly what happens. And you can see over time how the algorithm becomes more echo chambery as people get sucked into the vortex of this content.Laura: I think the scariest part for me both as someone who works with eating disorders and as a parent, like my child is obviously not on social media right now, but will be one day I'm sure, is the fact that they know, like the social media companies know exactly what they're doing because wasn't it a couple of years ago, but there was a whistleblower at meta. Who said who, who said, we have all of this information that shows that our algorithms are making body image and eating disorders worse, and yet they're not doing anything about it.Scott: Yeah. And then they downplayed and discredited their own data generated by the star researchers they themselves hired which is absurd. And the reason that they don't wanna do anything about it is because the..Laura: It's capitalism.Sorry, go. Scott: No, you, you're exactly right. The money is made from engagement. And I think the faint that the social media companies do is to imply that what they're doing is giving people what they want, community connectedness. And when it comes to advertising that they're connecting people with the products that they want to buy. And through being able to like things, you can get the sense that, oh, the social media companies are just sitting back and people are doing what they want in there.They're getting what they want, but certainly, the controls that you think you have over what your algorithm, especially on TikTok is sending you is less. And it's about engagement. And engagement doesn't care how you feel, if it's positive or negative, it just cares that you spent the time. Whatever it takes to get you to do more time is what it is going to send you. It's worth noting also that when you look at the proportion of appearance honored content that your algorithm sends you, so how big this echo chamber is, that correlates strongly with the eating disorder symptoms. So the more your algorithm becomes, you know, polluted by appearance, honored content, the worse the eating disorder becomes in tandem. And why wouldn't it?Laura: I have a question, and you might not be able to answer this. One of my clients uses the term recovery porn in eating disorder recovery, which are all of these images of usually women who claim to be in recovery or recovered. Have you looked at the impact that these recovery accounts have on eating disorder recovery?Scott: I've not looked at that specifically, but I'm well aware of the phenomenon your client has described. And unfortunately, lots of social media phenomena and hashtags, like for example eating disorder recovery, body positivity is another good example.Laura: Yeah.Scott: They are not clear paragons, they're not at all as clearly useful as we would like them to be if someone went searching for them. You go looking for ed recovery, you might find an account that is extremely thoughtful in the way that that content is presented right alongside content that is clearly not being very helpful. Just like with body positivity, you might get someone who hearkens back to the, the fat acceptance movement, who's really preaching the fighting the good flight right next to someone who is perhaps well-meaning, but still thin, skinny, and they're pinching a tiny little roll of fat and going body positivity, which as I can tell from your reaction is missing the point.Laura: Yeah. Okay. Maybe, maybe something for a future research agenda then, Scott.Scott: Absolutely. It's a great suggestion.Laura: I'm curious to, because, and I think what it comes, what it comes back to you articulated it there really well. I think something that I tried to unpack with my clients, you know, is thinking about, okay, well, is this image, they might have the message on point, right? But if there's an image that is still highly focused on aesthetics, it's highly focused on their body and, you know, showing off their body in a particular way, then that really completely undermines the message that they might have been sending with the best of intention.So just a little interesting aside, but you know, you've talked about how social media, you know, there might be some benefits to social media. I think there's definitely some work that has shown that coming out of the center of appearance research, but it's murkier and less clearly defined than, than maybe we would like to think.So you painted this really dark picture of social media and, and how it contributes to muscle dysmorphic disorder. So I'm wondering what we can do both from maybe a clinical perspective, or maybe a public health perspective as well as maybe a parenting perspective to protect our kids from internalizing these messages because they're gonna be exposed to them. Right. We know that for sure. So how do we buffer the impact, both maybe at the broader public health level, because this is a public health issue clearly, but also maybe in our own parenting in our own homes. Scott: Yeah. And okay, you're absolutely right. You cannot start from a base of let's not use social media altogether. That's, that's the arena. That's where youth culture is driven in, telling young people not to use it is just not practical. So they're going to use it. Encouraging your child to be a critical consumer of media generally, including on social media, is really useful.I think if you feel confident enough to talk about it, explaining to them that what they see is delivered to them by algorithms can be useful. That's something we're exploring in our own research where we want young people to have a better understanding that what they're seeing in their feed is not a one-to-one reflection of reality to the world as it actually is.And that's beyond the, you know, manipulation of photos and self portrayals that go on, but like the algorithm just feeding you with whatever activates your emotions. Part of that is this tool we're developing that can visualize your algorithm for you so that you can know and compare it to others just how biased it's become. And this can be for clinicians too, because if you have a client walk in the door, you need to know if 70% of their feed is appearance oriented, which is not a number I picked out of thin air. That's an actual number from clients we had with anorexia nervosa. And then you can have a productive conversation with that person around, okay, your algorithm is not only not reflective of reality, it's doing you harm and this is how we can work to remediate it.Laura: I would definitely, like sign me up for that tool. I will test it for you. Whatever you need me to do.Scott: Lovely.Laura: So, so yeah, having conversations that, you know, that there's obviously, the images themselves have been highly altered, stylized, potentially photoshopped, all kinds of different things. But then there's this whole machinery and infrastructure behind that feeding you more and more and more of these idealized images.Scott: Yeah, that's it. And you know, when social media, the way we use it, a lot of the time, like a lot of the time when people are using TikTok, people's guards are down. It's incidental. It's minutes in bed when you first wake up, it's bed when you might be trying to go to sleep. It's when you're on a bus, it's when you're bored, it's when you're tired.It's not active consumption of content. And before you know it, you can have scrolled through or mindlessly watched tens and tens of videos that have appearance oriented content and, just like with how people think that advertising isn't working on them, but the reason that so much money is pumped into it is because it does have cumulative accumulative impacts on, on purchasing decisions. The same thing happens with social media, so it's about getting people to recognize that and to try to minimize what's happening in those spaces because it all adds up.Laura: You know, you said kind of towards the top of the interview that people who are deep in their eating disorder, whether it's anorexia, whether it's muscle dysmorphic disorder, bulimia, orthorexia, whatever form that takes, they are, you know, the least clear in what's going on, right? They're the least easily able to see what's going on. They are definitely aware that there's a problem, but they might not be able to identify exactly what that is. So, with that in mind, I'm wondering for, for parents particularly of teen boys, tweens and teens, it sounds like are both vulnerable and kind of heading into adolescence.If a parent notices more protein powders coming into the house, more you know, concerns about lean protein and less carbohydrates on the plate and more time working out or conversations about being fit, about being healthy, and they're, they're noticing that, that's becoming increasingly rigid and perfectionistic. How might a parent approach this, do you think? Scott: It's a very common question that has never had an answer come easy to me, as I'm sure it wouldn't for many parents because teenage boys are notoriously challenging to talk to and get to open up to, especially about these,Laura: Yeah, but you're a psychologist so you ,Scott: So I'm obliged to have an answer and I I have you. So I think the way we approach folks who we think have muscle dysmorphia, but who are perhaps reluctant to talk about it, is to emphasize those parts of their training and their dieting that aren't working for them. We don't say, “Is it making you sad or anxious?” and, “what's not working for you?” because often whether it's a young boy, a teen, a young adult, they're just thinking about progress. They wanna progress. It's, I want my lifts to get stronger, my body to get better, etc. And the things that we think of as the symptoms of the disorder, the things that we're worried about, they're not worried about them per se. They're worried about their progress. And it's those things on the side that are making it hard, right? So we frame it as, okay. What's, what's getting in the way of you being able to train and diet and be like this and, and that maybe it's, ah, you know, I couldn't, I couldn't train today. I had to go and do this.It's like, oh, okay. So like, how did it make you feel? It's like, you can try to get them to see that it's the rigidity that is being more unhelpful than helpful. We deliberately keep it above the level of feelings for a while until that is more approachable. Often with our young clients, we'll just pitch it as, look we don't want to change your training and your dieting. We're not gonna tell you not to go to the gym. We just want you to be in a space where you can get back to making the progress that you wanna make. Then you've got your foot in the door and you go from thereLaura: You're getting them on side. You're telling them I'm on your team. Yeah.Scott: Yeah. Because whilst you can say the term body image to most young women and they intuitively know what you're thinking about, if I try to say, “are you worried about your body image?” to a young man, even if I know they are, it's so super clear as day, a lot of the time they'll say no.Laura: Yeah,Scott: Like straight up, they'll say no to you. Because it's just not the language that they speakLaura: Yeah, yeah. But if you can talk to them in terms of gains and what's getting in the way of theirScott: What's getting in the way? You know, you're not talking about feelings per se. That's just the best way I can describe it. It's a very tactful and challenging spot to be in, I think.Laura: Yeah. I mean, my hope is that I never have to broach this conversation with my kid, but fuck parenting is hard, man.Scott: Yeah, I certainly empathize.Laura: And I really hope you don't say CBT right now, but what do we know about treatment? What is available to help young people, older people, whoever is impacted by muscle dysmorphia to help them recover?Scott: The evidence-based for effective treatment for muscle dysmorphia is extremely limited. It's nowhere near what we have for the other eating disorders. There is nothing in the way of an RCT or anything like that. I have a PhD student now who is running the first manualised treatment for muscle dysmorphia, so we'll see how that turns out.Generally speaking, the approaches that work for eating disorders will also work for muscle dysmorphia, in my opinion, because again, the core maintaining factors of the disorder and precipitating factors are very, very similar. And what has been encouraging as a first port of call, the major eating disorder charities that run helplines, so certainly the Butterfly Foundation in Australia perhaps BEAT over in the UK, they are increasingly cognizant of muscle dysmorphia and the helpline staff are better equipped to, to talk about it, which is perfect.Laura: I noticed the other day that there's even an NHS page, which, you know, you and I spoke a couple of years ago for Don't Salt My Game, and I'm pretty sure it didn't exist even then. So there is certainly more recognition and awareness, but it sounds like people are more equipped to have these conversations, certainly in the eating disorder space.I worry more about kind of general practice in terms of medicine because there's even and, and don't get, this is not GP bashing . We all know how much pressure GPs are under, but there is a lack of awareness even about more traditional eating disorders in that space. So yeah, I reckon BEAT would be probably the best first port of call there.But in terms of treatment, it sounds like we don't exactly know yet. Your sense is that probably some of the modalities that we use for other eating disorders are probably gonna be successful because of, you know, the same underlying maintaining and precipitating factors. But I guess we need to wait for your student to do their research before we have more clear answers on that.Scott: Yeah. But even then for the really convincing answer that yes, you can confidently send someone for this treatment and there's a great chance they get better years and years away from that. But what I find promising is in talking to eating disorder clinicians, in training them when it comes to muscle dysmorphia, it's not a case of, oh, how am I gonna do this?It's, oh wow. There's all the parallels are all there, which is great because it means that the tools are there, it's just a matter of education both on the part of the clinician and on on people and young men so that they know they can go and seek help and that help will be there to meet them.Laura: Absolutely. And I just wanna go back to the TikTok algorithm thing, which is super disturbing to me, but, but just to kind of close out, I wonder, you know, from your perspective as a researcher, what do we need to be doing both in terms of a research agenda, but maybe also like a public health policy agenda in terms of tackling some of these, like really problematic systems, I suppose, that young people are up against. I don't know if that question makes sense, but like, where do we go from here? What do we do with this?Scott: No, I've thought about this. There's the organizations I'm working with in Singapore, we've been talking about that at length and the broader conversation that needs to be had moving back from TikTok to algorithms and data generally is we need greater oversight and control of how our data is used to deliver us content of all kinds.Because people cannot bat an eyelid when they think of, alright, I wanna clean my house and I'm on Instagram and I got an ad for a cleaning product, cool. And in your ideal world, advertising connects you seamlessly to the things that can make your life easier. What you don't want is for an algorithm to see and know that a young person has been looking at a lot of videos that are around weight loss and now a targeted ad comes up for a weight loss supplement, cause that is how that data gets used also.And we need tools, I think like the one we're developing so that people can see what their algorithms are sending that. You should know. You should know if your algorithm is sending you three times more toxic masculinity content than someone else, if it's sending you more eating disorder content, if it's sending you more plastic surgery content.Because the first step in a battle is knowing what your algorithms are sending to you. And this issue only becomes more important because let's say you or I wanted to find out something factual, we go to Google.Gen Z uses things like TikTok for search. 40% of Gen Z prefers to use TikTok than Google for search, which means you are down the rabbit hole of the algorithm from day dot.So you need to know, but of course that information's never released to you. So it's pushing back against the opaqueness of the data that we provide and how that data is used to send us content because it's not in our, in the service of our health and connectedness and community. Again, it's in the service of, of money, and, and engagement. So I think that's the broader conversation, right? The data collected from us is not benign.Laura: Oh, absolutely. Wow. All right, Scott, on that cherry note, um, at the end of every episode, my guest and I share something that they have been really excited about lately. Um, So something they've been snacking on, either literally or metaphorically. Do you have something picked out?Scott: I do. So in Singapore, my favorite breakfast to have is kaya toast with some rather runny under soft boiled eggs with soy sauce and white pepper. It's a very common breakfast here, and I love it. It's so, so satisfying. I had it this morning. I'll have it again tomorrow.Laura: Sorry. What is the kind of toast did you say?Scott: It's called Kaya Toast. So it's like thick cuts of toast with butter that's called kaya butter. And it's slightly sweet. I think it has a more fun and complex flavour than regular butter. And you can dip that in eggs that are loaded up with white pepper and soy sauce.Laura: Got it.Scott: I love it.Laura: Oh, it sounds like they have a really amazing food culture over there. Like I've heard from people that they have like, you know, lots of different kinds of street food and stuff like that, so yeah. That sounds awesome. Mine is also a food so it's, I mean, it's only February at the time of recording, but like all the Easter stuff is now showing up in the shops and so I demolished a pack of like Doisy and Dam, which is like a brand of chocolate over here, mini eggs the other day. And they were so good. Like, I don't know if you get mini eggs in Australia, they're like solid chocolate eggs with like a candy kind of coating shell around them. And they're like all different kind of pastel kind of colors. Like yellow and pink and green and like eastery kind of spring colors.Scott: It's possible we do, I can't recall 'em off the top of my head,Laura: You're gonna tell me like you don't like chocolate or something.Scott: No, no, no. I love chocolate I'm not sillyLaura: So I think you would like, I know you would recognise them. So maybe you don't have them. You don't have them over there. All right, Scott, it's been really great to chat to you again. Can you let everybody know where they can find out more about you, your research group, or any of your publications? I will link to the study, the TikTok studies if they're published yet? Scott: They're in the process of being, so the best place to follow along with the research my team does, including the TikTok work, is at my Twitter. It's @Scott1Griffiths. Or just search Google. Scott Griffiths, Scott Griffiths Body Image Research or something like that, and it will come up. That's the easiest way.Laura: I'll link to it so that it saves people the minefield of Googling stuff.Scott: Yeah.Laura: But yeah, so that's the best place to follow along on your Twitter and get updates about your research. I can't wait to read that. Well say. I can't wait to read it. I'm really depressed after talking to you about the state of social media.I mean, I was already bummed out about it, but this has just solidified that for me. So thank you for that. But otherwise, it was really great to talk to you and it's obviously really essential and important research that you're doing. So thank you for taking the time to share it with us.OUTROLaura Thomas: Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Can I Have Another Snack? If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to rate and review in your podcast player and head over to laurathomas.substack.com for the full transcript of this conversation, plus links we discussed in the episode and how you can find out more about this week's guest. While you're over there, consider signing up for either a free or paid subscription Can I Have Another Snack? newsletter, where I'm exploring topics around bodies, identity and appetite, especially as it relates to parenting. Also, it's totally cool if you're not a parent, you're welcome too. We're building a really awesome community of cool, creative and smart people who are committed to ending the tyranny of body shame and intergenerational transmission of disordered eating. Can I Have Another Snack? is hosted by me, Laura Thomas, edited by Joeli Kelly, our funky artwork is by Caitlin Preyser. And the music is by Jason Barkhouse. And lastly Fiona Bray keeps me on track and makes sure this episode gets out every week. This episode wouldn't be possible without your support. So thank you for being here and valuing my work and I'll catch you next week. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit laurathomas.substack.com/subscribe

Czar riffs about getting off to a happy start this new year, lays in some cheeky jokes on some social commentary, and gives a shoutout to the fans inspiring me to rise to the top!

In this extended episode, Anne chats with Landon Beach, the author of Narrator, and Scott Brick, the narrator of the novel, to find out what makes a great narrator-author relationship. If you're a writer, you know your characters, you understand their motivations and their goals. Creating a standout audiobook means trusting an actor to take the story to new heights. That's why we love audiobook narrators! They bring our characters to life with their voices, and they do it so well that we feel like we're coming along for the ride. Landon spent months learning everything he could about Sean Frost, the protagonist in "Narrator" He researched Sean's hobbies, his interests, his personality—even his favorite color! Many details of Sean that didn't make it into the novel became essential for developing his character in Scott's voice. We discuss how Landon's deep research into the character of Sean Frost led him to fully embody the role, and how Scott's experience as a voice actor informed his understanding of the subtleties that make this story great. We also talk about how you might be able to use your skills, interests, and background to add new textures & experience to your work as a voice actor. Transcript >> It's time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere Business Owner Strategies and Successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a BOSS, a VO BOSS! Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS Podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza. And today I am so excited to have two very special guests on the show. Welcome Landon Beach, author of the psychological thriller Narrator, which is available now wherever fine books are sold. Landon previously served as a naval officer and was an educator for 15 years before becoming a full-time writer with six titles, the latest being Narrator. Welcome Landon. Landon: Hey, Anne, thanks for having me on. Anne: We also have the actual narrator of the book Narrator and award-winning narrator who has more than 800 books to his name -- maybe there's more by now -- 600 Earphone Awards, a Voice Arts Legacy Award, a Grammy nomination. Welcome Scott Brick to the show. Scott: Hey, hey. It's so good to see you all. Anne: I know! You guys, thank you so much for joining me. I'm so excited to talk to you today about this book, which is amazing, BOSSes. So if you don't mind, I'd like to start with just a little bit of a preview, if you don't mind. I'm gonna play this and hopefully you guys will be able to hear it. Here we go. >> Why do authors have to kill off characters we love? I, Sean Frost, sit in my darkened recording booth and stare at the final paragraph of the novel I am narrating. Almost there. Finish it. Finish it right, finish it with a flourish. But I can't, not right now for I am crying. The main character, Nehemiah Stone, died two pages ago in a self-sacrifice that I had not seen coming. The book, The Paris Sanction, is author M. Scott Sal's fourth Nehemiah Stone thriller, which I have waited patiently for two years for the chance to narrate. Five years ago, Simon and Schuster thought I was the perfect narrator for the job when they contacted my agent, David Killian, whom I affectionately refer to as Killy. Anne: . I would love to play all of that, but I'm gonna leave the BOSSes in suspense . Wow. So you guys, for me, I mean, having read the book and listened to the audio book as well, it's amazing. And so I'd love to talk to you about the process. So let's start with you, Landon, after being an educator -- thank you very much for your service, thank you -- what was your thought process in becoming a writer? Landon: Well, I've always written ever since I was young, and I had a wonderful English teacher in high school who really encouraged me. And then it kind of went away for a while. As you said, I went off and served, but I don't think I ever lost the passion for reading or the itch. And so fast forward many years later, and Scott and I started working together and developed a friendship. And I had an idea that I had been tossing around in my mind for 20 years because I've always loved the entertainment industry. I love to watch movies and study film. And finally it came to me one day after Scott and I had finished I think three books together. I thought, I think I have a way to tell an entertainment comeback story that has never been done before with an audiobook narrator as the main character set within the framework of a psychological thriller. So that's where the idea came together. It wasn't until I started working with Scott and got to know a little bit about the audiobook world before I saw the opportunity that was in front of me. And then I shoved all other books to the side and just immersed myself in that world. And here we are today, . Anne: So I guess I should ask you then, how did you find Scott? So then Scott kind of contributed to the idea of the book for Narrator after you'd worked with him? Landon: He did not contribute to the idea at all. I shocked the heck out of him when I presented it to him. Anne: Oh, awesome! Landon: Yes. Now after that, yes, he was very helpful and had so much, you know, generous feedback. And the book, whatever success it may have, is in large part, of course, not only to his narration, but just his extreme kindness and professionalism, talking about the industry and seeing what worked and what wouldn't work in the book. And if we were gonna break some rules, to knowingly break them, so that it would be authentic and that the research would be impeccable. So that not only the common fan for 99% of them would not know where we're bending the rules or not. But it was important to us for maybe the 1%, the people that are in the industry that Scott and I both love, would appreciate the nods and winks and the Easter eggs. Anne: Oh, yeah. Landon: And just the fun of it that it hadn't been done before. So in terms of how I found Scott, I had placed in a few writing competitions for my first two novels, and I had written a third novel, and I was discussing with my wife how we might expand the business. And audiobooks were exploding back then and continue to explode now. But this is around 2019. And to make a long story short, I had been a fan of Scott's for years. Didn't know him at all. But I thought, well, if there's one person that I would love to narrate all of my books from now until eternity, it would be Scott. And I saw that he was an entrepreneur, and his ahead of the game, was already working with some indie authors at that point. And so I contacted his amazing production manager, Gina Smith, and reached out and asked if, you know, he'd be interested. And through a process that we went through, we ended up doing a three-book deal. And then it led to later books. So that's sort of how we got together on this. Anne: Well, I love the fact that you've continued to have Scott in your books. And so Scott, I imagine you had some collaboration after the surprise of finding out that he wrote a book about an audio book narrator. Talk about the process of collaboration with Landon. Scott: I will. I'll be happy to. But Landon, I just want you to know, thank you for the kind words, but you've only got 45, 50 minutes. I'll give you 50 more minutes to say good things about me. . It's very kind. Thank you. This was a marvelous surprise. Landon I got to know one another through letters, through emails, cards that we would exchange, and found out that we're both huge fans of Old Hollywood. I probably can't tell that I love old Hollywood, 'cause the books behind me. And at one point, I guess when he had this idea, he asked if he could maybe get some feedback. You know, essentially it was like an interview. He wanted to interview me about how audiobooks are made. And I remember him saying that he had this idea and very broad terms. Now, I wasn't really privy to what was going on in the story. I just told him about the process. And about six months later, he goes, oh, by the way, here you go. And I went, holy shit. Okay. Well, I guess he did. People say they're gonna do things all the time; it doesn't always happen. And then he asked me to read it ahead of time and just give him feedback. I mean, he was talking about like the rules that we break. You know, there's one thing about the audio book industry. It's very gender and ethnicity centric, right? If a black man writes a book, they're gonna hire a black man to narrate it. Same thing. People ask me why I work so much. I'm like, well, there's a lot of old white guys writing books. Right? And in the book at the very beginning is the Audie Awards. And Billy D. Williams has his memoir come out, and there's a woman who is nominated for best narrator of the year for having done that book. And I was like, hey, Landon, I'm sorry to tell you. But you know, they would hire a guy to do that. And , I just love the fact that the way that he addressed it was just talking about the elephant in the room. He said, you know, at one point Billy D. Williams says, you tell me that woman can't read my book? Are you kidding me? You know, and again, it just, address the issue and then move on. The collaboration, for lack of a better word, I was just primarily giving feedback like that as well. It's just that first interview. I remember days before the book was coming out, he emailed real quick and said, is it appropriate to say, I hit the record button? Is there an actual button that you hit in the studio? And I said, Well, no, not really. I mean, I'm not using hardware, I'm using software. So I have a shortcut. I hit the number 3 button on my keyboard. And he goes, But do you use that terminology? "I hit the record button." I said, No, I typically say I hit record. Okay, great. And that's what came about. And you know, they're small things, but Dan Musselman, who's one of my favorite people of all time, he gave me my career, basically. And he always said, you know, most books are a 100,000 words long. You could get 99,999 of them right. But if you pronounce one of them wrong, it will ruin the experience for the listener. And this is a similar thing, if you get the terminology wrong, it would take some of us right out of the experience. Anne: Absolutely. Well, absolutely. And I was just mentioning before when I was speaking in to Landon, how at home I felt with everything, everything was like, it was familiar to me. It was at home. Like, you grabbed a cup of tea for your throat, and you're at the award ceremony, and all of it just was so comfortable and just so wonderful and amazing. And I can't say enough good words about it, but I imagine that this was a little more collaborative than most audio books. Like Scott, talk a little bit about the process when you're hired to narrate an audio book, and how much interaction are you having with the author, or what does that look like? Scott: You know, it all depends on whether you're working directly with the author or through a publisher. Um, publishers really like to curate the relationship, for lack of a better word. They like to limit the amount that you really get to interact with the author. Then again, I have authors I've worked with for 20 years, and it's like, there's no way we're not gonna talk about it. You know, I'm like, okay, he's coming over to my house for a dinner. Am I not supposed to talk to him about his book? And if it's a Dune book, I've done all of those, I think 25 of them now. I call the author , and we go over all the pronunciations for the made up names, phrases, and whatnot. That's typically what will happen. I'll reach out to, you know, Nelson Demille. He puts in real people's names in the books that he writes. Because they've made charitable donations. Well, I wanna make sure that I'm, is it Carns or is it Kerns? They deserve to have their name said right. That's typically the way it works with an author. But when you work directly with an author like I've been blessed to do with Landon, he'll tell me, this thriller was inspired by this movie. He even sent me a copy of it on DVD. I'm blanking on it now. The Gene Hackman film. Why am I blanking? Landon: Night Moves. Scott: That's it. Exactly. So I watched that the night before, and it just helps get you into the mood. If anything else, the relationship that I've had, this working relationship with Landon, which is thankfully for me, become a true friendship, has informed my work on his books. It's nice to know when he sends me an email saying, you know, I got this character. I was inspired by this film, by this actress, by this actor -- it's really nice to know that kind of thing. Nobody listening will realize, oh yeah, that was Gene Hackman who inspired that character. Anne: Sure, sure. Scott: And yet, I know, and it makes it different for me and hopefully more layered and textured for the listener. Anne: So I guess my question would be is when you take on a character, right, you fully envelop that character. How do you prepare for that? And also, I'd like like to ask Landon, was it a surprise when Scott interpreted the character in the way that he did? Landon: So for this one, Anne, you read it ahead of time, Anne, which was wonderful of you to do that, because I wrote this in first person present tense. I felt that I had to know Sean Frost better than any character that I've ever written before. And I am not exaggerating here. I spent months working on Sean. I have 60 or so handwritten, two-sided loose leaf pieces of paper with notes about Sean Frost, his backstory, where he was raised, the toys that he played with when he was young. You know, millions of things that will never get into the book. And a lot of that was inspired by a book that had come out just recently, Character by Robert McKee. And it can be really intimidating to go through his books, but they're so worth it because the journey he takes you through in the -- he asks the hard questions. And so I told Scott this beforehand, I said, my biggest fear when the book was to come out was that someone would get to a place -- like you said, you know, if you get one word wrong, like he's talking about with Dan, is that someone would say, Sean Frost would never say that. Or Sean Frost would never do that. And that's scary and intimidating because you don't want something to take the reader or listener out of the experience. And so I felt comfortable after putting all that work in that I knew who he was, at least to start writing about him. And to add into the research before I say about, you know, Scott's interpretation of Sean, one thing that our relationship has developed far enough along where we're comfortable sending each other things and suggestions. And so this has a lot of pop cultural references, but it also has, I always have a soundtrack for all of my books, and it's, you know, songs that inspired me while I was writing. And if someone listened to all of those that say, how in the heck did you get Narrator out of all of those or the nonfiction books that I read? But there's something about it that I know as Scott, as a performer, as an actor, they're hungry for information. And let me see what I can do with this. And it's always on, you know, I always kinda say a volunteer basis -- he could use nothing that I give him, and we'd be completely fine. But because we're friends and we've had exchange of ideas, and in a lot of points in Narrator that made it better, it was the, let's let the best idea win here, no matter who came up with it. And so I was happy to, to go along with that. But I sent him an email for Narrator that was just massive, but it had every single pop cultural reference in Narrator. And there are points where, as you know, Sean acts them out in his mind and he's thinking about them. And so I thought, well, what if I sent those to Scott ahead of time? And so when he got to that part of the book, he could, he could look at that and work into the scene. And like, like he said, no one else would know that he watched Michael Douglas yelling to Sean Penn in The Game before he actually acted that out. But it keeps things fresh and, you know, energetic. And so that's what I would say about his performance is that, oh my gosh. I mean, just delighted. And I don't know a ton about the industry, but the respect that I gained in the year to year and a half of research before I approached him, I'm surprised I kept it a secret that long, but I was so intimidated before going because I wanted to make sure that I had done my job. But what I did realize is that there are interpretations and decisions -- he's making creative choices of taking that character on sometimes in every line or every word with what you're gonna stress and whatnot that I never noticed before. I always say that Scott and other wonderful performers, they make it seem easy where, oh, I'm just listening to this great audio book. I'm completely in there. But the decisions that you have to make to have that come alive. So yeah, absolutely. To see that hard work pay off, and to see the directions that Scott took it as an artist and creator in his own right, I couldn't be happier. . Anne: That's awesome. So Scott, tell us a little bit about the process, about how you got yourself into character. Scott: So funny, because in acting circles, you're either method or you're not, right? Maybe you're more of a technique actor. God, what's that grape line by Spencer Tracy? He's, you know, his approach to acting was memorize his lines. Don't bump into the furniture. I'm not a method actor, and yet I really like to prepare my mood. We have to prepare the text, make sure everything is pronounced correctly. I have a researcher who handles that for me, but I want to make sure that my head is in the right space. So, yeah. I will watch Night Moves, the Gene Hackman film. Before Narrator, I watched Misery because they're similarities, you know? Somebody who's being held against their will and forced to create basically. What I find really interesting is, I'm going through all the pop culture references that Landon sends me, is sometimes I find some that really work elsewhere. For instance, he was talking about this, and as you heard in the preview, this character, Nehemiah Stone. Well, that's a character who was very much, I think in the same vein as Jack Reacher. And I'm all also blessed to work on that series. I got 'em all right up there, just right behind me. And Landon emailed me and said, you know, while writing this part of the book, I was listening to the theme from The Incredible Hulk in the 1970s, The Lonely Man that marvelous piano music at the end. It's heartbreaking. That actually used to be my ring tone on my phone, but it was so silent that I couldn't hear my phone ring. So I had . But now a month or two after I did Narrator, I did the most recent Jack Reacher novel, which was called No Plan B. And I watched that video. I listened to that music every day before getting started. And nobody who's listening to either Narrator or a Jack Reacher novel is gonna go, wow. Sounds like he was listening to this, to the Incredible Hulk theme. But audiobooks is a type of storytelling where subtlety plays, and if it affects my performance just in a little way, then wonderful. Anne: Yeah. And I felt that absolutely while listening to it, so many subtle, tiny things. I felt close from the beginning, really to the character, which I thought was just phenomenal. So I imagine that because you guys had so much correspondence back and forth, Scott, this is different for you in other books, sometimes. You don't have as much collaboration with the author, right? And so then what other things do you have to do to prepare? As you mentioned, some of your publishers don't necessarily want you to collaborate so much. So what do you do to prepare for those characters and for those books? Scott: I have a real keen sense for genre. Look, I love certain genres that I work in simply because I'm a book fan. That's the reason I got into this industry. I'll give you an example. We just, I was working with Penguin Random House and the estate of Raymond Chandler, and his family wanted the whole Philip Marlow Omnibus rerecorded. And they wanted to add music. And so they were looking for a new voice for Philip Marlow. And they hired me. Now, sadly, Chandler passed away, and I want to say it was the late 50s, early 60s. There was no way I was gonna be able to have any interaction with him other than reading books that he wrote about writing. So what I did is, every single night -- there were eight books, seven novels, and one book of short stories. We recorded them over the course of a year, and every single night, the night before I would record, I would watch, maybe it was The Big Sleep, an actual Philip Marlow story. Maybe it was Double Indemnity. But I was watching film noir constantly, just to put myself in that mood, in that mindset, that hard boiled detective meeting the, you know, the femme fatale. Sometimes that's all you got. I've done that while doing the horror novels. I've watched Shining the night before, or The Ring. Yeah. I've done the same thing when I was recording Somewhere in Time. I watched time travel romances just to put myself in the right mood. Landon: Anne, if I could add something about the character and what Scott was able to bring to the table, I was asked in a recent interview, how did you pick Scott to do this? And, and I said that even if I would've had five different narrators before writing Narrator, I said, of course I would've gone after Scott because I knew it was first person present tense. But also it's so much in the mind of Sean Frost. And when I listened to Scott's work where he does first person -- one, if you identify with that character, at some point you're listening and you think, I'm that character. I'm going through this. Which is a wonder of fiction. But also two, you become immediately immersed in the narrative and the novel. Anne: Oh yeah. Landon: And Scott is great at that. It's kind of what they said about Tom Hanks when they picked him for Robert Langdon, is that they thought that without speaking, he is a fantastic actor of someone who's thinking, and less is more. And I like to think of Scott in those terms of when someone is speaking inside of their head and that internal monologue was a natural choice. And the caveat that we joke about is that, you know, Scott is not Sean Frost , but I thought he was perfectly suited to play that role. Like, and some people have asked me, they're like, they're like, Scott is Sean. I'm like, no, he's not. Anne: I was gonna say, can you identify -- Landon: But he was perfect for it because he's a conglomeration of all the narrators that I researched. All their methods and stuff are kind of melded into this one character. So yes, there is some of Scott that is in there, definitely. But some of the routines that Sean have are completely different than what Scott does. . Anne: Well, that's kind of good in a way. . Scott: All of my colleagues, all the narrators who've gotten back to me and said, I love this book. They don't ask about like abuse issues. They don't -- but anything like that, what they wanna know is, do you really make as much money as Sean Frost does? And I of course say, yes, I do, even though I don't . Anne: Landon, I wanted to say like the first person writing a novel in the first person I thought was really for this novel, I just thought it was really wonderful. Again, like you said, you picked Scott because you thought for him to do it in the character in first person was just, I think a phenomenal choice. Landon: Oh, thank you, Anne. That means a lot. Anne: But is that a choice as an author? Like, okay, when you sit down, you've got an idea to start writing. Like what makes you decide whether it's first person or how you're going to present that? Landon: Well, for this particular case, this is the first time that I've ever written first person. Scott knows from my other books, they've been the third person closed, third person omniscient. But coming up in getting ready to write this book, it really, a lot of it had to do with the fact that I'm trying to dramatize and make a psychological thriller about someone who stays in a really confined space, in a booth. And I empathize with that in terms of an author. I mean, I'm in my office right now, Anne, for 12 hours a day. It's really, really boring and lonely and hard work. And that's why I look forward to these calls, one, to see my buddy here because, you know, we need this as, as creators to touch base with each other every once in a while. And I always leave energized and enthused. But I thought it's gotta be a psychological thriller that's the route to go with making this so that there, I can bring in suspense and reliable narration, unreliable narration. And it opens up a different menu of things to play with the audience's mind and wonder what's real and get as many reversals, authentic reversals, not just cursory ones as we can throughout the entire book to keep people on, on the edge of their seats. So I thought for this one, I had to go all in on this one character. And I say this a bit tongue in cheek, but not, I miss him. I, I, I'm miss writing Sean. I really do. For that one intense period, and I think Scott would agree that when we got to the actual recording, I mean, it was like we were living in the same house next door to each other, and then it breaks away, and you go months without talking to someone. But that was so intense and we had to collaborate and work on a few issues that it was, I don't know, it's, it's like nothing I've never experienced before. Scott: Also, just from my perspective, what it allowed me to do was -- I don't wanna use the word improvisation, because this is a book. It's written, it is scripted. And yet there are those moments where you can improvise in terms of your performance. Not change the words, but like, he asked me about my own particular method of recording it. And for many years I've used a tally clicker. And I can demonstrate to you, you know, it's one of those things that click when you're going in and out of a venue, you see the guy who's counting heads. You know, how many people do we have inside now? Okay. It's technically called it tally clicker. But when I just use the words tally clicker, people always say to me, what? And I'm like, well, so I have to explain. Anne: Got one right here. Scott: Anything that makes the noise. Landon: There it is. There it is. Scott: Anything that will spike the wave form the waveform. Okay, well it's one thing to hear about it and then it's another thing to actually hear it. So I reached out to Landon, and I was like, how about -- 'cause this happens at the very beginning as I'm talking about the tally clicker -- how about I leave one of them in? And I had to call my, my edit my post house to say, I want all of them taken out except that one because it's the one that illustrates. As I'm talking about the tally clicker, I just went up to the microphone and just hit it four or five times. Oh, okay. Great. It'll help the listener. There was four or five things like that that, and I would always email Landon and say, is it okay if I put this in? At one point, I'm literally dabbing my lip balm on. He talks, you know, Sean, he's swishing his mouth with water. I left it in , you -- why not? Anne: I was at home, I'm telling you. Landon: It was so perfect. It was like special effects for a few parts. But it was those kinda layers that I think made this special in my opinion. Especially the time that he goes through Sean's routine, 'cause he goes through it a few times. But Scott picked the perfect moment because it's right at the climax, and here he is, you know, triumphant from let's just say some obstacles that he's had to climb over. And he's like, I dab this and you can hear it. And then I take a swig of water, and you can hear it. And I'm like, that is so perfect. I never even would've thought of that. Anne: I am in the booth. I am in the booth. Landon: I was there. Right there. Scott: The shape of your lips, it changes the sound coming out of it. And I was like, darn right. You know, and people were asking, my buddies were asking me, were you just like dabbing it with your finger? Hell no, I'm using -- Anne: Oh my gosh. Landon: Michelle Cobb was texting Scott back and forth and who is emailing me. And she was talking about it on the podcast, and she's just, you know, having a blast with the whole concept of Sean Frost. She's like, Scott, he's in a tuxedo. But I said, you know, the character that he was narrating in this book listened to me was -- and so I said, well, let's let Sean as a professional get into a little bit of method and do that. And so, yeah, I'm glad that some people like those moments and found them -- Anne: Loved them. Landon: -- entertaining and humorous. Anne: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Landon: It was fun. Anne: Absolutely. So is there a movie in the future? I don't know, I just Landon: I tell you what, I, I would absolutely love to see this made, and I was a screen writer before I was a novelist, and that's where my degree is in, my master's is in screenwriting. And so a lot of this, when I got to the end of it, I said, gosh, I can just, I can see it. So fingers crossed. Hey, anybody listening to this podcast, please reach out to Scott and myself . Anne: Yeah. Fantastic. So I asked that, but what's in the future for you next, Landon? Another book? What's happening? Landon: Yep. So I'm in the final editing stages of a murder mystery, and that's going to come out a month from now, right around Christmas. And I just found this out the other day that the first book in the series, Huron Breeze for thebestthrillerbooks.com won mystery of the year for 2022. Anne: Congrats. Landon: So I'm just excited, humbled, surprised, but it's gonna be neat to release a sequel when all of that gets shared. And so what Scott and I have talked about is that at some point, we'll do our pre-recording conference for Huron Nights, because we're gonna take the main character into a complicated place, because it's part of a trilogy. So usually this is kind of the Empire Strikes Back episode of a trilogy where everything goes to hell, and then they've gotta come back in the third one. So I look forward to that, and I have some, some interesting ideas of some things that might inspire him as he gets ready for his performance. And then I'm collaborating too with Susanne Elise Freeman on a novella, which is gonna take place in between books two and three, and it's going to be an assassination, spy, espionage short. And so we've already talked over Zoom, and I'm thrilled to be working with her. She's gonna of course play the main character in this one. And then we'll wrap up this trilogy with Huron Sunrise. And then finally I'm gonna get to the end of the Great Lake Saga, which is book five in that saga. I have a book on every Great Lake, and so I have four of them, but the last one has taken a backseat just because once Narrator got into my mind, I mean, the seas parted and it was all I had to get that out. And then of course the mystery, that's kind of taken on its own life. It was only planned as a standalone, but so many fans liked it and wanted more, I was like, well, I, I'll have to think about it. I did not plan to write anymore about that. Anne: Yeah. Well count me as one of those. Landon: Busy year coming up. Anne: Yeah. Well, it sounds like so much fun, all your projects coming up. Scott: You know what I, what I love about it is that when we were doing the first book in that series Huron Breeze, and there's this moment where there's a book within a book, right? There's a, a woman writer at the center of it, and she has written this wildly successful book, and they talk about how the audio book was narrated by Susanne Elise Freeman, my girlfriend. And I, and there was like a line or two in it that she actually says, and I said to Landon, you want me to have her come down to the booth and just have her say that? And so we had her do the, the opening credits too, so you -- her voice wouldn't come as a surprise. And then Landon gets this idea that like, oh, maybe I'll write the book within the book. And so he's having Suzanne narrate it; I just love it. It's become a cliche to, to talk about thinking outside the box, but that's where growth comes from. That's where industry norms become, you know, stretched and we expand and grow. And I just love the fact that he is open to, great, let's do something a little different. Anne: Well, I have to tell you, I'm not an audiobook narrator. I've, I've narrated one a long time ago, but I'll tell you what, you guys just make it sound so wonderful and delightful that, BOSSes out there, I'll tell ya, you guys are inspirational. And I really, really appreciate you talking to us today. And I had all these questions, but the whole conversation, I just love the direction it took and I appreciate. Scott: No, I was, and I was gonna have to cut you off from saying nice things. Anyway, that another 15 minutes. That's it. Anne: Well Scott, tell us, outside of working with Landon, is there anything else going on in your future that you'd like to let the BOSSes know about? Any other exciting projects? Scott: Yeah, I've got some wonderful books I've been working on recently. Just finished a historical thriller. It's non-fiction, but it was about the plot to kill Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin at the conference in Tehran, the first of the two times that the three of them met during World War II. The Nazi, it's called The Nazi Conspiracy. And that was really just a brilliant book. I'm also working on a couple of podcasting projects, scripted podcasts about the history of LA, the history of the entertainment industry. You can tell from books behind me, I love the silent film era, and I have an idea that I would love to just share with anybody who's like-minded and fascinated. Anne: Yeah. I'm already intrigued by that. I think that sounds like a fabulous idea. Scott: Awesome. Anne: Absolutely. So tell the BOSSes how they can get Narrator and any other book. Landon, where is it available, at Amazon, on your website? Where can they go to find out more? Landon: So there's links to all of my books on my website, LandonBeachBooks.com. But the Kindle version is exclusively on Amazon, but the paperback, you can get at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, anywhere pretty much. And the audio books are wide, so anywhere that audiobooks are sold, you can get a copy of Narrator in 30 seconds. Anne: Fantastic. Yes. So any last, I'm gonna say tips for the BOSSes out there for them to be BOSSes and be successful in their voiceover endeavors or their writing endeavors? Scott: I would say, from my perspective, don't be afraid to reach out to the author because you never know what can happen because of it. Be willing to do something that you might not ordinarily do in the booth. Years ago, there was a book I was doing where one character had an entire package of chewing gum we wanted in his cheek, and it actually spoke about how it changed the sound of his voice. And I knew it wouldn't sound right if I was just doing this. So I reached out and I said, would it be okay if I record all those lines separate and they get edited in later? I checked with the editor, with the publisher and I recorded the whole freaking thing with a, a wad of chewing gum in my mouth. And never in my life before or since have I brought chewing gum into a booth . But that was the time it seemed appropriate. So dare to think differently. Anne: Yeah. That makes the difference. Landon? Landon: Yeah, so I would say an idea that you might want to consider, I know that a lot of audiobook narrators, they will put some of their background and their history of what they did before they became an audiobook narrator. But I would encourage them to list as many things as they were involved in before because you never know if an author is writing about a specific subject -- we can use Narrator as an example. But of course I was looking for someone who had not only audiobook narrating experience, but performing arts experience, which was another reason it worked out perfectly to go with Scott on this. But maybe there is an opportunity of, I don't know, if you were a trucker or something else before you became a narrator, that you might be able to lend a unique experience and voice to that project in a realm that you're already really well versed in with audio books. So I would say, you know, not to run away from your previous background. It might lead to an interesting book that you're a part of. And the other part is just that, yes, there are some authors, and I can say this, they don't really wanna have a relationship. You know, they're like, I did this, you know. The narrator doesn't exist without me because I wrote the book. And you know, obviously those are not gonna be the kind of relationships that would work out like Scott. But with us, there might be an opportunity to really have a unique kind of collaborative environment, not like a total collaboration, which we've said, which is, you know, I have my turf and he has his. But yeah, there could be something that you did not know or expect. I never saw this coming until we became friends, and I, I really can't see Narrator without it now, if that makes sense. So. Yeah. Anne: Absolutely does. Well, gentlemen, it has been such a joy talking to both of you. Thank you so, so much for your words of wisdom and inspiration. And BOSSes, go get Narrator. I'm telling you, go out and get it now. In less than 10 seconds you can click and have this experience for yourselves. Gentlemen, thank you so much. I'm gonna give a great big shout-out to our sponsor, ipDTL. You too can connect and work like BOSSes. Find out more at ipDTL.com. You guys, have an amazing week and I'll see you next week. Bye. >> Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voBOSS.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies, and new ways to rock your business like a BOSS. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via ipDTL.

About ScottWith more than 28 years of successful leadership in building high technology companies and delivering advanced products to market, Scott provides the overall strategic leadership and visionary direction for Azul Systems.Scott has a consistent proven track record of vision, leadership, and success in enterprise, consumer and scientific markets. Prior to co-founding Azul Systems, Scott founded 3dfx Interactive, a graphics processor company that pioneered the 3D graphics market for personal computers and game consoles. Scott served at 3dfx as Vice President of Engineering, CTO and as a member of the board of directors and delivered 7 award-winning products and developed 14 different graphics processors. After a successful initial public offering, 3dfx was later acquired by NVIDIA Corporation.Prior to 3dfx, Scott was a CPU systems architect at Pellucid, later acquired by MediaVision. Before Pellucid, Scott was a member of the technical staff at Silicon Graphics where he designed high-performance workstations.Scott graduated from Princeton University with a bachelor of science, earning magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa honors. Scott has been granted 8 patents in high performance graphics and computing and is a regularly invited keynote speaker at industry conferences.Links Referenced:Azul: https://www.azul.com/ 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: I come bearing ill tidings. Developers are responsible for more than ever these days. Not just the code that they write, but also the containers and the cloud infrastructure that their apps run on. Because serverless means it's still somebody's problem. And a big part of that responsibility is app security from code to cloud. And that's where our friend Snyk comes in. Snyk is a frictionless security platform that meets developers where they are - Finding and fixing vulnerabilities right from the CLI, IDEs, Repos, and Pipelines. Snyk integrates seamlessly with AWS offerings like code pipeline, EKS, ECR, and more! As well as things you're actually likely to be using. Deploy on AWS, secure with Snyk. Learn more at Snyk.co/scream That's S-N-Y-K.co/screamCorey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at AWS AppConfig. Engineers love to solve, and occasionally create, problems. But not when it's an on-call fire-drill at 4 in the morning. Software problems should drive innovation and collaboration, NOT stress, and sleeplessness, and threats of violence. That's why so many developers are realizing the value of AWS AppConfig Feature Flags. Feature Flags let developers push code to production, but hide that that feature from customers so that the developers can release their feature when it's ready. This practice allows for safe, fast, and convenient software development. You can seamlessly incorporate AppConfig Feature Flags into your AWS or cloud environment and ship your Features with excitement, not trepidation and fear. To get started, go to snark.cloud/appconfig. That's snark.cloud/appconfig.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. My guest on this promoted episode today is Scott Sellers, CEO and co-founder of Azul. Scott, thank you for joining me.Scott: Thank you, Corey. I appreciate the opportunity in talking to you today.Corey: So, let's start with what you're doing these days. What is Azul? What do you folks do over there?Scott: Azul is an enterprise software and SaaS company that is focused on delivering more efficient Java solutions for our customers around the globe. We've been around for 20-plus years, and as an entrepreneur, we've really gone through various stages of different growth and different dynamics in the market. But at the end of the day, Azul is all about adding value for Java-based enterprises, Java-based applications, and really endearing ourselves to the Java community.Corey: This feels like the sort of space where there are an awful lot of great business cases to explore. When you look at what's needed in that market, there are a lot of things that pop up. The surprising part to me is that this is the direction that you personally went in. You started your career as a CPU architect, to my understanding. You were then one of the co-founders of 3dfx before it got acquired by Nvidia.You feel like you've spent your career more as a hardware guy than working on the SaaS side of the world. Is that a misunderstanding of your path, or have things changed, or is this just a new direction? Help me understand how you got here from where you were.Scott: I'm not exactly sure what the math would say because I continue to—can't figure out a way to stop time. But you're correct that my academic background, I was an electrical engineer at Princeton and started my career at Silicon Graphics. And that was when I did a lot of fantastic and fascinating work building workstations and high-end graphics systems, you know, back in the day when Silicon Graphics really was the who's who here in Silicon Valley. And so, a lot of my career began in the context of hardware. As you mentioned, I was one of the founders of graphics company called 3dfx that was one of, I think, arguably the pioneer in terms of bringing 3d graphics to the masses, if you will.And we had a great run of that. That was a really fun business to be a part of just because of what was going on in the 3d world. And we took that public and eventually sold that to Nvidia. And at that point, my itch, if you will, was really learning more about the enterprise segment. I'd been involved with professional graphics with SGI, I had been involved with consumer graphics with 3dfx.And I was fascinated just to learn about the enterprise segment. And met a couple people through a mutual friend around the 2001 timeframe, and they started talking about this thing called Java. And you know, I had of course heard about Java, but as a consumer graphics guy, didn't have a lot of knowledge about it or experience with it. And the more I learned about it, recognized that what was going on in the Java world—and credit to Sun for really creating, obviously, not only language, but building a community around Java—and recognized that new evolutions of developer paradigms really only come around once a decade if then, and was convinced and really got excited about the opportunity to ride the wave of Java and build a company around that.Corey: One of the blind spots that I have throughout the entire world of technology—and to be fair, I have many of them, but the one most relevant to this conversation, I suppose, is the Java ecosystem as a whole. I come from a background of being a grumpy Unix sysadmin—because I've never met a happy one of those in my entire career—and as a result, scripting languages is where everything that I worked with started off. And on the rare occasions, I worked in Java shops, it was, “Great. We're going to go—here's a WAR file. Go ahead and deploy this with Tomcat,” or whatever else people are going to use. But basically, “Don't worry your pretty little head about that.”At most, I have to worry about how to configure a heap or whatnot. But it's from the outside looking in, not having to deal with that entire ecosystem as a whole. And what I've seen from that particular perspective is that every time I start as a technologist, or even as a consumer trying to install some random software package in the depths of the internet, and I have to start thinking about Java, it always feels like I'm about to wind up in a confusing world. There are a number of software packages that I installed back in, I want to say the early-2010s or whatnot. “Oh, you need to have a Java runtime installed on your Mac,” for example.And okay, going through Oracle site, do I need the JRE? Do I need the JDK? Oh, there's OpenJDK, which kind of works, kind of doesn't. Amazon got into the space with Corretto, which because that sounds nothing whatsoever, like Java, but strange names coming from Amazon is basically par for the course for those folks. What is the current state of the Java ecosystem, for those of us who have—basically the closest we've ever gotten is JavaScript, which is nothing alike except for the name.Scott: And you know, frankly, given the protection around the name Java—and you know, that is a trademark that's owned by Oracle—it's amazing to me that JavaScript has been allowed to continue to be called JavaScript because as you point out, JavaScript has nothing to do with Java per se.Corey: Well, one thing they do have in common I found out somewhat recently is that Oracle also owns the trademark for JavaScript.Scott: Ah, there you go. Maybe that's why it continues.Corey: They're basically a law firm—three law firms in a trench coat, masquerading as a tech company some days.Scott: Right. But anyway, it is a confusing thing because you know, I think, arguably, JavaScript, by the numbers, probably has more programmers than any other language in the world, just given its popularity as a web language. But to your question about Java specifically, it's had an evolving life, and I think the state where it is today, I think it's in the most exciting place it's ever been. And I'll walk you through kind of why I believe that to be the case.But Java has evolved over time from its inception back in the days when it was called, I think it was Oak when it was originally conceived, and Sun had eventually branded it as Java. And at the time, it truly was owned by Sun, meaning it was proprietary code; it had to be licensed. And even though Sun gave it away, in most cases, it still at the end of the day, it was a commercially licensed product, if you will, and platform. And if you think about today's world, it would not be conceivable to create something that became so popular with programmers that was a commercially licensed product today. It almost would be mandated that it would be open-source to be able to really gain the type of traction that Java has gained.And so, even though Java was really garnering interest, you know, not only within the developer community, but also amongst commercial entities, right, everyone—and the era now I'm talking about is around the 2000 era—all of the major software vendors, whether it was obviously Sun, but then you had Oracle, you had IBM, companies like BEA, were really starting to blossom at that point. It was a—you know, you could almost not find a commercial software entity that was not backing Java. But it was still all controlled by Sun. And all that success ultimately led to a strong outcry from the community saying this has to be open-source; this is too important to be beholden to a single vendor. And that decision was made by Sun prior to the Oracle acquisition, they actually open-sourced the Java runtime code and they created an open-source project called OpenJDK.And to Oracle's credit, when they bought Sun—which I think at the time when you really look back, Oracle really did not have a lot of track record, if you will, of being involved with an open-source community—and I think when Oracle acquired Sun, there was a lot of skepticism as to what's going to happen to Java. Is Oracle going to make this thing, you know, back to the old days, proprietary Oracle, et cetera? And really—Corey: I was too busy being heartbroken over Solaris at that point to pay much attention to the Java stuff, but it felt like it was this—sort of the same pattern, repeated across multiple ecosystems.Scott: Absolutely. And even though Sun had also open-sourced Solaris, with the OpenSolaris project, that was one of the kinds of things that it was still developed very much in a closed environment, and then they would kind of throw some code out into the open world. And no one really ran OpenSolaris because it wasn't fully compatible with Solaris. And so, that was a faint attempt, if you will.But Java was quite different. It was truly all open-sourced, and the big difference that—and again, I give Oracle a lot of credit for this because this was a very important time in the evolution of Java—that Oracle, maintained Sun's commitment to not only continue to open-source Java but most importantly, develop it in the open community. And so, you know, again, back and this is the 2008, ‘09, ‘10 timeframe, the evolution of Java, the decisions, the standards, you know, what goes in the platform, what doesn't, decisions about updates and those types of things, that truly became a community-led world and all done in the open-source. And credit to Oracle for continuing to do that. And that really began the transition away from proprietary implementations of Java to one that, very similar to Linux, has really thrived because of the true open-source nature of what Java is today.And that's enabled more and more companies to get involved with the evolution of Java. If you go to the OpenJDK page, you'll see all of the not only, you know, incredibly talented individuals that are involved with the evolution of Java, but again, a who's who in pretty much every major commercial entities in the enterprise software world is also somehow involved in the OpenJDK community. And so, it really is a very vibrant, evolving standard. And some of the tactical things that have happened along the way in terms of changing how versions of Java are released still also very much in the context of maintaining compatibility and finding that careful balance of evolving the platform, but at the same time, recognizing that there is a lot of Java applications out there, so you can't just take a right-hand turn and forget about the compatibility side of things. But we as a community overall, I think, have addressed that very effectively, and the result has been now I think Java is more popular than ever and continues to—we liken it kind of to the mortar and the brick walls of the enterprise. It's a given that it's going to be used, certainly by most of the enterprises worldwide today.Corey: There's a certain subset of folk who are convinced the Java, “Oh, it's this a legacy programming language, and nothing modern or forward-looking is going to be built in it.” Yeah, those people generally don't know what the internal language stack looks like at places like oh, I don't know, AWS, Google, and a few others, it is very much everywhere. But it also feels, on some level, like, it's a bit below the surface-level of awareness for the modern full-stack developer in some respects, right up until suddenly it's very much not. How is Java evolving in a cloud these days?Scott: Well, what we see happening—you know, this is true for—you know, I'm a techie, so I can talk about other techies. I mean as techies, we all like the new thing, right? I mean, it's not that exciting to talk about a language that's been around for 20-plus years. But that doesn't take away from the fact that we still all use keyboards. I mean, no one really talks about what keyboard they use anymore—unless you're really into keyboards—but at the end of the day, it's still a fundamental tool that you use every single day.And Java is kind of in the same situation. The reason that Java continues to be so fundamental is that it really comes back to kind of reinventing the wheel problem. Are there are other languages that are more efficient to code in? Absolutely. Are there other languages that, you know, have some capabilities that the Java doesn't have? Absolutely.But if you have the ability to reinvent everything from scratch, sure, go for it. And you also don't have to worry about well, can I find enough programmers in this, you know, new hot language, okay, good luck with that. You might be able to find dozens, but when you need to really scale a company into thousands or tens of thousands of developers, good luck finding, you know, everyone that knows, whatever your favorite hot language of the day is.Corey: It requires six years experience in a four-year-old language. Yeah, it's hard to find that, sometimes.Scott: Right. And you know, the reality is, is that really no application ever is developed from scratch, right? Even when an application is, quote, new, immediately, what you're using is frameworks and other things that have written long ago and proven to be very successful.Corey: And disturbing amounts of code copied and pasted from Stack Overflow.Scott: Absolutely.Corey: But that's one of those impolite things we don't say out loud very often.Scott: That's exactly right. So, nothing really is created from scratch anymore. And so, it's all about building blocks. And this is really where this snowball of Java is difficult to stop because there is so much third-party code out there—and by that, I mean, you know, open-source, commercial code, et cetera—that is just so leveraged and so useful to very quickly be able to take advantage of and, you know, allow developers to focus on truly new things, not reinventing the wheel for the hundredth time. And that's what's kind of hard about all these other languages is catching up to Java with all of the things that are immediately available for developers to use freely, right, because most of its open-source. That's a pretty fundamental Catch-22 about when you start talking about the evolution of new languages.Corey: I'm with you so far. The counterpoint though is that so much of what we're talking about in the world of Java is open-source; it is freely available. The OpenJDK, for example, says that right on the tin. You have built a company and you've been in business for 20 years. I have to imagine that this is not one of those stories where, “Oh, all the things we do, we give away for free. But that's okay. We make it up in volume.” Even the venture capitalist mindset tends to run out of patience on those kinds of timescales. What is it you actually do as a business that clearly, obviously delivers value for customers but also results in, you know, being able to meet payroll every week?Scott: Right? Absolutely. And I think what time has shown is that, with one very notable exception and very successful example being Red Hat, there are very, very few pure open-source companies whose business is only selling support services for free software. Most successful businesses that are based on open-source are in one-way shape or form adding value-added elements. And that's our strategy as well.The heart of everything we do is based on free code from OpenJDK, and we have a tremendous amount of business that we are following the Red Hat business model where we are selling support and long-term access and a huge variety of different operating system configurations, older Java versions. Still all free software, though, right, but we're selling support services for that. And that is, in essence, the classic Red Hat business model. And that business for us is incredibly high growth, very fast-moving, a lot of that business is because enterprises are tired of paying the very high price to Oracle for Java support and they're looking for an open-source alternative that is exactly the same thing, but comes in pure open-source form and with a vendor that is as reputable as Oracle. So, a lot of our businesses based on that.However, on top of that, we also have value-added elements. And so, our product that is called Azul Platform Prime is rooted in OpenJDK—it is OpenJDK—but then we've added value-added elements to that. And what those value-added elements create is, in essence, a better Java platform. And better in this context means faster, quicker to warm up, elimination of some of the inconsistencies of the Java runtime in terms of this nasty problem called garbage collection which causes applications to kind of bounce around in terms of performance limitations. And so, creating a better Java is another way that we have monetized our company is value-added elements that are built on top of OpenJDK. And I'd say that part of the business is very typical for the majority of enterprise software companies that are rooted in open-source. They're typically adding value-added components on top of the open-source technology, and that's our similar strategy as well.And then the third evolution for us, which again is very tried-and-true, is evolving the business also to add SaaS offerings. So today, the majority of our customers, even though they deploy in the cloud, they're stuck customer-managed and so they're responsible for where do I want to put my Java runtime on building out my stack and cetera, et cetera. And of course, that could be on-prem, but like I mentioned, the majority are in the cloud. We're evolving our product offerings also to have truly SaaS-based solutions so that customers don't even need to manage those types of stacks on their own anymore.Corey: On some level, it feels like we're talking about two different things when we talk about cloud and when we talk about programming languages, but increasingly, I'm starting to see across almost the entire ecosystem that different languages and different cloud providers are in many ways converging. How do you see Java changing as cloud-native becomes the default rather than the new thing?Scott: Great question. And I think the thing to recognize about, really, most popular programming languages today—I can think of very few exceptions—these languages were created, envisioned, implemented if you will, in a day when cloud was not top-of-mind, and in many cases, certainly in the case of Java, cloud didn't even exist when Java was originally conceived, nor was that the case when you know, other languages, such as Python, or JavaScript, or on and on. So, rethinking how these languages should evolve in very much the context of a cloud-native mentality is a really important initiative that we certainly are doing and I think the Java community is doing overall. And how you architect not only the application, but even the Java runtime itself can be fundamentally different if you know that the application is going to be deployed in the cloud.And I'll give you an example. Specifically, in the world of any type of runtime-based language—and JavaScript is an example of that; Python is an example of that; Java is an example of that—in all of those runtime-based environments, what that basically means is that when the application is run, there's a piece of software that's called the runtime that actually is running that application code. And so, you can think about it as a middleware piece of software that sits between the operating system and the application itself. And so, that runtime layer is common across those languages and those platforms that I mentioned. That runtime layer is evolving, and it's evolving in a way that is becoming more and more cloud-native in it's thinking.The process itself of actually taking the application, compiling it into whatever underlying architecture it may be running on—it could be an x86 instance running on Amazon; it could be, you know, for example, an ARM64, which Amazon has compute instances now that are based on an ARM64 processor that they call Graviton, which is really also kind of altering the price-performance of the compute instances on the AWS platform—that runtime layer magically takes an application that doesn't have to be aware of the underlying hardware and transforms that into a way that can be run. And that's a very expensive process; it's called just-in-time compiling, and that just-in-time compilation, in today's world—which wasn't really based on cloud thinking—every instance, every compute instance that you deploy, that same JIT compilation process is happening over and over again. And even if you deploy 100 instances for scalability, every one of those 100 instances is doing that same work. And so, it's very inefficient and very redundant. Contrast that to a cloud-native thinking: that compilation process should be a service; that service should be done once.The application—you know, one instance of the application is actually run and there are the other ninety-nine should just reuse that compilation process. And that shared compiler service should be scalable and should be able to scale up when applications are launched and you need more compilation resources, and then scaled right back down when you're through the compilation process and the application is more moving into the—you know, to the runtime phase of the application lifecycle. And so, these types of things are areas that we and others are working on in terms of evolving the Java runtime specifically to be more cloud-native.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Sysdig. Sysdig secures your cloud from source to run. They believe, as do I, that DevOps and security are inextricably linked. If you wanna learn more about how they view this, check out their blog, it's definitely worth the read. To learn more about how they are absolutely getting it right from where I sit, visit Sysdig.com and tell them that I sent you. That's S Y S D I G.com. And my thanks to them for their continued support of this ridiculous nonsense.Corey: This feels like it gets even more critical when we're talking about things like serverless functions across basically all the cloud providers these days, where there's the whole setup, everything in the stack, get it running, get it listening, ready to go, to receive a single request and then shut itself down. It feels like there are a lot of operational efficiencies possible once you start optimizing from a starting point of yeah, this is what that environment looks like, rather than us big metal servers sitting in a rack 15 years ago.Scott: Yeah. I think the evolution of serverless appears to be headed more towards serverless containers as opposed to serverless functions. Serverless functions have a bunch of limitations in terms of when you think about it in the context of a complex, you know, microservices-based deployment framework. It's just not very efficient, to spin up and spin down instances of a function if that actually is being—it is any sort of performance or latency-sensitive type of applications. If you're doing something very rarely, sure, it's fine; it's efficient, it's elegant, et cetera.But any sort of thing that has real girth to it—and girth probably means that's what's driving your application infrastructure costs, that's what's driving your Amazon bill every month—those types of things typically are not going to be great for starting and stopping functional instances. And so, serverless is evolving more towards thinking about the container itself not having to worry about the underlying operating system or the instance on Amazon that it's running on. And that's where, you know, we see more and more of the evolution of serverless is thinking about it at a container-level as opposed to a functional level. And that appears to be a really healthy steady state, so it gets the benefits of not having to worry about all the underlying stuff, but at the same time, doesn't have the downside of trying to start and stop functional influences at a given point in time.Corey: It seems to me that there are really two ways of thinking about cloud. The first is what I think a lot of companies do their first outing when they're going into something like AWS. “Okay, we're going to get a bunch of virtual machines that they call instances in AWS, we're going to run things just like it's our data center except now data transfer to the internet is terrifyingly expensive.” The more quote-unquote, “Cloud-native” way of thinking about this is what you're alluding to where there's, “Here's some code that I wrote. I want to throw it to my cloud provider and just don't tell me about any of the infrastructure parts. Execute this code when these conditions are met and leave me alone.”Containers these days seem to be one of our best ways of getting there with a minimum of fuss and friction. What are you seeing in the enterprise space as far as adoption of those patterns go? Or are we seeing cloud repatriation showing up as a real thing and I'm just not in the right place to see it?Scott: Well, I think as a cloud journey evolves, there's no question that—and in fact it's even silly to say that cloud is here to stay because I think that became a reality many, many years ago. So really, the question is, what are the challenges now with cloud deployments? Cloud is absolutely a given. And I think you stated earlier, it's rare that, whether it's a new company or a new application, at least in most businesses that don't have specific regulatory requirements, that application is highly, highly likely to be envisioned to be initially and only deployed in the cloud. That's a great thing because you have so many advantages of not having to purchase infrastructure in advance, being able to tap into all of the various services that are available through the cloud providers. No one builds databases anymore; you're just tapping into the service that's provided by Azure or AWS, or what have you.And, you know, just that specific example is a huge amount of savings in terms of just overhead, and license costs, and those types of stuff, and there's countless examples of that. And so, the services that are available in the cloud are unquestioned. So, there's countless advantages of why you want to be in the cloud. The downside, however, the cloud that is, if at the end of the day, AWS, Microsoft with Azure, Google with GCP, they are making 30% margin on that cloud infrastructure. And in the days of hardware, when companies would actually buy their servers from Dell, or HP, et cetera, those businesses are 5% margin.And so, where's that 25% going? Well, the 25% is being paid for by the users of cloud, and as a result of that, when you look at it purely from an operational cost perspective, it is more expensive to run in the cloud than it is back in the legacy days, right? And that's not to say that the industry has made the wrong choice because there's so many advantages of being in cloud, there's no doubt about it. And there should be—you know, and the cloud providers deserve to take some amount of margin to provide the services that they provide; there's no doubt about that. The question is, how do you do the best of all worlds?And you know, there is a great blog by a couple of the partners in Andreessen Horowitz, they called this the Cloud Paradox. And the Cloud Paradox really talks about the challenges. It's really a Catch-22; how do you get all the benefits of cloud but do that in a way that is not overly taxing from a cost perspective? And a lot of it comes down to good practices and making sure that you have the right monitoring and culture within an enterprise to make sure that cloud cost is a primary thing that is discussed and metric, but then there's also technologies that can help so that you don't have to even think about what you really don't ever want to do: repatriating, which is about the concept of actually moving off the cloud back to the old way of doing things. So certainly, I don't believe repatriation is a practical solution for ongoing and increasing cloud costs. I believe technology is a solution to that.And there are technologies such as our product, Azul Platform Prime, that in essence, allows you to do more with less, right, get all the benefits of cloud, deploy in your Amazon environment, deploy in your Azure environment, et cetera, but imagine if instead of needing a hundred instances to handle your given workload, you could do that with 50 or 60. Tomorrow, that means that you can start savings and being able to do that simply by changing your JVM from a standard OpenJDK or Oracle JVM to something like Platform Prime, you can immediately start to start seeing the benefits from that. And so, a lot of our business now and our growth is coming from companies that are screaming under the ongoing cloud costs and trying to keep them in line, and using technology like Azul Platform Prime to help mitigate those costs.Corey: I think that there is a somewhat foolish approach that I'm seeing taken by a lot of folks where there are some companies that are existentially anti-cloud, if for no other reason than because if the cloud wins, then they don't really have a business anymore. The problem I see with that is that it seems that their solution across the board is to turn back the clock where if I'm going to build a startup, it's time for me to go buy some servers and a rack somewhere and start negotiating with bandwidth providers. I don't see that that is necessarily viable for almost anyone. We aren't living in 1995 anymore, despite how much some people like to pretend we are. It seems like if there are workloads—for which I agree, cloud is not necessarily an economic fit, first, I feel like the market will fix that in the fullness of time, but secondly, on an individual workload belonging in a certain place is radically different than, “Oh, none of our stuff should live on cloud. Everything belongs in a data center.” And I just think that companies lose all credibility when they start pretending that it's any other way.Scott: Right. I'd love to see the reaction of the venture capitalists' face when an entrepreneur walks in and talks about how their strategy for deploying their SaaS service is going to be buying hardware and renting some space in the local data center.Corey: Well, there is a good cost control method, if you think about it. I mean very few engineers are going to accidentally spin up an $8 million cluster in a data center a second time, just because there's no space left for it.Scott: And you're right; it does happen in the cloud as well. It's just, I agree with you completely that as part of the evolution of cloud, in general, is an ever-improving aspect of cost and awareness of cost and building in technologies that help mitigate that cost. So, I think that will continue to evolve. I think, you know, if you really think about the cloud journey, cost, I would say, is still in early phases of really technologies and practices and processes of allowing enterprises to really get their head around cost. I'd still say it's a fairly immature industry that is evolving quickly, just given the importance of it.And so, I think in the coming years, you're going to see a radical improvement in terms of cost awareness and technologies to help with costs, that again allows you to the best of all worlds. Because, you know, if you go back to the Dark Ages and you start thinking about buying servers and infrastructure, then you are really getting back to a mentality of, “I've got to deploy everything. I've got to buy software for my database. I've got to deploy it. What am I going to do about my authentication service? So, I got to buy this vendor's, you know, solution, et cetera.” And so, all that stuff just goes away in the world of cloud, so it's just not practical, in this day and age I think, to think about really building a business that's not cloud-native from the beginning.Corey: I really want to thank you for spending so much time talking to me about how you view the industry, the evolution we've seen in the Java ecosystem, and what you've been up to. If people want to learn more, where's the best place for them to find you?Scott: Well, there's a thing called a website that you may not have heard of, it's really cool.Corey: Can I build it in Java?Scott: W-W-dot—[laugh]. Yeah. Azul website obviously has an awful lot of information about that, Azul is spelled A-Z-U-L, and we sometimes get the question, “How in the world did you name a company—why did you name it Azul?”And it's kind of a funny story because back in the days of Azul when we thought about, hey, we want to be big and successful, and at the time, IBM was the gold standard in terms of success in the enterprise world. And you know, they were Big Blue, so we said, “Hey, we're going to be a little blue. Let's be Azul.” So, that's where we began. So obviously, go check out our site.We're very present, also, in the Java community. We're, you know, many developer conferences and talks. We sponsor and run many of what's called the Java User Groups, which are very popular 10-, 20-person meetups that happen around the globe on a regular basis. And so, you know, come check us out. And I appreciate everyone's time in listening to the podcast today.Corey: No, thank you very much for spending as much time with me as you have. It's appreciated.Scott: Thanks, Corey.Corey: Scott Sellers, CEO and co-founder of Azul. 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 an entire copy of the terms and conditions from Oracle's version of the JDK.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.

About ScottCloud security historian.Developed flaws.cloud, CloudMapper, and Parliament.Founding team for fwd:cloudsecLinks: Block: https://block.xyz/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/0xdabbad00 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 our friends at Vultr. Optimized cloud compute plans have landed at Vultr to deliver lightning fast processing power, courtesy of third gen AMD EPYC processors without the IO, or hardware limitations, of a traditional multi-tenant cloud server. Starting at just 28 bucks a month, users can deploy general purpose, CPU, memory, or storage optimized cloud instances in more than 20 locations across five continents. Without looking, I know that once again, Antarctica has gotten the short end of the stick. Launch your Vultr optimized compute instance in 60 seconds or less on your choice of included operating systems, or bring your own. It's time to ditch convoluted and unpredictable giant tech company billing practices, and say goodbye to noisy neighbors and egregious egress forever. Vultr delivers the power of the cloud with none of the bloat. "Screaming in the Cloud" listeners can try Vultr for free today with a $150 in credit when they visit getvultr.com/screaming. That's G E T V U L T R.com/screaming. My thanks to them for sponsoring this ridiculous podcast.Corey: Couchbase Capella Database-as-a-Service is flexible, full-featured and fully managed with built in access via key-value, SQL, and full-text search. Flexible JSON documents aligned to your applications and workloads. Build faster with blazing fast in-memory performance and automated replication and scaling while reducing cost. Capella has the best price performance of any fully managed document database. Visit couchbase.com/screaminginthecloud to try Capella today for free and be up and running in three minutes with no credit card required. Couchbase Capella: make your data sing.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud, I'm Corey Quinn. I am joined by a returning guest with a bit of a different job. Scott Piper was formerly an independent security researcher—basically the independent security researcher in the AWS space—but now he's a Principal Engineer over at Block. Scott, welcome back.Scott: Thanks for having me, again, Corey.Corey: So, you've taken a corporate job, and when that happened, I have to confess, I was slightly discouraged because oh, now it's going to be like one of those stories of when someone you know goes to work at Apple because no one knows anyone at Apple; we just used to know people who went there and then we kind of lost touch because it's a very insular thing. Not the Block slash Square slash whatever they're calling themselves this week has that reputation. But InfoSec is always a very nuanced space and companies that have large footprints and, you know, handle financial transaction processing generally don't encourage loud voices that attract attention around anything that isn't directly aligned with the core mission of the company. But you're still as public and prolific as ever. Was that a difficult balance for you to strike?Scott: So, when I was considering employment options, that was something that I made clear to any companies that I was talking to, that this is something that probably will and should continue because a lot of my value to these companies is because I'm able to have discussions, able to impact change because of that public persona. So yeah, so I think that it was something that they were aware of, and a risk that they took. [laugh]. But yeah, it's been useful.Corey: This is the sort of conversation I would have expected to have with, “Yeah, things seem to be continuing the same, and I haven't rocked any boats, yet and they haven't fired me, knock on wood.” Except that recently you've launched yet something else that I am personally a fan of. Now, before we get into the specifics of what it is you're up to these days, I should call out that since your last appearance on this show, I have really leaned into the Thursday newsletter podcast duo of Last Week in AWS: Security Edition. Rounding up what happened the previous week—yes, it was the previous week, and it comes out on Thursdays—because, you know, timing and publication, things are hard, computers, you know how it is—aimed at a target audience that is very much not you: People who have to care about security, but are not immersed in the space. It's a, “All right, what now? What do I have to pay attention to?”Because there's a lot of noise in this space, there's a lot of vendor-captured stuff out there. There's very little that is for people who work in security but don't have the word security anywhere near their job title. And I have to confess that one of my easy shortcuts is, “Oh, it's a pretty thin issue this week,” which is not inherently a bad thing, let's be clear, it's not yay, the three things you need to care about in security then eight more of filler; that's not what we're about. But I always want to make sure I didn't miss something meaningful, and one of my default publication steps is, “What's Scott been tweeting about this week?” Just to make sure that I didn't miss something that I really should be talking about.And every single time I pull up your Twitter feed, I find myself learning something, whether it's a new concept, or whether it is a nuance on an existing thing I was already aware of. So first, thank you for all the work that you do as a member of the community, despite having a, “Regular corporate job,” quote-unquote, you're still very present. It's appreciated.Scott: Thank you. Yeah. And I mean, that newsletter is great for people that don't want to be spending multiple hours per day trolling through Twitter and reading that. So, it provides, also, something great for the community to not have to spend all that time on Twitter like I do [laugh], unfortunately.Corey: It also strives—sort of—to be something approaching an upbeat position of not quite as cynical and sarcastic as the Monday issue. I try to be not just this is the thing that happened, but go a little bit into and this is why it matters. This is how to think about it. This thing that Amazon put out is nonsense, however, here's the kernel hidden within it that might lead to something, such as thinking about how you do sign-on, or how to think about protecting MFA devices, or stuff like that you normally care about a lot right after you really should have cared about it but didn't at all. So, it's just the idea of aiming in a slightly different audience.Scott: Yeah definitely. And it provides value that it does, it takes some delay so that you can read what everybody has written, how they've responded to the different news outtakes, you're not just including the hot takes. For example, as of this morning, there's a certain incident with an authentication provider, and it's not really clear if there was actually a breach or not. And so it's valuable to take a moment to understand what happened, get all the voices to have expressed their points, so you can summarize those issues.Corey: An internal term that we've used to describe the position here is that I am prolific but I also have things to do as a part of my job that do not involve sitting there hitting refresh on Twitter like mad all the time. The idea is to have the best take not the first take—Scott: Exactly.Corey: And if that means that I lose a bunch of eyeballs and early ad impressions in the middle of the night and whatnot, well, great. I don't sell ad impressions anyway, so what does it matter? It winds up lending itself to a more thoughtful analysis of figuring out, in the sober light of day, is this a nothing-burger or is this enormous? With that SSO issue that you're alluding to—[cough] Okta—sorry, something caught in my throat there—very clearly, something is going on, but if I had written next week's newsletter last night while it was still very unclear, it would have been a very different tone than the one that I would have written this morning after their public statement, and even still a certainly different tone that it would take a couple of days once more information is almost certain to come to light. And that is something that is, I think, underappreciated in certainly on Twitter, where an old tweet—there's nothing worse than an old tweet unless you're using it to drag someone for something—that, “Well, we have different perspectives on that nowadays. It's not 2018 anymore.” Right. Okay, cool.Scott: Yep. [laugh].Corey: But something that you've done has been a bit of a pivot lately. Historically, you have been right there in my sweet spot of needling cloud providers for their transgressions in various ways. Cool, right there with you. We could co-author a book on the subject. But lately, you've started a community list of [IMSDv2 00:07:04] abuses.Now, first, we should talk about what IMSDv2 is. It's the name that it clearly came from Amazon because that's a name only a cloud provider bad at naming things could possibly love. What is it?Scott: So, it's the Instance Metadata Service, Version Two. If there's a version two, you can imagine there was a version one at some point. And the version two—Corey: And there's a version two because Amazon prod—the first one was terrible, but they don't turn anything off, ever, so this is the way and the light and the future; we're going to leave that old thing around until your great-grandchild dies of old age.Scott: Exactly, yeah. So, when EC2s first came out, and IAM roles first came out, you wanted to give your EC2s the ability to use AWS privileges, so this is how those EC2s are getting access to their credentials that they can use. And the way in which this was originally done was there's this magic IP address, this 169.254.169.254 IP address, which is very important for security on AWS because if anything can access that magic IP address from an EC2 instance, you can steal their credentials of that EC2, and therefore basically become that EC2 instance, in terms of what it can do in the AWS environment.And so in 2019, there was a large breach of Capital One that was related to this. And so as a result of that—I think that AWS probably had this new version, probably, in the works for a while, but I think that motivated their faster release of this new version, and so IMDSv2 changed how you would obtain these credentials. So, you basically—instead of making a single GET request to this IP address, now you had to make multiple requests, they were now PUT request instead of a GET request, there was a challenge and response, there's the hop limit. So, there's all these various things that are going to make it harder and basically mitigate a lot of the different types of vulnerabilities that previously would be used in order to obtain these credentials. The problem, though, is that IMDSv1 still exists on EC2s, unless you as a customer are enforcing IMDSv2.And so, in order to do this in a large environment, it's difficult—theoretically, it's a simple thing; all you should have to do is update your SDK and now you're able to make use of the latest version. And if you're using any version of the SDK that was released in the past over two years, you already should be using IMDSv2 there, but you have to enforce it. And so that's where the problem is. And what was most problematic to me is now that I work for a company, we have run into the problem that there are some vendor solutions that we use that weren't allowing us to enforce IMDSv2 across all of our different accounts. And this is something I've heard from a number of other customers as well.And so I decided to create this list with vendors that I've had to deal with, vendors that other customers have had to deal with, in order to basically try and solve this problem once and for all. It's been multiple years now and a lot of these vendors, unfortunately, were also security vendors. And so that makes the conversation a little bit easier, to basically put them on this wall-of-shame and say, “You're a security vendor and you're not allowing your customers to enforce best practices of security.”Corey: I want to call on a couple of things around that. Originally the metadata service was used for a number of other things—still is—beyond credentials. It is not the credential service as envisioned by a lot of folks. The way that—also we'll find those credentials empty until there's an EC2 instance role, and those credentials will both be scoped what that instance does and automatically rotated in the fullness of time so they're not long-lived credentials that once you have them, they will last forever. This is, of course, a best practice and something you should be leveraging, but scope those credentials down, or you wind up with one of the ways that was chained together in the Capital One breach a few years ago.It's also worth noting that service would have been more useful earlier in time with a few functions. For example, you can use the metadata service to retrieve the instance tags about the EC2 instance. When I requested it in 2015, it was not possible. But they had released it in January of this year, 2022, long after we have all come up with workarounds for this, where we could have used that to set the hostname internally on the system, if you're looking for something basic and easy. It would have been something then you could have used to automatically self-register with DNS without having to jump through a whole bunch of hoops to do it manually.And you look at this, and it's wow, that's a whole lot of crappy tooling I can just throw into the trash heap of history you don't need anymore. But the IMSDv2, you're right, makes it a lot harder, there has to be a conversation, not just something you can sort of bankshot something off of to get access to it. And it's a terrific mitigation. What I've liked about your list of more or less shaming companies for doing this is, on the one hand, you have companies who take themselves off of the list as soon as it's up there. It's, “Oh, we love when people talk about us. Wait, what's that? They're saying something unkind? On the internet?” And they'll fix it, which honestly is better than I expected.And then every once in a while you'll see something that's horrifying of, “Oh, yeah, we're not vulnerable to that at all because we tell you to create permanent long-lived credentials, store them on disk and we'll use those instead.” And it's… that is, like, guaranteeing that no one is going to break down your door by making your walls out of tissue paper. Don't do that. Like, that has gone so far around the band that has come back around again. So, hopefully that got fixed.Scott: And I think you pointed out a couple of things I want to talk about with this is that, one, it has actually been very successful in terms of getting large vendors to make changes. Currently, of the seven vendors that have ever been listed there, are three of them have already made fixes and have been removed from the list. And the list has only been up for about a month. And so, in terms of getting enterprise solution vendors to make changes within, like, just a few weeks is very surprising to me. And these are things that people have been asking for for years now, and so it had motivated them a lot there.And the other thing that I want to point out is people have looked at the success that it's had and considered maybe we should make wall-of-shame lists, for all the things that we want. And I want to point out that there are some things about this problem, the IMDSv2 specifically, that make it work for having this wall-of-shame list like this. One of them is that not supporting or not allowing customers to enforce IMDSv2 is basically always bad. There is not a use case where you can make a claim—Corey: There is no nuance where that, in this case, is the thing to do, like having an open S3 bucket: There are use cases where that is very much something you want to do, but it's the uncommon case.Scott: Exactly. That I think is an important thing. Another thing is it's not just putting up a list, you know, like that is what people are seeing publicly, but behind the scenes, there's a lot of other things that are happening. One, I am communicating with various customers, customers that are reporting this issue to me, in order to try to better understand what's happening there, so that I can then relay that information to the company. So, I'm not just putting up the list; I'm also, behind the scenes, having conversations with these different companies to try to get timelines from them, to try to make sure that they are aware of the problem, they are aware that they're on this list, how to get off the list. So, there's that conversation happening.There's also the conversation that I'm happening with AWS in order to make various requests that AWS improve this for customers, to make this easier. And this is something that is public on that repo. I have my list of requests to AWS so that people can relay that to their own TAMs at AWS to basically say these are things we want as well. And so this includes things like, “I want an AWS account to have the ability to default to always be enforcing IMDSv2.” You know, so as an example, when you create an EC2 through the web console—which people can say, oh, you should always be using Infrastructure as Code; the reality is many folks are using the web console to create EC2s to do other changes.And when you create an EC2 in the web console, by default, it's going to allow IMDSv1 still. And so my request to AWS is, you should allow me to just default enforce IMDSv2. Also, the web console does not give you visibility into which EC2s are enforcing it and which ones are not. And also, you do not have the ability in the web console to enforce it. You cannot click on an EC2 and say, “Please enforce it now.”So, it's all these various, like, minor changes that I'm requesting AWS to do.Corey: It has to be done at instance creation time.Scott: Exactly. And so there is an API that you can make in order to change it afterwards, but that's only an API so you have to use the CLI or some other mechanism; you can't do it in the web console. But the other thing that I'm requesting AWS do is if security is a priority for AWS and they have all these other partners that are security companies, that they should be requiring their partners to also be enforcing this in their various products. So, if a partner is basically not allowing your AWS customers to enforce security best practices, then perhaps that partnership should be revoked in some way. And so that's a more aggressive thing that I'm asking AWS to do, but I think is reasonable.Corey: I'd also like them to get all of their own first-party services to support this, too.Scott: That's true as well. So, AWS is currently on the list. And so, they have one service, Data Pipelines, which if you are an AWS customer and you are using that service, you are not going to be able to enforce IMDSv2 in your environment. So, AWS themselves, unfortunately, is not allowing customers to enforce this. And then AWS themselves in their own production servers, we have seen indications that they do not enforce IMDSv2 on their own production servers.So, the best practice that they are telling customers to follow, they unfortunately are not following it themselves. And so the way in which we saw this was Orca is a security company that ended up finding this issue with AWS—and there's a lot of questions in terms of what all exactly they found—but they had this post that they called “Breaking Formation” in which they were somehow able to find—basically exploit to some degree—and again, it's unclear exactly what they were able to exploit here—but they were able to exploit AWS production servers that are responsible for the CloudFormation service. And in their blog post, they had a screenshot which showed that those production servers are not enforcing IMDSv2. And so AWS themselves is struggling with this as well, as are many customers. So, it's something that, you know, I put together this list of requests in hopes that AWS can make it easier for not only customers but also themselves to be able to enforce it.Corey: There are a lot of different things that we wish companies did differently, particularly if that company is AWS. Why is this the particular windmill that you've decided to tilt at given—let's say—it's not exactly slim pickins out there as far as changes that we wish companies would make? Obviously, you mentioned at one point, there is no drawback to enabling this, but a lot could be said for other aspects as well. Why is this one so important?Scott: So, in part, I personally have some, I guess, history with this [laugh], basically, IMDSv2, and so we can discuss this. This is back when Capital One had their breach in 2019, there was this Senator, Senator Ron Wyden, who sent this email over to AWS, to Steve Schmidt, who was the CISO at the time there and still is the CISO, and he basically—Corey: Now, he's head of security for all of Amazon.Scott: Yeah, yeah.Corey: CJ is now the AWS CISO. And he has the good sense to hide.Scott: Yeah. [laugh]. So, at the time, this Senator Ron Wyden had send over this email—and obviously it's not Senator Ron Wyden himself, you know, it's one of his, like, technical people on staff that is able to give him this information—and he sends this email to AWS saying, “Hey, this metadata service played a role in this very significant breach. Why hasn't this been fixed?” And Steve Schmidt responded, and because it's communications between a senator, I guess it has to become public.So, Steve Schmidt responds, saying that, “Hey, we never knew that this was an issue before,” is essentially what he responds with. And that irked me because I had reported this to AWS previously, as had many other people. So, there was a conference presentation by this guy Andrés Riancho at BlackHat, I believe in 2014, and he had presented previously in 2013, so it was a known issue; it had been around for a while. But I took the time to actually report it to AWS Security. So, I went through the correct channel of making sure that AWS was aware of a security concern, as a security researcher—so reporting it through that correct channel there—and provided Senator Ron Wyden with all this information.And so, then he then requested that the FTC begin a federal investigation into AWS, related to basically not following the best practices that security researchers have recommended. So, that was, kind of like, my early, I guess, involvement with this issue. So, it's something that I've been interested in for a while to make sure that this is resolved completely at some point.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Oracle Cloud. Counting the pennies, but still dreaming of deploying apps instead of “Hello, World” demos? Allow me to introduce you to Oracle's Always Free tier. It provides over 20 free services and infrastructure, networking, databases, observability, management, and security. And—let me be clear here—it's actually free. There's no surprise billing until you intentionally and proactively upgrade your account. This means you can provision a virtual machine instance or spin up an autonomous database that manages itself, all while gaining the networking, load balancing, and storage resources that somehow never quite make it into most free tiers needed to support the application that you want to build. With Always Free, you can do things like run small-scale applications or do proof-of-concept testing without spending a dime. You know that I always like to put asterisks next to the word free? This is actually free, no asterisk. Start now. Visit snark.cloud/oci-free that's snark.cloud/oci-free.Corey: It's always fun watching where people come from, as far as the security problems that they call out. There was, I believe in the cloud security forum Slack, a thread of recently about what security issues are top-of-mind and that should be fixed as a baseline expectation. In fact, let me dig it out because that is one of those things that I think is well worth having the conversation properly on this.Good examples of risky, insecure defaults in AWS. And people are talking about IMDSv1, and they're talking about all kinds of other in-depth things, and my contribution to it was, “If I go and I spin up an AWS account, until I go out of my way, I'm operating as root in that account. That seems bad.” And a few responses to that were oh, the basically facepalming, “Oh, of course.” I wish that there were an easy way to get AWS SSO as the default because it is the right answer for so many different things. It solves so many painful problems that otherwise you're going to wind up stuck with.And this stuff is hard and confusing; when people are starting out with this for the first time, they're not approaching this from, “All right, how do I be extremely secure?” They want to get some work done. For fun a year ago, I spun up a test account—unattached to any organization—and because account aliases are globally unique, I somehow came up with the account ‘shitposting' because that's pretty much what I use it for. The actual reason I wanted that was I wanted something completely unattached from any other account that I could easily take screenshots from at any point, and the worst case scenario is okay, I've exposed some credential of my own in an account that has no privileged access to anything; I just have to apologize for all the Bitcoin mining now. And honestly, I think AWS would love that marketing campaign; they'd see my face on a billboard looking horrified. It'll be great.But I turned on every security service as I went because, of course, security is the most important thing. And there were so many to turn on, and the bill was approaching 50 bucks a month for an empty account. And it's. It starts to feel a little weird and more than a little wrong.Scott: [laugh]. Yeah, my personal concern in terms of default security features is really that problem of the cost controls, I think that that still is a big issue that AWS does not have cost controls such that when a student wants to try and use AWS for the very first time and somehow they spin up large EC2 instance, or they just you know, end up creating an access key and that access key gets leaked and somehow their account gets compromised and used for Bitcoin mining, now they're stuck with that large AWS bill. For a student who has no budget, is in debt, and now is suddenly being, you know, hit with multiple thousands of dollars on their bill, that I think is very problematic, and that is something that I wish AWS would change as a default is basically, if you are creating AWS account for the very first time, have some type of—I don't know how this would look, but maybe just be able to say, like, I don't ever want this AWS account to spend more than $100 per month, and I'm okay if you end up destroying all my data in the account because I have no money and money is more important to me than whatever data I may store in here.Corey: Make an answer to that question mandatory, just as putting a credit card in is mandatory. Because there are two extremes here. It's more or less the same problem of AWS not knowing who its customers are beyond an AWS account, but there's a spectrum somewhere between I'm a student who wants to learn how the cloud works, and my approach to security is very much the same. Don't let randos spin up resources in my account, and I don't ever want to be charged. If that means you turn off my “Hello World” blog post, okay, great.On the other end, it's this is Netflix. And this is our, you know, eight-millionth account that we're spending up to do a thing and what do you mean you're applying service quotas to it? I thought we had an understanding?—everything is a service quota, let's be clear—Scott: Yep.Corey: —or a company that's about to run a Superbowl ad. Yeah, there's going to be a lot of traffic there. Don't touch it. Just make it work. We don't care what it costs.Understanding where you fall on the cost perspective—as well as a security point of view of, “We're a bank, which means forget security best practices, we have compliance obligations that cannot be altered in this account and here's what they are.” There has to be a way that is easy and approachable for people to wind up moving that slider to whatever position best represents them. Because there are accounts where I never want to be charged a thing. And that's an important thing because—and I've been talking about this for a while because I'm convinced it's a matter of time—that poor kid who wound up trading on margin at Robinhood, woke up saw that he was seven-hundred-and-some-odd grand in debt and killed himself. When it all settled out, I think he turned something like a $30,000 profit when all was said and done, which just serves to make it worse.I can see a scenario in which that happens, and part of the contributors to it are that we used to see that the surprise bill for compromised accounts was 10, 15, 20 grand. Now, they're 70 to 90 because there are more regions, more services to run containers—because of course there are—and the payoff is such that the people exploiting this have gotten very practiced and very operationalized at spinning up those resources quickly, and they cost a lot very quickly. I mean, the third use case that they're not aiming at yet is people like me, where it's, oh, you have a free account that sandboxed; I want to get the high score on the free tier because all their fraud is attuned to you making money. With me, it's nope, just going to run up the store to embarrass Amazon. That's not a common exploit vector, but I'm very much here.Scott: [laugh]. Yep. And that also is the thing though: The Denial of Wallet attack is also a concern on AWS, as well, where you've written a blog post about this, how if you are able to make use of data transfer in different ways, you can run up very high multi-million dollar bills in people's AWS accounts and even AWS's own protections and defenses against trying to look for cost spikes and things like that is delayed by multiple hours. And so you can still end up spending a lot of money in people's accounts, or one thing that's wild is an S3 object locking; that feature, the whole purpose behind it is to ensure data can never be deleted. It exists for various compliance reasons, so even AWS themselves cannot delete certain data.So, if an attacker is able to abuse that functionality in somebody's account, they can end up locking data such that for the next 100 years, it can never be deleted and you're going to have to pay for that for the next 100 years inside your account. The only way of not paying for that anymore is to move everything that you have in an AWS account to a new account, and then ask AWS to delete that account, which is not going to be reasonable under most circumstances.Corey: Yeah, alternatively, it's one of those scenarios where well, the only other option is to start physically ripping hard drives out of racks in a bunch of different data centers. It's wild to me. It's such an attack surface that honestly I believe for the longest time that AWS Security is otherworldly good. And as we start seeing from these breaches, no, what really is otherworldly good is their ability to apply pressure to people not to go public with things they discover that they then wind up keeping quiet because once this whole Orca stuff came out, we started digging, and Aidan Steele found some stuff where you could just get unfiltered, raw outputs of CloudTrail events by setting up a couple of rules in weird ways.And that was a giant problem, and it was never disclosed publicly. I don't know if any of my events were impacted; I can't trust that they would have told me if they were. And for the first time, I'm looking at things like confidential computing, which are designed around well, what if you don't trust your cloud provider? Historically, I guess I was naive because my approach was, “Well, then you shouldn't be using the cloud.” Now it's, “Well, that's actually kind of a good point.”Because it's not that I don't trust my cloud provider to necessarily do what they're telling me. I just don't trust them to tell me what they're doing. And that's part of it. The, “Well, we found an issue, but you can't prove we had an issue, so we're going to say nothing.” And when it comes to light—because it always does—it erodes trust in a big way. And trust is everything in cloud.Scott: Yeah. And so with some of the breaches that have come out, I created another GitHub repo to start tracking all the different security incidents that I could find for the three cloud providers, Azure, GCP, and AWS. And so on there, I started listing not only some of the blog posts from security companies that had been able to exploit vulnerabilities in the cloud providers, but also just anything else that I felt was a security mistake in some way. And so there's a number of things I tried to avoid on there. Like, I tried to avoid listing something that's kind of like a business decision, for example, services that get released that don't have CloudTrail support. That's a security concern to me, but that's kind of a business decision that they decided to release a service before it supported all that functionality.So, I tried to start listing off all those different things in order to also keep track of you know, is there a security provider that's worse than the others? Are there any type of common patterns that I can see? And so I tried to look through some of those different things. And that's been interesting because also I really only focus on AWS, and so I haven't really known what all has been happening with GCP and Azure. And that was interesting because there's been two issues that have happened on AWS where the exact same issue happened on the other cloud providers. And so that tells me, that's concerning to me because that tells me tht—Corey: Because those are not discovered at the same time let's be clear.Scott: Yeah. These were, like, over a year apart. And so basically, somebody had found something on GCP, and then a year-plus later, somebody else found the exact same issue on AWS. And then similarly, there was an issue with Azure and then a year-plus later, same issue on AWS. And that's concerning because that tells me that AWS may not be monitoring what are the security issues that are impacting other cloud providers, and therefore checking whether or not they happen to themselves?That's something that you would expect a mature security team to be doing is to be monitoring what are public incidents that are happening to my competitors, and am I impacted similarly? Or what can I do to try and identify those issues, fix them, make sure they never happen? All those types of steps in terms of security maturity. And that's something that then I'm a little concerned of that we've seen those issues happen before. There's also, on AWS specifically, they have had a number of issues related to their IAM-managed policies that keep cropping up.And so they have had a number of incidents where they were releasing policies that shouldn't have been released in some way. And that's concerning that showed that they don't really have a change management process that you would expect. Usually, you would expect a company to be having GitHub PRs and approval processes and things like that, in order to make sure that there's a second set of eyes on something before it gets released.Corey: Particularly things of this level of sensitivity. This is not—like, I was making fun of them a day or two ago for having broken the copyright footer and not updating them since 2020 because instead of the ‘copyright' symbol, they used an ‘at' symbol. Minor stuff, but like that's fun to needle people about, but it doesn't actually matter for anything.Scott: Yeah.Corey: Security matters and mistakes show.Scott: Yeah. And so there had been some examples where they released a policy that was called, like, ‘cheese puffs something' and it's like, okay, that's clearly, like, an internal service of some sort. But I'd called them out and, like, I'd sent an email to AWS Security being like, “Hey, you need to make sure that you have change management processes on your IAM policies because one day you're going to do something that is bad.” And one day they did. They made a change to the read-only access policy, and that basically—they removed every single privilege, somebody had ended up, you know, internally, removed every single privileges to the read-only access policy and replaced it with a whole bunch of write privileges for, I think, the Cassandra service.And so, that was like, clearly they've made a mistake that they should have made sure they were correcting because you know, they had these previous incidents. Another kind of similar one was in December, there was a support policy where they had added S3 GetObject to that policy, and that was concerning in terms of have they just given all of their support employees access to everybody's content in their S3 buckets? And so AWS made some statements saying that there were other controls in place there so it wouldn't have been possible. But it's those types of things that [crosstalk 00:33:17]—Corey: Originally, those statements were made on Twitter, let's be clear here.Scott: Yes. Yeah. [laugh].Corey: And I feel like there's a—while I deeply appreciate how accessible a lot of their senior people are, I cannot point the executive leadership team at a client to some tweets that someone made. That is not a public statement of record that works on this.Scott: Exactly.Corey: They're learning. We'll get there sooner or later, I presume. I want to thank you for taking the time to speak with me, as always, I'll throw links to these repos into the [show notes 00:33:46], but if they want to know more what you have to say, where's the best place to find you?Scott: So, my Twitter, which, unfortunately, is a handle written in hex, but it's—‘dabbadoo' is how you would pronounce it, but it's probably easiest to see a link for it. So, that's probably the main place to look for me.Corey: That's why my old Twitter handle was my amateur radio callsign. I don't use that one anymore. It's just easier. And I think that's the right answer. Besides, given what you do, it's easy enough if people want your attention. They screw up badly enough, you'll come to them.Scott: Yep. [laugh].Corey: Scott, I really appreciate your time. Thanks again.Scott: Thank you.Corey: Scott Piper, Principal Engineer at Block and, more or less, roving security troubadour for lack of a better term. 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 or a comment on the YouTubes saying that this episode is completely invalid because you wind up using the old version of the metadata service and you've never had a problem. That you know of.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.

