Podcasts about sean how

Sean O'Connor is the Director of Engineering at Datadog. Datadog is the essential monitoring and security platform for cloud applications. Sean discusses his transition from an individual contributor to management and shares why he chose Datadog, emphasizing the appeal of high-scale problems and the real business nature of the company. They delve into the importance of performance management and observability and cover the cultural and technical challenges Sean faces in managing a diverse, geographically spread team, and discuss the transition at Datadog from a decentralized model to more centralized platforms, the corresponding changes in both technical strategies and people management, and what excites him about Datadog's future, including the integration of security offerings into developers' daily experiences, and the evolution of Kubernetes and internal build and release tooling. __ Datadog (https://www.datadoghq.com/) Follow Datadog on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/datadog/), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/datadoghq/), Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/user/DatadogHQ), or Twitter (https://twitter.com/datadoghq). Follow Sean O'Connor on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanoc/) or Twitter (https://twitter.com/theSeanOC). Visit his website at seanoc.com (https://seanoc.com/). Follow thoughtbot on Twitter (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. WILL: And I'm your other host, Will Larry. And with us today is Sean O'Connor. He is the Director of Engineering at Datadog. Datadog is the essential monitoring and security platform for cloud applications. Sean, thank you for joining us. SEAN: Hi, thanks for having me on. VICTORIA: Yeah, I'm super excited to get to talking with you about everything cloud, and DevOps, and engineering. But why don't we first start with just a conversation about what's going on in your life? Is there any exciting personal moment coming up for you soon? SEAN: Yeah, my wife and I are expecting our first kiddo in the next few weeks, so getting us prepared for that as we can and trying to get as much sleep as we can. [laughs] WILL: Get as much sleep as you can now, so...[laughs] I have a question around that. When you first found out that you're going to be a dad, what was your feeling? Because I remember the feeling that I had; it was a mixed reaction of just everything. So, I just wanted to see what was your reaction whenever you found out that you're going to be a dad for the first time. SEAN: Yeah, I was pretty excited. My wife and I had been kind of trying for this for a little while. We're both kind of at the older end for new parents in our late 30s. So, yeah, excited but definitely, I don't know, maybe a certain amount of, I don't know about fear but, you know, maybe just concerned with change and how different life will be, but mostly excitement and happiness. [laughs] WILL: Yeah, I remember the excitement and happiness. But I also remember, like, wait, I don't know exactly what to do in this situation. And what about the situations that I have no idea about and things like that? So, I will tell you, kids are resilient. You're going to do great as a dad. [laughter] SEAN: Yep. Yeah, definitely; I think I feel much more comfortable about the idea of being a parent now than I may have been in my 20s. But yeah, definitely, the idea of being responsible for and raising a whole other human is intimidating. [laughs] VICTORIA: I think the fact that you're worried about it is a good sign [laughs], right? SEAN: I hope so. [laughs] VICTORIA: Like, you understand that it's difficult. You're going to be a great parent just by the fact that you understand it's difficult and there's a lot of work ahead. So, I think I'm really excited for you. And I'm glad we get to talk to you at this point because probably when the episode comes out, you'll be able to listen to it with your new baby in hand. So... WILL: Good. Excited for it. [laughs] VICTORIA: Yeah, love that. Well, great. Well, why don't you tell me a little bit more about your other background, your professional background? What brought you to the role you're into today? SEAN: Yeah. Well, like we mentioned in the beginning; currently, I'm a Director of Engineering at Datadog. I run our computing cloud team. It's responsible for all of our Kubernetes infrastructure, as well as kind of all the tooling for dealing with the cloud providers that we run on and as well as kind of [inaudible 02:54] crypto infrastructure. Within Datadog, I've always been in management roles though I've kind of bounced around. I've been here for about five and a half years. So, before this, I was running a data store infrastructure team. Before that, when I first came in, I was running the APM product team, kind of bounced around between product and infra. And that's kind of, I guess, been a lot of the story of much of my career is wearing lots of different hats and kind of bouncing around between kind of infrastructure-focused roles and product-focused roles. So, before this, I was running the back-end engineering and DevOps teams at Bitly. So, I was there for about five and a half years, started there originally as a software engineer. And before that, a lot of early-stage startups and consulting doing whatever needed doing, and getting to learn about lots of different kind of industries and domains, which is always fun. [laughs] VICTORIA: That's great. So, you had that broad range of experience coming from all different areas of operations in my mind, which is, like, security and infrastructure, and now working your way into a management position. What was the challenge for you in making that switch from being such a strong individual contributor into an effective manager? SEAN: Sure. You know, I think certainly there is a lot of kind of the classic challenges of learning to let go but still staying involved, right? You know, as a manager, if you're working on critical path tasks hands-on yourself, that's probably not a good sign. [laughs] On the other hand, if you come, like, completely divorced from what your team is doing, especially as, like, a team lead level kind of manager, you know, that's not great either. So, figuring that balancing act definitely was a bit tricky for me. Similarly, I think time management and learning to accept that, especially as you get into, like, further steps along in your career that, like, you know, it's not even a question of keeping all the balls in the air, but more figuring out, like, what balls are made out of rubber and which ones are made out of glass, and maybe keeping those ones in the air. [laughs] So, just a lot of those kind of, like, you know, prioritization and figuring out, like, what the right level of involvement and context is, is definitely the eternal learning, I think, for me. [laughs] WILL: I remember whenever I was looking to change jobs, kind of my mindset was I wanted to work at thoughtbot more because of the values. And I wanted to learn and challenge myself and things like that. And it was so much more, but those were some of the main items that I wanted to experience in my next job. So, when you changed, and you went from Bitly to Datadog, what was that thing that made you say, I want to join Datadog? SEAN: Yeah, that was definitely an interesting job search and transition. So, at that point in time, I was living in New York. I was looking to stay in New York. So, I was kind of talking to a bunch of different companies. Both from personal experience and from talking to some friends, I wasn't super interested in looking at, like, working at mostly, like, the super big, you know, Google, Amazon, Meta type of companies. But also, having done, like, super early stage, you know, like, seed, series A type of companies, having played that game, I wasn't in a place in my life to do that either. [laughs] So, I was looking kind of in between that space. So, this would have been in 2018. So, I was talking to a lot of, like, series A and series B-type companies. And most of them were, like, real businesses. [laughs] Like, they may not be profitable yet, but, like, they had a very clear idea of how they would get there and, like, what that would look like. And so, that was pleasant compared to some past points in my career. But a lot of them, you know, I was effectively doing, like, automation of human processes, which is important. It has value. But it means that, like, realistically, this company will never have more than 50 servers. And when I worked at Bitly, I did have a taste for kind of working in those high-scale, high-availability type environments. So, Datadog initially was appealing because it kind of checked all those boxes of, you know, very high-scale problems, high availability needs, a very real business. [laughs] This is before Datadog had gone public. And then, as I started to talk to them and got to know them, I also really liked a lot of kind of the culture and all the people I interacted with. So, it became a very clear choice very quickly as that process moved along. VICTORIA: Yeah, a very real business. Datadog is one of the Gartner's Magic leaders for APM and observability in the industry. And I understand you're also one of the larger SaaS solutions running Kubernetes, right? SEAN: Yep. Yeah, at this point. Five years ago, that story was maybe a little bit different. [laughs] But yeah, no, no, we definitely have a pretty substantial Kubernetes suite that we run everything on top of. And we get the blessings and curses of we get some really cool problems to work on, but there's also a lot of problems that we come across that when we talk to kind of peers in the industry about kind of how they're trying to solve them, they don't have answers yet either. [laughs] So, we get to kind of figure out a lot of that kind of early discovery games. [laughs] VICTORIA: Yeah. I like how exciting and growing this industry is around kind of your compute and monitoring the performance of your applications. I wonder if you could kind of speak to our audience a little bit, who may not have a big technical background, about just why it's important to think about performance management and observability early on in your application. SEAN: There can be a few pieces there. One of the bigger ones, I think, is thinking about that kind of early and getting used to working with that kind of tooling early in a project or a product. I think it has an analogous effect to, like, thinking about, like, compounding interest in, like, a savings account or investing or something like that. In that, by having those tools available early on and having that visibility available early on, you can really both initially get a lot of value and just kind of understanding kind of what's happening with your system and very quickly troubleshoot problems and make sure things are running efficiently. But then that can help get to a place where you get to that, like, flywheel effect as you're kind of building your product of, as you're able to solve things quickly, that means you have more time to invest in other parts of the product, and so on and so forth. So, yeah, it's one of those things where kind of the earlier you can get started on that, the more that benefit gets amplified over time. And thankfully, with Datadog and other offerings like that now, you can get started with that relatively quickly, right? You're not having to necessarily make the choice of, like, oh, can I justify spending a week, a month, whatever, setting up all my own infrastructure for this, as opposed to, you know, plugging in a credit card and getting going right away? And not necessarily starting with everything from day zero but getting started with something and then being able to build on that definitely can be a worthwhile trade-off. [laughs] VICTORIA: That makes sense. And I'm curious your perspective, Will, as a developer on our Lift Off team, which is really about the services around that time when you want to start taking it really seriously. Like, you've built an app [laughs]. You know it's a viable product, and there's a market for it. And just, like, how you think about observability when you're