On today's episode of the ACCEL Podcast, Scott, Eric and Alex welcome Brian and Matt from the ACCEL Gaming Division. On Part-One of this Two-Part Series, Brain and Matt discuss Blockchain, Play-to-Earn (P2E) Games, NFTs and how their integration with blockchain technology is not only growing, but accelerating to new heights of adoption across multiple chains. For more information on ACCEL , please visit www.acceldefi.com or our Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/AccelDefiFor educational resources related to ACCEL and Crypto in general, please visit ACCEL University on YouTube using the following link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJDNIqPTp9kjsMPmPo119Zg Episode Transcript:[Alex] Welcome to the ACCEL Podcast. Today we have very special guests for you, Matt and Brian. They head the gaming division here at ACCEL. [Alex] Can you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself, your background in gaming, and how you found yourself developing P2E Games in the crypto space? [Brian] Thanks again. As you said, my name is Brian. I've been an avid gamer pretty much my entire life. I've just been working into project management and programming for a few years now, and basically I've just brought everything together when forming this division as it appealed to all of my skills that I've built over the years. And I've been working on building this division from the ground up. So I am very excited to have a couple of people in our team. And honestly, it's been pretty much a dream of mine. I've always wanted to be kind of a project manager programmer for a small indie company. That's kind of something that's always been a dream of mine. So the simple fact that now I finally get to do it is fantastic and I'm looking forward to the future. [Alex] Thank you very much for giving us a little bit of information on your background. Is game development something you went to school for, or were you self taught? [Brian] That's a great question. I was self taught. The only kind of experience I have is some coding classes when I went to University, but I never really used them for gaming. It was just got through the courses and at the time that wasn't something that I planned on using. But now that I'm here, I'm really glad that I decided to stick with it. Those late hours of going through code, it's finally going to pay off. [Alex] Wow, that's fascinating. Hey, Matt, can you also give us a little bit about your background and how you got involved with ACCEL? [Matt] Absolutely. I've been in eSports. I was an eSports pro in my 20s. I actually have been involved in gaming for about 18 years now. Always dream. Just like Brian, we've been friends for ten years. We've gone through a lot. We've discussed a lot of things that we want to do, and this is sort of like making all that happen. I personally come from an engineering background. I am pretty good with numbers and like I set up both developed games simply and I've worked on different games just through the variable aspect. And I've been very involved with technology for the last ten years. So when Brian told me about this opportunity, I thought it was a great time to come in, materialize all the things that we've discussed over the years, just bring them together and make this an amazing environment. [Alex] Thank you very much for giving us that information. [Scott] So I guess that kind of leads us into our next question. I think there's a lot of kind of confusion around gaming in the crypto sphere and kind of how everything ties together. There's a lot of different words thrown around that I think kind of confused people between these console games and these mobile games that you can play on your phone, ones where you can actually earn rewards, ones where you can't can you kind of just give us a little bit more insight on what exactly you guys are going to do in the gaming division, how that ties into crypto? [Brian] Yeah, absolutely. So mobile and console games, they all use a standard protocol, and basically there's going to be a way that we can be able to connect them to the blockchains. As of right now, that's the challenge. But I believe that what we can do is it's definitely coming along. It's faster than you think. Right. People have been playing games for virtual tokens for years, and really the only change now is that they be playing with a stake and earn real world assets. So, you know, you basically instead of farming your own Gill, gold, whatever the ingame currency is, basically. Now what you can do is not only can you throw money in there, but there are also ways to earn the money through various tasks, et cetera. And it's basically a great community effort because you're going to have people that are going to be let's say all I want to do is be a blacksmith. Right. Well, everybody's going to need a sword. So you're going to have those one on one interactions in transactions with people just like you and me. And we'll be able to use centralized token or coin or what have you. And we'll be able to do all kinds of trading. And I think Matt can actually elaborate a little more. [Matt] Absolutely. What basically is happening here is that before, if you went to any game, you'd earn that game's currency, right? You could earn gold, you could earn Gill, you could earn, like, little jewels and Candy Crush, et cetera. And all those things actually allow you to participate or buy items using that in game currency. But those items and those things are only limited to that game, and you could never translate it into something outside of the game. You could be the best player in the world in Candy Crush, but you're still going to get beat up at school if you're a nerd happened to be honestly, it was an experience. And the good thing about these games, the strong thing about these games is they can appeal to both the time and skill that you can put in. And that skill doesn't always have to be related directly to one task. Right. Like, for example, you have people with different careers in the world that do different things. And in the gaming, in the meta verse itself, you can tie all this together that people are going to be very good at. Some people are going to be very good at racing, some people are going to be very good at guessing a number off of a deck. And some people are going to go more into the creative side. You know, they are going to design characters, they're going to build certain items, they're going to build a lot of different things. So there's always going to be a discipline that appeals to anyone. And like, as with horse racing, where one person wins and everyone else loses, you actually have all these opportunities for different people to come together and use the things they are good at, use the things they want to do, and they all have the same possibility to earn something that they can just take back with them after. [Scott] Okay. So I guess my follow up kind of question to that then is these Play-to-Earn games have kind of been around a while. Why do you think you're seeing this trend kind of catching on now? What is kind of that ignition behind it? Do you think it's the blockchain interaction? Is that kind of that big selling point that's really bringing the play to earn games, too? We're seeing them really rise to the top right now. [Matt] Yeah. I think one of the key reasons is exactly what you mentioned. Because for everything that happened before, one of the big elements was that there was always, well, not really in games, but like, if you take it to real world, there's always going to be someone in the middle regulating transactions between players. So, for example, this is a very simple example. If anyone out there has played RuneScape, I'm sorry for you. But Besides that, if anyone out there has played RuneScape, you've gotten like scammed at least once. Like, some person comes in and they want to sell you something and you give them your gold because like, okay, I want the site, I may give you my goal and then the person just disconnects and disappears and you basically got stiffed. Truth be told, it's just a game currency. So it wasn't really that much of a hurt on you because you really feel bad when it happens. And Blockchain Technology just has had its peaks since 2019. If I'm not mistaken, it was first developed around 2009, but it's really seeing the strong adoption today. And the important part of Blockchain Technology is that it can do two things that usually didn't happen before. A it can regulate transactions between two parties without having like a physical third party having to exist. And the second one is that is a trust system so you don't actually have to go and trust the other player to make your transaction. Because it's going to be written in code, it's going to be hashed and there's no way you're getting out of that. No one can really stake a different item in transaction than they originally did. Scams are there like scams happen every day, but it's mostly like 99% of them are mostly due to a human factor. And that's why the fact that you can now actually have people playing against something that they don't need to trust, they know there's no way to go around it and they're going to get the returns of what they're putting in. It's not a scam, it's going to be like written code. The smart context is going to be there. It makes people a lot more confident to stake money or stake different sort of assets in these games. Kind of like when people in the 90s were afraid to put their credit card information anywhere because they all thought like they were going to get cloned and scanned. And now like you'll just go to a Russian site because you wanted to buy that PDF, that one book that you need to print for your son and just put your credit card info in weird Russian site with like not thinking about it twice. [Brian] Also, one thing I'd love to add is I believe now more than ever people actually want to feel like they're a part of something bigger, right? So let's say you've got your avatar, you're going in the Metaverse and you want to buy paranike, whether it's going to be for your avatar, like The Sims where you can dress your avatar, or maybe Nike will have a special NFT for X amount of sales. So either way you've got the people who, I just want to make my avatar look cool, I want to spend it on this, that or the other. And then you've got other people that are, I'm doing this for the money. As far as like, this is a really cool limited edition Nike NFT. I can only imagine we're going to be bringing in some big names very shortly. And one of the cool things is you don't necessarily have to be quote, unquote whale to own a piece of the pie, right? You could have in the Metaverse, you own a piece of land and then that land has the shoe store in there. So someone who comes in and say 1000 people purchase that land, anybody who gets sales from that Nike shoe is going to disperse equally. And so everyone's going to be able to not only say that they've got some connections with brand management, but also just sales get X amount of tokens or whatever. And then you use those for basically whatever you'd like. So it's just really cool. [Eric] So Brian and Matt, you guys have done a diamond explanation of giving us a little bit of your background, how you're now starting to tie into ACCEL. So for our subscribers and maybe a couple more of our more veterans in the ACCEL game–I'll put myself in that category–give me a little more insight if both of you could, or a little more understanding on exactly what P2E Games are, and with that being said, exactly how they are going to now tie into The Blockchain, and I know you started to get into how we pay for it. I know, Matt, you had alluded to your son or your daughter can tie in a credit card, but bring it back a little more to the basics, and just let me know about the P2E Games, how they tie into The Blockchain, and exactly how it's being monetized. [Matt] P2E or like Play to Earn is just basically any game that gives you a reward for playing it. You can even define like, if you loosely define it, you can even call P2E to those little machines in Japan where if you exercise, you do ten squats, you actually get a train ticket. And it's sort of the same principle that comes in there. And people relate this a lot to casinos for that reason, because you basically go in, stake your money, make some bets. Betting is one of the many forms that P2E has. And I think there's a hidden gem that NFCs will bring that still hasn't been tapped into and relates directly with fractal ownership. There's a lot of artists that have talked about this. It's basically sort of selling a part or selling a piece of, for example, the right to your music. Like, if you have a favorite artist, how cool would it be if you could own a small percentage of the rights to their music? [Brian] Right. And NFT's in general, all these tokens would actually make for a strong case in which people can bring their resources together. We can form a pool of 30,000 people, and we can all pool our ETH. And the good thing is no one has to trust anyone else and get that pulled resources and get that pulled money to let's say we're all a big fan of Nike. You want to buy a percentage of Nike and sort of be able to bring the Nike brand into the Metaverse or get some dividends out of the Nike shares and et cetera. That's a strong point of NFTs and I think it's going to be seen a lot more because people are starting to realize there are a lot more uses to this than they thought originally. [Scott] Yeah, I think that's one of the craziest things we're kind of seeing in the blockchain and crypto areas. A lot of people don't really want to jump on this innovation and it's one of the things we're really seeing is everything is tied together and in our next episode we're going to kind of touch on this, but we want to leave you guys on a little bit of a cliffhanger. But in the next episode we're going to kind of explain to you guys how this all ties back together. The Metaverse, the NFTs, the Play-to-Earn, the blockchain and how they're all in one. So we're looking forward to this next episode. Please join us again with Brian Matt. It's going to be awesome. Bye.-----------------------------------------The Information presented in this podcast is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, and without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose.The Information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.The Information provided from or through this podcast is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional broker or financial advisor.You understand that you are using any and all information from this podcast at your own risk.

On this episode of the ACCEL Podcast, Scott, Eric and Alex interview Bhaves (aka Juicy Jerms in the community) and discuss his professional background, involvement with ACCEL, cryptocurrencies and the market cycles in this space. For more information on ACCEL , please visit www.acceldefi.com or our Link Tree:https://linktr.ee/AccelDefiFor educational resources related to ACCEL and Crypto in general, please visit ACCEL University on YouTube using the following link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJDNIqPTp9kjsMPmPo119Zg -------------------------------------Episode Transcript:[Scott] On today's episode of the ACCEL podcast, we interview Bhaves, also known as Juicy, as we discuss his background, involvement with ACCEL cryptocurrencies and the market cycles in the space. As always, my name is Scott and I'm Eric. And I'm Alex. You're listening to to the ACCEL podcast Defining a Decentralized Future. One listen at a time.[Alex] Welcome, everyone, to the ACCEL podcast. Today we have a very special guest for you, businessman, entrepreneur Juicy aka Bhaves. Welcome to the show. [Juicy] Hey, thanks for having me. Thank you for coming on. Can you introduce yourself to the listeners? Tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah, certainly. So my name is Bhaves, aka Juicy Germs in the chat. So I've got kind of like a wide array of background, started with SaaS software companies, have my own recruiting agency, work in various other real estate aspects. And then I was also a day trader for trading stocks. So I think it was just a good conversion to bring the crypto side into that portfolio. [Scott] Okay. Everyone kind of finds their own way into crypto. It's always exciting to hear about the different people and how they kind of found their way in. Here what really drew you in from that background into the crypto sphere. [Juicy] So when you're looking at investments, it's really about diversifying in different markets. Like I said, real estate stocks, crypto is growing, and at a very large rate, it's almost as like a doubling effect since 2012. And I kind of just wanted to grab a piece of the crypto side for my portfolio. [Scott] So it was really just kind of diversifying that portfolio, kind of reaching out into some different areas. [Juicy] Yeah. I have an investment philosophy of kind of building pillars. That way if one goes down, you're able to still rely on other areas for your money to continue to grow. As we know we have higher inflation than historically present. And I think crypto is a really good asset to just bring in to help kind of minimize the risk in overall portfolio decay. [Scott] So let me ask you something with that. Does it kind of attract you being something that's a little bit newer as it's a new market compared to some of the other things you've gotten involved in? Is that something that kind of peaks a little bit of interest? [Juicy] Yes, definitely. The hype behind it helps a lot. And then also just with the overall growth of it, I mean, you look at the numbers of decentralized finance itself. In April of 2020, we were sitting around about 3 billion in market cap. And then just a year later, it grew almost 30 times to 103,000,000,000 in market cap. So as soon as you start reaching these billion dollars in total dollars in that market or space, it's something that really is hard to kind of just shut off. And so that's when I kind of piqued more interest into it because it's something that's not really a fad. [Scott] Yeah, that was definitely something how it kind of went for me. It was like one of those things. It's almost undeniable once it keeps going for a while. Like at first you see it. Okay. Back a couple of years, 2014. Okay. Yeah, maybe 2016, Rosalien. And now we're really getting into the time where it's like it's either time to shut up and get on board or to get completely out. I feel like it's one of those times where a lot of people are taking advantage of the market and trying to find a way in. And I think it's advantageous to think that you can't take a look at where we've come from in crypto to kind of give you an idea of where we're going. Is that kind of how you feel? Juicy? [Juicy] Yeah. When you look at just like the overall trend from 2012, I mean, it's completely changed and flipped upside down to where instead of just having like a negative connotation behind cryptocurrencies, you're having large financial institutions, Fortune 500 companies getting involved in crypto, small countries are getting involved in crypto as well. So it's not something that really can be taken lightly for anymore or as a joke, it's a real serious player in today's world. [Eric] So juicy. With all that being said, as you give us a little bit of your background and you said you'd entered into crypto coming from the day trading space, and we've heard a lot about that where guys are coming home, gals are coming home trading on their Schwab account or their ETrade account. Now you've moved into that crypto space. How has that traditional background of day trading transitioned you into crypto? [Juicy] So the trading side of the stock market, there are similarities. As far as technical analysis goes, when you bring it over to cryptocurrencies, one of the biggest learning curve that I had to kind of deal with was crypto is very, very volatile versus the traditional stock market, having certain levels in which you can see kind of pauses and momentum kind of shift. Whereas crypto especially DeFi when the train runs, it runs, but when it's out of gas, it's a complete stop. [Eric] So then, alright, so with that being said, is crypto something that becomes more of an emotional trading thing? Because as we always hear, everybody always says, you got to remove your emotions from trading. You have to trade upon the numbers, predicated upon the financials or is crypto one of those things that the traditional trading mentality does or does not apply? [Juicy] It somewhat applies with technical analysis. You can find your support, resistance zones, breakouts as well. Fibonacci is one of the trading tools that I use for trading the stock market, and it does relate to the crypto side. But overall, it's more psychological on the crypto side, even though it is on the stock market side as well. On the crypto side, it's a lot more about seeing green and red for when people exit and enter. So with that being said, for the new Gal or the new guy coming into the crypto space, is it something that you've really got to go with the old traditional standpoints or not even the old traditional standpoints, but the mentality of buy and hold, you really can't get caught up in the excitement of the up and down cycles, where, as the old school mentality told me by my mom and dad, you're not going to make a quick buck overnight. It cannot mentality still be brought to crypto and still be successful and still invest for the long term, which is what people really kind of as we've always heard, you're not getting into a marketplace for the today, you're getting into it for the future. It's about your retirement and so on and so forth. Yeah. So what I do is I actually take the stock market principles of investing in companies and then tie it to basically my startup background in SAS software or Fintech. And essentially I'm looking for projects that have longevity because it is an ever growing space to where if you get in the right project and they're around three, four, five, 10 years from now, you're going to make quite a bit of money. Just like when startups come out like Airbnb DoorDash. Those guys didn't get a 300, $400 million valuation just from day one. I mean, they literally grinded it out at the very beginning. And then they slowly grew, slowly grew. Then incubator funds came in, invested in them, and now they're publicly traded. So I try to use more of take the products, the services, the IP that these projects are providing in DeFi, and then tie it with the chart itself, using one of the tools out there and try to figure out, hey, is this product something that can be around five years from now, ten years from now, is what they're building, something that is actually going to be viable for the DeFi blockchain space in the future? [Alex] We discussed a little bit about business and other investments. Can we talk about how you got involved with ACCEL? [Juicy] Yeah. So my initial investment with ACCEL was actually as a part of one of the presale tokens. The presale token provided a lot of value in the DeFi space. And I could kind of put on paper, like how they were going to generate revenue and how they can get to scale. So when the merger of ACCEL happened, it actually made it a lot better on my projections that I had of what the revenues could be at. And so I kind of just saw it as a steal, as an investment goes.[Scott] So as we kind of talk about that juicy working into the different kind of streams of rewards that we kind of can see is that kind of what really enticed you once that merger happen and you really got to dive deep into the ACCEL I know you have a little bit of a relationship with Chris that's been going on for a while and we all love Chris. We got a nice little talk with him on one of our first podcasts. And man, he's a smart guy. [Juicy] Yeah, he's brilliant. And he was actually the person to kind of push me towards ACCEL. And at first I was a little skeptical just coming from the more traditional stock background and real estate side. But then once I started to get the information, or once ACCEL released the information of how the revenues were going to work, where the revenue was coming from, how the rewards are going to be split amongst the community, and then you have the staking pool. I mean, those were things that kind of just showed me that, hey, we can really make some real money in deep eye without having to one risk quite a bit, but also still have that large unicorn type potential that you see from the startup companies in fintech that eventually go IPO. [Scott] Okay, so I guess kind of tying that in. So I know we kind of talked a little bit earlier, touched on it, at least about market cycles. Is this something that is more appealing to have these multiple revenue streams? Do you think with the different market cycles that you have to worry about with things cycle in and out? [Juicy] Yes. So it actually helps because we all know that there are going to be cycles in the market, especially at the macro level. But when you have true fundamental numbers that you can base calculations on, such as revenues and you can tie that into growth, I mean, even price coming down, it just allows me to have a good intrinsic value on buying at a cheaper price. One of the things I look for with long term hold, especially in the stock side, is like how much is it trading apart from its book value, its competitors using also PE ratio as well. If I see the revenues of ACCEL hypothetically in a 15 20 million range, but their market cap is only around 50 to 100 million. Well, for a tech company, a tech product based company, to be trading at only a four, five or ten multiple, it's kind of outrageous in valuation for me. So even these cycles that come in on the macro side, it's not really changing the thought process of what I see in an individual company or project because the revenues will speak for itself at the end of the day. [Eric] So juicy. As we all know, we always hear the terms of bullish and bearish cycles. Pretty safe to say we're in a bearish cycle right now. I mean, there's no two ways to call to say we look at all the large market cap currencies that are 50% to 60% down. So my belief and you can steer me in the right direction, having a greater knowledge of this knowing that we have a revenue generating coin in ACCEL, how are we going to get through this downturn of the market cycle and feel safe about being invested in ACCEL? [Juicy] So when you look at the stock market, what usually happens during a bear cycle? Money moves to more fundamental stable areas. And if the holders of ACCEL are seeing these rewards come in due to the revenues being shared, then it would naturally gravitate holders of other cryptocurrency where they're seeing 30, 40, 50% drops that don't have the rewards come in shift towards the more stable side of DFI because if I'm able to receive back a 25 30% return ROI on just the reward side itself in a bearish market, just imagine what that would be in a bullish market. [Eric] So safe to say right now. Again, this podcast is not to give financial advice, but safe to say, to be within ACCEL right now doesn't particularly make you insulated, but knowing that eventually with every down market there is an up market, ACCEL would probably be a good place to be. [Juicy] Yeah, I do think ACCEL would be a good place to be, especially with the way that the rewards and staking pool set up. It's really there to benefit the holders itself. Ethereum Bitcoin they can do what they do in the chart, but if I'm seeing returns back, why wouldn't I stick around? Is the question I ask myself.[Juicy] So juicy then tying back into what we came into this discussion about emotions, how are we able to remove our emotions or control our emotions during these bearish and bullish markets where people always say windfalls of money or windfalls of returns are made sometimes in the worst times, right? The most millionaires came out of the Great Depression. How can we then translate and tie that into this down market within ACCEL of crypto in today's space [Juicy] With the down markets, really what they do is they create buying opportunities and the emotional side, everyone looks at it as more of where is my money right now? Whereas they're not looking like a lot of the larger institutional investors are looking and they're looking where is this going to be valued in twelve months? Where is it going to be valued in a year? Where is it going to be valued in two years? We're always going to have ups and downs because people are taking profits. It happens if nobody took profits, everything would be worth ten times what it's at right now. But overall that's human psychology. You want to take profits, you want to grow your money, but they keep looking at what it is right now versus what can it be when it's actually in full fruition. And the way that you kind of do that is instead of investing for the quick hype, the quick pump it's where can I invest to where? Five years from now, ten years from now, it's changed my life, not where it is right now because right now the money sits there and if you're looking for it to grow 30, 40 X, you can do that, but you're probably going to lose more than you win versus the more fundamental side. Buy and hold wealth is created. It just takes time. And so, like for me with ACCEL, the price really doesn't matter. In my opinion, it's more of where are we going? And at that point, the market itself will catch eyes and dictate what it's truly worth. [Scott] So I think one of the biggest things people have a hard time with juicy and I'd love to hear how you've kind of taught yourself to do this is how do you take a step back and look at the whole picture? What gives you that ability, that mindset to be able to take a step back, take a deep breath and look at the whole picture. [Juicy] So it really just comes from experience. Back in College, I had my own little sports advisory where we would essentially just give out games to some not going to name anybody, but we would give out games, they would vet them, but it was all based on money management. At the end of the day, if you don't know how to manage your money, It's probably not going to work out the best. So I use those lessons basically from back then and applied it to the market side as a whole. It's really hard to take emotion out of it, right, because you see your money's green one day and then the next thing you know, you open your portfolio and it's down 10%. Usually that leads to that fear that it's going to zero, but in reality, I mean, nothing really goes to zero unless it truly just files for bankruptcy. And that's really the best way I can put it. I'm kind of blessed I was able to live through 20. 07 20. 08 20. 09 and my family went through very hardship with their businesses and that kind of helped me learn more and more that, hey, even though things have gone bad, There are better days ahead because once you bought them out, there's really nowhere else to go but up. [Eric] So juicy, everything you've given us today Dynamite information, and as everything ties back into it comes down to education and you've kind of walked us through your journey of how you've gotten to these trading cycles, working through emotion and for all of our listeners out there, you can get all of that insight at the ACCEL University on our YouTube channel, everyone.[Alex] Everyone, thanks for listening to the ACCEL podcast. Please check our show notes for our link tree and as always sit back and ACCEL.--------------------------------------NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE– The Information presented in this podcast is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, and without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose.The Information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.The Information provided from or through this podcast is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional broker or financial advisor.You understand that you are using any and all information from this podcast at your own risk.

On today's episode of the Accel Defi Podcast, Scott and Eric interview Accel Defi's Director of Accel University, Chris A.k.a. "Drake", as they discuss CEX's (or Centralized Exchanges), why they matter in the crypto space, and Accel Defi's listing on its first CEX: Hotbit.ioFor more information on Accel Defi, please visit www.acceldefi.com or our Link Tree:https://linktr.ee/AccelDefiSubscribe to Accel Defi University on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJDNIqPTp9kjsMPmPo119Zg ------------------------------------------------Episode Transcript:[Scott] On today's episode of the ACCEL Podcast, we are interviewing the director of ACCEL University, Chris. We discuss Sunshine, why they matter in the Crypto space, and ACCEL's official listing on Hotbit. As always, my name is Scott, this is Eric, and you are listening to ACCEL Podcasts, Accelerating Your Crypto Investments, one podcast at a time.[Scott] Today on the ACCEL Podcast, we have the director of ACCEL University, Chris. Chris, could you tell us a little bit about your background in the crypto space and your involvement in ACCEL? [Chris] Hey, how's it going? Thanks for having me on. Real excited to be here today. Yeah. So I'm leading the ACCEL University, which is our educational DAO that we are going to be building. As far as my background in crypto, I've always been an investor in crypto since way back when I had Ethereal in 2017 and things like that. But I never really kind of dove deep or took it seriously until closer to like 2020. And I would say that was when I became a little more active on the crypto scene and also in trading and investing in some more alternate coins or alternate tokens and things like that. Outside of crypto, I've been a full time investor and educator for a few years now, and so kind of developing educational resources and adding that value to the DeFi space has always seemed like something that I would be interested in and also a perfect fit for this project. As far as developing the educational side of ACCEL, I would say that is definitely my main priority here on the team. And for anyone who's not aware, basically what we're doing is building a DAO or decentralized autonomous organization that's going to be completely focused for ACCEL holders and we're going to be providing a ton of resources and tools that only ACCEL holders can access. And our goal here really is to kind of build the knowledge base that all of the ACCEL holders have and allow our community to not only grow but become more knowledgeable in the default space itself. [Scott] Yes, I know that's something that definitely excites me. I know there's a lot of people in the ACCEL community. I get really excited about the education side of things. I think it's something that a lot of people kind of have a little bit of a shortcoming on. And it's not in a bad way. It's just with all these mean coins that kind of took over the DeFi space in the last year or two, I think it just kind of caused the craze where people were just kind of throwing money at the wall and seeing what sticks. So I think it's really exciting to see the advancement of the education portion for DeFi as a whole. [Eric] So, Chris, that leads into my question for our listeners. So our listeners that need to be educated on it can you exactly tell us what ACCEL University and how do you think the ACCEL University is filling the space or the void that has been plaguing this crypto space? Because people just come into it and they really don't have a great grasp on it. So how does ACCEL University fill that void? [Chris] Well, really, the idea here is that we're being able to tackle investors and holders and traders of all types of backgrounds and welcome them to the project. And so in doing so, a lot of the resources that are being provided and developed for this DAO are going to be categorized towards beginner traders, towards more intermediate and also advanced people. Right. So really, ultimately, our goal here is to be able to have something that can provide resources and value to a crypto trader of any background. And ultimately, what that comes down to is we're also building a safe space where beginners people who are new to crypto can kind of come in, take advantage of these resources, and kind of get a jump start on their crypto experience or get a head start on that and kind of learn how to really be able to succeed in their crypto experience. [Scott] Yeah, I know something that's something that really excites a lot of different people in this space. Education is something like I said, that it's kind of far and in between to find someone to help, especially when you're talking on the DeFi side of crypto. It's just very hard to find that connection then. And even as you kind of bridge between DeFi and crypto to see some of these larger coins, I know one of the big focuses in the ACCEL community and kind of give you an opportunity to show off a little bit of what ACCEL University does is we're going to kind of touch on centralized exchanges, if that's okay with you, Chris. [Chris] Yeah, absolutely. [Scott] On the topic of education in the crypto space, could you help us listeners understand what exactly centralized exchange is and why most crypto investors use them? [Chris] Yeah, absolutely. I think that's definitely something we can talk a little bit about because there's definitely some confusion that I think would be worthwhile clearing up. So really central exchanges. Right. Usually abbreviated CEX, those are going to be the largest platforms that you can buy and sell crypto on. And ultimately, those are also the most accessible platforms for a lot of people. And so central exchange is a couple of examples. The biggest ones would be like Coinbase, for example, or Binance. I think an analogy that works well is basically a central exchange kind of operates like a large bank or a large crypto bank and provides people or users who are making accounts at these banks. Right. The ease of access, the ability to make transactions, additional features that something like a bank might offer. Right. So, like, for example, added security features on the ease of being able to trade crypto. Some of the things that we see on central exchanges are limit orders, for example, where you can submit in order to buy a crypto at a very specific price. And then ultimately you have those security features, you have those extra things that are kind of making your experience with crypto not only easier, but a little safer, a little more accessible. Right. And ultimately, I think some things to think about when it comes to central exchanges is just that whenever we talk to someone new to crypto, that is always their first point of reference is some type of central exchange. Right. If you talk to someone who doesn't know a lot about crypto, Coinbase is still going to be that household name that they might know about. Right. And then the largest cryptos that get listed on these central exchanges are also the ones that develop that same kind of popularity in the DeFi space. Right. So that's something that we see the largest audience or the largest user base for crypto dissipate in central exchanges and use these. [Eric] So, Chris, now that we've explained how it is to trade on the centralized exchanges, is it possible that we can get an explanation as to the natural progression when we go to defy or decentralized exchanges, how we can bounce back and forth between both? [Chris] Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, there's something to consider in between the difference between a centralized exchange and a decentralized exchange. And ultimately that idea is that obviously your decentralized exchange doesn't afford you those same kind of luxuries that a central exchange does. And so, for example, a decentralized exchange, like Uniswap, which is the most popular one for trading Ethereum based tokens, is going to work very similarly to a central exchange. And if you have a token that's maybe listed on a central exchange, you can kind of hop back and forth between the two. And either way, regardless of which exchange you are interacting with, you're still going to be trading the same cryptocurrency or the same token. [Scott] Yeah. So I think that's something where sometimes people in the crypto space get a little bit confused. And I think there's a little bit of a misconception. And I think one of the big things is the amount of exchanges out there. I think a lot of people are a little misled because there's so many mainstream ones that people only really see those handful there at the top. So usually tend to not know about these other exchanges. We know ACCEL was listed this week on their first exchange, which was HotBit, which is a pretty high volume exchange. Could you explain what the importance and why this is a good milestone for ACCEL moving forward? [Chris] Yeah, absolutely. So HotBit is a pretty large central exchange, and it also serves a lot of overseas customers. Or we also see a lot of people from overseas using this specific exchange at the very base level. Ultimately, what we're seeing is that being listed on HotBit is going to give new people who want to get into the ACCEL project that ease of access. Right. We're going to be kind of widening our user base and be able to approach and appeal to a lot of these crypto investors who don't necessarily know about or deal with decentralized exchanges. Right. One of the other things to consider is that it's going to offer us increased volume across the board. Basically, the more exchanges that you can be listed on, the wider your audience gets. And so the more volume you're going to get, the more holders, the more traders, the more people we can reach out to. And for example, people who have a HotBit account but might not have ever heard of ACCEL. That's a person that we can now reach with our project, as opposed to originally or initially the entire pool or audience were people who were already familiar with how to use a decentralized exchange like Uniswap. One of the other things to consider when it comes to why this listing is important to the project is that any trades that happen for ACCEL on HotBit, they're not going to have any taxes. Right. Normally, when you look at a decentralized exchange, there are a lot of things you have to worry about, like taxes on transactions, the price impact from your buy order, things like gas fees that doesn't exist on a central exchange. Those are features that are unique to a decentralized exchange. So anybody who wants to kind of trade or buy ACCEL with a small amount of money now they can do this and they don't have to pay taxes on HotBit. There's no taxes for transfers either. There's no gas fees. And so really what we're doing is we're creating this new pool of users to kind of come in and learn about ACCEL. [Scott] Yeah. So I think that's definitely something that some people don't fully understand. But being able to get into these different demographics is definitely a huge thing that these exchanges allow. Because trading on Uniswap or on these different taxes, it gets expensive with the fees and the taxes. So it allows people to come in for a smaller amount, and it allows them to make that initial investment and maybe they could come in and see how it goes. And it also allows them the freedom to come out of the centralized exchange and move into the DEX. If I'm correct and still allow them to use the staking pool, is that correct? [Chirs] Yes, that's correct as well. And so you can take advantage of the features that ACCEL has, like the staking and rewards, but you can buy on the central exchange, and this is appealing to maybe larger traders or larger investors, people who want to make larger transactions as well, because now they can do this without those taxes, without those gas fees. And then really now you just transfer over to your take those ACCEL tokens out of your central exchange and place them into your own wallet, and you can stick those into the pool like any normal ACCEL tokens would be. [Scott] Okay. So that makes sense that it allows you to have that extra basically an extra pool in a way. So I guess my next question would be, so as we're growing onto these different exchanges, we know we're on Hotbit now. We're going to BKEX next week. How will that work when the bridge is intact? Will that kind of allow even more ability for that? Do you think that will limit it even more? So how do you think it will work with the exchanges? And once we have the bridge up to connect the different chains? [Chris] Yeah. So there's actually two factors to consider when you're thinking about this part. And the first would be the idea that by being listed on a central exchange, we are creating a separate pool, like a separate liquidity pool of ACCEL tokens. Right. And this is going to help bring a little stability to the price of ACCEL itself in general. Right. One of the analogies to consider when talking about this is almost like, again, a bank or let's say we talk about a normal company. A normal company doesn't have all of their assets in one bank account. Right. A normal company doesn't have their entire financial standing based off the number of one account. Right. It might be spread in different areas. And that's basically the way a pool or liquidity pool might work. And so it's going to be spread out in different areas. And so the more we create these pools specifically, like the one that is on HotBit now, which would be a separate pool. And then when we get our next central exchange listing, that would be another pool. All of these add stability to the price, which helps out the project on a much larger scale. But then what happens when there are differences or discrepancies in the price across these different pools? Well, traditionally, for any token that has multiple liquidity pools, generally speaking, the true price is going to be the average price across all these. And so there might be small differences, but the true price of a token is going to be the average price. But in this function or in this feature, there's actually a couple of things that you can kind of look at. And so the first is going to be that bridge that you mentioned, and that bridge is what is going to help keep the price level across all the different blockchains across all the different pools. Right. For example, right now we have our ACCEL token on the ETH side, and that ACCEL token on the ETH side has multiple liquidity pools. Then we have our ACCEL BNB pre sale. And that comes with its own price and its own pool as well. How does this kind of all play out in the bigger picture or the bigger scheme of things? Well, ultimately, the internal bridge is going to help bring that price average. Right. And it's also going to allow easier transactions or interacting across the blockchain. Right. So, for example, if we think about the bridge once it's finalized, what could happen is that somebody could buy ACCEL using BNB and then swap it transferred into the bridge and receive ACCEL on the ETH side, the ETH blockchain. And then in doing so, maybe at the end of that process, they can transfer that to a central exchange and now sell their ACCEL for no fee. Right. Or another example would be you can buy ACCEL on the ETH side in a central exchange, like take those points out of the central exchange. Maybe you transfer them to your own wallet or something. Then you use our internal bridge and you can transfer those over to the BNB blockchain. And eventually, when the staking pool is created on the BNB side, maybe now you can stake your ACCEL tokens on the BNB side. And so that bridge is ultimately what's going to be a function that facilitates the ease of use of ACCEL across all of these blockchains and across all of these different prices. The last thing to consider here is also that there are opportunistic traders, arbitrage traders who will trade ACCEL when there are discrepancies in the prices. And that could be advantageous to the project in a couple of ways. The first is going to be that, generally speaking, arbitrage trading doesn't hurt the price of ACCEL itself, but rather these volume traders are taking advantage of the differences in price between maybe one central exchange and another or one central exchange and one decentralized exchange. So one DEX. And what this is going to do is it's going to increase the volume of transactions that are taking place for ACCEL as a whole. Right. So we're getting increased volume across the board, and that would be beneficial to us in general. So really there's a lot of different things to consider when it comes to kind of the bridge and the different prices. But generally speaking, if you kind of just look back at all the different examples I just gave, all of these are positives for ACCEL as a whole. All these are benefits or opportunity for growth when you look at it from this perspective. [Eric] Chris, thanks so much. That gives tremendous clarity for our listeners to understand exactly how the opportunities are rising within ACCEL on both of the two blockchains that we're in right now between ETH and the BNB side. One other question I'd like to pose to you. Could you possibly explain to us the matchmaking services and how that applies to ACCEL? [Chris] Yeah. So ultimately speaking, there are a couple of different features in place that are going to kind of help balance out the price and these are automated features. So for example if we look at HotBit which is our first centralized exchange that we were listed on, there are features integrated into their platform to kind of help bring some stability to the price and also try to help bring that price closer in line to the deck's price or the price of ACCEL on a different exchange. So these functions or features are also going to kind of build volume across the board are also going to try and balance the price and they're also going to ultimately try to limit those discrepancies or lower them so that when people come and look at ACCEL as a project they see a very similar price across the different exchanges.[Scott] That all sounds perfect Chris I know everything with the ACCEL University is super exciting. I know getting to hear a little bit about the exchanges and allowing our listeners to get a little bit more insight on what exactly goes on on these exchanges was definitely something that I think is definitely worth a listen and I think they're going to get a lot of good quality out of just this short 30 minutes. Thank you again, Chris. It was a super exciting episode to hear about the different centralized exchanges and how they're playing into the future of ACCEL and allowing our listeners to further their understanding of centralized exchanges and DEXs together. Anyone listening to the show today that wants to connect with Chris and ACCEL University, you can find him on YouTube, we have a channel on there and you can also come into our official Telegram. He's in there very often and also on our discord. Once again I want to thank you for the awesome interview Chris and we look forward to our next podcast. [Chris] Awesome. Thank you so much for having me.--------------------------------------------NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE– The Information presented in this podcast is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, and without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose.The Information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.The Information provided from or through this podcast is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional broker or financial advisor.You understand that you are using any and all information from this podcast at your own risk.

Andy Champion: Hello everyone. My name is Andy Champion. I’m the vice president and general manager of Highspot here in EMEA. Delighted to welcome you to this latest installment of the Win Win podcast. Joining me today, I’m delighted to speak to Scott Edinger. He’s somebody that I've spoken to before. He is a deep expert in his field, and he advises many companies globally on how to drive consistent growth. He has over 40 articles published in the Harvard Business Review and has contributed to over 50 articles in Forbes. Scott, welcome to the podcast. Scott Edinger: Thanks for having me, Andy. I’m excited to be here and talk with you again. ANDY: Always good to get back together. So Scott, there’s a few topics that I want to touch on today. And the first one I want to start with is this concept of the great resignation. It’s something that I think that, you know, is a topic of conversation with business leaders that I talk to, and it’s been causing quite a stir. Now, I think it’s fair to say there’s been a talent shortage for quite some time now. It’s nothing new. We as sales and revenue leaders have always sought to get the best possible talent. But I think what has changed is the pandemic has caused, I think, a pause in that natural talent lifecycle. It’s caused people to pause and to delay decisions, but as we come out of the pandemic, I think what I’m starting to see is that people are taking this moment to reevaluate their positions, to reevaluate the companies that they work for. But more importantly, I think they’re really taking a long, hard look at the people that they work with and specifically their managers. So I wanted to start there and just get your take on, are people starting to leave companies, or is it really that old adage of “People don’t leave companies—they leave managers”? SCOTT: Yeah, I very much think it’s the latter. I believe it was the people at Gallup, famous for their organizational surveys, who coined that phrase many years ago. I think it might be like 20 years ago. People don’t leave organizations, they leave their managers. And as much as we have this great resignation upon us, as it were, you know 10 years ago, we were calling this the war for talent. And I was reading some statistics about this great resignation and we certainly have much lower unemployment than we have had, but even the total number of people leaving the workforce, while statistically significant, isn’t dramatic, at least in the U.S. statistics I was looking at. So, it’s not like people who need to work are all of a sudden dropping out of the workforce. I mean, there are people who perhaps don’t need to work who are reevaluating. You know, like you said, the pandemic gives us this great pause to say what’s important in my life. And there is, without a doubt, people who are saying, “Look, I’m not going to work” or “I’m not going to work like I was.” And definitely there’s an Exodus from the workforce from that. But people who are either sales professionals or engineers or in technology, whatever their roles are, it’s not like they’ve decided all of a sudden, well, I’m just resigning. They’re going someplace else for something better. And they’re looking for something more from the organizations and I think most importantly from their leaders. So I think it’s very much that latter idea, “What more am I getting from my leader?” ANDY: And I know that that’s a sort of a starting off point for us on a few topics here. And you know, maybe we explore that briefly. When you look to leaders and great leaders, what are some of the core components? What are some of the core behaviors that you see come up time and time again that differentiate the good from the great? SCOTT: Well, it’s been a dozen years since I wrote my first book. I just realized, I was going to say 10, and now I realize it’s actually closer to a dozen. And that book was called The Inspiring Leader. And I wrote that book along with Joe Folkman and Jack Zenger. And one of the analyses that we had done was to identify which leadership characteristics were most powerful—in particular, which leadership characteristics were most powerful in driving engagement and commitment. One would think that this is the key to retention, right? So amidst all of these leadership competencies, one really stood out as strongly important. The book title gives it away: the inspiring leader. It’s the ability to inspire and motivate high performance. Now on the surface that may not seem revelatory, right? It’s like, okay, so someone who’s inspiring—this drives commitment, engagement. I can totally see, you know, we all want to be inspired. We all want to have that kind of leader in the workplace. But when you start to break that apart and say, so what is it that makes a leader inspiring? Then you start to get to some really valuable ideas, especially as it relates to this great resignation, war on talent, whatever the next iteration of it’s going to be. Because again, people don’t leave companies, they tend to leave their managers. So some of the things we found were most valuable was this idea of developing talent. Coaching and developing talent. People were loath to find another opportunity when they worked for someone who invested strongly in their development, who coached them, who helped them to advance in their career. When you find that, even if there’s better companies, you may find yourself in a really wonderful opportunity with that kind of growth—particularly, I’ll say this, if you’re between the ages of—call it 25 and 45. Which, by the way, is where we see most of the resignation happening, some in the 45 to 55 range. But the more concerning part of the great resignation is in the 25 to 45 year-old group. ANDY: And maybe we can unpack that a little bit. You know, I’m fascinated around this concept of the culture of coaching. It really resonates as I reflect on my career and it certainly resonates with many of the individual contributors and salespeople that I talk with. And I think it also aligns with how at Highspot we think a lot about consistent execution at scale: How do we help everybody succeed? How do we help everybody make their best contribution? So I wonder if you can sort of unpack that a little bit for us and talk exactly about what does good coaching look like, and why does it matter so much? SCOTT: Well, when you consider good coaching, you know, it’s usually not in the form of just telling people what to do. Really good coaching is about investing in someone’s development, helping them to get the right kind of training, the right kind of, call it formal education. But then when they’re back on the job, helping them to actually get better at those skills, whether they be selling skills, coding skills, management skills, leadership, even other coaching skills. So if you consider this idea of investing in the initial growth for people, send them to proper training, But then when they’re back from that, how do you engage with them regularly to help them to improve? Are you able to observe them in action? Are you able to give them proper guidance? Are you able to invest your time in helping them to get better at their job? I’ll give you an interesting hypothetical here. So if you are interviewing for a job and the manager that you are talking with shares with you all of the really wonderful elements and all the great parts of the company and their benefits. And, you know, maybe we have a sushi chef here once a month, whatever, the foosball table, whatever these things are. They spend their time on this and how great the company is. That’s interview number one. The second interview includes all of that. But that manager says, “A vital part of my success is investing in your development. So I’m going to spend a lot of time and coaching on you. I’m going to spend a lot of time helping you to get better at your job. That way you can drive greater success.” Which of those sounds more enticing? Both companies may be good, but I think it’s pretty obvious to me, which one I’d want to go with. ANDY: Yeah, for sure. And one of the things that I wish I’d learned earlier in my career was just how big a determinant of my success my leader and their line manager was. I only came to realize that fairly late on, and I think it was a big mess on my part. SCOTT: Well, I got lucky on that one. I’ll share a quick story here. When I was 25 years old, I had the second interview. I had a manager who said to me, “You know, I'm going to really invest in your development, in your growth.” Now, the funny sidebar there is that months after I was on the job—and this person rode me pretty hard on a number of things. His name is John Robens, great manager. Great, great coach. But when we talked about that, he said, “By the way, none of that is altruistic.” He’s like, “I’m not doing that just for the sake of doing it.” He was like, “I want you to grow. I want you to develop. I want you to be successful. But I know if you do that, you’re going to do a better job for me. We’re going to have more success. We’re going to hit our numbers.” There was a lot of things involved with that. So I think if you are a job seeker thinking about this, or if you’re in a job someplace thinking about your manager, or if you are managing others and looking to hire, this is a really wonderful lens to put over the hiring process. And even more importantly, how you do your job, how you go to work every day, really focusing on developing others and helping them to grow. And that really is the key to coaching. ANDY: I mean, there’s no downside for this, as you say, whether you are the manager looking to attract talent or whether you are the job seeker looking for your next role. But you know, there’s another aspect to this, right? And that’s this: What about the people that are staying? What about the people that are remaining in their jobs? This should be applying to them as well. And this could be a conversation that they can have with their manager. SCOTT: If you’re evaluating, leaving someplace, if you are a part of the great resignation, you want something better, it costs you nothing to try to ask for that at your current location. And one of those things can be, “What kind of development is available for me? What kind of coaching? How am I going to get better? Improve my ability to bring value to a job?” You know, you have to believe that ultimately your ability to bring more value equals greater compensation, greater degrees of freedom, all the things that are important to people in this pandemic resignation—whatever moniker we’re going to give it next. ANDY: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. One other aspect of this conversation that I’d be really interested in your take on is the dynamic between the manager and the individual, whether you're seeking a job or whether you’re in a current job. I agree with you asking for that development is really important, but where does the balance lie between me as the individual owning my career development and owning my growth and the manager inputting into that or providing the guidance. Where does the responsibility sit? Is it with me to drive my own career? Is it with my manager? How does that work? SCOTT: Well, I think self-determination notwithstanding, we all have a responsibility for our career and where we’re headed in our career. You know, where you don’t necessarily have the responsibility, if you are an employee, is perhaps to kick in the financial resources—though, bookmark that maybe if you want to. If there’s something special you want to do for your growth and development and maybe a company offset there, or maybe you expect the company to fund it. But I think each of us has to be able to say, “Here’s where I need to grow. Here’s where I want to improve my abilities, my skill sets. These are the competencies or areas of focus I want to get better at or to acquire.” I think we each have to do that, but it can’t be done in a vacuum because you don’t work alone. So being able to go to your manager, to your leader, the vice president, the CEO, whoever that may be and say, “Where do you need more from me?” And how do we come together on a vision for what my improvement looks like, getting to that proverbial next level in terms of skill development, in terms of knowledge, in terms of capacity. And what does that look like? And being able to drive that together. In a good company, managers are doing that in collaboration with individuals who are taking responsibility for their own. That’s ideal. You can imagine there’s plenty of non-ideal scenarios where people are driving all of their own development or the company’s trying to get blood from a turnip and trying to get, you know, lots of growth out of people who either don’t have the potential or don’t want to. We see that plenty too. ANDY: So, Scott, one of the things I remember reading some time ago was a quote by Richard Branson and it went something along the lines of, “Hey, you know, train people well enough so that they can leave. But treat them well enough so that they don’t want to.” I'm really interested in exploring that through the lens of the people that are staying and how we should think about balancing all of this investment in them so that they might actually be able to go and get a better job. SCOTT: Yeah. That Richard Branson character has a good idea now and then, doesn’t he? This is, I think, such an important point, because of all the talk about everybody leaving, the great resignation and the drama of it, it's really easy to forget about everybody who’s staying. They're the backbone of your business. So when I wrote that book, The Inspiring Leader, this notion that inspiring and motivating was one of the top factors in people not leaving their company. And for those who are most inspiring and most motivating in terms of getting the most out of other people, the ability to develop talent was a key factor. The Richard Branson story reminded me of another story of a vice president of customer service, talking with a CFO about significant investment in training and development. And the CFO responds to the VP of customer service and says, “Well, what if we spend all this money on them and they leave?” And the VP of customer service sort of says, “Oh, that’s a good point.” And responds with, “What if we don’t invest much in their development…and they stay?” Really sort of puts a point on the idea. You’ve got a lot of people that are staying. In fact in just about every business you have many more that are staying than are leaving. The people who are staying are the real issue for you. And how are you going to invest in their development, make them better at executing your strategy, make them better at interacting with and providing value for customers? This is ultimately the heartbeat of your strategy: the experience that you provide, not just what you provide, but how you provide that. So making sure that you’re investing in people and their growth is one of the things that I have seen that make people really reluctant to leave a situation, even when there are better jobs available. When they’ve got really great management, they’re growing, they’re developing, they’re stretching themselves, at least as long as the job opportunities are comparable here. The people are reluctant to leave when they’re in that situation. It also has the added benefit of helping you to compete better in the marketplace. So you have this really wonderful synergy of factors here of both making people more committed, more engaged in their work and getting better results. Like the manager, John Roben, who I mentioned to, you said to me, you know, “It’s not just altruistic.” Here is a definite gain for the business here that they're after. And that’s laudable. In commercial enterprise you’re allowed to do that. ANDY: And I really love that because I think there’s some gold dust in there that I want to be very specific about. You know, when typically when we look across a population in a given company, perhaps in a specific role, you see a bell curve of performance, right? You have far more mid-performers than you do low performers and high performers. And I think, you know, the temptation can often be as a manager just to focus on, “Hey, if I can get my high performers to perform another 10% better, that’s where my big output is,” but I think what I’ve seen, and one of the things that we focus on, is actually taking some of that time and shifting your mid-performers up by 5% can actually pay off way, way, way more, because you’ve got so much more of them. The concept that I often talk about is the frozen middle. It's just interesting to me. Does that align with your experience? SCOTT: Yeah, I’d say there’s a couple of frozen parts. You know, typically when people talk about—this is such an important point—when people talk about coaching and performance management improvement, they almost always gravitate to improving poor performance. And that is not what you and I have been talking about here at all. We’re not talking about trying to remediate poor performers and get them to be okay. We’re trying to take, you know, the entire bell curve, like you said that frozen middle, and shift it to the right to improve everybody’s performance. And I’ll say here that the people most likely to benefit from your coaching, who are most likely to contribute that much more to your business results—it’s certainly true in sales and in technical fields where I’ve seen it—are the high performers. And managers tend to say, “I’m just going to get out of their way and let them do their job.” But there’s a ton of value in saying, “No, I’m going to double down here. I’m going to invest a lot of time, effort, energy, maybe money, in helping them to get that much better, because they’re in complex jobs where the value that they can contribute is even greater.” So in everything we’ve been talking about coaching, in my mind, I’ve not been thinking about poor performers at all. I’ve been thinking about average and really strong performers and getting them better because they’re the ones that contribute value. Usually the poor performers we spend a lot of time coaching and investing in performance management with them. If I had a nickel for every time someone got on a performance improvement plan that got off of it and became a top performer, I’d have about 75 cents. It doesn’t happen very often. A lot of effort goes there that isn’t as valuable. ANDY: So as we wrap up, I want, I just want to come back to where we started, and that’s the great resignation. And we’ve discussed the importance of coaching in every situation, how there is no downside for the individual, the manager, or the company. Everybody benefits here. Just as we wrap up, I just want to touch on briefly, what does good coaching look like? And how does that manifest itself in, for example, the sales job? SCOTT: Yeah. Well, I think that, you know, I've drawn from a few different bodies of work for this, but one in particular, Dr. Anders Ericsson, professor of psychology at Florida State University wrote a book called Peak. As in peak performance, P-E-A-K. And most of you listening would not know Dr. Ericsson, but you’ve probably heard of the 10,000-hour rule popularized by Malcolm Gladwell. And that was an extrapolation of the research that Dr. Ericsson had done. I’m going to give you the short version here on what really makes the difference. The short version is, 10,000 hours isn’t the key. It might be less than 10,000 hours. It might be more than 10,000 hours. There’s certainly a significant amount of practice involved in developing expert performance, but there’s no magic in 10,000 hours. According to Dr. Ericsson, who I had a chance to sit down with a few years ago, the real magic is something we’d call deliberate practice. And that has a few conditions that we as leaders and that we as leaders and coaches can apply to our work every day. The first of which is that you’ve got to have a model for success. What does good look like? I’ll share them and then I’ll do a quick brief on each of these. You've got to have a model of what good looks like. And then second, you have to have a chance to practice against that model. You have to try to do it like the model. Third, while being observed by an expert who really understands number one, what great looks like, and then, four: again. So if you think about any instrument or sport—you know, my daughter’s a violinist. She doesn’t listen to a piece of music once to get what good looks like or great looks like. She listens to it a lot. And she watches how the teacher moves their fingers along the frets and uses the bow and everything. And she watches that very carefully and then she mimics it while being observed. And then she gets feedback: what worked, what didn’t work. So she gets that observed feedback on what worked and what didn’t work. Then she goes back and does it all again. And she doesn’t do that once. She does it dozens and dozens of times, I’m going to say hundreds of times, given how much I’ve listened to some practice (delightful in our house). But still, you know, nonetheless, you’ve got to do it a lot, whether it is learning to play a sport or an instrument, or be an effective seller. And you asked me specifically about that. So I’ll go take a quick dive on that. So number one, in sales, you’ve got to have a good model of what success looks like. What do you want your people to do differently? It’s not just generate revenue. That’s the outcome. What are the specific behaviors? From asking questions to positioning your solutions, helping clients to see issues that they hadn’t considered, helping them to understand problems in a different way so that they can develop some kind of insight. These are the things we tend to want salespeople to do. That’s the backbone of every consultative or solution sales course out there. You got to give them that model. I think sending them to a few days of training and expecting them to absorb it and integrate at one time is probably as unrealistic as listening to a piece of music one time and then expecting someone to play it perfectly. So then they’ve got to have the chance to go practice that while being observed by a manager or another expert. And when I say practice that, I’m going to suggest that you don’t want people to practice on your best customers, your top prospects. You want safe environments where they can get it right and make a few mistakes. That’s not great when you’re negotiating million-dollar deals. So you want to have that chance to practice these skills while being observed by someone who afterward can say, “Here’s what good looks like. Here’s what you did. Here’s what I saw. I liked that. Keep doing that. Change this. You remember when that happened with the customer, how you said that and they responded kind of negatively? I think you didn’t ask the right thing there.” Whatever these things start to look like. And then to say, okay, when that happens once, then you’ve got one iteration. And if Malcolm Gladwell said the average was around 10,000 hours, how many sales calls do you need to develop not expert, but at least strong performance? So that gives you a bit of a model. It’s like, have the model of what great looks like, have a chance to practice against that. Be observed with it, get feedback on what worked, what didn’t, and start all over again. You can apply that to any sport, skill, competencies… ANDY: You know, the beauty here that I think as leaders, as managers, our key currency is behavioral change. Long-term behavioral change to help our people achieve their personal objectives, their career goals. And that’s, I think, as we’ve talked about all throughout this, very, very closely aligned to the company goals and the aspirations that we have. Scott, thank you so much for your time today. SCOTT: My pleasure. ANDY: I think what I take away from this is that one of our best defenses as leaders in and around this great resignation is to continue to invest in our people to create that culture of coaching, using tools like deliberate practice to be a core part of that. This is about going deep on the individual and the skills and behaviors that they need. But also as individuals, when we are looking at our careers, when we’re assessing, do we make a move? Do we stay? Let’s look at the environment in which we’re in, put that alongside the companies that we look at, and make some decisions around where are we going to get that investment and that development? Thank you again for your time. I really enjoyed the conversation. I look forward to the next installment. SCOTT: Yeah, me too. Great to talk with you again, Andy.

About ScottScott first typed ‘docker run' in 2013 and hasn't looked back. He's been with Docker since 2014 in a variety of leadership roles and currently serves as CEO. His experience previous to Docker includes Sun Microsystems, Puppet, Netscape, Cisco, and Loudcloud (parent of Opsware). When not fussing with computers he spends time with his three kids fussing with computers.Links: Docker: https://www.docker.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottcjohnston 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 Liquibase. If you're anything like me, you've screwed up the database part of a deployment so severely that you've been banned from touching every anything that remotely sounds like SQL, at at least three different companies. We've mostly got code deployments solved for, but when it comes to databases we basically rely on desperate hope, with a roll back plan of keeping our resumes up to date. It doesn't have to be that way. Meet Liquibase. It is both an open source project and a commercial offering. Liquibase lets you track, modify, and automate database schema changes across almost any database, with guardrails to ensure you'll still have a company left after you deploy the change. No matter where your database lives, Liquibase can help you solve your database deployment issues. Check them out today at liquibase.com. Offer does not apply to Route 53.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: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. Once upon a time, I started my public speaking career as a traveling contract trainer for Puppet; I've talked about this before. And during that time, I encountered someone who worked there as an exec, Scott Johnston, who sat down, talked to me about how I viewed things, and then almost immediately went to go work at Docker instead. Today's promoted episode brings Scott on to the show. Scott, you fled to get away from me, became the CEO of Docker over the past, oh what is it, seven years now. You're still standing there, and I'm not making fun of Docker quite the way that I used to. First, thanks for joining me.Scott: Great to be here, Corey. Thanks for the invitation. I'm not sure I was fleeing you, but we can recover that one at another time.Corey: Oh, absolutely. In that era, one of my first talks that I started giving that anyone really paid any attention to was called, “Heresy in the Church of Docker,” where I listed about 10 to 13 different things that Docker didn't seem to have answers for, like network separation, security, audit logging, et cetera, et cetera. And it was a fun talk that I used to basically learn how to speak publicly without crying before and after the talk. And in time, it wound up aging out as these problems got addressed, but what surprised me at the time was how receptive the Docker community was to the idea of a talk that wound up effectively criticizing something that for, well, a number of them it felt a lot of the time like it wasn't that far from a religion; it was very hype-driven: “Docker, Docker, Docker” was a recurring joke. Docker has changed a lot. The burning question that I think I want to start this off with is that it's 2021; what is Docker? Is it a technology? Is it a company? Is it a religion? Is it a community? What is Docker?Scott: Yes. I mean that sincerely. Often, the first awareness or the first introduction that newcomers have is in fact the community, before they get their hands on the product, before they learn that there's a company behind the product is they have a colleague who is, either through a Zoom or sitting next to them in some places, or in a coffee shop, and says, “Hey, you got to try this thing called Docker.” And they lean over—either virtually or physically—and look at the laptop of their friend who's promoting Docker, and they see a magical experience. And that is the introduction of so many of our community members, having spoken with them and heard their own kind of journeys.And so that leads to like, “Okay, so why the excitement? Why did the friend lean over to the other friend and introduce?” It's because the tools that Docker provides just helps devs get their app built and shipping faster, more securely, with choice, without being tied into any particular runtime, any particular infrastructure. And that combination has proven to be a breakthrough dopamine hit to developers since the very beginning, since 2013, when Docker is open-source.Corey: It feels like originally, the breakthrough of Docker, that people will say, “Oh, containers aren't new. We've had that going back to LPARs on mainframes.” Yes, I'm aware, but suddenly, it became easy to work with and didn't take tremendous effort to get unified environments. It was cynically observed at the time by lots of folks smarter than I am, that the big breakthrough Docker had was how to make my MacBook look a lot more like a Linux server in production. And we talk about breaking down silos between ops and dev, but in many ways, this just meant that the silo became increasingly irrelevant because, “Works on my machine” was no longer a problem.“Well, you better back up your email because your laptop's about to go into production in that case.” Containers made it easier and that was a big deal. It seems, on some level, like there was a foray where Docker the company was moving into the world of, “Okay, now we're going to run a lot of these containers in production for you, et cetera.” It really feels like recently, the company as a whole and the strategy has turned towards getting back to its roots of solving developer problems and positioning itself as a developer tool. Is that a fair characterization?Scott: A hundred percent. That's very intentional, as well. We certainly had good products, and great customers, and we're solving problems for customers on the ops side, I'll call it, but when we stood back—this is around 2019—and said, “Where's the real… joy?” For lack of a better word, “Where's the real joy from a community standpoint, from a product experience standpoint, from a what do we do different and better and more capable than anyone else in the ecosystem?” It was that developer experience. And so the reset that you're referring to in November 2019, was to give us the freedom to go back and just focus the entire company's efforts on the needs of developers without any other distractions from a revenue, customer, channel, so on and so forth.Corey: So, we knew this was going to come up in the conversation, but as of a couple of weeks ago—as of the time of this recording—you announced a somewhat, well, let's say controversial change in how the pricing and licensing works. Now, as of—taking effect at the end of this year—the end of January, rather, of next year—Docker Desktop is free for folks to use for individual use, and that's fine, and for corporate use, Docker Desktop also remains free until you are a large company defined by ten million in revenue a year and/or 250 employees or more. And that was interesting and I don't think I'd seen that type of requirement placed before on what was largely an open-source project that's now a developer tool. I believe there are closed-source aspects of it as well for the desktop experience, but please don't quote me on that; I'm not here to play internet lawyer engineer. But at that point, the internet was predictably upset about this because it is easy to yell about any change that is coming, regardless.I was less interested in that than I am in what the reception has been from your corporate customers because, let's be clear, users are important, community is important, but goodwill will not put food on the table past a certain point. There has to be a way to make a company sustainable, there has to be a recurring revenue model. I realize that you know this, but I'm sure there are people listening to this who are working in development somewhere who are, “Wait, you mean I need to add more value than I cost?” It was a hard revelation for [laugh] me back when I had been in the industry a few years—Scott: [laugh]. Sure.Corey: —and I'm still struggling with that—Scott: Sure.Corey: Some days.Scott: You and me both. [laugh].Corey: So, what has the reaction been from folks who have better channels of communicating with you folks than angry Twitter threads?Scott: Yeah. Create surface area for a discussion, Corey. Let's back up and talk on a couple points that you hit along the way there. One is, “What is Docker Desktop?” Docker Desktop is not just Docker Engine.Docker Desktop is a way in which we take Docker Engine, Compose, Kubernetes, all important tools for developers building modern apps—Docker Build, so on and so forth—and we provide an integrated engineered product that is engineered for the native environments of Mac and Windows, and soon Linux. And so we make it super easy to get the container runtime, Kubernetes stack, the networking, the CLI, Compose, we make it super easy just to get that up and running and configured with smart defaults, secured, hardened, and importantly updated. So, any vulnerabilities patched and so on and so forth. The point is, it's a product that is based on—to your comments—upstream open-source technologies, but it is an engineered commercial product—Docker Desktop is.Corey: Docker Desktop is a fantastic tool; I use it myself. I could make a bunch of snide comments that on Mac, it's basically there to make sure the fans are still working on the laptop, but again, computers are hard. I get that. It's incredibly handy to have a graphical control panel. It turns out that I don't pretend to understand those people, but some folks apparently believe that there are better user interfaces than text and an 80-character-wide terminal window. I don't pretend to get those people, but not everyone has the joy of being a Linux admin for far too long. So, I get it, making it more accessible, making it easy, is absolutely worth using.Scott: That's right.Corey: It's not a hard requirement to run it on a laptop-style environment or developer workstation, but it makes it really convenient.Scott: Before Docker desktop, one had to install a hypervisor, install a Linux VM, install Docker Engine on that Linux VM, bridge between the VM and the local CLI on the native desktop—like, lots of setup and maintenance and tricky stuff that can go wrong. Trust me how many times I stubbed my own toes on putting that together. And so Docker Desktop is designed to take all of that setup nonsense overhead away and just let the developer focus on the app. That's what the product is, and just talking about where it came from, and how it uses these other upstream technologies. Yes, and so we made a move on August 31, as you noted, and the motivation was the following: one is, we started seeing large organizations using Docker Desktop at scale.When I say ‘at scale,' not one or two or ten developers; like, hundreds and thousands of developers. And they were clamoring for capabilities to help them manage those developer environments at scale. Second is, we saw them getting a lot of benefit in terms of productivity, and choice, and security from using Docker Desktop, and so we stood back and said, “Look, for us to scale our business, we're at 10-plus million monthly active developers today. We know there's 45 million developers coming in this decade; how do we keep scaling while giving a free experience, but still making sure we can fund our engineers and deliver features and additional value?” We looked at other projects, Corey.The first thing we did is we looked outside our four walls, said, “How have other projects with free and open-source components navigated these waters?” And so the thresholds that you just mentioned, the 250 employees and the ten million revenue, were actually thresholds that we saw others put in place to draw lines between what is available completely for free and what is available for those users that now need to purchase subscription if they're using it to create value for their organizations. And we're very explicit about that. You could be using Docker for training, you could be using Docker for eval in those large organizations; we're not going to chase you or be looking to you to step up to a subscription. However, if you're using Docker Desktop in those environments, to build applications that run your business or that are creating value for your customers, then purchasing a subscription is a way for us to continue to invest in a product that the ecosystem clearly loves and is getting a lot of value out of. And so, that was again, the premise of this change. So, now to the root of your question is, so what's the reaction? We're very, very pleased. First off, yes, there were some angry voices out there.Corey: Yeah. And I want to be clear, I'm not trivializing people who feel upset.Scott: No.Corey: When you're suddenly using a thing that is free and discovering that, well, now you have to pay money for it, people are not generally going to be happy about that.Scott: No.Corey: When people are viewed themselves as part of the community, of contributing to what they saw as a technical revolution or a scrappy underdog and suddenly they find themselves not being included in some way, shape or form, it's natural to be upset, I don't want to trivialize—Scott: Not at all.Corey: People's warm feelings toward Docker. It was a big part of a lot of folks' personality, for better or worse, [laugh] for a few years in there. But the company needs to be sustainable, so what I'm really interested in is what has that reaction been from folks who are, for better or worse, “Yes, yes, we love Docker, but I don't get to sign $100,000 deals because I just really like the company I'm paying the money to. There has to be business value attached to that.”Scott: That's right. That's right. And to your point, we're not trivializing either the reaction by the community, it was encouraging to see many community members got right away what we're doing, they saw that still, a majority of them can continue using Docker for free under the Docker Personal subscription, and that was also intentional. And you saw on the internet and on Twitter and other social media, you saw them come and support the company's moves. And despite some angry voices in there, there was overwhelmingly positive.So, to your question, though, since August 31, we've been overwhelmed, actually, by the positive response from businesses that use Docker Desktop to build applications and run their businesses. And when I say overwhelmed, we were tracking—because Docker Desktop has a phone-home capability—we had a rough idea of what the baseline usage of Docker Desktops were out there. Well, it turns out, in some cases, there are ten times as many Docker Desktops inside organizations. And the average seems to be settling in around three times to four times as many. And we are already closing business, Corey.In 12 business days, we have companies come through, say, “Yes, our developers use this product. Yes, it's a valuable product. We're happy to talk to a salesperson and give you over to procurement, and here we go.” So, you and I both been around long enough to know, like 12 working days to have a signed agreement with an enterprise agreement is unheard of.Corey: Yeah, but let's be very clear here, on The Duckbill Group's side of things where I do consulting projects, I sell projects to companies that are, “Great, this project will take, I don't know, four to six weeks, whatever it happens to be, and, yeah, you're going to turn a profit on this project in about the first four hours of the engagement.” It is basically push button and you will receive more money in your budget than you had when you started, and that is probably the easiest possible enterprise sale, and it still takes 60 to 90 days most of the time to close deals.Scott: That's right.Corey: Trying to get a procurement deal for software through enterprise procurement processes is one of those things when people say, “Okay, we're going to have a signature in Q3,” you have to clarify what year they're talking about. So, 12 days is unheard of.Scott: [laugh]. Yep. So, we've been very encouraged by that. And I'll just give you a rough numbers: the overall response is ten times our baseline expectations, which is why—maybe unanticipated question, or you going to ask it soon—we came back within two weeks—because we could see this curve hit right away on the 31st of August—we came back and said, “Great.” Now, that we have the confidence that the community and businesses are willing to support us and invest in our sustainability, invest in the sustainable, scalable Docker, we came and we accelerated—pulled forward—items in our roadmap for developers using Docker Desktop, both for Docker Personal, for free in the community, as well as the subscribers.So, things like Docker Desktop for Linux, right? Docker Desktop for Mac, Docker Desktop for Windows has been out there about five years, as I said. We have heard Docker Desktop for Linux rise in demand over those years because if you're managing a large number of developers, you want a consistent environment across all the developers, whether they're using Linux, Mac, or Windows desktops. So, Docker Desktop for Linux will give them that consistency across their entire development environment. That was the number two most requested feature on our public roadmap in the last year, and again, with the positive response, we're now able to confidently invest in that. We're hiring more engineers than planned, we're pulling that forward in the roadmap to show that yes, we are about growing and growing sustainably, and now that the environment and businesses are supporting us, we're happy to double down and create more value.Corey: My big fear when the change was announced was the uncertainty inherent to it. Because if there's one thing that big companies don't like, it's uncertainty because uncertainty equates to risk in their mind. And a lot of other software out there—and yes, Oracle Databases I am looking at you—have a historical track record of, “Okay, great. We have audit rights to inspect your environment, and then when we wind up coming in, we always find that there have been licensing shortfalls,” because people don't know how far things spread internally, as well as, honestly, it's accounting for this stuff in large, complex organizations is a difficult thing. And then there are massive fines at stake, and then there's this whole debate back and forth.Companies view contracts as if every company behaves like that when it comes down to per-seat licensing and the rest. My fear was that that risk avoidance in large companies would have potentially made installing Docker Desktop in their environment suddenly a non-starter across the board, almost to the point of being something that you would discipline employees for, which is not great. And it seems from your response, that has not been a widespread reaction. Yes of course, there's always going to be some weird company somewhere that does draconian things that we don't see, but the fact that you're not sitting here, telling me that you've been taking a beating from this from your enterprise buyers, tells me you're onto something.Scott: I think that's right, Corey. And as you might expect, the folks that don't reach out are silent, and so we don't see folks who don't reach out to us. But because so many have reached out to us so positively, and basically quickly gone right to a conversation with procurement versus any sort of back-and-forth or questions and such, tells us we are on the right track. The other thing, just to be really clear is, we did work on this before the August 31 announcement as well—this being how do we approach licensing and compliance and such—and we found that 80% of organizations, 80% of businesses want to be in compliance, they have a—not just want to be in compliance, but they have a history of being in compliance, regardless of the enforcement mechanism and whatnot. And so that gave us confidence to say, “Hey, we're going to trust our users. We're going to say, ‘grace period ends on January 31.'”But we're not shutting down functionality, we're not sending in legal [laugh] activity, we're not putting any sort of strictures on the product functionality because we have found most people love the product, love what it does for them, and want to see the company continue to innovate and deliver great features. And so okay, you might say, “Well, doesn't that 20% represent opportunity?” Yeah. You know, it does, but it's a big ecosystem. The 80% is giving us a great boost and we're already starting to plow that into new investment. And let's just start there; let's start there and grow from there.This episode is sponsored by our friends at Oracle Cloud. Counting the pennies, but still dreaming of deploying apps instead of "Hello, World" demos? Allow me to introduce you to Oracle's Always Free tier. It provides over 20 free services and infrastructure, networking databases, observability, management, and security.And - let me be clear here - it's actually free. There's no surprise billing until you intentionally and proactively upgrade your account. This means you can provision a virtual machine instance or spin up an autonomous database that manages itself all while gaining the networking load, balancing and storage resources that somehow never quite make it into most free tiers needed to support the application that you want to build.With Always Free you can do things like run small scale applications, or do proof of concept testing without spending a dime. You know that I always like to put asterisks next to the word free. This is actually free. No asterisk. Start now. Visit https://snark.cloud/oci-free that's https://snark.cloud/oci-free.Corey: I also have a hard time imagining that you and your leadership team would be short-sighted enough to say, “Okay, that”—even 20% of companies that are willing to act dishonestly around stuff like that seems awfully high to me, but assuming it's accurate, would tracking down that missing 20% be worth setting fire to the tremendous amount of goodwill that Docker still very much enjoys? I have a hard time picturing any analysis where that's even a question other than something you set up to make fun of.Scott: [laugh]. No, that's exactly right Corey, it wouldn't be worth it which is why again, we came out of the gate with like, we're going to trust our users. They love the community, they love the product, they want to support us—most of them want to support us—and, you know, when you have most, you're never going to get a hundred percent. So, we got most and we're off to a good start, by all accounts. And look, a lot of folks too sometimes will be right in that gray middle where you let them know that they're getting away with something they're like, “All right, you caught me.”We've seen that behavior before. And so, we can see all this activity out there and we can see if folks have a license or compliance or not, and sometimes just a little tap on the shoulder said, “Hey, did you know that you might be paying for that?” We've seen most folks at the time say, “Ah, okay. You caught me. Happy to talk to procurement.”So, this does not have to be heavy-handed as you said, it does not have to put at risk the goodwill of the 80%. And we don't have to get a hundred percent to have a great successful business and continuing successful community.Corey: Yeah. I'll also point out that, by my reading of your terms and conditions and how you've specified this—I mean, this is not something I've asked you about, so this could turn into a really awkward conversation but I'm going to roll with it anyway, it explicitly states that it is and will remain free for personal development.Scott: That is correct.Corey: When you're looking at employees who work at giant companies and have sloppy ‘bring your own device' controls around these things, all right, they have it installed on their work machine because in their spare time, they're building an app somewhere, they're not going to get a nasty gram, and they're not exposing their company to liability by doing that?Scott: That is exactly correct. And moreover, just keep looking at those use cases, if the company is using it for internal training or if the company is using it to evaluate someone else's technology, someone else's software, all those cases are outside the pay-for subscription. And so we believe it's quite generous in allowing of trials and tests and use cases that make it accessible and easy to try, easy to use, and it's just in the case where if you're a large organization and your developers are using it to build applications for your business and for your customers, thus you're getting a lot of value using the product, we're asking you to share that value with us so we can continue to invest in the product.Corey: And I think that's a reasonable expectation. The challenge that Docker seems to have had for a while has been that the interesting breakthrough, revelatory stuff that you folks did was all open-source. It was a technology that was incredibly inspired in a bunch of different ways. I am, I guess, mature enough to admit that my take that, “Oh, Docker is terrible”—which was never actually my take—was a little short-sighted. I'm very good at getting things wrong across the board, and that is no exception.I also said virtualization was a flash in the pan and look how that worked out. I was very anti-cloud, et cetera, et cetera. Times change, people change, and doubling down on being wrong gains you nothing. But the question that was always afterwards what is the monetization strategy? Because it's not something you can give away for free and make it up in volume?Even VC money doesn't quite work like that forever, so there's a—the question is, what is the monetization strategy that doesn't leave people either resenting you because, “Remember that thing that used to be free isn't anymore? Doesn't it suck to be you?” And is still accessible as broadly as you are, given the sheer breadth and diversity of your community? Like I can make bones about the fact that ten million in revenue and 250 employees are either worlds apart, or the wrong numbers, or whatever it is, but it's not going to be some student somewhere sitting someplace where their ramen budget is at risk because they have to spend $5 a month or whatever it is to have this thing. It doesn't apply to them.And this feels like, unorthodox though it certainly is, it's not something to be upset about in any meaningful sense. The people that I think would actually be upset and have standing to be upset about this are the enterprise buyers, and you're hearing from them in what is certainly—because I will hear it if not—that this is something they're happy about. They are thrilled to work with you going forward. And I think it makes sense. Even when I was doing stuff as an independent consultant, before I formalized the creation of The Duckbill Group and started hiring people, my policy was always to not use the free tier of things, even if I fit into them because I would much rather personally be a paying customer, which elevates the, I guess, how well my complaints are received.Because I'm a free user, I'm just another voice on Twitter; albeit a loud one and incredibly sarcastic one at times. But if I'm a paying customer, suddenly the entire tenor of that conversation changes, and I think there's value to that. I've always had the philosophy of you pay for the things you use to make money. And that—again, that is something that's easy for me to say now. Back when I was in crippling debt in my 20s, I assure you, it was not, but I still made the effort for things that I use to make a living.Scott: Yeah.Corey: And I think that philosophy is directionally correct.Scott: No, I appreciate that. There's a lot of good threads in there. Maybe just going way back, Docker stands on the shoulders of giants. There was a lot of work with container tech in the Linux kernel, and you and I were talking before about it goes back to LPAR on IBMs, and you know, BS—Berkeley's—Corey: BSD jails and chroots on Linux. Yeah.Scott: Chroot, right? I mean, Bill Joy, putting chroot in—Corey: And Tupperware parties, I'm sure. Yeah.Scott: Right. And all credit to Solomon Hykes, Docker's founder, who took a lot of good up and coming tech—largely on the ops side and in Linux kernel—took the primitives from Git and combined that with immutable copy-on-write file system and put those three together into a really magical combination that simplified all this complexity of dependency management and portability of images across different systems. And so in some sense, that was the magic of standing on these giant shoulders but seeing how these three different waves of innovation or three different flows of innovation could come together to a great user experience. So, also then moving forward, I wouldn't say they're happy, just to make sure you don't get inbound, angry emails—the enterprise buyers—but they do recognize the value of the product, they think the economics are fair and straight ahead, and to your point about having a commercial relationship versus free or non-existing relationship, they're seeing that, “Oh, okay, now I have insight into the roadmap. Now, I can prioritize my requirements that my devs have been asking for. Now, I can double-down on the secure supply chain issues, which I've been trying to get in front of for years.”So, it gives them an avenue that now, much different than a free user as you observed, it's a commercial relationship where it's two way street versus, “Okay, we're just going to use this free stuff and we don't have much of a say because it's free, and so on and so forth.” So, I think it's been an eye-opener for both the company but also for the businesses. There is a lot of value in a commercial relationship beyond just okay, we're going to invest in new features and new value for developers.Corey: The challenge has always been how do you turn something that is widely beloved, that is effectively an open-source company, into money? There have been a whole bunch of questions about this, and it seems that the consensus that has emerged is that a number of people for a long time mistook open-source for a business model instead of a strategy, and it's very much not. And a lot of companies are attempting to rectify that with weird license changes where, “Oh, you're not allowed to take our code and build a service out of it if you're a cloud provider.” Amazon's product strategy is, of course, “Yes,” so of course, there's always going to be something coming out of AWS that is poorly documented, has a ridiculous name, and purports to do the same thing for way less money, except magically you pay them by the hour. I digress.Scott: No, it's a great surface area, and you're right I completely didn't answer that question. [laugh]. So—Corey: No, it's fair. It's—Scott: Glad you brought it back up.Corey: —a hard problem. It's easy to sit here and say, “Well, what I think they should do”—but all of those solutions fall apart under ten seconds of scrutiny.Scott: Super, super hard problem which, to be fair, we as a team and a community wrestled with for years. But here's where we landed, Corey. The short version is that you can still have lots of great upstream open-source technologies, and you'll have an early adopter community that loves those, use those, gets a lot of progress running fast and far with those, but we've found that the vast majority of the market doesn't want to spend its time cobbling together bits and bytes of open-source tech, and maintaining it, and patching it, and, and, and. And so what we're offering is an engineered product that takes the upstream but then adds a lot of value—we would say—to make it an engineered, easy to use, easy to configure, upgraded, secure, so on and so forth. And the convenience of that versus having to cobble together your own environment from upstream has proved to be what folks are willing to pay for. So, it's the classic kind of paying for time and convenience versus not.And so that is one dimension. And the other dimension, which you already referenced a little bit with AWS is that we have SaaS; we have a SaaS product in Docker Hub, which is providing a hosted registry with quality content that users know is updated not less than every 30 days, that is patched and maintained by us. And so those are examples of, in some sense, consumption [unintelligible 00:27:53]. So, we're using open-source to build this SaaS service, but the service that users receive, they're willing to pay for because they're not having to patch the Mongo upstream, they're not having to roll the image themselves, they're not having to watch the CVEs and scramble when everything comes out. When there's a CVE out in our upstream, our official images are patched no less than 24 hours later and typically within hours.That's an example of a service, but all based on upstream open-source tech that for the vast majority of uses are free. If you're consuming a lot of that, then there's a subscription that kicks in there as well. But we're giving you value in exchange for you having to spend your time, your engineers, managing all that that I just walked through. So, those are the two avenues that we found that are working well, that seem to be a fair trade and fair balance with the community and the rest of the ecosystem.Corey: I think the hardest part for a lot of folks is embracing change. And I have encountered this my entire career where I started off doing large-scale email systems administration, and hey, turns out that's not really a thing anymore. And I used to be deep in the bowels of Postfix, for example. I'm referenced in the SVN history of Postfix, once upon a time, just for helping with documentation and finding weird corner cases because I'm really good at breaking things by accident. And I viewed it as part of my identity.And times have changed and moved on; I don't run Postfix myself for anything anymore. I haven't touched it in years. Docker is still there and it's still something that people are actively using basically everywhere. And there's a sense of ownership and identity for especially early adopters who glom on to it because it is such a better way of doing some things that it is almost incomprehensible that we used to do it any other way. That's transformation.That's something awesome. But people want to pretend that we're still living in that era where technology has not advanced. The miraculous breakthrough in 2013 is today's de rigueur type of environment where this is just, “Oh, yeah. Of course you're using Docker.” If you're not, people look at you somewhat strangely.It's like, “Oh, I'm using serverless.” “Okay, but you can still build that in Docker containers. Why aren't you doing that?” It's like, “Oh, I don't believe in running anything that doesn't make me pay AWS by the second.” So okay, great. People are going to have opinions on this stuff. But time marches on and whatever we wish the industry would do, it's going to make its own decisions and march forward. There's very little any of us can do to change that.Scott: That's right. Look, it was a single container back in 2013, 2014, right? And now what we're seeing—and you kind of went there—is we're separating the implementation of service from the service. So, the service could be implemented with a container, could be a serverless function, could be a hosted XYZ as a service on some cloud, but what developers want to do is—what they're moving towards is, assemble your application based on services regardless of the how. You know, is that how a local container? To your point, you can roll a local serverless function now in an OCI image, and push it to Amazon.Corey: Oh, yeah. It's one of that now 34 ways I found to run containers on AWS.Scott: [laugh]. You can also, in Compose, abstract all that complexity away. Compose could have three services in it. One of those services is a local container, one of those services might be a local serverless function that you're running to test, and one of those services could be a mock to a Database as a Service on a cloud. And so that's where we are.We've gone beyond the single-container Docker run, which is still incredibly powerful but now we're starting to uplevel to applications that consist of multiple services. And where do those services run? Increasingly, developers do not need to care. And we see that as our mission is continue to give that type of power to developers to abstract out the how, extract out the infrastructure so they can just focus on building their app.Corey: Scott, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. If people want to learn more—and that could mean finding out your opinions on things, potentially yelling at you about pricing changes, more interestingly, buying licenses for their large companies to run this stuff, and even theoretically, since you alluded to it a few minutes ago, look into working at Docker—where can they find you?Scott: No, thanks, Corey. And thank you for the time to discuss and look back over both years, but also zoom in on the present day. So, www.docker.com; you can find any and all what we just walked through. They're more than happy to yell at me on Twitters at @scottcjohnston, and we have a public roadmap that is in GitHub. I'm not going to put the URL here, but you can find it very easily. So, we love hearing from our community, we love engaging with them, we love going back and forth. And it's a big community; jump in, the waters warm, very welcoming, love to have you.Corey: And we'll of course, but links to that in the [show notes. 00:32:28] Thank you so much for your time. I really do appreciate it.Scott: Thank you, Corey. Right back at you.Corey: Scott Johnston, CEO of Docker. 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 Docker isn't interested in at all because here's how to do exactly what Docker does in LPARs on your mainframe until the AWS/400 comes to [unintelligible 00:33:02].Scott: [laugh].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.