doing your app building. WILL: The approach I really take is, like, what is the end goal? I'm currently on a project right now that we came in later than normal. We're trying to work through that. SEAN: I haven't come from, you know, that kind of consulting and professional services and support kind of place. I'm curious about, like, what, if any, differences or experiences do you have, like, in that context of, like, how do you use your observability tools or, like, what value they have as opposed to maybe more, like, straight product development? VICTORIA: Right. So, we recently partnered with, you know, our platform engineering team worked with the Lift Off team to create a product from scratch. And we built in observability tools with Prometheus, and Grafana, and Sentry so that the developers could instrument their app and build metrics around the performance in the way they expected the application to work so that when it goes live and meets real users, they're confident their users are able to actually use the app with a general acceptable level of latency and other things that are really key to the functionality of the app. And so, I think that the interesting part was, with the founders who don't have a background in IT operations or application monitoring and performance, it sort of makes sense. But it's still maybe a stretch to really see the full value of that, especially when you're just trying to get the app out the door. SEAN: Nice. VICTORIA: [chuckles] That's my answer. What kind of challenges do you have in your role managing this large team in a very competitive company, running a ton of Kubernetes clusters? [laughs] What's your challenges in your director of engineering role there? SEAN: You know, it's definitely a mix of kind of, like, technical or strategic challenges there, as well as people challenges. On the technical and strategic side, the interesting thing for our team right now is we're in the middle of a very interesting transition. Still, today, the teams at Datadog work in very much a 'You build it, you run it' kind of model, right? So, teams working on user-facing features in addition to, like, you know, designing those features and writing the code for that, they're responsible for deploying that code, offering the services that code runs within, being on call for that, so on and so forth. And until relatively recently, that ownership was very intense to the point where some teams maybe even had their own build and release processes. They were running their own data stores. And, like, that was very valuable for much of our history because that let those teams to be very agile and not have to worry about, like, convincing the entire company to change if they needed to make some kind of change. But as we've grown and as, you know, we've kind of taken on a lot more complexity in our environment from, you know, running across more providers, running across more regions, taking on more of regulatory concerns, to kind of the viability of running everything entirely [inaudible 12:13] for those product teams, it has become much harder. [laughs] You start to see a transition where previously the infrastructure teams were much more acting as subject matter experts and consultants to, now, we're increasingly offering more centralized platforms and offerings that can offload a lot of that kind of complexity and the stuff that isn't the core of what the other product-focused teams are trying to do. And so, as we go through that change, it means internally, a lot of our teams, and how we think about our roles, and how we go about doing our work, changes from, like, a very, you know, traditional reliability type one on one consultation and advising type role to effectively internal product development and internal platform development. So, that's a pretty big both mindset and practice shift. [laughs] So, that's one that we're kind of evolving our way through. And, of course, as what happens to kind of things, like, you still have to do all the old stuff while you're doing the new thing. [laughs] You don't get to just stop and just do the new thing. So, that's been an interesting kind of journey and one that we're always kind of figuring out as we go. That is a lot of kind of what I focus on. You know, people wise, you know, we have an interesting aim of...There's about 40 people in my org. They are spread across EMEA and North America with kind of, let's say, hubs in New York and Paris. So, with that, you know, you have a pretty significant time zone difference and some non-trivial cultural differences. [laughs] And so, you know, making sure that everybody is still able to kind of work efficiently, and communicate effectively, and collaborate effectively, while still working within all those constraints is always an ongoing challenge. [laughs] WILL: Yeah, you mentioned the different cultures, the different types of employees you have, and everyone is not the same. And there's so many cultures, so many...whatever people are going through, you as a leader, how do you navigate through that? Like, how do you constantly challenge yourself to be a better leader, knowing that not everyone can be managed the same way, that there's just so much diversity, probably even in your company among your employees? SEAN: I think a lot of it starts from a place of listening and paying attention to kind of just see where people are happy, where they feel like they have unmet needs. As an example, I moved from that last kind of data store-focused team to this computing cloud team last November. And so, as part of that move, probably for the first two or three months that I was in the role, I wasn't particularly driving much in the way of changes or setting much of a vision beyond what the team already had, just because as the new person coming in, it's usually kind of hard to have a lot of credibility and/or even just have the idea of, like, you know, like you're saying, like, what different people are looking for, or what they need, how they will respond best. I just spend a lot of time just talking to people, getting to know the team, building those relationships, getting to know those people, getting to know those groups. And then, from there, figuring out, you know, both where the kind of the high priority areas where change or investment is needed. But then also figuring out, yeah, kind of based on all that, what's the right way to go about that with the different groups? Because yeah, it's definitely isn't a one size fits all solution. But for me, it's always kind of starting from a place of listening and understanding and using that to develop, I guess, empathy for the people involved and understanding their perspectives and then figuring it out from there. I imagine–I don't know, but I imagine thoughtbot's a pretty distributed company. How do you all kind of think about some of those challenges of just navigating people coming from very different contexts? WILL: Yeah, I was going to ask Victoria that because Victoria is one of the leaders of our team here at thoughtbot. So, Victoria, what are your thoughts on it? VICTORIA: I have also one of the most distributed teams at thoughtbot because we do offer 24/7 support to some clients. And we cover time zones from the Pacific through West Africa. So, we just try to create a lot of opportunities for people to engage, whether it's remotely, especially offering a lot of virtual engagement and social engagement remotely. But then also, offering some in-person, whether it's a company in-person event, or encouraging people to engage with their local community and trying to find conferences, meetups, events that are relevant to us as a business, and a great opportunity for them to go and get some in-person interaction. So, I think then encouraging them to bring those ideas back. And, of course, thoughtbot is known for having just incredible remote async communication happening all the time. It's actually almost a little oppressive to keep up with, to be honest, [laughs] but I love it. There's just a lot of...there's GitHub issues. There's Slack communications. There's, like, open messages. And people are really encouraged to contribute to the conversation and bring up any idea and any problem they're having, and actively add to and modify our company policies and procedures so that we can do the best work with each other and know how to work with each other, and to put out the best products. I think that's key to having that conversation, especially for a company that's as big as Datadog and has so many clients, and has become such a leader in this metrics area. Being able to listen within your company and to your clients is probably going to set you up for success for any, like, tech leadership role [laughs]. I'm curious, what are you most excited about now that you've been in the role for a little while? You've heard from a lot of people within the company. Can you share anything in your direction in the next six months or a year that you're super excited about? SEAN: So, there's usually kind of probably two sides to that question of kind of, like, from a product and business standpoint and from an internal infrastructure standpoint, given that's where my day-to-day focus is. You know, on the product side, one thing that's been definitely interesting to watch in my time at Datadog is we really made the transition from kind of, like, a point solution type product to much more of a platform. For context, when I joined Datadog, I think logs had just gone GA, and APM was in beta, I think. So, we were just starting to figure out, like, how we expand beyond the initial infrastructure metrics product. And, obviously, at this point, now we have a whole, you know, suite of offerings. And so, kind of the opportunities that come with that, as far as both different spaces that we can jump into, and kind of the value that we can provide by having all those different capabilities play together really nicely, is exciting and is cool. Like, you know, one of the things that definitely lit an interesting light bulb for me was talking to some of the folks working on our newer security offerings and them talking about how, obviously, you want to meet, you know, your normal requirements in that space, so being able to provide the visibility that, you know, security teams are looking for there. But also, figuring out how we integrate that information into your developers' everyday experience so that they can have more ownership over that aspect of the systems that they're building and make everybody's job easier and more efficient, right? Instead of having, you know, the nightmare spreadsheet whenever a CVE comes out and having some poor TPM chase half the company to get their libraries updated, you know, being able to make that visible in the product where people are doing their work every day, you know, things like that are always kind of exciting opportunities. On the internal side, we're starting to think about, like, what the next major evolution of our kind of Kubernetes and kind of internal build and release tooling looks like. Today, a lot of kind of how teams interact with our Kubernetes infrastructure is still pretty raw. Like, they're working directly with specific Kubernetes clusters, and they are exposed to all the individual Kubernetes primitives, which is very powerful, but it's also a pretty steep learning curve. [laughs] And for a lot of teams, it ends up meaning that there's lots of, you know, knobs that they have to know what they do. But at the end of the day, like, they're not getting a lot of benefit from that, right? There's more just opportunity for them to accidentally put themselves in a bad place. So, we're starting to figure out, like, higher level abstractions and offerings to simplify how all that for teams look like. So, we're still a bit early days in working through that, but it's exciting to figure out, like, how we can still give teams kind of the flexibility and the power that they need but make those experiences much easier and not have to have them become Kubernetes experts just to deploy a simple process. And, yes, so there's some lots of fun challenges in there. [laughs] Mid-Roll Ad: When starting a new project, we