Scott Couvillon is CEO and Executive Strategy Director at Trumpet Advertising, an agency that strives to create purpose-aligned, believable ads. Scott says that companies succeed with their advertising, not only because their creative product promotion is compelling, but more so when the ads “compel an honest connection between a person and a brand.” Scott says there is a lot of talk in the advertising industry about purpose. What is more important is “What do you do with it once you've got it.”  Scott holds that advertising needs to be aligned with a company's core beliefs. Organizations need to think holistically and ask, “If you put purpose in the center, how do you: Get the company culture aligned with that purpose?” Get the advertising and communications pieces aligned with that purpose?” and  Get the customer experience aligned with that purpose?” Advertising agencies typically work on communications – but may neglect a company's culture and customer experience components. Focus on product characteristics does not build relationships with customers, instill customer loyalty, or keep a company's product from becoming a commodity. Trumpet clients have a common understanding – “They will sell more product by selling that product within the context of what they stand for.” Scott explains, “Brand connection is an invitation to participate in a culture that is very intentional.”  Holistic alignment is what sells premium brands like Apple phones and BMW SUVs. If you don't have holistic alignment, Scott says, the best you can hope for is that people will not dread the absence of holistic alignment. The product is okay . . . and the customer only hopes the experience won't be bad. Because transformational organizational alignment involves a deeper client-agency relationship beyond mere “communications management,” Trumpet typically engages with organizations in one of two ways:  High-level management will bring Trumpet in to force “purpose alignment” on its marcom operations.  Trumpet will start out working with marcom. Once Trumpet has proven itself, it uses its analytical performance to talk with the leadership team about a more holistic brand and organizational alignment. Scott presents the example of one client, a “very profitable credit union” that Trumpet turned into “a very meaningful credit union.” “Meaning” made the credit union “even more profitable.” Although increased profit wasn't the first goal, it was the result of the client's focus on purpose. He refers to Raj's Conscious Capitalism, and these “firms of endearment,” as “the companies that we don't dread.”  Communications should be locked in with company culture and customer experience, all three driven by clairvoyance and purpose. Scott asks key questions. “What is the core belief?” “What would the world lose if this company went out of business?” and then delivers an indicting punchline to the last query: “If the answer is a product, then you're a commodity and somebody else can do what you do. He warns that commoditization often happens when companies internalize the advertising function, communicate on self-serve platforms, and focus more on selling product than on “what they stand for.” Scott can be found on his agency's website at: https://trumpetadvertising.com/. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I'm joined today by Scott Couvillon, CEO and Executive Strategy Director at Trumpet Advertising based in New Orleans, Louisiana. Welcome to the podcast, Scott. SCOTT: Nice to meet you, finally. ROB: Yeah, awesome to have you on here. Sometimes these things can take a little bit to schedule, but this is the moment. Why don't you start off by giving us the rundown on Trumpet Advertising and what your superpower is? SCOTT: I guess the thing about a superpower is normally the world can either see you running really fast or a human flying, and ours is maybe a little more backstage than that. But it's nonetheless clear to us and to the clients we're working with. It's pretty simple. It's the focus on believability and being purposeful as an organization as an underpinning for the things that we actually do every day, which for us is being an advertising agency. For them, it's running operations and trying to grow their organization. We just try to do that a little bit more meaningfully than I would say agencies that we've all worked for, and even in some cases the agency that we were 10 or 12 years ago. The idea that agencies are responsible for compelling creative is a prerequisite, and let's just assume that all good agencies can buy media and do the analysis and reporting and optimize and come up with great ideas for that engaged attention. But there's a difference between compelling creative and trying to compel an honest connection between a person and a brand. The most successful companies right now are doing a better job of that. Advertising works. We know that. Analytics tell us. America being overweight and in debt, advertising is alive and well. But not every business is able to truly create the connection that allows month over month growth to be sustained in the long term. That requires a more fundamental relationship than just window to window promotion success. ROB: That sort of strategy, to really execute it, it seems like that would require necessarily partnership from the client as well. How do you think about that and that initial client-agency dance of figuring out if they're really interested in that level of connection and genuineness in what they're doing? SCOTT: There's a lot in that. How do we proactively go after business? What is our posture or the conversation when we're, for example, answering an RFP or an open call for agencies? The reality is that if we are dealing exclusively with marketing communications, it would be very difficult to think so holistically about the spirituality of an organization in order to bring some level of alignment between what we're saying externally through communications and what the experience with the company is ultimately going to be if our only connection to the organization is marcom. So yeah, frankly, it requires involvement and buy-in from the leadership team. The relationship's got to go a couple of ways. Either we have a very legacy-oriented, thoughtful, and extremely intentional CEO that brings us in and forces us upon marcom, or we'll work within the marketing communications sphere for a while, really prove our practical worth, that we have good ideas and good tactical execution that shows that we know what we're doing, and then we almost use analytical performance with the leadership team to start having conversations about more of a holistic brand alignment at the organizational level, not just within communications on its own. And again, it clicks for some organizations and definitely not others. ROB: If we can, let's get a little bit more concrete with an example. Is there a particular client you can talk about that typifies what the engagement looks like, what the structure is, as well as the go-to-market message? What's that look like? SCOTT: We are not category specialists. This is a methodology and a perspective that is applicable to a very specific mindset of an organization. What our clients have in common is that they believe they will sell more product by selling that product within the context of what they stand for. They're not constantly just putting something to buy out there; they're being clairvoyant on what people are buying into via that purchase. Structurally, from a relationship standpoint, we have a big financial institution in Texas and expanding out into more and more markets every year, it seems like; we work in healthcare, we work in tourism and destination management, hospitality, but what they all have in common and the structure that's the same is by identifying the purpose of the organization – what is truly the core belief? Our industry has beaten the tar out of “figure out your why and your core motivation” and all that stuff, but what our industry has done a very poor job with is getting beyond the cosmetic application of that “why.” It's easy to turn why we exist into beautiful brand creative, but if the brand, if the company, isn't living that in any real way, it's disingenuous at best and a lie at worst. Our scopes are focused on articulating what that belief is, getting that right and bought into by every level of the organization. When we were working with that financial institution, it was very much led by really, truly an unbelievable CEO who pulled his executive team along with him and really got them all bought in. There were years of internal transformation about “Look, this is the organization that we were, and this is the organization that we are going to be. We're going to move from a very profitable credit union into a very meaningful credit union, and that meaning is going to make us even more profitable.” The profit didn't come first. It got relegated to a result. That became really, really clear, because there became a spirituality at that organization that employees, stakeholders, customers, everybody was truly able to validate and then buy into. They were more than just checking account for a free toaster. The way that process went was getting very clear on that narrative, figuring out what the utilitarian expressions of that narrative were going to be – what products were they going to stop offering? What were the kinds of products they were going to develop? Because their product offering was going to be truly a manifestation of what they stood for, not just different ways for them to make money for shareholders and stakeholders. That kind of internal, truly product holistic thinking first prior to a total renaming and a new identity, new uniforms for employees – how are we going to retrain those employees in the new spirituality of the company while we're handing them a new shirt, as opposed to just handing them a new shirt? That's really how these things, in a perfect sense, go when people are buying into it wholly. There's been plenty of clients that we've talked about this upfront, we've gone through the purpose identification in each standpoint, and it inflects in some of the product expressions and some of the customer experience in a retail sense – certainly we're talking to it from a content standpoint in advertising, marketing, and social media stuff – but never really get invited into the inner sanctum of operations and HR practices, orientation and internal transmission to every employee at the organization. As an egomaniac, those aren't my favorite scopes because we're not able to do the true holistic alignment with every element of the business with a core belief. But it's better than just offering free shipping and extra cheese and hoping for month over month improvements. ROB: Right. It's necessary for you to have the conversation at a higher level in the organization, which is usually where you want to engage. Maybe not sometimes; sometimes the CMO has tons of power and big org. But when you're talking about essentially a credit union, a bank, it's a commodity to people, just like an airline can mostly be a commodity to people unless you are let's say Southwest and you do the work over time to sustain a differentiator. Even when everyone else is charging you for a checked bag. SCOTT: I think you look at the companies that get put into a very specific cohort that we pay a lot of attention to. It's really these believable, more purposeful companies. Raj Sisodia, great TED Talk, talks about conscious capitalism, talks about these firms of endearment. It's the ones that always get talked about at ANA and every conference in our industry. It's the Caterpillars and the Starbucks and the Disneys and of course the Apples and Intuit. It's that category. It doesn't have to be consumer. But these are organizations that are truly aligned, inside and outside, with an idea, not aligned more practically with an IP or a product or a manufacturing process. You bring up Southwest; identical equipment, flying from the exact same building as other companies. It's as commoditized as rice. But there is an affinity and a preference for airlines that we all have and that we use for specific purposes. Yes, there are times that we pinch the nose and it's the cheapest or it's the only one going where I need to be, but we're dreading that experience. And when we go in as a consumer with dread, the best you can have is the absence of dread. I defy you to find a leadership team whose mission statement is “Let's provide an absence of dread to the world.” That's not going to make our stock price soar. But that's where they're landing, whereas Southwest, as you bring up – JetBlue I'd say is another one. They've got a commodity product, and they've really focused on the only thing that there is to focus on, which is the morality and the spirituality of the organization and allowing people to really buy into it. Their turnover is lower. Vendor relationships are better. It is an easier company to run because there is alignment beyond the practical. Don't be late and don't lose bags. ROB: How disruptive – you talk about that feeling of dread. Names pop to my mind. Airline names pop into my mind when you say “dread.” What a heck of a brand. You're the airline of last resort and of dread, but hey, it's cheap. But let me digress a little bit from there. Walk me through the origin story of Trumpet. How did Trumpet start and get to be where it is now? What's that journey look like? SCOTT: Trumpet was founded in '97. It fell out of another agency. Just three guys took the phones and ran and opened up a new agency. That's kind of the late '90s agency founding story. It was a designer and a writer and an account guy, and they started with some real clients, and despite being in a Tier 3 city like New Orleans, over the years they've done some great work for clients like Gatorade. Not nobodies. Launched FreshDirect in New York. It wasn't just car dealerships and plaintiffs attorneys. In fact, those are the two categories we won't work in. They really grew into a creative powerhouse when I was exposed to them in the late '90s and met the founders. At the time, I was in San Francisco. I'm from New Orleans, but I was working out there for years and was loving that, and every day being the dumbest guy in the room and just trying to stay on my toes and not get discovered. But then when I came back to New Orleans, I got reintroduced to Trumpet. The idea at the time was they had amazing creative, but really not a strong, or as strong as it could've been, strategic underpinning. So I joined, maybe narcissistically, thinking that there was an opportunity to bring some strategic scaffolding together with the creative superiority they were wielding. It took a while to be heard and understand it and figure out how our personalities were going to coalesce, but getting into about the last four or five years here, we were on a clip, winning advertising agency accounts like an advertising agency does, talking about case studies and making result promises and case studies that are completely non-verifiable. But we didn't really have a perspective that made us different. We were frankly commoditizing ourselves with all of the other agencies that are able to execute, come up with ideas and get them into the market. But the development of this perspective – and not only adding the brand consulting mindset, if not the brand consulting scope to our scopes of work with clients, but that shift of perspective to, how do we stop lying? How do we stop running ads that test well and analytically prove in the near term that they work better than the old stuff? How do we let advertising be not a short-term tool, but really have a long-term impact? And how do we stop talking about things like brand ads as unmeasurable? How do we start talking about brand ads as being really the only promise we're making? Advertising, when it's seen as a trigger or stimulus for sales, if that's how you see it, that's what it's going to be. That has become the most ignorable stuff in a consumer's day to day, when they're seeing on average 3,600 ads a day in different format. And we're calling three from the day prior. There's a ton of waste. Advertising agencies say, “Yeah, but the waste is so cheap, you can afford it.” But when you look at advertising as truly an invitation to participate in a culture of a company – even when you're promoting, even when you're doing something of a more retail nature, but definitely when you're doing it in a brand sense – you have to be making plain and clear what experience you're going to have if you were to engage with this company via a product or social media visit or whatever those things may be, so that that experience can actually validate the promise we made in advertising, because that's when you get the connection that Raj is talking about in Conscious Capitalism. Those are the companies that we don't dread. In fact, those are the companies that we re-purchase from. The Apple phone that costs twice as much as a Samsung is not twice as good. It just costs twice as much, but we don't think twice about it because we have an affinity. We have a preference for that company, and if they tell us we need a watch – I didn't, but many people did go and get one. People don't want an SUV from BMW. They want the ultimate driving machine. They want the connection with BMW, and they just had too many kids. That brand connection being meaningful isn't throwaway, unmeasurable stuff. It's frankly the most important stuff, especially when the organization sees it as an invitation to participate in a culture that is very intentional, because the leadership that's approving the ads is also using the same idea that's easy to capture in ad creative and doing the harder work of trying to figure out how to keep that alive or to program that into the organization itself and into the customer experience itself. ROB: That's definitely a very compelling challenge. I think one part of the journey that's worth underscoring for you is – we're always talking to the challenger, the independent agencies, not the holding companies. But you've got even a different perspective. Those are quite often typically operated by somebody who was there on Day 1. Talk about your own transformation from joining the agency to being the CEO now. SCOTT: There's been a lot of leadership and structural capitulations over the years. Let me start by saying, too, that while we were a small agency in New Orleans – at our biggest, we were under 50. We really enjoy remaining at about that 20-to-25-person range, because we focus primarily on creative and strategy and project management. We do not have PR and social media and media planning and buying under roof. Now, we have media planners, but they're working with external groups in our network to plan and buy media and reconcile and optimize and all that stuff. The reason for that is because every place that we've ever worked, when you have a media department, that media department's mentality is kind of what every client that we win gets. And while it might be appropriate for consumer packaged goods, it might not be right for pharma or a healthcare system. But tough; that's our media director and that's your plan. Not all flowcharts look the same, but they could. That's the risk. We don't think downstream execution is unimportant; we just don't want to subject a client we haven't met yet to a downstream execution philosophy. That's how you wind up becoming a categorical agency, and we're trying to avoid that in order to fully administer the perspective regardless of category. That said, when you see the agency that way, it's not like you have a CEO sitting atop all these profit silos, because the only silos that are at Trumpet are really creative and strategy, and then the execution that comes from our client services division, which is split between project management and relationship management. But regardless, it's not a very complicated business to run. That said, the leaders of these disciplines are really empowered. The distance between CEO and the leaders of the silos is not very distant. But in order for the vision to not be lost in day to day execution, that's really where my focus remains. Right now we're in the process of trying to extract ourselves to the degree that we can from the day to day so that we can focus on the collective vision of the day to day. I say, how do we think a little less about the busyness of the agency and think more about the business of the agency? Not to be cavalier, but clients come and go, but the agency is either going to be defined by our relationships and whether we're right about to get fired or our clients love us, or we're going to have an idea as an agency that clients are going to find valuable or they won't. That's really what we're shifting to: trying to make it very, very clear, inside and out – just like we profess to our clients – let's make Trumpet a place very clearly inside and out that our employees and our clients are all clairvoyant on our value. Because if they want it, we'll be around for a while, and our retention increases and our connection with our employees increases the more transparent and clear we are about what's different about working here and working someplace else. There's no greater commodity than an advertising agency. ROB: It doesn't take a lot of capital to stand up something. SCOTT: Yeah. It takes three people and a client, and sometimes not a client. And sometimes not three people. [laughs] But there's a lot of talk in our industry right now about purpose. This should not be the 75000th purpose podcast because there's plenty of that. What this should be is one of the few that says, what do you do with it once you've got it? If you take it and run it into brand ads that are beautiful but aren't what the company is really rallying around, I think you're frankly doing a disservice. You're probably better off sticking in promotion land. That's been around since the '50s. ROB: Oh yeah, that's a well-trod lane as well. I think what's interesting maybe also is stepping into that CEO role, what are some things you might wish you had done sooner stepping into that seat? SCOTT: Actually, I've thought a lot about this. I mentioned this to you, but there's a difference between showing up to work every day as an account person or a team member or director of a discipline and trying to do the whole. But I think what has happened successfully here, in my personal path and matriculation, is we didn't miss the opportunity to shift from being in the mailroom to being an account guy to being a strategist to now being CEO. It's not like strategy is king now, like the ops guy takes over the CEO role and now ops is king, or the marketing guy takes over the CEO role and marketing is king. We are being disciplined enough to have Trumpet become associated operationally with an idea. There is very intentional alignment between Trumpet as an organization and the products and services that we provide. So those products and services being rendered on behalf of this portfolio of clients does not wholly define Trumpet. There's an idea of Trumpet: how do we make companies more believable? Advertising has a role in that, but advertising is a very narrow solution to that. Brand consulting or internal operational consulting has a role in that, but operational consulting is a narrow solution to the complex problem of how you get the customer experience, separate and apart from the company culture, separate and apart from the communications from that company, aligned with not a product, but a belief. Product innovation: awesome, you need it. But it's a very narrow solution to the satisfaction of that complex problem. There's three legs to that stool. If you put purpose in the center, how do you get the company culture aligned with that purpose? How do you get the advertising and communications pieces aligned with that purpose, and how do you get the customer experience aligned with that purpose? That requires very intentional, top-down commitment from the organization, and in our case it requires us challenging those organizations to think that holistically. Advertising agencies typically just exist in that communications third. I think we have a responsibility not to take over the whole, but to understand or to be able to provide a perspective that not only should communications be tied, locked in with the company culture and the customer experience, but all three should really be driven by clairvoyance and purpose. What is the core belief? What would the world lose if this company went out of business? If the answer is a product, then you're a commodity and somebody else can do what you do. But how you bring that product to market and what you stand for more spiritually than practically – you get that right and you will be more successful. Ironically, you will sell more product by talking about what that product is a means to what end. Becoming the CEO of the organization of Trumpet has been a challenge to not just let this be, “Oh my gosh, what clients are we about to lose or which ones do we really want to get?” and more, how do we keep this idea clear and alive internally and externally so that everybody, from our employees to our partners, in whatever executional hallway we partner with networks, and our clients – that idea of Trumpet is alive in all of those conversations? So that you don't get lost in the execution and confuse successful execution and analytical awesomeness with the idea of the company. Because that's not the idea of a company. That's the commodity part of advertising agencies. None of us should be bad at creative, buying and measuring and optimizing media and reporting on results. We should all be good at that. But that's all short term. What's the long term? Long term comes from brand, and not the unmeasurable ads. ROB: Right, and it's at a fractal level. Most individuals don't want to just buy and sell ads and measure them, and most organizations would be better not to. There's an alignment from client to organization to person that is going to put off some people who want to go in a different vision, but at least you're not adrift without direction and just commodity all the way down. SCOTT: And look at what the industry has done relative to that mentality. It's why agencies have been complaining for years that they're being marginalized. I don't lament marginalization. I think frankly, our industry deserved it. We allowed ourselves to be commoditized. The media commission structure lived on way too long and was disproportionately beneficial to agencies a long time ago, and has just been eroding and eroding and eroding over time. Now bring in the democratization of media buying and content development and clients can internalize a lot of this stuff. That democratization of the ability to execute elements of communications through self-serve platforms, and you don't need IPG anymore to run national broadcasts. Ironically, the democratization of the ability to participate in advertising, from a local one-off car dealership to a global superpower, is moving businesses farther away from a focus on purpose. They're like, “Man, this advertising thing is something we can just do. Let's internalize it. Let's run this with greater control.” What winds up happening is that the distance, the separation, the space between consumers and companies is widening because there's just less and less focus on companies being clear about what they stand for. They're providing consumers fewer and fewer opportunities to have a referendum on whether or not they like them, so products get commoditized. You'd better lower your expenses if you hope for net profit. ROB: Thank you for all that, Scott. When people want to find you and connect with you and with Trumpet, where should they go to find you? SCOTT: The internet is an awesome place, so you can google Trumpet. If you just scroll past the instruments for sale, you'll find us. But we're not hard to find. We're in downtown New Orleans now. We love our hometown, but we just as much love airports. We do not restrict our client base to here or really even the region. Have perspective, will travel. We're really just looking for those types of companies that are interested in holistic alignment, if not holistic transformation from where they were to a much more intentional place of where they want to be headed, and then right size our relationship to what makes sense for the individual company. ROB: That is excellent. Scott Couvillon from Trumpet Advertising, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing the transformation of your firm and thoughts on how we can all be transformational individually, organizationally, and brand-wise. Thank you so much. SCOTT: Thanks for the time. Love what you're doing. ROB: Be well. Thank you. Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

About ScottScott is a web developer who has been blogging at https://hanselman.com for over a decade. He works in Open Source on ASP.NET and the Azure Cloud for Microsoft out of his home office in Portland, Oregon. Scott has three podcasts, http://hanselminutes.com for tech talk, http://thisdeveloperslife.com on developers' lives and loves, and http://ratchetandthegeek.com for pop culture and tech media. He's written a number of books and spoken in person to almost a half million developers worldwide.Links: Hanselminutes Podcast: https://www.hanselminutes.com/ Personal website: https://hanselman.com 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 Thinkst. This is going to take a minute to explain, so bear with me. I linked against an early version of their tool, canarytokens.org in the very early days of my newsletter, and what it does is relatively simple and straightforward. It winds up embedding credentials, files, that sort of thing in various parts of your environment, wherever you want to; it gives you fake AWS API credentials, for example. And the only thing that these things do is alert you whenever someone attempts to use those things. It's an awesome approach. I've used something similar for years. Check them out. But wait, there's more. They also have an enterprise option that you should be very much aware of canary.tools. You can take a look at this, but what it does is it provides an enterprise approach to drive these things throughout your entire environment. You can get a physical device that hangs out on your network and impersonates whatever you want to. When it gets Nmap scanned, or someone attempts to log into it, or access files on it, you get instant alerts. It's awesome. If you don't do something like this, you're likely to find out that you've gotten breached, the hard way. Take a look at this. It's one of those few things that I look at and say, “Wow, that is an amazing idea. I love it.” That's canarytokens.org and canary.tools. The first one is free. The second one is enterprise-y. Take a look. I'm a big fan of this. More from them in the coming weeks.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Lumigo. If you've built anything from serverless, you know that if there's one thing that can be said universally about these applications, it's that it turns every outage into a murder mystery. Lumigo helps make sense of all of the various functions that wind up tying together to build applications. It offers one-click distributed tracing so you can effortlessly find and fix issues in your serverless and microservices environment. You've created more problems for yourself; make one of them go away. To learn more, visit lumigo.io.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. I'm joined this week by Scott Hanselman of Microsoft. He calls himself a partner program manager—or is called a partner program manager. But that feels like it's barely scraping the surface of who and what he is. Scott, thank you for joining me.Scott: [laugh]. Thank you for the introduction. I think my boss calls me that. It's just one of those HR titles; it doesn't really mean—you know, ‘program manager,' what does it even mean?Corey: I figure it means you do an awful lot of programming. One of the hardest questions is, you start doing different things—and Lord knows you do a lot of them—is that awful question that you wind up getting at cocktail parties of, “So, what is it you do exactly?” How do you answer that?Scott: Yeah, it's almost like, if you spent any time on Clubhouse recently, there was a wonderful comedian named Spunky Brewster on Instagram who had a whole thing where she talked about the introductions at the beginning of a Clubhouse thing, where it's like, you're a multi-hyphenate sandwich artist slash skydiver slash programmers slash whatever. One doesn't want to get too full of one's selves. I would say that I have for the last 30 years been a teacher and a professional enthusiast around computing and getting people excited about computing. And everything that I do, whether it be writing software, shipping software, or building community, hangs off of the fact that I'm an enthusiastic teacher.Corey: You really are. And you're also very hard to pin down. I mean, it's pretty clear to basically the worst half of the internet, that you're clearly a shill. The problem is defining exactly what you're a shill for. You're obviously paid by Microsoft, so clearly you push them well beyond the point when it would make sense to.You have a podcast that has been on for over 800 episodes—which puts this one to shame—called Hanselminutes, and that is, of course, something where you're shilling for your own podcast. You've recently started on TikTok, which I can only assume is what the kids are into these days. You're involved in so many different things and taking so many different positions, that it's very hard to pin down what is the stuff you're passionate about.Scott: I'm going to gently push back and say—Corey: Please do.Scott: That if one were to care to look at it holistically, I am selling enthusiasm around free and open-source software on primarily the Windows platform that I'm excited about, and I am selling empowerment for the next generation of people who want to do computing. Before I went to Microsoft, my blog and my podcast existed, and I was consistent in my, “Hey, have you heard the news?” Message to anyone who would listen. And I taught at both Portland Community College and Oregon Institute of Technology, teaching web services and history of the web and C# and all that kind of stuff. So, I'm one of those people where if you touch on a topic that I'm interested in, I'll be like, “Oh, my goodness, let's”—and I'll just like, you know, knock everything off the desk and I'm going to be like, “Okay, let's build a model, a working model of the solar system here, now. The orange is the sun.”And it's like, suddenly now we're talking about science, like Hank Green or whatever. My family will ask me, “Why isn't the remote control working?” And then I've taken it apart and I'm explaining to them how the infrared LED inside works. And, you know, how can you not be excited about all these things? And that's my whole thing about computing and the power that being able to program computers represents to me.Corey: I would agree with that. I'd say that one thing that is universal about everything you're involved in is the expression I heard that I love and am going to recapture has been, “Sending the elevator back down.”Scott: Oh, yeah. Throwing ladders, ropes, elevators. I am very blessed to have made it out of my neighborhood, and I am very hopeful that anyone who is in a situation that they do not want to be in could potentially use coding, programming, IT, computing as the great equalizer and that I can I could somehow lend my privilege to them to get the things done and solve the problems that they want to solve with computers.Corey: I'm sure that you've been asked ad nauseum about—you work in free and open-source software. You've been an advocate for this, effectively, for your entire career; did no one tell you you work at Microsoft? But that's old Microsoft in many respects. That's something that we've covered with a bunch of different guests previously from Microsoft, and it's honestly a little—it's becoming a bit of a tired trope. It was a really interesting conversation a few years back that, oh, it's clearly all just for show.Well, that is less and less obvious, and more tired and frankly bad take as time progresses. So, I want to go back a bit further into my own personal journey because it turns out that the number one reason to reach out to you for anything is tech support on various things. I don't talk about this often, but I started my career moonlighting as a Windows admin, back in the Windows 2003 server days; and it was an experience, and licensing was a colossal pain, and I finally had enough of it one day, in 2006, switched over to Unix administration on BSD, and got a Mac laptop, and that was really the last time that I used Windows in anger. Now, it's been 15 years since that happened, and I haven't really been tracking the Windows ecosystem. What have I missed?Scott: [laugh]. There's a lot there that you just said. So first, different people have their religions and they're excited about them, and I encourage everyone to be excited about the religion that they're excited about. It's great to be excited about your thing, but it's also really not cool to be a zealot about your thing. So hey, be excited about Windows, be excited about Linux, be excited about Mac.Just don't tell me that I'm going to heck because I didn't share your enthusiasm. Let's just be excited together and we can be friends together. I've worked on Linux at Nike, I've worked on Mac, I've worked on Windows, you know, I've been there before these things existed and I'll be there afterwards.Corey: Exactly. At some point being a zealot for a technology just sort of means you haven't been around the block enough to understand how it's going to break, how it's going to fail, how it's going to evolve, and it doesn't lead to a positive outcome for anyone. It fundamentally becomes a form of gatekeeping more than anything else, and I just don't have the stomach for it.Scott: Yeah. And ultimately, we're just looking for—you know, we got these smart rocks that we taught how to think with lightning, and they're running for loops for us. And maybe they're running them in the cloud, maybe they're running locally. So, I'm not really too worried about it. Windows is my thing of choice, but just, you know, one person's Honda is another person's Toyota; you get excited about the brand that you start out with.So, that's that. Currently, though, Windows has gone, at least in the last maybe 20 years, from one of those things where there's generational pain, and, like, “Microsoft killed my Pappy, and I'll never forgive you.” And it's like, yeah, there was some dumb stuff in the '90s with Internet Explorer, but as a somewhat highly placed middle manager at Microsoft, I've never been in an active mustache-twirling situation where I was behind closed doors and anyone thought anything nefarious. There's only a true, “What's the right thing for the customer? What is the right thing for the people?”My whole thing is to make it so developers can develop more easily on Windows, so I'm very fortunate to be helping some folks in a partnership between the Windows division and the developer division that I work in to make Windows kick butt when it comes to dev. Historically, the Windows terminal, or what's called cmd.exe which is run by a thing called the console host has sucked; it has lagged behind. So, if you drop out to the command line, you've got the, you know, the old, kind of, quote-unquote, “DOS shell” with a cmd processor—it's not really DOS—running in an old console host. And it's been there for gosh, probably early '90s. That sucks.But then you got PowerShell. And again, I want to juxtapose the difference between a console—or a terminal—and a shell. They're different things. There's lots of great third-party terminals in the ecosystem. There's lots of shells to choose from, whether it be PowerShell, PowerShell Core—now PowerShell 7.0—or the cmd, as well as bash, and Cygwin, and zsh, and fish.But the actual thing that paints the text on Windows has historically not been awesome. So, the new open-source Windows terminal has been the big thing. If you're a Machead and you use iTerm2, or Hyper, or things like that, you'll find it very comfortable. It's a tabbed terminal, split-screen, ripping fast, written in, you know, DirectX, C++ et cetera, et cetera, all open-source, and then it lets you do transparency, and background colors, and ligature fonts, and all the things that a great modern terminal would want to do. That is kind of the linchpin of making Windows awesome for developers, then gets even awesomer when you add in the ability that we're now shipping an actual Linux kernel, and I can run N number of Linuxes side-by-side, in multiple panes, all within the terminal.This getting to the point about juxtaposing the difference between a terminal and a console and a shell. So, I've got, on the machine, I'm talking to you on right now, on my third monitor, I've got Windows terminal open with PowerShell on Windows on the left, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS on the right, with the fish shell. And then I've got another Ubuntu 20.04 with bash, a standard bash shell.And I'm going and testing stuff in Docker, and running .NET in Docker, and getting ready to deploy my own podcast website up into Azure. And I'm doing it in a totally organic way. It's not like, “Oh, I'm just running a virtual machine.” No, it's integrated. That's what I think you'd be impressed with.Corey: That right there is the reason that I generally tended to shy away from getting back into the Windows ecosystem for the longest time—and this is not a slam on Windows, by any stretch of the—Scott: No of course. Sure, sure, sure.Corey: —imagination—my belief has always been that you operate within the environment as it's intended to be operated within, and it felt at the time, “Oh, install Cygwin, and get all this other stuff going, and run a VM to do it.” It felt like I was fighting upstream in some respects.Scott: Oh, yeah, that's a great point. Let's talk about that for a second. So—Corey: Let's do it.Scott: So, Cygwin is the GNU utilities that are written in a very nice portable C, but they are written against the Windows kernel. So, the example I like to use is ls, you type ls, you list out your directory, right? So, ls and dir are the same thing for this conversation. Which means that someone has to then call a system call—syscall in Linux, Windows kernel call in Windows—and say, “Hey, would you please enumerate these files, and then give me information about them, and check the metadata?” And that has to call the file system and then it's turtles all the way down.Cygwin isn't Linux. It's the bash and GNU utilities recompiled and compiled against the Windows stuff. So, it's basically putting a bash skin on Windows, but it's not Linux; it's bash. Okay? But WSL is actually Linux, and rather than firing up a big 30 gig Hyper-V, or VirtualBox, or Parallels virtual machine, which is, like, a moment—“I'm firing up the VM; call me in an hour when it comes back up.”—and when the VM comes up, it's, like, a square on your screen and now you're dealing with another thing to manage.The WSL stuff is actually a utility virtual machine built on a lower subsystem, the virtualization platform, and it starts in less than a second. You can start it faster than you can say, one one-thousand. And it goes instantly up, it automatically allocates and deallocates memory so that it's smart about memory, and it's running the actual Linux kernel, so it's not pretending to be Linux. So, if your goal is a Linux environment and you're a Linux developer, the time of Linux on the desktop is happening, in this case, on the Windows desktop. Where you get interesting stuff, and where I think your brain might explode is, imagine you're in the terminal, you're at the Linux file system at the bash prompt, and you type ‘notepad.exe.' What would you expect to happen? You'd expect it to try to find it in a Linux path and fail.Corey: Right. And then you're trying to figure out, am I in this environm—because you generally tend to run these things in the same-looking terminal, but then all the syntax changes as soon as you go back into the Windows native environment, you're having to deal with line-ending issues on a constant basis, and you just—Scott: Oh, yeah. All that stuff, where.Corey: And as soon as you ask for help because back in those days, I was looking primarily into using freenode as my primary source of support because I network staff on the network for the better part of a decade, and the answer is, “I'm having some trouble with Linux,” and the response is, “Oh, you're doing this within a Windows environment? Get a real computer, kid.” Because it's still IRC, and being condescending and rude to anyone who makes different choices than you do is apparently the way that was done back then.Scott: Well, today in 2020 because we don't want to just have light integration with Windows—and by light integration, like, I don't know if you remember firing up a virtual machine on Windows and then, like, copy-pasting a file, and we were all going like, “Oh, my God, that's amazing.” I drug the file in and then it did a little bit of magic and then moved the file from Windows into Linux. What we want is to blur the lines between the two so you can move comfortably. When you type explorer.exe or notepad.txt in Linux on Windows, Linux says no, and then Windows gets the chance, fires it up, and can access the Linux file system.And since Notepad now understands line endings, just happily, you can open up your .profile, your bash_profile, your csh file in Notepad, or—here's where it gets interesting—Visual Studio Code, and comfortably run your Windows apps, talking to your Linux file system, or in the—coming soon, and we've blogged about this and announced it at Build last year, run Linux GUI apps seamlessly so that I could have two browsers up, two Chromes, one Windows and one Linux, side-by-side, which is going to make web testing even that much easier. And I'm moving seamlessly between the two. Even cooler, I can type explorer.exe and then pass in dot, which represents the current folder, and if the current folder is the Linux file system, we seamlessly have a Plan 9 server—basically a file server that lets you access your Linux file system—from—Corey: Is it actually running Plan 9?Scott: It is a Plan 9 server.Corey: That is amazing. I'm sorry, that is a blast from the past.Scott: I'm glad. And we can run N number of Linuxes; this isn't just one Linux. I've got Kali Linux, two different Ubuntus, and I could tar up the user mode files on mine, zip them up, give them to you, and you could go and type ‘wsl–import,' and then have my Linux file system. Which means that we could make a custom Screaming in the Cloud distro, put it in the Windows Store, put it up on GitHub, build our own, and then the company could standardize on our Linux distro and run it on Windows.Corey: That is almost as terrible an idea as using a DNS service as a database.Scott: [laugh].Corey: I love it. I'm totally there for it.Scott: It's really nice because it's extremely—the point is, it has to have no friction, right? So, if you think about it this way, I just moved—I blogged about this; if people want to go and learn about it—I just moved my blog of 20 years off of a Windows Server 2008 server running under someone's desk at a host, into Azure. This is a multi-month-long migration. My blog, my main site, kind of the whole Hanselman ecosystem moved up in Azure. So, I had a couple things to deal with.Am I going to go from Windows to Linux? Am I going to go from a physical machine to a virtual machine? Am I going to go from a physical machine to a virtual machine to a Platform as a Service? And when I do that, well, how is that going to change the way that I write software? I was opening it in Visual Studio, pressing F5, and running it in IIS—the Internet Information Server for Windows—for the last 15, 20 years.How do I change that experience? Well, I like Visual Studio; I like pressing F5; I like interactive debugging sessions. But I also like saving money running Linux in the cloud, so how can I have the best of all those worlds? Because I wrote the thing in .NET, I moved into .NET 5, which runs everywhere, put together a Docker file, got full support for that in Visual Studio, moved it over into WSL so I can test it on both Windows and Linux.I can go into my folder on my WSL, my Windows subsystem for Linux, type code dot, open up Visual Studio Code. Visual Studio Code splits in half. The Windows client of Visual Studio Code runs on Windows; the server, the Visual Studio Code server, runs in WSL providing the bridge between the two worlds, and I can press F5 and have interactive debugging and now I'm a Linux developer even though I've never left Windows. Then I can right-click publish in Visual Studio to GitHub Actions, which will then throw it into the cloud, and I moved everything over into Azure, saved 30%, and everything's awesome. I'm still a Windows developer using Visual Studio. So, it's pretty much I don't know, non-denominational; kind of mixing the streams here.Corey: It is. And let me take it a step further. When I'm on the road, the only computer I bring with me these days—well, in the before times, let's be very realistic. Now, when ‘I'm on the road,' that means going to the kitchen for a snack—the only computer I bring with me is my iPad Pro, which means that everything I do has a distinct application. For when I want to get into my development environment, historically it was, use some terminal app—I'm a fan of Blink, but everyone has their own; don't email me.And everything else I tended to use looked an awful lot like a web app. If there wasn't a dedicated iOS app, it was certainly available via a web browser. Which leads me to the suspicion that we're almost approaching a post-operating-system world where the future development operating system begins to look an awful lot—and people are going to yell at me for this—Visual Studio Code.Scott: Mmm.Corey: It supports a bunch of remote activities now that GitHub Codespaces is available—at least to my account; I don't know if it's generally available yet—but I've been using it; I love it; everything it winds up doing is hosted remotely in Azure; I don't have to think about managing the infrastructure; it's just another tab within GitHub, and it works. My big problem is that I'm trying to shake, effectively, 20 years of muscle memory of wrestling with Vim, and it takes a little bit of a leap in order to become comfortable with something that's a more visually-oriented IDE.Scott: Why don't you use the VsVim, Jared Parsons Vim plugin for Visual Studio?Corey: I've never yet found a plugin that I like for something else to make it behave like Vim. Vimperator is a browser extension, all of it just tends to be unfortunate and annoying in different ways. For whatever reason, the way that I'm configured or built, it doesn't work for me in the same way. And it goes back to our previous conversation about using the native offering as it comes, rather than trying to make it look like something else.Scott: Okay. I would just offer to you and for other Vim people who might be listening, that VS Code Vim does have 2.5 million installs, over 2 million people happily using that. And they are—Corey: Come to find it only has 200,000 actual users; there was an installation bug and one person just kept trying over and over and over. I kid, I kid.Scott: No, seriously though, these are actual Vim-heads and Jared Parsons is a developer at Microsoft who is like, out of his cold dead hands you'll pull his Vim. So, there's solutions; whether you're Vim or Emacs, you know, we welcome all comers. But to your point, the Visual Studio, once it got split in half, where the language services, those services that provide context to Python, Ruby, C# C++ et cetera, once those extensions can be remoted, they can run on Windows, they can run on Linux, they can run on the cloud. So, VS Code being split in half as a client-server application has really made it shine. And for me, that means that I don't notice a difference, whether I'm running VS Code on Windows or running VS Code to a remote Linux install, or even using SSH and coding on Windows remotely to a Raspberry Pi.Corey: I love the idea. I've seen people do this, in some respects, back in the days of Code Server being a project on GitHub, and it took a fair bit of wrangling to get that to work in a way that wasn't scarily insecure and reliable. But once it was up and running, you could effectively plug a Raspberry Pi in underneath your iPad and effectively have a portable computer on the go that did local development. I'm looking at this and realizing the future doesn't look at all like what I thought it was going to, and it's really still kind of neat.Scott: Mm-hm.Corey: There's a lot of value in being able to make things like this more accessible, and the reason I'm excited about a lot of this, too, is that aligned with a generous free tier opportunity, which I don't know final pricing for things like GitHub Codespaces, suddenly the only real requirement is something that can render a browser and connect to the internet for an awful lot of folks to get started. It doesn't require a fancy local overpowered development machine the way a lot of things used to. And yes, I know; there are certain kinds of development that are changing in that respect, but it still feels to me like it has never been easier to get started with all of this technology than ever before, with a counterargument that there's so many different directions to go in. “Oh, I want to get started using Visual Studio Code or learning to write JavaScript. Great. How do I do this? Let me find a tutorial.” And you find 20 million tutorials, and then you're frozen with indecision. How do you get past that?Scott: Yeah, there is and always will be, unfortunately, a certain amount of analysis paralysis that occurs. I started a TikTok recently to try to help people to get involved in coding, and the number one question I get—and I mean, thousands and thousands of them—are like, “Where do I start?” Because everyone seems to think that if they pick the wrong language, that will be a huge mistake. And I can't think of a wrong language, you know? Like, what human language should I learn?You know, English, Chinese, Arabic, Japanese. Pick one and then learn another one if you can. Learn a couple. But I don't think there's a wrong language to learn because the basics of computer science are the basics of computer science. I think what we need to do is remind people that computers are computers no matter whether they're an Android phone or a Windows laptop, and that any forward motion at all is a good thing. I think a lot of people have analysis paralysis, and they're just afraid to pick stuff.Corey: I agree with what you're saying, but I'm also going to push back gently on what you're saying, as well. If someone who is new to the field was asking me what language to learn, I would be hard-pressed to recommend a language that was not JavaScript. I want to be clear, I do not understand or know JavaScript at all, but it's clear from what I'm seeing, that is, in many ways, the language of the future. It is how frontend is being interacted with; there are projects from every cloud provider that wind up managing infrastructure via JavaScript primitives. There are so many on-ramps for this, and the user experience for new folks is phenomenal compared to any language that I've worked with in my career. Would you agree with that or disagree with that assessment?Scott: So, I've written blog posts on this topic, and my answer is a little more ‘it depends.' I say that people should always learn JavaScript and one other language, preferably a systems language, which also may be JavaScript. But rather than thinking about things language-first, we think about things solutions-first. If someone says, “I want to do a lot of data science,” you don't learn JavaScript. If someone says, “I want to go and write an Android app,” yeah, you could do that in JavaScript, but JavaScript is not the answer to all questions.Just as the English language, while it may be the lingua franca, no pun intended, it is not the only language one should pick. I usually say, “Well, what do you want to do?” “Well, I want to write a video game for the Xbox.” Okay, well, you're probably not going to do that in JavaScript. “Oh, I want to do data science. I want to write an iPhone app.” JavaScript is the language you should learn if you're going to be doing things on the web, yes, but if you're going to be writing the backend for WhatsApp, then you're not going to do that JavaScript.Corey: This episode is sponsored by ExtraHop. ExtraHop provides threat detection and response for the Enterprise (not the starship). On-prem security doesn't translate well to cloud or multi-cloud environments, and that's not even counting IoT. ExtraHop automatically discovers everything inside the perimeter, including your cloud workloads and IoT devices, detects these threats up to 35 percent faster, and helps you act immediately. Ask for a free trial of detection and response for AWS today at extrahop.com/trial.Corey: Yeah, I think you're right. It comes down to what is the problem you're trying to solve for? Taking the analogy back to human languages, well, what is your goal? Is it just to say that you've learned a language and to understand, get a glimpse at another culture through its language? Yeah, there is no wrong answer. If it's that you want to go live in France one day and participate in French business discussions, I have a recommendation for you, and it's probably not Sanskrit.At some point, you have to align with what people want to do and the direction they're going in with the language selection. What I like about JavaScript is, frankly, it's incredible versatility as far as problems to which it can be applied. And without it, I think you're going to struggle as you enter the space. My first language was crappy Perl—slash bash because everyone does bash when you're a systems administrator—and then it has later evolved now to crappy Python as my language of choice. But I'm not going to be able to effectively do any frontend work in Python, nor would I attempt to do so.My way of handling frontend work now is to have the good sense to pay a professional. But if you're getting started today and you're not sure what you want to do in your career, my opinion has always been that if you think you know what you want to do in your career, there's a great chance you're going to be wrong, but pursuing the thing that you think you want to do will open other opportunities and doors, and present things to you that will catch your interest in a way you might not be able to anticipate. So, especially early on in careers, I like biasing for things that give increased options, that boost my optionality as far as what I'm going to be able to do.Scott: Okay. I think that's fair. I think that no one ever got fired for picking IBM; [laugh] no one ever jeopardized their career by choosing JavaScript. I do think it's a little more nuanced, as I mentioned.Corey: It absolutely is. I am absolutely willing to have a disagreement with you on that front. I think the thing that we're aligned on is that whatever you pick, make sure it's something you're interested in. Don't do it just for—like, “Well, I'm told I can make a lot of money doing X.” That feels like it's the worst reason to do things, in isolation.Scott: That's a tough one. I used to think that, too, but I am thinking that it's important to note and recognize that it is a valid reason to get into tech, not for the passion because for no other reason that I want to make a lot of money.Corey: Absolutely. I could not agree with you more, and that is… something I've gotten wrong in the past.Scott: Yeah. And I have been a fan of saying, you know, “Be passionate and work on these things on the side,” and all that kind of stuff. But all of those things involve a lot of assumptions and a lot of privileges that, you know, people have: that you have spare time and that you have a place to work on these things. I work on stuff on the side because it feeds my spirit. If you work on woodworking, or drones, or gardening on the side, you know, not everything you work on the side has to be steeped in hustle culture and having a startup, or something that you're doing on the side.Corey: Absolutely. If you're looking at a position of wanting to get into technology because it leads to a better financial outcome for you and that is what motivates you, you're not wrong.Scott: Exactly.Corey: The idea that, “Oh, you have to love it or you'll never succeed.” I think that some of the worst advice we ever wind up giving folks early in their career—particularly young people—is, ‘follow your passion.' That can be incredibly destructive advice in some contexts, depending upon what it is you want to do and what you want your life to look like.Scott: Yeah, exactly.Corey: One of the things that I've always been appreciative of from afar with Microsoft has been there's an entire developer ecosystem, and historically, it's focused on languages I can barely understand: ASP.NET, the C# is deep in that space, F#, I think, is now a thing as well. There's an entire ecosystem around this with Visual Studio the original, not Visual Studio Code—turns out naming is one of those things that no tech companies seems to get right—but it feels almost like there's an entire ecosystem there for those of us who spent significant time—and I'm speaking for myself here, not you—in the open-source community talking about things like Perl and whatnot, I never got much exposure to stuff like that. I would also classify Enterprise Java as being in that direction as well. Is there a bifurcation there that I'm not seeing, or was I just never talking to the right people? All the above? Maybe I was just—maybe I had blinders on; didn't realize it.Scott: There was a time when the Microsoft developer ecosystem meant write things for Windows, do things on Windows, use languages that Microsoft made and created. And now, with the rise of the cloud and with the rise of Software as a Service, Microsoft is a much simpler company, which is a funny thing to say for such a complicated company. Microsoft would love to run your for loop in the cloud for money. We don't care what language you use; we want you to use the language that makes you happy. Somewhere around five to seven years ago, in the developer division, we started optimizing for developer happiness.And that's why you can write Ruby, and Perl, and Python, and C, and C++ and C# and all those different things. Even C# now, and .NET, is owned by the .NET Foundation and not by Microsoft. Microsoft, of course, is one of the primary users, but we've got a lot of—Samsung is a huge contributor, Google is a huge contributor, Amazon Web Services is a big contributor to .NET.So, Microsoft's own zealotry towards—and bias towards our own languages has, kind of, gone away because Office is on iPhone, right? Like, anywhere that you are, we'll go there. So, we're really going where the customer is rather than trying to funnel the customer into where we want them to be, which is a really an inverted way of doing things over the way it was done 20, 30 years ago. In my opinion.Corey: This gets back to the idea of the Microsoft cultural transformation. It hasn't just been an internal transform; it's been something that is involved with how it's engaging with its customers, how it's engaging with the community, how it's becoming available in different ways to different folks. It's hard to tell where a lot of these things start and where a lot of these things stop. I don't pretend to be a Microsoft “fanboy,” quote-unquote, but I believe it is impossible to look at what has happened, especially in the world of cloud, and not at the very least respect what Microsoft has been able to achieve.Scott: Well, I came here to open source stuff. I'm surely not responsible for the transformation, I'm just a cog in the machine, but I can speak for the things that I own, like .NET and Visual Studio Community, and I think one of the things that we have gotten right is we are trying to create zero-distance products. You could be using Visual Studio Code, find a bug, suggest a feature, have a conversation in public with the PMs and devs that own the thing, get an insider's build a few days later, and see that promoted to production within a week or two. There is zero distance between you the consumer and the creator of the thing.And if you wanted to even fix the bug yourself, submit a pull request, and see that go into production, you could do that as well. You know, some of our best C# compiler folks are not working for Microsoft and they are giving improvements, they are making the product better. So, zero-distance in many ways, if you look at the other products at Microsoft, like PowerToys is a great thing, which is [unintelligible 00:32:06] an incubator for Windows features. We're adding stuff to the PowerToys open-source project like launchers, and a thing called FancyZones that is a window tiling manager, you know, features that prosumers and enthusiasts always wished Windows could have, they can now participate in, thereby creating a zero-distance product in Windows itself.Corey: And I want to point out as well that you are still Microsoft. You, the collective you. I suppose you personally; that is where your email address ends. But you're still Microsoft. This is still languages, and tools, and SDKs, and frameworks used by the largest companies in the world. This zero-distance approach is being done on things that service banks, who are famously not the earliest adopters of some code that I wrote last night; it's probably fine.Scott: Do you know what my job was before I came here?Corey: Tell me.Scott: I was the chief architect at a finance company that created software for banks. I was responsible for a quarter of the retail online banking systems in North America, built on .NET and open-source software. [laugh].Corey: So, you've lived that world. You've been that customer.Scott: Trying to convince a bank that open-source was a good idea in the early 2000s was non-trivial. You know, sitting around in 2003, 2004, talking about Agile, and you know, continuous integration, and build servers, and then going and saying, “Hey, you should use the software,” trying to deal with lawyers and explain to them the difference between the MIT, Apache, and GPL licenses and what it means to their bank was definitely a challenge. And working through those issues, it has been challenging. But open-source software now pervades. Just go and look at the license.txt in the Visual Studio Program Files folder to see all of the open-source software that is consumed by Visual Studio.Corey: One last topic that I want to get to before we call it a show is that you've spent a significant portion of your career, at least recently, focusing on, more or less, where the next generation of engineers, developers, et cetera, come from. And to that end, you've also started recently with TikTok, the social media platform. Are those two things related, first off, or am I making a giant pile of unwarranted assumption?Scott: [laugh]. I think that is a fair assumption. So, what's going on is I want to make sure that as I fade away and I leave the software industry in the next, you know, N number of years, that I'm setting up as many people as possible for success. That's where my career started when I was a professor, and that's hopefully where my career will end when I am a professor again. Hopefully, my retirement gig will have me teaching at some university somewhere.And in doing that, I want to find the next million developers, right? Where are they, the next 10 million developers? They're probably not on Twitter. They might be a lot of different places: they might be on Discord, they might be on Reddit, they might be on forums that I haven't found yet. But I have found, on TikTok, a very creative and for the most part kind and inclusive community.And both myself and also recently, the Visual Studio Code team have been hanging out there, and sharing our creativity, and having really interesting conversations about how you the listener can if not be a programmer, be a person that knows better the tools that are available to you to solve problems.Corey: So, I absolutely appreciate and enjoy the direction that you're going in, but again, people invite you to things and then spring technical support questions on you. Can you explain what TikTok is? I'm still trying to wrap my head around it because I turned around and discovered I was middle-aged one day.Scott: Sure. Well, I mean, I am an old man on TikTok, to be clear. TikTok, like Twitter, revels in its constraints. If you recall, there was a big controversy when Twitter went from 140 characters to 280 because people thought it was just letting the constraint that we were so excited about—which was artificial because it was the length of a standard message service text—Corey: I'm one of those people who bitterly protested it. I was completely wrong.Scott: Right? But the idea that something is constrained, that TikTok is either 15 seconds, or less than 60, it's similar to Vine in that it is a tiny video; what can I do in one minute? Additionally, before they allowed uploading of videos, everything was constrained within the TikTok editor, so people would do amazing and intricate 30 and 40 shot transitions within a 60 second period of time. But one of the things I find most unique about TikTok is you can reply to a text comment with a video. So, I make a video—maybe I do 60 seconds on how to be a software engineer—somebody replies in text, I can then reply to that text with a video, and then a TikTok creator can do what's called a stitch and reply to my video with a video.So, I could take 15 seconds of yours, a comment that you made, and say, “Oh, this is a great comment. Here's my thoughts on that comment.” Or we could even do a duet where you record a video and then I record one, side-by-side. And we either simulate that we're actually having a conversation, or I react to your video as well. Once you start teaching TikTok about yourself by liking things, you curate a very positive place for yourself.You might get on TikTok, not logged in, and it's dancing, and you might find some inappropriate things that you don't necessarily want to see, or you're not interested in, but one of the things that I've noticed as I talk about my home network and coding is people will say, “Oh, I finally found adjective TikTok; I finally found coding TikTok I finally found IT TikTok. Oh, I'm going to comment on your post because I want to stay on networking TikTok.” And then your feed isn't just a feed of the people that you follow, but it's a feed of all the things that TikTok thinks you're excited about. So, I am on this wonderful TikTok of linguistics and languages, and I'm learning about cultures, and I'm on indigenous TikTok, and I'm on networking TikTok. And the mix of creativity and the constraint of just 60 seconds has been, really, a joy. And I've only been there for about a month and I've blessed to have 80,000 people hanging out with me there.Corey: It sounds like you're quite the fan of the platform, which alone in isolation, is enough to get me to look at it in more depth.Scott: I am a fan of creativity. I would also say though, it's very addictive once you find your people. I've had to put screen time limits on my own phone to keep me from burning time there.Corey: That is all of tempting, provocative, and disturbing. I—Scott: You should hang out with me on YouTube, then. I just got my 100,000 YouTube Silver Play Button in the mail. That's where I spend my time doing my long-form. I just did, actually, 17 minutes on WSL and how to use Linux. That might be a good starter for you.Corey: It very well might. So, if people want to learn more about what you're up to, and how you think about the wide variety of things you're interested in, where can they find you?Scott: They should start at my last name dot com: Hanselman.com. They used to be able to Google for Scott, and I was in an epic battle with Scott brand toilet paper tissue, and then they trademarked the name Scott and now I'm somewhere in the distant second or third page. It was a tragedy. But as an early comer—Corey: Oh, my condolences.Scott: Yeah, oh my God. As an early comer to the internet, it was me and Scott Fly Rods on the first page, for many, many years. And then—Corey: If it helps, you and Scott Fly Rods are both on page two.Scott: Oh. Well, the tyranny of the Scott toilet paper conspiracy against me has been problematic.Corey: Exactly.Scott: [laugh].Corey: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. I really do appreciate it.Scott: It's my pleasure.Corey: Scott Hanselman, partner program manager at Microsoft and so much more. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn. 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 crappy comment that starts with a comment that gatekeeps a programming language so we know to ignore it.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.

The online buying experience is always evolving, so it’s table stakes for companies to be on their toes and ready to adjust when the market tells them to. Especially when the company we are chatting about today was founded in 1948! But being prepared to adjust and actually making it happen are two different things. At DICK’S Sporting Goods, its customers, who are referred to as “athletes” are truly running the show, and Scott Casciato, who serves as the VP of Omni Channel Fulfillment & Athlete Service at DICK'S, is the man who takes their needs and delivers a seamless experience to them via DICK’S ecommerce platform and throughout their 700 retail locations. And with their ecommerce sales increasing by 100% in 2020, Scott and his team have had to rethink many things like: how to scale up operations during peak seasons, why testing every iteration on the website is key, how to perfect the buy online pick up in-store experience, and determine how to take their athlete's feedback and transform it into a funnel for change. This episode brought back a lot of nostalgia for me, thinking about the days of wandering the aisles of Dick’s in my high school days looking for a new lacrosse stick or soccer shoes. So it was fun to hear about how much has changed, and  what investments the company has been making lately in creating the best customer experience possible for its athletes. Also, tune in to the end to hear Scott discuss the importance of great vendor relationships, how to future proof logistics, and the new in-store experiences that Dick’s is betting big on. Enjoy! Main Takeaways:The House Don’t Fall When the Bones are Good: Having a strong foundation is the most impactful thing a company can do to prepare for surges in traffic that might come during peak seasons or after highly-successful campaigns. You have to do the work, go through the load tests and constantly be improving the technology stack because there are no shortcuts when you are creating a scalable platform that can withstand anything you throw at it. With last year being a perfect case study to reflect on, dive into the data and pivot if needed so you’re ready for the surge!Bet On It … Then Test It: Building out an online experience that works requires constant testing. You can plan for outcomes and bet on how you think people will react, but until you test it, you can’t ever be certain. As Scott mentioned, following the path the data reveals can be surprising and sometimes opposite of what your intuition is telling you.Experiences For The Future: The shopping experience is going to continue to change, and the strongest companies are planning for the future by paying attention to trends and then creating experiences — both in-person and online — that will drive engagement with consumers and build trust and confidence in the company’s authority in the space. By investing early into an experience or a specific market, you set yourself up as the expert in that specialized vertical and become the retailer of choice for consumers.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Hey everyone and welcome back to Up Next in Commerce, this is your host, Stephanie Postles, ceo@mission.org. Today on the show we have Scott Casciato, vice president of Omni Channel Fulfillment & Athlete Service at DICK'S Sporting Goods. Scott, welcome.Scott:Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.Stephanie:I'm really excited to have you. So I have this deep love of DICK'S Sporting Goods because there was a location in my hometown, eastern shore of Maryland, which I feel no one even knows where that is on a map. But back in high school, I would go almost every week and just kind of peruse through the aisles and look for new lacrosse sticks and shoes. And I didn't really have much money, but I remember just loving the experience and being there probably for three hours with friends, just kind of hanging out. So I was so excited when I saw you guys on the lineup where I was, "Yes, something I know well."Scott:Was that your sport growing up, lacrosse?Stephanie:Lacrosse and soccer.Scott:Nice, nice. That's great.Stephanie:Deep love there. So I'd love to hear a bit about how you got into this industry, because you had a funny quote where you said, "I don't know how I really ended up here," and I'd love to start there, how did you become the vice-president of Omni Channel Fulfillment & Athlete Service at DICK'S Sporting Goods?Scott:It goes back... I spent the early part of my career in software, supply chain software, and kind of even on the sales side, then moved into the operational side and then got into management consulting and did a tour duty in the management consulting ranks. And I got introduced to the founder and co-founder of a company called ModCloth that I was with previously. And they were looking for somebody to run fulfillment and customer service. And I just said, I don't know anything about, I mean, I know supply chain, but I don't really know anything about direct consumer fulfillment at the time. And the founder of that business was, "Yeah, I know, but you're smart enough to figure it out." Right?Scott:So and I have a bent for really high growth, high speed businesses, and it just kind of the way I grew up in my career and that was a really great opportunity. So I did that and I spent five years there scaling that business really significantly, hyper growth phase and it was awesome. I learned a ton about fulfillment and service. And then about five years in, I had this great opportunity to come to DICK'S. And the thing that was really interesting to me is, the question was how can we build a great service organization for DICK'S Sporting Goods? I'm like, "Wow, if I could do it at a much smaller company, what would it be like to come to such a great brand and try to do it here?" And and we did, right?Scott:And so we spent a lot of time building that for the first four years of my time at DICK'S and then had an opportunity to take fulfillment on. So it's interesting that I have some of the aspects of that, that previous role that I had only, a scale that is much larger and just been very, very fortunate to be with such a great business. And it's been awesome to work with the team at DICK'S.Stephanie:Okay. So you are leaving ModCloth, I mean, that's like strictly ecommerce and then you're coming to this, I would say very omni-channel company. I mean, you have over 700 locations across the US, quickly moving to digital, at least over the past couple of years. Tell me a bit about what that transition was like?Scott:I mean, and at the same time we were really building... We were just starting our transformation to building our own technology. So it was a massive... It was basically rebuilding what we had already had from an ecommerce business perspective. And I think fundamentally a lot of the things that I came in and the tools that I had were relevant, right? How you scale a business. I mean, that stuff is somewhat the same. I think one of the biggest changes was or a few of them were one, just having more teammates that knew a lot of stuff that could really help and drive the initiatives and the progress forward, whereas in a much smaller company, right? It's you're wearing so many different hats and you're doing so many different things here.Scott:It was a shock to me to say, oh, there's somebody that can help with reporting or data analytics and help us with these answers. So that was awesome. And then I just think we were all learning, right? So we were learning what we needed. We were learning what we wanted to be in customer service, we were learning what we wanted to have in terms of digital capabilities. We were learning how to run that business as we were deploying new technology, right? So how do you do pricing online appropriately? I remember a lot of conversation. How do you display things? What's the right... How do you check? What's the right checkout flow? And then we had, as all businesses do, you have to make a lot of trade-offs because it may not be the most elegant thing right at the beginning, but we just got to get it up and running, right?Scott:And so having those conversations can be tough, right? Everybody, and especially our business, we just have this DNA where we just relentlessly improve, right? And so it's tough to launch something and know that it's not the perfect solution, right, and then making sure that you go back and you iterate and you keep going, right? We just did that for a long time. But it was a lot of fun and it's really tiring, but it was a lot of fun.Stephanie:So that's amazing. What was one of the maybe projects or things that you felt most strongly about that you got maybe the most pushback on that people are like, nope, that's not a good idea?Scott:I would say, well, we had a lot of conversation about how we were going to set up, for example, in my world, we were going to set up customer service. And we continue to evolve that. I think it wasn't that people were saying it's not how we want to do it, I think it was really more what I was saying about, we want to own more of that customer service experience, right? So we had always been outsourced. And as we moved, as we did the transition, and our previous outsourcer did a great job. And as we move to the next wave of that evolution, we decided we really need to keep an outsourced view in some form or fashion of customer service, but we really wanted to try to start to build our own, right, because we were, "Wonder what we could do on our own?"Scott:So this conversation about, [inaudible] how do you scale for the hockey stick effect that we have at holiday, right, while maintaining the great experience that we have? And we want to in source, but then we want to scale a holiday. We just had a lot of spirited debate about that. So that was part of that conversation.Stephanie:Very cool. And so are you guys kind of now balanced approach when it comes to customer service, depending on what's incoming and how to route it?Scott:Exactly. Right. So we have a team of internal service people that take various types of contacts, and then we have a few outsourced partners that we work extremely closely with. And we balanced the volume across there. And then at holiday time, we scale up across all. And so it's turned out to be... And we're measuring that experience relentlessly. So it's been a great symbiotic relationship, I think, across all three of those.Stephanie:Well, now that you've touched on holiday, I do kind of want to go into peak season and maybe talking about, I mean, you mentioned that you went through this big technology evolution and implementing new things to try and get to where you are now, what did that look like, especially when it comes to preparing for big surges? I mean, I saw your ecommerce I think went up 100% in 2020 or something, so you guys have had massive growth. What did it look like behind the scenes to prepare for that plus peak demand?Scott:I think it's been this... We're very happy that we started when we did, right? when you think about what happened over the past 12 months and what has happened in the ecommerce world and the growth that everybody has seen, we're fortunate that we started four years ago down this path. Because the foundation that we built really allowed us to scale this year really quickly. We've been through all the load tests dynamics that you go through at holiday, we've built the technology stack that can support the traffic that we knew that we were going to get. We've been through the trials and tribulations of how to test, what to test, where to find the failure modes, and we've got really talented people that work on that stuff every day. We've built controls internally to manage where things might not be working appropriately and to be able to balance that.Scott:And as you think about what happened last year, specifically with curbside, it is the example of, it took us four years to become an overnight success type of situation where [inaudible].Stephanie:[inaudible].Scott:Right.Stephanie:[inaudible]. Who knew?Scott:Totally. So I think it was scaling for holiday. We scale every year for holiday. I think last year was one that we didn't quite know, nobody knew what was really going to happen. But I think we over-prepared, and we executed an extremely successful holiday because we just had every... It was so great to see everybody so engaged in solving that challenge and really thinking through every aspect of what might happen in holiday from fulfillment through the web traffic through customer service. And we really came together as a team and figured out all the ways that things could go right and wrong and covered it all. And we had a great holiday season because of it.Stephanie:That's great. So what areas do you think businesses are maybe under-prepared? Is it in the fulfillment piece? Is it in customer service? What are some of the top pillars that you guys covered down on that maybe some people might not be fully prepared for?Scott:I think that we do a great job in measuring and really paying attention to the athlete experience across all measures, right? I think we've pivoted from, I think historically in most businesses have been in a place where you manage internally, right? You're managing things like conversion or traffic or speed to athlete and things like that, and to be the customer, traditional service levels and customer service. I think those are all important, but I think if you take the outside in view, right, and you're looking at things like how are we measuring the experience, what's happening to that customer when they're out there and they're buying from us? But are they buying from us again, right, as an articulation of their commitment to the brand?Scott:And then how do we influence that purchase behavior? And how do you think expansively about that in terms of not only the shopping experience online that they have, but the post-purchase, the delivery experience, the customer service experience, how are you really measuring that data and getting good information and causal information to figure out how you can drive really great lifetime value? And I think we do that and we're really starting to do that really well across our business. And we've gotten so much support for that outside in view, across our leadership team as well that it's become a real engine of thinking across our teams.Stephanie:I mean, it seems like that holistic view is really hard for a lot of companies to get to though. I mean, I hear about a lot of companies trying to consolidate their tech stack, marketing stack, put it all in one area that things actually are connected and you can have attribution and you can see the LTV. How do you guys think about having that view that allows you to make decisions?Scott:I mean, I think that it's philosophical at some level and don't get me wrong, it's hard because I think when you look at the business on a day-to-day basis, all retailers, right, especially those that are public are driving towards hard goals. We take a much longer term view of things generally across the business, which is really refreshing and great. And so it allows us to really make good decisions. When you think about what we're measuring, how we're investing, we're not investing, I mean, obviously we care about the quarter and we care about the year, right? Don't get me wrong, but I think we're making investments that are in the long-term interest of this brand and our customers. I think, we're a really large small business in that regard. And I think we've been able to energize our teammates to deliver that experience on the front line, but also make the investments on the back end of the house that allow us to do that.Stephanie:And I see you guys have been making some big tech investments. I saw, I think Commerce Hub, you did a multi-year deal with them. And I saw something about the vendor partner program that you have. We can kind of plug and play into a bunch of vendors and have an endless aisle. And I was, wow, that could be game changing to be able to pivot quickly and offer, get to the consumer, right, wherever they are, whatever they need, especially in times right now where it's very uncertain. So it seems tech is a big piece of that, towards that investment philosophy right now.Scott:It is.Stephanie:How are you figuring out what you need and how to put the proper pieces in place?Scott:I think we have over 500 vendors in our drop-ship program. And connecting to it has them, and understanding what the inventory is, and getting them to send us the right inventory, and then order information back and forth in real time is incredibly important, which is why we made the investment in Commerce Hub, it has been a great partner for us for a few years now. And it's easy to use. So I think that's that was great for that aspect of our business. I think our vendor relationships are super strong and we're fortunate that we have them because it allows us to be really creative in the way that we go to market. Scott:And I think we're also continuing to build great brands internally, right? And so if you think about, we just recently launched our first brand and it's been a great success so far. It's great stuff. We had got our [inaudible], if you haven't tried it, you should.Stephanie:I haven't. [inaudible].Scott:That's awesome. It's a partnership that we did with Carrie Underwood about six years ago, and it's quickly become our number two selling women's line.Stephanie:Wow. That's awesome.Scott:And then we launched our DSG brand a few years ago, or a year and a half ago, which is really a value-driven brand and with very high quality, right? So when you think about the continuum of our brands, we have very specific and different strategies and they're complex depending on what we're trying to achieve within a given brand or category within that brand. But I think we're fortunate that we've built such great lasting relationships, because again, I think it gets back to, we take a longer term view of things and we really, I think we treat our vendors as partners.Stephanie:Yep. So key, especially in this industry where so much is happening, so much is changing quick and people can get burned really quickly too.Scott:Right, right, right.Stephanie:It also seems being able to plug into a vendor system like that is important, especially around... It seems a lot of companies are doing private label type of things and launching their own brands. I mean, it's not fully reliant now on the big brands and being able to have that flexibility to pull people into your ecosystem that maybe could have never sold at a DICK'S Sporting Goods before, that seems amazing and really allows access in a way that wasn't here maybe five years ago.Scott:It really does. We're always looking for those bets to make with new and upcoming brands. And our vendor director job channel is a great way to sort of test some of these things. So that's definitely, you hit the nail on the head for us. It's a strategy that we actively have and it's nice because my team who manages that part of our business we'll work with our merchants to say, "What could our strategy be with the supplier or partner X?" Right? Some of these folks are small businesses that can't handle our volumes. So if we buy a little bit more, we can test some of them or we can test it in the vendor direct channel. So it's been a real tool for us.Stephanie:Testing's interesting too. I could see kind of doing AB test quickly and see if people like this product and if they like this one more, okay, here's what we're going to go. Maybe we'll circle back with you next year in a much less risky way to bring people in.Scott:We've gotten really good at testing and specifically on the site with how we're thinking about the experience online. And we test almost everything these days, right? I mean, there's some stuff that I think is just go do things, some go do things that we do. But I think generally speaking, we've really developed a muscle around building an experience and testing it and iterating on it to figure out what's really resonating with the athlete most. So everything from shopping experiences on our site all the way down through the conversion funnel to fulfillment, right? And speed and how we're communicating with our athletes.Scott:So I think we've learned so much, and I'm like constantly reminded when we get these, we all kind of make bets, right, when we launched these tests like what do think's going to happen? And I think I'm wrong so often, it's so important to test.Stephanie:Yep.Scott:Good. Because what you think the consumer is going to do they just don't. And even when you think about surveys, I think there's this everybody lies concept, right? And it's true...Stephanie:And depends on what state they're in or where they're at in the day.Scott:Right, right. So I think it's just so invaluable to us.Stephanie:And we do surveys on the show sometimes just to see who do you want on, and how am I doing? And it's, well, it's depends on probably where that person is, if they're happy, if they're sad, it could be different depending on the place that they're in.Scott:For sure.Stephanie:So what's an example of a test that you ran where you were so sure, you're like this one's going to win, everyone was kind of on board with one scenario winning and then the results come back and everyone's wrong?Scott:That's a good question. We just ran one recently that I did win on, which is the one that was top of mind for me coming into this. Let me talk about that one for a second. So the one we launched on same-day, we're trying to figure out what are our athletes appetite is for same-day services. And we did definitely get a lot of engagement on the test. I kind of thought it was going to be more than it was, but it was still interesting, right? So I think that's something that we're going to continue to have conversation on.Stephanie:They wanted it, the majority of the [inaudible]?Scott:I think they did. It wasn't as much as I would've thought, really.Stephanie:Because that's an interesting one that some people on the show said, people just want to know when it's getting there, they're okay if it's not same day, versus if it's more of a commodity product, you better get it to them the same day. And to kind of seems it depends what it is and how much delayed gratification someone can have on it, it depends, it seems.Scott:Yeah. Some of the tests that I think that we've run that have been less intuitive, I just think how products are set up on the site and how people search, right, and find products like you would think that sometimes when you put the best or most visible sort of notable product of the top search results, that's going to create a better conversion and sometimes it just doesn't, right? So it's really people come in I think with a lot of intent around how they're shopping and sometimes what you think is going to happen just doesn't because I think there's so many different ways that people shop.Stephanie:Yep. How do you think about shifting the website either, from what you learned from last year or when you're approaching peak season, are there certain key elements that you adjust knowing that maybe the consumer's are in a very different mindset than they were at any other time in history probably?Scott:Yeah. I think I can speak more to the way that we think about fulfillment in this regard. I always, I historically had thought, that's another example of what I thought was going to happen. I historically thought that during, for example, Black Friday weekend speed was really important, right? I need it, I want to get it fast. And it turns out that weekend in particular speed is not the most important, getting what you want is the most important, right? So getting the deal is the most important. I think it makes sense because most people are thinking, I've got three or four weeks that this thing can get to me. I'm not super concerned to get it next week, just to make sure that I get it, right?Scott:So that's one that we adjust in terms of making sure that we're really being honest with how we're going to fulfill. Thankfully we've got an extraordinarily resilient fulfillment network and we do really well in speed and but historically had been surprised as we've really measured that one over Black Friday weekend. It's really about getting the deal, not the speed.Stephanie:Versus Christmas when everyone's probably last minute shopping, it's probably opposite.Scott:Very different.Stephanie:Okay.Scott:Very different. And as you get into December and you get through towards the ground cutoffs and you get, depending on what's happening, the speed becomes a real issue. Last year was was nuts. I mean, FedEx was running commercials, right? They talked about the speed or buy early. And we definitely saw a little bit of a shift in terms of how people were thinking about buying.Stephanie:So how are you building up that resilience fulfillment network that you mentioned to be able to basically say I can offer anyone the endless aisle, we have unlimited of these, in one moment and then be, okay, now next month got to go, got to be there in three days or less type of scenario?Scott:I think you mentioned it when we kicked off the show, it was we've got over 700 fulfillment locations when you think about our store network, which is a blessing for us because it allows us to really, not only be closer to our athlete and get things there faster, but also allows for a lot of flexibility when... It's just load balancing, right? When you think about a business that has a couple of three, in my past one fulfillment center, when that thing gets backed up, or you have a labor problem or you have whatever the case, would be trucks that don't show up on the receiving dock or the outgoing dock, you're kind of backed up, right?.Scott:And so while that definitely happens across everybody's network, including ours, having all of these different nodes that are moving product out each and every really helps mitigate the risk. And so it also helps us, at peak time, it helps us staff up and get stuff out. And we have we've built a really sophisticated way to manage the way that orders are routing. So we're able to identify where we might have congestion points, for example, and try to proactively avoid those as we see those things happening, right? So we can move orders to one node or another, or block a node if we've got a weather issue or something, or we've got, in the fall when you have hurricanes in Florida, right, or in the Southeast, we're able to really change the way that our orders route to get product out of different places that aren't having those issues.Stephanie:And is that kind of done in the background where it's looking at all these different inputs and then kind of making decisions that you can come in and adjust if you need to, but it's already routing it for you in the background?Scott:Yeah. So part of it's automated part of it's people, right? And it's still a lot of people, right, washing the switches each day. But we've got a great team of people that are communicating, we're communicating out of our stores to my team and fulfillment. We're communicating from my team into stores and we're using the technology that we've built to really manage the capacity and the inventory across the entire network.Stephanie:It seems that is so important too you when you essentially have two business units when it comes to fulfillment, you've got your store locations with one set of data, inventory is probably very hard to track because it's always getting grabbed, it's always getting shipped out, and then you have just maybe a fulfilment center that's a whole different beast probably. How do you get to that consolidate view? Is that part of the backend tech that's kind of looking at it at a higher level, treating it all as one?Scott:It is and it's definitely complex for the reasons that you noted. And it creates, sometimes it can compromise how close we can get to the athlete if we think we've got a unit in Austin, Texas and we actually don't. The fortunate part is instead of canceling that order on you or that unit on you, it's going to go to maybe it'll go to a Dallas store, right? And we can still stay pretty close to you and get it to you. And we're also trying to look at things like, how do we keep packages together? Of course, anybody that's listening to this that manages freight will say, yep, really important from a cost perspective. And frankly, even from, as I mentioned earlier, that athlete experience, people want to get one box, right? I don't want to order three or four different things and get three or four different boxes. And sometimes that's unavoidable, but we're trying everything we can to not let that happen.Stephanie:Oh, blessing.Scott:Totally, right?Stephanie:I get, one company I'm not going to mention their name, they will send a can of soup, anything a bone broth. I mean, it's in these little bags and they just come one at a time. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I just would have rather just gone to the store and picked it up myself than getting random of one item at a time."Scott:It's so wonderful when the customer experience need and the business need align, right? So when you think about, nobody wants to ship more packages to you, right? We want to get it to you, we want to get to you fast and we want to get it to you in one package. And that's also a great experience for you. It's the same thing we talk about with customer service, which is a traditional metric that people manage as average handle time, right? How long are [inaudible]? And I'm so careful, we collectively are so careful with this metric because it can be so disastrous to the teammate that's on the other end of the phone if they think they're being managed to a handle time, right? I don't want to just get you off the phone, however, and you need to use it for all kinds of different scheduling and making sure you have enough people on the team.Scott:But what's really aligned is generally people want to get to an answer pretty quickly also, right? I want to have an efficient, valuable use of my time. I want to get to an answer and then I want to move on with my day. So that's another example of where if we can do it right and align those desires, we're going to create an awesome experience.Stephanie:The unintended consequences, pizzas is such a tricky thing with thinking about designing roles and KPIs. I mean, I'm doing it right now. I'm thinking about sales and building a sales team and being like, oh wait, this might incentivize bad behavior.Scott:You got to really think about it, right?Stephanie:You just think really strategically about it.Scott:The outcome or the impact is very different than the intent in some cases.Stephanie:Yep. Are there any external inputs right now that you think companies aren't preparing for? I'm thinking about the algorithms that are kind of running everything behind the scenes when it comes to your fulfillment and things like that. Is there anything that you guys are watching now that maybe you weren't watching a couple of years ago and letting it help influence how things are routed or how things are kind of being redirected, anything like that?Scott:I mean, I think we're constantly trying to get to be more precise, and we're very fortunate that if everything goes right, we can get you an order really, really quickly. So we're really trying to pay attention to, where are things not going perfectly and we've called this thing the perfect order, what's our perfect order, right? And how do we get more of those? So we're spending a lot of time thinking about how we can perfect our fulfillment network. And I mean, it is, as you can imagine, just an infinite number of variables that dictate how this thing goes. But we're working a lot on that. I do not think that...Stephanie:[inaudible] like local stuff, because that's something that kind of came to mind. You're paying attention to weather and higher level things are you down in the weeds of, okay, well there's a festival this week here so that means... Is it that [inaudible].Scott:It can be. I mean, for example, when we're doing a hot market event, so Super Bowl, NCAA Tournament, they're national events, but their inventories largely local, right? So we're really paying attention to what the traffic is doing and the inventory is doing it at those local levels for sure.Stephanie:I'd love to talk about events a bit because I know that's a focus is the athlete experience online and in person as well. And I saw that you guys are opening more retail locations. You're opening, I think I saw a golf center, I soccer center, I mean, these full on experiences. And I'd love to hear how you guys are thinking about that.Scott:I'm glad you mentioned that we're really proud. We just opened recently the House of Sport up in Victor, New York, which is an expression of what we think the future can be for DICK'S Sporting Goods. And it's really an experiential retail location. So you can go in there, obviously we've got golf simulators and we've got fitting in there. We've got rock walls to climb. We've got an outdoor fitness field where we're doing things and we're engaging the community in different ways. So we're running clinics and figuring out how we can get local teams into their... Engaging in the community in this way has been a part of our brand since 1948, right? So I think, if you read the story of DICK'S and how we were involved in the Binghamton New York community, when the business was founded, it'll give you a sense for why this is important to us.Scott:And we just believe that, we say it all the time, we believe that sports makes people better. So how do we think about engaging in the community where we're at? We've done this forever in community marketing, and you see how we donate equipment to local teams and so forth. This is kind of another evolution of that, where we think we can make a big impact, we can change the way that people think about retail. And I think it'll quickly get to how do we merge the online and the brick and mortar or traditional retail experience? So I think that's a place that is really exciting to us right now.Stephanie:I was just thinking about, how do you create, you have a view where you know this person came in to this event and they were using the golf simulator, and they really liked this club. And then they either bought in store or maybe four weeks later they ended up online and bought the one that they were using? Do you feel you're moving in a direction where you're going to have that viewpoint? And it's not a hard time to get there.Scott:Yeah, I think we're getting there. I think we're really focused on data and analytics, right? And so I think our ability to stitch together these experiences, we're building that muscle. I don't think that we're totally there yet, but we've got really smart people that are thinking about this. And I think we're moving in that direction because that's the key. We're not really worried about what channel you buy in, right? I think it's more about, are we the retailer of choice for you, right? And however that experience, the experience that we can build for that, it's important to measure it because then I think it unlocks the investment in the targeted areas that are going to drive more of that for our athletes. So I think that's where we're really focused.Stephanie:Have you thought about creating essentially kind of a guide shop, but you have the soccer experience or something, and then just a small shop where maybe you can look at a few other things, but then essentially you're going back online to order whatever you played with and got to experiment with, or are you doing full on retail location as always, and then often this area we're doing our experience center?Scott:We haven't done really pop up experiences, guide shop experiences like that. We're moving more towards, how do we create a more scaled experiential experience in store and then how do we measure that in terms of who might go online to buy.Stephanie:Mm-hmm (affirmative). I love that. I'm excited to see... I need to visit one of those stores, especially the soccer one. I mean, I don't know what it's going to be happening there, but I want to be there.Stephanie:I want to hear, which I feel you'll have a great answer for is what are you all most excited about right now over the next one to two years? What are you most passionate about?Scott:We're excited about a lot of things. And as usual, we have a very full plate. So I think things that we've already deployed that we'll continue to refine, things like our curbside program or a buy and pickup in store program for online, we're really excited about that. That's got a long runway of improvement, enhancement, and creativity that's going to be placed into that program. We are really excited about this merger of... I'm really excited about the merger of stores and online specifically around becoming a trusted advisor to our athletes. So if you think about the breadth of the teammates that we have, and when you walk into our stores or you talk to our people online, everybody's got a passion, right? Your passion is lacrosse and soccer.Stephanie:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Scott:How do we think about unlocking that potential, right, in terms of then being able to help our customer, whether that customer is buying first player pair of soccer cleats for their son, to getting ready to play club soccer, to getting ready to go off and play soccer at a D1 level or beyond, right? So how do we look at that continuum of expertise and really become that trusted advisor, both online and in our stores? And I think that is incredibly exciting venture. And we do it well today. I think there's an opportunity to do it even better. So we're really excited about that. We're really excited about the assortment, right, that we're going to continue to launch online. I think it's going to be differentiated. I think it's going to keep our position in the market really strong.Scott:So I think the product that we put in there, the expertise that we put in there is going to be differentiated in the market, right? And that I think is probably more incremental and more incremental expression to the core business. And then we're going to continue to press. Game Changer has been a great business for us for years. And that team is great. And they continue to build a technology that service the baseball market. But we're always looking for different ways that we can expand or innovate across the industry.Stephanie:I love that, you know what? We need like, what do you do after college? I always think about that and I'm like, I loved playing sports. But then you start working, and then you have kids, and then you're, I still want to play, but how do I get back into it? And something is missing there, Scott. [inaudible].Scott:No, but I love... So that's who we want. That's another sort of persona that we really want to love to serve in our stores. Because I'm one of them.Stephanie:I'm your person.Scott:Right.Stephanie:We're the people.Scott:We're the people. And I think what we want to be able to do, I love talking about this. I think in our stores and online, our ability to listen and inspire, right, how do we help you meet that goal, right? "Hey, I'm doing a couch to 5k first time. I'm starting to get active." Or, for me, the 5'8 guy that always had a dream of the NBA that never came to fruition because my vertical is about that high. I still play. I want to make sure that I can get all the gear that I need to be competitive, right, or to achieve my personal best.Scott:So I love the fact that we can really positively impact people's lives in that way. And I think we want to make... I would love to make sure personally that anybody that walks into our store and knows that we're not just a sporting goods retailer, right? I think we want to make sure that we're helping, we want to facilitate you achieving your dreams. And then we talk a lot about that internally. So if we can translate or transmit that feeling to our athletes, I think that's really powerful.Stephanie:And also makes me think about creating custom leagues too, where it's, this is a different kind of league. It's not the traditional school. It's not even people creating their own volleyball leagues. It's we are a part of this. We're making sure that this can happen for people who struggle to even find those networks. I mean, I know back when I was in DC, I looked for where's some other women who play lacrosse? I don't really want to play with guys who are going to be checking me and I count find it, super hard to find. I mean, it's easy to find some sports in a community setting, but it's very hard to find people in certain other sports settings.Scott:You're right. There's a social, I don't want to, careful to say social network, but there is this idea of how do I plug into people that are me within a certain geographical area, right? That would be interesting. That's really interesting. Thanks for that one. Let me...Stephanie:Take it back to leadership. We just need a parenting kit. It's, here's everything you need so that we can go play our sports and then your kids are entertained. They get many lacrosse sticks. You go there and then I'll go off on my own so I can actually play, give me the kid.Scott:I love that idea.Stephanie:I want to think like such parents. Anyone who's not a parent is probably, "What are y'all talking about right now?"Scott:What are you talking about? Yep.Stephanie:Yep. All right. So let's shift over to the lightning round. Lightning round is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I ask a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready?Scott:I think so.Stephanie:Okay. So I'm sad, I haven't asked this yet and don't know this, but what is your favorite sport?Scott:Basketball.Stephanie:Oh, nice.Stephanie:And who's your favorite sports team?Scott:It's always been the Chicago Bulls since back in the day, which is probably blasted me because I live in Pittsburgh. So to not say football and the Pittsburgh Steelers is a problem.Stephanie:You'd probably get egged.Scott:Probably. But they're close second.Stephanie:That's good. What is the nicest thing anyone's done for you?Scott:Oh, wow. I'm going to struggle. I'm going to go to my kids. I think my kids being, this is going to sound so cheesy, but it's so serious. The way that my kids treat other people with respect and kindness, I think is the thing that comes to mind for me first. And I know that's probably not the answer that you would normally get.Stephanie:Nope, I like it.Scott:To me that's pretty important. So I'm really proud of them. And I think that's probably the best thing that somebody could do for me.Stephanie:I love that. There's so much you can learn from kids. I think about that all the time. So I'm the person who is here for those cheesy kind of kid answers. You're in the right space. What's one thing you don't know that you wish you understood better?Scott:American history comes to mind?Stephanie:That's a good one.Scott:I don't think that's on topic, but that's the first one that comes to mind.Stephanie:When you want to feel more joy, what do you do?Scott:It's going to sound crazy. I tell people, thank you.Stephanie:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Scott:Right. So I just believe that there's a lot... I get a lot of energy from being grateful, right? And so that's what I do. If I'm really feeling a little down or if I'm really stressed or some of the times the way that I work out and I get the endorphins mode going, that's one way to do it, and the other way is to be grateful for things. So I feel that's the way I get a lot of energy.Stephanie:I love that. All right. And then the last one, I mean, it seems you guys are very much ahead on a lot of things within the ecosystem. What do you do to stay on top of the trends? Are you watching other companies? Are you reading things, what are you doing to stay on top?Scott:I think it's a combination of experiencing and reading. I don't read nearly enough, it's hard, right? There's so much the content that comes out and not enough time. So I'm trying to just experience things out in the wild right? I'm talking to a lot of people, whether it's parents at a game or if it's just my own experiences online, and I'm trying to translate that to what's happening and why companies would do things a certain way. And then my team is doing the same thing. So I think we're trying to stay close. We're trying to stay close that way and certainly reading and engaging in conversations like this also kind of help.Stephanie:Good. That's awesome. Well, cool. Well, Scott, thank you so much for joining us. It was really fun to hear all about what you guys are up to. Where can people find more about DICK'S Sporting Goods and find you?Scott:I think www.dickssportinggoods.com. For the story of Public Lands and Golf Galaxy, and you can find me at LinkedIn, on LinkedIn.Stephanie:Amazing. Thank you so much.Scott:Thank you so much for having me. It's been a great time.

Scott Berkun Scott Berkun can help you understand design. His new book, How Design Makes the World, helps both practitioners of the discipline and consumers of the products that they create understand how design shapes our world. We talked about: his journey from computer programming to UX design his early switch at Microsoft from UX research to project management the distinction between building things and designing things the hazards of building things that don't solve a problem his take on the concept of "design maturity" how the rise of the consumer web and then the rise of mobile apps accelerated the growth of UX practice the lag in the adoption of UX practice in enterprise products how being right and having a good idea is not sufficient to actually change organizational decision-making the importance of being able to persuade others of the relevance and desirability of your design ideas his intent to give designers tools to democratize the design profession how truly hearing and empathizing with key stakeholders works better than evangelism to get them to appreciate your work the "aha!" moment when he discovered systems theory and thinking how allegiances to UX practice specializations can impede the progress of good design the superiority of non-binary thinking Scott's bio Scott Berkun is a bestselling author and popular speaker on creativity, leading projects, culture, business and many other subjects. He's a former interaction designer and project manager who worked for many years at Microsoft and WordPress.com. He's the author of eight books, including The Myths of Innovation, Confessions of a Public Speaker, and The Year Without Pants. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Guardian, Wired magazine, USA Today, Fast Company, National Public Radio, CNN, NPR, MSNBC and other media. His popular blog is at scottberkun.com and he tweets at @berkun. Video Here's the video version of our conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgy1KyEWzfU Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 91. Scott Berkun is a prolific author. He's written books on project management, public speaking, creativity, innovation, and remote work. His latest project is How Design Makes The World, a really accessible book that can help anyone better understand and appreciate design. If you're a professional, it can help you explain your work to friends and colleagues. If you're just curious about the field, it can help you understand how the things around you came to be. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode 91 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I'm really happy today to have with us, Scott Berkun. Scott is a well known author, he's author of eight books now and the reason I asked him on the show is his eighth book, his latest book, How Design Makes the World really caught my eye. It's kind of a companion now for me right alongside Don Norman's books and then my other design shelf as sort of a really accessible book about how to explain design and how it shapes the world. Welcome, Scott. I'm curious about, I think a lot of people know you as a product guy and an old school Microsoft PM sort of person, but you have over the years, you left Microsoft, became a book author and now you're writing this brilliant book about design. Tell me how that came to be. Scott: Sure. Thanks for coming on the show to begin with. Wanted to be on the show for a while and I couldn't make it happen. I'm excited that I'm finally here. Yay! Go us. Larry: Likewise. Scott: Yeah, the story is a circle. I was in college. I studied computer science. I learned, I discovered I was not a very good programmer. I was a mediocre programmer. I was good at the first part. I was good to figuring out what the problem was.

Scott Berkun Scott Berkun can help you understand design. His new book, How Design Makes the World, helps both practitioners of the discipline and consumers of the products that they create understand how design shapes our world. We talked about: his journey from computer programming to UX design his early switch at Microsoft from UX research to project management the distinction between building things and designing things the hazards of building things that don't solve a problem his take on the concept of "design maturity" how the rise of the consumer web and then the rise of mobile apps accelerated the growth of UX practice the lag in the adoption of UX practice in enterprise products how being right and having a good idea is not sufficient to actually change organizational decision-making the importance of being able to persuade others of the relevance and desirability of your design ideas his intent to give designers tools to democratize the design profession how truly hearing and empathizing with key stakeholders works better than evangelism to get them to appreciate your work the "aha!" moment when he discovered systems theory and thinking how allegiances to UX practice specializations can impede the progress of good design the superiority of non-binary thinking Scott's bio Scott Berkun is a bestselling author and popular speaker on creativity, leading projects, culture, business and many other subjects. He’s a former interaction designer and project manager who worked for many years at Microsoft and WordPress.com. He’s the author of eight books, including The Myths of Innovation, Confessions of a Public Speaker, and The Year Without Pants. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Guardian, Wired magazine, USA Today, Fast Company, National Public Radio, CNN, NPR, MSNBC and other media. His popular blog is at scottberkun.com and he tweets at @berkun. Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgy1KyEWzfU Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 91. Scott Berkun is a prolific author. He's written books on project management, public speaking, creativity, innovation, and remote work. His latest project is How Design Makes The World, a really accessible book that can help anyone better understand and appreciate design. If you're a professional, it can help you explain your work to friends and colleagues. If you're just curious about the field, it can help you understand how the things around you came to be. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode 91 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I'm really happy today to have with us, Scott Berkun. Scott is a well known author, he's author of eight books now and the reason I asked him on the show is his eighth book, his latest book, How Design Makes the World really caught my eye. It's kind of a companion now for me right alongside Don Norman's books and then my other design shelf as sort of a really accessible book about how to explain design and how it shapes the world. Welcome, Scott. I'm curious about, I think a lot of people know you as a product guy and an old school Microsoft PM sort of person, but you have over the years, you left Microsoft, became a book author and now you're writing this brilliant book about design. Tell me how that came to be. Scott: Sure. Thanks for coming on the show to begin with. Wanted to be on the show for a while and I couldn't make it happen. I'm excited that I'm finally here. Yay! Go us. Larry: Likewise. Scott: Yeah, the story is a circle. I was in college. I studied computer science. I learned, I discovered I was not a very good programmer. I was a mediocre programmer. I was good at the first part. I was good to figuring out what the problem was.