understand that you want to make the right choices in technology, features, and investment but that you don't have all year to do extended research. In just a few weeks, thoughtbot's Discovery Sprints deliver a user-centered product journey, a clickable prototype or Proof of Concept, and key market insights from focused user research. We'll help you to identify the primary user flow, decide which framework should be used to bring it to life, and set a firm estimate on future development efforts. Maximize impact and minimize risk with a validated roadmap for your new product. Get started at: tbot.io/sprint. WILL: I have a question around your experience. So, you've been a developer around 20 years. What has been your experience over that 20 years or about of the growth in this market? Because I can only imagine what the market was, you know, in the early 2000s versus right now because I still remember...I still have nightmares of dial-up, dial tone tu-tu-tu. No one could call you, stuff like that. So, what has been your experience, just seeing the market grow from where you started? SEAN: Sure, yeah. I think probably a lot of the biggest pieces of it are just seeing the extent to which...I want to say it was Cory Doctorow, but I'm not sure who actually originally coined the idea, but the idea that, you know, software is eating the world, right? Like, eventually, to some degree, every company becomes a software company because software ends up becoming involved in pretty much everything that we as a society do. So, definitely seeing the progression of that, I think, over that time period has been striking, you know, especially when I was working in more consulting contexts and working more in companies and industries where like, you know, the tech isn't really the focus but just how much that, you know, from an engineering standpoint, relatively basic software can fundamentally transform those businesses and those industries has definitely been striking. And then, you know, I think from a more individual perspective, seeing as, you know, our tools become more sophisticated and easier to access, just seeing how much of a mixed bag that has become [laughs]. And just kind of the flavor of, like, you know, as more people have more powerful tools, that can be very enabling and gives voice to many people. But it also means that the ability of an individual or a small group to abuse those tools in ways that we're maybe not fully ready to deal with as a society has been interesting to see how that's played out. VICTORIA: Yeah. I think you bring up some really great points there. And it reminds me of one of my favorite quotes is that, like, the future is here—it's just not evenly distributed. [laughs] And so, in some communities that I go to, everyone knows what Kubernetes is; everyone knows what DevOps is. It's kind of, like, old news. [laughs] And then, some people are still just like, "What?" [laughs]. It's interesting to think about that and think about the implications on your last point about just how dangerous the supply chain is in building software and how some of these abstractions and some of these things that just make it so easy to build applications can also introduce a good amount of risk into your product and into your business, right? So, I wonder if you can tell me a little bit more about your perspective on security and DevSecOps and what founders might be thinking about to protect their IP and their client's data in their product. SEAN: That one is interesting and tricky in that, like, we're in a little bit of, like, things are better and worse than they ever have been before [laughs], right? Like, there is a certain level of, I think, baseline knowledge and competency that I think company leaders really just have to have now, part of, like, kind of table stakes, which can definitely be challenging, and that, like, that probably was much less, if even the case, you know, 10-20 years ago in a lot of businesses. As an example, right? Like, obviously, like if it's a tech-focused company, like, that can be a thing. But, like, if you're running a plumbing business with a dozen trucks, let's say, like, 20 years ago, you probably didn't have to think that much about data privacy and data security. But, like, now you're almost certainly using some kind of electronic system to kind of manage all your customer records, and your job scheduling, and all that kind of stuff. So, like, now, that is something that's a primary concern for your business. On the flip side of that, I think there is much better resources, and tools, and practices available out there. I forget the name of the tool now. But I remember recently, I was working with a company on the ISO long string of numbers certifications that you tend to want to do when you're handling certain types of data. There was a tool they were able to work with that basically made it super easy for them to, like, gather all the evidence for that and whatnot, in a way where, like, you know, in the past, you probably just had to hire a compliance person to know what you had to do and how to present that. But now, you could just sign up for a SaaS product. And, like, obviously, it can't just do it for you. Like, it's about making your policies. But it still gave you enough support where if you're, like, bootstrapping a company, like, yeah, you probably don't need to hire a specialist to [inaudible 25:08], which is a huge deal. You know, similarly, a lot of things come much safer by default. When you think about, like, the security on something like an iPhone, or an iPad, or an Android device, like, just out of the box, that's light-years ahead of whatever Windows PC you were going to buy ten years ago. [laughs] And so, that kind of gives you a much better starting place. But some interesting challenges that come with that, right? And that we do now, literally, every person on the planet is walking around with microphones and cameras and all kinds of sensors on them. It's an interesting balance, I think. Similarly, I'm curious how you all think about kind of talking with your clients and your