Scott and Michelle offer these practices to keep in mind at any stage of a health journey. Mindfulness. Take just a few moments to be present and distraction-free. Don't overcomplicate the journey. Overthinking and overcontrolling quickly lead to anxiety and depression. Taking small, practical steps will get you where you need to be. Share your journey with others, but not everybody. Close friends can keep you accountable and motivated. But your journey is intimate and won't always be pretty.  Have the right reason. There is something intrinsically motivating you to live a better life. Don't confuse that with the urge to suddenly identify as a health nut. Living in the past isn't productive. Your body changes, and your lifestyle changes. What worked then might not work now. Take this into account when evaluating what exercise is right for you and what you expect your body to do and look like. Limit social media. It's a time suck. Sleep well and take time to relax. The hours between 11-3 AM are our best opportunity for quality sleep. Don't skip it. Let go of toxic relationships. You can't easily avoid people, but you can let certain people in closer while others remain at a distance. Setting personal boundaries with even your loved ones will lead to healthier relationships. TranscriptMichelle: Welcome to the Totality Living Well podcast where we probe into the nitty-gritty aspects of health: the good, the offbeat, and even the controversial things that aren't always discussed. Whether you've had a long-standing curiosity or simply want to know more about a topic, we're here to explore the solutions and answers to empower you in body, mindset, and spirit.Scott: Hey guys, Scott and Michelle Williams here. Healthy living consultants, certified in nutrition fitness and neuromuscular massage.Michelle: We're parents, business owners, and understand the challenges that life can bring with keeping the elements of your own health on track while ensuring that the kids, parents, pets, and loved ones in your life are also taken care of with the resources they need for health and longevity.Scott: We're so glad you joined us.Michelle: Seeking to live a life of health for many entails acknowledging a specific need, setting a goal for improvement, and then implementing the necessary steps to reach that goal. But that's not always as easy as it sounds is it, especially when it comes to all of the factors pertaining to real life. If it were that simple, then the health and wellness industry wouldn't be as big as it is. Welcome everyone to our podcast today. I am Michelle Williams, along with my fabulous husband Scott Williams from Totality Living Well. And today we're going to be addressing the one issue that can trip us up as we aspire to reach any health goal, or really any goal. And that is energy drains.Scott: That's right. The topic needs to be discussed because as health professionals, we've seen so many people out there that really and truly want to make a change. And they come to us and they're so excited about doing that. And so many things start to get in their way, and they just don't understand why they cannot get to that point.Michelle: So, the last time we left you with some tips on how to really get cruising on your health journey. And why don't you recap those for us?Scott: Practicing mindfulness in your life is such an important mindset on this. It's not just about your body, it's about your body, mind, and your spirit. Self-care is vital for us: to take care of others, we've really truly got to be able to take care of ourselves to begin with. And don't overcomplicate the journey. The journey can be simple, you just have to get moving, you don't need to assess every single thing that you see in a magazine or everything everybody else is doing.Michelle: And that leads to this valuable insight that we want to share is how to reach those goals without the distractions and those things that can deplete our journey. So, we've got a long list of sneaky little traps that can be avoided, if we know what they are. And we're just going to share those with you and just go ahead and dig in.Scott: Sounds good.Michelle: Okay, so the first one, I think it just goes in right with that third tip of don't overcomplicate the journey, and that's overthinking the journey. I guess just any client we've really worked with who gets kind of caught up in—you know, I'm guilty of doing this myself: individuals who really want to control the journey ahead, and one way to kind of think that they can do that is by overthinking. And ultimately, when I started thinking about this, I started thinking about overthinking really kind of has a couple of different underlying reasons. One is maybe a lack of organization. Two would be a lack of confidence or having self-doubt about the journey ahead, and then not fully having a defined goal or being fully committed to that goal. And then when I started thinking about that a little bit more I thought about overthinking maybe is actually something that stems from worry or desperation to really want to accomplish that goal. So, it's not really something that's counterproductive for us, and when you think about it, it's more of a mind issue. So, that effort to control the whole journey ahead by overthinking is really the one thing that makes you lose control, and it just totally self-sabotage is the entire thing. So, basically, just keep it simple.Scott: Right, exactly. Because people do come in with great goals. And I think that what they're looking for is they're looking for validation in that goal; they want you to validate what they're trying to achieve. Sometimes it might not be their actual goal, but they think, “Oh, but this is going to make me healthy and/or this is going to make my professional that I'm working with think that I'm on the right track.”Michelle: Like, I'm truly invested in that.Scott: Exactly. And sometimes you have to take a step back and figure out realistically, it's like, how do you look at the baby steps of this goal and come back to kindergarten as opposed to running as a senior. And really, and truly taking the steps to go level by level to achieve those goals.Michelle: I think one of the things that goes along with it, and it's not really part of the notes that we had kind of things that we wanted to discuss today, but also overtalking about something; just talking incessantly about, “I'm going to be a vegetarian,” “I'm a vegetarian,” “Oh, my new vegetarian diet.” I mean, just for example.Scott: Oh, yeah.Michelle: And then just that constant talk, talk, talk, it's almost like there's a way to have that proper accountability, but there's also a way that people try to convince themselves and they're not really realizing that they're convincing themselves. So, I think that overtalking goes right in hand-in-hand with overthinking.Scott: I think so too, and I think what happens is, people need to keep that to one or two people that can actually really help them kind of just grab forward and go with that, but not talk to everybody about it. Because everybody just gets tired of hearing it because all they want to see is, “Okay, you're doing that. So, what's the result? What's this look like?” You know, they look at you and go, “Well, you're a vegetarian, or you've done this, or you've done that. What was your goal truly about? And are you really achieving it, or do you look the same as you did a month ago when I saw you?”Michelle: I think one of the things, too, is like, if someone establishes a goal and it's not for the right reasons to accomplish something, but rather to make it an identity, that's when you see a lot of that happen. People are kind of wanting to establish something to be known for.Scott: Right, exactly. Because everybody wants to be popular in the public. Everybody wants to be known for something. And sometimes that is lack of what they had as a kid as far as the compliments from people as a child, and they're still trying to feed that back into their lives.Michelle: Yeah. And when we do start working with clients for their health journey, we really do assess where they are in that whole goal-setting place in life because there are different phases: there's that pre-contemplation, and then there's the contemplation, all the way up to action. And so when someone's finally in that action phase, they're still not overthinking. So, I think that that's probably a kind of a good sign of not being fully ready to move forward.Scott: It is truly. And that helps them really assess because sometimes they think they come in, and they're like, “Yep, here's the money, let's go.” And they think by hiring you, or by having someone holding you accountable, it's going to just flip a switch, and all of a sudden—and their goals are going to just happen magically. And really, and truly, we got to step back and see why.Michelle: Another big energy drainer that I see with people who do overthink is living in the past. And I know that you can speak to this just the same, where we meet with people—and let's just say middle-agers, okay. Let's just say somebody who had a great football career when they were teenagers, and they ate the house down, and they can't understand what the age of 45 they're gaining all this weight. They never had that problem before. Well, are you moving the way that you moved when you were a teenager, you know, to warrant eating that? Another thing would be from ladies, I hear, “Well, I know exactly what to do. I'm just here for the accountability, and what I've done has worked in the past.” And I kind of laugh to myself, “Well, if it worked in the past, why are we here?” Because if you lost that weight before you had children, and you were in your 20s, and you knew what to do, and you were radically going for it, and then, later on, you have children, and you haven't lost that baby weight and it's been 15 years, since you've lost that baby weight, what worked then, chances are it's not going to work now. And so we have to always be mindful and reminding ourselves and other people that what has always worked doesn't always work. I know personally, there are times in my life, I guess, I found myself wanting to detoxify from childhood, processed meats and things like that, where going vegetarian was a great thing for me. Ultimately, going vegan was nice for a little while. And I had my children and Mama wanted some meat, and so that meat-eating diet kind of came back and it was right for me at that time. And as a nutrition specialist coaching other people, one thing that we can say is that there's not a one size fits all approach to diet and to exercise, movement, that kind of thing. And you think about it: babies have a totally different requirement, from a nutrition standpoint than a toddler. A toddler's got a totally different need than a teenage boy playing football. That teenage boy playing football has a totally different dietary need than someone who's going to be hitting the big three-oh for their milestone birthday. And that person is still going to be different from what a senior needs. So, we all need different things at different times. And living in the past, it's a comfort to say, “I've been there, I've accomplished, I knew it worked,” but the mind needs new things, the body needs new approaches based on what our resources are, what our routines are, what the current body is, what we have and that kind of thing. I know, you've seen that too.Scott: Exactly. When I was in my teens I worked out, I played sports. When I got into my 20s, I started mountain biking. At that point in time, you go to mountain bike ride and burning and 3500 calories a day. And I could eat like a house, and realistically, it wasn't a big thing. Then I rolled into my 30s, kind of got away from that kind of conditioning, went back into the gym and started a little bit more about building muscle, and then I had to retain correct nutrition, and not just caloric density, to actually rebuild the body that I wanted to. And then in my 40s I started looking ahead, and all of a sudden, all the active things that I did, my joints weren't exactly wanting to do it as much anymore, and then you should have a shift of metabolism. And you have to realistically figure out what is your goal right now because what you're doing in your 40s is not what you were doing in your 20s. You have to have that reality check; you're not going to have what you had in your 20s, but how do you make your best 40s?Michelle: Right, and a 50-year-old cannot look like their 20-year-old self. It's just, it doesn't matter how many times they go to have their hair done, or go under the knife, or have all these aesthetic treatments, it's a different body, and it is about embracing what you have to work with, in the current moment.Scott: Exactly.Michelle: So, I guess I would just say, to remember that today's a new day; yesterday's the past and just don't go back. Just leave it in the past.Scott: Leave it in the past.Michelle: Yeah, set your new goals for the day ahead.Scott: Right, and just make sure that you're—just find that mindset that you're good with that. And I think that's what people stumble with is you've got to look at yourself and go, hey, I am great where I am, and I can be the best 40-year-old, 50-year-old, 60-year-old that I can be out there, versus some of the people you see out there that are in your same age range. One of the big things that we talk a little bit about as far as time and things that take away from, I want to talk a little bit about social media. Everybody wants to get on social media; social media, it's just such a trap out there. And realistically, you spend 10 minutes here, you spend 20 minutes, there, you spend 30 minutes there, and all of a sudden you say, “Well, I just don't have time to go to the gym anymore,” or, “I don't have time to eat right,” or, “I don't have time to sit and read and meditate a little bit.” If you look at some of those trackers out there, you can actually really tell what you're doing with each thing that you have on your phone, you can see how much time you're wasting.Michelle: It's crazy. I mean it, it becomes addictive.Scott: It does.Michelle: I mean, not only to the kids but adults too. I can log in not even realizing that I'm logging in to check my feed. I don't even think that I'm doing it; I'm doing it subconsciously. And I can look down and think that maybe 5 or 10 minutes has gone by, and it's been an hour plus.Scott: Right.Michelle: And I just read feeds. Boy, I could have really read a good chapter in a book. [laugh].Scott: Yeah, getting caught up. Or I could have actually got up and went for a walk, and then got some sunshine.Michelle: Yeah, no kidding. I agree; social media is a huge energy trap. And I think just checking email also, it can be a big distraction, too.Scott: Yeah, because we have so much junk email out there. If everything could filter out all of the junk, and you could truly just get the true emails you need each day, that would be great.Michelle: Yeah, I think it's the same thing. I think just setting designated times and timelines for looking at those kinds of things is a huge help.Scott: Yeah. And then beyond that, it's just like, we spend so much time doing some of that stuff, we stay up too late. We stay up too late on social media, we stay up too late in emails, we stay up too late watching TV, some people stay up too late playing video games. And when you stay up too late, you throw off your entire next day.Michelle: Well, especially when it's time and again. Because okay, yes, there's going to be the big ball game that comes on, and that's going to run late into the night, and we want to see that; we don't want to record that; we don't want to watch what's more fun to watch live. I mean, certain things need to take place in real-time.Scott: Oh, exactly.Michelle: And kids might have sports. And a lot of those times we know from when our kids were in cross country. We didn't get home until 10 o'clock at night, sometimes. It was a school night.Scott: It was crazy.Michelle: It was. So, I mean there are times when we have to kind of make the exception, but I do think it builds up, like what you're saying. And then that really wears the body down and the mind down.Scott: It really does because you actually then to start the next day, you want to eat everything that you can because your body is deprived of what it needed for rest. So, now it's going to try to replace it with calories.Michelle: Yeah, it messes up that leptin and ghrelin hormone balance of when you are hungry and how full you are, and those just get really whacked out when you don't get that sleep. And then too, I have learned from multiple sources time and again at different seminars and from various educators, that the time period that you can sleep between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. are valid for regenerating the body, resetting the body. So, yes, you can go to bed a little later than what you want to be, if you can stay asleep and get good quality sleep in that little window of time, you're at least doing yourself a favor.Scott: Definitely. But four hours sleep isn't quite enough for the night.Michelle: Yeah, not for the norm. I mean, there are some rare individual, I guess, that can get by with that, but that's certainly not me.Scott: Me either. [laugh].Michelle: And we have taken a couple of supplements before that have helped us. Obviously, we recommend everybody check with their health care provider and professional before doing anything, but we've had great experience with melatonin and [00:15:58 methionine], which is an amino acid, just bringing calm to the body, helping it turn off. Soaking in a hot bath with lavender and Epsom salt.Scott: Yeah, a lot of relaxation type things before bed.Michelle: And turning lights out. Turning lights and electronics out and just, you know, unplugging.Scott: Right. Easy, soft music, something just that relaxes you down.Michelle: Right. And you were saying that it does throw off the way we eat. So, that brings us to our fifth energy drainer. And that is living on a poor diet. I mean, you think about it, you're tired, you're running late for work, you haven't prepared anything for lunch, or even breakfast and you're going by the drive-through. First thing you're going to do is grab that fast sandwich, that biscuit, whatever, and that's not really giving you quality nutrition. So, over time, your body's getting dead food; it's getting processed food, and it can't regenerate by its divine design. It's one thing to grab that one meal on a quick whim, but to make that your lifestyle, that starts to add up, and that starts to make you feel pretty lousy. And when I teach kids, one of the slides that I have is garbage in, garbage out. So, what you take in, that's what you're going to be putting back out. And a lot of times, that's really lousy energy—Scott: It truly is.Michelle: —you know, and irritability, and not being able to be on your game. So, I even use that with the chefs that I teach at the college for the Culinary Institute. They want to know, why is healthy food, all that important? And I'm like, let's just rewind down to the basics: it's an energy drainer. You don't feel good, and you're not living that quality life.Scott: Yeah, exactly. It's one of those things that, if you were around from different decades, as we were, and if you can realize the fact that why can they still sell a hamburger for the same price they did when we were kids.Michelle: Or the ice cream sandwich that never melts on the sidewalk. [laugh].Scott: [laugh].Michelle: That's really weird.Scott: And we watched the kids get fast food type things around here that you look in a cup and it's still there the next day, and you're like, why is that still in a full form?Michelle: Yeah, that's really freaky. You know that Twinkie test, I've never taken the Twinkie test but apparently, they don't rot at all, they're so loaded. [laugh]. I remember eating Twinkies when I was a little girl. I was given one to—my mom gave it to appease me before breakfast, so I wonder if those Twinkies are still with me? Well, basically getting good fresh enzymes, and that means the colors of the rainbow that are grown in nature your red, orange, yellow, green, blue, fruits, vegetables and get those in when you can even if you do have to merge that with foods that aren't ideal, and they're more of the grab-and-go if you can grab that salad or even a juice, that's better for you, getting those life enzymes.Scott: Definitely. Exactly. When we go into another step of life as far as things that actually drain us as well, and we started looking at relationships. Being out there, and toxic relationships, and negative people, and—Michelle: No, not in this day and age. [laugh].Scott: And just the negative side of everything. You look at—if you turn on the news, everybody's hating on everybody. And it's like, when did we start becoming such a society of hate, and where did the love go? And so, the more that you can separate yourself from those types of things, the better that you do with life if you begin your day with more positivity.Michelle: There's this book that I have been reading, and it's pretty neat. It's called Your Body Believes Every Word You Say. And this lady was really ill, and she couldn't figure out how to get well. And then she started changing the way that she thought and the way that she spoke and her body responded, and it's a pretty cool story. I don't know who the author is, but it's a pretty good book. And it's true. It's like, the words that you are around and the words that you speak, they do either make or break you. And when you are around that negativity—and sometimes you can't help it. Sometimes you work with someone, and you see someone every day and they're just really a downer. But that's where you have to kind of dig deep and control the way you respond.Scott: Exactly. And when you get yourself together, the more you are in tune with your life and the more balanced you are, the more that you will start to attract. I was telling Michelle this, that when you do that, you're going to become a magnet. And people magnetize towards you that are people that love you, and people magnetize [00:20:29 who are do] people that hate you. And the responses are so different. You get people that love you, and realistically, you can't get away from them because they want more and more from you, and you get people that hate you, and they'll snub you, and walk away, or talk bad about you.Michelle: Yeah, you've kind of said, too, that when you start that positive journey in making strides for your health or trying to establish healthier habits in your lifestyle, you get people who kind of want to pull from you because they want a piece of that too. And you're a little bit stronger than they are, or you've got people who kind of… they're not so happy because it, maybe, makes them aware that they've got something that they should probably change, you know, they want to change. So, those are the people that kind of start hating on you. You know, you're going to get it both ways.Scott: And when we go places with Michelle, it's like, when she's in balance, and everything is feeling good—and that's the majority of the time, it's like, we get people that just magnetize towards her, in the stores that we go to, and they want interesting information, they want topics, they want tips. Just because we did some time on TV, they know us a little bit better. And it takes so much time out of our day sometimes, and I like to push it on through, but she magnetizes people that really and truly want part of what she has, or you see people that walk by us and kind of give us a look kind of like, “Eh, who are you?” So, it kind of feeds both ways.Michelle: Yeah. And I think having a positive attitude makes me want to engage with people as well. So—Scott: It does.Michelle: —there are those times that you tell me to just sit in the car while you run in and out. [laugh].Scott: That's right, I tell her, I say, “We only got 10 minutes, I'm going to go in here, I'm going to get this handled, and I'm going to go.” Okay because I like to say, “Hi, bye,” but I'm not wanting to overly engage because usually, I've got a time schedule to keep.Michelle: There you go. So, we've got another energy drainer. Why don't you tell us about this one?Scott: You know, this is about—Michelle: Saying yes to so much.Scott: That's right. And realistically, it's like, everybody wants to please people. So, when people want your time, when they want your volunteerism, when they want your help, we all want to say yes because we want to be a pleaser.Michelle: We want to be part of the solution.Scott: Right. We want to help people get through something. And it's so hard that realistically, you just have to stop sometime and say, “Okay. Can I really achieve this? Is this going to put me over the top? Do I really have time to do this?” And you have to say no, sometimes.Michelle: Yeah, you have to guard your time. And just remember that the opinions of others doesn't define you. And you remind me of that all the time because I want to say yes to people. I want to give. I want to help other people. But sometimes I don't reserve what I need to for my own self-growth.Scott: Exactly.Michelle: And I remember when I first started practicing it—I don't know if I'll ever master it, but I try—but I know the kids were little, and a parent asked for me to volunteer for something in a classroom, and it was the first time that I thought, “I'm going to practice saying no,” and it didn't really go over all that well. And I threw it back in her lap, I guess, and she was kind of offended, even though it was nice about it. And it's never easy. So, I think that's just an ongoing thing that I'm learning to practice. But it does; it pulls you in so many directions, and it can drain you of your energy.Scott: Oh, exactly because you'll get stressed out because you took on too much.Michelle: Yeah there are ways to say, “You know what, thank you so much for thinking of me, but I don't think that's going to work out right now.” You don't have to just do a hardcore, “No.” Or, “Heck no.” You can—Scott: Right.Michelle: —be, you know—Scott: Diplomatic.Michelle: Yeah, diplomatic. And it's very awkward at times, even being diplomatic.Scott: It is. Definitely.Michelle: I'd rather say no through text than I would face. [laugh]. So, you do. You have to guard your time. And I think that leads into our next energy drainer and that is not front-loading your day, with self-care in body, mindset, and spirit. Because we get so busy during the day and we can have all of these intentions and then they fall through and at the end of the day you think, “Well, what did I even get to do for myself?” And that can lead to resentment, more fatigue. You think, “I didn't even make any progress today.” But if we can start the beginning of the day doing some sort of self-care that—and I love to start with exercise. In an ideal world, I'd be up at 5 a.m. every day doing my gym time. Sometimes that's not very conducive, especially if I have an early morning commitment of some sort. But I do like to do that. That's one of the things that I feel like it sets those feel-good hormones, those endorphins in the right direction, and I'm able to think clearly through the day. And you, you start the day with reading, and meditating, and saying a prayer. And you're very consistent with that.Scott: But I have to be because I feel like if I don't get started off in the right boat, somewhere down the road, when the day gets overwhelming, I feel off, you know? I feel like my energy isn't there, my motivation isn't there, even just a little saddened sometimes. So, realistically, it's like, I need to take that time in the morning to start my day with who I'm going to be.Michelle: Yeah, I mean, I do think that there's a lot to that. It could be something just as simple as reading something inspirational, taking a moment to just be grateful for something, moving your body. You don't even have to go anywhere, just move for five minutes, stretch, anything like that. And then start the day with something healthy, start the day with a good hydration, something like that. It's pretty pivotal in the direction that it can take you. So, there you go; those are our energy drainers. And one of, I guess, the overlooked things that could be included in that morning routine would be making sure that you have your day planned out the night before.Scott: Yeah.Michelle: I don't know if that's an evening routine, or if that's a morning routine, but they kind of like, merge together.Scott: They do they really do because if for some reason you didn't get your clothes cleaned, you didn't prepare meals the night before, you don't have your water—I fill my water jug every night, almost every single time because I like cold water.Michelle: And I don't, and I don't like cold water. I don't fill my water jug and I end up drinking yours. [laugh].Scott: Exactly. That's what always happens, unfortunately. But those are some of the small things I put into place because I know if I do that, then the next day is going to at least start pretty well.Michelle: Yeah, exactly. So, I think that if we are mindful of these energy drainers, and we know, kind of, the impact that they can have on our lives, it just helps us to be better prepared, so that we can shift accordingly. And that doesn't say that we're going to live a life of perfection. But being mindful, that's huge.Scott: Yeah, and I think at least it helps you identify them maybe before they come, and how you're going to handle them.Michelle: Exactly. So, three tips that we want to leave our listeners with today—and we really do appreciate you listening to our insights on energy draining—that we want to leave you with: setting personal boundaries for yourself that you will and will not allow in your life. That's huge because that gives you kind of an automatic roadmap to follow.Scott: And I think one of the most important ones for me is scheduling time for yourself and holding those appointments. Don't let anybody get in your way. Don't let the kids, the dog, the cat, a client, anybody take your time because that time is valuable to your balance.Michelle: You don't have to say, “Oh, I'm getting my hair done,” or, “Oh, I'm going to take a nap,” or whatever that appointment time is with yourself, you can just say, “I'm sorry, I already have an appointment at that time.” It can be that simple. I think the third one we want to leave you with, too, is to have a saying, or an affirmation, or some sort of quote that can help you get back onto task if you feel yourself thrown off during the day. Sometimes all you need is a simple reminder to just help you refocus.Michelle: Elements of living a healthy lifestyle come in various forms. Sometimes we don't have all the answers we need, and sometimes we don't even know that we have a need until we have important discussions.Scott: That's the inspiration behind why and what we do with Totality Living Well and helping others live a life of true balance in body, mindset, and spirit.Michelle: We love hearing your comments, questions, and feedback as you navigate your own health journey. We're grateful that you've taken this time to join us. You can keep up with the latest on the podcast through Apple, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you choose to listen to podcasts.Scott: You can also follow us on Facebook or Instagram by following Totality Living Well.Michelle: And check out our website totalitylivingwell.com for other tips and customized health programs available.Scott: We'll see you next time.Michelle: Remember, keep your health front and center. It's priceless. In great health, always.

In this episode of Totality Living Well, Scott and Michelle introduce themselves and how they came to be health coaches in Knoxville, Tennessee.  Scott and Michelle began their health journeys early in life.  Scott remembers meeting Arnold Schwarzenegger and admiring his bodybuilding as much as his ballet training.  Michelle questioned everything as a kid. She wanted to figure out why her family members suffered from diabetes and heart conditions. She even questioned what lunch ladies were serving her in school, which led to some awkward conversations. Having lived in both Colorado and Tennessee, Scott and Michelle acknowledge the health gaps between Western and Southern America. The couple discuss how their love story intertwined with their health and business goals. Ebbs and flows are a part of everyone's lifestyle. When your healthy habits are right on track, Michelle says that's when real life will set you off balance. As an adult, parent, and businesswoman, she's been there and survived.  TranscriptMichelle: Welcome to the Totality Living Well podcast where we probe into the nitty-gritty aspects of health: the good, the offbeat, and even the controversial things that aren't always discussed. Whether you've had a long-standing curiosity or simply want to know more about a topic, we're here to explore the solutions and answers to empower you in body, mindset, and spirit.Scott: Hey guys, Scott and Michelle Williams here. Healthy living consultants, certified in nutrition fitness and neuromuscular massage.Michelle: We're parents, business owners, and understand the challenges that life can bring with keeping the elements of your own health on track while ensuring that the kids, parents, pets, and loved ones in your life are also taken care of with the resources they need for health and longevity.Scott: We're so glad you joined us.Michelle: Welcome listeners to the introductory Totality Living Well podcast. My name is Michelle Williams, and I am joined today by my husband Scott Williams. We are co-owners of Totality Living Well, a health and wellness company based out of Knoxville, Tennessee. And we are stepping into the podcast world to share our life experiences and expertise in health and wellness, and we are so honored that you have chosen to listen to our first episode.Scott: Thank you for joining us today. We're excited to talk a little bit about who we are and how we came about. Michelle and I met here in Knoxville about seven years ago, and we both were looking at, just, the community and basically what we felt was missing here. And basically just the concepts of health and wellness, and how people actually looked at this community and health and wellness, both coming from a different geographical area of the country. And we both looked here and said, “Wow, we could really do some great things here.”Michelle: Yeah, one of the things that we noticed, too, that the idea of health and wellness for a lot of people entailed getting a prescription filled, and then going to grab their salad at a fast-food restaurant, and maybe just doing a little bit of something here and there—mowing the yard for a little exercise. And we wanted to introduce people to a way of living that we had grown accustomed to, especially out in the West. We each came from Colorado, where it's pretty much a health mecca, but I guess we've always lived a life of health and wellness. So, Scott, why don't you just share with everybody how you got started?Scott: Yeah, when I was a young kid—I actually grew up in the Midwest, I mean Indiana, and up there was meat and potato country. They did three vegetables and boiled them to death and that was about it. But once I moved out to Colorado, I saw just a little bit more about how to treat your body, really. And then I got an opportunity. My father took me to an early contest of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Columbus, Ohio. So, I got to meet Arnold initially and was very inspired by him. But then also for people that are of our age range, I also got to meet a gentleman named Jack LaLanne. And Jack LaLanne was an icon of health wellness in the early 1900s, and he was just very inspiring. And the guy was probably in his 80s at that point in time, was strong as a house. And he just gave me advice, and he said, basically when it came to nutrition, he said he made it and he said if it came in packages, he didn't buy it. It was fruits and vegetables, if he wanted pasta, he made his own pasta, if he wanted bread, he made his own bread. He said, “You've got to stay away from the additives that are out there.” And he says that's the way for him on how he was able to keep himself in such a great condition of health and wellness. Which, you know, it went back for me as a young teenager, and I was so inspired by that. I was like, okay, right away, I went home, and it's like, I'm going to have better eating habits, I'm going to hit the gym, I'm going to exercise, I'm going to take care of myself, and just continue that the way that was, basically. And I just really got inspired by that. And I decided I wanted to help others as well.Michelle: So, Jack LaLanne asked you a question when he first met you, that actually was a life-changing question. And I ask that, a lot, of my first-time clients, too, and that question was, “How frequently do you poop, son?” [laughs].Scott: [laughs]. Exactly. And it's all about the fact is when Jack, his motto was when you ate, you should go to the bathroom. You should poop within 15 to 20 minutes after every time you eat. And, basically, if you're not doing that, then your system is not working properly.Michelle: Yeah and I think so many people, just when it comes to digestion like that, that's something that they don't really even address or think about the frequency. So, the way you eat and the way you move, all of that not only affects your digestion for the better but it also, it helps with cellular turnover and all of that. And that's just—it all fits together, and I think you saw that at an early age.Scott: Yeah, definitely. It changed my life in the way I was doing things, was before I was eating fast food, I was going out, I was doing stuff like that, and probably I didn't have very good bowel movements at that point in time. But once I got on a health train, but more vegetables in my life, and more fruits, and more things that—it made me feel so much better energetically. And it also made me just perform better as a kid. I could think better in school, I could perform better in sports. It just all around made me a better person in that way.Michelle: And then you got to meet Arnold again after you started walking that healthy lifestyle. So, tell us a little bit about that.Scott: Yeah, I mean, I got to meet Arnold a second time there. And Arnold was just such an inspiration because even though he was a bodybuilder, and everybody knew him for his muscle mass, he still was iconic because he was doing things that people didn't even think about. Arnold did ballet. And if you can believe the fact that a gentleman that size actually did ballet because, at that point in time, they didn't have any formal yoga, they didn't have a lot of formal stretching ideas. But he did ballet, which opened his body up, to be able to keep him injury free, to keep him flexible, and to be able to train harder and still care for his body in that way.Michelle: It's almost like a lot of those principles and that line of thinking is starting to come around and be more widely received, and even taught now, which is kind of cool because both of those guys were just so iconic and before their time. They just set the tone in the bar for health and wellness.Michelle: It's really cool that that all led to your next steps. And that's how you got started with your education.Scott: Yeah, so I guess basically, from that point on, I just knew that I wanted to help people. I dabbled in a couple different types of jobs, and things just weren't right for me. So, I basically knew that through personal training, through nutritional consulting, and then also 10 years, 15 years later, I went on and did neuromuscular massage work and trained in that because I started seeing the benefits of helping people that had injuries, helping people stay away from injuries, and helping people get through pain that they didn't even know they had, and how they could take that and get that out of their lives so that they actually could physically move because people would say, “I just can't exercise because my back hurts too bad.” “I can't exercise because I've got this bad neck.” But if you found a way to actually help people change that, that didn't take any effort, necessarily, for them, except for to lay on the table and actually get work done on them, and then to find out what the possibilities were. And then that always opened the door for me, too. People will say, “Well, how should I eat?” Or, “How many days a week, do you think I need to exercise?” So, basically, we could get them healthy on the table, we could change the mindset that they had. And then they start inching into interest in other realms of taking care of themselves.Michelle: And then at one point, you started helping people move, and you had this cool idea. Tell us a little bit about what you did.Scott: Yeah, so actually, um, when I was a young teenager, I decided that I was tired of the large gym scenes and all the hype about it—because all they wanted to do in the gyms were sell memberships, sell memberships, and then hope people didn't show up. Because if people didn't show up, they could keep selling memberships. If everybody showed up, they would be over-occupancy. So, I thought about it and I was talking to one of my clients at the time, and I said, “I got this great idea.” And she was a really sweet lady. She was an attorney, I think, in her probably late 50s. I had helped her—when she came to me she had a hard time lifting things. Her and her husband—I mean, her husband was like a big marathoner and she was having a hard time keeping up with him. And basically, I got her to the point where she was curling 25-pound dumbbells, and she was able to go on hikes with her husband at the end of the day and keep up with him. And so she was so excited that she wanted to help me in any way possible. So, I said, “Okay, this is my idea.” So, she said, “You know what? Come see my banker.” So, what I did in the early 90s, basically, was I started a mobile gym. So, I took a 35-foot school bus, renovated it, put equipment into it, stereo system, lights, everything you could do, and then I rolled around to businesses and homes, and I trained people in the Denver Metro area.Michelle: I love that story and I think just—I love your heart too. Of course, I'm married to you, but you've got a great heart. And then after you did that little journey with the bus, I like what you did with the bus.Scott: Well, so at that point time, when I decided to park the bus—the hard thing about the bus was the metro area was getting too busy, it was hard to get around, and truly, I needed a crew of buses. I needed five to be around different places at different locations for when people needed to be trained. So, I decided to park that situation and I got out of it, and actually got myself outdoors a little bit more. So, while I was sitting on this bus, I didn't know what to do, I thought I bought—I tried to sell it, nobody was really that interested in it. And then someone had called me up and they said, “Hey, we're really interested in your bus. We saw it.” That thing. And so basically, they came over to look at it and ended up being a family. And they were basically, like, living out of a tent. And they wanted to purchase the bus so they could actually live out of it.Michelle: I love it. And I love how your heart speaks through all of that. And I think that's part of the reason that we started working together, too. We met in Knoxville, Tennessee, after coming out here from Colorado, and you were trying to get your business up and running, and my professional background for so many years had been in marketing. And after we had become friends, I said, “Hey, let me just try pitching you to a couple of these TV stations and see what happens.” I said, “But the first thing that we need to do is, I want you to start with one word that we're going to base your whole media campaign on, your publicity.” And I said, “Take a few days, that's all you got to do.” And because this is an important word, and we need to really think carefully about that. And you said, “I don't have to think. I know my word.” I said, “What is that word?” You said, “Integrity.” I think I fell in love with you that day. [laughs]. I was like this guy really not only walks this walk, but he's got heart behind it. So, it was pretty easy to fall in love with you after that, and to start a business, and sharing our stories together and how they paralleled.Scott: You know, and I think that it was a great experience that we fell in love at that point in time. And by talking to you, I want you to tell them a little bit about your story and what drew you into health and wellness.Michelle: Okay, so I am 52. And so back in the '70s, we did not have internet, we did not have all of this immediate access to information. We had to go to the library and look things up or read the encyclopedias, and what you got from those encyclopedias, that was what you're going to get. And I was always interested in healthy eating just from a young age and noticed that a lot of my relatives kept coming down with the same types of illnesses, diabetes, gallbladder problems, heart disease, high cholesterol. Just, you name it and it was just kind of the norm. And I started thinking, “Why? Why does everybody get that when they get older?” And it was my maternal grandmother who came down with gallbladder disease. And I thought, “Well, how does that happen? What does the gallbladder do?” So, I was seven and started researching what the gallbladder did. And I learned that it metabolizes fats. And then I started looking at what we had in our foods in the way of fats, and then how we kind of started eating a lot of fats with just everything we did, a lot of processed foods. And by the time I was in fourth grade, I thought, “Well, what's it going to be like if I take 30 days, and go without sugar?” Just 30 days, no sugar at all. And then at the end of that 30 days, just binge on sugar, and go to McDonald's, and have a Sprite, and have a Big Mac, and an apple pie, or an ice cream, or anything like that. And my mom thought it was kind of funny. And so I started reading the labels. And that became not so funny to her because I was questioning everything. And then at school—I was in fourth grade—started asking the lunch ladies about what kind of sugar was in their food and nobody could tell me so I started boycotting school food. And it really wasn't funny when the principal called to meet with my mom because nobody else wanted to eat school lunch. And so that was that weird time period where everybody was like, “I want to be a movie star. I want to be a nurse, I want to be a teacher. I want to be—” anything but a nutritionist and I wanted to be a nutritionist. So, it was a fun thing for me and my grandfather. After he retired from the military, he had a huge garden in Tennessee—or in  Mississippi, rather. So, I would help him with that big garden and I learned a lot about organic gardening, which is still a big passion today with our garden, that you get to till for me every year.Scott: Of course I do.Michelle: You love me. [laughs].Scott: I do love you. That's the reason I do it.Michelle: But we do grow some superfoods. And so anyway, that was the beginning of that. And then fast forward to when I could go to college. And I did get a scholarship to a great school that had a great nutrition program. I was 17, and I chose communication of all things. But it was always a passion of mine and came back to it full circle. I now have all of the certifications in that. And I was really interested in youth nutrition when the boys were first born, and wanted to get them off to a good start. So, that was the first big interest and the first certification that I had to help them. And you and I started talking, and we realized that all generations needed good nutrition. And then I also had just my passion, hobby of running and exercising, and then I just fell in love with weight training after I met you. So, there's our story.Scott: And that's great. It's one of those things that you just evolve through life, and you really and truly grow, and you add more tools to the toolbox as you go along. And that's the nice thing about it, being a little bit more of a seasoned professional in this business is, the more people you touch and the more clients that you have, the more challenges you've seen, and the more things that you can teach them on how to apply those challenges. And all of us have challenges in life. Even today, we have our own challenges. But you have to find and look at what types of things will actually help you. And there's a lot of professionals out there, and they'll say, “You just follow my checklist. You do this, this, and this. You do it this way and you're going to have the perfect body, you're going to have the perfect life, you're going to have the perfect kids, you're going to have the perfect job.” But realistically, that doesn't work that way. Nobody out there has that perfection, and that might have worked for one individual, but that doesn't work for other people, and so you just cannot follow a standard out there. And so those are some of the things that we want to help dive into.Michelle: Yeah. And we really do take a comprehensive approach to health and wellness. And it's more than just your body which, that's a lot of what brought us into our health journey was just the interest in how movement, and nutrition, and flexibility, and all of that adds together. But then there's so much more to health. And the component of your mindset, and what you tell yourself, and the way you think, and then also your spirit. And that's what differentiates us from animals, and I think a lot of times that's overlooked with people looking at a comprehensive health and wellness program. So, when we started Totality, we said that it's going to be Totality Living Well, in body, mindset, and spirit. So, in this podcast that we are about to pursue, we're excited to just delve into all kinds of topics that maybe aren't always first and foremost in the media, or social media, or in the articles. And we're going to look at some things that can be practical in helping people move along. And I know that as a certified youth nutrition specialist, there have been many, many days with our now grown—almost grown sons who are 18 and 16, where I was like, “Do I have to really feed them today? [laughs]. It's kind of a pain. I'm getting tired of this.” And so, as parents and as business owners, we understand the challenges, and we understand real life, and we're not going to try to act like we know it all because we don't, and we are looking forward to talking with experts in different areas of health and learning from them, but then also sharing what we have learned with our listeners, and with the goal of just empowering all of you in your health journey, so you can live a quality life.Scott: And truly, that's what it's about. It's really at the end of the day, when people talk about what they want to do, so many people say, “I'm going to work hard for 30 years, 40 years, and then when I retire, everything's going to be great.” Well, you know, it really depends on what you do when you take care of yourself along the way because you can't wait until you're 55, 60 years old to start taking care of yourself. Because you'll realize the fact that, “Oh, wow, this isn't what I remember.”Michelle: Yeah. And that's one of the first things that I tell my clients. Strap in because you're about to go into a ride of your life. As soon as you commit to really taking the reins on your health, real life is going to happen like never before. And that's going to be anything from financial issues, to relationship issues, to illness. I mean, it can be anything. So, it's about walking mindfully through all of the hurdles and the challenges. And so I'm really excited about some of the things that we've got in store.Scott: I am too. And we're going to look at it from both angles because Michelle works a lot with females; I work a lot with males. And just getting a feel for what both people struggle with throughout life, and their tug of war, I would say, between taking care of themselves and taking care of their family.Michelle: Yeah. And one of the things that we want to do with our podcast, each time that we have one, is to leave our listeners with three tips. And so we started brainstorming, what could we do in this introductory podcast for three tips?And the first one is to practice mindfulness in your life with your health, but always remembering that your health is not just about your body alone. It is the body, mindset, and spirit. And I think when you do take that comprehensive view of your health, it really opens your eyes to what you can be doing for yourself.Scott: And our second step is really about self-care. It's vital. In order to take care of others, you got to take care of yourself first because if you put yourself on the back burner all the time, between your kids, your job, your husband, anything, you're going to wear yourself down. And when you wear yourself down, you're not good for anybody else.Michelle: Yeah. And then the third one, too, it's just, don't overcomplicate the journey. And I think that that comes when we do listen to so many plans that have been pre-mapped out for us. It's just like, “I've got to execute this perfectly, or it's a wash.” And it's about ebbing and flowing, and simplifying it, and just focusing on a couple of things. So, I'm very excited about some of the things that we're going to be introducing to our listeners.And we just want to thank you so much for taking the time to learn who we are and what we stand for. And we invite you to tune into our next podcast where we're going to be expanding upon the three tips that we just mentioned, and give you some valuable insights that we've discovered as health professionals in walking our lives of health.Michelle: Elements of living a healthy lifestyle come in various forms. Sometimes we don't have all the answers we need, and sometimes we don't even know that we have a need until we have important discussions.Scott: That's the inspiration behind why and what we do with Totality Living Well and helping others live a life of true balance in body, mindset, and spirit.Michelle: We love hearing your comments, questions, and feedback as you navigate your own health journey. We're grateful that you've taken this time to join us. You can keep up with the latest on the podcast through Apple, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you choose to listen to podcasts.Scott: You can also follow us on Facebook or Instagram by following Totality Living Well.Michelle: And check out our website totalitylivingwell.com for other tips and customized health programs available.Scott: We'll see you next time.Michelle: Remember, keep your health front and center. It's priceless. In great health, always.

Subscribe & Download Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Google Play Follow us onSoundCloud Listen on Spotify Guest: ​​​​Scott Swedberg https://vimeo.com/450499054 Episode Transcript 00:05  Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to the agile entrepreneur podcast and video cast. And this is your host, Ramesh Dontha and today we are going to talk about jobs. The next person I'm going to talk to, will get you a job. His name is Scott Swedberg. Scott is the founder and CEO of job sauce, a career services company focused on the individual. He founded the company while working at LinkedIn and the job sauce has helped 10,000 professionals since 2014. Scott, welcome.  00:39  Scott: Thanks for having me Ramesh.  00:41  Ramesh: so right off the bat, I know I introduced you as the founder of the company that focuses on the individual and I think that particular word is very important for you. So can you talk about, you know, what job's sauce is about and why the word individual means so much to you?  00:57  Scott: Yeah, so something that we recognize at job sauce and I founded it because I experienced personally is so much of your life is tied to the work that you do. It's how a lot of people express their fulfillment in life. That's how most people make money. So it's really important for an individual to feel fulfilled in their career. And I noticed that most career services type companies, it was either, you know, an individual resume writers say helping people, which is great, but you kind of have to trade your time for money. You can only help so many people or you've got these bigger outplacement companies that focus more on a B2B level. Certain company has to lay off employees and they contract this company to ease the landing, provide them with resume services or what have you. What the job sauce does is we focus on the individual, like individual resume writers career coaches do, except we can do it at scale. And we bring in a lot more resume writers and career coaches to help the individuals who are coming to us, so we can actually impact 10,000 people in the last five or six years as opposed to if I were doing this just myself and didn't have any support, you know, maybe I could have eclipsed a thousand by now if that's all I did. But we're able to reach a lot more people because we're focused on this niche, helping individuals grow in their career as opposed to, and I'm just helping a company ease the landing of their weight off employees. 02:26  Ramesh: Great. Okay. So just for my own clarification is job sauce a market place where you're connecting people like resume writers and career coaches with the people who are looking for a job or you as a business owner, you will manage all that who to bring in as a resume writer and career coach, but you are the front of the company. How does it work? 02:49  Scott: And so it's not a marketplace. When someone comes to us, if they're going to work with us, all of our resume writers and career coaches have ...

On‌ ‌today's‌ ‌episode,‌ ‌we‌ bring back ‌Scott‌ ‌Scharf‌ to talk about‌ ‌how‌ ‌to‌ ‌build‌ ‌out‌ ‌an‌ ‌accounting‌ ‌system‌ ‌using‌ ‌automation.‌ ‌ Scott is the Co-Founder of Catching Clouds, an outsourced cloud accounting service for e-commerce businesses. Topics: Why accounting is a daily, weekly, and monthly endeavor. The best accounting software. Setting clients up for accrual. Understanding the technological ecosystem. Switching from cash-basis accounting. Refining the process of cash flow projections. Why cash is king. One thing to increase optimization.  Transcription: Joe: Mark, I said many times that I actually fell asleep in accounting class in college. And unfortunately, it was Northeastern University and there were probably 200 people in the room. I was sitting near the door. So 199 people marched out with me there, my head on my desk, drooling, and then the next class came in yet somehow I'm in the position over the last eight years of really revealing a bare minimum of 5,000 profit and loss statements. And I get on my soapbox and preach about this; how important good clean financials are, not only for an entrepreneur's ability to analyze his own business and make sure they're driving towards their goals properly, but to be able to even just get in the room with highly qualified buyers. Once you get in the room, there's a ton of other things, but the P&Ls will get you in the room. And I understand you just had another conversation with our good friend Scott Scharff from Catching Clouds about building automation into accounting so you don't have to actually do this yourself day in and day out, week in and week out by building some automation into the process, either through QuickBooks or Xero. I understand Scott has preferences for both and good things and bad things to say about both. Mark: Yeah, so you're not the only one that fell asleep in accounting class. I did as well. If you looked at my grades, you'd wonder why I'd talk about accounting so much. But you know this Joe I've been working my way through some biographies of various titans of American business. I went through John D. Rockefeller. I'm now in the middle of a biography on Andrew Carnegie. And you know what one thing they both have in common? They were religious about their books. In fact, that was one of the big advantages that Carnegie brought into his business, was detailed books that they could optimize. I just find it fascinating that we can see that this is the case all the way through history what the people have been super successful. Their books are up to date. They're clean. They use them to optimize their businesses. And Scott and I talked a lot about how to do that with an Amazon business. I'm not going to lie, it was overwhelming, partly because Scott is crazy intelligent when it comes to this stuff and he has his systems all set up and he starts throwing around this system, that system, you just hook this up and you do that and then the other thing happens. And in my head, I'm thinking, how can anyone even start this? And at the end of this episode, you'll hear me kind of say that to him. I'm like Scott, this is overwhelming. How do you even get started? But the idea is simple and it is you just get started. He said something in this episode, which I didn't call out in the middle of the episode, but I think is really, really key. He said that of all the financial records that he sees people put together, he will see sometimes accountants that don't know the Amazon world trying to do books, and then he'll see some owners doing their own books. He said both are typically a mess but the ones done by the owners are less a mess than those being done by the bookkeepers because the bookkeepers don't know anything about Amazon. Joe: That is CPAs you mean, right? Not the bookkeepers. Mark: Yes. Joe: Yeah, I'll agree with them a million percent because CPAs do taxes, bookkeepers manage books, and owners try to manage books as well but never quite as good. So I think he's spot on. Guys, listen, and by guys, that's a unisex term. Pay attention to this. I know I preach on it sometimes and I'm so sorry, but it's because I'm here to help you. I'm here to protect you. We are entrepreneurs, we're advisers, we're brokers, we're mentors, and we're your friends, and we're sharing this information for you to help you build a better business and have a better exit someday. Even if that someday is 20 years from now, if you've got automation in your books like Scott is talking about here with Mark, it's going to make your life easier and help you make more money. So with that, let's move to it. But before we do, I want you all to send an email to Mark to discuss whether Carnegie is pronounced Carnegie or Carnegie. Mark: That's a really good question. I go both ways by the way. The author of this; it's an audiobook, he's saying Carnegie so I'm saying Carnegie now. Joe: Okay, Carnegie Hall is where I've been before, but I don't know either. I actually said we have a client that is a one, two, three, fourth remove descendant of Teddy Roosevelt and I pronounced it Roosevelt because I Googled that. Mark: That's wrong. Joe: I know. It was dead wrong. Mark: Carnegie, Carnegie Accounting, let's do accounting. Joe: There we go. All right. Here we go. Mark: Scott, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. I know you are on the podcast a while ago. I think we talked about the ultimate seller's checklist about the things that you have to do, both leading up to a sale and then after the sale, closing on the business but I'm excited about today's conversation. We're going to talk a little bit about bookkeeping and the reason I'm excited about this and I know people in the cars or wherever you're listening at would be like I need to stay awake, I want to talk bookkeeping. I hop on this all the time. Bookkeeping is so important and there's so much data in your books if you keep them right. I had a conversation with somebody just the other day who is ready to sell. He's got a great business that's growing like crazy and he's going to have to put things on hold to flip over to accrual because that's what we require now. And so I want to talk to you about this because it's what you guys do over at Catching Clouds. Why don't you just kind of give a quick introduction for those that are listening to you for the first time? Scott: Okay, cool. Thank you. That was a while ago and that was a good conversation. So Catching Clouds, we provide outsourced cloud accounting services to e-commerce businesses. So our whole focus is only working with businesses that are selling a physical widget on Amazon, eBay, Shopify, Bigcommerce, TrueCommerce, House, Wayfair, Wish, Amazon Canada, CO, UK. Really most of our clients are those more complex multi-channel sellers and we're working with the larger established businesses and the one to fifty million dollar range. But the main value we offer is we provide the bookkeeping, accounting, and controller level review of their financials and we do all the work. The clients get read-only access to the financials. They threw everything over the wall to us and we leverage technology to pull everything together and then we turn that into accurate financials. And we just consider ourselves part of our client's businesses. Were just part of their team. Mark: Why? I mean, let me just start off with kind of an obvious question and one that I think if somebody is not at the million-dollar revenue or fifty million dollar revenue level, why are companies at that level hiring and spending money on a company like yours? Why is it that their financials are important enough to have that controller level service like yours? Scott: Yeah, so the main thing is that they feel out of control. And we have talked all about management accounting, not just year-end for taxes; we're like a clock, strike twice a day. And otherwise, you only know; and if anything it is extended, you only know if you're profitable in September for the whole prior year. And our whole focus is accountings at daily, weekly, monthly piece and that the owners at a minimum have to stop, take a step back and look at their financials and adjust their gut feeling so they can make great decisions on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, which are all those decisions you have to make so that your business runs better. It's more efficient, it's more profitable, and better to sell because it's managed well. But if you don't get that feedback where we have people; sellers that will go, wow, that was my best month ever and we're like, yeah, you lost a bunch of money. And they're like, wait, what? Well, you spend all the money on this and you didn't pay attention to your marketing spend and you spent through all your profit on the marketing spend. And if you don't see that, it doesn't do any good to notice that six months from now. So it's those kind of things. Or when they're looking at any of the many real-time tools, there's a big difference between real-time tools to do re-pricing and high-level reporting and you can use to make real-time decisions on re-pricing product or what to buy and all that stuff, and then double-entry accounting that accounts for everything. And then we help them adjust they're gut. Hey, this tool always shows you your sales numbers 10% too high, and then they can adjust to it and make those real-time tweaks. But the real value is they're serious about being entrepreneurs. They understand and they hate doing accounting. Most of these businesses didn't go into business to pay sales tax or do accounting and they want somebody else to do it, but they want somebody else who can talk the talk, who understands where the FBA is and FBA reimbursements and inventory and accrual and landed costs. And they don't want to have to train the accountants on just the terminology, let alone what are all the crazy things Amazon does, what's the settlement statement, and all that crazy. So that somebody that they can trust is taking care of those financials and then it's our goal to educate them on how to read the financials themselves and provide insight. Mark: Yeah, I think you talked a lot about kind of those boots on the ground sort of decisions, those granular decisions. I think financials and getting comfortable with reading your financial statements there's two levels. I'm a big picture type of guy and I actually just recently did this with Quiet Light and with another company I own where I took a look at my financials over the course of the last year and I just simply broke down the expenses as a ratio of revenue in the big categories and where are we? And with Quiet Light one thing I want to do is up our data game. We've got a lot of data that we built on over the years, but it's not organized as well as it could be. It's not point and click we could pull this data up. It requires some work. And you know what? It shows in my P&L because we historically had a large tech department that's changing. With my other company, we should be more marketing focused and it was this kind of bigger directional sort of CEO sort of thing and saying, hey, you know what, we really need to double down on the marketing. So I think the financials have that kind of dual-level play of you get the big picture, but the granular boots on the ground sort of decisions too is important if you know how to read them and understand them. You guys help with that. You help laicized some of it. Scott: We do. And one of the key values we do is each of our controllers who are CPAs we don't do federal and state income taxes, but they understand accrual accounting, gap accounting, and everything else. But each one is supporting at least 10 sellers and we never share confidential information, SKUs, or whatever but we can look across all of our clients and say, hey, wow, you're spending three times as much on your Google ad spend as we've seen with our other clients and we're not seeing that show up in your income. And they're like, oh, I just launched a new product, in four weeks I'm going to cut that back. And then our controller as from an accountability puts it on the calendar, calls the seller and say cut it back so you can start making profit. It's okay to ramp up your marketing spend and burn through your profit for whatever number of weeks to launch a product but sometime you've got to back it down. And if you forget all your profit is flowing out. And so it's that comparison and we can do that common comparison, kind of small data, big data across our client base because they're all consistent because we have no restaurants or which would be bad or nonprofits or other things. So it's that insight of being able to see multiples and your business too, you have the same benefits of the fact that I've looked at over a thousand seller's books. You guys have looked probably at least that many if you get that when you're in this niche and you focus on these areas, you really understand the nuances and you see the different scenarios and then you can provide that feedback. Mark: Absolutely, specialization especially for what you guys do. It makes a huge difference. Let's start with talking about different types of software, because Joe Valley, the co-owner of Quiet Light he often, says Excel is not accounting software. Unfortunately, we see a lot fewer Excel books these days than we used to, although they still come up every once in a while. The two dominant ones seem to be QuickBooks and Xero. I have seen other systems thrown in there from time to time. I know you've dealt with NetSuite to an extent. What's your favorite, why, or are they equally good? Scott: So Pepsi, Coke, they're great. It's so great that they… Mark: I'm a pop guy. Scott: Okay, yeah. Mark: Oh no, I'm joking. I'm not, I don't drink pop or soda. Scott: Yeah, I know. So in general it's great that they're both out there, they're both heavy competitors, Xero does much better internationally. Intuit has a much bigger footprint here; a much, much bigger footprint here in the US. But because Xero came along and has been in the cloud and about six years ago, got 200 million in VC funds Intuit went uh-oh we better fix our cloud solution. So that helped anybody that was on QuickBooks. So today they're both feature consistent. Okay, so if you pick either platform one or the other, you're going to be okay. We prefer Xero. We think Xero is a better cloud platform. It's better with multi-currency. If you're doing multi-currency, it is by far significantly better. And then our view is that Xero is a better company. Intuit is a shareholder driven marketing company and that's all they care about. They don't care about accountants. They don't care about small business. I mean their marketing says they do. They are a big, big business. And Xero even though it's much bigger, is still only a few thousand people. It started in New Zealand and is very much about supporting businesses and being engaged in everything else. And they're just really upping the feedback always. Mark: Yeah, I've got a soft spot in my heart for Xero. I put my other company on it for a while. I actually had to take it off because I didn't like their PayPal integration at the time and that other company had a good amount of PayPal sales, but I just like how they set up the system philosophically. It just felt tighter. It felt like QuickBooks you could have all these loose ends kind of floating out there and Xero, like their name kind of alludes to, wants everything zeroed out and they wanted all the balance out. And philosophically, it felt better. What about NetSuite or other third-party systems? Are there other systems that you think are good to work with? Scott: Not really. Really it's in that small; even if you're a startup, you should start on Xero and QuickBooks and you should be doing accounting from day one even if you have no idea what you're doing. And every business owner, entrepreneur, you have to wear every hat in the business so you understand it enough so when you delegate it, you can oversee it. So you can start at that level and the only reason we would expect anybody that would outgrow Xero or QuickBooks online or us at that 50 million or whatever stage is when their supply chain gets more complicated. So we can talk about cloud inventory tools but the idea is need and I'm a big believer in best of breed; so Xero for cloud accounting, Gusto for payroll, A2X for Amazon and Shopify income, Hubdoc for document management, Bill.com and others and Veem for international wire. So we've got these set of tools but then the cloud inventory tool really has to be specific to the client. Almost all of them suck in different ways but there are some that are getting to be pretty good that you can use. But if you outgrow those or you can't find a tool that you need that will meet your supply chain and the number of 3PLs you have and your manufacturing process, then you might have to grow up to NetSuite. And if you're a larger business and you want to be able to; you're buying a lot of international stuff and you have customs invoices that show up six months after you've done a sale and you want to back-calculate all of your COGS into the past, the only way to do that is on NetSuite. Because we do monthly snapshot accounting so if there's an adjustment six months later we posted in that month, we don't go unravel everything and put it all back. So if you need that sophistication or you need a more advanced one but you're going to pay for it price wise and you're actually going to pay a penalty that in my opinion, not great integrations to pull data from these sites and it makes it difficult to impossible to at least reconcile Amazon working with the different NetSuite integrations. Mark: Well, let's talk a little bit about that because I want to talk about some of the automation of this because I think the biggest challenge with a lot of the software is figuring out how to pull in the data in an efficient manner and we especially run into this problem with accrual accounting. This is why so many bookkeepers mistakenly or misguidedly tell their clients you should just do cash basis, because for them it's a lot easier, right? You see the purchase order, you enter it in, and going through to an accrual, you need to check your beginning inventory levels at the beginning of the month and ending inventory levels to figure that out. And it's just more work than they want to do, frankly. How do you set your clients up? I want to talk two questions, one would be how do you set your clients up for forward-looking moving forward we're going to be on accrual and keeping that automation in place. And then secondly, what are easy ways if there is an easy way to go back and get those historical COGS on a monthly basis for an Amazon business? Scott: Yeah, the two sides income. I mean, the first piece would be the automation we look at is first making sure you're posting your income properly. If you sell a hundred widgets that you get paid for 100 widgets and so we use a tool called A2X accounting to post the Amazon income. We've been using it for six-plus years. If posted a penny, it breaks up a hundred plus Amazon fees and follows the accrual method by posting a summary invoice. Because the main thing we recommend for everybody, unless you're doing B2B or direct manual sales on turns, every other sale can be summarized on a daily or weekly or monthly invoice and A2X will post Amazon and Shopify income. For Shopify, it will post Shopify payments every day that matches the payout every day. So the first thing you want to do is be able to get all the income into the system properly and then A2X breaks out based on our design. We're their close partners. We're using it for a year and a half but we were in Alpha for about six months, but they'll post and our standard is to post all the income by payment processor. So on Shopify, if you're using Shopify Payments and Amazon Pay and PayPal and Globally and Sasol and Afterpay or whoever else. It'll break out each of those posted invoice for each of those merchant providers and then you can reconcile it. So that's how you get your income and it's going to post it in the right period as to when the sale happened, not when you got paid. The difference between accrual, you track everything. And in our opinion and accrual, not only do you need it for valuation, not only do you need accrual to make sure you have a balance sheet so you can see your inventory and your assets versus liabilities but it's also easier to look at that if you have these huge expenses that you pay for or you're buying a ton of inventory and you pay $100,000 this month in shipping charges you want to spread that out and as you sell the product, pull that out not pull it together. Now for COGS and inventory, if you're looking for your values, the best tool is just you can't do it on spreadsheets. Just like you can't run accounting on spreadsheets, you really need a cloud inventory tool. You need the automation so you have a structured process to purchase products through a purchase order so you know what you're paying for. I mean you're constantly updating your costs, you're receiving that inventory. So whether it's fraud or they forgot to put a case; you bought 20 cases and they only put 19 in and they were just going super fast, which is usually the problem not so much someone's trying to rip you off. And if you can't catch that in controller control, you just have money that's just leaking because inventory is just cash in a different form that you're trying to turn into more cash. And so you really need those tools that are pulling in every order because all of that detailed data doesn't have to live in the accounting and it shouldn't. Xero and Quickbooks online are not set up to pull in every Shopify transaction, every Amazon transaction. They're not. The idea is you want that summary information and then you want to make sure that your cost of goods sold aligns with the income. So you have to have a consistent process. For Amazon, we upload costs into A2X and it'll post cost of goods sold so the same orders that were in your income even if the settlement statement splits over the end of the month all get posted in the appropriate month, and then you can do the same thing for Shopify. And then for our clients that are on cloud inventory, you can run as long as the tools provide in our focus, which would be cost of goods sold per channel so you can see your profitability per channel on the financials is really the piece you want to make sure that you can get that number, be able to validate it, and everyone's like, oh, that's this big accounting thing. I'm like no your whole world is operations; its purchasing product and shipping product out. Everybody will know we did 422 orders last month and they'll go, okay, and there's all the data for it and that needs to get applied to the accounting and then you need somebody who can do that properly. Mark: You said something just a little bit ago here which I find; it tends to be a mindset shift among a lot of sellers and that is your inventory is just cash in a different form that you hope to turn into more cash. And this is where the switch from cash to accrual changes and people that are on cash basis tend not to see this, right? They see their business bleeding cash and they see a cash in, cash out and when they spend all the money on inventory, they see that as losing value but it's not. You're just transitioning one asset cash into another asset inventory. And I think this is, again, why this topic of discussing books excites me because it causes you to think of your business in a different way; in completely different ways, as a blend of assets. Most of what you said, I already know our listeners are going to listen to this and be like that is way too complex for me to go through and do. Can I connect these things directly? Can I just plug and go or do I need to hire somebody to do this? Can I train somebody to do this? I mean, how do you actually go about implementing this? Scott: So there isn't one tool that will connect all the different pieces. Now Xero and QuickBooks online and A2X for an Amazon-only business gets you a long way along the method because if you're all FBA A2X will get you most of the way there. But for anything else, there's no secret process. So someone's like, oh, I'll just use what Logility and use their reports, they connect everything. I just did a deep dive review of them again and we couldn't figure out how they were posting the data and then we couldn't rec because we were evaluating we were trying to implement it. So you have to have a consistent set of processes to know you're doing your accounting on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. We do cost of goods sold monthly. So it's an hour or two per client per month because we have a standardized process that we follow through that shakes out vendor deposits and the other details. So the first process is what are you doing, what are you trying to accomplish, and just break that down, whether you're doing it yourself. Look at resources. We have some online courses. We have a bunch of YouTube videos to make sure we educate people. But then we still have a manual process for Walmart and eBay and Etsy and House and Wayfair and all these other channels where we download the data monthly, pivot it to post the income, and reconcile it. But we use the exact same data to apply a cost to post COGS. So it's a matter of that. Now, there are consultants out there that will help you set up the cloud inventory tool which we don't do, or you can work with the vendors to implement it and then you either have to manage it yourself or hire someone like Catching Clouds or another e-commerce accountant that understands the technology, the e-commerce space, and accounting. Mark: I think this is why it's so tough for so many people. Because as an entrepreneur, I have an idea, I've invented a product or I've identified a niche I want to go after and I'm good at that but now you're asking me to understand my financial reports. And then on top of that, you're asking me not to just understand my financial reports, but to understand the technological ecosystem around these financial reports to make them all work without hiring somebody who's going to cost me $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 a month just to be able to do this and suck up any profits that I do if I do have. That's why it is so difficult for people. The whole ecosystem is complex and difficult to understand. But I do know once you do get it set up, it is just a few hours a month. So you put in the effort of what am I selling, what are my processes, and then how can I get this into the system the right way? Once you get that setup, then maintaining it isn't as difficult as the initial setup. Is that fair? Scott: That is correct. Once you get those processes in place and you've got a defined process, you're just not assuming you can set automation and set and forget it, you're there. And then I would put the same due diligence that everybody puts into outsourcing; I mean, e-commerce sellers, the big things they outsource, except for the few that decide to buy a warehouse and want to invest in property and that's important to them being an entrepreneur and that's part of the journey. But that's, in my opinion, a very small percentage of the sellers, everybody else is working with 3PL warehouses or FDA or Walmart fulfillment service, Shopify fulfillment network. The same due diligence that anybody puts into that and understanding their supply chain or their vendors or who they're purchasing from, you just need to decide the financials are a priority for that order and then go through the same due diligence where you know nothing as an entrepreneur about whatever and then you start. But it is absolutely possible to put these systems in place or outsource the work like most sellers outsource and one thing I recommend every seller do is outsource sales tax. Don't try to use a tool like TaxJar or Taxify or Avalara. Just hire assault consultant or have someone like Catching Clouds, which we do it only with our accounting services because it's so complex. We're filing over 5,000 returns a year and even if you do everything right, the states generate notices and you have to deal with all of that. And the same thing applies to outsourcing your 3PL and your fulfillment. And then I would recommend outsourcing your accounting and finance because unless you're 30, 40, 50 million, it's really expensive to hire a bunch of accountants and manage them and train them and make sure they stay on top of the technology and all that other stuff. Mark: You know this is the sort of field that if you fall behind, is that much more work to get caught up. And I know we've referred some business over to you in the past that need some cleanup. We refer them to other partners as well that need clean up. What does that process look like? I'm saying, okay, I've fallen behind, I've been doing cash basis accounting for the past forever and now I want to go back three years to do this right and get moving forward. What sort of workload are you typically looking at to be able to get that caught up? Scott: Yeah. So in general, unless they were using A2X and it's very, very rare or they were doing things right or in a lot of cases it's interesting if the owners are involved, they don't know all the things in accounting and what they do they're very particular about so they do less wrong. Invariably when we see other accountants that don't work with any other e-commerce businesses, they're just making it up as they go and they make it worse and worse. 80%, 90% of the time we have to start over with a brand new Xero file even if somebody is on Xero because there's just tens of thousands of bad records in there and you can't get to it. So we set up a new Xero file. You import all the bank and credit card transactions for that time period. You categorize them and you reconcile all those accounts. Then you post all the income and then you go through accounts payable through all that time. And of course, once you just identify the data and even if they have another system, we can rip all that out, put it back in, but then make sure that no, no, this invoice was paid this month, but it was from the prior month to make sure that the bills are in the right period to get all that going. And you just do those accrual things and then we can post the income per month historically and then do the cost of goods sold per month. And so if it's 12 months or; and so we have to go back to either 1120 or 1119 to the prior tax return or back to the beginning of the business and run that and that's what it's going to take. We have looked at; we are Xero expert experts. My co-founder, partner, and wife Patti teach Xero experts how to do cool expert things in Xero and we have all these tricks to clean up the accounting. And I've got a whole list of things that I want Xero to do to allow us to make it so we can just take what's already in Xero and clean it up because the bank feeds and the fundamentals for Xero are great it's just when you connect all these apps and push in data, you end up with whatever. So it's really a process for us. It's about four to six weeks for one to maybe a little bit longer but it takes time. It takes time to set up the systems. It takes time to pull in the data. It takes time to get through it all and redo it and then validate things with the client go away. Hey, I bought a forklift. That was in inventory. I don't sell forklifts. You go, oh okay that doesn't go in inventory. We'll move it over to a fixed asset and off you go to the races. But it just takes a fair amount of work to understand to pull in all the data and do it. But for the most part, you just start with a new accounting file, get all your data; bank, credit card, bills, income, and COGS, and repost it following the accrual method. Mark: Yeah, I get that. I've been there. I've had to do that before. And you're right, going back when you have thousands of transactions can be a nightmare. I want to know where's the balance between good enough and probably not good enough and too much. And here's what I want to bring up to you, there's a well-known accounting company, which I will not name names, that has a cloud-based service that I know does cash basis and then at the end of the year does an inventory adjustment so basically giving you a full yearly accrual basis. And I've seen these financials before where all of a sudden December looks like the worst month ever because they're doing this massive adjustment at the end of the year. So that's one extreme and for a lot of owners, they'll say, well, it's good enough, I'm getting some high-level understanding of my sales and maybe my some cost, but not COGS. That's one and I would say that's not good enough but that is the attitude. On the other end, you and I have talked before about entering sales down to the individual sale, and being that's ridiculous you don't need to go to that level of detail. What is the balancing point from a controller standpoint being able to look at financials and be able to understand these books and be able to get both those kind of big picture decisions made, but also those granular decisions of look you're over overspending here. This is not a profitable product line or you need to stop ramping up your expenses in this area. What's that balancing point for you guys? Scott: So, yeah, there are a lot of people that really look at their financials and that other method is good enough for a tax return. It's not good enough to make those decisions to understand what's in your business. And it's just making sure that you're doing all of the accounting, not everything, right which means every bank. And the most common things we see when we review books is that they're not reconciling every bank account and credit card every month. Because if you think your system; you downloaded whatever data and you think you have $50,000 in the bank and the bank thinks you have 10, they win unless you've caught the error and fixed it. And it's typically just a data error so if you're not looking at the end of the month settlement for every bank account, credit card, and merchant account to say, hey, this is where we have clients were like, you had $30,000 disappear. Oh, it's a reserve. PayPal's got a reserve or Strike has a reserve which has been happening a lot recently. So we want to have those triggers but you want to make sure you're doing those reconciliations so that you know about all of those expenses and all the things flowing through your credit cards. The other thing is make sure every account's on there. If you're using a personal credit card from the owner because you don't have an Amex, Plum, or whatever in your business, and as long as it's dedicated to that business, it should be on the books. You should be tracking those expenses and then it's just do; and then you pay it off and it's just payments to the owner and it all works out from an accounting perspective. And then, like we said, you just want to make sure you're posting the income in a summary fashion and you could just decide to do it all monthly and know that I'm going to take four hours a month, I'm going to post the income and figure out COGS and get that done and it's good enough and if there's any adjustments. And then the last thing is you have to make sure that the balance sheet balances, which means all the numbers and the liabilities and assets. If the balance sheet doesn't balance you can't trust the P&L. You can't trust your statement of cash flows. And so it's kind of a do those core things and then go make sure you have somebody; an external party that's reviewing what you're doing at least monthly or quarterly to say, yeah, this is right or no, you have this write off or hey, you have this big hundred thousand dollar adjustment leach let's go see if we can figure out what's going on in there. Mark: It sounds like there's two steps here, right? There's the validation of your financials, but there's also an understanding or review of those financials. And maybe they're kind of linked together in the same thing where when things don't add up right that's a sign that you need to be digging deeper into something. Maybe you have an inventory leakage or you're leaking money because not all the inventory has been shipped or accounted for. And you would recommend that on a monthly basis then? Scott: Yeah, at a minimum, it's hard to do. We try to do as much of the accounting daily as possible. We believe that to stay on top of a dynamic e-commerce business, you have to be pulling in the bank feeds from yesterday today. You need to be looking at accounts payable and bills you know oh, I did a $30,000 prepayment on a $100,000 purchase order and I owe $70,000 in six weeks when it ships. Like if you're not paying attention to those things on a daily basis, then the owners are constantly pulling money out when they have to pay bills out of the business; their personal bills, and then the next week loaning the same amount of money or more back into the business and you just go do this swing if you're not staying on top of it. But if you're smaller and you're ramping up and everything else, at least do it monthly and then start doing a little bit more weekly. There is more automation that's coming over time around bank feeds and AI and other stuff, but it's going to take a while to get here. Mark: You know, one of the things that I think can really help once they start getting the stuff together is the ability to forecast. And I'm not talking about even on the sales side, that's kind of the second level of forecasting. But on the expense side, because you just brought it up right now, right? You have a bill of $70,000 that's going to come due. Have you planned for that or is that something that's gotten lost with all the craziness of the rest of your business? Or you want to launch a new product line what do your expenses look like over the next three, four, or five months? You can't do that if you aren't living to some extent in your financials on a fairly regular basis where you understand what's coming up. Do you guys get into much of forecasting even on the expense side? Scott: Not long term forecasting, but cash is king and cash flow projections. So we're just refining our process. So we have some clients that we'll do it for a daily for a short time when they've got lots going on at a specific time frame. And then we'll just provide kind of a weekly cash flow that's always that four to six-week view; here's where payroll comes out, here's your expected income, here's what the Amazon payments come in if you're not using Payability or something that lets you cash out every day so you can manage cash flow but it's really all about that. And we just haven't chosen to extend it for a longer period of time because our focus is daily, weekly, monthly but the idea is that the owner should take a step back and look and say, oh, because what we're trying to always get to is to say, here's how much free cash flow you have to buy inventory, pay for marketing, invest in the business, new products, new design, new people, whatever and then hopefully there's something left over for the owner as well. Unless you're in that I'm continually investing that's great but you need to know how much that is so you're not constantly doing. And that cash flow and that availability can include you have a $100,000 Amex plan card. That's just capital to you because most e-commerce sellers love racking up points and that's not debt. That's not a long term loan. They're going to pay that Amex bill probably every two or three times a week to keep the balance down so they can keep buying product to keep up with demand. But you need to know where those numbers are, where are those thresholds? When you're starting to push out against them if you're growing and your sales are growing, which is what's been happening for a ton of sellers in this big new world that we're in where everyone's home and everyone's buying online and that's all ramped up you need to know when you're hitting those limits and that you either need to invest more money as the owner because you're going to turn that cash into more profit; into more cash. Or you're looking at different lines of credit whether it's with a bank, which is usually the most painful way. But there are other alternative ways that aren't quite online loan shark and you find the balance between those to post that in. But it's really cash is king. If you're not looking at it; there's so many businesses that are profitable on paper, profitable on their P&L that go out of business because they didn't manage their cash. Mark: They didn't manage their cash or the cost. And you said costs are king what do you mean by that? Scott: Cash is king. Mark: Cash is king. Scott: Well, actually, costs are pretty important. If you don't have a good handle on your costs, you're going to run into the situation where you don't know what the value of your inventory is. And the most important thing is you don't know how to price your product. So if you have a product that you buy in the US and you buy in huge volumes and that your suppliers don't charge you shipping, you can use your buy cost. It's pretty straightforward. But if you're buying a product, either whether it's being manufactured or shipped internationally and it costs you a dollar per unit, but it costs you nine dollars to get it live in Amazon FDA or your warehouse, you need to know your cost is $10 is your landed cost after shipping and customs and insurance and even inbound into Amazon. So you know your all up cost to know what that is. And if you don't have a good handle on one of the first things we do with just about every client is revalidate their costs, identify the ones that are wrong, and then look at what they're selling it for. And they think they're averaging some margin and it's usually a lot less because they're not aware of their full cost for their product. And that's understanding that landed cost and landed cost is a key accrual process where you pay for everything and then you take that shipping and it gets added to inventory and then as you sell, it comes out and it's value. And that can make a huge difference on client's business. We have clients that are close and they're using landed cost, but they're not doing that last accounting bit monthly to do a journal entry to take hey, I spent as much on cost, customs, tariffs, whatever, and moving that all into the inventory account. And then you go, oh, I really have spent two million dollars on inventory and shipping and everything else, and I'm pulling out 200,000 a month in cost of goods sold. I have not just the number of quantity of units, but you can see the money flowing in and out of your business. Mark: Why don't we have you on monthly to the podcast? I don't know I feel like we just scratched like the first quarter of what you put together as far as the list of things we can talk about. But we are up against the half an hour, so I am going to cut it here and ask the best way to reach you; obviously CatchingClouds.net. You guys have courses available. Is that on Catching Clouds? Scott: Yeah. So if you go to our site, we have a contact form if you want to talk to me, especially if you're a larger business, I'm happy to talk or email and interact with anybody. I just enjoy interacting with sellers. Then we have our YouTube channel, which we have over a hundred YouTube videos, and we'll start adding more next month on basic topics. Now it's all my wife mostly who can explain things better and doesn't talk as fast as I do, but we're really there. And we have so much more that we want to push out onto those YouTube videos because we're happy to share the basics; how to read financials, and all these different things. We just want to help those sellers that are smaller than a million and or do it yourself. And then we also have a Facebook group that supports that for sellers and accountants for providing answers and questions for people that take our courses and just have general questions and then we have our outsourced service. So if you go to our contact form, reach out and I'm happy to interact and have a conversation. And most of my focus is really where your biggest challenge is and if I can help them figure out the top two or three cloud inventory tools that would be there or a developer that would do automation and build zappy integration to improve their efficiency or point them in the right direction, I'm happy to do that. And then our big services, we'll just take it all over, clean it all up, and then run it. Mark: Yeah, I think for those that are listening here, especially those that may not be in that one to fifty million dollar revenue range, the one thing I can say just from my experience is the companies that get there have books in order for the most part, much more so than smaller companies. And part of the reason that they've gotten there is because they have taken the time to put together good books. And it does give you insights into the business that you can't get otherwise. That doesn't mean that we haven't seen companies in the one to 50 million dollar range that don't have their books together. But all the more reason for those companies to make sure you're are doing this because if you aren't, I can almost guarantee you're bleeding cash somewhere and you're lacking optimization somewhere. I think the biggest thing; let's end with this cut, people are overwhelmed by this, they may be not sure how to start. What's one thing that they can do today? If they think that they're under optimized with their books right now, what's one thing that you would suggest that they do today? Scott: I mean, it really usually just comes down to education. So whether it's our YouTube videos or books like Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs is a good book. It's looking at that and then our big thing is process. So if you're not documenting your process for receiving inventory and dealing with returns, just take a whiteboard and put it on your wall and start building those things. So it's called the combination of education and then it's just organization so you can keep track of your to-do list and you know, oh, I've got to block out this much time every day or week or month for accounting. It's more about that discipline and then just get an accountability coach. There are other things you can do, like profit first for a different way to look at profit. Or you can hire someone for EOS entrepreneurial operating system and the traction books. So there are actual structured processes that you can join in where it's not just you have to determine it ahead of time, but it's kind of education. Have coach as partners, whether that's Quiet Light who gives out I know great advice. Even when they're talking to people two or three years from when they're selling and they may never sell to say, no, these are the smart things to do because everything they're telling you to do smart to sell your business is the same guidance to run your business profitably. And then get those external resources, find your peers out there and talk to them and share best practices, and just continue to evolve as an entrepreneur. Mark: Scott, it's really good to see you again. Thanks so much for coming on. Scott: You're welcome. Thank you. Resources:  Catching Clouds Catching Clouds Contact Form Catching Clouds YouTube Channel Catching Clouds Facebook Page Quiet Light Podcast@quietlightbrokerage.com

This guy is a straight hustler and is killing it in the mobile pizza game. He has not one, not two, but THREE mobile units including one BADDDDDAASSMOTHATRUCKING Food Truck. Learn more about how he got his start, his tips for success and how it pays to have a great personality. And of course, listen in on all the pizza talk! Visit him in the Sacramento Area- To see where they are at and follow them on Instagram! IG @bellafamiliawfp Full Transcript Here Scott: I love being mobile so much. My scenery is different. You know every day I'm looking at something else and that is also really cool. Eidref: Thank you so much for tuning in to the what's Good Dough podcast. I hope you enjoy it. And I hope you share it. Want to get in touch with me? Follow us on Instagram; What's good Dough. And remember to always ask what's good dough? What's happening? It's your boy Eidref. How y'all doing? How y'all doing? I'm doing great, in case any of you were wondering. Today, we have an amazing episode with Scott from Bella Familia wood fired pizza in Sacramento, California. Scott has not one, not two, but three mobile units including a beast of a truck. We talk about hustling, and what it takes to remain the top mobile pizza dog in your area. And overall, I just want to say this has been one of my most fun conversations. He is just a great person with a great personality and I'm really excited to share this episode with you all. So sit back, relax and enjoy the show. And remember to always ask what's good dough. How are you doing today? Scott: I'm doing great. Eidref: Awesome. For those people who don't know who you are, can you give me a brief introduction? Scott: Yeah. My name is Scott Thorson, I'm with Bella Familia wood fired pizza. I'm about a Rocklin California. I have been doing mobile wood fired pizza for a little over 12 years and that's a real quick kind of overview. I've got a couple mobile pull behind wood fire trailers and then I have one unique looking food truck. Eidref: You have a badass food truck. You can follow Scott on Instagram and I'll make sure to tag his handle on the show notes. But, describe this food truck for people listening. Scott: We took a 20 foot storage container and put it on the back of a Freightliner truck. Actually, the very first one was called Del Popolo down in San Francisco. They've got a truck and so you know, what is it copying is the best form of flattery or something. I mean, their truck look beautiful. And so we kind of took it as well as some inspiration from a few other trucks around the world that are kind of doing the same thing. And I found a local fabricator, and I've had it on the road about four and a half years now.

Guest: Scott Lalor started his undergraduate education at Brigham Young University where he studied economics and finance. After graduating he had the opportunity to work for a few local companies in Utah including Zango, Goldman Sachs, and England Logistics. He then got his Master’s in Business Administration from the University of Notre Dame. After receiving his MBA Scott recruited straight to Amazon at their headquarters in Seattle. A few years later he transferred to their Luxembourg office where he is currently living with his family and filling the role of Senior Vendor Manager. Overview: Have you ever wondered what it’s like getting a career in international business? Or how to manage diverse teams representing a variety of cultures and countries? Join us as we learn from Scott Lalor, Senior Manager at Amazon in Luxembourg as he shares with us his experience managing abroad. Transcript Meg: So first Scott could you give us a little bit of a background about yourself? Scott: Absolutely, first thank you for inviting me out. I’m excited to be back on campus and speaking about business. So, I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah and then out of high school I came to BYU. I played on the lacrosse team, had a ton of fun doing that. And then I spent two years on a church mission in California. I came back from that and focused more on my studies. I ended up graduating in Economics but also spent a fair amount of time in the business school studying finance. And then I ended up getting my MBA at the University of Notre Dame. Personally, I am married to my wonderful wife Allie. We have two boys ages eight and four. We absolutely love to travel, it’s one of our favorite things to do; my two boys have been to twenty-one countries already, so they love to travel as well so we passed that on to them. And anything outdoor-related hiking, biking, fly-fishing, and most recently I’ve picked up soccer or as my European colleagues a called it Futbol. I am still pretty bad, but I have a lot of fun doing that. Meg: Tell me a little bit more about some of your travel experiences… Scott: So, we’ve lived in Luxembourg for two and a half years. It has really become kind of our leap pad to the world. We’ve been able to travel to a lot of European countries and we’ve also been able to go a little bit farther. So, we’ve spent time in Israel, Turkey, Morocco, and Egypt. Some really some special places and it’s really taught our family about the world and different cultures. Just a few fun stories that I like to tell. First, a funny one. So, we were in Germany’s late one night visiting some Christmas markets and we were all hungry and so we went to this pizza place. They didn’t speak English, our German is quite bad and so my son ordered a pepperoni pizza for dinner and when it came out it wasn’t pepperonis like we know here in America, it was actually huge peppers across every inch of the pizza. So, he looked at me in fright. We all had a good laugh about that. So, we ended up picking the peppers off and enjoying now a cheese pizza. I would say, on the more serious side, we visited Egypt. Egypt as many know, has been through some real challenges over the past five or so years after Arab Spring and you know their economy is struggling. So, we went to a city called Hurghada which is on the Red Sea and visited Luxor and some of the some of the neat Egyptian sites that a lot of people know. When we’re there we got a taxi every day and went into the city and we met this wonderful taxi driver named Mohammed. We became close friends with him. The first day he picked us up and said, “Hey do you do you need a taxi the next day?” and we said, “Sure.” So, we ended up going with Mohammed four or five nights in a row. So, the third night he turned around in the cab and said “Are you interested in meeting my family and coming to my house?” And you know we were in Egypt in the middle of nowhere and we felt a little hesitant about that. We didn’t know how safe would be. I think what I’ve learned so much about living abroad is we have preconceived notions about people and countries and religion and often that is driven by what the media tells us. And so of course we felt hesitant, but we were able to build a relationship with him. And so, my wife and I just said, “Sure.” We ended up going to his parents’ house. Just to kind of paint a picture, it was a very run-down apartment. We walked in, still a little bit nervous and right when I walked in Mohamed told us to sit down on the floor. We met his parents, they were wonderful. But Mohammed ran out the door. So we were now thinking “Wait, what’s going on? You just brought us unto your home you ran out the door.” I didn’t know what he was doing, if he was going to get whoever. He ended up bringing his whole extended family in. So, all of a sudden, a whole bunch of kids can run in the door and his sister and his other sister and brother-in-law. They were speaking in Arabic and basically saying, “The Americans have arrived.” So, they made us tea and we sat on the floor, they showed us their wedding video, and his kids start playing with my kids. They were telling us about their lives in about the challenges that they’ve had with the Taliban and have his brothers fought terrorism and how his brother died in the Army. We walked away from this experience just loving the Egyptian people. It was such a special moment to connect with these people from a completely different part of the world, but they want the same thing that we want. Like a stable government, good jobs, and a safe place for our family. We actually still keep in contact with Mohammed. We’ve been able to support him in some ways. His mother is quite sick and unable to support him. That’s a really special experience that I was able to share with my family. Meg: Sounds pretty amazing. It’s one thing to visit another country, but really amazing thing when you can actually connect with the people. Thanks for sharing those cultural experiences with us. So now can you give us a little bit of a description of your career path, where you’ve been, what you’re doing now? Scott: When I was at BYU, I was very lost. All my friends seem to know exactly what they want to do, whether it be investment banking or consulting and I frankly didn’t. I didn’t know what to do. So, like I said I did economics and was interested in finance. I graduated around 2010 right after the financial crisis so there were a ton of jobs out there. The economy wasn’t doing great. So, I ended up starting a company called Zango. They have a big international presence and I knew I want to work in finance, and I knew I want to work in an international environment. I started as a treasury analyst managing the European business consisting of money movement, foreign exchange policy, and working to ensure that we have the right cash in the right places. So that was a fun job. I was then recruited by Goldman Sachs in their Salt Lake office working with hedge fund clients, so being both operational support and customer support to that. I learned a lot at Goldman. Very tough environment. After that, I was recruited by a company called England Logistics, also a local company here in Utah. It is mainly a trucking logistics company, but they had a separate arm where they did accounts receivable factoring. So, basically buying receivables from trucking companies and then paying out at a discounted rate. I manage that whole division risk and risk portfolio. So, we would analyze the risk of each receivable and manage the trucking companies that we work with. We grew really fast, had a big team, both from a finance standpoint and an operations standpoint. I learned a lot. That was like a crash course on management. Things are going really well but I always knew I wanted to get an MBA. I wanted a broader business education and I knew I wanted more International exposure. I ended up applying to the University of Notre Dame, I had friends go there, and got accepted. That was in Indiana and just a wonderful experience. I loved culture Notre Dame, and the people were really special, and of course the sports and the football games were extra fun. Out of my MBA I was recruited by Amazon. They came on campus and did four interviews in two days and then I was lucky enough to receive an offer. I started to Amazon in Seattle as a Senior Product Manager over a Prime Now. Prime Now is an ultra-fast 1-2 hour shipping and it was brand new. Honestly, the best way to describe it was like the wild west. We were trying to figure out how to continue to meet our customers promise, which is 1-2 hours, which is much faster than what we’ve ever done at Amazon. So, I got thrown in there when it was part of the product team. So, I help to define what selection our customers would want in 1-2 hours. It was more of a consumable base model than what you traditionally buy at Amazon.com. I did that for about two years and really enjoyed it. But that desire to do more international work was still in me. I hadn’t ever worked in-country and so after that two years I did a lot of networking in the different global companies within Amazon. I reach out to the London office, and the Luxembourg office, and Singapore, and any of the more English-speaking countries. I ended up finding this role in Luxembourg. When I started Luxembourg, I was a manager of vendor management for the automotive team. So, I’ve been doing that role now for about two and a half years. Meg: So now that you are working internationally will you explain to us a little bit more of the nature of your business interactions with different cultures and countries? Scott: The Amazon that Americans know and love is the retail Amazon. It’s basically three things in our business model, it’s selection, convenience, and price. What we try to have is the best selection of the whole world, which means a really broad selection. We always have good prices or sharp prices. Third is convenience and the way we think about convenience is that we can deliver it to you fast and that whatever products you want we have in stock. So, we’re basically taking that Playbook from the US and taking it to Europe. So, within the automotive team we’re were much younger. So, the automotive division that I work in has only been around five or six years. So, we’re building our selection, we’re making sure we can deliver fast, and that we have the proper prices. So, in my role as a Senior Manager I interact and my team interaction with vendors across the EU, the US, and Asia to sell products in our five Amazon EU websites. So, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, and the UK. My team manages all aspects of the vendor relationship from introducing them to Amazon, to contract negotiations, and then to account management. I love it because we get a build a strategy the start of the year and how we think to grow this business profitably and then we got to go execute that strategy and we have full P&L responsibility. Meg: So, you mentioned that you’re kind of taking the amazon structure that they have here in the US and taking it there. What are the main differences of working here in the US versus what you do there? Scott: My experience is that Europeans have a more balanced approach to work life. Secondly, working a Luxembourg offers much more International diversity for such a small country. Luxembourg is a special place. Many people don’t know much about Luxembourg. It’s a tiny country that is in between Germany, France, and Belgium. It has about 600,000 and half of the people are expats or not from Luxembourg. That makes for a very International community that you just don’t find in too many places. I think big cities like London, and New York, and Singapore have that and so I would put Luxembourg out there. So, you get that international feel. A fun story that I like to tell or two different stories I like to share. So, my son had a party a couple months back at our house and all the kids are playing and there were 8 or 9 kids over there. The countries of those children represented where India, China, England, Greece, Italy, and Turkey. In his classroom there’s 12 or 13 different countries represented, and we love that I think it’s so cool. The conversations that we have with our boys about these different cultures and about how different parents are and different relationships are is something that that we love. Meg: I bet. And they’re probably learning a lot from their different experiences. Scott: Absolutely, we have conversations that we just wouldn’t have if we lived here in Utah or somewhere else. We’ve talked about currency and how a Euro isn’t exactly worth a dollar and why that is, and we talked about languages and how the different languages work. Both boys are learning French so that’s exciting to see them progress in their learning. And like I said we talk about culture because the way our friends’ parents interact with their children is different than us. Another funny story is our Italian friends invited us over for dinner on a Saturday night. So we said, “great, we’re excited,” good fresh Italian food. That was earlier in the week and so it was Saturday and so we text them and said, “okay what time should we come over? us Americans usually eat dinner let’s say 5 or 6 p.m.” and they said, “come over around 8:30 and we’ll start eating at 9 p.m.” So, we kind of laughed, our kids typically go to bed around 8, but all Italians culturally they have really late dinners. Kind of as a joke we bring our two boys in their pajamas because we knew we were going to be over there till 11 or 12 and we were thinking about getting up early in the next day. So that was a funny experience. Meg: That’s funny that you mention that because I noticed even when we were in Luxembourg there everything seems to close a little bit early. The city goes to sleep. So, what’s the day to day like at your job in Luxembourg? Scott: It’s quite similar to my time in Seattle. Generally, working in Europe the way I described it is that it is a little bit more complex. You have the EU, European Union, which bring some unification to working in those different countries, but every country has its differences. So, whether it be different currencies or different languages. Logistically each country does it a little bit differently, the regulations I would say or less unified than the US. So, when we manage 5 websites with 5 different languages and multiple currencies it’s a little bit harder to scale and to accomplish some of the things that we need to accomplish. So, it becomes challenging you have to be really creative about where you spend your time and you have to ruthlessly prioritize on the most important things. Meg: Sounds like you have a little bit more steps along the way. So, how do you approach management and leadership when working in a multicultural team or working in a multicultural environment? Scott: This is something I’ve learned a lot working internationally. The first thing I would say is listen more and talk less, which is hard for me. I would say one of the greatest takeaways from working and living abroad is it has made me more unsure of myself and how I think the world works. And I mean that in a good way. Regardless of who you are if you live and grow up in the same location your whole life you come to believe your surroundings are how the world works or how the world should work. When you get thrown into a different country, a different culture, you see other ways of solving problems and you say to yourself “wow maybe there is more than one way to solve a problem. Maybe the way we do it isn’t the best way or maybe there’s other ways.” And even better you say, “you know these people and these cultures they understand something that I don’t understand.” So, I love that as I’ve re-evaluated how I think about different cultures and think about the world. As a manager I’ve learned that diversity is so important in building a team. If you can build a diverse team then you can tap into different strengths and have greater outcomes. I’ve also noticed if you have people that are all the same whether it be all from a country certain country or from a certain part of a country, or all male or all female it often quiets the minority group. The ideas aren’t as good, because not only do the majority think a lot alike and agree with each other, it can hurt the team dynamics. So, being attentive to diversity on a team is super important. I try to make sure that everyone has a chance to speak up and has a platform to share his or her opinions. Meg: Has it ever been difficult for you in trying to form teams and deciding who should be on what team? Scott: Yeah cause the core of what you do is your people. Our Vice President said it the other day. He said, “our main focus is to build and develop our people. Luxembourg makes it a little bit easier maybe then some locations. So, within my vendor management team we have people from Italy, Germany, France, Turkey, India, America, and the UK. That geographical diversity is so valuable, and you know the questions you asked was “is it difficult?” I think it’s really difficult. Also, from a female perspective I work in the automotive world and there’s these preconceived notions that it’s only a male driven culture. And so, we’re trying to be the leaders in the automotive world to bring with more women into it. We as a leadership team focus a lot on that and not only just wait for female applications to come in but go out and recruit female employees. That’s been really important for me and it’s led to such great success. Meg: When it comes down to it would you say the diversity really trumps the specific skill needs, or is it a balance of both? Scott: That’s a really hard question to answer. Let me answer it in this way. At Amazon we don’t believe so much in industry knowledge. We specifically have on our application “no Automotive experience necessary.” Which I think it completely different than a lot of other companies. We believe if you’re smart and you can meet our leadership principles, core values, and our culture we can teach you about the automotive industry. But it’s very difficult to teach culture. It’s difficult to teach diversity. But if you can build a strong culture and you can build a diverse team, we can teach you the necessities of the industry. Meg: That’s an interesting perspective that not many have. I like that. Does your approach to vender management differ between different countries? How? In what way? Scott: For sure. As mentioned, different cultures approach business differently and to get positive results I have to adjust accordingly. For example, Italian vendors that I work with, in my opinion, value relationships more than other cultures. In the US when I worked with vendors everything is very email-based. We didn’t necessarily build a relationship. It was more of a transactional relationship than a personal relationship. I’ll give a story to illustrate what I mean. As I mentioned my vendor managers and I we go out and we try to bring vendors onto Amazon. So, we were working to sign a vendor on Amazon, this was a very important vendor, we called them and sent them emails and tried to convince them to join Amazon for years really. Things were just not moving. We could always get kind of wishy-washy answers and “yeah we’ll join” or “yeah we’ll do this” but we just never saw the results. Finally, my Senior Vendor Manager and I got on a plane down to Milan, drove a couple hours, and went to meet this vendor face-to-face. We shook their hands, we visited their factory and we sat we and just talk for a half an hour 45 minutes about them, about the history of their company, about their products, about them personally. And then after we built that trust, after we got to know each other, after they looked in our eyes and trusted us. Then we could actually talk about business and the conversations we had there so different than the ones we had on our phone. What I learned from that experience and others like that is that each culture has a different style of doing business. To be successful you first have to be aware of these differences. It has taken me a year to really understand these differences. Secondly, adjust accordingly. We had a lot of success with that vendor after that meeting and we’ve had subsequent meetings where they’ve come to Luxembourg. Now they know me personally, they know about me, and they know about our business. So, it required a higher level of trust than what I’m used to. Like I said once I realize that then I’ve become much more successful in knowing what’s important to these vendors. Meg: That’s very interesting. And that kind of leads to my next question. What would you say are necessary skills that you need when working in vendor management with different countries? Scott: What we call vendor management at Amazon other companies can call different names. We’re kind of like a sales team and we’re kind of like account managers. We do both functions. The way I would answer that question is first you have to have good strong interpersonal skills. Like I said earlier you have to be able to listen. Close your mouth and listen because what’s going to come isn’t maybe what you expect. Because each business has a different strategy and different philosophy and that’s especially true of the international level. So, being able to listen, to ask questions, and being able to build those relationships at a personal level are absolutely necessary. Second is negotiations. We negotiate every day. We have interest and the vendor has interest and sometimes those are aligned and sometimes those aren’t aligned. You have to be creative to find solutions that benefit both parties and where both parties can gain. You have to understand where there is value for them and where you can add value. Sharpening this negotiation skills is really important. Third is data analysis/finance. My core education, like I said, is economics and finance. You can’t own a P&L Statement, you can’t own an income statement if you don’t understand how the income statement works. So, things I learned at BYU and the Notre Dame, just those core fundamentals of how the income statement interacts with the cash flow statement and the balance sheet. Because I know that I can then take action that will impact those different line items. So being able to both understand the financial aspect and then the data analysis comes when you have millions of rows of data and how to tell a story. At Amazon as you can imagine we have so much data, more data than you could ever want. Data about what customers are looking at, what customers are clicking on, what’s the click-through rate, what’s the sell through rate, how often are we out of stock when someone comes and looks at a product, and our pricing. It’s easy for new employees Amazon and other companies to get totally lost in this data. We’re in a world of data now with the internet and with cell phones. So being able to know what data is most important and really sharpening those data analytics skills. And like I said in Europe at least you have to be able to deal with ambiguity. You have to deal with uncertainty. For example, you have situations like Brexit or certain situations like we’re having in Turkey where the currency devaluations day over day 25%. You don’t necessarily have those experiences in a more stable environment like the US. You have to wake up and be ready for whatever comes at you. So, dealing with ambiguity because there are more political, economic, and cultural differences and so sometimes you just have to roll with the punches and figure out the best solution. Meg: Sounds like flexibility is a big key needed for success. So, it seems like a big part of what you do has to do with effective communication with different countries. Have you ever had any miscommunication because your expectations were different from another’s? Or just in general? Scott: Yeah, very good question. So, speaking about myself and where I’ve grown is I was too direct. And I would say on the cultural Spectrum Americans are more direct or one of the most direct cultures. When I first arrived in Europe, I found myself mostly in internal meetings being very direct with people. Not necessarily in a rude way, but just like very direct to the point and I maybe missed some of the small talk and miss some of the relationship building. I remember after about a year my boss took me aside and said, “Scott I appreciate your hard work and you’re doing great things, but you need to be less direct.” And that took me by surprise. I guess at first I was a little mad. It’s hard to receive criticism or feedback when I thought she was wrong. But in retrospect she was totally right. What I learned is to be successful in the long run, in any culture, is you have to make friends. You have to make allies both internally, within your company, and external. What I mean by that is don’t just think about the business problem. Don’t think about people as somebody’s who is going to help you solve a business problem or a transaction. But get people on board. Get them on your boat. Get him going in the same direction, because you’re going to need those same individuals at a later point. When you work for a company for multiple years you interact with those same people whether it be in your department or in the finance department or the marketing department or in operation. You’re going to need those people again. You want to make sure you keep a high standard, you keep a high bar, and your work quality is high, but you don’t you’re not so driven in a way that you burn bridges or hurt long-term relationships. Meg: That’s a good piece of advice for us to all keep in mind. With that, what other kind of advice would you give for someone who is planning on working internationally? Scott: I think there’s a few different ways. I think it’s hard to find a job internationally direct from the US to a foreign country. I found it difficult. I tried that but it is very hard. What I’ve seen most people do is get hired within a local company that has operations globally. You do well in your current role, receive high feedback, and let your manager know that you want to work internationally. Then after a year or two or however long you go connect with those local Global office. You build a network there. When hiring internationally if the hiring manager already knows you fit the company culture and you have a track record and they can communicate with your current manager it makes getting hired a lot easier. So that’s what I did at Amazon. I worked for two years in Seattle, built a really strong relationship with my manager, told her exactly what I want to do next, which was work internationally. So when the call came in from my next manager she was prepared and we were all on the same page in terms of what my skill-set was and what was what I was able to accomplish. Meg: So really prove yourself and then the doors will open. So how could a student like me prepare for a future job in international business? Scott: The first things I would say is be curious. I would read about the different challenges that are going on in the world. I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, which has an international section so I can stay up to date on all the trends and all the world events both politically and economically in Europe, Asia, and America. So that first will give you an understanding of what’s out there. Secondly, I would say just be brave and get out in the world. Whether it be a vacation first, or a volunteer opportunity, an internship, or something else. My biggest message to young people today is, the world is a big beautiful place and has so much to offer the mind and soul. I love the different cultures, the food, the people, that I’ve been able to experience over the last few years. They all provide an element of excitement and joy. So those connections you make both personally and professionally will be some of the most important connections and the most important things in your life. Meg: Thank you. We really appreciate you joining us today and all your insights. Scott: Absolutely, great to be here. Thank you!