customers about this because I'm sure you all have a non-trivial amount of education to do there. [laughs] VICTORIA: Yeah, definitely. And I think a lot of it comes in when we have clients who are very early founders, and they don't have a CTO or a technical side of their business, and advising them on exactly what you laid out. Like, here's the baseline. Like, here's where you want to start from. We generally use the CIS controls, this internet for internet security. It puts out a really great tool set, too, for some things you were mentioning earlier. Let's figure out how to report and how to identify all of the things that we're supposed to be doing. It could be overwhelming. It's a lot. Like, in my past role as VP of Operations at Pluribus Digital, I was responsible for helping our team continue to meet our...we had three different ISO long number certifications [laughs]. We did a CMMI as well, which has come up a few times in my career. And they give you about a couple of hundreds of controls that you're supposed to meet. It's in very kind of, like, legalese that you have to understand. And that's a pretty big gap to solve for someone who doesn't have the technical experience to start. Like, what you were saying, too, that it's more dangerous and more safer than it has been before. So, if we make choices for those types of clients in very safe, trusted platforms, then they're going to be set up for success and not have to worry about those details as much. And we kind of go forward with confidence that if they are going to have to come up against compliance requirements or local state regulations, which are also...there's more of those every day, and a lot of liability you can face as a founder, especially if you're dealing with, like, health or financial data, in the state of California, for example. [laughs] It puts you at a really big amount of liability that I don't think we've really seen the impact of how bad it can be and will be coming out in the next couple of years now that that law has passed. But that's kind of the approach that we like to think. It's like, you know, there's a minimum we can do that will mitigate a lot of this risk [laughs], so let's do that. Let's do the basics and start off on the right foot here. SEAN: Yeah, no, that makes sense. Yeah, it's definitely something I've come to appreciate, especially doing work in regulated spaces is, when you do reach the point where you do need to have some kind of subject matter expert involved, whether it's somebody in-house or a consultant or an advisor, I've definitely learned that usually, like, the better ones are going to talk to you in terms of, like, what are the risk trade-offs you're making here? And what are the principles that all these detailed controls or guidelines are looking to get at? As opposed to just, like, walking you through the box-checking exercise. In my experience, a really good lawyer or somebody who will talk to you about risk versus just saying whether or not you can do something. [laughs] It has a very similar feeling in my experience. VICTORIA: Yeah, it's a lot about risk. And someone's got to be able to make those trade-off decisions, and it can be really tough, but it's doable. And I think it shouldn't scare people away. And there's lots of people, lots of ways to do it also, which is exciting. So, I think it's a good space to be in and to see it growing and pay attention to. [laughs] It's fun for me to be in a different place where we're given the opportunity to kind of educate or bring people along in a security journey versus having it be a top-down executive-level decision that we need to meet this particular security standard, and that's the way it's going to be. [laughs] Yeah, so that I appreciate. Is there anything that really surprised you in your conversations with Datadog or with other companies around these types of services for, like, platform engineering and observability? Is there anything that surprised you in the discovery process with potential clients for your products? SEAN: I think one of the biggest surprises, or maybe not a surprise but an interesting thing is, to what extent, you know, for us, I don't know if this is still the case, but I think in many places, like, we're probably more often competing against nothing than a competing product. And by that, I mean, especially as you look at some of our more sophisticated products like APM, or profiling, it's not so much that somebody has an existing tool that we're looking to replace; it's much more than this is just not a thing they do today. [laughs] And so, that leads to a very interestingly different conversation that I think, you know, relates to some of what we were saying with security where, you know, I think a non-trivial part of what our sales and technical enablement folks do is effectively education for our customers and potential customers of why they might want to use tools like this, and what kind of value they could get from them. The other one that's been interesting is to see how different customers' attitudes around tools like this have evolved as they've gone through their own migration to the cloud journeys, right? We definitely have a lot of customers that, I think, you know, 5, 10 years ago, when they were running entirely on-prem, using a SaaS product would have been a complete non-starter. But as they move into the cloud, both as they kind of generally get more comfortable with the idea of delegating some of these responsibilities, as well as they start to understand kind of, like, the complexity of the tooling required as their environment gets more complex, the value of a dedicated product like something like Datadog as opposed to, you know, what you kind of get out of the box with the cloud providers or what you might kind of build on your own has definitely been interesting. [laughs] VICTORIA: Is there a common point that you find companies get to where they're like, all right, now, I really need something? Can you say a little bit more about, like, what might be going on in the organization at that time? SEAN: You know, I think there could