James:  Hi audience and listeners, this is James Kandasamy from Achieve Wealth True Value and Real Estate Investing Podcast. I'm excited to let you guys know that last week we had Mark Kenny from King Multifamily and we discussed a lot of interesting stuff about some of the different markets that he's been buying. They have been buying like in five different markets. Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Texas, and Florida. And it's very interesting to see, apart from Texas and Florida, which are, you know, more popular markets and how do they underwrite deals in Alabama and how they underwrite deals in Tennessee, you know. So it's a very interesting episode, I would encourage you guys to listen to that as well.    This week we have Scott Hendricks from Current Investment LLC. Scott is a wealth manager and we're going to be covering different topics such as a DST or Delaware Statutory Trust, which is another alternative for 1031 exchange. You're going to be talking some things about 1031 exchange. And we're also going to be talking about qualified opportunity zones investments and some of the broker-dealer licensing such as series seven licensing, which is really important for people who want to raise money using broker-dealer license. Hey Scott, welcome to the show.   Scott: Hi James. Thank you very much.   James: Awesome. Awesome. So did I miss out anything? Do you want to fill in the introduction with anything else that I missed out about yourself?   Scott: No, I, I appreciate that. I have been an Austin based wealth manager, financial advisor for about eight years now. I have a series seven, which is the general securities license and I have a series 66, which is called a combined uniform state license. I also am licensed with my clients in California and Arizona and Wyoming in addition to Texas. And I am affiliated with a broker-dealer firm known as Kelton and Associates. They're based in Tampa, Florida. But my business current investments are based right here in Austin.   James: Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. I really want to quickly get into the series seven being a broker-dealer because there's a lot of capital out there. There are very, very few deals nowadays. And what's happening is a lot of people trying to raise money, you know trying to be a money raiser, but there's a lot of advice that's coming from the SEC attorneys that, you know, you have to do it the right way. And there's a lot of discussion about why not I become a broker-dealer? So can you define what is a broker-dealer, which is basically a licensed person who's allowed to legally raise money? What is a broker-dealer?   Scott: Sure. So a broker-dealer in my case is basically the...I think of it as kind of my back office. The back office that supports registered representatives like me with performing my transactions for my clients, maintaining regulatory oversight and supervision of my activities, ensuring that I receive ongoing training. They handle the registrations with the government entities that oversee all securities business in this country. And you're correct, there are a wide range of licenses that govern various aspects of all of this activity. They are now regulated by an organization known by its acronym, FINRA, which is simply the financial industry, regulatory authority and finra.org is the website where anyone who would be interested in learning about these licenses or possibly even obtaining one of these licenses could go and look at the menu of the different licenses that FINRA overseas. Some of which are for broker-dealers, some of which are for general securities representatives like myself, some of which govern the transacting in your liquid securities and private placements, which are often the kinds of opportunities that I believe you're describing where it is necessary to raise funds.    I don't remember the specific numbers of all of those licenses. There are about two dozen types of licenses that FINRA supervises. And I would encourage your audience if they were interested to learn more about that to go to FINRA, finra.org.   James: Got it. So how difficult is it to get a series seven license? I mean how long does it take? How difficult is the exam? What do you need to be good at kind of thing? Can you explain?   Scott: Well, you know, interestingly I got my license eight years ago. I know some things have changed as far as the cost. The costs have gone up a little bit. They're still reasonable. Most of these licenses can be obtained for a few hundred dollars, a filing fee, purchasing the study materials, scheduling the exam. I would say the process takes anywhere from three to six months. There are no prerequisites so you do not have to have a finance degree from college, you don't have to work in the financial industry. You can simply if you purchase the application for the license, study the material, take the test and pass the test, you'll obtain one of these licenses.   James: So do you need to know a lot of financial terms? Is there a lot of math? Is that calculus involved?   Scott: I wouldn't have passed if there was very much calculus. No, there's no need to know a lot of math. It certainly helps to be familiar with, I would say intermediate financial concepts. Certainly, basic concepts like, you know, interest compounding, time of the value of money cost basis, rates of return; fundamental financial concepts that anyone who wishes to invest or is already an investor should be familiar with. But there's no set list of previous academic or experience requirements that one must have before taking one of these FINRA exams.   James: Got it. So basically the cost is less than a thousand dollars. You say $300 eight years ago.   Scott: Again, I'm a little out of date, but I would say yes, you can still apply for any of these federal licenses for less than I would even say, you know, three to $500.   James: Got it. Got it. And so you say three to six months you go to the exam, it's not that difficult, you need to know basic financial concepts, which I think is important. You're going to be advising people about their money and what's the rate of return.   Scott: It's a designed course of study to maintain the credibility of the industry, the level of professionalism and the basic knowledge base that the regulatory bodies in this country want professionals to maintain for the benefit of their clients.   James: So when you are taking a series seven and becoming a broker-dealer, why would one person want to be a broker-dealer?   Scott: If you want to oversee agents, if you want to essentially work with a group of agents, representatives, who will assist you in putting together investment opportunities and seeking investors, seeking clients, raising funds a broker deal or license, which I'm going to go out on a limb and say a broker-dealer license is probably more difficult to obtain, a little bit higher barrier because of that nature. That a broker-dealer is more of an office in charge of a number of representatives who then go into the field and work directly with clients.   James: So are you saying broker-dealer has someone under them who works with the clients?   Scott: They could. There's no reason why a broker-dealer could also not be an individual as well. But it is a different level of licensing required to have broker-dealer credentials than it is to have securities representative or securities agent credentials as I do.   James: Oh, got it. Got it. So series seven will get you into the securities agent level and there's another level where you're to become a broker-dealer, I guess.   Scott: That's reasonably accurate. Yes. So series seven, again, a series seven is called general securities license that enables me, authorizes me to transact in marketable securities for individual clients or businesses. So I am authorized to recommend and Franz deck that is initiate the buying and selling of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, registered private placements and in that last case to accredited investors. So it opens up a range of investment transactions that I am authorized to both recommend to clients and then assist them in transacting in those assets. A broker-dealer could essentially be in a position to put together deals, to put together or review outside deals that then they would approve an authorized to their representatives to go out and seek investors, recommend them to investors   James: Got it. Great. I think the structure is similar to like in real estate agent versus broker, either the broker has somebody working for them.   Scott: I wish I thought of that. That's a great analogy. I think that's very comparable. Yes.   James: Got it. Got it. Very interesting. So I didn't even know that; I thought broker-dealer is a person, I mean, can be a person, but it's usually like a company where a lot of agents work for them and these agents get the series seven licensing. Okay. Got it. Got it. So I presume if you want to do fundraising for your lifetime, then you want to get a series seven licensing and be part of a broker-dealer.    Scott: You know, I would advise anyone interested in being licensed in the securities industry to get a series seven. The series seven is almost the gateway licensed to a range of other licenses. Some of these other licenses do require that the individual have a series seven as a prerequisite. And as I mentioned earlier, there are licenses that are specific to illiquid private placement types of investments. So if I was interested only in raising money for let's say for startups or for venture funds or for passive real estate portfolios or deals, I would encourage that person to go get the series seven but then also look for one of the more specific licenses that delve more deeply into the specialized knowledge required for those kinds of specialized  investments tailored to the accredited investor.    James: Oh, got it. So series seven is just basic and then there's a lot more specific to the niche, I guess.   Scott: Yes. Now, the series seven enables me to do both, but the accredited investor deals that I am able to recommend to clients must first be approved by my broker-dealer.    James: Okay, got it. Got it.    Scott: If I had one of these more specialized licenses, I might be able to go out and self approve or do my own independent due diligence and then recommend a particular investment to an accredited investor.    James: Got it.    Scott: As such, right now I need to go to my broker-dealer and say, Hey, here's a good deal. It looks like it would be right for one or several of my clients. And then asked my broker-dealer to scrub it, do their due diligence and then if they approve it, I would be authorized to go raise funds for it.    James: Got it. Got it. So if one of our audience who wants to raise money for commercial real estate, you know, as syndication or multifamily, so they can get a series seven license and go and work for a broker-dealer.  And in that while they work, they can propose to raise money on specific multifamily or any other commercials syndication, I guess to the broker-dealer and the broker-dealer needs to approve that, then he can go and raise money for that part of their syndication. Okay. Got it.    And I mean, if it's not confidential, do we know how do these agents get compensated in terms of percentage? What is that range if it's not confidential?    Scott: No, it's not really confidential. In my case, it's not confidential. In fact, it all has to be completely transparent and disclosed to the investor. So, for example, on a non traded REIT,  if I was to recommend a real estate investment trust to a client that had previously been approved by my broker-dealer, I would earn a commission. In most cases where the investment is illiquid, I'm not gonna put that into a fee-based account. It's a standalone transaction that might complement that particular investor's portfolio. If they agree, I would disclose my commission and my commission generally runs between about four to 6% on the deal. Again, it's very comparable to what a real estate agent might earn on the sale of a property. But I'll disclose my commission, if the investor wishes to proceed, then I'll help them invest and I'll earn a commission on that transaction.   James: So four to 6% of the money being invested, is that right?   Scott: Correct.   James: Got it. Got it.   Scott: You know, four to 6% of the investor's contribution I would earn as a commission, a percentage of that, I would share with my broker-dealer, my back office. The way we think about it with these securitized real estate deals is if you invest $100, you know, $94 of your investment goes into the ground.   James: Got it. Yeah, I understand.   Scott: You know, approximately a 6% sort of transactional cost. Speaker: Got it. And do you get paid in the beginning or do you get at the end or during the transaction or how does that..?   Scott: It really varies depending on how the deal is structured. It really varies. In many cases, my commission will be earned upfront, but there are certain deals where, where my commission may be considerably less upfront but I'll get an annual payout over the life of the time that the investor holds that deal. It really just depends from a deal to deal.   James: And it's a one time commission. Right? That's it. Right?      Scott: In most cases.    James: Yeah. So I think what some people are doing is basically they're getting a GP percentage, which can be a lifetime, I mean, of that investment. But this is slightly different. Did you get a commission flat fee of 4-6% in the beginning? I mean, not at the beginning, in most cases.    Scott: Right. Yeah. Most of my business James is fee-based portfolio management. So I may work with a client who has a portfolio of stocks and bonds and I'll earn a percentage of that account value over the time that I manage it on behalf of my client. It's in these cases of the one time a private placement transaction like a REIT or a Delaware statutory trust, where I'll simply earn a one-time commission. And then the investor will then own a passive property, a passive asset that will generate passive income for that client. But if they also have hired me so to speak or work with me to manage their other portfolio, that may be on more of a percentage-based or a fee-based relationship.   James: Got it. Got it. So is it public information on which agent or which broker-dealer is doing better than others like the stock market, in terms of performing for their clients or is it all private?   Scott: You know, that's one of those questions that can always only be answered with the words 'It depends.' It's really difficult when you come down to investing for individuals and let's say for business owner clients to compare performance. Because each and every investor has so many different goals and different risk tolerances and different timelines that it makes it very difficult. It really is apples and oranges to compare the performance of an entire book of business; either held by an advisor like me or overseen by a broker-dealer. It almost makes no sense to try to compare rates of return or performance simply because each and every investor has a unique objective.   James: Absolutely. Absolutely. I agree. I mean, that's a really good comment. I mean, returns are one thing, right? But risk profile off the investors and you know, how risky is the deal itself is another factor. And everybody has their own taste or flavor that they want to take on when they want to invest. So, awesome. Awesome. And why does an equity investor want to come to a broker-dealer versus going to a private syndication model and invest privately?   Scott: I think a lot of it has to do with the extra risk that you are mitigating by looking for investments that have already been registered with the securities and exchange commission and have been scrubbed; that is, have been researched thoroughly by a professional organization. And you know, there are certain things like just the credibility of the track record of successful deals that it has offered to clients that have exited; all the kinds of things you might look into with a private syndication deal. But for some investors that extra assurance of knowing that it has met the registration requirements of the securities and exchange commission and has been scrubbed and approved by a registered and licensed broker-dealer.   James: Got it. Got it.   Scott: That basically, that does that for a living. That does it, you know, hundreds of times a year looks at deal, memoranda and all of the documentation that goes into assuring investors that the deal is sound. And while you can never completely eliminate risk in any deal, I think that there's a certain risk premium that is reduced with registered and professionally researched opportunities.   James: Got it. Got it. Got it. Although I think I want to just clarify one thing. So usually the investor's equity is paid out of their equity, right? I mean the broker-dealer or the agent fees in this model are paid out of the equity. Whereas in the syndication model, a lot of times people who you know will become part of the GPS as one of the functions to raise money. They get the money from the GP, not from the passive investor. So that's one big distinction, right, because...   Scott: It is, that's correct. That's correct.   James: It makes a difference as well. So, in terms of the profile of customers who come and look for broker-dealers and agents who work with broker-dealers, I mean, is it like a lot of family offices, a lot of institutions, or is it a lot of private equity investors? How would you say in terms of percentage?   Scott: I think the answer is yes. And again, every wealth manager's business is different. In my case, I primarily work in the area of regulation D filed, liquid or a passive real estate and other types of deals. I generally am working with high net worth individuals.   James: Okay.   Scott: High net worth investors who are accredited and are simply looking to add or complement their existing portfolio with passive income through real estate, through business development companies. I also transact in oil and gas, master limited partnerships. So it's the investor in my case who is looking to diversify our portfolio and derive passive income at a rate that is more favorable than they would get in the bond market these days or certainly more favorable than they would get in something like a bank insurance CD or savings account. And perhaps doesn't have the inclination or the experienced to go in and evaluate real estate from private syndication that others might feel that they do have. So I'm able to offer for the less experienced real estate investor, the kinds of opportunities to derive passive income without the expertise that it might take to evaluate a syndication deal.     James: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Makes sense. Yeah. The professionalism, of course, makes a lot of difference compared to someone you know, coming on from a weekend boot camp. So very interesting. So, yeah, I mean that's really good.   Scott: There are always different paths.    James: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And so coming back to 1031 and DSTs - Delaware statutory trust. So 1031 is, you know, a lot of people know what 1031; where it's basically an exchange mechanism within real estate to a much larger real estate offer, same kind where someone has to identify like three deals within 45 days of closing of the current deal. And they can defer the capital gain and they can defer the depreciation recapture back to the new deal which they should close within six months. Am I right? Did I miss out some?   Scott: You know, that's pretty good. Everything you said is correct. I would simply add, and the way I like to describe it, a 1031 transaction is it's taking advantage of a section of the tax code and that's all 1031 is. It's simply a section of the internal revenue code that allows a real estate investor to sell a property or multiple properties and exchange the proceeds into other real estate, either a single property or multiple properties that can be either active or passively owned and differ all taxes that might be paid as a result of be the capital gains, depreciation recapture. There are a few other taxes that may come into play. For example, if you're in a state that has a state capital gains tax like California, that can also be deferred under the federal a tax code section 1031. But you're correct about the timelines there.   There are pretty strict timelines that must be met in a 1031. And I often tell groups of real estate agents and investors that 1031 is widely known. A lot of people know about it, but it still kind of has some stigma or some intimidation factor about it that prevents it from being widely used. And so part of what I try to do is help my clients and others understand the 1031 process. The primary thing they're going to gain is what they might have otherwise paid in taxes, they can keep inequity and reinvest into other real estates. You mentioned that in many cases an investor will trade up with the 1031, going into the larger holding in real estate. I also see a lot of clients who spread out their investment and diversify into other classes o rfeal estate or into other geographic areas that they may not have owned previously. So it really is a wonderful way, four real estate investors to both diversify, expand, and differ the tax liability in the process of building a portfolio of real estate.   James: Very interesting. But It's within the real estate asset class, right? Can they go from a real estate, you know, equity a 10 31 into something else other than real estate?   Scott: Not as of the end of 2017. And this is something that may be new to your audience. So with the last tax bill, I think it was called the tax cut and jobs act passed by the government in Washington back at the end of 2017, the rules of 1031 were limited. Whereas, previously investors were able to exchange property in maybe in a non-real estate asset. For example, if you owned a, I like to use the example, if you owned a classic car collection, you could sell your antique automobile and exchange the proceeds into real estate or into more cars or fine jewelry and still do it under section 1031. All of that went away at the end of 2017 and left only real estate tangible property is now the only asset class that can be exchanged under the tax deferral section of 1031.   James: Okay. So that's something new. I didn't even know that previously before 2017 you can exchange from other than real estate to other than real estate even though now you know, we all are real estate people so it's all within real estate, which is good.    Scott: And you also hear another common misconception about 1031. The 10 31 exchange is also sometimes commonly called the like-kind exchange. Like-kind is a phrase that is used in the actual language of the tax code. And a lot of investors, and frankly a lot of real estate agents confuse the phrase like-kind as meaning that if you sell multifamily, you must buy multifamily. Or if you sell a commercial property, you must buy a commercial property. That is not the case. Like-kind is very broadly defined by the IRS. Meaning, if you sell anything that has a physical address, a tangible property, you can buy any other category of tangible property. So if you sell a block of single-family homes that you've held as a rental property, you can go buy a warehouse or if you sell a self-storage property, you can go buy a ranch. So it's really any kind of property. It can be exchanged for any other kind of property,[31:24unclear] since 2017, as long as we're talking real estate.   James: Okay. So let me clarify that because we had some kind of sound issue there. So after 2017 we can go and exchange, even though it says like-kind, but you can go within a different asset class, like buying from single-family to a ranch or from multifamily to single-family. Okay. So if you still within real estate, you are good I guess. Right?    Scott: That's right.    James: Got it, got it. Got it. And I think one of the common strategies that a lot of you know, generational real estate investors use is basically to buy real estate and keep on exchanging until they die. And when they die, they gave it to their kids as a gift and where the cost basis starts all over again. And that's the generational wealth Passover, right? Is that true? I mean, did I say it correctly?   Scott: Yeah, it is. And really the 10 31 exchange is, I believe a terrific way to build a real estate legacy. If the investor has heirs or hopes one day to pass a legacy of real estate on to their heirs, 10 31 exchange is an excellent way to do that. Because as long as you continue to sell and then buy real estate under the rules of section 10 31, there's no limit to the number of times you can do it. And as long as you continue to do it, you have deferred your tax liability each time. If at any time you chose to cash out and simply sell your holdings and take the cash and walk away, you're going to owe the tax and in fact, you're going to owe the cumulative tax that you have been deferring. So there actually is with 10 31 a fairly strong incentive once you've begun the process to just keep doing it.   And if you keep doing it until your time is up and you have heirs waiting in the wings, you will upon the date of death of the original owner, that owner will leave to their heirs a legacy of real estate that upon the date of death is stepped up in cost-basis. That's the term that the auditors use such that the cost-basis will then become equal immediately to the market value as of that point in time. And as I like to say, the heirs, if they don't wish to hold on to the real estate, they conceivably could turn around the day after the funeral and go sell everything and pay virtually nothing in capital gains or depreciation taxes.   James: Got it. So that is an awesome tip there. You can use real estate to not pay tax and make tons of money and, of course, your kids are your heirs, they inherited that and they will make the money. But it's a big way to give your wealth that you have created to your heirs, right. And without paying any taxes   Scott: Right. And, again, it, it would then be up to that next generation whether they want to continue to own that real estate and continue to enjoy the benefits of passive income and all the other benefits of owning real estate in a portfolio. Or as I said earlier, if they chose to get out at that time because of the step-up in cost basis, it would potentially eliminate or virtually eliminate all of the capital gain tax liability.   James: Got it. And also the depreciation recapture, right?   Scott: The appreciation recapture as well. Now of course, if there's an estate tax, depending on the size of the portfolio that is inherited, an estate tax may still come into play. But that's an entirely different situation.   James: Estate tax. Okay. Got it. Got it. Got it. So let's come to DST - Delaware statutory trust. And I know some people say this is similar to 10 31. Can you explain what this and why we should use this compared to the normal 10 31?    Scott: Absolutely. So a Delaware statutory trust is not widely known. I've been familiar with these opportunities for about 4-5 years now and I've spoken to many real estate groups, investor groups, agents, attorneys, CPAs. The Delaware statutory trust, in short, is the only form of passive real estate that is eligible as replacement property in a 10 31 exchange. So let me expand on that. A Delaware trust is often compared to a REIT. It's very different from a REIT in many important ways, but it is a legal form of ownership set up around a property, around a physical property, and then offered to investors who may invest in a fractional percentage of the underlying property via the trust.  Because a Delaware trust must own physical property, the IRS recognizes it as another way an investor could engage in a 10 31 exchange. In other words, the 10 31 is just the process of selling and then swopping or buying other real estates. You could either as an investor buy an active property or properties, you're going to be the landlord and hold the deed and be responsible for the rents and the tenants and the repairs. Or you could own a fractional interest in a Delaware statutory trust. You would be a passive investor. The sponsor of the trust would have all management and landlord responsibilities, but as a fractional investor, you would derive your proportionate share of the income. And because there is underline real property in a Delaware trust, the IRS allows these types of trust as an eligible investment via section 10 31.   And so here's really how it works and this is kind of the main core, I think, of the benefits of the Delaware statutory trust, In section 10 31 exchanges, the investor sells a property that begins, as you alluded to earlier, that begins a 45 day calendar, a 45 day clock. That investor has 45 days to identify, in most cases, up to three properties that they intend to reinvest in. Now, they don't have to invest in all three. They could identify one primary property and two backups or two properties and one backup. But they've got to have those properties identified in the first 45 days.    A Delaware statutory trust makes an excellent backup property because it's passive, for one thing. It's open to investment. It's not going to fall out of escrow during the first 45 days as sometimes real properties do. In other words, it's not going to go off the market. If that were to happen with the investor's primary or secondary property and the deals weren't going to close there, if they have named a Delaware trust as a third or as any of their backup properties, their money could then roll back into that trust as an investment and that would effectively secure their 10 31 transactions from start to finish. So Delaware statutory trust makes great backup properties in that first 45 day identification period.   Secondly, in cases where an investor is selling a property and buying a property for less, or actually buying a less expensive property, maybe a value-add property that they want to improve and they're going to have some leftover cash from the deal that they sold, a Delaware statutory trust makes a great way to capture or invest that leftover cash and still secure 100% of the transaction, the 10 31 transaction, from tax. So as a simple example, if you're selling a million-dollar property and the property you want to buy is 850,000, you've got 150,000 leftover. It might be hard to find another real property for 150,000 in some markets. So a Delaware trust comes along as a great way to park or invest that residual leftover cash securing 100% of the 10 31 proceeds from taxation, at least deferring 100% of the tax liability and giving the investor now two different properties.   One is the primary property for 850 that they wanted to buy and fix up or be the landlord over. The other is the 150,000 fractional interest in a passive investment that they will have no work responsibilities to maintain, but they'll be receiving a passive income from that trust. And then the final way that I think Delaware trusts are powerful is if the investor is simply wishing to continue to own real estate but really wants to get out the landlord business entirely. And that would be someone who maybe has been an active landlord for a better part of their investment career, wishes to continue to hold real estate because it's a great asset. Why not? But doesn't want to be a landlord anymore. So they may sell all of their active real estate properties, declare their intent to do a 10 31 exchange and then pick two or three Delaware statutory trust to put 100% of the proceeds into. They now have switched from being an active to a 100% passive investor.    Someone else does the work of the landlord that is the sponsor of the trust. They began to receive the mailbox money or the passive income, still own real estate as part of their portfolio and they've effectively deferred all of what would have been their tax liability from selling their active holdings. And another wonderful thing about two more points about a Delaware trust. You can do a 10 31 exchange out of a Delaware trust. So when the underlying property in the trust sells, which signals the liquidation of the trust, the investor will be notified with plenty of time. They can then declare another 10 31 and take their proceeds out of the Delaware trust, which may have appreciated over that time and they can take those proceeds and swap them into some other property. They can either go into another trust or they can go back into the active real estate market if they choose to. Or of course they have the option to simply cash out, take the cash, and at that time they would incur the tax liability.    And then the other benefit of a Delaware trust is you do not have to do a 10 31 exchange to invest in a Delaware trust. Delaware statutory trusts are open to cash investors. So it's a good way for an accredited investor, which you must be. In order to invest in a Delaware trust, you must be an accredited investor, but you do not have to be bringing money into the trust via 10 31, you could be a cash investor. But once you're in a Delaware trust as fractional owner with either your cash investment or your 10 31 proceeds, you can then when the trust liquidates do a 10 31 exchange. So a Delaware trust provides a good way for a real estate investor who wishes to be passive, doesn't have a property to sell but wants to in the future be able to do a 10 31 exchange. As long as they've got cash and they are accredited, they can invest in a Delaware trust.    And then you know, three to five to sometimes seven years down the road when the trust liquidates, they'll be eligible to do a 10 31 exchange and defer any potential tax that they might have otherwise paid.   James: Wow. I didn't know so many things about DSTs. This is very eye-opening for me. It's like a syndication but it's a tax-protected syndication, right?   Scott: It's a way to take 10 31 money; money coming out of a 10 31 deal and put it into an investment open to up to 500 individual investors typically, which is far more than something like a tenant in common where you're limited to only 35 investors. Delaware trust, yes, you're a fractional owner of a real estate portfolio that is managed by a sponsor who acts as a trustee and you basically, your only job is to go to the mailbox and receive your checks.   James: Got it. Got it. Yeah, I was trying to bring that up. Tenants in commons is another way I thought Delaware strategize is similar to tenants in common. Because in tenants in common is where everybody puts their 10 31, everybody has their own LLCs, all different entities, but they work as one. But you brought up a good point. There's a limit on 35 tenants in common that can be done but DST is 500 people.   Scott: And an important distinction to make there is that with a much higher cap on the number of investors, you're able to fractionally own much larger institutional scale types of real estate. So you may be able to be a fractional investor in a downtown Dallas office tower that's in a Delaware trust, whereas 35 investors, it would be difficult to pull together the 35 investors who could afford to purchase a multimillion-dollar property. But with a Delaware trust, you often are a fractional investor in a property portfolio that could potentially be worth tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. So access to a larger scale institutional type of property is one of the benefits of what the DST has versus a tenant in common.    And then the other one, now some will see this as a negative, some may see it as a positive. With a tenant in common, each one of the up to 35 investors has a vote. They have some control over the upkeep and the sale or the management of that property. And as you know, when the property is going to be sold, you've got to get the unanimous vote of all 45 investors. With the Delaware trust, the investor is 100% passive. They do not have any say, any control over the management of the property. That's entirely the responsibility [48:05unclear] of the sponsor. They also do not have any control or voice over when the property is going to be sold. So if that appeals to an investor, in other words, if they say, I don't want I have to vote or to have to go get the other 34 people to vote, I just want to be passive, a Delaware trust is a good option compared to [48:31unclear]    James: But what is the average return of Delaware statutory trust?   Scott: So again, that varies. It varies from you know, market conditions and from the difference of Delaware trusts that are available. Typically what I have been seeing lately are rates of return between about five and seven and a half to 8% and that's cash on cash. So cash on cash or nominal right of return is let's just say six to six and a half percent in the midpoint. So while that is not typically a strong rate of return compared to private syndication or even compared to a lot of tenant in common deals, you have to look at the other benefits.    One, again, access to larger institutional scale properties. The fact that the Delaware trust is going to be a registered program, sponsored and regulated by oversight bodies. And then three, although this is also the case with the other types of real estate investment, the sponsor of the Delaware trust in rules similar to REITs. If they are taking depreciation on the underlying property, that tax credit has to be distributed to their investors. So while the nominal rate of return might be 6%, that is the cash on cash return, in many cases, the investor is going to see some portion of that cash dividend be already after tax. In other words, it's going to receive the benefit of that depreciation tax credit that the sponsor is taking. So depending on the investor's tax bracket, their effective rate of return is going to be higher than their nominal rate of return, given that some portion of that distribution is after tax money.   James: Got it, got it, got it. But let's say for example 6% cash in cash, is it including the sale of the property or is there such thing called the sale because they are physical assets under this DST, right?    Scott: Yeah, no, you're right and I thank you. I should be clear. That is the cash flow. Let's say that, again, rates of return I'm typically seeing now average, I would just say average around 6% for this example. That is the cash flow. So that's the annualized cash flow that the investor is going to receive in monthly checks. Obviously one 12th of that amount in monthly check is the underlying property where they have their principal. If that underlying property appreciates over the life of the trust and is sold at a value greater than it was acquired for, the investor is also going to receive their prorated share of that appreciation. So the aggregate return is, I like to call it, or the total return is if the property appreciates is definitely going to be higher than the cash flow rate of return.   James: Okay. So do you have that kind of sample numbers on roughly what's a performer?   Scott: I can refer generically to some of the deals that I've seen. So let's say if an investor puts $100,000 as, let's say in this scenario where I described leftover cash; if they've sold a million-dollar property and they want to do a 10 31 and buy a $900,000 property and put that residual 100,000 into a Delaware trust, I'm just gonna use a number typically four to five, six or seven years. And again, during this time, the investment is illiquid. The investor cannot get their money back on their own schedule. They have to wait until the sponsor finds a buyer and sells the underlying property. But most real estate investors understand the concept of illiquidity.    So if they've put 100,000 into a Delaware trust and five years down the road, the sponsor finds a buyer for that property and sells it at 25% gain, 25% in an appreciation, the investor is going to get their 100,000 back, they're going to get 25,000 for their proportionate share of the 25% gain. And during the five years they've held it, they've collected, I'll use the 6% rate of return as an example, they've collected $6,000 a year in monthly distributions at a 6% rate of return. So they've in effect received in a very simple example, their $100,000 back. They've gotten $30,000 of cashflow over five years and they've received a $25,000 gain or appreciation on their original investment.   James: Got it. Got it. Got it. Interesting. So, yeah, I mean, it depends on the structure of syndication, right? Usually, you know, like for me, we allow people to buy and sell their shares. You know, within the investment period, but it looks like DST doesn't give that flexibility.   Scott: A DST and you know, again, it's important for me to also say that with DSTs, there are still risks involved. You can lose money as you can with any type of investment. The illiquidity of the investment is something that the investor has to be informed of and understand that if they are an investor in a DST, they're at the mercy of the sponsor for the holding period. Now, while the disclosures require that I tell investors it's a five to seven year hold time with no option to exit. Typically with the market right now being what it is, I have seen DSTs liquidate sooner then five to seven years. It's simply varies from yield to deal.   James: And what is the fee that the sponsor takes in DST?   Scott: That again, it varies from deal to deal. Typically there's a 1% a dealer or sponsor fee, at closing. And again, as I mentioned earlier, I do earn a commission on investment that goes into a DST, it can range from anywhere from four to 6%. And, again, it's in the same ballpark as if you were working with a real estate agent and buying the physical property or working with yield syndicator and buying into syndication.   James: Very interesting. I mean, I didn't know this vehicle exists and this is very powerful in terms of 10 31 money specifically. Why? Because you know, and I was thinking that you always have to go in 10 to 200 to go to larger properties, but it looks like you can buy smaller properties and take the remaining and put into DSTs I guess. Right?   Scott: Yeah. It's really a part of my message that using a DST is a great way for an investor to diversify if it is in their interest. First of all, the primary reason anyone would undertake a 10 31 is to defer the tax. But a DST allows that investor to diversify into different types of property, both in terms of asset class or asset and active and passive real estate. So they can begin to sort of put more chest pieces onto the chest board, I guess and look at passive investment, active investment, lodging, self-storage, multifamily, single-family industrial, commercial; build a real estate portfolio that is truly diverse in terms of geography, asset category and the active and passive of ownership status.   James: Got it. So let's quickly talk about qualified opportunities zone. I mean, there's so much of details into opportunity zone. I don't think we have time to go into a lot of details there. But at a high level, what is qualified opportunity zones investment, how is that different from a normal 10 31 and DST and you know, investing into opportunity zones?   Scott: So qualified opportunities zones were also part of this same tax act that passed at the end of 2017. They are a fairly new concept or fairly new opportunity for investors. And the case can be made that opportunity zones were written into law because investments that were not real estate were excluded from section 1031 eligibility. So an opportunity zone is a geographic region of the country and there are a thousand or more opportunities zones all over the country where the local authorities have designated a desire to have investment flow into those zones from investors. They may be, you know, below market regions of cities or communities where the thought being that if investment dollars float into these areas, we would have more healthy economic development.    Qualified opportunity zone investors may use gains from a sale of an investment other than real estate, whereas with 10 31, all you can exchange is real property. So, for example, if an investor has a stock portfolio and it's gone up in value, they want to sell their stock portfolio, but they'd rather not pay the capital gains tax that that's going to incur, they could invest the gain from that sale into a qualified opportunity zone, differ the tax liability, invest in a a property or real estate or real estate fund that's building projects in that zone and then they would enjoy a certain tax benefits due to the deferral of their original gain. If they maintain that investment in the opportunity zone for 10 years, they could then cash out and take their money and pay no tax. So one of the important differences between a 10 31 exchange and an investment in an opportunity zone is to put it simply, you don't have to die in order to cash out tax-free.   James: But do you get 100% tax being erased?   Scott: Not in the first case. You're correct. It really is complicated and we could probably have a whole separate episode on all of that opportunity zones. There are really two appreciation events that are subject to favorable tax treatment when it comes to talking about opportunity zone investments. The first one is the gain that the investor realized on the sale of their asset, whatever it may be that they want to put into an opportunity zone. So if they sold real estate that had gone up in value or sold stock, or I'll go back to my classic car example, and had an investment sale that would have been subject to capital gains tax, they can defer that tax up to seven years by putting that investment into an opportunity zone. Now, it is only a seven-year deferral. So after seven years, the investor will owe a portion of the tax they would have owed on the original sale of their investment.    It will only be, in the case of a seven-year deferral, it'll only be 85% of the tax they would have owed. So it is truly just a deferral. You do have to come up with tax payment, at least 85% of the tax you might have owed seven years ago. In year seven, that tax bill does come due to the IRS. But understand now we're talking about two different investments. The investment that was sold to make the original opportunity zone investment, the tax four, which is deferred seven years. So it might be a benefit to an investor's cash flow and then the investment within the opportunity zone itself. And if that investment turns out to have been a good one, and the real estate or the property or the project in the opportunity zone appreciates over 10 years -hold time- and the investor then cashes out of that opportunity zone investment that will be exempt from capital gains tax.    So it's that second investment in the opportunity zone that if it is a winner, if it appreciates over 10 years, the investor has the potential to cash out with their gain and owe zero capital gains tax.    James: Got it. Got it. Very interesting. So let me summarize. 10 31 DST and qualified opportunity zone. So 10 31 let's say I have a million-dollars, where I want to defer my tax and my depreciation recapture, I just buy another asset, right? A larger asset or multiple assets, but it should be a larger value than all of it get deferred. And to the next asset, if I don't want to pay tax, I have to, you know, keep on doing 1031 until I die and pass it to my heirs. That's the 10 31.  So DST is basically you asked it's the same as 10 31, but it's more of passive investment.    Scott: Let me, let me jump in there and clarify it. A 10 31 is just a transaction. It's a way to sell and then buy real estate and defer the tax, not pay tax during that transaction. A DST is an asset. It's a kind of an investment. It is a passive real estate investment that can be a part of the equation of the 10 31 transaction.   James: Got it. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And qualified opportunity zone is basically, it's the same as 10 31, but you're deferring your tax for seven years and on the seventh year, your bill is due to the IRS, but you get 15% forgiveness.    Scott: You basically get a discount based on discount on the tax that you would have owed in year one. You'll owe 85% of it by the time year seven comes around. And so again, that was the tax you would have owed on whatever it was you sold to make the opportunities zone investment.    James: Got it. Got it. So the original tax difference, you only pay 85% after year seven, right? So you get 15% forgiveness. But I think the bigger thing in an opportunity zone is whatever deal that you're investing in an opportunity zone that's completely free in terms of capital gain after 10 years.   Scott: Yeah. Right, right. If the investment you have made in the opportunities zone does well and it goes up in value and 10 years down the road you have the opportunity to exit, you'll owe no tax.   James: Okay. That's very interesting because that's another investment where you don't pay tax at all. And if you're doing most of the time you definitely make money, right. If you go through the construction phase and you're past that I guess. Right.   Scott: Well, I will say that opportunity zones are new. There are a lot of risks involved. We don't have time probably to go into them here, but yes, there are a lot more considerations to making a potentially successful opportunity zone investment, but in the basics, I think you've got it correct.   James: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've heard about so much of details on opportunity zone that you're to be really careful whether it's a qualifies opportunity zone and, you know, there's so many things, right. So awesome.    Scott: And you know, James, this is a good opportunity for me just to mention as kind of a way of a disclaimer. I am not an attorney and I'm not a CPA. And one of the most important pieces of advice I give to my clients is if you're doing any of these complicated real estate transactions, check with your lawyer, check with your CPA to make sure that you've gotten all your questions answered before you write the check.   James: Yeah. I think the purpose of this podcast and talking about so many things of this is just educational and just letting people know there are options out there. Which is very important because I was not aware of DSTS and you know, there are so much of details of the, you know, opportunity zone. So it was very eyeopening for me, so thank you very much. I appreciate it. Why not you tell our audience how to get hold of you if they want to get hold of you?   Scott: You bet. Sure. again, I'm Scott Hendricks. My company is called Current Investments. My website is currentinvestments.net. That's all one word, current, like the flow of water and then investments plural.net. You'd be welcome to send me an email or give me a call. My email is Scott@currentinvestments.net. My phone number...Do you typically, do your guests share their phone number?   James: That's up to you.   Scott: Okay, well that's fine. I don't mind at all. My phone number in Austin is  512 563 2134    James: Awesome. All right, Scott, thanks for coming in. I learned a lot of things. I'm sure my audience and listeners learned a lot of things and that's it. Thank you.    Scott: It was fun. James. Thanks very much.

Scott Meyers is a real estate investor based in Indianapolis. It all began in 2005 and since then he has grown in the self-storage industry as a developer, owner, syndicator, and operator. He has several multi-million dollar businesses under his belt but his favorite is self-storage and today he is in control of over 7,500 units. Scott started ‘The Self-Storage Mastermind’ to teach others about the self-storage business.  In today’s episode, he discusses how he entered the real estate industry, why he’s chosen to grow with self-storage, and what one should keep in mind before investing in a facility. He gives us insight on one of his memorable deals over the years- what happened, what he learned and what’s going on with it today.  Some Of The Episode Highlights: His Self-Storage Business His ‘Why’ in Self-Storage The ‘Boomerang Property’ Special Gift for Our Listeners    Connect with Scott: Website: selfstorageinvesting.com   - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  TRANSCRIPTION Intro: Hey guys, this is Don, your host. In today's episode, I will interview Scott Myers. Scott is an amazing investor and he specializes in one of the most interesting asset classes, self-storage facilities. Today, me and Scott will discuss the nature of this market. Also, as previously mentioned, I want to remind you that you have an opportunity to get a free 30-minute phone call with me and Eden if you review our podcast on iTunes. Simply rate the podcast and write a review of how you feel about the content and the show. To redeem, email us the content of the review to Hello@donandeden.com. You will then be contacted and scheduled for a 30-minute phone call with me and Eden, where you could ask questions or network about any subject or project that you would like. So, let's get started and I hope you guys will enjoy the interview. Lady: Welcome to the commercial real estate investing podcast with Don and Eden where we cover all aspects of real estate investing with special attention to off-market strategies. Don: Scott, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? Scott: Hey, Don, I am fantastic. How about yourself? Don: I'm great. How's the weather up in Indiana? Scott: Well, that depends. We had our first snowfall of the year last night. It had about three inches, which is a little bit more than we normally get this time of year. So, I think I'd rather be down next to you conducting this interview right now. Don: Yeah, I mean, we just got the best weather right now in Florida. It's been very muggy for November, 75 degrees all throughout. I used to live in the Midwest, and I know it kind of gets cold in that period of time of the year, right? Scott: Sure can. Yep. Don: Yes. You've been living in Indiana, all of your life, born and raised? Scott: Born and raised in Michigan. I went to the University of Michigan and after I graduated, I moved down to Indianapolis where I took a job. I was working in the telecommunications industry before I got involved in real estate. Don: Wow. Okay, so that's a pretty sharp transition. What made you move into real estate? Scott: When I began looking in investment books on ways to I guess diversify my retirement rather than relying on our 401k stocks and bonds and mutual funds ran across several books, one of which was Robert Kiyosaki's book terms in real estate and the more I looked at more I realized that I didn't want to put my money into the stock market as the poor dad did in Robert Kiyosaki's book 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad.' And so, I began investing in single-family homes and then it took off after that. Don: Yeah, let's talk about your initial investments in the single-family space. What did you do, fix and flip? Scott: Began to buy single-family homes, and then fix them up, refinance them and rent them out. And I did that for a number of years until holding. It's kind of a tough gig holding on as a landlord unless you're flipping some as well. So once the economy began to turn in 1999 and 2000 during that downturn, shortly after the government came out with the Community Reinvestment Act, and made it easy, a little too easy for anybody to own a home and so we began then turning around our houses to sell them. So, we became retailers in addition to landlords. Don: Nice. I know right now you're focusing primarily on self-storage. Tell us about the first time you got to learn about this asset class and this market in general. Scott: Began looking into self-storage because of, well, that wasn't the cash flow that I wanted to have in single-family homes and apartments on like I had intended. And then when I went back and looked at the business model, I realized that most of my expenses were a result of a related to tenants and toilets and trash. And so, we all love real estate and we love running real estate if it weren't for that. So, I began looking into what are the other asset classes in real estate that has the benefits of real estate, but without all the hassles of the three T's. And it's either parking lots or self-storage. And so, the more I begin to look into self-storage in the business model, yeah, I really liked what I saw. And began attending some industry trade shows, then dip my toe in the water by getting into a partnership with someone in a self-storage facility. And the rest they say is history. Don: Yeah. So, there is a question that I want to ask you. I know now that you're very big on the self-storage space and you own or you're in control of over 7500 units, I’m guessing in self-storage just since 2005. So, you've been a longtime player in that space, but I want to ask you more about the beginning because I remember I just recently did a transition from residential wholesale real estate into commercial real estate. And even then, being an experienced investor and owning a lot of properties and having capital, it's not easy. So, you said something about going to shows and learning about... So, tell us a little bit about that period of time where you did not make your first deal in self-storage yet, but very attracted to that asset class and what you did in that time period, how much time did it take for you to get your first deal? Scott: There weren't any resources. You found me, Don because we have an education company as well. We teach people how to go about and do this business and we've been doing that since 2008. But prior to that, that company was really born as a result of that. There wasn't a resource, there wasn't a Scott Meyers out there to learn from it. So, I attended the industry trade shows and those shows are primarily for the folks that are already in the business.  So, I begin talking to the attendees and just asking them, "What do you like best about self-storage and what don't you like about self-storage?" just to get an understanding from several folks that before me and how to get into it. There still wasn't any way to learn the nuts and bolts, the A to Z or how to get into it. When I came home as I began to do more research on my own, I reached out to a consultant in the industry and I spent a day with him and drove around and taking notes and asking about it.  He owned a management company as well. And he managed several facilities for other folks. I asked him as many questions as I possibly could to fill in the gaps and I filled up three notebooks full of paper, just answering the questions that I had about the business and I, like you, been in multifamily and apartments and I understood commercial real estate. But all the nuances and all the intricacies of self-storage to bridge that gap and fill in the gaps took me all day and a bunch of notes and even then there was no way to get it all but that's how I started. And then just sort of trial by the fire going out and talking to other owners and brokers and begin exploring and looking at several facilities to buy. Don: Okay, tell us a little bit about the market itself. So, what are the biggest players, what is considered a big property? I know so when you're looking at multifamily anything over 200 units is considered very big. Mobile home parks, anything over 150 is considered institutional. So, what would you say is a big deal when you talk about self-storages? Scott: Yeah, we're in that 400 to 450 unit range and which equates to roughly greater than 60,000 square feet. Those facilities that are larger than those are the ones that are going to be typically institutional, so those are the ones are going to be held by Public Storage or Extra Space or Bridge or CubeSmart number of the big players or reads in the marketplace. Now not all the time we own several facilities that are that size as well with the goal and the intention of eventually off to the reeds and that's what we're developing and building now. That's really what's considered the big boys. And so the reeds are the institutional properties and facilities that size you know, that only accounts for about nine to 10% of all the units and all the square footage of self-storage are below that and are owned by some regional players that own you know, 1, 2, 5, 7 properties. Some national players that aren't considered and then a lot of the mom and pops that we buy our facilities from that can go all the way down to as low as 15 between units per facility. Don: Okay. So, mom and pop are always good because you can get a pretty good deal. Somebody that owned the property for quite a while, they have a lot of equity typically and there is a lot of value-added. So, I would assume that the value adds basically comes to play when talking about raising up the rents, right? So, they're just not fulfilling their potential. Scott: Yeah, that's absolutely one of the ways that we look at. We're always looking at turnarounds and value adds and the first of which is usually what you just mentioned is usually poor management. They haven't raised rents in a while because they like to stay full, they have fallen behind on technology and we do utilize software and kiosks to manage these facilities or at least help to manage these facilities, which reduces our payroll, which is our second highest expense, line-item expense next to property taxes. In many cases, not all the cases many of the mom and pops didn't understand how to market their facility, therefore they suffer from a lower occupancy than if they were running very well and had a better website and then a means for people to rent a unit or reserve units online. Don: Yeah, what would you say are the biggest minds or the things you should be careful when you're buying a self-storage, especially when underwriting a deal? Scott: Well, the normal due diligence that we go through first the physical side, we hire an inspector, we do our site visits and we hire an inspector to look at all the physical aspects with the underwriting. As you know Don, that some in commercial real estate, you make a $10,000 mistake and underwriting and just at a 10 cap is $100,000 valuation mistake that you've made. But in today's seven or six cap environment, we're talking about $120,000 - $130,000 mistake. So, it's making sure that if we're buying it from a seller and individual seller, or if we're buying from a broker, we need to get the seller's numbers, and all of the expenses. So, it has an art and a science to it. But the science part is just knowing exactly what to ask for. And in self-storage versus apartments versus mobile home parks, there are expenses that are associated with each one of those asset classes.  So it's important to know what are the expenses of running a self-storage facility and making sure that your account for that. And as I'm sure you're used to and telling your folks as well but just because the seller and the broker don’t include it has zero alongside an expense sentiment doesn't mean it's going to be zero for you. So, management of lawn care and landscaping and snow removal, if that manager does that, or their employer does that, well, they're not going to do it for you so you need to add those expenses in. So, I think that's one of the places where people get tripped. Another is the change in property taxes.  If you run it for a million dollars, and the last time it was assessed was at $500,000 and in this county, they assess based upon a sale, you can expect your property taxes to double roughly and so you need to account for that and underwriting that you're different set of expenses when you buy it versus what is given to you by the seller. So you know, we can go through each and every one of those but just making sure that you pull all the bills and you all of the information in terms of all the income coming into the facility, as well as all the expenses of that underwriting based upon that to give your valuation and your offer. But then we always have two sets of numbers that we use afterward, which is how we're going to run it today meaning 30 days after we bought and then what does it look like in the next one to five years down the road once we have stabilized it and added more value. Don: Okay, and what does it look like as far as the demand and the supply for self-storage facilities across the United States when we're talking about late 2019? I know that people are buying and we're consuming a lot more than what we used to, especially those you can buy everything online right now. And I know people have a lot of things that they want to store. What is your take on this industry and the direction in which it's going in the future for 5 or 10 years? Scott: What we're seeing right now is a demand for self-storage. We always look at supply; supply and demand for a particular market. And the good news is that we draw a ring around a particular site if we have developed for an existing facility of about three miles, five miles as if it's rural or one mile if you’re in downtown Miami. But then we're looking at the amount of self-storage square footage already in that market in a three-mile radius, compared to the population in our industry is considered somewhere between six and a half to seven and a half square person. And it depends upon the market and there are some areas that are quite a bit different than that. But that's kind of a round number. And so, that alone gives us an idea of what the demand is. So, then we visit those facilities and determine if that truly is the case, if they have waiting lists, the rental rates in the market will also be an indicator of what the demand is, obviously. And so, then we base it upon that, but there's only four square foot of storage per person in this market, and the rates are considerably higher than we see around the rest of the country and all the facilities are full and have waiting lists, then there's probably a need for some storage there. In the case of development, we're also going to get a feasibility study on just like you do Don when your billing departments often saying, "Yeah, we think it's going to work, we have to get a feasibility study before the bank will give us money and private equity partners as well." But that's how we look at it in today, in real-time for looking at a facility to develop or even to turn around.  Now in terms of moving forward or looking forward, we don't see a whole lot of changes being the demand for self-storage. And we don't have a crystal ball that is perfect, but we keep an eye on trends and we've seen in the past, we've seen that the baby boomers have created a huge demand for self-storage as they've been downsizing and moving into assisted living and then passing on. Their kids store their items in storage for the future.  But then the concerned about the millennials that perhaps they wouldn't have the same demand and self overseeing just the opposite. Yeah, they're minimalists, they have smaller homes or apartments because they want to give them up and go travel instead of having a house or they want to live in a smaller home. But they like adventures and experiences and adventures and experiences require skis and gear and mountain bikes and camping gear and kayaks and all those other things. And they don't fit in in their tiny houses or apartments or condos. And so we've seen an even greater surge in demand for self-storage, and we see that happening in the foreseeable future. Don: So, you wouldn't think there are any major disruptors coming in the form of let's say, multi families that are being built with storage facilities inside them. Would you say that this is a disrupter? Scott: I don't think so. Because sometimes they are done either on the grounds and in the basement in some of those areas. For they're doing that to a degree but we haven't seen that effect because if you're going to build apartment and you already have construction crew on-site, you're going to maximize the living space because you're going to generate a heck of a lot more revenue per square foot in living space, and you are for storage. So it's an amenity that they can put in place, but not to the degree that it meets the demand for the entire area or the market. So, we may lose a few of those clients in a three-mile radius, but it certainly doesn't speak to the entire market that we're marketing to if that makes sense. Don: Yeah, it makes sense. So where are you focusing on buying these self-storage facilities? Are you buying across the country or you're looking at particular markets and then when you're looking into a market? I know when I'm looking for mobile home parks or multi-families, that I'm looking for job growth and population growth and understanding the environment of the market. Are you doing anything different when you're looking into a self-storage facility, are there different stats that you got to understand before moving in? Scott: When I was also in homes and apartments and we're always looking for the emerging markets that were always a buzzword and some of the guru's had created. And you always want to see where there's growth in those markets. And that's always like that as well. Because if you see, you see self-storage facilities going up. Typically, they're going out not too far from apartments in a growing market, we're not too far away, they go hand in hand or in step with one another. But the good news about self-storage, unlike apartments and single-family rentals is that in a downturn in the economy, or even in a market that is experiencing a little bit of a decline in population or maybe some job loss in self-storage, we're in the trauma and transition business.  If there's trauma, people losing their jobs are having to move they need storage, and they're downsizing and moving back with their parents are moving in with somebody else. And so that creates a need for storage. We've seen during the last recession and everyone prior to that self-storage does extremely well because businesses are downsizing. So, as we head into a changing economy, we feel that we're in good shape. When we're in a growing market or growing economy, people buy more stuff or there are more people to store things therefore there's a need for storage. But even if there's a downturn in a particular market that is losing jobs, there's a need for storage and self-storage does extremely well.  Now doesn't mean that we do great in every single market in every single economy. The one caveat or the one market in which we wouldn't do well, and as those in which there's just a new extreme blight or a flight. So, if there are several manufacturers are leaving, and there are thousands of jobs that are leaving a market. That there are some instances that we've seen that or even New Orleans when Katrina came through and wipe them out, there's lots of areas within a three-mile radius that the population is so low that self-storage facilities are struggling, same in Detroit and Flint, Michigan, exited as the auto industry has left, the same thing. So, we do have to be careful that there is an extreme blight in those markets but we like just about every market and every economy for storage. Don: Yeah, but I would think that whenever there's an extreme blight in the market, then it's not going to be just self-storage is not going to be affected. It's going to be all types of real estate... Scott: Exactly. And you're right. Don: It doesn't really matter. So, I want to ask you about a specific deal. One that you remember, one for the ages is what we call it. So that you can intrigue everybody that's listening to this episode about self-storages and is considering to get into space, something that you bought, made good money and it was interesting and intriguing. So, tell us about one of those. Scott: Yeah. So, this is a property, it was a larger property that I bought back in 2007, so just prior to the Great Recession. I bought the property for $1.5 million with no money down, I used seller financing and a bank and bank debt on it. And it was an industrial building that had offices in it and warehousing, but we converted a large portion of it to outdoor parking for storage is the indoor self-storage. So, we put about $400,000 with a bank loan into the project and we had $1.9 into it. Then in 2007, at the end of it, so about two and a half years later, we sold it prior to the recession of 2008 and we sold about a $2 million profit on that one.  Then came the recession and the buyer went bankrupt because he was a developer out of California and had lost his portfolio, retain the rights to market some of those properties, this being one of them. So, he offered it to me several times over the next several years, and the price kept coming down, down and down and then finally I was able to buy it back for $545,000. And so that's when we get good at syndicating as we mentioned Don when you run out of cash. We've leased it back up again and we've rehabbed them and renovated several areas, leased up the storage, added more storage to it. And it's under contract to sell right now for just a little shy of $3 million. Don: So, you made $2 million the first time and then a little bit over $2 million the second time. It is coming back to you giving you $2 million whenever you work with it. Scott: We affectionately call it 'The Boomerang Property,' so yeah. Don: That is just great, that's phenomenal. Okay, that's beautiful. You bought the property, that was luck also buying it right on time and selling it just before the recession, won't you say? Scott: We had that thing leased up so that we really couldn't create much more value in it. It was at the top, it would have just been through some minor rate increases. And so, we didn't foresee the recession coming and certainly not the magnitude that it was. So, I absolutely will not pretend that I knew what was happening. So yes, we were fortunate enough to be able to sell it at that time when financing was plentiful, and he was able to buy it and that was really good timing. And boy, we learned a lot of lessons through that recession. Fortunately, we weren't holding that one during that time. Don: Okay. What market was it? Scott: That was here in Indianapolis. Don: Nice. Great. That's very interesting. And I'm sure everybody that's listening could see that you could make $2 million on a self-storage facility, one that you bought for $2 million or was in for $2 million. That's amazing! That's a 100% return on your investment. That's great. What book would you recommend for somebody to read in case they already read 'Think And Grow Rich' and 'Rich Dad Poor Dad?' Scott: Wow, let me see here. Don: Difficult question, huh? Scott: It is. I'm just looking at my bookshelf of the many things we’re utilizing our company right now as we scale and grow just depending upon where folks are at is 'Traction'. So, it's more than just a book. It's where Gino Whitman talks about the entrepreneur operating system and really how we as entrepreneurs need to handle and run our business and treat it as a business no matter what the size is. So, I would strongly recommend 'Traction' by Gino Wickman. That is the one that's probably had the biggest impact on us recently. This is for yourself as well as any staff that you may be bringing on are the Four Disciplines of Execution or 4DX all about just getting things done. Bestseller on our wall street journal number one, and again loads of information on how to, well, just how to get things done and how to not make excuses or procrastinate and move the ball forward in your business. Don: Yeah, it seems that procrastinating is always one of the keys to failure. Everybody's saying to never procrastinate, always take action and get things done. Amazing. Yeah. So Scott, what's the best way to connect with you in case anybody wants to learn more about self-storage is or invest with you or anything of that nature? Scott: Sure. Well, selfstorageinvesting.com is our website with all things self-storage, and lots of freebies to download and some videos. But I got a little something that I want to give to your folks done specifically for being on this podcast. If you want the beginning a roadmap or what we call the blueprint into self-storage, you'll go to that same site http://selfstorageinvesting.com/blueprint1/ the numeral one behind it. It’ll show you the steps that you need to follow to get involved in this incredible business that we call self-storage. Don: Well Scott, thank you very much for sharing that with our audience and I hope that you're going to have a great day and thank you for being on the show today. Scott: My pleasure. Thank you, Don. Don: Yes, you're welcome. You have a great rest of your day Scott: You too. Lady: Thanks for listening to the real estate investing podcast with Don and Ethan. Stay tuned for more episodes. Till next time.

Getting control of your business is the key to navigating towards a profitable future. The most common obstacles for successful eCommerce businesses are inventory and cash flow. Today's guest is an expert in providing forecasting tools to help skirt those obstacles to grow your business and prep for a successful exit. Scott Deetz was one of the advisers whose input was crucial to a successful overseas deal we discussed on a previous episode. In this episode, we explore the ways Scott's forecasting techniques have fact-based evidence to support predicted ROI for potential buyers. Scott is the founder and CEO of the Northbound group, a company that helps eCommerce businesses uncover the value in their businesses and prepare a successful exit. With a background in corporate transactions, Scott got into the amazon selling space in 2013. He soon realized his interest remained where it had started, in mergers and strategic advising. He now spends all his time assisting eCommerce businesses on how to maximize the value of their company for either keeping or selling. Episode Highlights: Whether forecasting is based on a wish and a prayer or if there is science and methodology involved. The importance of forecasting as a regular part of any growing business. How Scott's tools can help establish the supplier as a partner and diminish cash flow problems. How the forecasting can change the discussion on strategy. The value of the planning and structuring a deal around the forecasting. The buyer's effective multiple and what it means for their purchase process. The importance of speaking the buyer's language. Scott reveals the levels of building from forecasting. How hard data coupled with owner wisdom can the best formula for forecasting as well provide a roadmap for a successful exit. Transcription: Joe: Mark, one of the things or a dozen of the things that I always see happen with entrepreneurs that we speak with is that everyone runs out of inventory, everyone has cash flow problems, in fact I was just on a call prior to recording this podcast with someone that does an amazing job with their business to the point where it's growing 150% year over year which causes what? Cash flow problems, inventory problems. I did a webinar yesterday and one of the questions was have you ever run a stock? Yes, no, or I'm so amazing I never run out of stock. Oddly enough no one checks the third option which is really good. But a lot of people run out of stock. It seems to be the status quo. I understand that you had our friend Scott Deetz on the podcast talking about forecasting, talking about cash flow management; what it does for your peace of mind number one but inventory management and how you can use all of these forecasting tools to renegotiate with your suppliers to build a more valuable business and to grow it with more confidence. How did the call go? Mark: Yeah. So, Joe, I know the podcast episodes that you do are so well packaged that you have an amazing podcast, right? I just want to start out with that. You have an amazing podcast and you package these together so well with their incredible exits series that you've been doing and actually, in all honesty, it is a really good series that you've been doing where you're interviewing some sellers. With my less desirable or appealing package, I've been doing essentially the same thing with the UK deal. We really had Joseph Harwood on. That episode aired I believe in August and we talked about Joseph's exit as a UK company. And one of the things that we brought up on that call was how many advisors helped us through that process. Well, Scott was one of these advisors and I'm going to also have another podcast with one of the other advisors on that that helped us through that. One of the crucial aspects for shows of sale, one of the things that really made it run was the forecasting that Joseph and Scott did with the business now forecasts. A lot of us see them and think they're just kind of a wing and a prayer and they're kind of hoping and hey, if my rosy assumptions work out this business, is going to have a hockey stick amount of growth. And so they get discounted quite a bit. I remember I spoke to somebody else about this; Andy Jones from Private Equity Info and we asked him about forecasts and he said look you look at forecasts they are all hockey sticks. I guarantee the buyer is going to do their own forecasts. Well, Scott has a different approach to forecasts. They're very very conservative. He ends up doing scenario analysis to see Scenario A, Scenario B, Scenario C; one's very pessimistic, ones very optimistic, one is what they actually expect to happen and there's actually a methodology here. Now we spent the first half of this call going over why is this important. He explained how he uses this to negotiate supplier terms that don't pinch the supplier but actually help a partnership with that supplier. He talks about how it was crucial for Joseph having the ability to order a really sizable amount of inventory as we're going into a busy season so that he didn't run out. And then finally we talked about how it has an impact on the actual selling process. And he brought up a point; super simple, you and I talk about this all the time, when you're talking to a buyer for an online business you need to be able to speak to the return on investment they're going to get. And their buyer is constantly doing that sort of analysis. Well, Scott was able to go through an analysis that was based on reason and logic and numbers and it had been refined if we could take a look historically to see here's what we were forecasting, here's how close we were, right? We were off and so we've modified our assumptions. So about half of it is on why the second half is on how and kind of giving people a little bit of a jump start on how to actually do forecasting. And it's something that I would highly recommend. We had Ben Murray on from the SaaS CFO and he talked about the importance of forecasting in a SaaS business. So this is a really important thing for any online business and frankly any business to start doing. Joe: And these guys are all connected with running multi-million dollar businesses that will have a multi-million dollar exit. And that's they've; I want to say grown up into forecasting. A lot of people bootstrap things and sort of do the best they can. Those that hold on long enough or mature enough to get to the forecasting part. I think it makes a huge difference. The folks that I just had on the call prior to this they've got an incredible business and they've grown up into that as well. I think that this podcast will help them tremendously. I know Scott personally he's a great guy, very smart, very very good at numbers so let's jump into it. Mark: But before we get there, I just want to throw out there to the listeners in case you didn't catch it. Mark Doust is an expert at very subtle wise assery; here's why, I told him I was going to read this quote, quote-unquote this is from a listener, a guy named Chris Rock is his last name. Thank you, Chris. I just want you to know you are my favorite listener at this point. Quote, I've been impressed by several podcasts with Joe Valley; no space there for Mark Daoust, no mention of Mark Daoust at all, Joe Valley and we'd like to set up a call this week to discuss the process and valuation. Thank you, Chris. You are my favorite without a doubt. Let's go to the podcast. Joe: I was being sold. I just want to make it clear. Mark: Alright here we go. Scott Deetz, here we go folks. Mark: Alright I'm really excited this week to have Scott Deetz on. Scott you and I worked together for a long time and frankly it's been way way too long for this to even happen. I should've had you on the podcast probably a year ago or so but I don't know if you've listened to the podcast at all. We have a tradition of guests introducing themselves mainly because we don't do show prep so I'll hand it over to you. Why don't you introduce yourself to the audience? Scott: Sure, perfect. Yeah, I'm excited to do this Mark. So my name is Scott Deetz. I'm with Northbound Group which is a company that I founded. I was an Amazon seller starting in 2013. I was ASM3 for folks that may know what that is and I got into the Amazon selling side of things but my background has been in more corporate transactions, mergers, and acquisitions. And once I got into the industry for a little bit, I realized that I liked helping people and looked at the industry and thought I could help people in a series of ways with strategic finance and with corporate development work and with being, in essence, a strategic advisor to people that may want to consider exit strategies as well. So I started Northbound Group about three years ago and now that's what I do full time; it's just assist Amazon and other e-commerce businesses on how to maximize the value of their company for whether they want to hold it or whether they want to sell it. Mark: Yeah. And you worked on; actually, we worked together on Joseph Harwood's deal. We had him on the podcast a few weeks ago talking about how to sell a UK based business and that was a complex transaction. We talked a lot about that on that podcast about how complex it was at least compared to what we typically see in the spaces as to how these transactions go. The topic that you and I are going to discuss today is forecasting. And I really think with Joseph's business and the way that we presented that business to potential buyers there was so much that it hinged on the forecasting that your group did to be able to say what are we looking at for sales coming from the future. Now this is a bit of a touchy subject because within Quiet Light we don't rely on forecasts all that much, right? We would never sell or trade necessarily on a forecast on its own. However, your forecasts were a bit different than what we've typically seen in the past. If I could just kind of put it bluntly most forecasts that we see are kind of a wish and a prayer. If someone is saying hey here's what I like to do over the next twelve months or it's even more simplistic than that; well this is what I did the first three months of the year, a straight-line projection shows that it's going to be this so that's going to be my forecast. And it's just very unreliable and that's why we've never used it. Yours tended to have quite a bit more specificity and we really put a lot into that forecast including structuring the deal around the forecast as well which meant that our client, in this case, Joseph really believed the numbers that were coming out because he was riding a lot on that. So I wanted to talk about forecasting and I want to start out with just kind of a basic question, is it just a wish and a prayer to say this is what we're going to be doing in the future? And again this is a softball question. I'm leading you into the answer pretty easily here. Or is there actual science and actual methodology here where we can use these forecasts with some level of reliability? Scott: Yeah. So to me, that case study really showcased the power of how forecasting can ultimately affect the amount that you receive for your company. But I would say the short answer to your question is if an Amazon seller came to me and said would I rather have a simplistic forecast than no forecast at all I would say yes. But the answer to it really is that I think forecasting is not a one-time event but something you implement. So, in other words, people don't build a forecast and then it collects dust. You implement a forecasting methodology in your business that is continually being updated as new information is coming into the business. And when your self as an owner or when an outside party can see that not only is it a science and it's around a tool but it is also an ingrained methodology for the business, I think that's really when the power of forecasting takes hold. And particularly in Joseph's case, for example, the first forecast that we built and if he was on the call we would laugh together, it started out like you would expect. I have no idea. Let's put some numbers on a board. Let's start looking at it. Then we started implementing it on a regular basis and we would get it down to the point to where we could update a complete forecast for the business in under 60 minutes. And every time that we realized we were either short of our forecast or over our forecast we started tweaking it and we got more and more and more accurate so that by the time that we, for example, got in front of a potential buyer for the business the buyer could sense our confidence in the forecast and obviously then that in turn gave them their confidence in the forecast and ultimately helped facilitate the transaction. Mark: And I want to get into methodology here in a little bit but I want to start at a maybe a little bit of an earlier point because we talk a lot in Quiet Light about how having a good exit strategy and preparing a business for sale often gives you a really good business to own, right? And this exercise of forecasting is not just for an exit. It's actually really good from a business ownership standpoint. What are some reasons that people should be implementing forecasting as a regular part of their business? Scott: Yeah. The easiest way I can answer that is that I say there is no cash flow planning without forecasting. Mark: For anybody out there by the way it felt like a good rhyme. Scott: It does, doesn't it? Yeah, there is no cash planning without forecasting or something like. But everybody out there that is in this industry struggles with the fact that as you grow because you have to front a lot of your inventory oftentimes or at least a portion of that you have to invest in the business. Everybody is doing this dance between growth and having enough cash to grow. A forecast fundamentally is the link between the two that doesn't look at what your accounting numbers were in the past but looks at what the next six or twelve months forward of your businesses and we'll answer the question for you do I have enough cash to succeed? And the way I look at if you use Xero or Quickbooks or a good accounting program is very simply that gives you a gorgeous picture of what's in the rearview mirror but you don't drive your car based on what's in the rearview mirror, you drive your car based on what's out in front of you. And really what forecasting is that capability. So whether you ever want to sell your business or not if you want to have an accurate cash flow of your business you by definition have to be good at forecasting. The second reason that I think that it's really really critical is because forecasting helps you determine where you're making your money and where you're not making your money. So very often in our forecasting tools that we have built for Amazon sellers, we'll build a forecast for people and it doesn't only forecast the revenue but it forecasts the profitability. And it's not uncommon at all for example to see somebody who's selling a product in the US that's making a great amount of profit and they take that same product and when you add the VAT or other costs in the UK it's not profitable at all. So why put the gas pedal down so to speak and grow an area of your company that's not as profitable? So I think it's really helpful in two things; well three things actually, the first one is cash flow planning, the second one is analyzing your profitability, and then the third one is once you have an accurate forecast we have found it's the single most important thing to help you get better supplier terms. So when we go negotiate with suppliers on behalf of our clients or we give them the tools to do it themselves we are incorporating forecasting to show the suppliers a forecast that they then believe. And if your supplier believes an accurate forecast then what they'll do is they'll say to you, okay wow we're going to grow this much. That is the basis for the conversation of getting payment terms after shipping. And it's also the basis for being able to ask for a better price for your product. So those are really outside of even selling the business; as far as running the business those are the big three. Mark: Yeah. This idea of cash flow planning; I mean the number one problem with Amazon businesses is what it's cash flow, right? I mean people are growing, their business is growing and they're putting all the money back into inventory and I think a lot of Amazon sellers are really just sticking their thumb up in the air and saying okay I think I should order this much. Maybe there's some level of estimation going on there. But the number of people that we see the number of businesses we see where they have inventory shortages or they have a busy season and they end up ordering too much and so they're sitting on just a big pile of inventory that's there for another year waiting for the next busy season. I mean it's kind of a rule; it's not an exception that we see this. Your supplier terms that you mentioned in the third point that plays into this cash flow problem as well. I don't want to get into the details of exactly what Joseph's structure with his business and his supplier terms but suffice it to say he eliminated all of the cash flow issues that you would normally have with an Amazon business because you guys were able to negotiate really good terms with the suppliers. I assume that was based on the forecast that you're able to put together. Scott: Yes absolutely it was and the key part that we were able to do was bring in the supplier in essence in partnership and have them realize, and this is what I'd recommend anybody that's listening to this, this is not about beating up a supplier. This is about being upfront with them and saying if I had no cash flow problem this is what the growth potential would be for the products that I sourced through you. We were able to make that case with this particular supplier. And in essence, it rapidly accelerated the growth of the business prior to then ultimately exiting the business because we eliminated the cash flow problem which also became a competitive advantage against other people that had cash flow problems because when they run out of inventory we get our sales. So it's absolutely critical and the number one reason that a lot of suppliers don't want to give better terms is because like you said they don't trust that either the business will sell that many units. So then if they know the business doesn't sell the units they may be stuck with them. Forecasting helps eliminate that concern and we were able to go to the supplier and say look at all of these trends, look at all of this information if we sell this many units of these many products this is how fast we could grow. But the problem is we don't have the cash to order that many units, can you help us out? And ultimately we are able to come to a very favorable situation for frankly both the supplier and for Joseph. Mark: Yeah. This idea of profitability as well. I mean this is just a common area where we see a lot of waste being spent on ASINs that frankly aren't that profitable. And these are the areas where people are spending time, resources, maybe they're spending money on this and it's really just diluting what their efforts should be as well. So this idea of going back I liken it to something that again we preach over and over at Quiet Light which is it starts with having good books, good data that you can go back and look at. Personally in my personal life like when I review my finances and if you do this at home and you look at your credit card statement, how many times have you looked at your credit card statement and you look at something and say oh my gosh I have this subscription; I didn't even realize I still had this subscription on there, right? Going back over and over again and like you're doing revising assumptions of what the business is doing helps you think about your business more critically in a different way than maybe we would normally think of you know especially with a product-based business you're thinking about product variations, you're thinking about customer service, how can you make that customer experience better but maybe not thinking strategically about your business as you might want to. And I know with Joseph's business looking at his inventory purchasing history he made a couple of purchases in there which I looked at and I just thought oh my goodness this guy is brave. Because he was taking huge chunks of inventory on at the time but he was able to do that because you guys had worked on this and he felt very confident about what was coming up plus he got great supplier terms that came with kind of a safety point there. Scott: We simply would not; two notes on that, one without going to the suppliers for the supplier terms we wouldn't have been able to grow as fast because we wouldn't have wanted to take on the personal risk that comes when you sign a letter of credit at a bank or anything like that. You've got a personal guarantee. So good supplier terms allowed us to have a business partnership that while we had a good-faith guarantee that we were going to pay them for that it's not the same as putting up your house or putting up all of the other assets that you have in the business. And forecasting was sort of a key aspect to that. Here's the other thing and I've seen it go the opposite way as well and I always like to stress this is that if somebody is thinking about eventually selling their business you have to understand that every dollar of profit in the year that you sell costs you three to four times as much. Because when you apply the multiple to your valuation if I am a company that's making $200,000 a year and they go out of stock and that stock going out of stock costs them $10,000 of profit. You not only lose the $10,000 of profit because you went out of stock you lose three times that amount and if your multiple is three and we're not here to discuss multiples. But the point is that just going out of stock we had somebody that we work with that went out of stock during a busy season for only two weeks, it cost them about $30,000 of profit and instantly they lost $100,000 off their sales price by one outage that forecasting could have prevented by knowing that they needed to order more. So I think if you needed a fourth reason out there why this is so critical I always say the most expensive way to finance your business is by running out of stock and not ordering enough not because we've all seen that yo-yo. Forecast at least allows you to see the problem so that you can address it proactively as opposed to all of a sudden boom you're out of stock and you're in a scramble and you're shipping by air which also costs you on your valuation and those things. So for those reasons that's why I think it's just so absolutely critical to running a business successfully particularly on Amazon. Mark: Yeah and I want to comment on that real quick because I was about to say obviously we're going to be Amazon-specific; that's where you really know your stuff extremely well. The forecasting is an exercise that pretty much every business should be doing. I know I had Ben Murray on the SaaS CFO and he talks about the importance of forecasting in a SaaS business. And I know at Quiet Light we just recently implemented some forecasting models as well. And it's super helpful when I can look at; our major expense is conferences, right? So when I can even look out and see what our expense profile in the forecast for that over the next six months is it really helps us understand how to spend our money and gives us a different way of looking at this. Alright; forecasting, we could talk a lot about why we should do it for just running the business. When it comes to selling a business the impact of having a reliable forecast and the impact that it has on a buyer, I'm going to just comment on this real quick because with Joseph's business I was obviously working with buyers directly on that and I can tell you that oftentimes forecast get met with some skepticism. People look at it and they don't really trust them. When people look at your forecasts partly because of the way we structured the deal and there was an earn-out that we were upfront with saying look we expect some pretty big growth in this business so we're not asking for everything upfront. We're willing to do an earn-out type of structure here but also because of the way that the forecasts really seem to have some specificity to them. That became an integral part of that sales process where people wanted to delve in and understand the forecasts. And as we were going through an update in months people were checking the forecasts as well. And when they saw that you guys were right on them or in some cases maybe a little bit wrong but here's why. It changed the discussion dynamically. This was not just kind of an amateur business of somebody who found a product that sold well on Amazon. This was a business that was being run strategically and had a real plan moving forward. And so on the sales process, I think the very simple conclusion is you added a lot of value to Joseph's business by virtue of having the strategic planning and the strategic background that you were working on and then structuring a deal around this as well. Scott: Thank you. Yeah, so I think a couple of points on that; one of them as you transition over to the sales side of things, the first thing I always want to state is that most buyers like you said will say to you we can't buy on future projections. As a general rule, there's a lot of risk in Amazon and all of these reasons for it but I want to make this statement and I state it so boldly when I talk with sellers because I think it's so critical in forecasting such an important part of it. The only multiple that a buyer cares about is not the historical multiple, the only multiple they care about is what I call the buyer's effective multiple which is what is the price I pay divided by the earnings that I get which by definition is something in the future. So while they're not sharing their forecast with you if they don't believe they are building a forecast on their side which is helping them calculate what's called the return on investment in various ways. So the notion I want sellers to understand just as how when you build a listing you need to speak in the language of your customer in order to have your product listing make sense. It's the same thing when you go through a transaction you need to be able to speak in the language of a buyer to have the most credibility for that particular buyer. So the forecast that we built with Joseph is built very very much with that purpose in mind. We think of ourselves as an outsourced CFO to a business with the responsibility of communicating in the language of a buyer. So when I think about sort of forecasting and what I'll call more advanced forecasting what we were able to do was not just to say hey if you give us a bunch of cash we think the business will double what we were able to do is to look at every product on a per unit basis of how many units it's doing right now. We would then apply seasonality to it so that we had all the historical information to apply seasonality. We did that for every current product in every market based on the margin in that market whether it was in dot.com or in Europe or in the US. And then we were able to build in each of all of the product launches of new products that didn't exist today but we're coming out to market. And we were able to be conservative on those but in essence, show that even if we hit conservative numbers of that we're gonna be in a pretty positive situation. So I think the message is when a buyer sees all of that underlying logic in the forecast it's more than just an idea. It's really a strategic communication tool between the buyer and the seller. So they were able to go okay, and you bring up another great point which is that this is absolutely a process through the life of getting the transaction done. If it takes you a few months to sell your business every month you're updating that forecast; you're having that dialogue as to where things are at. So I think what I would encourage people is that when you want to be in front of a buyer the same way that you want to be in front of a customer and think about it from their lens. You want to do the same thing for a buyer and a buyer needs to understand what the potential is of the business in order to pay the highest price for it. And if they don't know the business as well as you do I look at it as we're sort of obligated in our minds to provide them that picture. They can agree or disagree and we can structure a deal accordingly but unless we have a common view of what we think reality is in the future that's really the only effective multiple that they can use to calculate their return on their investment. Mark: Yeah. And the phrase I've always used for that is buyers buy for ROI. And you see it's got that rhyme so it's more memorable. Scott: Yeah, I love it. I love it. Exactly. Mark: No one buys a business to lose money. People buy a business because they want to make money. And speaking in the language of the buyer it really does boil down to that and the more firm that we can make that ROI pitch of here's why you're going to see a return on your investment; the more fun you can make that the more certain a buyer is going to be, the more willing they're going to be to pay a higher price for the business. I feel that we spent a lot of time speaking on why and that's my fault here. I want to get into how to do this because it's one thing to say okay here's what my historical sales were and maybe we're going to assume certain growth; I mean what sort of assumptions would you start with when you're doing some forecasting on an Amazon business? And then I'm going to wrap in multiple questions here and just kind of let you go to town on this, how would you do like a new product launch as well? I'm interested in both of those questions; like existing products in the next year and also new product launches. Scott: I got it. So here's the way I think; I'm going to refer to this as the building blocks of a forecast. So the building blocks of a forecast first is an understanding that there are two types of forecasts that you need. One of them is I'm going to refer to it as a product forecast or a product sales forecast and the second one is one I'm going to refer to as a P&L forecast or an overall profit and loss or income statement forecast and here's how they relate together. The first thing that you need to build is you need to build your product forecast which is, in essence, each one of your products. And part of what we've built over the last two or three years is toolsets to do this. But even if you weren't going to use our toolsets and just think about it conceptually every one of your products you need to know what the margin of that product is. You need to understand what the historical sales of that product have been. And then very simply you need to be able to project out; we do it on a per-day basis because that's generally how people think about it and then multiply times 30 but you need to be able to project out how many units per day or per month of each one of my current products am I believing that I'm going to sell. The second thing is most of the time when we build a per product forecast for people and they say that they want to double the size of their business or that they could, the first thing that they realize when they look at all their existing products is that that's not going to get them where they want to go. And that's where new product forecasting comes in. And the way that we do new product forecasting is exactly the same way but we build in what we call a launch budget and then a launch ramp up for each one of those new products. So we'll build in an upfront cost of let's say $5,000 to do giveaways or ads or review gathering; those types of things. And then we'll build in that if I eventually get to 30 units a day of this particular product then it's going to take me four months to get there so we'll start at 10 units then 15 then 20 and then 30 over each particular month. So visually the way it looks is in the product forecasting all of your current products we have out on the top and then down below that over time you have a bunch of zeros but then you eventually have revenue coming in down below that if you list out all of your new products. And that gives you what I refer to as your product forecast. Mark: So how do you project out with some of these products on a per-day basis? I mean obviously; let's say I'm selling 10 units a day right now and I want to get to 17 units per day, where do you look at to say I think I can get here. You have to be looking at; we have to do X, Y, and Z to get here almost working backwards to be able to say we're going to do X, Y, and Z to get here or are you looking at here's what we're doing and here is just kind of the trajectory and where do you see the limit as well? Because that's more aspect of it where if you're doing 10 years a day you might want to sell a thousand per day but that market just isn't there for that. Scott: Yeah. So the way we think about that is first of all you have to look at what the overall market potential is. So pick whatever tool that you want to use. We use Helium10 for example when we say okay if I was in first spot for this keyword, this keyword, this keyword, and this keyword what is really a realistic assessment of how much I could gain? And then let's look at the product trajectory of where this product is at and if we're rank 15 then we believe that we can get; and we usually say start conservative. Start your product forecast on if I could eventually get to the top half of Page 1 but don't necessarily build a forecast based on I'm going to outtake the competitor. A more advanced forecast what we want people to do is literally situate themselves compared to the competition. So it's pretty obvious sometimes when you go into a market and one of the clients I was speaking with yesterday while we're doing our forecasting work he said yeah for me to get to spot one or two is I'm going to have to have literally 4,000 reviews, I'm gonna have to do massive giveaways, so we said really for this product and this keyword and this niche we're going to keep the forecast is based on being in positions 3 to 6. And then let's look at where you're at now and if you're in position 22 but you're working your way out then you can build your forecast up to that particular level. But you really have to do it that way. And then the other key that we really really focused on a lot is every month has a seasonality factor to it. So you have to understand what is your seasonality factors when you're building your forecast. So in our tools for example we have the ability to set up to 12 different seasonalities because we want to basically allow you to understand when it gets to August how much should I order for the holidays or for a lot of people they have summer seasonality when should I place my orders. So you really have to assess not only the units per day but assess the seasonality side of things. And then the only other thing that we look at in terms of building that sort of bottoms-up forecast is don't always plan that a product is always going to stay level. You have to plan sometimes over a two or three year period based on the product life cycle to start to even put in a slight decline. There might be competition there might be price wars and those types of things and I think that's absolutely critical to forecasting because it encourages you to always innovate. Where sometimes people get a few; and I'm sure you've seen this a ton of times, you get a few hero SKUs that are doing great but then they don't invest in new product and we've talked about this before, you have to keep doing that even if you're thinking about selling your business because you can't count on those products always being the big winners that they might be today. Mark: How many influencing variables do you typically look at in a mature forecasting model and are they working together in a formulaic way or are you really just taking more subjective assessments of these things? And what I mean is let's say that you're looking at I know this is what my keyword volume is for particular products, I know what my [inaudible 00:36:08.1] says so I can kind of back into some projected numbers here from just the paid model and here's the organic models so you can almost approach this formulaically or you could sit back and again have more of this the subjective look at all the different factors. Are you taking more of this variable approach? Scott: Yes. So here's what I would say. I look at formulaic as tools that provide insight but do not provide wisdom. You as the owner of your business need to become what I'd refer to as wise. And my way of thinking about it is you have a bunch of data that eventually leads to information that then information leads to decisions and then decisions over time leads to wisdom. And so the way that I think about that is sort of like a pyramid building up. The tools provide you the data and the information but it's your insight and your time and experience that provides the wisdom. So the way that we think about it is every one of your products with our best clients that we force them through the discipline of looking at all of the data out there but committing to units per day in the future going forward on this particular product and think of it as sort of a manual override. All of the forecasting tools out there are great but every one of them every time; and we built all these tools because I built that originally for my Amazon business and eventually what ended up happening in every conversation we have with owners of businesses they say oh yeah I know that I used to do this the last three months but I've really taken a hit. My review rating went down to 4.2 and I lost 20% of my sales. Oh good, then we better put this one down at 20 units a day down from 30 until we feel more comfortable with it. So once you get the process down, that's what I want to encourage people, as you get the process down to where it's a half-hour a week the one that we do that takes an hour a week they have 75 parent SKUs out there and we can go through that in an hour and just yup, yup, yup, yup, and just continually refining what that particular process is. So I always think of it as tools versus wisdom and you need to apply the owner's wisdom to it. That's the only way we've found; same thing with launches you have to build into a launch what do you realistically think that it's going to take. And then oftentimes that's why this cashflow thing is so important is that we have multiple clients that will list out 15 different products that fit the brand. Then we'll look at the cash flow and we'll say here's the first five, the second five, and the third five, and we're going to roll them out over the next year so that you can then implement them in a way that is cash flow acceptable to the business. Mark: How do you recommend people get started? I know we're getting up against the clock here but starting something like this can be terribly daunting because there are just so many factors to be able to consider. Any recommendations on how somebody can start out maybe with some simple forecasting? Scott: Yeah. So here's what I would say there's four levels to forecasting and if you take nothing else from today implement Level 1 which is look at every one of your products, what it's done historically, and implement what you believe that it can do over the next 12 months. And if you want to do it by using the historical sales via ASIN report or the business report that comes out of Amazon for the last month and then just project what that is in terms of units and then in terms of sales build yourself a very simple spreadsheet in order to do that. That will at least start to give you an idea. And if you commit 30 minutes every week to looking at that sheet that you've built and you build that and just continue to update that I guarantee you you'll learn more about your business. So step one is just do that every week. Pick a time that you're not frustrated and you want to just kind of look down and see what the potential of the business is because frankly, that's a pretty exciting goal for you to then say hey if I want to get here; that's what we always…another action we say is you can't manage what you can't measure. So you have to build it to that. Level 2 then is to apply seasonality and new products. So layer on new products you're thinking about and if you don't know what they are right now still layer in I want to release 4 new products in the next year, I'd like to think that they could be as good as my current one's etcetera, etcetera, and then look at your seasonality trends. The next level beyond that and I want to describe this because you do have a lot of advanced sellers that are thinking about selling on this podcast is transition from a product forecast to then look at the rest of your income statement on what I call a percentage of revenue basis and project out that if the revenue doubles or grows up by 20% does my cost of goods sold go up by what percent. And so each one of your line items I always look at it as product costs are 19% of revenue, Amazon selling fee is 15%, FBA is 21% and get to where you can easily know every one of your; overhead and tools is 4%, paid media is 12%, know every one of your numbers on a percentage basis and you'll now have the product forecast and then the budget forecast and you'll be at what I'll call it an advanced level. And then the expert level what we build for people when we want to take them to market is we apply what we call a scenario analysis which is where we're looking at worst case, middle case, best case so that we can show it to a buyer that hey even if this thing doesn't do everything it's still going to have a positive ROI for you. But if it hits either the middle or the advanced case or the more aggressive cases your ROI is going to go up to 70 or 80% IRR. So the most advanced one then is to take a base forecast and then create scenarios and that probably building a toolset to do that all by yourself unless you really like doing that might not make the most sense. There's folks like ourselves or your accountants or other people out there that you probably want to work with but that is sort of the ultimate level because now and my closing comment of this will be relating it all back to the topic of selling your business. For most people, more than 50% of the money ever put in your own pocket will come when you sell your company not when you run it because you're always having to finance your inventory. And forecasting is the simple thing that tells you when is the right time to sell because it answers the question when does my value reach a level at which I go oh wow if I could get that much for my business now is the right time to sell. So we haven't talked about that at all but the number one question you get is the number one question I get; what is my business worth and when should I sell, and is now the right time to sell? Forecasting is the answer to that particular question and not some answer that Scott gives you or Mark gives you. But my goal for everybody on this podcast would be implement forecasting and give yourself some time to get good at it and you'll be able to answer that question for yourself which is a very powerful enabler for your business. So that's why I'm so passionate about the topic because it ultimately answers the question what should I do with this business and when; should I keep it or should I sell it and if so for how much. Mark: And even on top of that I mean Joe says all the time he says don't decide to sell your business plan to sell your business, right? Don't just wake up one day and be like I'm done because you're leaving money on the table; guaranteed you're leaving money on the table if that's the way that you go about it. If you say my goal is to get here to this number then like you're saying you can work towards that goal, you know how to get there, you have a roadmap to get there as well and you know that you're going to maximize the value of your business at the time of the exit which is frankly what most of us want to do. That's usually the goal. Scott, we could talk a lot on this and really get more in-depth. Thank you so much for coming on. I hopefully can have you on in the future we can spend less time on why and more on the how because it seems like we just started to scratch the surface on this but I really appreciate it. Where can people find out more if they want to ask you questions about forecasting or frankly anything else that Northbound does and I'll just make this quick plug; you guys do great work. I love working with you guys. Where can they find out more about you and your group? Scott: Yeah so I'm always happy to answer questions so people that want to get a hold of me individually ScottDeetz@NorthboundGroup.com or if you want to get in contact with us just in general do Info@NorthboundGroup.com and I'm happy to answer any questions. You're right there's just so much to this but it's to me the most powerful thing that can put you in control of your business. So if there are people that are out there that feel like they're kind of bouncing along and they don't really know where their business is going or what its true potential is, forecasting is the thing that gets you back on the horse where you've got the reins firmly in control and you can see your business as opposed to just feeling like you're reacting to what's in the rearview mirror. So thanks for having me on. I look forward to obviously working with you on [inaudible 00:45:28.5]. Mark: Thanks, Scott.   Links and Resources: Northbound Group Email Scott Email Northbound Group