be a few different paths that companies take to it. Some of it, I think, can come from a place of...I think, especially for kind of larger enterprise customers making a transition like that, they tend to be taking a more holistic look at kind of their distinct practices and seeing what they want to change as they move into the cloud. And often, kind of finding an observability vendor is just kind of, like, part of the checklist there. [laughs] Not to dismiss it, but just, like, that seems to be certainly one path into it. I think for smaller customers, or maybe customers that are more, say, cloud-native, I think it can generally be a mix of either hitting a point where they're kind of done with the overhead of trying to maintain their own infrastructure of, like, trying to run their own ELK stack and, like, build all the tooling on top of that, and keeping that up and running, and the costs associated with that. Or, it's potentially seeing the sophistication of tooling that, like, a dedicated provider can afford to invest that realistically, you're never going to invest in on your own, right? Like, stuff like live profiling is deeply non-trivial to implement. [laughs] I think especially once people get some experience with a product like Datadog, they start thinking about, like, okay, how much value are we actually getting out of doing this on our own versus using a more off-the-shelf product? I don't know if we've been doing it post-COVID. But I remember pre-COVID...so Datadog has a huge presence at re:Invent and the other similar major cloud provider things. And I remember for a few years at re:Invent, you know, we obviously had, like, the giant 60x60 booth in the main expo floor, where we were giving demos and whatnot. But they also would have...AWS would do this, like, I think they call it the interactive hall where companies could have, like, more hands-on booths, and you had, like, a whole spectrum of stuff. And there were, like, some companies just had, like, random, like, RC car setups or Lego tables, just stuff like that. But we actually did a setup where there was a booth of, I think, like, six stations. People would step up, and they would race each other to solve a kind of faux incident using Datadog. The person who would solve it first would win a switch. I think we gave away a huge number of switches as part of that, which at first I was like, wow, that seems expensive. [laughs] But then later, you know, I was mostly working the main booth at that re:Invent. So by the, like, Wednesday and Thursday of re:Invent, I'd have people walking up to the main booth being like, "Hey, so I did the thing over at the Aria. And now I installed Datadog in prod last night, and I have questions." I was like, oh, okay. [laughs] So, I think just, like, the power of, like, getting that hands-on time, and using some of the tools, and understanding the difference there is what kind of gets a lot of people to kind of change their mind there. [laughs] VICTORIA: You'd get me with a switch right now. I kind of want one, but I don't want to buy one. SEAN: [laughs] WILL: Same. [laughs] VICTORIA: Because I know it'll take up all my time. SEAN: Uh-huh. That's fair. [laughs] VICTORIA: But I will try to win one at a conference for sure. I think that's true. And it makes sense that because your product is often going with clients that don't have these practices yet, that as soon as you give them exposure to it, you see what you can do with it, that becomes a very powerful selling tool. Like, this is the value of the product, right? [laughs] SEAN: Yeah, there is also something we see, and I think most of our kind of peers in the industry see is, very often, people come in initially looking for and using a single product, like, you know, infrastructure, metrics, or logs. And then, as they see that and see where that touches other parts of the product, their usage kind of grows and expands over time. I would obviously defer to our earnings calls for exact numbers. But generally speaking, more or less kind of half of our new business is usually expanded usage from existing customers as opposed to new customers coming in. So, I think there's also a lot of just kind of organic discovery and building of trust over time that happens there, which is interesting. VICTORIA: One of my favorite points to make, which is that SRE sounds very technical and, like, this really extreme thing. But to make it sound a little more easier, is that it is how you validate that the user experience is what you expect it to be. [laughs] I wonder if you have any other thoughts you want to add to that, just about, like, SRE and user experience and how that all connects for real business value. SEAN: I think a lot of places where, you know, we've both seen internally ourselves and with customers is, you know; obviously, different companies operate in different models and whatnot. Where people have seen success is where, you know, people with formal SRE titles or team names can kind of be coming in as just kind of another perspective on the various kind of things that teams are trying to drive towards. The places reliability is successfully integrated is when they can kind of make that connection that you were talking about. It's, like, obviously, everybody should go take their vitamins, but, like, what actual value is coming from this, right? Nobody wants to have outages, but, like, to do the work to invest in reliability, often, like, it can be hard to say, like, okay, what's the actual difference between before and after? Having people who can help draw those connections and help weigh those trade-offs, I think, can definitely be super helpful. But it is generally much more effective, I think, in my experience, when it does come from that perspective of, like, what value are we providing? What are we trading off as part of this? As opposed to just, well, you should do this because it's the right thing to do, kind of a moralistic perspective. [laughs] But, I don't know, how do you all kind of end up having that conversation with your customers and clients? VICTORIA: That's exactly it. That's