Scott Voelker, the amazing seller himself, is back on the podcast today with a new book that will guide entrepreneurs on a path to financial freedom. Scott has transformed from someone who dabbled in e-commerce into a seven figure business owner, author, and host of one of the most popular e-commerce podcasts out there. Now he is sharing his tips with other entrepreneurs, offering sets of specific steps to follow to create a business that will allow freedom and flexibility. From the construction career he left at an early age to starting and building a successful photography business, Scott has built on his entrepreneurial nature for over two decades. In 2008 he started selling photography products online and soon realized it could become a full time income. Fast forward a few more years and he started to hear more about Amazon FBA model and how some people were making good money using the platform. He started researching and listening to any valuable information he could garner then used all the know-how he'd gathered and applied it to his product listings. Episode Highlights: How Scott and his wife got their start building a business from the ground up. Scott discusses the path he took and how the book delves into his future plans. Whether he finds the pathway to the end goal more difficult than five to ten years ago. How Scott is evolving from being “The Amazon Guy.” Helping others with the book and the action steps he outlines. Scott addresses the question of finding time to start a side hustle. Learning how to schedule downtime once success allows for less work time. Tips for finding that future-proof opportunity. Taking the affiliate marketing path as an opportunity to learn your market. Using channel diversification as a building block. Transcription: Mark: Joe recently I sent you a book through Amazon that I was hoping you would read and I'm assuming that's the next book on your reading list, right? Joe: No. Sorry. Mark: I'm not going to buy you any more gifts. Joe: No. Now you sent it to me via Amazon and I think I have to download it onto my Kindle app. Mark: You haven't even downloaded it? Joe: I haven't even downloaded it. Mark: Oh my goodness. Joe: You're just trying me. See the reason I haven't is because it's a productivity book and you're trying to get me to be more productive but I haven't read it yet so I'm not as productive as I could be. Do you see an excuse thing going on here? Mark: Productivity is one of those things that I'm sure everybody's like Joe is terrible at getting stuff done. Joe: This book I'm holding out for those that are on the YouTube channel. Thank you for being on the YouTube channel, by the way, you're awesome. This is the book I'm currently reading it's called the Take Action effect By Scott Voelker; a friend of ours and we just had him on the podcast. And that's what the book is all about. It's a combination of, and this is why I'm not reading the book you sent me. And I have one more in front of that by the way but this one is amazing it's really telling Scott's story. Scott as lot of people know has a podcast called The Amazing Seller podcast. With the audience he has every month he could fill up the Bank of America Stadium here in Charlotte and I think that's like 25, 30,000 people. He started out just telling his story building an Amazon business and everything he was going through. He just laid it all out on the line. He's really transferred himself or transformed himself into someone that is first and foremost helping people take action in their lives and he talks about this in the book and how he did certain things in his life and what an impact it had and what it led to next and next and next and now where he's at running a 7 figure business with the lifestyle that he wants. It's still one of the most important things about Scott and the book and the action steps that he shows people how to take is to run a business, set your own goals, how to set goals properly with vision boards and different things but with a lifestyle that you want. This is not a get rich quick scheme it's a book to build the life that you want; how to take certain steps and actions and if you want to run a 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 million dollar business great. These will help and there are some examples of that; of people that are doing that. But if you want to just earn an extra couple of thousand dollars on the side and build the business slowly there are absolutely some steps in there for those folks as well; people that are listening now that still have full time jobs that don't dare buy a business this allows them to take certain steps and actions to do that and build a safe business that's going to be relatively passive that they could do part-time as they build that up and eventually quit your day job work and sell it through Quiet Light. Mark: One of the things I like about this is the idea of having a purpose to what you're doing. And I think there is this tendency to chase success, chase success, chase success, and we put in our minds that success is a certain business goal while we ignore the other aspects of our life. And I know over the past 13 years running Quiet Light Brokerage I've run across so many successful entrepreneurs who have built amazing businesses but frankly are somewhat miserable because they've built prisons for themselves. And we talk about why are people selling. Sometimes it's just because they've built that prison of a business and they need to get out. And they realize that they need to readjust their life priorities. I love when we meet people like Scott, like Ezra Firestone, and some of these other guys that have reached certain levels of success and now what they're doing is they're really trying to just be helpful and really contribute to that entrepreneurial community with some of the lessons they've learned. And I love the focus of this book. I love that it's a system out there to help you identify what's really important and have everything else flow into that, set the real goals out there and build that system including the business that fits those goals. Joe: And it's just that Scott is a real guy giving real-life examples of things that he's done and the path that he's taken and he's giving real advice here that is action-oriented. And it's a mindset. It's inspiration. And they're steps to take as well. It's one of the best books I've read in 2019. I highly recommend everybody take a listen to the podcast and at the end and in the show notes here you can go to take action effect and download or buy the book. It's available. He went further than our very own Walker Deibel, he made it available in the audio version as well. Mark: Walker needs to step his game up and start a recording. No. Fantastic. Let's get to this episode here. I love introducing our audience to people that we find to be good friends of Quiet Light because they share some of our mission and purpose. So I'm excited to share this episode with everybody. Joe: Let's get to it. Joe: Hey folks Joe Valley here from the Quiet Light Podcast and today I have a guest that is back on. But this time he is a published author on his way I'm sure to being a best-selling author. Scott Volker, welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast. Scott: What's going on Joe? Thanks so much for having me. Joe: Welcome back I should say. I just saw you a couple of weeks ago at Brand Accelerator Live; a fantastic event where you launched the book, a big hit and my goodness I'm looking at some of the reviews and they're fantastic. And I'm reading it myself of course. And let's get into that but first for those folks that don't actually know who you are why don't you tell us all about Scott Voelker? Scott: Yeah. Well to kind of sum it up I've been at this basically creating businesses that allow me to have the flexibility, the freedom, that's always my first and foremost. Back when I was like 21 years old I was working for my father's construction company and from there I thought I was going to own that company one day and then that partnership and son in law that was stealing and some craziness I soon saw that that wasn't the path that I was going to take. But I wanted to still be able to work for myself and my wife and I started a photography business, learned the ropes through good old trial and error, and built that into a business that allowed us to take our kids to school and home from school and all of that stuff. And it's really important me to watch my kids grow up and I've got 3 kids ages now 11, 21, and 24. But I've been at this for over 18 years and really building businesses hasn't really changed just the platforms have changed. And so when I wrote this book I wanted to go through and tell the story of myself. Someone that didn't have a college degree and felt a long time ago that I kind of felt to myself like I wasn't smart because I didn't go to college. But then after kind of building some businesses and watching other people go to their 60 plus hour a week job and then seeing myself not have to do that I was like well wait a minute I'm going to give myself a little bit more credit. I've done okay. And so it in a nutshell that's what I do. I just love building businesses. But I like more about just building a business it's more about the freedom and the flexibility, stability and all that stuff. Joe: And that is what you talk about in the book. Let me just; I don't think I said what the name of the book is. It's called The Take Action Effect. Scott: Yeah. Joe: Proven Steps To Build a Future Proof Business And Create Your Ultimate Freedom. I'll hold it up here for those folks that are on the podcast; I'm sorry on the YouTube channel. Scott: Yeah. Joe: One of the things that you talk about in the book really hit home with me and that is that your wife had that first idea for you to go off and on your own. Scott: Yeah. Joe: And it's and it's continued in your relationship. You guys work through all of your business opportunities and ideas together, right? Scott: Yeah, 100%. I mean she was my take action moment as I talk about in the book a lot. I think we all have these moments in our life that something happens; like a decision happens that we make either because we're forced to and then we see the result from it or we choose to, we take that leap. And I was frustrated with my job and I thought I was going to own this company and then found out that it wasn't going to probably happen and we needed to figure out another way. And then that's when my wife had said maybe we should start a photography business which at the time we didn't have digital it was all film based not YouTube videos to go out there and educate yourself. So Scott that wasn't a good student in school had to figure out how to go through and teach myself Photoshop and just how to run a studio and we did that. But yes she was the one with the idea and still to this day she's always the one kind of nudging me a little bit and saying like you should probably listen to this. Even the podcast The Amazing Seller Podcast that was because she said that you should; I had the idea but she was likey should probably lean into that a little bit and here we are. Joe: That's funny you know my wife usually has the idea and then I have to go out and do it. It's a running joke in 20 plus years of marriage. I was going to I think our wives are very similar. Our marriages are very similar but it sounds like there's one distinct difference is that my wife comes up with the idea and I have to execute. So you're taking a lot of past so it's interesting from a construction worker to entrepreneur in the photography space before really the online world existed and then discovering it through eBay and then Amazon and then The Amazing Seller podcast. Scott: Yeah. Joe: Can you just talk about that path a little bit and talk about what the Part 2 of this business about this book talks about? Scott: Yeah. So like I said the photography business being brick and mortar I learned a lot about how to get clients in the door. And a lot of people say like Scott when you start a business should it be your passion. And if it could be then yes that would be amazing because then you would love to work on it every day. But I wasn't passionate about photography. I was passionate about getting out of my job. So my wife was passionate about photography but then I started to develop these passions and that was marketing and that was Photoshop and video editing. And the way that it kind of led me to really the online space and e-commerce really was my wife was looking for props on eBay. So in our business, we always were unique in the way that we had props. We had certain sets and we had like a lot of backgrounds that cost us 2 or $3,000 and people would pay just to come in because we had this hand-painted backdrop. So my wife was looking for this cedar bridge that she had seen somewhere else and she found one on eBay. It was like 130 bucks it was a little 4-foot little wooden cedar bridge. And so then as she was looking at one of the other stores that she shops at she's seen the same bridge for 30 bucks and she's like it's selling for 130. I bought one for 130 maybe we should try to sell this thing. I said okay. So then that's where we got the idea and we started selling those. Actually, we took the minivan over to the store and we loaded it up and we packed that thing and that money actually paid for our kids tuition for a private school. And so that opened my eyes to eBay and like what else could I sell, right? And even though I had a business I'm still thinking to myself as an entrepreneur like well that wasn't that hard. Maybe I should try to find more things to sell. So then we actually started a video business on the side of our photography business; they kind of work too, you know one of the same. And then I started building these projectors to transfer old 8-millimeter film. So the old 8-millimeter film that we use to have grown up as kids it was a lot of times silent film but there was some sound when it got; I think it was Super 8 and then I found a machine that was modified to transfer the film. And so when I got that I kind of looked at it and being in the construction world I'm like this is just a modified projector. Let me go ahead and reverse engineer what they did here and I did that and I started selling them on eBay for about 800 bucks. I was selling one or two of them a week. Joe: Wow. Scott: Yeah, so I made about 100,000 on just old projectors that I modified for film transfer and that's kind of what got my wheels spinning about this online stuff. Joe: And it never would have happened if you didn't; I'm going say this so many times, taken some action, right? Entrepreneurs are special people. They come up with an idea and they don't think about it and think about it and think about it and think about it. They've got to do some planning, of course, the more complex world we live in you've got to do some planning especially when you're going to spend some dollars. But I think maybe Scott back then when you and I didn't have any gray hair we were able to take action a little simpler and a little quicker, right? I would just with that whole ready aim fire or ready fire aim what is it? Scott: Yeah. Joe: Those things, right? And I just take my path and hustle and work hard and get it done and figure out the road to that end goal which I knew what the end goal was. I just didn't know the road or the path. Scott: Yeah. Joe: Are you finding now given that you've; I mean you've done all this for 20 years an entrepreneur in many, many different past and you've coached thousands of people through The Amazing Seller podcast and many of them 6, 7, 8, 10 figure exit eventually. Scott: Yeah. Joe: Are you finding that the pathway to that end goal whether it's an eventual exit of a business or just a one of a lifestyle where you can drive your kids to work every day and spend more time with your spouse and you take family vacations, is it more difficult than it used to be in your opinion? Scott: I think it depends on what your final outcome is. I think for a lot of people it's not about building an 8 figure business just to say you built an 8 figure business; to some people it is. It's like bragging rights but for a lot of people; and I know you told me a story about a guy he was a stay at home dad I think and he built his company in 2 years without pulling a dime out of it so they could cash it out and then live off of that and live the life that they wanted. So I think for a lot of people it is that. So for me personally I think it is I don't want to say easy; it's simple. Nothing is easy. Like everything that I've ever done, there's always been struggles and issues that you have to overcome; whatever like that's business. You just have to learn how to adapt, how to move, and adjust. But I think it is actually easier nowadays to build a business that you can potentially exit. And actually getting to know you more, getting to know the team over at Quiet Light has actually got my wheels spinning once again at looking at this as an opportunity for me to build something maybe from scratch, get it to a certain level, and then sell it, and then you just repeat that process. Like I could build a team to just help me do that. So again my wheels are always spinning. And the more I talk to you and I start hearing these stories I'm like that seems like a pretty straightway to go. But the principles and the concepts are pretty much the same. They haven't really changed. And that's what is in the book is really these pillars; these core things that make up a market, make up products, make up traffic; like all of that stuff hasn't really changed. The platforms change but the principles never change. Joe: You addressed some of the approaches in Part 2 of the book about building your future proof business. Scott: Yeah. Joe: You started out as an Amazon guy, right? You were selling on Amazon telling your story in the podcast but you've evolved quite a bit. Can you address that and then we'll talk about how the book addresses it as well? Scott: Well yeah but the book itself actually is my pivot. So we talk about pivoting all the time. So when I started the podcast you're right I was getting into the Amazon game just like everyone else was. It's just I was kind of doing it and other people were just kind of consuming information and saying like I'll wait until we have all the pieces that are working or all of the answers, right? Joe: You were telling your story whether it was a success or a failure and everybody was listening. Scott: Exactly. And so as I started to do that I also started to see how the market was shifting. So when the podcast was started it was Scott the Amazon guy. And then after I started to kind of see that the market was changing, more competition was coming, and it was getting a little bit riskier I'm like I don't want to go down that road. Now that doesn't mean it can't work. I just don't want the headaches of constantly just worrying that my accounts are going to get shut down or whatever. So I'm like I'm going to go back to basics build a business from skill sets that I've built and I talk a lot about that in the book like everything we've done we've built skill sets that we can then leverage in the future. So for me to really go down that road of like okay where was I van and where am I now, it's all about evolving; all about growing. I mean I think we're all doing that as we learn more things like even like when I first started I didn't think about having a brand that I could exit. And now I'm thinking; a lot of times I'm thinking to myself could this brand be sold, what would it take to sell this business? So a lot of times I'm thinking more along those lines now. But like I said people are always kind of like thinking of me as the Amazon guy and I don't want to be known; I don't want to 20 years from now be Scott the Amazon guy. I want to be the guy that helped people build a business that allowed them the life that they want and that they deserve. Joe: That's what I'm seeing with the people that I've met that have listened to your podcast and then to your events and are connected with you in any way. Whether it's Brand Accelerator Live, your inner circle Mastermind group, or The Amazing Seller podcast; they're not just building Amazon businesses, they're building businesses that will allow them to live the life that they choose to first and foremost. Scott: Right. Joe: Some of them that's all about building value and exiting and others it's all about taking care of others. Rachel; I had a conversation with one of your followers, listeners, attendees, whatever you want to call them, Rachel we don't use the last name but an amazing story. She's building a business so that she can help others. Scott: Yes. Joe: She's going to make money off the business but that's not the focus. The goal is to be able to use that money to help others foster children charities and things of that nature; really good people. You're building good humans which I think is terrific. You're surrounding yourself with them as well. Scott: It's pretty awesome. It's funny Joe I was just listening to the Ask Scott session that we recorded there live at Brand Accelerator and it just happened that the one lady came up and was telling us about her problem and her problem was is that she was wondering how she was going to keep up with the amount of scale. And I said that's a real bad problem to have. And I knew you were in there; I thought you were in there and I called you out and I go I think this is a question for Joe later kind of let him help you on that. But it's really; it's pretty rewarding to sit there and think to yourself I had something to do just because I showed up, pressed record, and started helping people. That right there that will; to me that surpasses any amount of money that I can make from a podcast is hearing other people's stories and how they're set up now to really live the life or maybe donate to their charity. That's like again the effect of the take action is the effects of that we're able to do the ripple effect on other people but also on your life and your business. So it's really about the ripple effect all the way through. Joe: Yeah, not necessarily about just building that business and exiting it. It's everybody involved along the way. Scott: 100%. Joe: That lady was Karen by the way and she did have some good problems, right? People wish to have her problems. Scott: Growth every year, year after year, and I don't know… Joe: Yeah. How do I keep up with buying more inventory? One of the things that you talked about which I think is really, really important both in the book and on stage and I'm going to just summarize for anybody listening. This book really encapsulates everything Scott's done in his life and what you've done in your life, Scott. But then it also gives a pathway to taking action and seeing what the impact and effect of that action is. But someone said look I'm busy I've got a full-time job. I'm trying to do this. How did you find the time for that? How do you find the time for this if you; you're an advocate of don't quit your day job if you have one do a little side hustle and build this over time until it's safe to exit. How would you address that question but Scott I just don't have time? Scott: Yeah and I actually I address this on stage when I came to that point because I shared my story that I was working 60 plus hours a week for my father's company running I think was like 13, 14 guys at one time that were underneath me making sure that those jobs got done. So I was always the first one there and the last one to leave like always. On the side, I was building a house from scratch. I was like 25 years old. Joe: That took a little time. Scott: It took me 11 months. And I remember Joe my mother in law lived up on the Hill. She lived probably I don't know maybe 500 or 1,000 feet. She was up on a hill though and she could look down and see the property. We had two acres. And I remember one night I wanted to get this one spot on the house done outside. It was up in the peak. I had a 30-foot ladder up against the house and I had floodlights out there at 2 o'clock in the morning because I wanted to finish. She couldn't sleep because she was worried about me going to fall and I'm up there nailing up my siding because I wanted to get that peak done because I didn't want to come back to it the next day and do it. And then I got up at 6x o'clock and I went to work. So when people say I don't have time I don't have sympathy for that because you probably have time you just are not really wanting it bad enough in my eyes. You know what you're watching your TV show or maybe you're taking an extended lunch break or maybe you're just oh I need my 8 hours of sleep you know like get 6 for a month, right? I mean it's not going to kill you but if you really want it bad enough you will find the time. And I've done it. My photography business when I was learning that when I was getting ready to leave my job I was up till 2 o'clock in the morning figuring out Photoshop. I was figuring out how we were going to do billing for our customers. Like I was figuring out all that stuff late at night and then I'd get up and I'd go to my job because I wanted it so bad. And I was so interested in it because I wanted it so bad. Joe: Yeah you are preaching to the choir if I'm the choir right now because yeah look the thing that I see consistently I mean I've done this in my life you and I have been self-employed for about the same amount of time and it's always started with a side hustle and then work like crazy. As you are building that business you're not really making a whole lot of money. You're not taking anything out and oddly enough when you're making the most money is actually when you're not working as hard in my experience. Scott: Right. Joe: You get it up to that level and it starts to just; it's a scalable business. And with that scale, it's starting to generate enough revenue to kick off and then you can quit your day job and then you can live that lifestyle that you want. It's hard though when you're a hard worker and a hustler like yourself and like so many people that are listening. How do you shift from that I'm used to working, I love working, I'm going to work, I'm going to work, I'm going to work to I'm going to sit down and I'm going to have coffee and breakfast with my wife every day by the pool at 8 o'clock? Do you have the discipline to really reschedule your downtime? Scott: You definitely have to schedule it for sure. You have to schedule it and I'm getting better with that like I'm still not perfect Joe. I have to make sure that at 6 o'clock at night that's my cutoff. I'm not going to do anymore posting and I'm not going to do any more answering. It's hard because we can work as long as we want. And when you start to see momentum you want to work more because you want [inaudible 00:24:18.18]. But I've made it very, very clear in my life that I want to have that time. I literally wrote out a vision board and really I created a video years ago that I wanted to see come true. It wasn't like you know the woo-woo stuff but it was like what am I working towards. And one of them was having a coffee and breakfast with my wife. And so here we are many years later and literally, I just got in now. I mean I started my day today at 10 o'clock in the morning. I had a first interview at 10:00. I dropped my daughter off the school at about 7:45. My wife and I got back here. We went out to the pool. I had coffee. I was out there with the dogs. I had my laptop. I was answering a few emails; doing stuff. I'm out there chillin' with my wife hanging out. And that's what I want my life to be. Now could I be doing other things to try to make the Amazing Seller bigger or my e-commerce businesses bigger? Yes, I could but I choose to; like that's kind of like my time. You know what I mean? Joe: Right? Scott: And I do think it's hard. You have to be disciplined. A lot of people say Scott I could never do it. I would never get any work done. Then maybe you do need a job. Joe: I've heard that often. I couldn't work from home I could never get any work and that's just discipline. It's focus and discipline. Scott: 100%. Joe: We've gone from how do you find the time to do this extra side business and side hustle and grow it to how do you schedule your downtime so that you could work. You don't need to as much but scheduling your personal life to make sure that you're there for your family and things of that nature. My kids are older than you. Well, not actually mine are 16 and 18 right. You've got 21? Scott: 21, 14, and 11, yeah, Joe: So I've driven my kids to school from kindergarten right up until last year when my oldest got his license and it's an honor, right? It's a privilege and an honor to be able to do that. And when they look back someday that's what they're going to remember. They're not going to remember that Dad was making more money or something like that. So from finding time to scheduling time; your book specifically talks about all of that in your life and creating the mindset of action and everything you've done in your life. But can you address like a little bit of the how to's in terms of building that future proof business and the steps that you go through with the folks that are listening. Scott: Yeah. To me, it's very, very simple and even if you're looking at this because I know people listening here are probably looking to possibly buy a business or sell a business. Here's the deal. Like whenever you're looking at an opportunity you want to first see if there's a market already there. Like a lot of people say I want to invent a market. That's risky because we don't know; I mean if you ever listen to Shark Tank they always say has the market validated the product? No I don't have any sales it's in pre, or we're kind of building this thing out, it's in pre-production, or we're in like the pre-stage and they're like come back to us when you have sales that the market actually voted and said we actually want and need this. So the market is critical. You have to have a market. Now I'd like it to also be a submarket. So we could talk about like and I always talk about the bass fishing. So if we went like fishing we would niche it down into bass fishing. If we wanted to go one level deeper we could go kayak bass fishing. And then we can really own that category and then we can also build out of that category to serve a wider part of the market. But I always like to look at the market first. Then from there, I want to see what's the potential in the market? And that could be going to Amazon and seeing how the products are selling using a tool like Jungle Scout or whatever tool you want. We have these tools that let us know the market's buying these products. Now we can either sell those products ourselves as our own brand or we can affiliate market those products. We can do all kinds of things. So I want to validate that there are actually sales being made there. Joe: Let me just stop you for a second because some of the language you're using I don't know if everybody knows it. Talk about the affiliate marketing aspect of it because it's a brilliant path that you educate people on taking. Scott: And I'm going to be doing more of it Joe; I got to be honest with you. I was just thinking about this this morning I'm like man there's so many things that I could cover just for getting back from Brand Accelerator Live. People get stuck at the I've got to launch products or I've got to grow mine. If you bought a business; right now if you bought a business and you're thinking I don't want to launch a whole bunch of products because it's something a whole bunch of capital. Why not take the content side of things. Build out traffic and start putting out products that are related to your product as an affiliate bringing some revenue but also get them to vote that the products that you're putting out there from them they want to buy then you can private label them. So I think it's an easier way to get started. If you're just listening to this and you're getting started, the easiest ways to start looking at the market and how much traffic the market has. And then from there can you get in front of the market by getting attention by posting content, building an email list, like getting attention with influencer, whatever. Then you can start to say okay all these products I'm not going to private label all these it's going to cost me a small fortune. I'm going to start putting products out there like a kayak bass fishing boat. Like I might do that but I'm not going to sell it as my own but I might do an affiliate offer for it. So basically on Amazon, we can use their whole catalog. We can become an associate for them. And it's not going to be a ton of money it's 4%, 8%, depending on where your bracket is; the category but it's a nice easy way anyone can get started. It's not going to cost you hardly anything to set up a website and to start posting content. You can write it yourself or have someone else write it and then just start building that over time. Joe: It's a great way to go back to discovering your market as well because as you niche it down people are going to buy certain things and you can say okay well that one's much more popular than the other. Scott: 100%. Joe: The tools like Jungle Scout do that very, very well. But this is an action you've got proof in your own bank account which ones they like more. What about the multiple channels. You and I have talked about this before. We talked about channel diversification. That's something you talk about quite a bit here as well. Scott: Yeah. Well, I think again there's a lot of businesses that are very successful and you sell these businesses just Amazon FBA. We got someone in my inner circle that bought I think 3 businesses from you guys already. Joe: 3. Scott: Big businesses too; crazy amounts. I mean one of them is doing like 6,000 units a day like insane. Joe: Yeah. Scott: And you know what I mean? So it's massive. So the potential there is huge but also I look at like there's a little bit of risk there because if that channel decides to go away or they shut your account down there is a potential. So I want to build a back end support there in some kind. So I want to start building content. I want to start getting my own traffic so that way there I could lead people over to my Shopify store or I could leave people over to my channel if something shall happen. Now if it doesn't; great, keep using that. And I don't; I never tell anyone not to use the channel. Use the channel. Leverage the heck out of it. Drive traffic to Amazon. Build up your rankings. Do all of that stuff. But I do think that having your own email list is a must. I think having your own content, your own home base I call it; your own blog, your web site so this way you control that asset. And to be honest with you Joe like I'm really interested lately and I think I talked to you about it, content sites to me are never going anywhere. We're always going to have content sites. We're always going to have information that people are going to be searching for. So for me what I'm looking at doing is starting something and building it over the course of 12 to 18 months. Now listen to what I just said there over 12 to 18 months not 3 days or 30 days. It's going to take time for the search engines to kind of pick it up and get it indexed and all that stuff. And if I can build that piece of property like I used to do in the construction days; I find a piece of property, I build a house on it, I get some revenue coming in by renting it out, and then I might want to sell it. That's kind of what I'm thinking about. And there's ways you can do that without even having to launch a physical product until you get to the 12, 18th month. Then you can decide what you want to do. But you can start getting revenue coming in from affiliate offers, from AdThrive, Mediavine, any of these other networks just from the content coming in. So for people that say I can't get started because I don't have the capital, I don't have the know-how, I don't have the time, do something like even if it's just building out a content site over the next 12 months do that. Just do that. Joe: Yeah I think again taking action, right? Scott: Yeah. Joe: We just got to say that whole lot here; the take action effect. This book as I've read it and as I've talked to you, you are an interesting mix of inspiration and how-to; and you are the book. That's what emanates. You call it a pivot I call it it is what you are, you're inspiring people to go beyond their current capabilities or to get started and take some action but you're also teaching them how to do it. So it's a nice blend of both and was that the main objective of the book itself? Scott: It was actually a little bit difficult and to be honest with you Joe because I didn't want to just be let me show you how to start a business. I wanted it to be for someone also that has a 7 figure business right now that are 100% dependent on Amazon they read the book and they go oh I can do all of these other things and then probably bring in more revenue, bring in more traffic, get a better multiple when I go to Joe Valley and Quiet Light. So I was looking at two different paths. So as you're reading the book you're going to hear me talk about if you're feeling stuck at your corporate job right now and you feel like you can't get out of it here's what you could do but if you already have a business you should do this too. So it's kind of like you're serving two camps. And it was kind of hard when I was going down that path because I wanted to really talk to both people not just the person starting. Joe: Yeah and I think it's an important message for both. For those that have bought a business that want to diversify beyond Amazon and those that are listening to their spouse and that spouse is saying honey we've got a great gig here you've got health insurance and a retirement plan are you crazy you're going to buy an Amazon business and [inaudible 00:34:05.8]. No, you teach them how to do something on the side as a side hustle and let it grow and take less risk but still have that that additional income down the road or a decent exit as well which boosts the retirement plan. Right, Scott? The book itself again folks it's called The Take Action Effect; Mr. Scott Voelker from The Amazing Seller and beyond. The beyond card is you just do so many other things. How do people find the book; where can they go, what do they need to do to get this in their hands and learn everything you've talked about? Scott: Yeah, just go to TakeActionEffect.com and there's just a simple page there. It'll tell you a little bit more about the book and it'll lead you over to most likely Amazon you get paperback hardcover or the Kindle; pretty affordable to be able to take this information. I don't think people are taking the value in a book is much as they should. It is a way for you to really understand me and my story but also who I've helped and who I want to help. And it allows us to start that relationship because I'm all about relationships. And I want to be able to build a relationship with you way before you would ever hire me or come to one of my workshops or inner circle or whatever. And this book is a way to do it. It's a really, really small investment to be able to really get you thinking differently because the way I look at it Joe is we're installing the Take Action mindset. We're taking this to where you think you know what I don't think I can do this and by the time you get done with even the first; probably quarter of the book you're going to feel like you're going to conquer the world. And that's what it's really all about. Now, Joe, before I do end this I'm going to ask you a question. Joe: Yes? Scott: I want to know one of your take action moments. Joe: Okay. Scott: What's something that you can recall that you're like if that never happened my life would be totally different. Joe: Let's see. Well going back to your vision board I did something very similar once upon a time and it was a Tony Robbins program writing down my goals and envisioning what they are. And I literally; and this is I described my life; I put it all down from the lifestyle that I wanted to live and the type of woman I wanted to marry. Lo, and behold within 6 months I met her. Scott: Wow. Joe: I showed her the list maybe 18 months later and it described her to a T. So that is a Take Action moment for me in terms of writing that list down. Now it changed over the years in terms of my goals. At one point I wanted to have the boat in the harbor in Portland Maine. Well, I live in North Carolina right now that's not really going to happen. And I didn't want it once I had kids. I couldn't really spend much time with them on a boat in that situation. The other one Scott when I'm at Brand Accelerator Live is; I mentioned it before we started recording, is that I have taken action on moving forward with my book as well. We're not going to talk too much about it. I'm going to drop a little hint in here and then I'll be quiet for 12 months. But it's something that I've talked about for many years and I've tried and I've tried and I just haven't gotten it done. And you've inspired me to get it done. And some of your tips in the book itself have allowed me to sort of bullet point what I need to do to take more action and get it done; so two impacts right there and I think is going to make a huge difference for me. But again it's not always; like Rachel says it's not always about me or her. It's about how you can help others as well. And I think you're doing that. You're helping others first and it's benefiting you. And I think it's the best way to go about it. So thank you, Scott, for being my friend, for being my colleague, for being on the Quiet Light podcast. I hope to see you on it again. Scott: Thank you so much, Joe. I appreciate it, man.   Links and Resources: The Take Action Effect Scott's Website Scott's Podcast Scott's YouTube Channel

The old-school way to train someone for a task involves memorization, repetition, and practice, in order to make it like second nature. Not only is that time-consuming, but also, people aren’t very good at it. So why train, when AR makes it obsolete? Scope AR aims to help companies get out of old habits, and CEO Scott Montgomerie drops by to explain how. Alan: Today’s guest is Scott Montgomerie from Scope AR. Scott is the CEO and co-founder of Scope AR, a global leader in developing augmented reality solutions and products for industrial clients focused around field maintenance, manufacturing, and training. As the pioneer of utilizing AR for industry support and training, Scope AR are partnered with technology leaders such as Google and Microsoft. Since founding the company in 2011, Scott as one of the first executives to get augmented reality tools in use by multi-billion dollar corporations. Having launched many AR firsts, Scott has become one of the industry’s thought leaders and visionaries. He’s shared his knowledge and spoken about some of the most innovative uses of AR at several leading conferences, including South by Southwest, Augmented World Expo, Unity Vision Summit, and XRDC. Some of the clients include Unilever, Prince Castle and Lockheed Martin. To learn more about Scope AR, visit scopear.com. Scott, welcome to the show. Scott: Thanks a lot, Alan. Alan: Yeah man, I’m really super excited. We’ve been kind of chatting offline and it’s amazing, the work you guys are doing and you’re starting to really see this uptake of augmented reality being used in enterprise. Can you maybe give people a 10,000 foot view of Scope AR, what you’re doing, and who your clients are, and what they’re using it for? Scott: Yeah, sure. So we really view that augmented reality is a way of interacting with the world in a way that’s much more intuitive, the way that we evolved with our hands and our eyes. And so we really view that there’s a huge market central there. I think it was a stat out there that said that, 90 percent of Silicon Valley is focused on the worker that’s at their desk, using computers and screens. And there’s a vast market out there that is untapped, in these field workers that are using their hands and their eyes. And so if we can use augmented reality to get them the information they need, at the time of need, and really help them become an expert when they need to know that information. And like I said, we think that’s a huge market. So we really approach the problem in two different ways with our products. The first is a remote assistance capability. So we were the first to market with a product called Remote AR, we launched in 2015. So it was far before any of the other 30 companies that are out there today. The idea is that it allows you to communicate over video between a technician and an expert. So it’s almost like FaceTime. If you’re looking at a piece of equipment — maybe a car engine — you take your phone or a pair of smart glasses like a Hololens, and you can look at this piece of equipment and transfer this video back to somebody with expertise. And this expert can now draw on their side of the screen, and get a really good remote guide instructions. So the problem with something like FaceTime is that the communication channel is not wide enough to provide really good instructions. When was the last time you actually communicated with a mechanic over the phone or over FaceTime? There’s no chance. Alan: Never. Scott: Yeah, exactly. It would probably be very painful for him to guide you how to replace something simple like a spark plug. “It’s that one right there. No, to the left. No, no, the other le

The old-school way to train someone for a task involves memorization, repetition, and practice, in order to make it like second nature. Not only is that time-consuming, but also, people aren’t very good at it. So why train, when AR makes it obsolete? Scope AR aims to help companies get out of old habits, and CEO Scott Montgomerie drops by to explain how. Alan: Today’s guest is Scott Montgomerie from Scope AR. Scott is the CEO and co-founder of Scope AR, a global leader in developing augmented reality solutions and products for industrial clients focused around field maintenance, manufacturing, and training. As the pioneer of utilizing AR for industry support and training, Scope AR are partnered with technology leaders such as Google and Microsoft. Since founding the company in 2011, Scott as one of the first executives to get augmented reality tools in use by multi-billion dollar corporations. Having launched many AR firsts, Scott has become one of the industry’s thought leaders and visionaries. He’s shared his knowledge and spoken about some of the most innovative uses of AR at several leading conferences, including South by Southwest, Augmented World Expo, Unity Vision Summit, and XRDC. Some of the clients include Unilever, Prince Castle and Lockheed Martin. To learn more about Scope AR, visit scopear.com. Scott, welcome to the show. Scott: Thanks a lot, Alan. Alan: Yeah man, I’m really super excited. We’ve been kind of chatting offline and it’s amazing, the work you guys are doing and you’re starting to really see this uptake of augmented reality being used in enterprise. Can you maybe give people a 10,000 foot view of Scope AR, what you’re doing, and who your clients are, and what they’re using it for? Scott: Yeah, sure. So we really view that augmented reality is a way of interacting with the world in a way that’s much more intuitive, the way that we evolved with our hands and our eyes. And so we really view that there’s a huge market central there. I think it was a stat out there that said that, 90 percent of Silicon Valley is focused on the worker that’s at their desk, using computers and screens. And there’s a vast market out there that is untapped, in these field workers that are using their hands and their eyes. And so if we can use augmented reality to get them the information they need, at the time of need, and really help them become an expert when they need to know that information. And like I said, we think that’s a huge market. So we really approach the problem in two different ways with our products. The first is a remote assistance capability. So we were the first to market with a product called Remote AR, we launched in 2015. So it was far before any of the other 30 companies that are out there today. The idea is that it allows you to communicate over video between a technician and an expert. So it’s almost like FaceTime. If you’re looking at a piece of equipment — maybe a car engine — you take your phone or a pair of smart glasses like a Hololens, and you can look at this piece of equipment and transfer this video back to somebody with expertise. And this expert can now draw on their side of the screen, and get a really good remote guide instructions. So the problem with something like FaceTime is that the communication channel is not wide enough to provide really good instructions. When was the last time you actually communicated with a mechanic over the phone or over FaceTime? There’s no chance. Alan: Never. Scott: Yeah, exactly. It would probably be very painful for him to guide you how to replace something simple like a spark plug. “It’s that one right there. No, to the left. No, no, the other le

Scott: One of Kyle's big interests is birds. So what we did was created a birding weekend, and invited a bunch of guests who were connected with the Audubon Society, Cincinnati chapter, Cincinnati Bird Club. People along that line those who share the same interest in birding as Kyle does.Katie: Yeah and this interest in birding is more than just - I like to be outside and in the woods, right? Tell me about that interest that Kyle has and what that looks like.Tammi: When Kyle was born we had two acres in the woods and my husband is the biggest Audubon-nut known to man. And we had every bird in our yard. So Scott had all these CDs from Audubon and from Cornell University of bird calls.Tammi: What we didn't realize is Kyle's gift is audio memory and at age 2, age 3 he was putting those CDs in our old stereo and memorizing, we didn't realize, he was memorizing all those bird calls by track. We're thinking three hundred, four hundred, or five hundred bird calls he has memorized, and he still knows them to age 20. Katie: That is incredible, I didn't realize that it was something that started that young. So when you chose what to do, you were thinking around Kyle's interests. Why were you looking at Kyle's interest in particular?Scott: Well we want to get him integrated, involved in the community - trying to link him up with like-minded people. People with the same interests, shared interests.Katie: So let's unpack how you came up with the idea to eventually have a retreat, what was your initial concept around what you would do?Tammi: My initial thought was a running event, Kyle ran cross country in eight grade and he wants to run again. But Scott and I don't run long distance. So I thought I thought we would set some kind of annual running event. And that was mom, all on my own, in my own head, I get caught in my head.Katie: What do you mean by that? Why was it like being caught?Tammi: When we came to Starfire and started learning different strategies. Taking people to lunch, taking other runners, birders, artists, taking even neighbors, just taking people to lunch and pick their brains, I just call it getting out of my own head.Scott: Yeah the cool thing about some of this was when we first started thinking about this we thought well we can do this, we can do this with no input from anybody else you know we'll come up with the idea and then we can help execute. And then talking to a particular person at Starfire we were told to just talk to people, see what they think and let them kind of run with the program. Don't plan everything for yourself, this is not about you, this is about Kyle integrating into the community. Don't even make the event about him, just make an event of which he is an equal part of and let people volunteer and get the buy in from that.Katie: How important do you think those coffees were and those plannings were over time?Tammi: They were critical.Scott: Critical that's the word I was thinking too.Tammi: It was fun and it was critical to get everyone's feedback and to brainstorm with others. The synergy of getting all our ideas together.Scott: Yeah, simple conversations and getting buy-in, otherwise you're going in cold asking people to do something when they don't even know who you are. It just, you have to.Tammi: And we took a few birders to lunch and they said, well why don't we rent a cabin out in rural Adams County and go birding? And that had never crossed our minds. Scott: And then all the pieces, well what would we need to do for this and this and and it just kind of fell in place in some ways. It still look a lot of planning.Katie: And did it fall in place because the people who helped come up with the idea were helping with some of the logistics and thinking through what to do?Scott: Yeah.Katie: Some shared ownership there, and that's kind of what you were saying that you might get caught in your head, that the original idea didn't have anyone else owning it and so that's the shift where some other people being part of this and feeling just as passionately is what drives the whole ship.Tammi: Absolutely.Katie: And then so everybody who participated in the planning of it how did you work with their schedules to make sure they were involved?Scott: Our event was more of a regional draw, it's not people who live on our street. So our meetings were one on one, they were through email, phone calls things like that. It wasn't like a collective group of people meeting all the time. Turned out there was a bigger interest than we really kind of expected so we had to kind of pull back on it because the place we were getting for the weekend wasn't large enough to hold everybody. So their enthusiasm made things so much easier. The worse thing you can do is throw a party and nobody shows up.Katie: That's really neat. And what was Kyle's role in the project planning itself?Tammi: Excellent question.Scott: I won't say Kyle initiated any of the plans himself, what we would do is we would always ask Kyle if he wanted to do this, get his sign-off essentially.Tammi: Is it ok to have a sleepover with ten people in a cabin? And he would give us a thumbs up or thumbs down. He would come on all the lunches with us or the coffees we would have with people.Katie: Once you came up with this idea together and you landed on your theme, you came up with what you were going to do, you probably set a date, picked a location, were there any other things logistically that you really had to work through that were big parts of this?Tammi: We had to watch the weather, and it rained, which actually turned out to be a good thing because the birds like the rain.Scott: Yeah, it was migration season for the warblers, it was in May, so a nice spring rain kept them calm and singing.Tammi: Picking trails that were accessible and worthy of seeing lots of birds. Picking a trail that was near a lunch picnic shelter, because we provided lunch.Katie: Did anything come up during the process where you felt like, oh no this is never going to work?Tammi: Oh big time.Scott: YesKatie: Can you name a couple of those?Scott: Well, we had a spot all picked out, it was an hour and a half east of the city of Cincinnati, and was it a week or two before? They said, there's — I'll just call it an environmental issue. They had some wild animals on the premises, and we cannot have you come to this. Katie: What type of wild animals?Scott: Feral hogs.Katie: Oh of courseScott: Feral hogs were loose on the property and we need to trap them and we can't have humans at the facility because it'll spook the feral hogs. So we had to scramble, Tammi actually did, scrambled and found a place that we then rented for the weekend.Katie: That must have been just.. How did that feel, gut wrenching?Scott: (Laughter)Tammi: Gut-wrenching except that the rental I think turned out to be a better option for us.Katie: So it was a good thing, hogs feral hogs who would've thought can actually be the best part of your project?Scott: Yeah and then we walked into the place we rented and the first thing we see is the mounted head of a hog on the wall, and I was like, this is perfect, it was meant to be.Katie: So take me to the day of the birding event. It sounds like a lot of the planning happened with you all and you were the connection but maybe having everyone in the room at once was kind of an exciting thing. Where everybody's like, now we're all here. Tell me about the day, how did it feel?Tammi: It was May and it was rainy and we all met at a trail head and that's how we got our day started with a hike.Scott: And we turned the hike procedures and all that over to one of the birders, who was familiar with the trail. So they led the hike and we just participated like everybody else.Tammi: It was exciting, everyone showed up.Scott: Everyone showed up.Tammi: We had 17 on the hike and I think 14 came back to the cabin for dinner. That was exciting to finally get inside and out of the rain. We had a lot of fun stories to tell. And then ten people, that's the limit on the cabin for spending the night, so we had ten conversations to midnight.And what Scott and I noticed too, Kyle being such a (I don't want to say expert) but the audio memory, he can hold his own in that group of experts.Katie: Were they impressed by the level of knowledge that he has?Tammi: Absolutely.Katie: After all this your goal to help Kyle get more integrated into the community, and also as a family to connect more socially with people who share the birding interest, what has happened since? What is a result of this project that you want to share?Scott: During that weekend one of the activities we did was we had a little contest where we would play a bird call and the avid birders had to identify what the bird was. We had fifteen birds and Kyle ended up winning the competition. It was pretty cool in and of itself. Then a few months later there was a bird outing, and the person that was leading the birding walk - we had never met. And when we introduced ourselves to him he said,“Oh Kyle I've heard about you, you're the one who knows all the bird calls.” So we decided to take him to lunch just to make the connection with him. Over lunch he said he would like to do that, he heard about the birding weekend, he actually knew of the place we went and said that was one of his favorite places to go birding ever. And he would like to do that same weekend if we'd be interested in doing it with he and his buddies. So great yeah, we'll do that. And then at lunch he decided I have about an hour, I'm going to go birding, Kyle would you like to join me? So we all went birding and it was kind of interesting because Josh kind of took Kyle. And they went birding and Tammi and I were kind of behind them watching it was pretty cool because it all came out of the birding weekend. It was that connection, he knew about the weekend, he knew about Kyle's skills, he knew of where we went birding, it was just this perfect puzzle that was put together.Katie: And you didn't even have to put that out there?Scott: He did it all. It was his idea, and it's his guest list, so we're connecting Kyle to a whole other group of people he didn't know before.Katie: That's incredible, thank you guys anything else you want to say?Tammi: Well, I was going to say, I felt as the non-birder, you know the big let down after the big weekend… Birders all go away for the summer and I thought, oh my gosh we did all of this and there's no connection. And then a month later they go on that hike and then — there's Josh.Katie: Pretty awesome.Tammi: It was awesome.

This is a special episode courtesy of the Dorks Delivered Youtube channel where Josh interviews Scott Aurisch about his life in business and what motivates him. Josh Lewis and Scott from NRG Boost Fitness talk about taking the plunge in business in the fitness industry. Watch this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX1YaTk2bl0&t=22s Josh: I've got Scott here from NRG Boost Fitness and today we're going to be talking about taking the plunge in business. My understanding is you've been in business for a while and about 12 months ago, you decided to go for some brick and mortar. Scott: Yeah, exactly right. I've been in the fitness industry now for over 20 years but in business for myself for coming up to 8 years, and very close to 12 months in my own premises. Josh: Right. Are you loving it? Scott: Absolutely loving it. It's probably been one of the most tiring years of my life but certainly the most fulfilling, from a professional standpoint. Josh: I think it's a big discipline thing. You get your own business and you take a plunge and you do something that you're thinking, should I or shouldn't I, and if you take the risk, sometimes against all odds, and it's not that you fail, you don't fail, you make sure you don't fail. Scott: Exactly right. You sort of get rid of that safety net and you're just forced to step up and it's an enormous growth experience and I'm really pleased that I did. Josh: That's cool. And has there been any milestone moments over the last 12 months that really stood out as a, ‘I've made it’? Scott: Yeah! Probably no one moment, just lots of little moments along the way, where, when you do take a moment to reflect back on where things were... Pretty much 12 months ago was when I was in the planning phase for opening here, which all came together super quickly. Once I've made the decision to make this happen, things just seemed to fall into place, which is something we might talk about a little bit later on, but as the year has unfolded, just sometimes when I'm training somebody that I've built a good relationship with, in some cases over the years, but in some cases, people I've just met this year, it's in those moments that I realise what I've achieved, when you make those connections with people. So that's what I mean by what some people would regard as little things, rather than big milestones, but they're the most rewarding moments for me. Josh: That's cool. Prior to running out of brick and mortar, how was your business beforehand? Scott: I was working out of a local gym and I'd been there for several years, and it wasn't that I got to a point where I was unhappy, but I did feel like I wasn't growing professionally anymore, and I just needed a new challenge that would present that opportunity for growth and freedom as well. Josh: Cool, cool. I guess you haven't looked back. You're 12 months in. What sort of aspirations do you have for the next 12 months? Scott: Yeah, I guess I haven't looked too far ahead, which is probably something I need to get a little bit better at, but certainly, consolidating what I've achieved in the first 12 months, and I think one of the keys to that is building good relationships with my client base but also other industry associates that I have contact with. So I'll definitely be looking to build on that over the next 12 months in a way that is sustainable in terms of my energy and my own health and wellbeing because, as you would know, when you work for yourself, you can get a little bit focused on the business and some of your personal life can tend to suffer. Josh: Absolutely, it can go by the wayside. Scott: Yeah. Josh: It becomes a very addictive, very addictive thing, having your own business. Scott: It certainly can, and in my situation, where I'm preaching to people about achieving balance in your life. It's really important that I practise what I preach and set the example of having a balanced lifestyle where I'm looking after myself and looking after my personal relationships outside of work as well because your business might be firing on all cylinders but if some of those other areas of your life begin to suffer, that's going to impact on you as an individual at some point, and then ultimately affect your business. Josh: Yeah, completely agree. It's all about having balance. Otherwise, the whole system breaks. Scott: Yeah, that's right. Josh: If you were to go back to the moment while you were working for someone else and you didn't have your own business, can you remember what made you take the step and take the leap towards doing everything, wearing all the hats, and doing the payroll, doing your taxes, doing everything underneath your own banner? What was the catalyst towards the move? Scott: Yeah, probably just a couple of little moments. Again, it was nothing major. There was no massive falling out with anyone at my previous workplace, but just piecing a few things together and just some little frustrations and I thought it was time to take control of things myself and when you run your own business, you get to do things your way and you are absolutely responsible for everything that occurs. So, yeah, it was nothing major and just a couple of little things and I do distinctly remember in those moments thinking, yeah, I've got to do this because there was a lot of thought that went into it beforehand but when I eventually made that decision, like I said earlier, it all just fell into place. Josh: That's cool, that's cool. You do a lot of stuff for communities, and I understand you've gone back to the school that you went to and you've helped them out. Tell me more about what happened there. Scott: Well, I was fortunate enough to be contacted by the Logan PCYC who run a lot of great programmes and one of them is called the Deep Blue Line programme, which is in association with Queensland Police, where they visit local high schools and present an 8 to 10 week programme to a group of students of various ages. I was invited to come along and speak for one particular week about the importance of exercise and nutrition and, yeah, it was pretty cool. But one of the schools I got to visit was my own old high school that I had not stepped foot inside for 25 years and it was my Back to the Future! Josh: That would have been weird. Scott: It really was. It was a really cool experience, though. The place had not changed. It had been really well maintained over that time but it was just like going back to how I remember it. And then to go back as an adult, as a professional, and feel like you're adding some sort of value to a place that played a role in your own development. It was very fulfilling for me, and I've been back a couple of times since as well. Josh: Was there any old teachers that you saw and you were like, ‘Oh, no… Sir, what are you doing?’ Scott: No, no. Very much a turnover of staff but while I was at the school office, I did look at the boards with all the photos and the honour boards with the kids' names and that sort of thing. And just to tie that into NRG Boost Fitness here, I've actually got three old schoolmates as current clients. Josh: That's cool. Scott: Yeah. So that's also something that I find very rewarding as well and makes me feel really good. Obviously, we all run businesses to earn money. Josh: Ideally, yeah. Scott: Yeah. You've got to earn a living. You've got to support yourself and your family, but for me, I think one of the keys to my success is that I don't focus on just the dollars. It's about a lot more than that. It's about personal fulfilment and things that make me happy and the fact that I've got three guys that I'd probably fallen out of contact with a little bit over the years but have reconnected with in recent years. They're now current clients, and I'm helping them improve their lifestyles. Josh: That's cool. So you've been in business for a long time, you've got your bricks and mortar now, have a rough idea of where you're wanting to go. If you were to do it all again, would you change the order of events or what would you do differently? Scott: I honestly don't think I would change a great deal. One of the things I think I got right from the outset was as professionals, as entrepreneurs, you would have to read a lot about the importance of beginning with the end in mind, having a clear picture of what you want your business to look like, and it was the clearest example in my life where I was able to come up with a very clear picture of how I wanted this place to look, how I wanted this place to operate, and doing that, and putting effort into getting those details right from the start, allowed me to almost follow that to the letter and it was amazing watching that unfold. To have ideas go from just words on paper through to, a little over two months later, from when I first decided to undertake this venture and then to actually open my doors, it was literally two months, but the reason it was able to happen so quickly is because I was clear on what I wanted and things literally just fell into place. There was no forcing or pushing. Things just sort of fell my way. Josh: That's very, very serendipitous, or lucky, I guess, or fortunate that that worked out that way. Scott: Yeah. So just to answer your question in fewer words, basically, beginning with the end in mind was the most important thing that I did and I would recommend that for anybody else looking to do anything similar. Josh: Cool. A lot of people get into business and they think, ‘Oh, in two years' time I'm going to retire. I'm going to make a million dollars,’ and have these huge thoughts of grandeur and they don't necessarily make the appropriate planning before jumping in and understanding the depth of the water and realising how deep it goes and how much is actually involved in running your own business, especially when you're starting up and you need to be the person wearing all of the different hats. You need to be the technical person, you need to be the administration, you need to be the marketer, the salesperson, you do all of the different things all at once, and as you said, you want to have a balance in your business, you want to have a balance in your life. Was there any steps that you went, ‘Oh, shit, I need to learn more about this,’ or, ‘I need to learn more about that,’ or things that you went, ‘Oh, wasn't expecting that to be a hurdle?’ Scott: Yeah. Not really. That's probably another thing I think I got right—the scale of the venture that I took on, I think, was appropriate for that first leap. But the point you make about a lot of business people taking the plunge but not realising the depth of the water they're diving into, in my industry it might be somebody that says, ‘Oh, I can run a gym,’ and they take on this big operation and then it's not until they're in it and they realise what an undertaking it is. So I was pretty happy to start with a personal training studio that's literally a couple of hundred metres around the corner from home, so it suited my lifestyle and I've been really comfortable with the size of the jump, so to speak. There have certainly been things that I've had to learn as I went along but that was the whole point to begin with—to learn new things and challenge myself. Josh: I think it's very sensible the way that you've gone about the business because, as you said, a lot of people might just go in and they jump straight into a lease but they don't have any clientele and they have no idea about marketing. They just think they get some business cards and then they will come, build it and they will come, and that's not how it really works. I think it's great that you're in the IT world, they call it agile development, where you try and make the smallest profitable item first and then you build upon that. A good example would be Uber. So you don't start with an autonomous vehicle that's driving everyone, tens of thousands of autonomous vehicles driving everyone around countries. Instead, you start with an app that allows for people to take in that step until they've saved up enough money to then be able to move onto the next ventures, and Elon Musk does the same things. Josh: And you've done the same thing in where you've built up your clientele, you've created a rapport and the message is strong and your social content in strong, and the community that you've created around your business is very strong. Different events that I've been to with Scott have been 60, 70 people upwards. Your opening day here, I don't know how many people you would have had here, it was stacks, so it shows the belief and the message that you've instilled in all the people that you have come here is very strong and the allegiance of people. Scott: Well, I think, getting back to one of your earlier questions about community, I've done things outside of here for the broader community, but I placed great emphasis on the importance of building a community within your business, in much the same way that a café might do the same thing. There are hundreds of cafes, Brisbane wide, and what makes you choose one over another? It’s generally the one where you feel most welcome and almost like it's a second home, and so that's what I try to do here, again, not in a forced kind of way but just in an organic way, and it's been another very satisfying thing for me to observe, friendships being formed and I know that some of my group members socialise outside of here, that didn't know each other previously but they met through NRG Boost Fitness and that's sometimes more rewarding than dollars. Josh: I think just, straight on the friendship situation, it's something, it's a place... I come here myself and it's a place that I feel very comfortable in, and I've brought multiple friends here because I find it's a good time to be able to catch up and see people while having a workout, as opposed to catching up and having a beer and a pizza, which is lovely as well, but it's not as great for your waistline and your health, and I can definitely say you...we, two and a half years ago, met for the first time and I told you my goals and you said, ‘That's not achievable’, in nicer words, in the timeline that I wanted to achieve it in. You said, ‘Look, see how you go’, I think, and I tried really hard, twisted my ankle, stopped trying as hard for a while, but I continued to persevere and 12 months later I achieved the goal that I wanted to, the weight that I wanted to, the percentage of body weight that I wanted to, and I'm very impressed with the results I was able to get from you. But it was not just the journey of the weight. It was also the friendship that was made along the way, and a great example would be Scott coming over and surprising me of a lunchtime and taking me over to see the jolly old Saint Nick. Scott: That's right, yeah. Coming up to a year ago. Josh: Yeah, that's right. We were able to sit on Santa's lap together which was… Scott: For the first time in probably 30 years! Well, for me, anyway! Josh: For you, yeah! And I thought it was great that you definitely went above and beyond and I don't think there would be many business owners, or especially PTs, that would do that level of commitment towards the friendships and the bonds that were created within the community, so it's a testament to the way you create your business. Scott: Thanks, Josh. Josh: I'd like to cut across to a quick video that discusses more about taking the plunge and we'll talk more about that afterwards. It's big, it's wet, it's wild. That's right. It's Niagara Falls, and if you've ever been here or any other large waterfall, you might have wondered, what would it be like to just jump in? So, there was this time when Sam Patch, who was the first daredevil to take the plunge over Niagara, all the way back in 1829. He shot to fame and his slogan became part of a popular slang. The slang was, ‘Some things can be done as well as others.’ It's a great line. You could take it to mean that our achievements are equal, or you could also take it like we are trying to do our own thing as best we can, or maybe he was telling us that we can do those things that others think are impossible. So what about you? What's your Niagara Falls? What's that big challenge that you are scared to take on? Well, let me tell you, it's often much easier than you think once you just commit to it. For Sam Patch, he was actually pretty disappointed with the crowd that turned up for his first successful attempt. There was bad weather and he'd been delayed, so he announced that he would do it again a few days later. This time, 10,000 people turned up and he cemented his place in history. So, if old Sam can jump off Niagara Falls twice, there's nothing to stop you taking the plunge. Whoa! Josh: Good to be back. I thought that was pretty good. So we went through that you can sort of see sometimes it's not the first time, the first step, but just taking the plunge and just being the person that commits to that can really make a big difference in your business. So it's cool that you've gone through and you've done that and you've experienced that firsthand and you didn't, in a sink or swim situation, you were able to swim and, if anything, swim very, very well. Scott: Yeah. Well, just one point I'd like to add to that, Josh. As any person should do when making a decision to go into business or not, you're going to come up with your list of pros and cons, and you'll have your moments of bravery and you'll have your moments of fear and ultimately, for me, it came down to a fear of financial risk and when I really thought about it, I then fast-forwarded to when I'm 80 years of age and I look back, and if I hadn't done this, what would have been the reason that I didn't and would I be comfortable with that decision? And if it was just a money thing that held me back, I think I would look back and regret it and be disappointed that I wasn't bolder at the time. So, yeah, I think it's a useful exercise sometimes, to fast-forward to when you're in your final years, will you wish that you had have taken more risks? Josh: Definitely, I agree completely. I've always looked at it like, who would you like to see standing there at your funeral and... as dark as that is, who would you like to see standing there, at your funeral, and what was the reason you were remembered? And hopefully, there's a legacy that you've left behind, whether that be children or even just a nice smile in helping someone out and that's there some memory that you've left there. So it's work your way back from there. Scott: Yeah. And it might seem a little bit dark to some people but it's an extremely powerful exercise to take yourself through as well. Josh: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Definitely. So what would you say would be the life tip or quote that you live by? Scott: Well, there are probably a few but one that I have been thinking about recently is not being a victim in life and basically taking absolute personal responsibility for your life circumstances. I just believe that as soon as you blame somebody else or other people for your situation, is when you give away your power. Sure, bad things are going to happen in your life and some will be other people's fault, but it's how you respond to that really makes the difference. So I really try to remember that all the time and take the appropriate action. So there might be people out there who are unhappy with their job and it's as simple as changing jobs. I understand that it's scary in that moment but if you're truly unhappy, you have the power to find a better job. Josh: Absolutely. Scott: And if you're overweight, you can continue blaming this, blaming genetics, whatever the case might be, but ultimately, if you eat better and exercise, you're going to improve that situation. Josh: Absolutely. And it's all about baby steps and getting the understanding, sometimes understanding your weak points and turning them into your strengths or at least having recognition towards them so you know how to work and come out of your comfort circle, to grow into a better person, whether that be through weight loss or a change of job, or a change of marriage, or whatever the situation is, it can all make you a happier you. Scott: Yeah, exactly right, Josh. Josh: Cool. And we're going to do something here. So we're going to do a shout out. You've done really, really well. Public speaking and especially in a global audience, like YouTube, can be scary. It's all imprinted in stone forever. It's going to live on longer than us. This could be our legacy. If nothing else, this is it. Scott: Don't stuff it up. Don't stuff it up! Josh: So you've done really, really well and I really appreciate your time that you've given me today, and I'd like to see if there's maybe another business coach, leader or business that you think would benefit from having a review and that the public would benefit from hearing from. Scott: Yeah, well, certainly one of the best things I've done in recent years in terms of developing my own business expertise, for want of a better term, is I undertook an internship with a business called Create PT Wealth. I attended a free workshop. It was probably over three years ago now, and that, in itself, was a half day, full day workshop that was highly valuable and I took a lot out of that and I realised the position my business, and I'll use the term business fairly loosely because at that time it was a fairly poorly structured business, and it made me realise what work I needed to do to make a real business. Scott: So I then undertook an 18-month personal training business internship and it covered all sorts of things: business systems, marketing, the whole gamut of things. At the time, I could not afford it, well, I told myself that, ‘You can't afford this,’ but something in me knew that I needed to do it and it wasn't an expense, it was an investment in the future of my business. So that was another time where I took the plunge and found a way to afford it and what I learnt in 18 months has been a massive reason behind where I'm at today, in terms of having my own premises and being very happy with my professional life. Scott: So Create PT Wealth is the name of the business and I would strongly recommend that anybody else in the fitness industry or a personal trainer seek them out and see what they can offer your business. Josh: Cool. Is there anybody particular at PT Wealth that stuck out for you? Scott: Yeah, well, certainly both Brad and Jason were both extremely helpful, right from that initial workshop and I also had a business coach, Leanne, through that time as well, that I would check in with, every fortnight, and just have a phone conversation, and it was a good way to be kept accountable. She would set me certain business-related tasks that I would need to report back to her on in the next fortnight and that's a really important thing, is accountability, because sometimes it's easy to make excuses to yourself but when there's somebody else that you've got to report back to, I found that that really kept me on track. Josh: Definitely. Scott: Thank you to Create PT Wealth. Josh: Cool. Well, I think we should all take a deep breath and give yourselves a clap. That's awesome. Thank you very much. Scott: No worries, Josh. Thank you. Josh: Awesome. Read about the interview: https://dorksdelivered.com.au/business-tips/interview-with-scott-aurisch-of-nrg-boost-fitness?highlight=WyJzY290dCJd I hope you enjoyed the episode. Every little bit helps and a small thing that you could do, as a token of appreciation, would be to jump onto iTunes and rate and review to make sure that other people can listen and get the same helpful help that you guys had. Thank you, and keep good.

Peter Abrahams on a priority for him right now in his new role as Publisher of the Washington Business Journal~ "I'm on a listening tour, really, talking to a lot of the business leaders in the city. Trying to get to meet with our clients, our stakeholders, really understanding what's important to them. I have some ideas . . . " Peter Abrahams - Publisher, Washington Business Journal and Andy Ockershausen in-studio interview Andy Ockershausen: Well this is Our Town. This is Andy Ockershausen with an old friend. He'll never be old, and he's a wonderful friend. His name is Peter Abrahams, he's just taken over the job at head of the Washington Business Journal, but I knew him when he was selling magazines here in the studios of WMAL. Peter, welcome to Our Town. Peter Abrahams: Thanks Andy. Good to be here. And by the way, you said I'm an old friend, let's just be clear. I'm not that old. Andy Ockershausen: Yeah, I've been around a long time. Peter I've had some people that are older than me, believe it or not, in this business. Peter Abrahams: I do believe that. You're not that old. Andy Ockershausen: I'm not going to be either, Peter, but I'm so happy to have you and have you back at Our Town, but we met long before I found out that you were an important guy, through a mutual friend that grew up with you in Boston. Is that correct? Peter Abrahams On How He and Andy Met Peter Abrahams: You know, as I was thinking about seeing you today, we have known each other for so long- I'm trying to remember how we actually met the very first time because I didn't, but it's been 25 years. I mean you were one of the very first people I met when I landed here. My first time here was in '89 and I can't even remember, but through the years, it never goes about a month or two months without seeing you running around somewhere. I mean running, you don't walk, you tend to move pretty fast so, and I have short little legs, so it was always hard to catch up with you. Andy Ockershausen: Yeah, but you make an impression everywhere you go, Peter. I always was so impressed, Scott Langerman went to- Peter Abrahams: Oh, was it Scott? Yeah. Andy Ockershausen: School with him and then Longwood somewhere up with the rich people in the Boston area. I knew that. Peter Abrahams: Yeah, Chestnut Hill, Baker Elementary. Andy Ockershausen: Isn't that something? It's incredible and then you run back into him in the Capitol, but Peter, having you and seeing you operate because I went to a lot of things, as you did, and that was so important, you made an appearance in Our Town, and people knew Peter Abrahams. And you have represented an important part of Our Town with your publication. Peter Left Our Town, But Not Actually Peter Abrahams: Yeah, you know it's funny, people always ask me that and they ask me, I didn't actually leave. I was still here, but I was never here. I was spending about three days a month here over the last couple years. I was- Andy Ockershausen: Kept your home here? Peter Abrahams: Kept my home here. But I really wasn't here and so a lot of people have welcomed me back. I didn't leave, but it's interesting because when you talk about the impression, for me, this area has always made an impression upon me. So, I feel fortunate coming back because I've been welcomed back, which was surprising, and you know, I am going to take that people think I physically left. It's great, because they're buying me coffees and they want to see me. Andy Ockershausen: Oh wow. From Boston to Washington, DC - Abrahams Instantly Felt at Home Peter Abrahams: But, you know, when I moved here, I was in Boston, it was shortly after school. I ran my own business, which failed, I was bankrupt. Got in my friend's car and we drove down here.

S.F. Lighthouse is Creating Opportunities While Enchanted Hills Camp Rises from the Ashes – Meet Will Butler – Tactile Maps Anyone?   Full Transcript Below   It was an honor to meet up with Will Butler, the Communications Director of the San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Will gives us an update on the Enchanted Hills Camp located in Napa and people are returning and continuing the tradition that started over 6 decades ago. Jeff talks about the wood working classes he will be teaching along side of George Wurtzel and Brian Buhrow for beginers and a second session for advance wood workers. Scott Blanks gives us a review of the Tactile Maps and how they can provide added information when mind mapping one’s location. The Lighthouse of SF will soon make it possible to order your maps on-line. Will tells us how to subscribe and find out more about theSan Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind and visually Impairedand Enchanted Hills Camp. You can subscribed to their newsletterand follow them on Facebookand follow on Twitter@Lighthouse-SF You can find out more about Aira on the web at www.Aira.io Image of the Aira Logo Your Life, Your Schedule, Right Now. If you want to know more about Aira and the services they provide, check them out on the web and become an Aira Explorer today! www.Aira.io Using augmented reality, Aira connects people who are blind or low vision to a trained professional agent who is dedicated to further enhancing their everyday experience – completely hands-free assistance at the touch of a button. Thank you for listening! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store Full Transcript: S.F. Lighthouse is Creating Opportunities While Enchanted Hills Camp Rises from the Ashes – Meet Will Butler – Tactile Maps Anyone?   Speaker 1: Welcome to the Blind Abilities coverage of the 2018 National Federation of the Blind convention, sponsored by Aira.   Speaker 2: Aira, your life, your schedule, right now. Jeff Thompson: In this coverage of the National Federation of the Blind 2018 Orlando, Florida, I meet up with a virtual friend of mine. I've conversed with him many times. His name is Will Butler. He's the Communications Director at the San Francisco LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Such a great opportunity at these conventions to meet up with people you've only virtually met. I was really honored to be able to finally meet up with Will Butler and talk about the San Francisco LightHouse, the opportunities and events that they've created out in San Francisco not only for California but people worldwide. Jeff Thompson: I also met up with Scott Blanks, and he gave a little description of the TMAPS that they were giving away at the convention.   Speaker 2: Aira, a description of life. Jeff Thompson: Welcome to Blind Abilities, I'm Jeff Thompson. I'm down here in Orlando, Florida Convention 2018 and I came across the San Francisco LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired booth. And I ran into Will Butler and he's the Communications Director. How you doing, Will? Will Butler: Excellent, how you doing, Jeff? Jeff Thompson: I'm doing good thank you. Can you- Will Butler: Finally face to face with the great Jeff Thompson. Jeff Thompson: I don't know about the great part but I'm here and it's really exciting to be here. It's really hot down here. Will Butler: Well, you got to wear a sweater inside because you're going to freeze inside. Jeff Thompson: Oh yeah. Well in the northern part of California it doesn't really get this hot right? Will Butler: Every year it's hotter and hotter up there. But where it really gets hot is out in Napa. Jeff Thompson: Yes up on Veeder Mountain where the Enchanted Hills camp part of San Francisco LightHouse is. Will Butler: That's right, yeah. We have our camp out there in the hills of the Wine country and it's, gosh, I don't know in its 68th year I think. And it almost was its last year earlier this fall because the fires that came through Northern California came and ripped through the area and tore down about half of our camp, including all the cabins where the kids stay every year. So we are just barely recovered from that and we're lucky enough to be able to launch a camp season again for June. Jeff Thompson: Yeah. The doors are open up there. Will Butler: They are, they are indeed and there are a lot of blind kids and families who are really happy about that because they didn't want to miss a year. Some people haven't missed a year in generations. Jeff Thompson: Oh, that's awesome. All the way from Africa. There's people coming from Poland, people from Australia are volunteering up there. Will Butler: I hear you're going to spend a couple of weeks up there. Jeff Thompson: I'll be up there with George Wurtzel. Woodworking for the blind, they hold their annual event and Enchanting Hills does such a great job of that where we go up there, we have a beginners class and then we have a advanced woodworkers class. I'll be up there from the 6th starting with the music camp that you guys run up there. That's great opportunity for people to be- Will Butler: Playing some music, running some power tools. You're a pretty hands on guy, huh? Jeff Thompson: I worked at Blind Incorporated when I went there as a student they gave me a click ruler and I was able to figure it out. It all came back to me so fast that they hired me to teach it and from there on it's just been fun to do stuff that people really didn't expect me to do. Will Butler: What do you think about maps? Jeff Thompson: Maps? That's what you guys got here, right? Will Butler: Yeah. Do you want to see what we got here at the table? Jeff Thompson: Sure. Will Butler: Here, come on over. Okay so what we got here what we're showing off at the convention in particular this year is TMAP. And TMAP are our Tactile Map Automated Production. One of the big things we do at LightHouse in the map lab is we make maps for people to order. Like someone would say, "I need a map of my neighborhood, I need a map of my whatever." And we'll turn it into a tactile graphic that they can feel and use to get around. But we figured that's not really super scalable because it's just our time and resources. So we created software that actually allows you to type an address in and print with an embosser auto print a tactile map on demand. Jeff Thompson: Really. Will Butler: Yeah. In some ways if you have access to an embosser it's like the Google Maps experience to be able to like just type an address in and get an aerial view of the area around your point of interest. And really get to know an area by exploring rather than turn by turn directions. Jeff Thompson: Well, I remember when I first lost some eyesight and I was trying to draw these mental maps. I always wanted something that I could put my finger on and actually get an idea of what the big picture looks like. Will Butler: Yeah. Yeah, well I don't know, do you want a map of your neighborhood? They're free. Jeff Thompson: Sure. Will Butler: Okay. Jeff Thompson: So this is something that you offer all in San Francisco as well? Will Butler: Yeah and actually pretty soon you're going to be buy these on demand maps from us. You'll be able to just go on the LightHouse website, type your address in and we'll send you a map wherever you want. Jeff Thompson: What website is that? Will Butler: That's lighthouse-sf.org. Jeff Thompson: That's really great. I was feeling these yesterday. I found Market Street on San Francisco on that you are here button. It was really good. So what else has San Francisco LightHouse offer to people in California? Well wait, I shouldn't say California because I've been out there three years in a row and I'm from Minnesota. Will Butler: Right, exactly. Yeah we definitely love the idea that people are starting to come from all over the country and all over the world to take advantage of the services that we offer and the fun programs that we have. We've got these dorm style short term residences now in our San Francisco building, which house 29 people at a time. And they're actually quite nice dorms. They're better than your college dorm for sure. And so people can come out and for immersion classes and week long retreats and what not. And really stay with us and kind of get immersed in whatever the program is. Will Butler: So we offer employment immersions for youth ages 16 to 24 every summer. The youth stay with us for three weeks and they get job experience in the community, in the San Francisco area. They get to go to work for a few days out of the week. They have workshops, and then culminates with a conference all together. They really get to bond over that over a period of a few weeks. And then we have also similar youth employment programming throughout the year for anyone in the Bay area or anyone who can make it out on the weekends. Jeff Thompson: And people can get that newsletter from the LightHouse. I get one once a week maybe. Will Butler: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah we affectionately call it LightHouse Lately where we just update folks on what's been going on. It's usually about four things every week. It is about our programs but it's also about things that I think would appeal to people globally in the blindness community. It's where we might give you the latest update about the Holman prize. It's where we might talk about new initiatives or accessibility related. Advancements that have been made, or projects that we've worked on. We worked on a project recently with Microsoft called Soundscape which was a really cool app that helps blind people navigate just with sound and 3D beacons. And the Holman prize, we're about to announce the winners of the Holman prize next week. Jeff Thompson: I know I'm excited. I watched the countdown. You had the I believe it was 50 and then down to the 10 plus the one. Will Butler: That's right so we have three winners just like last year. Jeff Thompson: Is that embosser? Will Butler: Yeah let's go over there and listen to that embosser.   Scott:she was really well prepared. Will Butler: What are we printing over here?   Scott: Alright. Well thanks Jeff for getting us on. We are just finishing a TMAP. Street map for someone here at the table. I'm not going to give you the whole address. This is a free giveaway that we're doing here at the convention basically is just a tactile street map. What we sell in our San Francisco store, and stop me if Will's already covered this, is a package that includes three scales of the address that you request. And not just tactile but also print. So we want to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to benefit from these maps. So you'll get those three scales, the key and an intro page that gives you a simple description of what you are about to lay your hands on or your eyes. Will Butler: Describe what the embosser just spat out for you and what you're doing?   Scott: Yeah, so the embosser is a tractor-fed embosser. And what we have is two pages. The first page is a map with the address at the top, the streets, and abbreviations at the edge of the map. And then the second page is the map key which gives you the abbreviation, the full street name and the directionality so east/west, north/south, northeast/southwest, etc. And so then I'm just going to staple it up and hand it over to the lucky person who requested it and they'll have a little piece of their world unlocked and maybe grab a little more independence because of it. Will Butler: How long did it take you to print that?   Scott: Oh, from the time we got the address to the finished product that was maybe three minutes. Jeff Thompson: Three minutes.   Scott: We mean it. On demand is the real thing. ' Speaker 6: Thank you.   Scott: Your welcome. Jeff Thompson: Thank you, Scott.   Scott: Handed it off. Will Butler: Thanks Scott. Jeff Thompson: If people want to find out more about San Francisco LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired out there in California how would they get a hold of you? Will Butler: Yeah, obviously you can just type LightHouse on Facebook and we're one of the first ones that comes up. There are other LightHouses around the country but we're the one in the Bay area. You can find Enchanted Hills Camp on Facebook. They have a very active camp related Facebook page. And you can go to our website at lighthouse-sf.org. Lighthouse-sf.org and explore everything there. If you want to learn more about TMAPs you can go to lighthousesf.org/tmap. If you want to just go directly to subscribe for our newsletter you can go to lighthouse-sf.org/subscribe. Jeff Thompson: Alright. We've been talking to Will Butler he is the Communications Director out at San Francisco LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired San Francisco. Thank you very much for taking the time. Will Butler: Thank you Jeff, it's always be a dream of mine to be on your podcast. I appreciate it. Jeff Thompson: Thank you. While waiting for my map I had to ask the embosser, what kind of embosser are you using?   Speaker 7: The one we brought today that's a ViewPlus Columbia. Jeff Thompson: So you must be pretty confident that you would bring it to the convention.   Speaker 7: Yeah that's exactly why we brought it. We've been doing this grind for a while. The last few conferences we're actually doing swell papers so we were bringing PIAFs and Zychems, but those things are fragile. They don't like to travel, they don't like to be handled on the road. They break. So we tried this instead. They're inexpensive, seems to be reliable, just cranking them out.   Speaker 7: Back at the shop we're actually using a ViewPlus EmFuse which is pretty esoteric because it does the ink print as well as the braille. But those are really big units. You're not going to want to pack that up in a road case and bring it on tour. Jeff Thompson: This one seems like something that you could move around a little bit.   Speaker 7: Oh yeah, they're light, they're small. It's designed for the home pretty much.   Speaker 8: Alright Jeff, I have your map for you. Jeff Thompson: Yeah exactly. Alright.   Speaker 2: Aira, independence like never before.   [Music]  [Transition noise]  -When we share -What we see -Through each other's eyes...   [Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]   ...We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities. Jeff Thompson: For more podcasts with a blindness perspective check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com. On Twitter @blindabilities. Download our app from the app store, Blind Abilities, that's two words. Or send us an email at info@blindabilities.com. Thanks for listening.      

There's something to learn by listening to any individual's success story, but when the story starts with being kicked out of high school at 15, one can get pulled especially quickly into hearing how it panned out. I found myself at the edge of my seat while sitting across from Pivotal Coaching Co-Founder Scott Hopson for the latest #WeGotGoals podcast episode interview because that was exactly how his story started. If you're in the training industry, maybe you've attended continuing education sessions through NASM, EXOS, The Gray Institute, or Power Plate International; if so, you've probably studied Hopson's material or done a workshop with him. He also helped launch Midtown Athletic Club, Chicago's first urban sports resort with 575,000 square feet of health and wellness amenities. And, as the co-founder of PTA Global, he's coached countless personal trainers in a unique approach focused on behavioral science. Essentially, Hopson has worked his entire professional life on becoming the best version of himself as a personal trainer, but he's also dedicated his life to the fitness industry from a practical coaching, educational, and business perspective. And with the prestigious laundry list of titles he possesses, you can imagine why I found it unbelievable that it all started with being kicked out of school. But, as Hopson told me during the interview, when he decided he wanted to turn his life around, he started at the source where he felt like he was always home, the one place where he felt "in flow" amidst it all - with his coaches when he was playing sports. He held onto the memory of being coached and let that passion drive him forward. Now, helping others achieve their movement goals makes him feel alive, and he's equally passionate about training other coaches to bring out their fullest potential and thus, inspire clients to become the best version of themselves too. The most interesting thing about our interview, though, had nothing to do with fitness and everything to do with the human behind the science of coaching. In order to go after the "what" (whether that's a specific fitness goal or any other transformational goal in your life), "you have to articulate the 'why,'" Hopson said. Ultimately, understanding that it's not about him as a coach at all when he's in a coaching session has helped him understand how to navigate every other kind of partnership and communication in his life. "If I'm going to coach you, I've got to create an environment for you to train yourself, because I can't do it," Hopson said. "That'd be quite arrogant and ignorant of me to believe I can. If I create an environment for you to change yourself, that affects how I communicate to you, how I listen, do I have empathy? And I apply that to my business relationships. Am I listening? Am I willing to consider the possibility that they don't only have a point of view, but they might actually change mine?" Hopson also mentioned that he leans into his intuition to help guide his unique, nonlinear career path and what big goals he goes after. "I'm at my happiest, and in flow, where nothing else matters than that present moment, when I'm being of service to someone as a coach," he said. I commented on how lucky he was to know that feeling - a feeling of just being in total flow. He replied that we all have it, in some way, shape or form. We just have to notice and be open to tapping into it. "It doesn’t happen every day, [but] there are things you can do to connect you back to it if you lose it – whether it’s prayer or meditation, or whatever it is that connects you to that thing," Hopson said. Listen to Scott Hopson's episode of the #WeGotGoals podcast to hear one success story you likely won't ever forget. You can listen anywhere you get your podcasts (did we mention, we're on Spotify now?) If you like what you hear, please leave us a rating or a review! We'd really appreciate it. And stick around until the end of the episode, where you’ll hear a goal from one of you, our listeners. (Want to be featured on a future episode? Send a voice memo with a goal you’ve crushed, a goal you’re eyeing, or your best goal-getting tip to cindy@asweatlife.com.)   --- Transcript: Jeana: Welcome to #WeGotGoals a podcast by aSweatLife.com on which we talk to high-achievers about their goals. I’m Jeana Anderson Cohen. With me I have Maggie Umberger and Cindy Kuzma. Maggie: Morning Jeana! Cindy: Good morning Jeana! Jeana: Morning! Maggie, you talked to Scott Hobson this week, right? Maggie: I did! I spoke with Scott Hobson and he has a lot of roles which I will try to give you in the upfront here but he will do a better job of talking about the many companies that he has started. And from his career trajectory, he’s been a personal trainer, he has coached coaches. He still loves to coach people on how to help other people achieve their goals. He is the founder, co-founder of PTA Global as well as Pivotal Coaching. But essentially what he does, is he helps people move better.  Whether that is individuals or people within big gyms or at really large conferences and for fitness professionals across the world. He’s been to 40 countries to teach. He’s also an author, a writer, and a speaker. And I was so lucky to get to speak to him about his goals of which he has many. Jeana: But he also failed big once, right Maggie? Maggie: I didn’t realize this. I didn’t know this until we were talking for this interview, but he was kicked out of high school. And he kind of tossed it out there and I was honestly shocked because he has done so many things. He is the co-founder of Pivotal coaching which is a world-wide coaching business now. And I was honestly surprised because he is so accomplished. He’s so well spoken, he’s so driven. But I learned that he did get kicked out of high school and it took something for him to realize that in order for him to turn his life around he needed to find the thing that made him feel like he was in flow, is what he calls it. And when he feels like he’s in flow, he knows he’s doing the right thing and the only thing that he felt that kind of sensibility around was when with his rugby team and when he was being coached by his coaches. He felt like he was at home and he wanted to do that more. He wanted to do that in any capacity he could, so he became a personal trainer. He kept going back to school, he kept learning more and his fervor for learning more about human movement and just how people behave around fitness. It’s a much broader topic for him then just like what happens in a coaching session. And he’s really turned that enthusiasm, is what he calls it. This spirit for understanding how people move into his life-long career. Which is huge leaps and bounds away from getting kicked out of high school years ago. Jeana: And he feels like it’s important to coach the humans who are doing the movement and not actually coach the movement. Which is an interesting semantic issue, it’s an interesting word choice. What does he mean by that and how does that fit into his overall philosophy? Maggie: So Scott has the wherewithal to know that what happens in the gym is only a tiny part of your day. And he knows that as long as you just throw anatomical cues at people it’s going to go over their head. They have to find their why. And so he’s become really, really passionate about helping other coaches learn how to speak to people to meet them where they are and to really influence and inspire change for people on a greater level than just going through the motions of a program, of going through the workout. We say this all the time at aSweatLife that fitness can be the catalyst to you living your best life and that what happens in the gym can absolutely affect you life outside of the gym if you let it. If you want it to and he has started to focus a lot of the training and the protocols within Pivotal Coaching around human behavior and how can what coaches do in your training sessions influence how that training session goes. It's so much more of an emotional thing than just a physical thing which is interestingly a large part of the conversation that we had was just about how connected to his own emotional well-being he is. Like when he’s not in flow as I was saying, he knows it and he needs to make a change. And that's what happened when he was director of a really large facility that he's still incredibly involved with and he loves it very much. But when he was doing a role that he could do but he felt a little bit more stressed by being in it. It was apparent to him that he needed to make a change and he could be a better asset in a different capacity. So that when he could actually get back to working with people, for people and helping. Really his passion is working with coaches then he could really feel, do better work, help people on a greater scale. And so that's been his guiding force, like getting within the process, finding the joy, finding the payoff in the process is what he says. Not just that the end goal or whatever the thing he's trying to accomplish gets checked off the list. It's about feeling the way he needs to feel all along the way. Jeana: What an incredible story of overcoming obstacles and finding your true path I can't wait to hear Maggie talk to Scott. And stick around at the end of the episode we’re hearing from you listeners. Maggie: Thanks so much for joining me Scott, on the We’ve Got Goals Podcast. Scott: I'm excited. Maggie: We're excited to have you! So Scott for the listeners at home I know that you do a lot of jobs and that they probably sometimes they overlap, sometimes they’re different. You're a one-on-one coach, your a group coach, you have managed big facilities, you also coached on a global scale and your a founder of a couple companies. For the listeners can you give a little brief description of, I know you said what you do on a daily basis is different, but how you spend your days and what your general title is? Scott: Yeah, it’s wonderful. Well I mean the single biggest thing right now is I’m a co-founder of Pivotal. We’re a development company. And our mission is really simple it's to empower people to fulfill their potential. And our clientele if you will is anyone that has a passion for movement. So what I do on a daily basis could be considered coaching - one-on-one, groups, and teams from everyday people at health clubs to Olympic-level teams I work with all of them. But my real passion is teaching and you could say I coach the coaches. So what I travel the world doing, I think I've been to about 40 different countries by now, I coach coaches on how to be a better coach. We can talk later about what that includes maybe. But I also consult.  Having been an operator for 20 years building health clubs, big beautiful sports resorts around the world. I know what it takes to actually build facilities, operate facilities, manage people, sales marketing, membership and on it goes. But ultimately I think it all comes down to coaching. I’m in the people industry and my job is to build meaningful relationships and I think that’s what coaches do. I don’t know if that makes sense, but that’s kind of what on any given day one of those is what I’m doing or all of those is what I’m doing. Maggie: That’s fascinating.  Not only the breadth of what you do but the depth to which you do it. So like you're talking about working on the business side of the athletic club and building out a club. And then also building out an amazing coaching staff and helping people become better coaches. And then helping individuals also reach their fitness goals. It just runs the gamut. Scott: Yeah, it does. Maggie: Did you start as a personal trainer yeah in terms of profession? Scott: Yeah, in terms of profession that's the first real professional job I had. But I've been in the movement industry my whole life the only thing that's really kept me sane through life's adventures that don't all start out the way you want them to. But that one kind of bedrock of always connecting to why I'm here has been either playing sport, coaching sport, moving, coaching people, something to do with this idea of I'm here to move and I'm here to help people move. Not just physically but towards their dreams in life, you know? So 1998 is when I became a personal trainer and fitness instructor in the UK, in London. But immediately, the minute I was in the industry I knew this was only part of what I was going to do here. And that's when I went back to school to become a physical education teacher. Which is the problem when you get kicked out of high school at 15. Maggie: Wait a minute, should we go back and ask about that? Scott: There would need to be some whiskey in the room.  Yeah you're talking to a guy that didn't even graduate high school at 15. I left and then when I realized “oh, I probably should have stuck around” I was 24, 25 and I decided I wanted to go back and become a coach and a physical education teacher. So the problem is that you've got to graduate high school first. So believe it or not I was a 25 year old in school with a bunch of teenagers. Maggie: Wow! Scott: Yeah, that’s where it started for me. Actually, I answer it that way because that’s where it started, was the realization that I needed to do something different with my life. And I found out pretty quickly it was in this area of movement and coaching. That was my only real love in life, was playing sport and being coached.  So how do I do that, Okay I'll go to university. Okay, how do you do that, you’ve got to graduate high school. Problem, big problem. So I had to go back in order to go forwards and then it's been an unbelievable journey since then just exploring all the possibilities in this industry, you know? And there's multiple Industries- it's not just fitness, it's not just performance, it’s wellness, it's all of it really. You know? Maggie: Oh, yeah. And it’s a huge world. And it can feel, it seems like you have this outlook that is just wide-eyed and excited versus daunted. You know, because you talk about there being so many facets to movement, and to health and wellness. That I can get intimidated by where do I spend my time? Scott: Where do I begin? Maggie: What to learn. Oh my god, there is so much to learn. Scott: There is. Maggie: But, based on what I’ve seen and how you have grown your career. You’ve just gone after the things you wanted to go after. And created your career based on what excites you. Scott: That’s probably quite accurate actually. For me we’ve also got passion. But I’ve kind of shifted. I think passion is a good thing. If you aint got it, it’s too darn hard to do anything. You know? Maggie: Yeah. Scott: But for me it’s become more enthusiasm. And it sounds like semantics but that word. When you’re enthusiastic about something. Like it literally means to be in spirit, right? It means to be, the payoff is in the process. I think you've got to passionately follow where the payoff is in the process. Whatever that is in your life. Like that burning desire to do something just because the act of doing it is the payoff. And that really sums up my career. Every few years there seems to be another door opens or something says no, you should take a left here. When my best laid plans said to take a right but something says in me says no, you’re supposed to follow that. It leads to failure, a ton actually but if your enthusiastic. The saying about enthusiasm, it's the ability to keep falling on your face and not care anyway. That’s a big part of enthusiasm. Maggie: Well, I think that kind of transitions to the question that we ask on #WeGotGoals, which is what's one big goal that you're proud to say you've accomplished and how did you get there? Scott: Wow, that's I knew you were going to ask it and it's surprisingly difficult to answer, right because you don't want to sound trite or have too much levity. But the reality is there's two things that all stand out. One is, one of the company’s that I'm a founder of is PTA Global, Personal Training Academy Global, we launched that out of nothing. We literally traveled the world.  Me and my five brothers who created it. Not biological brothers and we asked every health club we had worked with in 40 different countries. What are your problems? What are your pains? And we built personal training certification to answer their problems. Not just based on whatever we thought was the best way to train. We actually tried to build something on what people needed rather than what we thought. Then we went out and recruited 26 of the best educators in our industry. Many of whom we were told they won’t even be in the same room as each other. They had conflicting opinions, philosophies, they argue. We got them all in the same room to write PTA Global. All of them in the same room and we launched it in 2009 which was the worst economic time. Little did we know what was coming.  And now we're 35, 40 countries, you know? And it all just came from sharing a common purpose, you know what I mean? That drive, that desire to do something. So that stands out professionally as the best thing I've done in my career so far. Is to truly just go all in, we all quit our jobs with salaries and put all our chips in. And said it's this or nothing. Just once we have to try and do the right thing, rather than to do things right and it cost us everything we had. If we didn't sell, we didn't eat. If it wasn't successful, it was on us there was no one to blame, no corporate structure or nothing. It was incredible! I'll tell you that's the biggest achievement in my career other than being in it in the first place. Because it wasn't easy for me to be in it in the first place you know I talked about getting kicked out of school and I had to go back to college. I was the first person in my entire family history that has ever done anything outside of high school. And I think just having to pay for your own way you know what I mean despite life willingness to say you can't do it. Maggie: Where did you learn that? Where do you think that drive comes from? That just openness to enthusiasm and willingness to lean into it. Scott: Truthfully, I think for me it was just not failing a lot, but really discovering who I was in the first. I think some people it's wonderful they seem to have the playbook, they come with it. They can be like oh this is what it's like to be a good person. Or this is what it's like to follow your dreams. But that wasn't my experience. My experience was a lot of failure and a lot of pain and alot of looking at who I was at first. And then finally when you hit it enough bumps you say holy crap I’ve got to change something. The second part is you can’t do it alone. I've been very blessed to have people that showed up right on time. When I needed help so I think surrounding yourself with the people that you hope to become you know what I mean. I mean truly looking at people, I don't know what it is that you have but I want that. Whether it's their spiritual fitness, their ability to be kind, their ability to be successful in business. Like you clearly have something I don't, where I lack or and I'm unable to see. I should probably surround myself with people like you and try to learn it, you know? And it's really those two ingredients and that burning desire. For me to pick up a book and study coaching and movement or isn't a drudge, it's a joy. You know what I mean? When I'm bored it's the first thing I want to do. Wow I’d love to learn more about [...] or how did that Olympic coach win it for the fourth year in a row. Whatever. I'm fascinated with not just human movement but with the human being inside it. So I think when you're fascinated, I think that curiosity, that’s the word. Maggie: Yeah. Scott: You’ve got to have a relentless curiosity for whatever you’re passionate about. You know? Maggie: Yeah, absolutely! Did PTA Global come about, you said you visited countries you visited the big clubs that you worked with and answered some of their problems or their needs. Was it also an equal part you finding those extra elements that you were excited about. Like what's inside a human being and how can we help them feel their best while they're working out. Those little nuances, did that kind of come together as the marriage. Is that what PTA Global is? Scott: 100%, yes. if you're going to solve a problem, you’ve got to first know what that problem is. And the key to getting clarity is to ask better questions. If you keep asking the same questions, it doesn’t matter about how many ways you phrase it. So part of the fascination was what are the real problems of our industry. We’ve got 300 times more education than we’ve ever had, we’ve got more gyms and health clubs than we’ve ever had and we’ve got more billions of dollars invested in health and wellness than we’ve ever had. Yet we’ve got less human beings moving than anytime in human history. We’ve got more disease, disability and dysfunction than anytime in human history. And believe it or not we have the first generation of youth with a lower life expectancy than their parents.  If that don't make you wake up like our kids are scheduled to die younger than we are. It’s supposed to be the opposite. We're keeping old people live longer and sicker and younger people are dying sooner with more sickness. So part of it was that we've got to solve this problem. But the other part wow I've got to go find something that maybe isn't there or I've got to find the missing link. There’s that journey of discovery, right? The merging of that and the guys and girls we did it with are geniuses in their respective fields. Nutrition, behavioral change, movement, anatomy, whatever it is. So to actually go to each of these leaders and get their take on how it answer that. It was, you don't get many opportunities in life to do that to. Say here are the problems let's go speak to the world's best and find out how they might solve it. And then bring it back to the people who asked for it. That really was the journey. Maggie: So for the listeners at home what does PTA Global do or what does that certification earn you? Scott: A couple of things. One, if you woke up today as a fitness enthusiast and said man I would love to become a  professional coach, a personal trainer or a fitness professional, you have to get legally certified. Now you can do it the right way or the wrong way. The wrong way is you could go online trough some swipe your finger, take an exam, call yourself professional. Or you can go study, whether it’s 6, 9, 12 month program. Some of them are two years, actually study the human body anatomy, kinesiology, program design, behavior.  Then you have to sit for an actual exam and there's a practical in a room. One of those companies is PTA Global, we created a brand new approach to becoming a globally certified fitness professional. So if you take our course whether you're in Dubai, London, Amsterdam. You are legally certified anywhere in the world to practice in this profession. So that's kind of a big deal. It very much a behavioral change approach, we say when you find the why, you find the what. Everyone’s got a what, weight loss, weight gain, whatever it is. Until I find the why, the chances are we aren’t going to get you there. So that's how our philosophy is meeting people where they need to be met. And then we have advanced curriculums. One of them is called Exercise and Stress Management. We are nothing but a bunch of cells that get stressed on a daily basis. And how I move today is as much to do with my nutrition, my sleep, my emotions as much as it is my posture and flexibility, you know? So we can go on a very deep journey with you. And that then that leaves into Pivotal, my company now, which is that my passion is to travel the world and connect those dots. With the operators, with the product manufacturers, with the educators, with the certification bodies. We work with all them to bring people together to connect dots. So we travel the world, me and Haley, creating partnerships between global leaders. Delivering education for these people, creating education for them. One of our biggest passions is to teach the teachers. When you're in a room of a hundred coaches you’re really touching hundreds of thousands of people, right? Maggie: Sure. Scott: But when you’re in a room of 50 teachers your reaching exponentially more. So that’s what Pivotal does. We’ve kind of gone even bigger, how do we touch the most people to empower and fulfill their potential. Whether it is the club operator, whether it is the coach, whether it is the educator. And that was really the birth of Pivotal. Was to take everything I learned at PTA Global and kind of go one layer deeper. Which is really connecting people. I can’t think of one single movement in human history that hasn’t come from those first followers finding their fanatical fans and on and on it goes. So that’s kind of our gig now. Maggie: Yeah. So this conversation that is generally focused on goals. Is interesting to me I think to ask this question about how you’ve worked with people in the fitness world, in the fitness realm about how to tap into their why by them articulating their what. And then going through the behavior change process to get them to meet their goals. And how has that potentially shaped the way you view goals? Scott: Utterly, completely. You know one of my most important values to me is authenticity. Sometimes I feel like saying no experience, no opinion, you know? How can you coach someone one-on-one personal training or in small group or large group and hope to not only inspire but guide them to transformation. Because really everyone is looking for a transformation. No one wants to be what they are. You want to be more than they are. You want to be the best version of yourself you can. So if I want to coach you my job really is to create an environment for you to change yourself because I can’t do it. It’d be quite arrogant and ignorant for me to think I can.  So behavioral change, this whole view point is if I create an environment for you to change yourself that affects how I communicate to you, how I listen, do I have empathy can I be a GPS because you're coming today and you're stressed because you’ve had 15 coffees, you didn't eat, didn't sleep, you busted up with your partner. Okay that changed our program like instantly. How do I create on demand based on your behavior. So what that does authentically as coach for me. Man am I applying that to myself? Am I applying that to my business relationships? Am I listening when I’m speaking to my partners? Am I willing to consider maybe the possibility that they don’t really have a point of view but it might actually change mine. That’s empathetic listening. I'm going to listen at a level where I actually might realize that I'm wrong. Do you know how hard that is as a personal trainer because we always think we're right. Don’t eat this, do eat that. Stop doing that, go to bed on time.,   Okay, you just told them to change their whole life and you're there for maybe 3 hours a week out of the 168. So you're like 2% of their life but you've asked them to change a hundred percent of their life. That seems a bit drastic and you're not there to pick up the pieces because there's going to be a lot of falling pieces. When you ask someone to change everything. What if their partner doesn't like that? What if it means now, when everyone else is eating fried chicken. They’re saying “ugh, couldn’t we have grilled it?”. But no one else in the family likes grilled. And on it goes. So it's affected everything I do because it makes me stop and go am I applying that same principle to my life? And is what I'm asking them to maybe consider doing, have I consider the choices in my life today or this week? Am I making the right choices for myself? That's authentic. So when someone says I come in today Scott. No I didn't fix my nutrition plan, I didn't work out three times this week, empathy would say man I know how that feels. There’s no judgment. It’s just like I know how that feels. Now ask more questions. What would your block? What was your break? What do you want to do about it? That's shifted how I am in my relationships and life for the most part this aint about me, right? I wish it was. Then my script would work. Maggie: Well it's interesting because the world of fitness has like you said kind of blown up. And everyone has a place in it in a really cool way. Brands are part of it. Different kinds of fitness have become hybrids and people aren’t just one thing were multiple things. And I think that's an awesome thing that health and wellness has become a little bit more top of mind. But I also think that creates a lot more ego about who is right and who is wrong so the idea of taking it back, maybe I’m wrong is probably very slim to none in the health and wellness world. Scott: One of my favorite quotes I heard was in 2004, it was at a conference I was speaking at called Meeting of the Minds. And it was like TED talks back in the day every presenter got 20 minutes and they were leaders and what they did. It was incredible I got to ask to present, I was the new kid on the block. I heard this guy say, “I’m pretty sure standing here today, after 30 years as a world-class Olympic coach”, which he was and educator. “He said 50% of what I’m about to tell you is complete BS.” So everyone laughs. And he goes, “The real problem is I’m not sure anymore which 50%.” And it really struck me. That’s probably the wisest thing anyone in this room is going to say all day. There is what I think is right and there is what I know, I don’t know. Then there is what I don’t know, I don’t know. And in every area of research in every industry, every few years there’s like wow that changes what we think about technology or medicine. And yet our industry for the most part still wants to practice fitness the way we did 30 years ago. Even though what we’ve learned about the body and the mind is dramatically more evolved. So you go into these operators and you see them building clubs the same way they did 30 years ago. If medicine followed that it would be a problem, right? And so to your point, I think fitness itself needs to be dramatically redefined. Because fitness just means your fit to perform the task that you were here to perform. So what is that? Your a mum wants to pick up her kids is different from someone who wants to look better naked that’s different from someone. It’s just you know? So the industry itself could really do with redefining a little bit of its purpose I think. Because we are more wellness, we are more healthful. We should be. I think fitness itself is what could with a little bit of a tweak. Maggie: Yeah, yeah. So moving forward, as you look down the line. Whether it's tomorrow kind of goal or 10 years down the line. What is a big goal you hope to accomplish? Scott:  I've got too many, I think. Maggie: That's okay. Scott: I think for me, I would love, love for us to get rid of names like personal trainer and instructor. And I’d love for us to get rid of the definitions of I’m a yogi, I’m a pilates, or I’m a [...]. We’re coaches, I know I keep saying it. We’re coaches and what’s fascinating about the word is it comes from the 14th century. Like the stagecoach, it was a vehicle of transportation that carries people from where they are to where they’re going. So I always like to say you can be a personal trainer, you can be an instructor but what people are looking for is to go from where they are to where they want to be. From who they are to who they want to become. When you’re a coach you’re this vehicle of transportation, you know? And you remember your coaches, the good and the bad. I think we’re bigger than just trainers and instructors. But what I would love to see, is if we could all come together to say this is what we agree on this is how we coach the human being inside the human body. These are our ingredients for human movement. The thing about ingredients are you can create infinite different recipes. But we’ve got to agree on the ingredients, surely.  A world class chef can cook all different kinds of cuisines. But they know the food, they know the ingredients, they know their basics. And I don’t think we have that. So if I go to physical therapy [...], there’s not a lot of respect for the fitness professional world or the professional training world. There’s not a lot of respect for the group exercise instructor. You go into mind body and there is a complete dissonance between what you’re do in a yoga studio versus what you do in a swimming pool. Movement is movement. Coaching is coaching. And human beings are human beings, man. I would love for us to just have a commonality around those basic ingredients. I really would and that’s kind of what my journey now of Pivotal is about. Is because I can be in a room with physical therapists looking at movement assessments, joint mechanics, knee pain, back pain. The next day I’m at a conference with 300 people going through small group training. And [..] understand is I’ve actually given them the same ingredients, just a different recipe. It absolutely blows my mind sometimes. People go, “Oh yeah, you do the rehab stuff and you do the small group.” I’m like I do movement and coaching. Maggie: Yeah, and from the consumer side of it. Like, it can be taxing to go to so many professionals. Not only for your own dollar that you’re just doling out to hear the latest and greatest from this party and then you hear a contradictory thing from another person. Then you’re like where do I spend my money? But it’s also like how do I get better from this injury? Or how do I actually perform better in this goal that I’m trying to reach fitness-wise? That can be really hard on the just fitness enthusiast. Scott: Go back even more right. The person who’s not enthusiastic about it Maggie: Right. Scott: So your mom and dad passed away when they were say 55. You’re 53, 54. You’re one year away from the exact age where you might have lost your parents. Your sedentary, you're overweight, you're in pain, you don't move. It's not lack of information or lack of education. You need to move, everyone knows. Exercise is probably gonna do. Going to  bed on time is probably a good idea. You pick up a cigarette packet it's got a picture of death on it with a cross. It's kind of very ignorant of us to think people need more education they don't they don't. They don’t need education. But they haven't found a meaningful and relevant reason to do it that outweighs the reasons not to do it. And so I would suggest that what we need to do as a movement and industry is get back to coaching human beings. Because when you find the what you find the why.  But, we just got back from China, here’s my example. And it blows my mind. It's one of the hottest places to go and travel. I don't speak Mandarin. Very very to no English. Not that there has to be but it makes it hard to even get a cup of coffee let alone eat or move around. And loads of smoking. Loads of pollution. Crazy packed busy. But everywhere you go is movement. I’m not lying, there’s eighty, ninety year old people riding bikes in the middle of a busy cross-section. Music’s playing, you turn around someone’s just doing [...]. You walk to the nearest park, hundreds of old people dancing, doing pull-ups and then they drop, no lie. Light up a cigarette and get back on their bike. No obesity, I don’t see the diabetes. I see people moving in ways that make them feel good. It’s nearly always in a community. They’re not doing it alone. Maggie: Right. Scott: Do you know what I mean? I think we really need to look at that part of it. Is how do people want to move? What's their style of moment? What's emotionally attaching to them? Not just physically but emotionally attaching. And so we put people in boxes and there’s good to that. Chances are they've already had a bad experience most people have exercised their life. Most people have failed at it.  It goes all the way back to that crappy gym teacher who told you we're good enough. There’s a lot of emotional triggers going on as soon as they walk through the door. And they're met by trainers that often are wearing shirts that are 3 sizes too small. It’s not the most enticing model of movement. And I think we can shift it. It wouldn’t take too much. The shift come from the neck up. Not the neck down. So I hope, my biggest goal coming is that Pivotal really, we just would like to leave the world a little bit better than we found it. And so if we could get more people moving more often that’s a win. But more importantly, in ways where the payoff is in the process. They move because it feels good. They move because emotionally connects them. Not, “Oh, I have to do it.”  I've got to do it. Or I’m doing it just for an outcome - weight loss or whatever it is. We know that doesn't work, it never has worked. If it does is short-term. I move because I love to move. Some days I swing a tennis racket, some days it’s playing rugby, some days it’s lifting weights. I move because I just love to move. I think everyone is wired to move, we just haven’t worked out how they want to move. Maggie: So, if we were to imagine that I were coming in for a first time coaching session with you, And it probably begins a little bit more about the conversation and what's happening neck up versus alright let’s do this functional screening and figure out where your compensations are. What would be some of the questions that you’d ask me as the client to tap into something. Scott: Wow, wow, wow. Maggie: A reason for moving. Scott: I love what you said because let’s call that the client intake consultation, whatever it is. There is a movement screening involved. There is a nutritional screening involved. But it starts with a motivational interview. And so one of the first questions we’ll ask. Repeat the questions you feel comfortable with. Because if I create emotional insecurity right out the gate, I’m already a threat to you. So the first questions can’t be too deep or you’re immediately thinking I don’t know if I like you or trust you, why on earth would I tell you that. So we even teach, not just the kind of questions but the sequencing, the language, all of it. But one of the first things would be what is the single most important goal you would like to achieve in your time with me. Okay, there’s a couple of big words in there. Not all your goals, the single most important in your time with me. Another big question right out of the gate is what are your expectations of me in the next 60 minutes. Because I need you to know right out the gate that I am here for you, it’s all about you. But I’m accountable, right? If I go to the doctor and they misdiagnosis me or prescribe me to wrong medicine, I’m holding them accountable.  What are your expectations of me. If I got type A directed, I like just tell them what to do and just make sure I know why we’re doing it and kick my butt. Okay. You’re not a high-five kind of guy. You just told me a lot of information on how to coach you. But someone else might say, I have no idea where to start. So giving you an entire game plan in 60 minutes is overwhelming, confusing and the opposite of what you asked for. The only thing I need to give you is the one next thing, then you do it and you’re going to feel like a success. Another question we might ask would be we get further into the questionnaire and we say 1 through 10, 10 is most important, 1 is least important. How important is it that you are successful moving toward your goal? We don’t judge it. If I say a 5 out of 10, that’s wonderful. Why is it not a 2? We don’t go to how can I make it a 10? Why is it not a 2? Because you’re already thinking that. Oh, it wasn’t a 2 so I’m not bad as I think. I’m not as behind as I think. Yeah, it was a 5 that is important to me. We’re reinforcing in your brain with your words. And you’ll get things, oh it’s not a 2 because if I don’t change now it could be too late. Or it’s not a 2 because I waited to long and my pain has gotten worse. They start to unravel the magic. But then another question and this will be the last example I give you. Will be 1 through 10, 10 is the most confident, 1 is the least confident. How confident are you, you can successfully achieve your goal? If someone says oh, I’m an 8 out of 10. Interesting, because it was only a 5 out of 10 for importance. But it’s nearly a 10 out of 10 on confidence. So you’re really confident about a goal that’s not that important. Or it could be opposite, it’s really important but I’m not confident. Two completely different people to coach. We literally have an entire script of motivational questions that are based in neuroscience and behavioral change. Not just the language but the sequence. So by the time you get to the end and you do a summary, they say how did you get all of that out of me.  Number two, you clearly listened. But most important, they say I just admitted that to myself outloud and another human being. That is the start of a valuable change. Is getting clear on what you’re willing to do and ready to do versus not. So there’s not sets and reps, there’s no calories, or anything. What’s your why? And are you ready and willing to change at this time because if you’re not it’s a trainwreck. And I’d be irresponsible to offer you to do it, quite honestly. Maggie: What I think is really fascinating about everything that you just outlined and all the questions that you brought up the word goal with. Those questions could be transitioned from a pre-coaching session to a goal setting session for your career, for your family, for how you want to set up your life at home or whatever it is. It’s how you do anything is how you do everything. Scott: Yes. Maggie: And so I think, at aSweatLife we do really believe that like what happens at the gym is not just that little box of time in the gym and then you leave and your gone. It’s those things that come up in there can carry out to the rest of your life if you let them. And it’s just about. Scott: It’s supposed to, right? Maggie: Right. And it can in a really positive way if you’re open to it. And if you say. Oh yeah, this small victory I did do this thing that was awesome. I’m going to go carry it into my meeting at work. Then I’m going to do the next thing that’s awesome.  So it’s really fascinating and really cool to hear because it is just a conversation around like how do we feel about goals, in general. Scott: Yeah. And what do I mean by goal? Is that just the outcome, is that the process. How will I know when I’ve got there. Measurably and subjectively. How do I know when I’ve actually got there. Most goals are subjective. I want to be in less pain, I want to feel better. That’s a subjective goal. How do we know when we’re there when you’ve arrived? And finally, how do you want to get there. Are you a kind of person who says I’ve got to get on the freeway and get there as quick as possible?  Okay, but then it’s the freeway and it’s concrete jungle and there’s lots of in and out. No, I’d rather take the scenic route. I’d rather go slow and take in the sights. So there’s where you’re going and then there’s how you want to get there. But invariably there is going to be traffic and roadwork. So as a coach, you’ve got to be a GPS and recalculate the route. Which for me, in my experience is every session. You can just see it emotionally in people when you get used to coaching wise. Something just happened where you stopped enjoying this session, that didn’t feel good. Maybe I said something that wasn’t. You know? Or maybe I didn’t listen to something you needed me to listen. I saw something in my client, the entire posture changed. You better recalculate right now.  And so for us, we’d say most people what they emotionally care about is outside the gym. There is very little emotional connection to the dumbell. So yes, in groups that’s different. Don’t get me wrong. That sense of tribe, community, relationships, being part of something bigger than yourself, agreed. But in one-on-one, I would honestly say that most people what they care about is outside the gym. They’re hoping what they transform inside the gym makes that better out. That’s what they’re trying to improve is their life outside the gym. And the people who care about their life inside the gym are the people who work inside the gym. Quite honestly most clients don’t. Maggie: So, I want to pull it back to you for a minute. Because you’ve talked about going from not finishing high school at first. To where you are now which is cofounder of multiple companies. And a huge contributor to what we know about  modern fitness today. You’ve written 50 or more accredited courses that people now go through to get their own certifications. And how you’ve gone from one step to the next. When you look back on it now, what do you think was your guiding force throughout? Or has that changed? Scott: That’s a really great questions. Today, looking back I’ve got a different lens than if you had asked me a year ago or ten years ago, right? But the common thread is to truly be of service. I know it sounds really cheesy but from PGA Global to Pivotal to coaching people or teams or kids. And a lot of what I do is volunteer work in the community. A lot of the teams that I coach, the high schools and the local soccer leagues. It’s all volunteer work, right.  I find that I’m at my most happiest, in flow. When you’re not thing about the bills or the money. When nothing else matters in that present moment is when I’m being of service to someone as a coach. Whether it’s the teacher coach, the sports coach, as a coach. And it could be 4:00 on a Friday night, pouring rain on Foster Lake shore where I coach soccer. And we’ve got out ten year old kids, our eleven year old kids, our sixteen year old high school girls and it’s pouring with rain and it’s 25 degrees. The time just flies. And you get home soaked and cold and you think I want to do it again. It’s those moments where you feel that in flow there is something going on in you. You know what I mean? There’s an internal something directing you. So the single biggest directive force is that, I find that when I’m of service to people, selfishly it seems to make me feel really great. So maybe that’s one good use for being selfish [...]. And I really do want to know that it mattered, to be honest mate. I want to know that the work I do matters. I guess I can only speak for myself but man some many times you go through life and you think did anything I do today make a blind bit of difference. Do you know what I mean? Or, in some cases made it worse. But at the end of the day you want to know that your life made a difference. To someone or something bigger than yourself. I think that’s the biggest directing force I’ve had is the sense of I think this makes a difference. I just have a feeling this makes a difference. I don’t know if that answered your question or if it was too esoteric. I can make it more pragmatic if you want. Maggie: No, I think that it gives me goosebumps because I think that’s what everyone wants to some degree. And that’s a really special thing to find your flow. I don’t know that we can all say that we have it enough. We have probably been in flow at some point in our lives. But maybe we’re not attuned enough to saying this is it, how do I recreate this. It seems like you do have that awareness sort of around what is the secret sauce to when you’re feeling in flow and how you can keep doing it. Or keep bringing it back as much as possible. Would you agree? Scott: Yeah. I think the struggle for all of us, myself included is I think we do know what that is. There’s just an innate knowing, you know? It like saying I don't know if I love my kids. You know you love your kids. You can’t find the words. You know, right? But life, we allow ourselves to be distracted by what’s urgent rather than important. By what’s demanding. So I’ve often taken jobs that didn’t feel good. Because the money was a safety net. Or the benefits were a safety net. Or whatever it was, even though I knew there was a big [...] I would love and yeah it’s in my industry. And then a year in you’re like, this is not me. But you go along because now you’ve got bills and kids. We do and that’s real man. But at some stage you know you can’t die with your music in you. That’s for sure. Maggie: Yeah. Scott: You know what I mean? Maggie: Right. Scott: It’s like being in flow is when you sit down and you’re writing. I write alot for work and also non-work stuff. And you’ll just be in flow and you have it going you don’t realize 3 or 4 hours are gone and it’s 20 pages on the floor. And you realize crap, I didn’t number them. Because you’re just in flow. It doesn’t happen every day. It doesn’t and there’s things you have to do to reconnect to it when you lose it. You know, there’s prayer or meditation, whatever it is that connects you to that thing. For some people, it’s playing sport. It’s dance. Maggie: Yeah. Scott: When you feel disconnected, you better reconnect. You know. You have to because that is really painful being constantly disconnected from your source, your flow. That’s a really painful existence, for me it was. Often, what sparks me into reconnecting is how much more miserable do I have to get before I reclaim happiness, you know? How much more self-pity, wallowing. Sometimes you have to say hold on, there’s what happens to you and then it’s how you react to it. And sometimes you have to say stop that’s enough. I’m going to reconnect to what makes me feel good. I’m going to go back to where I’m in flow. And it requires a leap very often. And Pivotal started when, two years ago. I had been at Midtown Athletic Club as their national director for five years rebuilding the facilities, re-recruiting the coaches, developing Midtown University, it was huge projects. And I realized I was getting more into operations again. More into PNLs and that’s what the job deserves and that’s what they deserve. But in my mind I thought maybe I could manipulate it to be more education so that wasn’t fair. So I had a wonderful chat with an incredible COO, John Brady. And [...] changed. It was like I need to reclaim and he said Scott just do what you love and you’re great at. That’s why I recruited you in the first place. And I went home and I realized I need to make a change. Loved the club, loved the people but I wasn’t in flow anymore. I made two phone calls on the way home that day to two leaders in the industry that I hadn’t spoken to in years. I said what would you say if I said I was available to write education, deliver education, and teach teachers again. Within 24 hours, I had a plane trip to China and I was in boardrooms speaking to these leaders. And I came home to Haley and I said I think we need to start a company. But you honestly need to stop doing one thing that wasn’t making you happy but do it the right way. Don’t just cut and run. Consider other people. And then took this leap of faith, like these two names came to me and it was like wow, they’re leaders man. Should I really call them. They picked up immediately and said I want you on a plane. And it was that reminder light that when you say yes to life it conspires to help you, you know what I mean? That’s my experience but you’ve got to do the work. It doesn’t just come. It’s not Mary Poppins sitting around and hope that if I meditate good things come. No, you’ve got to meditate but then you’ve got to take action, right? It takes a lot of work. Relentless effort, actually. Relentless effort and I think that’s the final piece. For successful people I see is, if it sounds like a lot of work, it’s because it is. Maggie: It’s probably ten times more than it even sounds like. Scott: Success is always hard work whether in love relationships, raising your kids, business life. To be good at anything is probably going to take a bloody lot of work. But if you’re enthusiastic and you’re in flow more often than not, even on the bad days it’s like you know what, I can do that. Maggie: Well this has been an awesome conversation. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast, Scott. Scott: Thanks for having me! I hope the listeners get something out of the crazy stuff that comes out but it was an honor. It was really nice. Cindy: He goal getters, co-host and producer Cindy Kuzma here. Just letting you know that we have coming up for you now a goal from one of you, our listeners. This is another one recorded live at the Michelob Ultra Sweatworking Week Fitness Festival last month. If you want to share one of your goals with us, whether it’s a goal you achieved, a goal your setting up to achieve, even a piece of goal-getting advice that you’d like to share you could do that and you could be featured on this very podcast. All you have to do is record it and email it in mp3, wav, whatever kind of file you want to  Cindy@aSweatLife.com. Thanks and here is you and one of your goals. Speaker: So I set a couple of goals earlier this year and I noticed that one thing I didn’t do was have accountability in a plan. So I find myself now it’s June and I haven’t accomplished the goals that I set for myself.  Because I haven’t set those checkpoints to say, hey, you know how are you going to get there? Have you been doing everything on a daily basis, on a weekly basis? And then just that accountability. So whether that’s telling someone and having them check in with you, or just saying by first quarter I’m going to accomplish this and then next quarter I’m going to accomplish that. And then I just found myself not having achieved anything. So, for the second part of the year I’m going to reset and visit some different goals and create strategies that are more focused around holding myself accountable for those specific plans. Cindy: This podcast is produced by me, Cindy Kuzma and it’s another thing that’s better with friends. So please, share it with yours. You can subscribe pretty much anywhere you get your podcasts including now on Spotify. And while you’re there if you could leave us a rating or review we would be so grateful. Special thanks to Jay Mono, for our theme music, to our guest this week, Scott Hobson, and to TechNexus for the recording studio. And of course, to you our listeners.  

Scott Vaughn is an intuitive healer, who specializes in helping others see through old belief systems that no longer serve them and empowering them to take charge of their own lives through recognition of their spiritual gifts. Scott shares a supernatural event from his family history — the story of his great, great grandfather Parks, a preacher who floated to the ceiling of his church and stayed there. MENTIONED ON THE SHOW DUNE by Frank Herbert Bene Gesserit LITANY AGAINST FEAR I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. Bene Gesserit "Litany Against Fear" from Frank Herbert's Dune Book Series © 1965 and 1984 Frank Herbert Published by Putnam Pub Group ISBN: 0399128964 GUEST LINKS - SCOTT VAUGHN www.scottdouglasvaughn.com www.scottvaughnphotography.com The Grandpa Story Scott's original post about the levitating preacher HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON Slade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition BECOME A PATRON https://www.patreon.com/shiftyourspirits Edit your pledge on Patreon TRANSCRIPT Scott: I'm Scott Vaughn. You got that part right, I know that. I'm a professional intuitive in Johnson City, Tennessee. I do a lot of work, a lot of readings. When I first began my work, I was doing a lot of healing work. I'm sort of a, was a reiki practitioner who sort of woke up one day, and, not that all reiki practitioners need to wake up, that isn't what I'm trying to imply. I was going along about my married life and, this stuff has always been in the background for me. I was always, probably a little bit more claircognizant I would say, if I was putting a term on it, than I could have recognized at the time. I always seemed to know some things that I was not supposed to know and it seemed to make people more uncomfortable, now that I think about it, than I was able to access at the time. But somewhere around 2012, I think it's in the summer that I actually met you on the street side in Chattanooga, I ended up having a health issue and turns out I had had some elevated liver enzymes. I went to the doctor about it. That this is a theme. I've had elevated liver enzymes for a long time. So I went to the doctor and she said, We're gonna send you and get you an ultrasound of this liver. So they did an ultrasound of my liver. She said, We didn't find anything. I'm going to send you to a gastroenterologist. And of course, I was a really great hypochondriac in those days so that just absolutely fed those wonderful impulses and urges that I had going on at the time. So she sent me to a gastroenterologist and he said, We're going to do a CAT Scan of your liver. This was around, I think, maybe Memorial Day of 2012. That's 6 years ago now. Hard to believe. But they call me back, the nurse, she says, Hello, we have found something on your liver and we're definitely going to need to take a look at it. We're going to have to schedule you in for an MRI. And as you know, medical tests always... you don't get them the next day. It was like, 5 weeks out. So of course I was scared shitless. What I had to do at that point, I was working a fairly rigorous spiritual program, and I had to really put myself back into that, because I had, not really thrown that out. I just wasn't as rigorous in my practice as I had wanted to be. And as I began to do that, I don't know what happened. I began to wake up, and went to the local metaphysical shop, which was not really a place that I hung out, to be honest with you, at that point, and had a chakra alignment. I don't exactly know what happened there but I began to... He put some sto... This is how I would have described it then. He put these rocks on me and he left the room. And then I started seeing all these dead people. So that's how I talked about it then, so that's how I'll talk about it now. I started hearing, I mostly hear things, rather than see things, although I do see things in my mind's eye as well, but my mind's ear is, I think, more developed. I began to hear these conversations with people who had passed and favorite aunts were coming by, my grandfather was coming by, my father was, had not passed yet but he came by later. We can talk about that later. And after that, just began to start having what I call.. just sort of mind-blowing awarenesses. Began realizing that I needed to follow a slightly different path for my life, and I'd been working, and did until fairly recently, in higher education, in academic advising and higher education administration. I was at the point in my life where I was really ready to go very heavy into that conference-going world and writing articles and all that stuff that people do in the academic world. It sort of just really called all that into question for me and... This is not what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to do something else. So... took a few classes here and there. I enrolled in a ministerial program that was being offered out of our local metaphysical shop that's named Atlantis here in Johnson City, and the teacher, my teacher, who was offering it, just... I happened to be in there one day, probably buying a stone because I was getting an interest in crystals and things like that. And she said, Hey, I'm teaching this class. I don't know if you might be interested in it. And for some reason, which was very seemingly out of character for me, I said, Yeah, I'm interested in doing this! It was the Alliance of Divine Love, it's a metaphysical, ordinational ('ordinational' is not a word), but it's a metaphysical sect, it's not really a sect either, but it's a metaphysical type of ordination, with 3-years long course, and that was a really good experience for me. And the only reason that I really want to mention that is if you had, if she had come to me a year before, maybe 2 years before: I never would have encountered her. That's one thing. I would've just been like, No! Hell no! Like, You're crazy. I don't want anything to do with... No! It wasn't that I had anything against it from a religious standpoint. It's just that I thought, I thought people who are like who I've turned out to be were absolutely crazy. Funny the way things shift over time for you, and... So, went through that, and it became very apparent that I needed to... It was just time for me to start working with people and I kept hearing this strong message: You need to work with others. And I'm like, Wow, I don't know, I'm like, Why? I'd taken a reiki class several years before and that was a lot of fun. I did it, and work on, you know, put my hands on some people, did it for myself. Thought it was a real neat experience. That summer I also felt the need to take that second level of reiki and... so I opened up the following year. Just started seeing folks in my house, in my living room, as a matter of fact. I put up a massage table in my living room and started working with folks. One of my very first clients was a guy named Dennis (if you're listening Dennis, Hey!) turned out to be a very dear friend over time. I performed at his wedding last summer to his partner. I was working with Dennis and I was doing all the stuff. And in those days, it was a very formal preparing the space and making sure everything was very quiet and very sacred and taking it with just the utmost seriousness. I had these agate wind chimes that were really pretty, but when the air conditioning would blow, it would sound, clink clink clink. It was annoying. I resist the word cacophonous because that's really pretentious, but they're... I had to call it out and say it was pretentious, but it was cacophonous. It was annoying. And I remember saying, just looking up, Can't you do something about these horrible wind chimes? I can't focus on Dennis. And I got a very, very clear message back, and I still laugh about it. You don't need to worry about the wind chimes because you're not doing any of this anyway. Slade: Ooo... Scott: And I was like, Shit. But that was a very strong message for me, very early in beginning to do my work. And then, and just logically followed, I knew that I was also supposed to do readings as well but didn't know how that would work. But I knew that was coming for me. I remember one of the, the very first psychic fair I participated in, I didn't know what to call myself. I was more in the room with the healer folks, but towards the end, I was like, I'm really here to do readings. I ended up doing a couple of readings for folks and it seemed to... I don't remember them very well, which I usually consider that a pretty good sign that something decent happened, if I'm staying out of the equation and not screwing it up with my conscious mind, and everything sort of logically followed after that. I felt like I just needed to probably stop seeing people outside of my office or outside of my house, because I live in a condo and it was just... went and had to keep it clean all the time and I didn't like to do that, so decided it was probably a good idea to open up an office that was right over the hill from where I was living at the time, and began to do readings, mostly I used to be doing healing type work and it wasn't exactly reiki that I ultimately began to do that I am doing now. I don't exactly know what I would call the methodology that I have but it's not a lot of hands on. It's a lot of chanting, it's a lot of frequency, and just sending energy back and forth for folks. It's a lot of Spirit Guides. It's a lot of calling in the Medicine People from other cultures, and allowing them to hold the space and allowing that work to continue. But began doing readings. Primarily my work now consists mostly of doing readings instead of doing healing work. That's sort of not the focus as much now. It's just turned out more that I'm doing readings. And, I was told very early on that, the people that I would end up working with were probably going to be people who were not necessarily always sold on the new age path, the whole metaphysical thing. That the person I was going to be working with, you know, anyone who seeks me out, I feel like I work with whomever I'm supposed to work with, but the majority of the people who come my way are folks who are disappointed in organized religion and in the church and things like that. But they haven't been able to find a way to replace that with anything that's meaningful. These are folks who are sad sometimes and disillusioned about the way they've seen spiritual matters handled. And folks who really want to... They know there's something more but they may have been taught all their lives it was not okay to seek those things. Because that was not allowed. There's a strong threat of that, especially here in this culture in east Tennessee. So that tends to be a lot of the people who come my way. One of the things that I feel very strongly that I'm supposed to do is sort of, the Hermit card in the tarot is one that I sort of embody. Just sort of holding the light up for folks. Slade: Mmm... Scott: You know? Standing there, along the path. The nice thing about that card is, you don't know what's in front, you don't know what's behind. But there he is, holding the light. And that's sort of what I've been feeling lately, that I'm supposed to embody. Is holding the light up for people and interpreting the things that are given to me to offer to them as insights for them along their path. Slade: You're a Lantern Bearer, Scott! Scott: A Lantern Bearer - that's cute. I love that. Slade: I actually have an episode about the Hermit tarot and how I re-named it the Lantern Bearer, because... yeah.. Scott: You know what? I may have stolen that. That may be where I've heard that. I may be stealing from you and I don't - Slade: I stole it from someone else. Scott: Okay. Slade: There was a, I don't know if there's one of those decks floating around out there where the Hermit card is actually called the Lantern Bearer, or someone somewhere has used that term, and I was like, Ooo, I like that! Scott: I'm sure Hay House has put it out somewhere, you know? Slade: Right. Yes. Copyright whoever said it! But I do have an episode about it and the episode's mine. I want to talk to the audience for just a second and let them know that, for those of you listening to this conversation, Scott is a friend of mine and he's an honorary member of the Automatic Intuition community because he was sort of teaching himself while being friends with me, but yet I still needed him to be a part of that group. I've wanted to interview him since day one of this podcast but here's the thing with interviewing your friends. We could talk for hours about anything, and it may or may not necessarily be fun or interesting to anyone listening. So far I think you're doing pretty good, but... So the challenge was to find the right focus topic, and with so many of the guests on the show being intuitives and healers and peers, Scott and I were kind of brainstorm texting about this for months, like, What should we do an episode about?? And then I see this post on Scott's Facebook wall titled, "Concerning The Time My Great-Great Grandfather Floated to the Ceiling of the Church—And Lingered.” I read the story and I lost my mind over it. I told Scott “THIS” this is what I want to talk to you about. Nobody else has this story. This was months ago. Scott: Great! Slade: Go ahead and say something while I clear my throat. Scott: One of the things about the story is that, a lot of times I'll re-run myself on Facebook. You know. Nobody really notices that much about that as the person doing it. People think, Oh this is great, you just put it together now. No, this is a re-run from last year. You liked it then too. But I think the first time I put that out there, maybe 2009, I was in a much different head, I was in a much different heart space than I am now, okay? So there was a lot of, the original version of that, if it's still out there and I don't think I went back and edited it, really conveys a lot of the skepticism I had at the time with it. And then the latest version comes from what I would say is a more heart-centred, really knowing, just from a much more knowing place and much more loving place and a much more... I'm very open to the possibilities of everything that could have happened when he floated to the ceiling of the church and lingered. Slade: Okay, so... let's just... You've got to tell us this story. Your great-great-grandfather floated to the ceiling of the church. I'm just going to let you tell us... Like I've never heard it before. Tell it to me. Scott: Okay. Like you've never heard it before. Because a lot of times when I'm talking about this story, I'm talking about the story itself, which is different than telling the story. It's the story about the story. It goes that my great-great-grandfather had started out, I think, in the hills of Tennessee and then south eastern Kentucky of a town Jellico, Tennessee. That's about two hours above, maybe an hour and a half, an hour above Knoxville, if you take Interstate 70. A very remote mountain area. If you were writing a book about Appalachia and you really wanted to find something that seemed almost cliche it was so realistic, you could find that. And so, in the back woods, probably a Baptist minister, okay, and my understanding at the time is that he was a very straight up and down Baptist minister, very read-the-scripture, the talk-a-lot kind of guy and was making a pretty good living as preacher back in the woods. Around the early 20th century, this wave of Pentacostalism started sweeping through the country, hitting about, in the mountains (my electricity just went out as we're talking about this - Hello, great grandpa, great great grandpa Parks). So (electricity's back) so this wave of Pentacostalism starts sweeping through the country, probably hits the area in the early 20th century in Jellico, and... So he began to preach... I don't know how familiar you are with some parts of the Bible. Over in the book of Corinthians, it talks about the spiritual gifts of healing, of prophecy of times, of people being able to interpret speaking in other tongues and people being able to put their hands on other people and they be healed from things. He began to preach those things and a lot of people followed him as he started a new congregation. He took his congretation with him and they moved and started something else. The people who went with him were all into it, but a lot of people in the community, it was heresy to them. So, the story goes that three men, allegedly from the Baptist church, came in to break up the service. They had guns and they appeared in the very back. My great-great-grandfather, I'm going to start calling him Grandpa Parks, or grandpa. Grandpa Parks was up there preaching and he saw the men and he said, If you come one step closer, I pray the devil smite you. And they walked closer. And of course, people in the church were starting to really panic and get nervous. My great-great-grandmother, Grandma Parks is sitting there thinking, she starts to pray, and at that moment, the Spirit of God picks him up from the pulpit and he rises to the ceiling of the church, and of course, Grandma Parks is there and she's like, Oh God, he's about to be 'transa-lated', was the word I heard. He's about to be transa-lated, just like Enoch. He's about to be transa-lated just like Enoch. She thought he's gonna... People are like, He's gonna go through the ceiling! He's gonna go through the ceiling! And, of course, you know, he's just as surprised as anyone, right? So the look on his face... really, you know, he's described as looking like he was scared, because, not because of the men at the back at this point, because he really just didn't know what was happening. And moved him through the congregation, through the middle of the congregation. You know, there's the rows on either side, right through the middle of the church and put him down right in front of the three men with the guns. Thus, after that, he was left alone. Now the story also goes that the three men, one of them, shortly after went blind. One of them dropped his gun, took his place in the church service and shut up. Okay? He joined up. And the other one, at some time later, you know, who knows, history tends to conflate times, he killed himself. Yeah, so, sort of like the three men on the cross maybe, or the Holy Trinity there, I don't know. But there were three of them. Outside of that, this entire denomination in the mountains, they call themselves The Church of God of the Mountain Assembly in Jellico. They're still there! There are still... You can look them up on Google. The Church of God of the Mountain Assembly headquarter in Jellico. That's one of the things that they talk about in some of their literature, was the time when Brother Parks was lifted to the ceiling of the Church, and that was a sign that they were doing the right thing. They were on the right track and that their message had weight and that began to grow and spread. There are quite a few, interestingly enough, Jellico's in the coal mining area and as the mines dried up, people went north. So a lot of my family, as well, went to Michigan. I have quite a bit of family in Michigan, or had been in Michigan at the time. So there's quite a bit of that church now in Michigan as well, which is interesting. And so, the amazing part of that story for me in that whole thing is it's sort of like a litmus test to my own spiritual development for me, when I look back. I was told the story as a kid. I was always fascinated by family stories. I know this is not the focus of what we're talking about, but I have equally interesting stories from... Nobody levitated, but people getting, sticking knives up their nose and dying from that, the other side of my family. I'll talk about that later. It's my uncle, Hugh Ballard, on my dad's side, who stuck the knife up his nose and died. But, I was always fascinated somehow, I sort of became like R2D2 for my family. They implanted stories within me as a small child and it tended to speak to me in the wrong way and I just start projecting holographs of stories that make people uncomfortable, I suppose. I don't know. Slade: I'm kind of that person in my family as well. Scott: You're a storyteller, so... Slade: Well, I think that... It's weird because I had aunts that would do genealogical research and stuff like that. And they would always give the stuff to me. Like, they didn't give it to their own kids. For some reason, people identified that I was the one to give it to. They felt like it would get told somehow, or it would be preserved, or just cared about, in a way, by me, that other people wouldn't. And it's true! I do care about all that stuff more. But I do wonder, what would possess you to think this, like, 7 year old boy wants to know about all this stuff? Scott: I've often wondered that, but it came to me from my mom's side of the family and my dad's side of the family. I've ended up with all of the family pictures. I've ended up with all of those things. But my ancestors, 'ancestors' is using that term broadly, my family members who have passed, my ancestors, some of them were alive when I was alive, they figure very prominently in the work that I do too. So that's another matter entirely that we can talk about in a minute. Slade: Here's something I want to ask you about, because... Scott: Please do! Slade: And I have to say, all the months that we tried to think of a reason for you to come on the show, and then all the months since we decided what the reason was, interestingly, two days ago in real time, I interviewed Ian Allen, who is a friend of yours, who also lives in Johnson City, and part of our conversation was about how supernatural, mystical, what we consider new age topics were viewed through the filter of Christianity. So you have some crazy, I mean, full-blown witchcraft going on, but it was all in the name of Jesus, you know what I mean? So I was wondering what your perspective is on that sort of weird mishmash of Christianity and the supernatural stuff which is not traditionally thought of as everyday Christian. Scott: Right, you know, I've been thinking that you were going to ask that question. I've not had an answer for it all week. Because I've had that in mind as well and I think that I was raised in a very traditional Christian family environment, and those kinds of things, though it's very conservative religion, a very evangelical religion, generally speaking, the belief was, a lot of those things that happened in, you know, the early church, we didn't have access to them in the current church. So the idea that, Can people be healed? Yes they can but God uses doctors. That's why God created doctors. Whatever, right? But... I've had to look further back into my family to be able to find some of those things, and that's in my Pentecostal relatives, right? Some of my mom's family, they still follow that path, and a lot of my family doesn't. But they're always the ones at the family gatherings I'm gravitating towards, because they're talking about prayer and things that have happened as a result of prayer. They're talking about warts falling off people. They're talking about somebody who had cancer who doesn't have cancer now. Somebody who was a drug addict one day and suddenly had an experience and they've not used drugs in 25 years. Those kinds of things. All kinds of ways of having miracles. And I don't really have an answer to your question. I have just a lot of experiences, a lot of things I believe have happened but I don't really know why that is. So thank you for asking - it's a great question! Slade: Do you believe in miracles? Scott: Yeah, of course! Now, I used to - For many years, I considered myself an atheist, okay? And so I didn't believe in anything. And it took a lot of work for me to not believe in anything, which tells me I wasn't a very good atheist. The kind of work that I'm doing now certainly was off the table because it was deeply buried. And, I think, you've heard that there are no atheists on the front lines of battle. I don't know. No atheist in the foxhole? I don't know about that, but I do know that some things that happened to me in my life forced me to really reconsider there was something out there that was bigger than me, and that wasn't me. Otherwise I would really be dead or worse... So if you can think of yourself being dead or worse, the worse part means that you're probably not an atheist. Because you tend to believe there is something going on out there that doesn't line up with your belief system, being an atheist, or at least as I understood it. For many years, I've used, I was an alcoholic. I'm a recovering alcoholic now, drug addict, those things. It's been many years since... I've been clean and sober for many years. Slade: Was that the result of anything spiritual? Or was it more of... from that atheist time period? Scott: It was probably from all that. I was a very bitter guy, a lot of bitterness against, and rebellion against religion, and those kinds of things, and with the family history, I suppose, that's always a part of it. Just poured alcohol onto it and pills and just went through a period of my life where I really wasn't there for it. As I got sober, that's sort of the beginning of my re-awakening. I believe we're all born awakened, right? Then I think, our families, our society, etc., I think we just get closed up and closed up. And in the end, we buy into that belief that we're closed up so much and we just continue to add to it, and alcohol was my way of adding to it, and not being here for my life. As I began to show up more for my life, I began to see, at least for me, there's a lot more than what I'm willing to admit is out there and in here, right? There a lot more and I don't have to be shut off from it. As I began to realize that I'm not shut off from it, I started awakening. I won't say that I'm awakenED. I will say that I'm awakenING, if that makes any sense. I've been sort of thinking that some of these things might come up over the course of us talking today, and in some ways, I think I am baffled that I'm doing this and I'm grateful that I am doing this, but... If you had met me 10 years ago, and you had told me... If I had come to you for a session 10 years ago, of course I wouldn't have come to you for a session 10 years ago because I wouldn't have dared to 10 years ago, based on where I was, and you had told me that I was going to be doing this kind of work and all of that, I would have laughed. I would have thought, Boy, he has confirmed that he is just as crazy. I went in here and paid him money, you know, that kind of thing. So yeah. Slade: I probably would have told you. Scott: Yeah, I know. And I would have been like, You're crazy! Slade: I would be that person people always tell me about. I hear this all the time, 'A psychic told me once' and I'm always in the chain of... I'm never the first one to tell them, which is probably cool. Scott: Correct. Slade: I'd rather be at the end of that line of... Just to go back to this miracle for a second, with your great-great-grandfather... Scott: Absolutely. Slade: You know what, if it's okay with you, I'll post a transcript of your Facebook post so everybody can kind of read some of that detail, because it's different every time you tell it, right? There's a different perspective. Scott: It is! Which tells me it was different every time it was told to me so who knows exactly. There have also been members of my family who've worked really hard at debunking the story too. We'll talk about that in a minute if you like, but yeah... Slade: Well tell me, did you ever speak to anyone who actually witnessed this? Scott: Okay. The first family reunion, and it's interesting that all this is coming up, because in two weeks, I will be at the site of all this again. Okay? In two weeks, my family is having a reunion in Jellico. Because I'm the person who knows the stories, and knows where all the people are buried. I'm probably the last person alive, at least in this branch of my family who could take you to the graves of everyone who has come before us. Anyway, I don't know where I was going with that, but the first thing at every reunion, I take my tape player and I, because when I was a kid, my parents for my 5th birthday, my parents bought me a tape recorder, okay? So I was always just recording things and I knew that some of my older family members were going to be there, and I knew I wanted to get some things on tape. I also knew that my grandmother was toward the younger end of the family. So my grandmother, and even her mother who passed away, who died really young, she probably wasn't there for what happened either. But I was there. My grandmother's best friend, Helen Seal, who she grew up with, came down from Michigan to be part of the reunion because: She and my grandmother were like sisters and, The coal-mining camp where everybody was originated there in Tennessee and Kentucky. Everybody was very much like family so Helen came down. Helen was still part of, she's passed now, but she was part of the Church of God of the Mountain Assembly in Michigan. So she still attended the church but in Michigan. You know I said a lot of people went to Michigan to work in the automobile factories when the coal mines dried up. Slade: Right. Scott: So Helen was also just a great storyteller. She had long grey hair that she wrapped up in a bun. She was just a spitfire of a woman so I knew I wanted to talk to her about it. And I wish I could find the tape. It's going to be that mythical tape that's lost, that I can't find now. Sort of like Nixon's tape that's missing from Watergate. Yeah, but she's telling me, and it starts out, she says, 'I know you want to talk about the time Brother Parks was lifted to the ceiling church, and many years ago, I asked Sister Parks what she thought about it.' So she goes into this story, okay, and she wasn't there, but she was getting it, she was telling me her version of Sister, of my great-great-grandmother telling her the story. Okay? Slade: Okay. Scott: Then Helen's husband, Oble, he, I don't know how he knew this, because he didn't live there, but he said that there was an old lady living in the community, Granny Mobely was her name, Granny Mobely (sounds like a Lee Smith novel)... Slade: It does. Scott: It does! Granny Mobely, who was there at the time, right, and I said, Where does she live? And he said, Well I don't know. It's , I don't know, or I didn't know to just go down to the grocery store and ask people where Granny Mobely lived, but I never investigated that any further. I was into college and changing schools and all of that. So I never got any first hand account. I do know that the church has some official records and there have been two books that they have put out, two little books, where they tell the story. Also, he kept a journal as well that one of his other descendants has. I was thinking, How many descendants must he have? My great-great-grandparents had like, 8 children. And so, if you think about probably... There are probably thousands of people now who are descended from them, living today. But one of my cousins' distant relatives, probably what I would call a 5th cousin, in Michigan, who's the pastor of one of the churches there, oddly enough, has his journal, where he wrote some things down. I've never been able to get ahold of that. I've wanted it. I've sent requests. I've asked for copies of it. I've tried to communicate with people about it and that's never been... No one's ever been able... No one's ever been willing to communicate with me about that, which just adds to the mystery and tells me that one day I will see it. You know how that goes. He used to prophesize well too, about great birds with people in them flying through the air. That one day, people would be, one day, this is Oble Seal told me this, that one day he was out preaching, he said, One day, there'll be people on the moon. And this was in the 30s, right? And I don't know what we were talking about in the 30s. I don't know about... I mean, I'm sure there were, certainly there were aircrafts in the 30s. I don't know how many he would have had access to, but there certainly had not been astronauts in the 30s yet. Slade: We had Jules Verne and we had, I don't remember if that... What was it that Hans Fritz movie, Metropolis, or... There's some really, really old creepy black-and-white movie I think that might portray people travelling on rockets to the moon, right? Scott: Yeah, so maybe that's... I don't... Who knows if he had access to seeing those... Slade: Umhmm... Oh yeah! Scott: You know, probably not. So I don't know. And I wish that I could find that tape. I know it was in the attic where I used to live, and then I've moved since then. I don't know where that box of tapes went. You know how that kind of thing goes. Slade: It's a great set up for a novel. Scott: Yeah, I know. It is! Slade: Someone finds the box of tapes in the attic and then, you know. Of course, in the story, you're both your 40-year old self and your 95-year old self so we can switch back and forth between time periods. I can see the whole thing right now. Scott: Absolutely. Yeah, that's very good. Thank you very much! That's good inspiration for that. Slade: Yes! Scott: Reverend Parks also is part of my work that I do here today too. He's one of what I call my 'assistants' and my 'guides'. Slade: So he's like an ancestor guide? Scott: He's an ancestor guide and when I'm working with someone specifically in a healing type session, he very strongly appears. Slade: Interesting! Scott: A lot of really tuned-in people say, Who is the bearded man here who is not you? Slade: Ooo! Scott: That's Grandpa. Pay him no mind. He's very much who I call in to help when, you know, need a space cleaned out, he's very helpful with those kinds of things. He's very good at removing what I call, reptilian type energies from folks as well. Slade: You know, I have to say, it just occurred to me as I was asking you that question about the whole connection with Christianity versus this kind of supernatural stuff, one of the things that became really apparent to me, because I always thought of myself as very much sort of against fundamentalism, still do... Scott: Same here. Slade: Very anti-Christian, all that kind of stuff. But one of the things that I have observed, kind of begrudgingly in the beginning, was that the people who are more open to talking about mysticism are by nature people of faith. And so, if you go to an older generation of people and you want to talk about supernatural stuff, there's a lot more little old church ladies that want to talk about spirits and healing and communication from the dead and all that kind of stuff, and are a lot more open to it than, certainly than an atheist is going to be, or an intellectual from our generation is going to shut that down much more quickly too. And so I learned very quickly to kind of have this universal translator running in my mind and to realize that that was the language they were given to speak with, you know, was the language of the Bible in the culture that they grew up in and so, that's what they had to work with. But some of the things that they will tell you and some of the things that they will describe are just straight up like, Well this is total paranormal investigation! Scott: This is straight up like off Sylvia Browne. Slade: Totally, totally! Scott: Yeah. Slade: So it's made me a little bit more open-minded in myself. I have had to be more open-minded about the fact that when you strip away the vocabulary and you strip away whatever theology's comfortable and whatever symbolism is used, in both camps, or in any camp and all the camps, you'll find that there are people who are extremely plugged in and sensitive and aware and awakening and all that kind of stuff. And then you will find people who are going through the motions and claiming to get it when they don't and then you have people who are just completely tuned out. But that idea of who that someone is who is plugged in transcends everything else. And so when I recognize another person who's 'plugged-in', I don't care. All that other stuff is transparent. You see through it. And so I had these experiences where I have talked to these little old ladies who use the Jesus vocabulary through the whole thing, but meanwhile, they're the most likely to get what it is that I do and to be accepting of it. Scott: I had an aunt who was, she always used to like to renounce the spirit of fear. That was one of her big things that she liked to do. Slade: Ooo I like that. Scott: Renounce the spirit of fear, you know. Here, 25 years later, I start into A Course in Miracles and talking about love and fear and all of those things, and I'm like, Good grief Rita, you were onto it all along. Slade: It reminds me of the Bene Gesserit Litany against fear from doom. Do you know it? Scott: No, I don't. Slade: Okay. I'll put it in the show notes. Fear is the mind killer. Anyway. It's a little litany that the nun-like witch organization in that world.. It's a chant that they do when facing fear. It's a way of, kind of like... Scott: Fair enough. Slade: ...allowing the fear to pass over and through you. I can't recite it off the top of my head right now but I'll put it in the show notes for your sake if no one else's. Scott: For my ADD's sake, I'm trying to sit here not get on my phone and look it up while we're talking. Slade: I know! Don't do that in the middle of an interview! Scott: Yeah, I'm not. I'm definitely not doing that. I'm thinking, he'd never know. This is audio, but you'd know, because you're you! Slade: The litany against fear. It's really good. It's up there with the Serendipity prayer, and, you know, it's one of those tools for me. It's a mantra for sure. So I gotta ask you this. Scott: Please. Slade: Given your perspective and where you are in everything, I see you as someone who is kind of an archivist in a way, of all this old knowledge and old wisdom. You've got pieces of it, more so than others might. And so, as you think about how you are breaking that all down, sort of processing it and then putting it back together and give it new life and new form, what do you most hope to contribute to the conversation about spirituality? Scott: You know, it's to really... There's so many trappings that folks put on it. And just let go. That's one thing that I'm always telling folks. Just let go and stop trying to control absolutely everything. Just allow. Seek the truth for yourself and allow it to come. You can study whatever you want to study, but be open to the sources that the truth might come to you. Be open to what speak to you. Be open to what doesn't speak to you. Sometimes what doesn't speak to you speaks to you more than... because it doesn't speak to you, if that makes sense. In the 12-steps circles, people talk about 'let go and let God', you know, let go and let Spirit do Spirit's work, and realizing that a lot of that happens in a very subtle way in that it often times doesn't happen very instantly. It's a process and also that just because we're spiritual, just because we studied the Law of Attraction, which is great, you know, it's fine. It's not the only law there is though. Just because we've read this and watched the latest YouTube video, just because we've done this or this or this, it doesn't absolve us from doing the work on ourselves. And from taking, you know, sometimes I tell the folks that I'm working with, if nothing else, I'm gonna be able to, hopefully, with some assistance here, provide you at least some kind of mirror so that you can see yourself honestly, and see your path in a way that you've not seen it before. At least as honest as I can convey it to you, as honest as you're able to see it, but to look very closely inside for the answers and not externally. Because the answers for me are not the answers for you, and there's certainly some universal truths, but the path for everybody is slightly different. And each person has his or her own expression. And I just feel like I'm babbling, Slade. I love that question. Slade: It's meant to be a stumper but it's also meant to be a prompt to... Well, I used to ask people what really bugs the shit out of them in all this crap. And then I realized, Heather O'Shea I think was the person who was like, 'I'm going to reframe that, make it more positive'. And I was like, 'Okay, that's a good idea'. And so, going forward, I try to re-frame that as a more positive thing. Scott: One thing I would say is, this is not a cake mix. Okay? This is not... You realize there are certain... We don't have as much control over things in our world as we do over baking a cake. It's a good analogy, but again, it's not the best analogy. Okay? I do believe that the new thought community talks about planting seeds and watering seeds and all that, but the idea is that you've got to plant the appropriate seeds for the thing that you want. Right? And... Slade: And you have to do it. You have to tend it. Scott: YOU have to tend your garden. Remember, from Candide, and he goes through all that and Candide at the end: All of this is well and good. All of this is well and good. I've encountered the woman who had her ass eaten because of steak or something, but I still had to cultivate my own garden. You know? I still had to cultivate my own garden. And Pangloss is saying, 'All is well and good in this best of all possible worlds.' And Candide's saying, 'Yes, thank you, but I still have to cultivate my own garden', and that is me planting the appropriate seeds and doing the literal work of putting the thing together. Keep seeing things. If you can think it, you can be it. If you can dream it, you can be it. On one level, that's certainly true. You know? I know that there's a lot of hope for people in that as well. But if it were that simple, we wouldn't have any problems. If it were that simple... I hear a lot of talk about... Everything's all the Law of Attraction this, and the Law of Attraction that, and that is certainly all well and good and there's so much truth there, right? But it's not simply just thinking happy thoughts all the time and everything will be okay. It's about embodying a new way to be, and truly, not just sprouting affirmations (hehe, 'sprouting'), not just spouting affirmations at yourself. Sprouting - I'm using that seed metaphor. Slade: Right. Taking it all the way through Scott: Yeah, taking it all the way through. Thank you! It's... You can't just say, 'I am at peace with myself' and 'today's going to be better' and everything just work out. You have to go a little bit deeper than that. You have to do what affirmations really do. You have to... The nice thing that I love, because I deal with a lot of affirmations with folks that I work with is to say, 'Use this as an affirmation.' And 'You'll know it's working if, after you've done this for a couple of days, you feel worse.' Because that means it's lodged itself in those deep recesses of the things that you don't want to have to deal with and it's bringing it all to the surface. It's going in there and it's sort of destroying the energy of the thing you no longer want, and it's just all bubbling up like stomach acid, right? In that way, you know you're on the right track. Slade: Interesting... Scott: There's always that thing is, I want to feel better and I want to feel better NOW. And I'm always like, we can all feel better, but we still have to do something. You know? We still have to take a look at our ourselves. Slade: Well, you know, and you don't just do it once either. I think the... If I was answering your question with the way that you're answering it, I would say that, the thing that really kicks you in the gut when you realize that you have to get up and re-do it every day. You have to start over and over and over again and every day. I mean, some things might carry you through longer arcs of time, but really, it's not A decision. It's thousands of decisions. It's thousands of times making the same decision over and over again. Scott: It's a whole spiritual practice. It's not just a set of isolated things. It's a whole spiritual practice, you know? Like yoga is a spiritual practice. It's a whole thing. It's not just going to a class now and then. Although I love going to yoga classes, but it's a whole spiritual practice that I have to embody. And I have to figure out a new way to BE, not just a new way to think, not just a new way to act, but a whole new way to BE if I want some results in that way. But certainly I know inside of me, given, left to my own devices, I'll always usually pick the easy way out. Slade: Scott, it's so good to capture one or maybe a handful of your stories. I know that we still have so many others that we could do, but I'm glad that we finally got one in the can. I really want to appreciate you for coming on and telling your story. Tell everyone where they can go find you online. Scott: Yeah! It's sort of the entrepreneur phase of my life right now but ScottDouglasVaughn.com is the website for my spiritual work. Also I'm a photographer! I take pictures of abandoned buildings and things like that. And all of this grew out of that same summer, summer of 2012 that I was talking about a little bit earlier. That's ScottVaughnphotography.com My website, ScottDouglasVaughn.com is pretty good insight into what I'm doing right now.

Similar to outsourcing fulfillment, today's podcast guest says for many entrepreneurs, it may be best to outsource the collection, management and disbursement of sales taxes with the new Economic Nexus ruling by the Supreme Court. In this podcast, first we cover what the decision means to online entrepreneurs, and how it will impact the average business. For some no action needs to be taken. For others a lot of action must be taken. And ignoring the details is not really an option. Sometimes the least interesting subjects and work as an entrepreneur bring the most value. Well-managed financials are one such thing. Held within the broad “financials” umbrella is now sales taxes. While the answer to the questions, “should I collect” used to be grey. Everything is fairly black and white now. And the subject is never going away. Episode Highlights: Don't geek out on Sales Taxes. Outsource it. See SALT experts below. If you have Nexus it means you have an obligation to potentially register and collect sales taxes or income taxes in a given state. Physical Nexus is where you are, where your business is, where you are storing inventory or where Amazon is storing it. Economic Nexus is the change with the Supreme Court decision. The states could define other ways to define Nexus. For instance either $100,000 in sales or 200 transaction in the last 12 months – and you could be required to collect sales taxes on those revenues that occured within their state…regardless of Physical Nexus. Economic Nexus takes effect immediately for the 24 states that already have them on the books. (Links below will lead to finding the 24 states) Notice and Reporting are other ways to determine Nexus. It's really confusing! You MUST register to collect sales taxes. If you collect and do not remit, it is CRIMINAL. Hire an expert to register to collect sales taxes. There are 45 states that require it. Only register where you have to if you are a small seller. But if you are doing 10-20 million in revenue, “suck it up” and register everywhere. SALT experts can handle almost everything for you. See notes and links below. SALT is an acronym for Sales and Local Tax Experts Use www.WhereStock.com to determine where Amazon is holding your inventory. Seel link below. Taxjar is a good option if you wish to take on managing this yourself. Scott & his outsourced accounting team at Catching Clouds use Taxify (but recommend both options) The Supreme Court Decision may not increase a buyer's liability in an asset sale. Transcription: Joe: So Mark Jason got an e-mail this week and he had a question and it was “What makes Quiet Light different?” And Jason gave it an interesting answer and I want your feedback on it. It says “Well the formal answer is that we're all entrepreneurs but that's not really it. The difference is that Mark … you Mark Daoust is one of the best human beings on earth and that permeates everything we do. As a result, he attracts good people that are always doing good work with the best interest of others even if it's painful for the broker we ignore our own incentive to do what's right.” Did you pay him to say that? Mark: Yeah … well, I'm not going to say exactly how much but he got paid for that. I think it's a little over the top. I mean really. Joe: But he didn't write that down. He said it to someone and someone wrote it down and shared it with me. And I … look I shared this to put you on the spot. You look by the way very much like an internet entrepreneur today. You've got a t-shirt with some ducks on it, a little duck, duck going on there. Mark: Duck, duck, gray duck. I'm from Minnesota and I [inaudible 00:01:53.2] I'm going to put this out there, it's a more sophisticated game. All you parents out there stop this duck, duck, goose crap. It's all duck, duck, gray duck; that's what we're doing here. Joe: Don't know if we have time to go into what the heck you're talking about with duck, duck, gray duck. Well just … I thought you were going into hockey or something like that. I wanted to touch on one more thing you know Jason talks about that and you and the environment that you've created here and the caliber of entrepreneurs and advisors that you brought on. I listened to a podcast last night with Chuck Mullets and for those that are the buyers in the audience today, if you have not listened to the 27 tools for due diligence I think it was, listen to it. Because some of the tools in there were just amazing and I've been doing this for a long time and I haven't heard of any of them. I have to take my hat off to Chuck and give him some compliments for the job that he did there. I was really really impressed. He's a … I'll say it, he's a lot smarter than I thought he was. Mark: Ah, you know the bar was pretty low, to begin with. Joe: But I want to just raise myself up a little bit and show you something. Mark: What's that? Joe: I have on- Mark: Oh you have on Chuck's shirt that he made for you. Joe: I have my Quiet Light logo shirt on. So there you go. Mark: While I'm wearing ducks. Joe: Oh I didn't shade you there. Okay, listen this podcast is about something that's really important. It's about the Supreme Court decision to change the way that sales taxes are to be collected. Let's not get into details, let me just tell you that we had Scott Scharf on again. We specifically talked about the problem and the solution. What does this mean to e-commerce entrepreneurs and how do you solve it? I can tell you right now when you get three quarters of the way through the solution is … if you are up for it just like you outsource your fulfillment to a 3PL you can outsource your sales tax collection and distribution and management. And if it were me that would be my recommendation but it's absolutely there and you don't have to deal with all that little detail and there's a lot of it. Mark: Yeah and I like to say a word to people that share a person holiday with me, and when I read and hear about some of these red tape sort of restrictions that are coming down, I have a tendency to plug my years and go la-la-la-la I don't want to hear it. Joe: Right. Mark: I like the days of the free open web when it was just easy to do things. But the fact of the matter remains this is the direction we're going. Joe: Right. Mark: Restrictions, regulations are going to come into play more and more frequently and these aren't necessarily bad things we just needed to understand how to navigate them. And so an episode like this is timely, I'm glad that you got Scott on the line to do this episode because this is the [inaudible 00:04:34.0] time the episode given that this decision just came down a few weeks ago. Joe: Yeah some of the things that we talk about here on the Quiet Light Podcast are painful as entrepreneurs. Particularly those that don't love this detail, they love the excitement of driving revenue and the marketing aspect of it. These painful things when you pay attention to them will make your business more valuable if and when you ever decide to sell. So again listen to the whole thing. Get through it, he talks about it in detail point by point. But I try to keep him on track so it's not … he doesn't geek out too much. Scott loves this stuff. Mark: Scott? Never. Joe: He calls it geeking out himself. So we try to get on track to … okay how do … how does a guy like me, how does a guy like Mark, like an entrepreneur listening, how do they overcome this giant massive ball of red tape? And really, I think the answer is, outsource it. And we're going to give all of the ability to do that down there in the show notes. Mark: Sounds great. Joe: Let's go to it. Joe: Hey folks it's Joe from Quiet Light Brokerage and today I've got Scott Scharf on the line with me from Catching Clouds. And we're going to talk about the Supreme Court decision that's come down regards to sales taxes, define what the problem is, and then give you a solution to it in the second half of the podcast. Scott welcome … welcome back actually right? Scott: Yeah it's great to be back. Joe: All right so you know we don't do fancy introductions. Tell these folks who you are and what you do at Catching Clouds so they understand what level of expert you are here. Scott: Yeah at Catching Clouds we're e-commerce accountants who are really experts in the accounting e-commerce businesses and of course sales tax management; which is why we can talk about this topic. We've been doing this for the last seven years and we love solving problems for e-commerce, sellers, anybody that we interact with it. And this Quill decision is definitely one of those things. Joe: Quill decision, that it that's the name of it? Q-U-I-L-L. Scott: Well, yeah so Quill was a decision from what 26 years ago that the Supreme Court overturned their own finding that really delimited what states could do to go collect sales tax from small businesses that are selling across state lines. Joe: Good. Okay, so they overturned it. So, folks, you heard Scott say that they're e-commerce accountants and I just want to reiterate … and you know my little soapbox here. E-commerce accounting, accounting, good financials, clean documentations, it's one of the four pillars to get maximum value for your business. So if you're using anything other than Xero or QuickBooks seriously consider talking to Scott if you want to get maximum value for your business. Because Excel spreadsheets for a 20 million dollar company or if you're doing a half a million in revenue doesn't matter, you're going to lose value in the sale of your business if and when some day you decide to sell. So there's my little pitch, definitely- Scott: [inaudible 00:07:24.7] Joe: these services. Okay so if I understand this correctly this is no longer physical nexus which I think everybody that's listening knows the definition of it; what it means. Is economic nexus, can you tell us what the heck that means for these folks? Scott: Yeah so actually physical nexus still applies so it's not that they got rid of physical nexus it's just not the only consideration deciding if you have [inaudible 00:07:52.0] of fancy. Joe: So let's say what physical nexus is anyway then, go ahead. Scott: Okay. Well, physical nexus … well, first nexus is if you cross a threshold and you have nexus based on some parameters means you have an obligation to potentially register and collect sales tax or income tax or other things in a given state. So if you don't have nexus you don't have to do these things. Okay, that's the first part. So there are different types of nexus, the first one is physical. It's been around for quite a while. It's where you are, your business is, your business is founded, you have employees, you have property. Okay for an e-commerce business, it's wherever you're storing your inventory. If it's at a 3PL on either coast you have a nexus where you're storing your inventory. If you're an Amazon FBA seller, when you send inventory to three or five warehouses they'll move it to up to 26 states that's your inventory and it creates nexus. There are a few other ones out there but from a physical perspective … I've been around for a while, there's like affiliates and other things. But the main thing it's where you are and your property is. Joe: Physical nexus, okay. And now we've got economic nexus, what is that? Scott: So economic nexus what states have determined and the brakes were taken off with the Supreme Court decision that they could define other ways to determine nexus to basically either require your business to do reporting and other function or register and collect sales tax in those states. So what they've done is said hey if you're doing over typically in the standard is based on the Supreme Court decision $100,000 in sales or actually more importantly 200 transactions either in the last calendar year or in the prior 12 months and that would mean that they're expecting you if you're a larger business to register and collect sales tax from there … of any consumers buying products you're shipping to into that state. Joe: How many transactions do you say? It was 200? Scott: 200. Joe: So if it's a $20 sale it's only what 1,000? Scott: $1,000. So $100,000 people see the $100,000 and think that oh God there's no way I didn't know you'd do $100,000 in any states last year, but it's totally based on your average. So if you take your average sale price and multiply it times 200, if you've done more than that revenue in any states that have these laws you're over that threshold. Joe: Okay so economic nexus passed by the Supreme Court, when does it take effect is it immediate or is there-? Scott: It's immediate for the roughly 23, 24 states that already had these laws on the books. And the only thing that was holding them back were these court cases that were just … was decided a week and a half ago. Joe: Okay so there's 24 states, not all 45 that collects sales taxes but that is 24 of them. And for folks listening, we will add a list of those 24 states but there'll be a lot of resources in the show notes that we'll give you that through their software as well. Scott: Well and it's not just economic nexus, you have to remember there's now notice in reporting states that aren't doing economic nexuses but have set thresholds for doing notice and reporting. They're basically two different new ways of determining nexus and they're both in effect now and there are other states that have them starting later this year and more. So it's multiple ways of nexus that might impact your business. Joe: Okay so I'm just going to say a few years ago I did a presentation at Rhodium Weekend all about e-commerce selling and part of it was sales tax collection accounting. So I wanted to say to Yana if you're listening I was right. She came after me after that now that's never going to happen. It's right. So really just don't even worry about the 24 states I think physical nexus, economic … basically get prepared to collect and remit sales taxes everywhere and use a special service that can allow you to do that. First though … and we'll get to that but first do you have to register to collect sales taxes? Scott: Yes. You have to if you are not registered you don't have a license and a number from the state, it's criminal to collect sales tax and not remit it and not have a license. It's also criminal to collect sales … have a license to collect sales tax and not give it to those state. Those two things have additional penalties and they'll come after the business owner's criminally. So you need to have a license before you start collecting sales tax and then once you start collecting sales tax you have to give it back to the state either monthly, quarterly or annually; whatever they say. Joe: Okay just to clarify, you used the word criminally three times. That's a little scary. Scott: Well it's … but unfortunately both Amazon and Shopify and these other sites, I mean literally there's a button in Shopify that you can click that says collect sales tax in all states. And it's easy to start collecting sales tax in the 45 states that have sales tax. So technically it's very easy to hit these buttons and not realize and you just want to be careful. And in difference between criminal is there's additional by jail. Everything else related to sales tax is expense and cost which is more likely to happen but maybe not as painful but can be pretty painful based on penalties and interest and other things. Joe: Right. Okay, so first and foremost let's just define and answer this simple basic question that some folks have been asking, does this mean … and I know the answer to this thus do you, does this mean quote unquote I have to start collecting sales taxes? The answer is yes. The answer is you should have been collecting them before, you had to before. Correctly? Scott: Well correct, if you have physical nexus that goes back in time. Okay, most of these economic nexus laws are new. And the way they're currently written is if you pass the threshold then the expectation is you register and start collecting sales tax going forward. So there's going to be nuances and changes but in general, if you exceed most of these thresholds for economic nexus or notice in reporting basically the expectation is you go out, you register now, and you start collecting forward. And there's no … depending on the state but for most states, there's no real risk of you owing money or have not done whatever in the past, you can go forward. But when you have physical nexus because of Amazon FBA or a 3PL then you need to consider if you register and collect going forward where you still have a risk of any previous outstanding liability which I know within a sale you're very aware of to make sure you know both the seller and the buyer are aware of any business liabilities or do you go back in time and pay anything that you didn't collect in the past; which isn't fun. Collecting sales tax or paying in sales tax you didn't collect from the consumer on each individual sale. Joe: Yeah because that's directly coming out of your profits now instead of collecting and just passing it through. Scott: Yup. Joe: Okay, so let's jump to making this easy for people that are listening. The bottom line is that they need to start collecting sales taxes and remitting them. Obviously, get registered to collect sales taxes. There're software out there that does this right? Because you're talking about you need to do this, you need to do that, and for me as a former physical products e-commerce seller, my eyes would roll into the back of my head, I would [inaudible 00:15:15.0] more and I'd never wake up again. Can't … Can I just pay somebody to do this for me and if yes what are the options and how much would it cost me annually or monthly? Scott: Well the first part, so you don't pull out your own hair, is there are multiple services out there that will help you with the registrations and register you in multiple states because it will drive you crazy. Every state is a little bit different. On average I'll pay about $100 per registration plus $20 to $50 in registration fee for some states, that's the first piece. So if you've decided to register in two, five, ten, whatever number of states you need to get registered first and I suggest … it'll just drive you crazy, is would be to get registered and there are a number of services out there that can do that for you. Joe: Okay and we'll put those in the show notes but why Scott only five or ten whatever you decide to get registered? And why wouldn't you register for every state that requires you to collect sales taxes? I guess maybe because you never sell any … somebody in the state of- Scott: So one it's just that overhead in the cost of doing business. So the first thing there are 45 states that have a sales tax and we are all heading sometime … I would have said three to five plus years that we're going to collect sales tax on every e-commerce sale, it's now probably two to four years or two to three years. It's going to happen a lot faster but there is a cost even on the low cost tool or outsourcing it … and I'll talk about some of those numbers in a minute, but you really only at this point want to register for sales tax where you have to. You shouldn't have to if … now if you're already a 20 or 30 million dollars e-commerce business just suck it up and go to all 45. Joe: Right. Scott: Anybody else below there, you're paying more money for compliance and tools and registrations. And in some of these states when you register for sales tax nexus you are in some ways volunteering to pay income tax. Potentially depending on the state and the situation; minimum franchise tax like in California which is $800 a year, and then additional fees, and not only the sales tax cost but paying a CPA to file and deal with franchise tax returns and income tax returns. So you want to as a small business or even a medium sized business minimize that overhead and only do this in the states you need to but you definitely want to start the big states where the population are. California, Florida, Texas, and those other bigger ones is the basics to get that going but you would want an easier way in. So figure it out for the first batch that you're doing and then do another batch and another batch. So you just can't stop your whole business to do sales tax and you just have to balance those things out. But at the same time, you don't want to show this huge [inaudible 00:17:52.3] selling and talking to Quiet Light. This huge compliance overhead and its overkill and it's going impact your own profitability and the money you're taking out of the business. So just want to find a balanced approach as you get there. Joe: How do you determine that? Is there a tool or process inside of Shopify or if you're an Amazon Seller that tells you that you know what sales you have by state? Scott: Yeah so there are two … for sales price there's a couple of ways to do it. So the first if you're an Amazon FBA seller there's a great tool called wherestock.com you pay him $30 and they'll log in … we'll get you the link, and they'll connect your Amazon site and they'll … it'll take them about a day and they'll give you a report showing you all the warehouses where you have inventory and when it started. How far back in time if you had inventory in the Michigan warehouse and if you go through that list and you don't see North Carolina or some states because of the type of your products it'll tell you, you might have had or five of these main states that you've never had inventory in and you don't have nexus there; which is great news. The next piece is really a matter of downloading all of your orders out of Shopify for the previous 12 months or the last year and then just pivoting the data or doing a total if you know how in Excel to show you your sales; both the number of sales in each state and the total dollar volume in each state. So you want to know your own numbers and any that you're over $100,000 in sales or unfortunately $10,000 in Washington State, Pennsylvania, and Oklahoma starting on Sunday I think. I think it just started Sunday. I think it was July first and it's happened right before it. Those are $10,000 in sales which is really low, everybody else is 100,000. So that'll … you'll go through those states and add up the ones that you have, look at the ones that you have the most amount of sales and income in and start with those. You want to know your own numbers and work through your own list. The other option is and I can provide a link to our tax calculator that we have in there … bunch of other people putting them out there that basically take your average sale amount enter it and it will total all those things up. But those are the two things; one, all of your income across all of your sales and then this Amazon wherestock report to let you know what's going on in FBA and that'll be in your information and then you just build a list and you work your way through your own priorities on how many you want to do; all at once or a few at a time. Joe: Okay so just to dumb it down a little bit. If you're doing 20, 30 million dollars just suck it up and do all 45 states. But if you're doing maybe just a million dollars in revenue, which is fantastic, do this report because you don't want to have to register in 23 states that instead of all 45 if you don't have to. Scott: Right. Joe: Someone else talked about it in this way. I mean that registration alone is going to cost you $100 to $150 so maybe $3,000 or so for 23 states that you don't have to register in. But if you're only doing $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 in revenue in the state of Montana it doesn't make any sense to register because a. you're not going to hit that threshold and b. realistically Scott is if someone in the state of Montana that works in- Scott: Montana is a bad example they're not on sales tax. Joe: Okay. Scott: So pick one of the few states that doesn't have one but Nevada or however else- Joe: How about Maine? Scott: So it's always a risk man, your question is so should you or not you … are you going to, can you fly under the radar- Joe: Yeah. Scott: Are they going to find you tomorrow and what's going on? So it's a risk management decision between the cost of compliance to your business versus the overhead and the cost of compliance and then the chance of being caught. There are four million Amazon sellers, there's between five and ten million businesses doing e-commerce these days. The states just had their handcuffs taken off and they're all going to go woohoo let's go get this money from out of state sellers. It's going to take them a while to ramp up and the chances of getting caught are very very low and they have been low and they're still very very low okay? But there isn't really no ambiguity now; there's no more well, maybe, or there's this court case, or whatever else. Joe: Right. Scott: So until now and whenever possibly the Congress does something or more lawsuits happen which take time this is the way things are today and you just have to make that decision of a risk management. So you never want to mess around with the IRS when it comes to payroll taxes or W-9s and contractors but for sales tax, you're going to have to balance those out. But the chance of being audited or being notified by the state is significantly higher than it's ever been in the past. Joe: Okay let's talk about the services that are out there; as in the software or services that you recommend for listeners just … you can do your download calculator that I'm going to provide in the show notes to determine the revenue by state and things of that nature to decide where they want to register. But what softwares or service programs do you recommend that folks check out that you have seen people use consistently that make this a whole lot easier? Scott: Yeah for people doing it themselves I would start with TaxJar it's by far the easiest to use most straightforward they … not only do they pull in all the data but they process the filing for sales tax and the payments in all 50 states. It's both the easiest and I, from what I've seen the lowest cost. They're a great tool. They have a great blog and a ton of information and support and it's the best way to do it yourself. The next one that's a little more powerful- Joe: Hold on a second. Scott: Yeah? Joe: In terms of a TaxJar thorough cost ballpark if someone's to put in all the states what would the overall cost be to … and do they do registration or just compliance? Scott: Okay so TaxJar does not do registrations. Joe: Okay. Scott: It's only the sales tax data aggregation to pull it all together from channels. Pull everything together. One note is if you have sales that are outside of Amazon, Shopify, or BigCommerce you have to import that data into TaxJar so that you have the complete thing. From all the sales so your filings are accurate. But in general, you're going to pay a monthly fee between I think 29 and up to 500 depending on the number of sales. Whether it's a thousand per month, 5,000 you know … in larger apps you're going to pay a base monthly fee no matter what; totally reasonable wherever your SaaS thing. And then you're going to pay a per-filing transaction. So if you're paying filing quarterly you're going to pay four times somewhere between $21 and $30 per filing. I don't have their pricing memorized. Joe: Sure. Scott: So if you're filing quarterly your costs are going to be lower. If you're filing annually it's going to be these monthly fees. So if you're a smaller seller the pricing can work out to be fairly affordable. They also have kind of an unlimited filing piece so if you get over a certain level … and I haven't done the math whether it's 20 states or 30 states but there's a certain point where you can pay it for kind of an unlimited plan and get to a max price. I think that's in the 4 to $6,000 for the year kind of total. But you can using that tool max that out and really lock that compliance cost in. Not counting your time making sure it's being done right. Importing data, dealing with notices, and just making … keeping an eye on it, it's not a set and forget process. Joe: So, on the high side it sounds like maybe $500 a month and your maxing out the services there, on the low side $29 a month so it all depends upon the size of the seller and how much you do. Okay, you are about to mention another- Scott: So the next one I would say is Taxify and that's what we use because we're doing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of returns every month. It's a little more powerful in certain ways. They have integrations. It can handle a wider range of different businesses and there's … it's just they're really kind of head to head but for DIY most people go with TaxJar just because it's easier to use. TaxJar is more powerful if you have a more complex business. You might want to consider it or compare the two. Pricing is pretty similar between those two and- Joe: Those using TaxJar you said TaxJar, not Taxify. Scott: No we're using Taxify. We are using Taxify. Our accounting practice for us to file we use Taxify but I've known the TaxJar guys for six years now and they really do have a great solution. And any of our stuff we talk about those two is really the primary ones to consider third one is- Joe: Hold on I want to just interrupt again sorry. On this option, you're saying you already use it which means that with your accounting services for sellers of a certain size I assume, the collection, the management, and remittance of the sales taxes are part of your services as well. Scott: Correct. Joe: So I don't have to learn the software, I can hire you guys to do it. Scott: Correct. Joe: Okay. Scott: Well and I'll talk about some other … outsourcing is absolutely a viable, just like you outsource fulfillment to a 3PL or to Amazon FBA, sales tax is something you don't want to geek out on. I've done it for the last six years, it drives me crazy but I geek out on it. It just … it will distract you from listing products and buying products and designing new products and all the front end stuff to generate more income. That is absolutely something you want to … you might like that we look at here's how you do it yourself and you should understand anything you outsource but we do that. We offer the service but we also do notice management. The states send all kinds of notices. Even if you pay on time they'll send you a notice but if you don't respond to the notice they'll fine you for not responding to the notice. So there's more to it than just a set and forget tools. These tools are phenomenal as they deal with the complexity. Because every return is different, they have 50 different fields. They really aggregate the data and reduce the complexity of filing and paying which is awesome which is why we use automation. But then there's there is more to it. Joe: Okay, you're about to mention a third option for folks. Scott: Yeah third option is Avalara TrustFile. Now if you really are already a 20 or 30 … so Avalara has two products, they have a smaller and a lower end one which I don't think is as powerful as TaxJar or Taxify called TrustFile which you can use. They've cleaned up their pricing but it's still a little confusing but they're a viable tool. If you're already let's say five or really 10 million and you're doing more than just e-commerce you can consider Avalara AvaTax which is their higher end tool which will give you more control automated. If you have an accounting department it is definitely a tool you would consider. Quite a few CPA's and accountants use AvaTax as well to do more complex larger sales tax across multiple businesses. So those are really the key players, there are other smaller players out there but those are really the key players that are really focused and understand what's going on out there. Joe: Okay. I was listening to your better half Patti on your YouTube channel. She does a great job, by the way, great Q and A's there. I think she mentioned SALT experts and what they do and what not. Can you define what a SALT expert is and why someone listening might want to consult with one of them? Scott: Absolutely so a SALT; Sales And Local Tax expert, these are people that will do one, they can do a nexus study which tells you where you have nexus and it'll tell you whether your products are taxable or not, are they a food, are they a candy, do they have flour in them, are they clothing or … they can go look at all that. You can all interpret what the states say but these are people that do it all the time and will contact the state anonymously or you. The next thing they will do is what's called a voluntary disclosure agreement. If you owe a state tens of thousands of dollars of back tax and you want to come clean because you want to clear out your liability to sell your business and just make sure everything's done right, they'll go to the states anonymously and say I have this seller and they'll represent you. And in some cases get penalties, sometimes interests, and can potentially get a payment plan if you're cleaning up historical sales tax. And you want that person representing you a SALT expert, not your CPA. Unless they've done it multiple times in their own state you really want to talk to someone that's an expert. They're the people you want to call if you're audited to represent you and help you get through an audit. So those are the unique things we haven't talked about but the main thing is you can outsource your sales tax compliance to them. They will do the registrations and most in almost every case they will set things up. Most of them are very technical … in our case we at Catching Clouds we're really great at setting up Shopify to collect sales tax right and Amazon and eBay and in the more technical configurations. So we're very technical accountancy but they will help advise you on those things. They're all over it. They talk to me about the technical stuff, we're really good friends. It's a great community. I'll try to just solve this for sellers but then you can pay them a monthly fee or a per-state fee to take care of the data collection which you have to give them. The filing, the payments, notices, and kind of provide a complete service to outsource your sales tax. You can go to one person, pay them to take care all of your sales tax that's going on and advise you and then they're the ones that are keeping tabs on all the changes that happen every week; every month if that's the route you want to go. Which is a good way to go, in general, I'll give you a safe number, you really want to budget at least $50 per state per month. So you're looking at between $600 and $1,000 per year for this to not be an issue to worry about but you need to budget the right amount. Plus you want to have that same space because everyone's … Arizona's awful that they'll come back the second year and hit you with hundreds of dollars additional fees per county and everything else that you didn't count on and you can't get around and they'll deal with these random issues. Joe: Okay, great. I have a list of those from your website for those listening again in the show notes SALT experts will be available. Sounds like a one stop shopping place to go and just outsource all of this. Of course, some people that want to do the work themselves will have those calculators that you talked about there as well Scott and the links to the Taxify and TaxJar and Avalara. A couple of quick questions before we wrap this up, and maybe they're not quick questions but historically when someone sells their website … their physical e-commerce business in this case, the question of liability for past sales taxes that should have collected is really really gray, right? Scott: Yeah it is. Joe: And only once for those listening how do you solve that problem as a buyer? In most cases, most buyers don't worry about it. They really never have and these are people that are a lot smarter than you and I combined. They don't worry about it; pretty high level folks. In one case I had and think about this as a seller, I had someone that it was … the business sale total value was around $758,000 but they did the math and they said look in the 24 months that you've been around you should have collected X amount of sales taxes and let's call it $50,000 in that purchase price, in that $750,000 in the asset purchase agreement $50,000 was set aside in Escrow for potential sales tax liability purposes. And when the buyer went out to register to get their sales tax in the state of California, Texas, whatever if that state said yes, of course, we'll register you but we know that you owe us from this brand, you didn't own the company but from this brand you owe us $17,000 then that money would have come out of that 50,000. For the record, the buyer was able to register in all the states that he wanted to register and not a single state said okay great but you owe us money hence all 50,000 was released. How does this Supreme Court decision in economic nexus change that liability moving forward for the buyers of these businesses? Scott: I don't think it … I think it only increases the chance of the state contacting you and having to either answer the questions or go through an audit and all of these things are moot until you're actually audited. And you're at that point where you're dealing with an auditor and then then they ask for historical records and financials and everything else. Up until then, it's not really an issue. Unfortunately, though it's the decision of that state; are they going to hold the new business and whoever bought that Amazon seller account? They want to attach the liability to the Amazon account where it was being sold that you buy a continuing Amazon account which is what most people do or is it tied to the prior business and the business owner? The people selling you need to be concerned when you get that big chat to set some of this money aside if the states come after you historically because if you've spent it all, it really … in most cases tends to tie to the original business owner of the business. So I would say that there's … it's really if you're buying [inaudible 00:34:44.4] sale you have to be worried about it more than anything else. If it's an asset sale you're buying this asset, starting a new business, you've got to register fresh and move forward. There's a small risk but only after you've been audited. So it's just a couple of nuances there. Joe: So very very small risk and only after you're audited and the odds of being audited again, incredibly small. Scott: Correct. Joe: Okay. Let's talk about those out there that are wholesaling. They're buying products and wholesaling them, they don't have to collect these sales taxes is that correct? Scott: They don't but you have to follow the rules. The first is and what really does this finding really change is instead of collecting tax exemptions certificates; so for every B2B sale you have to get a tax exemption certificate and it's not just a picture of the sales tax license on the wall of someone's cell phone. You have to have something that has your business name on the top that other companies who you sold it to their tax licenses whether it's one state or multiple states. And it doesn't matter which states they are and an owner or a business manager an approved person of that company signing at the bottom saying they're responsible for the sales tax. Okay? Joe: Is it on a form? Is it an official form that they would fill out? Scott: There's a form per state and there's a great multi-state form. I can get you all of the links and if you want to have a process that you have them and keep in mind that they pretty … a lot of them expire every year. So you want to have all of these forms from your five or 10 or 50 or 500 B2B customers on file. And if you get audited by any given state then you need … then you have these to say hey I didn't have to collect sales tax but if you don't have the forms or they're expired or you're missing them that … then they can say all of that was taxable and you owe the sales tax. Even if the other company sold it and collected sales tax they can double dip and come after the information. What this decision really changed was two things related to B2B sellers. But first, as most people tend to collect tax exemption certificates for their own states where they're filing where they would expect their own business to get audited. Now that it's kind of every state can look at all this information, B2B sellers should start collecting tax exemption certificates on every sale. And if you have your top five or ten B2B customers, go back and get them from those ones and … to make sure you've got this filed. And then just set it aside in case you're audited. The second big impact of this for B2B sellers is now your B2B sales, number of transactions, and dollars volume count towards these economic nexus thresholds. It's all of your sales. It's your B2C sales and B2B. And even if you're 100% B2B and you have no tax you're still going to cross this threshold. And the states are still going to expect you to file a return. And it is going to cost you the same amount in compliance for you as it does. Even if you give them no money like every number is zero. Joe: That's really important for people that are doing both B2C and B2B. I was thinking just wholesale B2B but we have a lot of clients that they'll sell to let's say for instance chewy.com they're selling their own website but they wholesale to Chewy. They need to pay attention to this stuff as well. That's great information. Scott: It's all of their sales. It combines both and it's looking at all of your sales. Because what the really the states are doing and all these laws are meant to do is to get to the point where every transaction is taxed and they get a sales tax from every sale. That's what they're trying to do so pretty much most of the pain goes away if you register and collect in a state. You don't have to worry about different fines and fees or other unknowns, you can start defining your cost of compliance but that's really where we're going. Joe: Okay. Do you think this Supreme Court decision is good or bad? Overall for the individual states that are going to be applied this collect and collect is what I'm saying. Scott: I think it's bad for e-commerce sellers. I really do. The compliance costs just went from an unknown maybe I can avoid them to … and we're heading that way so I think it's bad for e-commerce sellers. Of course, it is great for the state bureaucracies that are going to go out and collect a bunch of money from other states until something else changes to back it down. I think it's going to increase the risk for smaller sellers and even mid-range sellers of having more unknown's that could impact your business. From us, as consumers, we're really getting to the point as a company … a country since we're so consumer based, it's all about products and services and things along those lines that we're really heading to the point where we're going to pay a sales tax on everything. It's just that the cost and the complexity and potential risks to all small businesses, not just e-commerce businesses, anybody that has a product and ships it out of state or does anything else now has to be concerned about that much more in running a business that you know e-commerce businesses are 24/7, running really fast, the rules are constantly changing, you just didn't need this additional in my opinion large overhead of cost of doing business to really impact them. Joe: Right at the end of the day hopefully it would be great for states and the roads and highways and schools in the state in which you live. But for now, it's a major complexity that you as an e-commerce owner have to deal with. Scott, as always you're fantastic. These details are great … for me personally they're overwhelming many times but that's the point of the show notes and simplifying it and really … perhaps hiring that SALT expert to do the vast majority of this work for those listening that choose to go that route. Scott before we depart any last thoughts or recommendations for people that are listening; both buyers and sellers? Scott: Yeah. Just take a deep breath plan out time once a month or a quarter to focus in on this. Add up your numbers, decide your risk tolerance, and then move on. And then don't worry about it for that month or quarter. And then when you decide to do it, think about what it is you're doing and make a decision and move on. You don't have to stop all your business or sales or everything else. Just take a practical approach. This is one more thing that has to be on your regular process; like checking your insurance or other things that you're validating. And just keep moving; keep selling and growing. Balance the risk and then just move on. Joe: That's great thanks, Scott. As always appreciate it look forward to seeing you at the next event and hopefully lots of folks will reach out to you here. And be at peace of mind here with what you've shared. Thanks so much, Scott. Scott: Well, thank you. Links: Catching Clouds eCommerce Accounting Patti's Q&A about Sales Taxes and the new SCOTUS Ruling Catching Clouds Academy Fox News Supreme Court sales tax ruling: The winners and losers MSNBC Supreme Court Rules States Can Require Shoppers To Pay Online Sales Tax Internet Sales Tax | What Online Retailers Need to Know Sales Tax Nexus Threshold Calculator Sales Tax Permitting with SalesPermitted.com Get your FBA stock locations summarized and delivered to your inbox. Sales and Local Tax (SALT) Experts – Outsource Everything Cathie Stanton and Lauren Stinson, Cherry Bekaert ► http://cherrybekaertsalestax.com/ Michael Fleming ► www.salestaxandmore.com ► https://www.salestaxandmore.com/chart… Diane Yetter ► www.salestaxinstitute.com ► https://www.salestaxinstitute.com/res… SaaS Sales Tax Apps: TaxJar ► https://www.taxjar.com/ Taxify ► https://taxify.co/ Avalara ► https://www.avalara.com/us/en/index.html

Episode 209: Page to Stage: What can you learn in 48 hours? What can you learn when you put up a show from page to stage in 48 hours? Teacher and playwright Scott Giessler shares his experience. If you want your students to have an immediate lesson in problem solving this is the conversation for you! Show Notes Life, Off Book Finishing Sentences Oddball Episode Transcript Welcome to the Drama Teacher Podcast brought to you by Theatrefolk – the Drama Teacher Resource Company. I'm Lindsay Price. Hello! I hope you're well. Thanks for listening! Here is the question of the episode: “What can you learn when you put up a play in 48 hours?” I'm just going to let that resonate with you. Play to stage in just two days – not two months, not a year – two days! So, this 48-hour play project, that's what our guest did today with his students, and he's going to share his experience with this great project, this great problem-solving project. Aha! Everything is a learning experience. Now, I have to warn you, the sound may be a little wonky. When we recorded it, there was bad weather on my end, bad weather on his end, so that's what I'm blaming it on – weather! But what Scott has to say is so lovely. Oh, I really love this conversation, so hang in there. I'm going to hang in there. You do it, too. All right? Let's do it. LINDSAY: Hello everybody! I am here, talking to Scott Giessler. Hello, Scott! SCOTT: Hello! LINDSAY: So, tell everybody where in the world you are. SCOTT: I am calling from very cold, Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. LINDSAY: I hear you. I feel you. I'm hoping that, when this goes up, maybe it won't be so cold, but you never know! SCOTT: Yeah. LINDSAY: Scott, you are a teacher and playwright, so let's just start with the teacher first. How long have you been a drama teacher? SCOTT: I've been doing it for 17 years, and it's been a pretty steady job at that. I started in 2001 and I've been just working at it ever since. LINDSAY: What made you want to get into the teaching aspect? SCOTT: Okay. Well, I had another life before this where I was working in the commercial sector because I went to college and I wanted to be a screenwriter. After I left college, I went through several different jobs in the commercial sector, just in the entertainment biz – both in Boston. Then, I moved to LA and did a little work there. There was just a point where I started to realize that there was kind of that big, empty hole in my life of, you know, these jobs are interesting on some level, but I couldn't care any less about them. And then, it all came to a head when I'd gotten laid off at a job and I just couldn't imagine applying for any other jobs that were available. My wife and I sat down and sort of talked about it. We developed a plan to move back east to New Hampshire where I'd spent a lot of my summers. When I got here, as it turned out, the local high school was looking for a theatre teacher. So, things really kind of magically came together for me, all in the summer of 2001, and they hired me on a wing and a prayer because I had no credentials at the time. Eventually, you know, it started off as just sort of a stipend job when I was a study hall monitor, and I think I taught a theatre class in middle school while I was getting my certification. Eventually, they hired me on full-time at the high school. LINDSAY: And now, it's 17 years later. SCOTT: It is! LINDSAY: Okay. SCOTT: Unbelievably, yeah! LINDSAY: It's very frightening how time just sort of magically melts, isn't it? SCOTT: Lindsay, you ain't kidding. LINDSAY: And, the older I get, the faster it melts. SCOTT: Yes. LINDSAY: So, that's how you got into it. 17 years later, why is this the job that stuck? Why are you still in it all this time later? SCOTT: Man, well, you know, I'll tell you, I'm not really certain. I will tell you that,

Volkswagen Innovation Volkswagen is delivering innovation in many ways that you need to factor into your next car-buying equation. From new technology and designs to new vehicles and (an industry-leading) new warranty – the carmaker is definitely on the move. We sat down with Scott Reed from Ontario Volkswagen, in Ontario, California, to talk VW innovation. ⇒SoCal's VW HQ = Ontario Volkswagen Hear the impressive details about what's available right now and what's being rolled out very soon. And learn about an exclusive (and free!) ride and drive event you can attend. VW Factory is bringing out brand new vehicles you won't be able to buy – but you will have the opportunity to drive them on April 24th! All that and more in this iDriveSoCal Podcast.   ***Transcript*** Recorded March 29, 2018 Volkswagen Technology & Innovation Scott: What makes most of this stuff so easy for a new owner of a Volkswagen to be immediately comfortable in the new car that they just purchased is the fact that they already know how their phone operates. They know how to pull the navigation up on their telephone. And now that can so seamlessly be transferred up to the display on the vehicle. I think the bigger story with a lot of our cars is the design, the design itself, not necessarily technology. You're getting a lot of bang for your buck with Volkswagen these days and especially now with the 6-year, 72,000 mile you know People's First warranty. That's industry-leading. Tom: Welcome to iDriveSoCal, the podcast all about mobility from the automotive capital of the United States--Southern California. I'm Tom Smith and today I'm out at Ontario Volkswagen in the Los Angeles suburb of Ontario, California. Ontario Volkswagen is just off the 15. And joining me is the sales manager of Ontario Volkswagen, Mr. Scott Reed. Thank you so much for joining us and thank you for being our newest automotive retail partner. Scott: Not a problem. I thank you guys for being here. We're excited. Southern California Volkswagen History Tom: We're excited to start bringing the news of Volkswagen to drivers throughout Southern California. So I always like to start off with everyone's path to the automotive business is different. How did you get into the business yourself? Scott: For me, it's a family affair. I was born and raised in the car business for the most part. My dad goes way back in the Southern California automotive retail side of things. So I kind of grew up in showrooms and sales managers' offices and things like that. And then shortly after high school, I decided I wanted to start selling cars. So dove into it. Dad wouldn't give me a job working for him because I didn't know how to sell cars. So I went over to a Ford dealership close to my home and showed up as a 19-year-old kid and said, "I'd like to learn how to sell cars." They gave me a job and I learned the ropes. Did that for about a year and came back to Dad.. Tom: And growing up, was there ever a time that you were like, "Maybe I want to be a doctor. Maybe I want to be a lawyer," or anything but? Were you always like,"Dad does this. I love that. I want to do it too."? Scott: Yeah, not particularly, no. I liked to play baseball as a kid. You know when you grow up and realize that you're probably not going to be a professional baseball player. For me, luckily, it was earlier than most kids. I realized that at about 13 or 14. So I kind of gave that up and played water polo and swam all through high school and my first year in college. Tom: Nice. Family --> Cars Scott: But yeah, I realized very shortly I was ready to get to work and start making some money for myself. So I went to community college and as soon as I started selling cars, I really enjoyed it, enjoyed the people that I worked with, enjoy speaking with people and customers on a daily basis. And I was kind of just...it felt like a natural progression to me. And still,

Ban the Banhammer - Episode 28 Scott and Randy discuss the (mis)use of the various forms of the "ban" tool, and provide alternative techniques. Show Links It's Almost Impossible to Rehabilitate an Online Troll, Steve Brock Director of Moderation Services at Mzinga Building Web Reputation Systems SMC Epsiode 14: LinkedIn's Scarlet Letter #CMAD presents: Modern Moderation: Moving Beyond Trolls and Ban Hammers (stream)Streamed live on Jan 26, 2016 - Join us to talk tech with Justin Isaf, to ramble about reputations with F. Randall Farmer, to ponder proactive tasks with Sarah Hawk, to advocate for automation with Darren Gough, and to learn the legal aspects with Aurelia Butler-Ball. Transcript Randy: Ban the ban hammer. Scott: What? Randy: Ban the ban hammer. Scott: Wait a minute. We gotta talk about this. Randy: Welcome to the Social Media Clarity Podcast. 15 minutes of concentrated analysis and advice about social media and platform and product design. Scott: So in this episode we're going to focus on what seems to be the moderator's tool of choice, the ban. Randy: And how it is, most often in our experience, the wrong tool. Scott: Yeah, it could be the right tool in the right circumstance, but it's mostly misapplied. Randy: Yeah, if you're reaching for it first, it's probably the wrong tool, but we'll talk about that in detail. We could set this up by talking a little bit about our experiences encountering other people talking about the ban hammer. Scott, you find a wonderful reference post. Do you want to tell us a little bit about it? Scott: Sure. So, this is just an example. Steve Brock who's the director of moderation services at Mzinga that talked about the difficulties of rehabilitating online trolls. But in it he's talking a lot about bans. How to identify trolls, how to ban, what different bans are, and how to apply them, and whether or not they are effective. So this is a good example of how a lot people tend to think about dealing with misbehavior in online communities. Randy: Although, we're going to be picking a little bit on Mr. Brock, by no means is he unique in most of these positions. In fact, were going to talk a little bit about how each point has its own challenges and each point carries forward the error of the previous one, and it leads you to a place this is both undesirable and expensive. Scott: So what are the steps, Randy Randy: The steps are first you identify the troll, figure out who it is you're wanting to take action on. Someone who is doing harm to your site. You perma-ban them. We'll explain the different bans in a few minutes. The idea is to kick them off the site and make their identity no longer accessible. He also suggests removing all content, doesn't mean they're all bad. And if they return with a new account, immediately ban that as soon as you detect that. You could try hell-banning. This is number five, he says, "But they'll find out." He's actually right about that, and then he says, "Well, the abuse will get worse once they figure out you're pulling tricks on them." It turns out, number six, you have to assume that they can't be reformed, so you've got to stay vigilant. You have to stay on it all the time. And for his final step he says, "Therefore, you need 24 7 coverage and so you need to hire enough moderators to cover your site." It's our contention that this entire list that leads to outsourced 24 7 coverage of your site and a constant battle with removing people follows from errors starting at the very beginning of the list. Scott: But before we get into that, let's actually define a few of the terms that have come up already. Perma-ban, it's a ban that is based on the identity, banning the account. There's no fixed time out. That's it. You ban them, they're gone. You can ban based on their account. You can hit their IP address. You could try to ban them based on credit card so they can't start a new account if you're a paid account. Also, there's kind of this nuclear option of removing all of the content. Regardless of whether some of the content was actually good, you ban the person, therefore, their content must also go too. So, that's the perma-ban. Randy: I'll talk a little bit about hell-banning, which I mentioned earlier. This is also known as shadow-banning, stealth-banning, or ghost-banning. It's strange. It's hiding content from the community except for the creator of the content, the person you're hell-banning. The idea is, you'll see that you posted, but no one else will see the post. Meant to be discouraging, or meant to just let you burn out your energy. It goes all the way back to The Well. The Well had a method for doing this where people would actually selectively stop reading content from other people, and this led to destroyed threads that no one what was going on in the thread because you could never tell who was actually reading what. I want to quickly, even though I know were just making a list, I want to go ahead and shoot hell-banning in the head- Scott: Yup. Randy: So we don't have to talk about it much more. Because this involves a bunch of complicated technology, which is trivially defeated by anyone who is malicious and confusing to those who aren't. Scott: Yup. Randy: The community doesn't know what they're missing, and when someone knows someone and talks about it and they find out they're hell-banned, you end up with the community talking about hell-banning, not whatever your content is. Scott: Right. Randy: Scott and I are both unified. There's a lot of moderators like us. Do not waste any time on technology to hide from your user that their behavior is unacceptable. Scott: It wastes a lot of time because it leads inevitably to two results. Steve Brock calls it out perfectly. They'll find out, and then they just abuse even more and even harder because they feel like they've been cheated in some way. And then the other one is anyone else who isn't hell-banned or ghost-banned gets paranoid about whether or not they've been ghost-banned. If any technical glitch occurs, then they suddenly think that some action has been taken against them. This is not healthy for your community. You'll spend time assuaging people of their paranoia then you will building the actual community and trust. It destroys trust. So those are two types of bans. There's another type of ban, if you will, and it's the time out. It's a temporary suspension from being able to contribute in some particular way. This breaks up into a couple of ways. You can limit somebody's permission where they can't post, or they can't reply. You can even limit their ability to log into the system, but the idea is that it's a time out, so that you can communicate with the person. Or you can degrade their service. Randy, you have some good stories about degrading service. Randy: There are often reputations systems for detecting egregious behaviors, and I'm talking about is specifically, the spamming behavior. I worked for Yahoo for five years. When they would detect either a mail spamming bot, or a bot hitting the search engine to get results to use to make SCO, what they didn't do is ban IP addresses. What they did instead was build a reputation database and degraded service. What that meant was, when a request would come in from a highly suspected spamming robot, they would serve it, they would just serve it very slowly. This is kind of a low level taxing. What happens if you ban them all, we've seen one of the few days yahoo was actually down, they made a change to their interface for search, and all the spamming robots in the world that were hitting yahoo started failing instantly. They were getting instant errors back from the web servers. This was creating a denial of service attack, as a result of all the robots who were never used to failing now retrying instantaneously. So hundreds of thousands of robots were now sending hundreds of requests per minute. Scott: Yeah, that's bad. Randy: They put back the interface because there was this kind of detante in degraded service design. Scott: So that's not the same thing as ghost-banning, that's just degrading somebody's service because it's targeted. Spammers want to be able to spread their spam as quickly as possible and move on to the next target, and if you slow them down, you're actually costing them money. Randy: Spamming behavior is different from whatever trolling behavior is. The reason we say ban the banhammer is because cases like we've outlined here are missing the key point. The category error is the difference between troll and trolling. The difference between being a spammer, a person, and spamming. We really have a problem with online social contributions. It isn't people, it's behaviors. The only thing you can really evaluate is the content. It's trolling that's the problem, not trolls. Scott: Right. It's really important, and we've talked about his in the past, and I talk about this when I give workshops, you focus on the behavior, not on the person. In Sociology, there's a thing called the fundamental attribution error, and that's basically when you take a behavior and you ascribe that as a personality trait to a person. So if somebody does something that is a violation of your terms of service, they post something that is borderline racist, they are not necessarily a racist. They are not necessarily a troll. They've done something and then that's a specific behavior that can be addressed as opposed to simply assuming this is who they are and they'll never ever be different. You do wind up in the exactly that idea of trolls can never be reformed if you make certain assumptions that their behavior is tied intrinsically to their personality. We just know that's not true. Randy: We even know that ID's aren't people. Back to the post, the person comes back over and over with multiple ID's. So an ID banning solution is no solution at all. But sometimes, it's the reverse. Sometimes there's no person. When we start talking about spamming, the spammer, the mythical person who is doing the spamming is not reachable. He's got a hundred thousand robots doing stuff. You don't even know where he is. You don't know how to reach him. You can't back through those robots. It's the robots that are exhibiting the behavior. So you have to deal with the robots in that case. In the case of trolling, you have to deal with the trolling posts. What are the things that are causing a problem. What are against your terms of service or your community guidelines. Scott: We're saying ban the banhammer. When you're reaching that as your first tool, it's probably the wrong thing to reach for, but there are times when we do need to use this kind of a tool in specific instances, and spamming is one of those instances. Scott: Let's define it a little bit better, because a lot of people will call all kinds of things spamming, including just an off color comment. Scott: They have zero or even negative quality to your community. They have absolutely no contribution at all. They're not even part of the discussion. There's a lot of them, or they're coming really fast. There's not a human behind those particular posts. At that particular point, what we're doing is we're throttling the input. Instead of treating it as a community problem. We're treating it as a bandwidth problem. Randy: And bans are not my first tool for dealing with that. My first tool for dealing with that is content hiding, described at the end of my book, "Building Web Reputation Systems." In the final chapter we talk about how we enabled users on Yahoo Answers to mark items, such as spam, and we started to trust them. We came up with a method by which we could trust them and we could literally, within 30 seconds of when a piece of spam would come up, it would be hidden from the network. What hidden means is kind of the opposite of hell-banning. That item disappears for everybody, and a notice is sent back to the author, and this deals with that problem, which is if the author is just a robot, the author can't mitigate it. You won't be sending back a note saying, "No, no, no, this is my real content. I got ganged up on," or something. This is why, when we turned on this mechanism on Yahoo Answers, spamming vanished, literally within two weeks. The spammers picked up and they left and they went somewhere else. Scott: And that's because you were using the crowd to surgically remove the bad content. Randy: Yes. So the point there is there was no banning of the user account. It wasn't necessary. The user account became inactive because it no longer could successfully post. Scott: You didn't have to ban anybody. They abandoned their effort. Randy: That same process is used on accounts that are more tightly tied to people, the people who care about their postings. If they have them reported using the same mechanism, not for spamming, but for tastelessness, or some breaking of the rules. The same mechanism will trigger. The content could be hidden and they would receive a note explaining to them what the community gave them as feedback about what needs to change, and they could change it. They weren't banned. The problem with the ban is when it does tie to a person, it's an ending. It's an invitation either to an escalation or an ending. It's the last thing you should ever do if you do it. If the first thing you do is ban someone, they can't correct the behavior, and you come off very poorly. Scott: It's a slap in the face. Randy: The customer lost forever. Scott: At Schwab Learning, I had the ability to ban people, but we never did. We dealt with spam by an escalation process. It would evaluate what came in, and I would either pull the content, or I would hold the content, but I would always contact the person. I had different levels of contact. I had the, "Oh, you made a mistake. What you wrote looks like spam. I'd love to hear more about you." And so that's not an ending. I was opening up a bigger beginning. "Tell me more. Please participate more, and prove to me that this isn't just spam, but it looks like spam, so I'm worried about it." Then, there was the self-promoters. There was this gray area about solicitation in that particular community. So we'd have some people who were very well meaning, and would make their own products, and would want to promote them to other parents, and I would say, "Hey, you know, I'm really sorry but self promotion is not okay, but if you want to talk about other things, and you want to promote this on your profile, when you talk about other things on our community, people will see your profile, and then they'll see what you're trying to advertise. We're giving you that space to be able to do that. Then there was, "That's it. You're a spammer. I've pulled your content. You violated my terms of service. Please don't come back. I've canceled things." That always gave a chance for somebody to give me a response back. We didn't have a huge amount of spam, but invariably if it was that bad, nobody responded. But I would usually get some kind of response from the other messages from anything from, "Oops, I'm sorry," to "How dare you." We took it from there. But that was a discussion. Randy: Yeah. So what you want is beginnings, right? You want dialogues, as much as you can afford them. If you're going to pay people to moderate, they should be having conversations, not just destroying them. Scott: Ideally. Unfortunately, a lot of moderation services aren't really set up that way. They're set up to remove content based on terms of service. It's difficult to find moderation services that you can spend the money, to take the time, to help actually foster communities. It's a shame. Randy: It's mostly a scaling problem. If you've got user generated content in great quantity, as I mentioned earlier, if you're going to invest in tools, don't invest in hell-banning. Invest instead in customer feedback so that the users can tell each other how to behave and reinforce that behavior. That's one way to increase the leverage you get out of your paid moderation people so they can spend time with specific cases that need their attention. If the community is keeping the new kid who shows up and doesn't know how to behave from posting a crappy question or answer on Stack Overflow, then you don't need paid moderators. In fact, Stack Overflow is one of the largest, richest communities with the highest quality content of it's type in the world and it has very, very few top level moderators. All moderation tasks are actually done by any contributor who cares enough to generate enough content of enough quality on the site. If you ever want to see what a site looks like when it doesn't live with a banhammer as it's first line of defense, Stack Overflow or any of the Stack Exchange servers are really interesting to show how they incrementally give authority to you as you succeed in contributing to the community. Scott: At Schwab Learning, there was a point where I started to teach the other community members exactly what I was doing. I decided there was a point where I said, "I'm just going to be transparent about this, and start doing this in the public." Especially when it was the nice stuff, and started showing people how I approached potential spammers by addressing their behavior and saying, "Hey, maybe this is a mistake. We'd like to hear more from you." The community picked up on it. I was no longer the first line of defense against spam. The community became the first line of defense. What they would do is they would engage with anyone who looked like it was spam, and they would try to talk to them and draw them out, and if they weren't able to draw them out, then they would bump it up to me and say, "I think this person's actually trying to spam us." Randy: I do consulting on social media product design, and discussions about moderation are a critical part of what I consult on. So new clients often give me administrator access, or moderator access to their communities so that I can see what's going on behind the scenes. One of my clients, I was looking around for moderation information and I discovered a profile for a user, and they had a field on the profile that the administrator's could see that said how often they'd been banned. This person had been banned six times. This is the example of the banhammer going insane. These are perma-bans. You prevent them from participating and then apparently, they could appeal, and then you could put them back on, and then they ban them again for similar behaviors and so on. The banhammer is the wrong tool. In fact, every offense was the same, and it was a minor offense. Technology changes to the software to discourage that behavior that would have been more effective in changing the behavior. Scott: So we're saying ban the banhammer and we've been giving hints at things to do instead, ways to think about behavior online that won't cause you to think, "I've got to use that banhammer right away." And so, let's get real detailed and talk about exactly what you can do instead of using the banhammer. Randy: Number one, start by defining the behaviors you want to encourage and the ones you're trying to discourage from your contributors in your community. This should be baseline for choosing the actions you take going forward. Scott: These behaviors are not people. Yes, you have your community guidelines, but understand that if somebody violates a community guideline you don't punish the person. You give them an opportunity to correct the behavior. Randy: Amen. So based on your available resources, you can either develop tools to facilitate the community marking the content, to give feedback privately to the contributor, so that they know they should make some changes. Scott: Giving them a chance means that you're focusing on the content that they're producing. If a piece of content is clearly violating your terms of service, or a piece of content is clearly being generated by a bot, or it's clearly a spam going off to somewhere else, or it's illegal, then yes, you're going to want to remove the content. Randy: If you're at scale, you need the tools you need to find them. Sometimes your community is small, and a personal conversation is the right choice. Other times, your community is huge and you have to have the tools to scale or you will never solve the problem. People have tried to buy the solution with human moderation, and they've all given up. At scale, you need help. You need tools, and if you're lucky you can get tools to enable your community to do a lot of the basic work. Scott: Even if you're not at scale, don't overlook the ability to enlist your community in helping you identify and correct behaviors of people who are coming into your community. We're talking about avoiding the banhammer, which is a tool, and we're talking about all the other ways you can reduce damaging behavior in your community, and these are skills that anybody can employ including your community. So you can teach your community the same things. Teach them to engage and try to sus out the difference between is this person actually trying to harm you, or is this person just making a misstep about their behavior? If they can't handle it, then you become the escalation process. You then support your community as a community and you can get a small amount of scale even with a small community out of this. Randy: Very true. And you might be able to get incremental tool development to support the community. So for example, if you don't have a community platform, if you don't have report abuse as a button on content, assuming you have that much incremental tool development maybe significantly cheaper if all you want to do is count the number of people who mark this thing as violating the terms of service. Stack Overflow has a tool I'm not a big fan of but it's functional. You can spend one of your points to actually give someone a negative score. I don't like the math of this, but if enough negatives go in fast enough, they immediately read it as a hidden content line. So they get community feedback immediately, and then there's an escalation process that can occur to appeal. They recently changed this to improve the initial response, negative feedback pattern by changing the name from deleted to on hold, which invites a conversation and to have a community practice of, is it you leaving negative, one, or anything other than the most obvious spamming behavior, you should leave a comment about how to improve the post. It's kind of a social system that they've evolved to go along with their mechanical systems. A mechanical system doesn't have to be complicated, but it provides a mechanism for social evolution. Scott: Reframing the idea of flagging away from this is bad, it shouldn't be here, to this is problematic, and we want to fix it. Randy: I consulted on discourse.org's moderation mechanism and it does just that. When several people mark a thing as a problem, and the problem is not illegal or spam, but it's a content problem, the content still gets hidden, but the message that goes the user invites them to edit it, to fix based on the feedback from the community, and if they do edit it, it will be able to be re-posted immediately with no flags on it. So we say, "You can fix it. You can go back to square zero with this post, immediately. Give it a try." So, we presume that if it's not the most egregious kind of errors that the content hiding will be temporary until the problem is resolved. This is how people can learn the behavior that is expected of them in the community. Scott: I would like to see a lot more systems offering something like that. All too often, it is a post and punish model. You post it and either it goes away, and you're punished somehow, or you succeeded and it stays. This is what missing from a lot of these is that we're just not giving enough people chances and giving them the agency and the respect to actually change their behavior. Randy: This leads to the kind of thinking that was in the article when it said that, "Trolls are irredeemable." What do you think it's going to take if you never accepted their bad stuff from the beginning, and the community said if you want to post here, please don't be a dick, and there's a dick button, they will learn to conform, or they will leave. You don't have to kick them out because their content never appears. And by the way, it turns out to be the same pattern. So the pattern is, "Do I post things that are to my only benefit and to the harm of others, or do I contribute to this community?" The definitions of those vary from place to place, and it is the community who can help you enforce them as well as your moderators. So your moderators can focus on the real exceptions. Randy: Ban the banhammer. Scott: Ban the banhammer. Randy: Alright, we should say goodbye though. Scott: Oh yes. We should say goodbsye. Thank you very much for listening. We hope that this has been some help. So, don't reach for the banhammer. Randy: Yes, people are not nails. Catch you later. Randy: For links, transcripts, and more episodes, go to socialmediaclarity.net. Thanks for listening!

A.O. Scott: The fantasy that I would use to comfort myself [as a child, about death] was…that I’d become other people. I would still be me, but I would inhabit different bodies…and eventually I would just get to see what it was like to be everybody. Jason Gots: That’s a critic’s fantasy. A.O. Scott: Yeah! And you discover shortcuts to do that...through works of art. A.O. Scott's new book Better Living Through Criticism playfully and artfully examines what critics do and why. On this week's episode, he and host Jason Gots dig into these ideas, then react to surprise clips from Jesse Ventura, MIT professor Sherry Turkle, and philosopher John Grey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Quantifying Empathy - Episode 23 Twitter Hearts and Facebook Reactions TL;DR - You KNOW Marc, Randy, and Scott couldn't let Twitter messing with Favorites and Facebook Reactions go without some spirited discussion. Facebook is testing emoji reactions - this is the ‘dislike button' by Owen Williams @ TNW Hearts on Twitter on the Twitter Blog. RECLAIMING CONVERSATION : The Power of Talk in a Digital Age is Sherry Terkle's new book which influenced some of Randy's thinking. Kaliya Hamlin (@identitywoman) was mentioned during the episode. Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Social Media Clarity Podcast. Fifteen minutes of concentrated analysis and advice about social media in platform and product design. Randy: I'm Randy Farmer Scott: I'm Scott Moore. Marc: I'm Marc Smith. Randy: Really, Twitter, hearts? Scott: Really, Facebook? Reactions. Randy: Oh, my gosh, guys. We have a lot to talk about since the last time we've had a session. The big social guys have gone nuts for emoticons as a way to express yourself with a single click. Scott: We already had ways of expressing ourselves, they were just very generic. Now we're trying to be specific about it. Randy: Twitter changes from stars to hearts ... Scott: ... and Favorites to Likes. Randy: Yeah, and Favorites to Likes. [as if] they're exactly the same. If you think they're the same, people out there, just think what if they changed it back to a pile of crap. Is that the same as a heart, or a star? When I think of Twitter's problems, I don't think this is one of the ones that was very high on the list. Scott: No, but it's one of the ones that helps them get attention. It helps generate notifications. They practically said, 'we're not getting enough people using the Favorite, so now we're going to change it to something that more people will use.' That generates notifications, and that brings people back to the app. Randy: So, something that was meaningful, now means less. Marc: Is it the case that you are more likely to love something than like it? Randy: Well, that's not the test on the table in this case. It's Like versus Favorite. Marc: Yeah, but the like generates this heart, which suggests love, and it used to be a star. So, we're moving from star to heart. Admittedly, we're going from Favorite to Like, but is there really that much more like than favorite in the world? Scott: I think that the context was really different. From what I gauged from the reactions, other than people just hating change, was that Favorite de-noted a bookmark, and then expanded from there. A lot of people were using it as, "I'm saving this link for later", or, "I'm saving this Tweet for later". Some people were using it as, as you would for any signaling system, some people were using it as, "I like what you said". Now, they've actually tightened up the context while at the same time, loosen it, by saying, it's a like, which can mean anything. Anything that's positive. It's a positive mark on it. Randy: Right, and they retroactively marked every Favorite a Like. How many gillions of those they have, I don't know. At least one person I was talking to yesterday when I first saw this in practice, and was shocked by it, was Kaliya [Hamlin], otherwise known as Identity Woman, and she says, "Oh my God, now I've got to go fix all my Favorites on Twitter, because I don't love most of those things." Scott: Yeah. Some people were tweeting out "Liking your tweet is not consent." Randy: That's awesome. When we first thought of doing this episode, that hadn't even happened yet. That's just the freshest thing, that happened yesterday. Before that, Facebook was going to start testing the emoticon variants, or they call Reactions, as a response to the demand for dislikes. Marc: Right. So, we don't get Dislike, but we get Reactions. Randy: Well, and if you look at the reactions, the icons are ambiguous. I don't know if that's a feature or a bug. They do, in fact, include a dislike one, called Angry, it's angry face. It's like, what's this about? I think this is what we wanted to talk about, is we wanted to take some of these seemingly crazy, and capricious ideas, and talk about what it is maybe they're trying to do. We've been calling this, amongst the three of us - " Quantifying Empathy." So, we are going to have a conversation about that today. Marc: Right. It seems that what we're seeing is a feature that allows people to have a very light weight way to author some higher level of attention. I mean, after all, the system knows who "saw" each piece of content, and it even reports that for some pieces of content on some platforms. It'll say some number of people have been exposed to, or have seen the piece of content, but that's sort of the lowest level of content measurement. How many people might have seen it. Now with the Like, or the Love, or the Favorite, or the reaction, we're trying to get people to click, and just click, but to click from a field of choices to give us a higher resolution sense of, what did that click mean? The Like was too ambiguous. So, now we have angry, and happy, and sad. What are the other ones? Grumpy. Randy: You can make up as many as you want. Scott: Great. Randy: No, there's just a few. There's a Yay one supposedly. Scott: Yay. There's Wow, there's Sad, there's Angry ... Scott: ... and there's one other. Randy: So, when you use ambiguous faces, in the case of Facebook, it actually lacks all subtlety. Does it mean what the face expresses to you? Or, does it mean the words that are written underneath it? Scott: Yeah. Am I angry at you because of something you said? Or, am I angry about the same thing you're angry? Am I expressing actual empathy, or am I reacting against you? Marc: So, this is a great piece of ambiguity that the interface has yet to resolve. You pointed this out earlier, that people are splitting their reaction to what this story means _for the author_ of the story, and their reaction _to_ the story. So, there's this ambiguous reference that must be clarified, and these additional features do not clarify it. If anything they add more ambiguity. Randy: Interesting in Facebook, is you've always been able to use these exact same icons, you've always been able to add them to a message. You did it by posting a reply to post. You would then explain - so, you could put in a sad face, and say, "I feel sorry for you. If I can help you in any way, let me know." Right? So, you have this rich interaction that would be going on between humans. So, what do the humans actually want? What are good for humans? Probably saying more, not saying less. What really kind of drives it home for me, is when you *count* them. I say, when you click on an angry icon, there's object missing. There's a famous expression; "This sentence no verb". Right? Well, now with the reactions we have; "I'm angry with..." or "I'm mad at..." Marc: That's great. That's great. Randy: I'm sad at ... Right? In the same kind of construction, with that missing by pulling them out. Then you count them, and you say, "Lots of us are mad at..." We don't even know if those people are mixed and matched on what they're mad at. Scott: Right. A lot of people are mad, but we don't know if they're mad at, or mad with. Randy: Yeah, and I've got to tell you, that's going to drive people off. Just the mad icon alone is going to drive people away from posting, because they can't figure out, you know, if you have any social anxiety, any feedback, other than "we love you, it's okay" is going to be harmful. So, it surprised me that they said Dislike is too negative, we get that, and then put an angry face. In counting them they're already finding out in Spain and Ireland, where they're testing it, messages are coming back with a mixture of counted face types. Want to talk about no way to interpret data - What the heck does that mean? Facebook's excited, because they got a lot of clicks they probably wouldn't have got before. That they can use to route messages to your email box. Scott: Yeah, so the cynical side of me says - so one thing in developing, and choosing what they were going to choose as far as what icons to go for - they looked at all the one word, and sticker-only posts, and they just kind of aggregated all that together, and said, okay, these are the things that people most likely say in those replies, when they're posting an emoticon or sticker or something like that. So, they're just making it easier for them now to count and quantify that for other purposes. Either to send notifications, or more likely a lot of the brand pages, the blogs, and other folks out there who are into Facebook marketing, are saying this could be useful, because now you can get more detailed information about what your brand reaction is. So, it's just another thing that someone's going to measure in order to sub-divide targeted marketing. Randy: Yeah, but that ends up, it's true, and diluting. We all recall the experiments people have been doing just with Like and Share, if you think X: Like this thing. If you think Y: Share this thing. Right, because they're trying to manipulate these various counters. So, it occurred to me, they could have just put in a polling mechanism. So ... Scott: Twitter did put in a polling mechanism recently. Randy: Good. Scott: Yeah, Facebook used to have polls. A long, long time ago, Facebook used to have polls, and they took them out. Marc: So, this is an interesting point. If we're going to be critical of the reaction system, we ought to suggest an alternative: One alternative is to allow the poster to list the reactions that they are interested in having people choose from. So, a little bit of a hybrid between a poll, and these emotion icons. Maybe you could react to me with sympathy, empathy, or cash, or other. Scott: Well, you could even take the system that they have now, and say, which one of these would you like to focus on, or how many of these would you like people to, you know, is this a 'Wow - Yay' type of post? Do you want Wows and Yays, and you don't want Sads on your post, because that's not what you're talking about? They actually have something built in, this is really funny, in Facebook, they have the option for being able to say, "I'm feeling blessed." Or happy, or sad, or angry, and they have this list of about 25 of these things, and why can't I +1 somebody who is feeling a certain way already? Because now the context is, "I'm with you on this. " Marc: So, what's the ultimate goal here? We want users to click more, and ... Randy: ...let's be clear: Advertisers want users to click more. Marc: Right, right. I meant to say, what is the system designers ultimate goal here. They want users to click more. As system users though, as people who use these features, what is our goal? Randy: I got to say, I'm with Sherry Turkle on this, that anything that reduces human conversation, is probably truly reducing empathy. If people out there are interested, I'll put a link in the show notes to show Turkle's latest book and work. It talks specifically about the fact that we've been reducing ourselves to machine interactions with lighter and lighter interfaces to the point where we don't even know what empathy is anymore. We don't have to respond with any empathetic statement when all we have to do is click a sad icon. Scott: Yeah, and I really want to read Sherry's book, but I'm starting to think that there's a slight difference in that, and a little bit more optimistic in that, yes, using our smart phones, and what not, are pulling us away from face to face conversations, and I think we're having to figure out now that we're breaking that, what can we do, now that we're turning our faces towards devices, what can we do to actually build back in? What are the things that we're missing, and how do we rebuild that in our systems? How do we get folks to build up more empathy with people, and can we do that with systems? I think it's something that is important. These systems are light weight, and they're somewhat useful, but they lack deeper meaning, which is exactly what you're saying. Randy: Well, don't take the simple path. Don't just count clicks on dots, right? Design interfaces that help people solve problems. Scott: Right. Randy: People do this. Marc: What problem do people feel like they have? I mean, at the moment Facebook trained us to want to generate certain kind of responses. We want Likes, we want Comments, we want some kind of currency that proves we consumed other people's attention, and that they've granted us some kind of approval. Is that they only purpose that we could use this platform for, and is that the only purpose these reaction features are designed to support? Scott: Well, obviously not. I mean, that's not the only purpose. Facebook's purposes might be at cross purposes with those of us who want to actually build communities online, and help people develop deeper, meaningful relationships. That's why I think that these are light weight, but not very meaningful. They might suffice in those ambiguous situations, especially in a network like Facebook, where very often you are not close friends with the people who are on your Facebook network. So, sometimes commenting deeper on something could become awkward, because you just aren't that well connected, but you want to acknowledge. So, I think there's room for the social grooming that a Like, or any of these kind of reactions would provide, but I think that we should be thinking about, as designers, and as people who are fostering online communities, how to help people get to that deeper conversational engagement, that Sherry Turkle is point out, even though we are still on our devices. Randy: Right. So, I think I can summarize my thought on this, clearly, which is, any interface that allows a single click for me to add angry, without and object on it, decreases my chances of influencing the person, or the event, I was angry with, because there is no context provided. So, the one way we can improve using these tools is if I choose angry, I do actually have to say at what. Scott: Well, and as a designer, we could even prompt people that if you choose ... Randy: Exactly. Scott: ... that if you choose something it would give them the ability to provide the context, rather than the context-less emoticon. Randy: Yeah, so, agree and disagree are missing. We know from helpful/unhelpful movie reviews that two of those icons are going to be re purposed for that, because they already are. If they had helpful and unhelpful we know those would be mapped to agree and disagree, for controversial objects. So, is angry going to be the new disagree? Scott: Yeah, I think so. Marc: So, is this all because typing a few characters, a comment, a short message, is too burdensome, and is it too burdensome because of the time, or because we're doing it with one thumb, standing in a checkout line, and that's why we really need, at most, the two to three to four tap method for replying to complex situations. Rather than the forty- or fifty-tap necessary to actually type out a five- or eight-word sentence. Scott: I think that's a good point. I don't think that these systems are being designed with user convenience in mind to necessarily help us to communicate with each other better. I think that they are there to help us generate notifications, so that we come back to the application faster and more often. Randy: A single click on a face has striped almost all semantic meaning from the event. Scott: I think you have a point that this particular system is being set up, and this particular way, because mobile devices are being used for the quick in and out, you know, quick check. Users are using it that way, and Facebook and Twitter are adapting to that particular use in order to capture that behavior. That's what it is, it's a behavior capture system. They're getting somebody's attention, they want to get somebody to "engage," even though I don't think that's engagement. Then they're going to pull all that data together, and they're going to use it as either targeted advertising, or use it to generate more notifications to bring the original posters back to the application, where you deliver more ads. Marc: So, I would say it as this: Why not to like the new Like - I'm angry, you might be happy, but we might not be able to tell. Randy: That sounds like a great summary to me. Scott: Yeah. Yeah. Randy: Thanks everyone. I hope you're enjoying the new format. Go ahead and say thanks, guys. Marc: Right. Scott? Randy: Say thanks. Scott: Oh, that. I'm not. I'm like, now I'm lost. Marc: You're not thankful? I'm thankful. Thank you everyone. Scott: I'm Angry. Thanks. Randy: Okay, that's great. That's an ending. I'll take it. Scott: I don't know why. I'm just Angry. Marc: Well, I'm going to be Grumpy in a minute, so ... Randy: I might even keep a little of this. Marc: Bye-bye. Randy: All right. Outro: For links, transcripts, and more episodes, go to Social Media Clarity dot net. Thanks for listening.

In this episode of Bloody Angola: A Podcast by Woody Overton and Jim Chapman we bring you an amazing interview by our friends at The P2P Podcast (Penitentiaries to Penthouses)At 16, Kiana was convicted & sentenced to 2 life sentences without parole. While physically he was incarcerated, mentally he was FREE. Resilience is his name and after 17 years of living in the can God made a way for him to be in physical freedom.#formerlyincarcerated #prisonstories #redemption #secondchances #bloodyangolapodcast #woodyoverton #jimchapman #truecrime #realliferealcrimeBREAKING THE CHAINS  - FULL TRANSCRIPT - BLOODY ANGOLA PODCASTJim: Hey, everyone, and welcome to Bloody Angola. A podcast 142 years in the making. The Complete Story of America's Bloodiest Prison. And I am Jim Chapman. Woody Everton cannot join us today. He is on assignment. But we're bringing you something different today. We did a two-part series, if you haven't checked it out yet, it's called Second Chances. It features a former inmate at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. He was actually the first juvenile released when the Supreme Court passed a law making it possible for juveniles who were sentenced to life in prison without parole to get a parole hearing after 25 years. If you haven't seen that episode yet, go check it out.This week, we have a very special episode. The guy we brought you the story of and who actually joined us for the two episodes of Second Chances, we met through our friends at Penitentiaries 2 Penthouses. It's a podcast known as P2P, and they interview formerly incarcerated people that are doing well as they acclimate back into society. When we did the Second Chances episodes, they were a big part of that, certainly a big part of making the introduction to the gentleman that came on the show. So, thank you so much to P2P.And they have an amazing podcast. So, we have decided that we're going to bring y'all one of their episodes and we're going to share it on our feed. We thought y'all would really enjoy it. We have some really, really big stuff about to pop off for Bloody Angola. I know that y'all are going to be real excited as we go through that process, but I think y'all will love this episode. It is with a gentleman by the name of Kiana Calloway who was in Angola for a very long time and has quite a story that you need to hear or that you will enjoy hearing. Without further ado, here's the P2P Podcast in their interview with Kiana Calloway. [P2P theme]Scott: Welcome, everybody. This is Scott with Penitentiaries 2 Penthouse Podcast. Shane: Yes, sir.Scott: I'm your host. To the left of me, we got Mr. Beatty.Beatty: Your best friend in real estate. Scott: To the right of me, we've got our guest, Mr. Kiana Calloway. Kiana: Swag out. What's happening? Scott: Special gentleman he is. And then, we got my partner over here to the left, Mr. Shane Johnson. Beatty: Big Shane.Shane: Yes, sir. 24 years successful now. Scott: There you go. We look forward to digging into today's message. Kiana, man has a powerful story. How I know Kiana is we work on a project together through the Justice and Accountability Center of Louisiana. Basically, that's nonprofit organization full of attorneys and policy people who march down to the state capitol every year.Kiana: Shoutout, JAC.Scott: JAC. And they do legislative work, so they propose bills, work with lobbyists, senators, representatives to pass criminal legal reform bills. The specific focus though is usually expungement legislation. For those of you who don't know what expungement legislation is, expungements are the things that guys like myself, Kiana, Mr. Shane over there need once we come home for opportunities. Whether it's employment, housing, life insurance, you name it, there's hundreds of things that we get denied for on a regular basis based on the fact that we made some mistakes in our lives and we've paid our time, we've paid our debt, and we're trying to get past that. So, the work that we're doing revolves around expungements. A, changing expungement law, but B, getting the knowledge and information out there because the average Joe that comes home from prison-Kiana: Don't even know about it.Scott: -don't know about expungements, don't know how to go about getting expungements. Furthermore--Shane: I am one.Scott: Yeah, exactly. And they're expensive as hell. You could easily rack up if you have multiple felonies, several thousand dollars just in paying the state, the district attorneys, and the clerks of court's office, not even including legal counsel. That's the work that the Justice and Accountability Center does. Me and Kiana are working on a project to get the expungement app through Justice and Accountability Center, the information there out. So, we're going to be traveling, presenting workshops, getting the information out there so that people can access expungements equitably.Kiana: Plug in, man, we're going to be in your areas very, very soon. Just being able to alleviate one of the collateral consequences that come after incarceration, I think that we're doing our part. And we'll be doing ourself a disservice, God, if we're not traveling, educating people about the work that we're putting in the state capitol. Keeping them informed that there's issues that you can get plugged into, but you just need to reach out. We can't do this in our silos. It's an honor to have run into a like-minded brother that's putting in work outside the bars because you are what you do, even when the camera is not on. [chuckles]Scott: Yeah, for sure. It's easy to look good on camera. It's harder to make it happen on the outside. But that's what I like to do. I'm just passionate about-- and just like you, passionate about making sure that people have opportunities, man, because I was given opportunities and I've had a lot of challenges, man, and I just want to see people be able to breeze through that process instead of getting caught in the hiccups.I do want to highlight a very successful human being today. As I said, I had the fortunate privilege of watching Kiana's documentary that's coming out real soon on a very, very national level. I told him today, and it's hard to get me to break down. And I told him, man-- [Shane laughs] Man, I watched it, dude, and they had some parts in it, I was just like [inhales deeply] and it'll really hit you. He's had a very, very challenged life, a lot of injustices, and I'm going to let him explain that. A lot of people see the part of the justice system that WAFB, whatever your local news channel post out there about people who commit crimes and their wrongs or whatever, but they don't talk about all those mugshots that they post where guys really didn't do what they were being accused of.I'm going to let Kiana take it from here, but if you don't mind, could you just kind of share a little bit about your upbringing and then what caused you or what led to the prison? And then we'll just kind of take it from thereKiana: Well, actually, the system led me to prison. Scott: Right. Kiana: We have to understand that the system was built to do exactly what it's doing. People say the system messed up. No, it's not messed up. It's doing exactly what it was scripted to do. We must always bring that energy back into the space. Just so happened that I have been resilient enough to really surpass the test that the system has caused upon my life. I've seen individuals in the same space, same situation, same cell, and six months later, they hung themselves because they can't handle the stresses or the traumatic expressions about being, one, either fomerly accused and convicted of a crime, or, two, just trying to figure out, like, "Man, is this my life? Is this what I'm supposed to be?" Not to get too deep into that, because my documentary, it basically shows resiliency. It shows the true test of time. Like, you can go through these hard spaces, but you have to be prepared to bounce back because everybody bounces back. Shane: Amen. Scott: What you're referring to is the school-to-prison pipeline? Kiana: Yes. Scott: Okay. Got you. Kiana: Everybody bounces back. Beatty: Explain the school-to-prison pipeline. Kiana: School-to-prison pipeline. Okay, I'm going to give it to you in layman terms. Beatty: Let's go. I am layman.[laughter] Scott: That sounds like a good movie title. [crosstalk] Beatty: I am he.Kiana: Okay, definitely. So, school-of-prison pipelines. I went to prison at 16 years old. If I was tested in the second or third grade and I read below a certain level, they built another cell for me. Just the way that it planned out, I ended up in that cell, that school-to-prison pipeline. If we understand the way that our America is functioning, three main attributes of human survival. Education, travel, and should I say-- I'll throw manufacturing and the building. Planes, the way planes first started, it crunk up, but now the evolution of planes is that it just takes off. They could probably put it on autopilot, ain't got nothing but to do the landing. And it's crazy, man. The car, it crunk up. Now, you pushed on. Why? Education is still the same. You sit in a single-file line. They teach you ABC, one, two, three and it never gives the whole individuality of the person. So, when we speak about school-to-prison pipeline, I walked through a metal detector when I was going to elementary school. If this is an educational institution, they should be focused on my education and not my protection or not my apprehension in so many different ways. We learn how to stand in a single-file line, walking to child hall, cafeteria. What did you do? You stood in a single-file line, and you walked to the child hall. I understand the level of control, but that's how institutionalized that we can be. People never have been to prison and are more institutionalized than someone that spent 50 years in the junk. Beatty: Concrete walls, fluorescent lighting. Kiana: Hey.Scott: Colors.Beatty: White, blue. Scott: Light blue. I guess to give that short synopsis of school-to-prison pipeline, at a young age, you experienced that-- we all do-- Kiana: It's a program. Scott: And then, which eventually led to? Kiana: Even since those days of single-file lines, straight line education, as today, we pump 72% of our state's budget into incarcerating someone instead of the education precinct. Only 13% or sometimes 7% of the budget goes to the adequate education of our youth. That shows the level of, should I say, support--Beatty: Focus.Kiana: Dependence, codependence, any word that we want to put into that space, because we must understand that it's systems that we're dealing with. These systems that we're dealing with has to be dismantled and it has to be dismantled from the inside. Scott just said that we have the privilege of working on the new task force, the Safe and Alternative Task Force, which is a governmental task force that was structured through last year's legislation, which gives us the opportunity to properly plan the effects of not only expungements, but the use of solitary confinement inside of our jails and prisons in the state of Louisiana.And sitting at these tables with the state attorney, with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Department of Corrections, I really start to understand that we are the experts in this field. Like, people are holding these positions and really don't know.Unison: Mm-hmm. Kiana: They really don't know the outlook of putting a face to incarceration. That's what we need to try to understand. Who are we incarcerating? How can we lead the nation in crime, but we have--Shane: The highest incarceration rate.Kiana: Yeah. Let me kind of bring this back. How can we be less in the nation in education, but highest in the nation in crime and incarceration? Scott: Going back to you being sentenced at a young age or going to jail or prison at a young age, can you share with us what happened and then jump into your experience? Kiana: I'm going to XYZ it because a lot of it is in the film.Scott: Yeah, don't spoil it.Kiana: Yeah, I don't want to do a spoiler alert, but, man, I look at my life as not a needle in the haystack. Yes, I was falsely apprehended, falsely accused, falsely convicted, sentenced to two lifes without the possibility of probation, parole, or suspension of sentence. Was said in the trial for my life to be deliberated on, like, "You either going to get life in prison, or we're going to send you to death row." Shane: Wow. Kiana: This is at the age of 16, just making 17.Scott: Swallow all that at the age of 16?Kiana: I had to swallow all of that, and now I have the opportunity to regurgitate that because now my pain is turning into passion. It's turning into my why. That's why I love waking up every morning. That's why I love opening my refrigerator. That's why I love playing with my daughter. Shoutout to my baby mama. Shoutout to my fiancé. I definitely got to say, what's happening T? I love you. A lot of these things that's taking place right now, I wouldn't do it without you on my side. Shane: Amen. Kiana: Yeah, definitely throw that in the space. The evolution of life sometimes, like even riding up here today, I've never been to Denham Springs a day in my life, but it felt like an epiphany. Getting off of this bridge, making this exit, I'm like, "Dang, they got a Cane's right here." [laughter] Kiana: I was tasting Cane's. It's basically trying to figure out, I am walking in the steps of my higher power, my divine energy. When I was laying in the cell, and I was like, "God, man, something got to happen." I woke up the next day, and I woke up the next day, and I woke up the next day. So, I'm looking at that right now, if we can kind of just think back to our prophetic literature that's in the books, and I'll say the Bible, Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth, that's the acronym that I placed on it. Inside of this book, they have stories of great men. I placed myself inside of these great men while I was in that cell looking at these cinderblock walls, I had a 55-inch TV, so I read the story of Paul. Paul was a gangster. Paul wrote probably 85% of the book. Scott: And he marked a whole lot of people. Kiana: Man, he was a gangster. Paul used to rob, Paul used to steal, Paul used to kill, Paul was taking lives. That's for me. Let me get that move around. [laughter] Shane: He was more definitely--[crosstalk] Kiana: Move around, let me get that. Let me get that. Paul was incarcerated over 75% of his existence.Shane: Yes. Scott: And wrote a good portion-- Shane: And he was a great man.Kiana: Paul was incarcerated 75% of his existence.Shane: He was a great man.Kiana: He wrote books that stand the test of time till today. Prophetic hymns, metaphorical narrative that any culture can take and put it into their own existence. Every line, every piece, every scripture, every sentence, every dot, every comma means something. That's what we need to pay attention to in life. Every comma means something. If I had to trade my chicken plate so I could get on the phone, see people don't understand that type of narrative though. People don't understand that type of narrative. You see what I'm saying? Beatty: Tell everybody-Scott: Tell the laymen.Beatty: -what that means. Kiana: I spent 18 months in one of the most dehumanizing places that ever could have been created for a human being, and that was Camp J. Shane: Angola, Louisiana. Kiana: Angola, Louisiana. The Farm. Yes. So cooler one, cell 11. They got cell 10. Cell 11 was the last cell. They had a guy named Money that slept on side of me for 10 months. Every morning, he woke up singing, [in a singing tone] "It's been a long, a long time coming, but I know a change gon' come." Scott: Is that Money from RCC? Kiana: No, not that Money. This is the old Money--Scott: [crosstalk] Kiana: Yeah, I know who you're talking about. Money name was Alfred Baker. When I went to Camp J, Money had all been in Camp J for like 14 years at this time. Shane: Wow. Kiana: He got caught up-- [crosstalk] in that same cell. In that same sale. That's why I fight for solitary confinement today. Scott: Talk a little but about that, because I did hear you'd mentioned about solitary confinement kind of messed you up, so make sure touch on that. But solitary confinement, man, you'll go crazy sitting in--[crosstalk] Kiana: I've seen it. Scott: How did it affect you? Shane: Hold on. Chicken for the phone.Scott: Oh, yeah. Kiana: Okay. Shane: Keep us on point right there.Beatty: No. Are we talking trades? What are we doing?Kiana: So here we go, we're talking trades. So, I was in Camp J. The man come down, shift change, 6:00 and 6:00. We know shift change. 06:00, man come down. "Who wants to use the phone?" Friday, what's on Friday? In Unison: Chicken. Kiana: Exactly. Who wants to use the phone? Everybody hands coming out the bar. "Okay. Let me get them plates. How many people are not getting the chicken plate?"Beatty: [laughs] Kiana: Listen, I didn't talk to my-- Beatty: This is the guard?Kiana: This is the guard.Scott: He's trying to eat. Kiana: He's getting chicken so he could swing it on the other side of the town. Shane: You have to make an executive decision. Kiana: They got Joe's around the corner. So, you know it's a whole situation here. You only get one phone call every 30 days in Camp J at this time. Scott: Really? Kiana: I haven't talked to mom then. This was in '98. My mom got diagnosed with breast cancer. You've seen the space, my mom got diagnosed with breast cancer. I didn't know for like two and a half years that she was even-- She comes to see me one time, and her head was bald. I didn't know what was going on. Scott: Wow. She didn't tell you then?Kiana: She still didn't tell me. She just broke down crying. I'm like, "Baby, don't worry about it. We got this. I'm going to be able to give you your roses while you're still here." Shoutout, mom, she's still home. Every day, yes, I give her roses while she's still here. Scott: [crosstalk] -strong woman.Shane: Big love. Kiana: As you can see, my life revolved around the strength of this queen, and it shows. I'm going to try to amplify that to the best of my ability. Shoutout, mom, I love you. Anyway, I haven't talked to my mom in like three months at this time. What's going on? Every time I call, now I know that she was going through chemo, so she didn't even want to get on the phone weary. So, I'm talking to my sister, I'm talking to my brother, talking to my nephews. I'm talking to everybody but mom. I know, I know something ain't right. Something ain't right. She never did this. I was blessed my entire 17 years. Well, I spent 17 years in prison as a result of that conviction and still have 17 years on parole. I'm currently on parole.Scott: Unjustly.Kiana: Unjust. And currently on parole. Have 6 years remaining, been home 11 years. That was my main source of everything. Every month, Molly Diggs sent $100 to my account. Every month for 17 years. Man, if that's not a blessing, you know what I'm saying? Within itself because I used to take my $100 and split it down the middle so I could feed-- you were on the dome, you know what's happening.Shane: Yeah. Kiana: You know how'd that go. Shane: Believe me, I do.Kiana: This work that I'm doing out here, this is work that was prophetically distributing and manifesting itself in a can. I love brothers, I love you. It's how we do this. It's work that we got to do. But I'd be damned if I trade my chicken plate again though.Shane: That's right. [laughter] Kiana: I'd be damned if I traded that chicken plate again. Scott: Since we're talking about solitary, man, if you don't mind just kind of sharing a little bit about, A, how it affected you, how long you stayed in solitary, and then kind of tell the folks out there what solitary does to the mind. Because I have my own personal experience, I spent 11 months in solitary myself, sitting in cells. But I want to hear your take on it, and then I'll kind of chime in with mine.Kiana: Okay, so you want my professional take, or you want my personal experience? Scott: Personal experience.Shane: Personal. And keep it for the who? Layman?Beatty: Yeah, laymen, please. Name of the next movie, Only for the Layman. Kiana: When we're speaking about solitary confinement, let me put a definition to that first. Solitary confinement is a person placed in the one- or two-man cell for 23 hours or more without the ability of education, personal contact, air, exercise, everything that you are being deprived of. I'll just say deprived of all liberty and growth with no access to human contact. Basically, the first time that you are apprehended, when you get into a police car and they put the handcuffs on you and you go to a holding tank, let's call that solitary confinement. Some people may be placed in the cell with 14 people. Some people may be placed in the cell with two. Some people may be placed in the cell with one. Okay, so the effects of solitary confinement, what we're triggering here in Louisiana is the term "post-incarceration syndrome", and that is when a person who have spent a long time inside of any incarcerated state has mental transformations that may impede the normal ways of thinking.Now, that's where the tunnel comes in. It could be a mental disorder. It could be some similar to posttraumatic stress disorder. You could deal with insomnia, you could deal with claustrophobia, you could deal with depression, you can deal with-Scott: Anxiety. Kiana: -anxiety. There's so many different-- [crosstalk] yes. There's so many ways that you can kind of figure it out. So, when I first came home, I knew what I experienced personally. When I go to the bathroom, I take one leg on my [crosstalk] to take me a crap. Why do I do that? Because when I was in prison, I knew I had to be on guard at all times. Shane: All the time, every day. Scott: You can't stand up and fight with your pants down.Shane: No. Scott: [crosstalk] -free access to move around.Kiana: The thing about it is, when I came home, I still was continuing those traits until I realized, "Man, I could take my pants off. I could just slide them down right here. Nobody's going to come in the door and do me nothing." When I sit down to eat, my arm's on the table, and I'm doing what I'm doing because I know I got to be finished before this last dude is sitting down. That's a trigger for us. We all eat fast. Shane: I suffer from it right now.Scott: I still do. I've been home nine years, and I eat faster than most people. I'm in and out like that. Shane: [laughs] Kiana: So, I kind of compiled a lot of triggers that I identified as being posttraumatic effects of incarceration. Scott: From your stints in the cell blocks--[crosstalk] Kiana: Yes. Smell, sounds, certain things that I touch, certain things that touch me. Certain people that get around. I can't let nobody sit behind me while I'm in the car, if I'm in a movie theater. I can't go to a club. Like, a lot of those things were affecting me. During COVID-- this is when my father came into place. During COVID, I said, "You know what? The only way I'm going to understand my problem--" because I know it's a problem, but when I look around, I'm like, "Well, shit. What is normal? I'm not normal, but I see this dude here. He never been nowhere, but he more fucked up than me. He got issues. He got problems. You've been on here forever, and you calling me every day asking me for $20, $15, your daughter need shoes." Scott: Not Shane. Kiana: No. I'm just saying in general.Scott: I just want to clarify in case--[crosstalk] [laughter] Scott: Shane is a mooch. [laughs] Damn.Kiana: Just kind of figure it out, I traveled around Louisiana, I talked to over 275 individuals, and we talked about anything from-- and all of them were formerly incarcerated people.Scott: That's when 40--Kiana: That's when 40 for 40 Worldwide came into, during COVID.Shane: That's dope. Kiana: I knocked on doors. I took the camera to meet them where they were. We're going to talk about where you came from to become who you are today. Every individual that I talked to, they talk about every situation that I've experienced, situations that I may stumble across in the future. They gave me possible solutions that I could pull logic from. I'm like, "Damn, what can I do with this project? Okay, we're going to name it 40 for 40 Worldwide because I'm going to pull 40 of the most influential pieces out of this space, and I'm going to build a campaign in Louisiana that will allow people to come home and holistically heal." Whether it be through arts, whether it be through song, whether it be through poetry, whether it be through broadcast, whether it be through construction, whether it be through welding, whether it be through any mechanism, I feel we can do that as a channel. We can do that as a body of individuals. 40 for 40 Worldwide was to amplify the voices of formerly incarcerated people that have been through horrendous events in their life while serving time, ultimately gaining momentum to build 40 other individuals in 40 other states to implement some type of federal legislation that will add people returning home from incarceration into a protected class. Because there are over 40,000 collateral consequences that stop you from getting a job, from going to school, from getting insurance, from going to real estate school. There's so much that hinders you. It seems like people returning home from incarceration is the only social group that America still has permission to openly hate. Scott: I got denied for life insurance. Can't even get life insurance. Kiana: You see what I'm saying?Beatty: Yeah.Kiana: So, how can we humanize this space? In Louisiana, one out of every three individuals have been impacted by incarceration.Shane: Yes. Kiana: And we right here, three out of five, I don't know if the cameraman has a buddy or sister or brother or even if he'd been to prison. Cameraman: I'm just lucky I ain't been. [crosstalk] [laughter] Scott: Going back to the solitary thing, how long would you say in your 17 years that you spent just in solitary? Not in dormitories, but solitary. Kiana: Solitary confinement, out of 17 years, I've spent probably eight and a half. Close to nine. Scott: In solitary? Years? Kiana: Yes. Scott: Damn.Kiana: In Camp J, I spent close to 19 months. That was just from 1998 to 2000. When I first made it to Angola, me being a juvenile, they put me in the cell, they let me out to go into the dog pen for a while, and that was basically for a year. After that, minor offenses, because now I'm a boy transforming into a man in the man institution.Scott: You've got prove something.Kiana: It's not really proving it. It's just making sure that they don't prove me. I'm not here to prove who I am. Beatty: Preventive maintenance.Kiana: Yes. That's the type of person that I have been, is that I'm not here to prove that I'm a man. I'm here to prove that you're not going to fuck with me.Beatty: Yeah. Kiana: You know why? Because much respect is given, much respect is required. That's how I walk in life. I can have a relationship with Shane, and I can have a relationship with Scott. At the same time, my relationship with Shane and Scott is going to be identical because y'all deal with me identical. You feel what I'm saying? I'm not going to differentiate anything dealing with any situation in life. When I first went to Angola, my first time in the field, they called me Looney Tune. My number was 372220, I'll never forget it. I was at the end of the line. We in a line of 375 people do stuff with tools on their hand, and every time that man look around, they was [mimicking a shotgun] because I'm in the back trying to keep up. "Man, that dude crazy. Come here, Looney Tune. They're going to shoot you." Scott: Oh, the guards [crosstalk] shotguns--[crosstalk] Kiana: Yeah, because I can't keep up with the hose. I got locked up, every day is my first out in the field, I can't keep up with the hose. Shane: What did you say, Deuce Deuce? Kiana: That mean they lined up in tools. Beatty: Okay. I knew that. Kiana: You're not that lame. Scott: For the viewers.Kiana: For the viewers.Scott: For the viewers out there that don't know, when you go to Louisiana Department of Corrections State Penitentiary, you go onto the field when you get there.Kiana: You're picking cotton, man. Scott: Actually, we got Fat on here the other day, and he told his story about how they tried to make him go out there and pick cotton. Kiana: You're picking cotton, man, or you're going to ride like Fat.[laughter] Kiana: I'm telling you.Shane: As a [crosstalk] you're the number one.Cameraman: Camp J was so brutal.Kiana: That they shut it down. Cameraman: Yes. They closed--[crosstalk] Kiana: I had a hand in that.Scott: Talk about it. Kiana: I had a hand in that, man. So, it was a campaign. That was in 2013. Beatty: We're talking about the shutting down of Camp J if you didn't hear.Scott: Camp J is solitary confinement at Angola.Shane: It started in 2008. Kiana: Yeah. The campaign started in '08 but it actually got shut down in '13. Basically, man, just being able to lay in those cells and be like, "Man, this shit ain't right. I wish I had some people standing out fighting and fussing for me." When I came home, my first objective is, how can I get engaged? How can I get involved? What can I do? Man, I really would like to salute again. It's going to be a shoutout hour. You heard me shout out VOTE, Norris Henderson. Matter of fact, Norris's brother just got killed, man. So, we're going to lift him up, little daddy, man. Salute the little daddy. We lost a soldier. We lost a soldier, man. Definitely, I would like to give VOTE a shoutout in the space. They've been holding it down.Scott: Long time doing fighting work that most people, A, don't want to do, but, B, they can't do. Those guys, all formerly incarcerated, are leading the pack on criminal legal reform work in Louisiana. They got their hands in every-- dang, every piece of legislation that goes in front of state capitol for--[crosstalk] Shane: They're built to do that. Kiana: Definitely. Scott: They just opened up the little building too, right? Kiana: Yeah, definitely this year. I was a volunteer for VOTE when I first got into the game. Like in 2012, 2013, we did a lot of work around restoring the voting rights for formerly incarcerated people in Louisiana. Act 636.Scott: Then, they had a campaign to end solitary confinement in Camp J. Kiana: Well, no, this was kind of before. The Camp J space, I was on some freelance stuff. I partnered with The Village Keepers. That was the name of Jefferson Parish. I partnered with The Village Keepers, and they were doing some work around solitary confinement in Jefferson Parish. The work that I did toward Camp J was basically I told my story twice, how it was inhumane and how I laid in the cells and really like phantom and wondered if people were really out there putting in work. I didn't have the opportunity to speak at the capitol, but I knocked on some doors and passed out some flyers, got people involved, did a lot of work toward that end, but that was basically a backend thing because DOC was ready to kind of make amends with that space. Man, it was a dungeon.Shane: [crosstalk] -reparation for people. Kiana: Yeah, it was hell. What they did in '08 was they shut down the Boot tiers in 2008, they shut down the Shark tiers. The Shark tiers, they were like cells inside of a cell. You've got the cells and then you had had the big old Boot that slammed-- boom, slamming the front with the little trace slot right there. That's all you had to really move around. In 80--Scott: Wait, wait. Shane: In other states.Kiana: Oh, yeah, definitely. Scott: I'm trying to picture my own experience in solitary. When I've been on it, it's a cell block-- Is it something different than that? I haven't been on Camp J--[crosstalk]Kiana: This is the view. A lot of people may not picture this, but you can get it. If you're walking down the Beavers working cell block, imagine you take half of the hall out, where the cell doors are originally there, you take half of that tier out and you bring that out further with concrete blocks. Like a concrete steel block will come all the way out. On that concrete block, you have a steel door that slams, boom, with the [mimics locking]. You come through that door, and then you walk down that narrow hall, maybe halfway from here to like that door, and then the cells open and then you go on the cells. So, they lock the cells. Scott: So, they don't rack them back--[crosstalk] Kiana: No, they don't rack them back until they come to the cell and then handcuff and shackle you. Then, they come step out of that boot door and rack them back close, now you just in the space and then they open up the big door. Shane: In other states, states like Illinois and Chicago, Indiana, they call them two-door cells, because you have your first door, open that up. When they walk in, it's like maybe 6ft of space, officer walks to that cell, handcuff you, shackle you and everything and then leaves you out. Scott: Mind you, if something were to happen in your cell, whether it's medical or if you're sharing, I don't know how Camp J is, do they share [crosstalk] space?Kiana: That's one-man cell. Scott: If something was going down in the cell and not only are you behind bars, but you're also behind this barricaded force, you have no way of getting in touch with the guards to come, "Hey, I'm having a heart attack."Kiana: Can't even hear you. Scott: They can't hear you. So, you're just left to die. A lot of people that are on Camp J are awaiting trials. Especially if they're high-profile cases and different things like that, they might not necessarily be guilty of the crime, but they're sitting back there and they can possibly die because, A, all types of things happen medically when they become incarcerated.Kiana: Oh, man. They were coming through the walls. Shane: Breaking cinderblocks. Kiana: Coming through the walls. Busting through the walls.Scott: Who was? Kiana: The inmates. They bust through, they could bust through the walls. Scott: They come get you? Kiana: Yes. Scott: Oh, wow. Kiana: If they want you, they bust, they coming through the walls. I'm talking about there's so many times that they had to replaster the cinderblocks. Scott: So, they just going to get moles coming through?Kiana: Moles? Shane: No.Scott: How they getting through--[crosstalk] Kiana: You can use--[crosstalk] Shane: [crosstalk] Scott: Oh, you're talking about the guy on the side--[crosstalk] Kiana: In 1998, they took the block-- you know in the cellblock, they have the flap where you put your stuff in there? You take that up out of there, and you can go through the wall. Scott: No shit. Kiana: Yeah, you can go through the wall. Scott: Dudes are getting jugged up.Kiana: Going through the wall. Shane: Getting raped.Kiana: Listen to me, going through the wall.Scott: That's wild, man. Kiana: Listen, man, that is a world inside of a world, man. So, being mindful enough, and that's what I mean by, you guys are survivors. I didn't acknowledge my self-worth. I didn't acknowledge my value. But I think my job now is to pump that into you guys, because y'all are survivors, and y'all are experts in the way that this criminal justice world is about to be reformed. We cannot continue to allow people to plan meals for tables that they never slid a seat under. How can you give me cheese and I'm lactose intolerant? I don't eat cheese and ice cream. I can't deal with that. But you're still putting that on my table, and you wonder why I got diarrhea. Shane: Because you just don't know.[laughter] Kiana: You wonder why I got diarrhea. Scott: That's a nice analogy. Kiana: You wonder why my communities are underresourced. I got to go find it. I can't buy toilet paper, so I'm going to come shit on your lawn. [laughter] Kiana: I'm just trying to figure like that, because that's what we got to understand, man. Life is about who we are. We are life. We are the movers and shakers. We create every sphere, every business. Like the United States of America is a 501(c)(3) organization. It is a nonprofit. We bought into that. When we were born, our family signed our birth certificates and Social Security cards and put us into this entity. We have to understand, we need to pull control of that entity. Use our democracy, get out there and vote and put people in positions who have your best interests at heart.Don't just come to my house [chuckles] and shoot me some sugar. And now I'm walking, I've got a banana in my tailpipe. I'm blowing up every time I go somewhere. It's crazy. And that's what we're allowing, that's what we have been allowing. And I hope that people understand that this work I do, I can't put a tag on it, bro. I do everything. I do reform. I do litigation. I do policy. I do programs. I do training. I hold peer support groups, like the same groups that we held inside with Project Detour. Beatty: Shoutout.Kiana: Shoutout Project Detour. That was started in RCC. Scott: Turn around, show the back. Can you turn around?Kiana: I could, but we're going to wait [crosstalk] shot at the end.Beatty: We'll put that later. Scott: Like a whole baseball player. Kiana: Definitely, man.Scott: He did homerun.Kiana: But, yeah, this was an organization that we started in Rayburn, man, in RCC. Scott: Okay. Kiana: We started this in RCC, and we've seen the impact on the individuals on the tier with it.Scott: RCC is Rayburn Correctional Center in Angie, Louisiana. It's a state penitentiary. Kiana: Yes. We've seen the impact on individuals on the compound, people that didn't give a rattin' ass about nothing. Scott: Give us an example of one of the guys.Kiana: Reggie. Scott: Quetan?Kiana: Yes. Reggie was in the block. As a matter of fact, Reggie is in Austin right now.Scott: Okay. I knew he moved out there.Kiana: Yeah, he's staying in Austin. I've seen him when I was on a fellowship with REDF. Shoutout, REDF, that's my accelerator teaching me how to turn my business into a business. Yeah, I needed that. Just floating on the wings, man. I want to say, yeah, man. Ooh. I did like 80 hours of training in like four days. But anyway--Scott: Who is this?Kiana: REDF Accelerator. Scott: Is that a program or a guy? Kiana: That's a program. My fellowship. I'm part of a fellowship. REDF Accelerator. Scott: Okay, cool. Kiana: So, yeah, definitely. Partnering with 18 other entrepreneurs across the state. They chose us out of like-- 500 employment social enterprises is what we're calling our business at this point. Just trying to figure out how can we figure out those key performance indicators, man, and make sure that double line bottom is on point. Scott: You said you ran into Reggie.Kiana: Yeah, I ran into Reggie, man. And Reggie now is a photographer. He's doing some great work. Shane: Wow.Kiana: He's doing some great work, man. Reg is really holding it down. Scott: You ran into Reg at Rayburn.Kiana: Reg was an asshole. Scott: Yeah. Kiana: You know, Reg stayed in and out the blocks. Reg will fight. Reg will curse you out. Reg will jump on the free man. He'll end up on Snow when he's housing on Wind.Scott: Snow is the working cellblocks. Kiana: Yeah. Shoutout Rayburn. But, yeah, definitely. Once we started Project Detour, started with Pat, Vladi, all of us was the board in that space. We've seen how Reggie-- there was countless other Reggies that was a part of that. We've seen a development in that space. Once we start showing them that they can take ownership in their own personal development, we've seen it, understanding that we're not just going to talk about Sigmund Freud and Eric Burns. We're not going to talk about the three personality traits. We know you understand what they are, but this is who created them and this is how they created them. And we can do the same.Once we've seen that, built that brotherhood, and Reggie's turned from a writeup every week to a writeup and no writeups in two, three years. So, we see that it's working. We see that they start taking ownership and accountability for their own actions. Why can't that be replicated out here? Scott: That's what you're doing now.Kiana: I came home in 2011, man. Project Detour was founded in 2013, once I figured out how business was supposed to look.Scott: So, you came home in 2011. Tell us about your transition out, some of the challenges you had, and then let's kind of talk about all of-- this dude's got his hand in 100 different pots that he created. I'm not talking about pots that other people created that he's jumping into. He created those pots. So, let's talk about that. Tell us about the challenges you faced coming home. Kiana: I always was a smart guy, I could say. I know how to read and write. So, the challenges that I faced were systemic challenges because the physical challenges, I was able to maneuver around them. For an example, I came home on a Wednesday. Friday, I was working as a crane mechanic. Never touched a crane a day in my life. Don't know what a crane looked like, but I was hired as a crane operator. Riding down Fourth Street, turned down Engineers Row, see [unintelligible 00:45:21] "crane operators, hiring now. Crane operators, hiring now." I pulled into H&E. Shoutout to H&E Equipment. Pulled into H&E parking lots, sat down. One guy comes out, I said, "Hey, man, what do you do?" He said, "I'm a crane operator." I said, "What y'all operating?" And he said, "Man, [unintelligible 00:45:38] it's a walk 7200s, 41000s, 4000s." [laughter] Kiana: I'm like, "All right, cool." Scott: I got that. Kiana: I go home--Scott: I got my driver's license. [laughter] Kiana: I just got my driver's license. I'm 34 years old, man, I just got my driver's license for the first time in my life. I'm happy. So, I go home, YouTube University. YouTube University. I jumped on YouTube.Beatty: Shoutout to YouTube University. Kiana: Jumped on YouTube, man. Put in "manual to [unintelligible 00:46:03] 4100s, 41000, 7200s, 72,000s." They told me, man, like, "This is what you do. This is how you start it. This is how you grease your lines. Check your lines before you get in there." Next day, I went over there. I went back to H&E, filled out an application. Have you ever been convicted of a felony? I checked no. If I check yeah, they're not even going to talk to me. Right? Scott: Right. I don't blame you.Kiana: Yeah, I check no.Scott: I'm all for it. I support it. Kiana: I check no. They took my application that day, they called me back the next day. Actually, I was at the head, because minority crane operators are nine and void. Scott: High demand. Kiana: Yes, nine and void. Really, really nine and void. I ain't no shit about no crane. I know you can make $50 to operate the crane for 10 minutes. Shane: Yes, sir. Kiana: I didn't know that. $50 an hour, and you up there 12 hours a day, but you're only working for 10 minutes, 15 minutes. They called me, and I went in the next day. I had my nice shoes on, my suit, I'm job ready. I'm ready for this. I'm prepared. And that's what a man like-- you could start at 41? I'm like, "Yeah, I can start." He said, "Come on, let's go. We don't need the interview. I just want to see if you could do it." So, we went out there, I walked around the crane, looked up under it, popped the bottom where the lines were at. I always checked the grease lines. When I did that, said, "Hey, man, we're going to get you trained."Scott: We got one professional. Kiana: That was basically all it took. I worked there for my first two and a half, three years.Scott: Let me ask you a question. The no box on the application, that never came up?Kiana: It never came up until my passion of what I wanted to do in life. It started really burning me because I started getting frustrated with waking up in the morning.Scott: Working for somebody else?Kiana: Not really working for somebody else. I'm not aligning myself with what I'm supposed to be doing. Scott: Okay, I feel you. I understand that.Kiana: I'm making good money. At this point, I'm a crane mechanic. I went to training. I just started getting some things to really put me in a position to be this operator. But I'm waking up in the morning and I'm like--Shane: You're not happy.Beatty: Yeah.Scott: You don't feel like you feel--[crosstalk] Kiana: I'm in the tool room and the conversations that I was having a year ago, I'm not having these conversations with these people. I'm not feeling it. I'm starting to see myself drift more into Project Detour, because now I'm starting to take my check, and I'm taking young kids in my community, and we go and get some chicken and sit under the park and talk for 45 minutes, asking them what they need. Now, I'm taking my check, and now I'm helping them get school uniforms and putting shoes on their feet and attending the football games and trying to help out with the coaches and talking to the students.Then, I started actually getting in tune with the courts because a lot of my young brothers had records. I had to sign them off on my [unintelligible [00:44:53] because their daddy in jail and their mom out on drugs. So, I started seeing that I was needed in the space that I wasn't occupying. I was getting money. I'm straight. I'm driving a Range Rover, this is in '13, I got a 12 Range Rover, just came out, of BMW. I'm doing good. Scott: Bought by H&E crane money? Kiana: Yes, definitely. Shane: Mechanic money that is.Kiana: But when you're not aligned with your values in life, man, you can have all the riches in the world, it's not going to sit right with you. It's not going to feel because right now, man, I feel I'm in the best place in my life that I have been in my life, and I look at every day as me getting better than I was yesterday, because my worst day out here subsides the best day I had inside of there. Shane: That's right. Kiana: It oversees, it just demolishes. Scott: From H&E, you just said, "Hey, look, I'm going to--" [crosstalk] Kiana: Yeah, I've got to go. I've got to start what I want to do. I want to start my passion. Scott: So, what was next? Kiana: So, Project Detour was next. Project Detour, full-fledged. Got the board, got the bylaws, got the policies and procedures in order, got everybody on the card. We just started doing a lot of mentoring in the city, and then I went back to school. Now, it's me running the organization, attending Delgado Community College full time. Shoutout Delgado. Shane: Big shoutout--[crosstalk] Scott: What's their mascot?Kiana: The Patriot. Scott: The Patriot. Kiana: Yeah, they're a patriot. Scott: Delgado Patriot. Kiana: If I got you wrong, shoutout Delgado. [laughter] Kiana: Something like that a buccaneer or a patriot. But, yeah, definitely I'm getting my criminal justice degree. Actually, I have eight more credits that I need, so I'll be graduating next year. Scott: Are you still going right now? Kiana: Yeah, I'm attending SUNO right now. Shoutout SUNO. It's a lot that I'm doing, man. I'm trying to better myself in all aspects, not just my personal outside life, but my internal being. All of that comes into the space, and I don't think that I'm going to be fully, fully healed until I get exonerated. So, that's what I'm working on right now.Shane: Fulfilling that passion, that burning desire. Kiana: I'm working with the district attorney now with Jefferson Parish. We've been having maybe a few meetings, a couple of meetings, and that's how I want to close the film with him saying, "Yeah, Kiana, we think that you have done everything that you've need to need to do in the course of your life, man, and we want to honor your wishes." [crosstalk] Scott: Are you working with--? Kiana: Paul Connick? Scott: No, the organization that does the--Kiana: The Innocent Project? Scott: Yeah.Kiana: Funny story about that, man. The Innocent Project, they don't work with individuals who's free. Scott: Oh, they only do incarcerated.Kiana: Yes. That was a problem that I really didn't understand when I went to them, because, trust me, I probably ruffled every feather in the state of Louisiana trying to see what can I do, until I was just like, "You know what? Just keep walking in your purpose. It's not what you're doing, is where you're going." That's the overall piece of this entire synopsis, man. I think that's when I'm going to get completely holistically healed. Well, I could be able to get exonerated. I've done a lot of work and then once I get exonerated, I want to continue to be a force. Scott: I want to ask you this. I'm completely guilty of all the crimes that I committed. So, when I was in prison, I had to-- go ahead.Beatty: Allegedly committed. [laughter] Scott: No, I did all that. Kiana: He was convicted, so it's over. Scott: It's over. I was in prison, and I had to swallow the pill, "Okay, you've done a lot of dumb shit and I'm paying for it." But I can't imagine the mental that a person must go through in your situation that spent 17 years in prison and not have done the crime. Dude, I don't want you to go into great detail because I know, but what's the mental process for that? Kiana: It was basically piggybacking what you just said. I have done a lot of shit in my life. I wasn't a choir boy when I was out here. A lot of things that I didn't do, it shouldn't have amount to that sentence, that such severe sentence. But just being open minded, you can imprison me physically, but you can't entrap my mind, that was kind of like the cage bird sings. I strive myself on education because I was so uneducated sitting in this trial. Only thing I could understand is objection, overrule, sustained, objection, overrule, sustained. What does that mean? I know when they say that, the judge say something that counters what they say. So, I felt stupid. It felt like I was in Charlie Brown. [onomatopoeia] That's how my entire trial felt. And my trial was like nine days, the first one. Might I add that it was a non-unanimous jury? Shout out to the UJC. Scott: [crosstalk] -nonunanimous jury. You want to explain what that means real quick for our layman? Kiana: Yeah, for the laymen. Non-unanimous jury, I was found guilty on two counts of first-degree murder, non-unanimously, meaning that 1 person out of the 12 said that I was innocent, saying that the state did not prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt, which the law states that you should be judged by a jury of your peers and unanimously deliberated upon. Louisiana and Oregon were the last two states that upheld the non-unanimous jury pool, which means that 10 people can say that you're guilty, and two people can say that they don't believe that you're guilty, and you still can be sent to prison for life. And that happened to me twice. My first trial was 11-1. I was found guilty and sentenced to life. In 1998, with the great help of Christopher Aberle, my appellate attorney, shoutout Chris, He put together a wonderful brief, and my case was remanded and set aside for further proceedings.I was sent back to Jefferson Paris, tried again for second-degree murder, and I was found guilty again. That jury deliberations were 10-2. Two people said this time that, "Oh no, he didn't do that." And 10 people said, "Yes." I was found guilty again on a lesser charge, which was manslaughter. They sentenced me to 34 years under Act 138, which gave me 17 years inside of a penal institution and 17 years remaining on parole. Honestly, we have right now currently over 5700 people that are incarcerated, serving life or high numbers on a non-unanimous jury. That PJI, shoutout PJI, Promise of Justice Initiative, they're working closely trying to get those individuals home on that. In 2018, I had the-- man, that was one of the peak campaigns in my existence. Scott: I do want to talk about the documentary that I had the fortunate privilege of watching.Kiana: Kiana's Mission. Scott: Yeah, man. I said at the beginning of this podcast, it takes to make me cry. My wife would say different. She says I'm a big teddy bear. I don't believe that. I believe I'm a big lion. But I did, and I teared up and it touched me on multiple spots in the documentary. I want you to talk about that a little bit and then talk about 40 for 40 and then Roots. Just tell everybody about what inspired the documentary and how long you've been doing it. Kiana: Definitely. Kiana's Mission is a documentary, like I said a little bit earlier, it's a story about resilience. It's a story about overcoming the hurdles of life and coming out the end still feeling prosperous. I've been shooting this documentary maybe about-- what we in '22 now? So, maybe about nine years, having the ability to get introduced to a camera. When I came home, I learned that the camera is therapeutic, being able to sit down and tell pieces about you and not feel vulnerable, because eventually somebody may see this and it may help change their lives.What I did was I just walked around with the camera with me all day taking basic photos, and then I was like, "You know what, bro? I think it's time that you start putting your life in perspective. How can you get your story heard?" Because everybody has a story. Not everybody makes it to cable. Everybody has their intention. So, just having the ability to be in a position to where my life work, it needs to be televised. So, I'm working with Roots of Renewal. Shoutout Roots. Shane: Shoutout big Roots.Kiana: I'm the ED over there. Scott: What's Roots? Kiana: Roots is a reentry organization geared to our young men, 18 to 26, reentering home from incarceration. Scott: Is that in New Orleans? Kiana: Yes, New Orleans. Actually, we're in three different parishes. We're in New Orleans. We're in Jefferson and we're in Terrebonne. Just being available for those young men. What we do is we purchase blighted properties throughout the city's area, rehab them, give the guys job skills so that they may be productive in the construction field if they choose to.Beatty: That's awesome. Kiana: Yeah, definitely. Scott: They get any type of certification? Kiana: Yes, definitely. So, I pride myself on training.Scott: Okay.Kiana: I think that we can't go through life without the proper tools. Once they come to Roots, what we do-- In the documentary, you can see that I have that camera setting up, interviewing my young men, because that's the first initial engagement. I want you to understand that I want to know how you were when you first came to me. And then throughout the middle course of this pace, we're going to do another one, just to do a recap, a summary on what you have done. I use the Poverty Stoplight method. Shout out Dr. Martin Burt. He's running for president of Paraguay. Man, I got you, you're my dog. I'm on your team. Beatty: You've got my vote.Kiana: You already know. I was introduced to the Poverty Stoplight, Dr. Martin Burt, maybe in about 2017. Scott: Is he from New Orleans? Kiana: No. He's from Paraguay. Scott: Oh, Paraguay. That's the country?Kiana: Yeah. Scott: Where is that at? I'm geographically challenged. Kiana: That's like in the Middle East over there by Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, but not in that area. Scott: Oh. He's running for the president of that country.Kiana: Of that country, yes. He's already the secretary.Scott: Hey, my boy got president friends. Kiana: Yeah, definitely. I'm actually in his book. You could go check it out Who Owns Poverty. Kiana Calloway is in that space. He's a professor at Georgetown University. Scott: I'm going to get your autograph before you leave.Kiana: Oh, man. I got some things--Scott: [crosstalk] -now before you blow really big.Kiana: I've got something on the horizon, man.Scott: I bet you do.Kiana: So, working with Dr. Martin Burt, we sat down, and he told me about how broke poverty down into six dimensions. Income and infrastructure, education and employment, housing and motivation, and integrity and insurance. It shows how we can put these indicators into a life map so that you can actually see what poverty looks like. Instead of feeling it, now you can see it. Scott: How does it work as far as showing the guys? Is it a progress chart or something? Kiana: Yeah, definitely. It gives back in data on-- it comes into the red, yellow, and green. What I did was I restructured that model because the way that poverty looks in Paraguay, it don't look this way in Uptown New Orleans.Shane: That's right. Kiana: What we did was we developed the New Orleans spectrum, I'm the parenting hub here in the United States that had this data tool. Anyway, so what we did was we identified, if you're coming home from incarceration, it's practically like you're bankrupt. You're coming home after filing bankruptcy. You have nothing. Income, transportation, housing, internet access, a clean bed to sleep in, all of those are indicators of poverty, but we don't understand that, so when we come home--Shane: And it's vital.Kiana: Very vital. They're vital to you reentering, and they're vital to recidivism. If you start with Roots of Renewal in the 26 survey, and out of the 26 questions, you have 25 reds, we got work to do. Like, we got work to do. Scott: So, they fill out an assessment. Kiana: Yes. Scott: And then, you track their progress based on that assessment. Kiana: As we work forward, the tools that they need.Scott: [crosstalk] -red to yellow to green. Kiana: Reds to yellows to greens. Scott: Nice. Kiana: We try to achieve that in four months because Roots of Renewal is a 16 week job training program. Inside of that program, which Project Detour, is over the programming side of it, it gives personal development courses, financial literacy courses. It gives critical thinking, transaction analysis. We deal with the rehabilitation of the being because--Shane: Of the individual.Kiana: Of the individual. We need you to be in the right space if we want to send you to this job. So, we've got to help you build this resume. We partner with local construction companies throughout those areas so that long-term employment is definitely in the realms.Scott: After the program.Kiana: Exactly. Along with lifetime membership, alumni perks, because once you get in the Roots, man, you're a brother now. It's not that you just come through a program or a project. No, you got my seven numbers. You could call my seven numbers at any given time, and they do that right now. Scott: It's awesome, man. Kiana: Yeah, definitely. So, that's Roots of Renewal. I began to be the ED at Roots of Renewal in 2019. I started there as the programs manager, just dealing with the programs with Project Detour. I was contracted in through Amy and Brendan, who were the actual founders of this space, as the programs manager. I definitely just dealt with peer support groups. Like, how can we develop a curriculum that's going to show the impact of these individuals actually reentering? We got a non-recidivism rate of 98.9%. Only one brother, and that's Javelle. He comes home next month, I believe. Shoutout, Javelle, we got you when you get out here, man. Just trying to stay active, implying myself into a space the way I know that I'm desperately needed. Scott: Man, you're doing it. Also, an Instagram page that caught my eye that you also set up, and it's a project that you work on 40 for 40. Tell the audience about the 40 for 40, A, what they need to look up, and then, B, what prompted it and how that went.Kiana: 40 for 40 Worldwide. Definitely, man. Like I said, during COVID me, Durado Brooks-- Shoutout, Durado. Mark Kerry. Shoutout, Mark. We traveled Louisiana, man, and we had an opportunity of interviewing over 400 individuals that's formerly incarcerated. Over 400 formerly incarcerated entrepreneurs. A lot of these individuals have their own businesses, started their own businesses. We went to donut shops, we went to sandwich shops. We went to Twisted Wings, Twisted Burgers. We went out there while people were cutting grass and washing cars. Everywhere that they were, when we say we were in their space, we were pulling up on them for like an hour. We had the conversation, man. "Tell me what it's like after incarceration?" Man, the stories were beautiful. I just had to try to figure out how can we take that collage and turn it into power because our stories are powerful within themselves. So, during COVID, me, Durado, Mark, we sat down on the videos, we kept going over them. Actually, this year, I said, "Man, we need to do something with this. Let's drop a Black History Month project." So, that's where the Instagram came from. We drop one story every day of Black History Month-Scott: For 28 days. Kiana: For 28 days, you're going to see 28, and we're going to do the same thing next Black History Month. We're going to try to replicate that. Scott: It's like an annual thing. Kiana: Yes. It don't make sense to just have it once. We correlated stories, we drop one every day, and we correlated these stories of impacted survivors today. If you could read the actual captions, we're putting them in the spaces of W. E. B. Du Bois. We put them in the spaces with Medgar Evers. We put them in the spaces with Fred Hampton. Like, we're putting them in the same energy to let them know that man, the narrative that our ancestors were speaking-- and I don't say ancestors, I'm talking like, 40 years ago, 50 years ago, 60 years ago. The same narrative that they were speaking, we're still saying that same narrative. I think that we need to wake up and understand, how can we put a face to pain? They went through a lot, but they're overcomers. They're survivors. So, yeah, go punch into Instagram, 40 for 40 Worldwide. If you are in any other state that has a jail, contact us, because we're coming into your state. Jim: All right. I don't ever do this, by the way. I normally sit back behind that camera unless I'm running my podcast. But I'm going to tell you what you inspired me--Scott: What's your podcast?Jim: Local Leaders: The Podcast, Bloody Angola. I produce Real Life Real Crime with Woody Overton and got a bunch more coming out. I've listened to everything that you said, and inspiring. Inspiring shit. I'll tell you-- Kiana: Appreciate it.Shane: Real shit too. Jim: Yes, exactly. What impresses me the most about you is you said something a few minutes ago. You give back a lot. A true leader gives back. We are raised in our lives to believe being first in anything is the leader, winning. No, giving back is winning. You have done nothing but have people-- in my opinion, people try to hold you down, and it seems like the harder you get held down, the harder you push back. And that's an innate quality. It's rare and impressive, man. I want to obviously shout you out for that. But I have one question. Before all this happened in your life, we