the same. It's starting that conversation about, like, well, what happens when this experience fails, which designers don't necessarily think about? What's, like, the most important paths that you want a user to take through your application that we want to make sure works? And when you tie it all back there, I think then when the developers are understanding how to create those metrics and how to understand user behavior, that's when it becomes really powerful so that they're getting the feedback they need to do the right code, and to make the right changes. Versus just going purely on interviews [laughs] and not necessarily, like, understanding behavior within the app. I think that starts to make it clear. SEAN: Part of that, I think that's been an interesting experience for us is also just some of the conversation there around, like, almost the flip side of, when are you investing potentially too much in that, right? Because, like, especially after a certain point, the cost of additional gains grows exponentially, right? Each one of those nines gets more and more expensive. [laughs] And so, having the conversation of, like, do you actually need that level of reliability, or, like, is that...just like what you're saying. Like, you know, kind of giving some of that context and that pressure of, like, yeah, we can do that, but, like, this is what it's going to cost. Is that what you want to be spending your money on? Kind of things can also be an interesting part of that conversation. VICTORIA: That's a really good point that, you know, you can set goals that are too high [laughs] and not necessary. So, it does take a lot of just understanding about your data and your users to know what are acceptable levels of error. I think the other thing that you can think about, too, like, what could happen, and we've seen it happen with some startups, is that, like, something within the app is deeply broken, but you don't know. And you just think that you're not having user engagement, or that users are signing off, or, like, you know, not opening the app after the first day. So, if you don't have any way to really actively monitor it and you're not spending money on an active development team, you can have some method to just be confident that the app is working and to make your life less miserable [laughs] when you have a smaller team supporting, especially if you're trying to really minimize your overhead for running an application. SEAN: Yep. It's surprisingly hard to know when things are broken sometimes. [laughs] VICTORIA: Yes, and then extremely painful when you find out later [laughs] because that's when it's become a real problem, yeah. I wonder, are there any other questions you have for me or for Will? SEAN: How big of an organization is thoughtbot at this time? VICTORIA: Close to 75 people? We're, yeah, between the Americas and the [inaudible 38:31] region. So, that's where we're at right now, yeah. SEAN: Nice. At that size, like, and I guess it sounds like you're pretty heavily distributed, so maybe some of this doesn't happen as much, but, like, one of the things I definitely remember...so, when I joined Datadog, it was probably about 500 people. And I think we're just under 5,000 now. There are definitely some points where there were surprisingly, like, physical aspects to where it became a problem of just, like, where certain teams didn't fit into a room anymore. [laughs] Like, I had surprise in the changes in that, like, dynamic. I'm curious if you've all kind of run into any kind of, I don't know, similar interesting thresholds or changes as you've kind of grown and evolved. WILL: I will say this, we're about 100, I think, Victoria. VICTORIA: Oh, okay, we're 100 people. I think, you know, I've only been at thoughtbot for just over a year now. And my understanding of the history is that when we were growing before COVID, there's always been a very intentionality about growth. And there was never a goal to get to a huge size or to really grow beyond just, like, a steady, profitable growth. [laughs] So, when we were growing in person, there were new offices being stood up. So, we, you know, maybe started out of New York and Boston and grew to London. And then, there was Texas, and I think a few other ones that started. Then with COVID, the decision was made to go fully remote, and I think that's opened up a lot of opportunities for us. And from my understanding in the previous and the past, is that there's a big shift to be fully remote. It's been challenging, where I think a lot of people miss some of the in-person days, and I'm sure it's definitely lonely working remote all day by yourself. So, you have to really proactively find opportunities to see other people and to engage remotely. But I think also, we hire people from so many different places and so much different talent, and then, also, you know, better informs our products and creates a different, you know, energy within the company that I think is really fun and really exciting for us now. WILL: Yeah, I would agree with that because I think the team that I'm on has about 26 people on the Lift Off team. And we're constantly thinking of new ways to get everyone involved. But as a developer, me myself being remote, I love talking to people. So, I try to be proactive and, like, connect with the people I'm working with and say, "Hey, how can I help you with this?" Let's jump in this room and just work together, chat together, and stuff like that, so... And it has opened the door because the current project that I'm on, I would never have had an opportunity to be on. I think it's based in Utah, and I'm in South Florida. So, there's just no way if we weren't remote that I'd been a part of it. So... SEAN: Nice. And I can definitely appreciate that. I remember when we first started COVID lockdown; I think, at that point, Datadog was probably about...Datadog engineering was probably about 30% remote, so certainly a significant remote contingent but mixed. But my teams were pretty remote-heavy. So, in some ways, not a lot changed, right? Like, I think more people on my team were, like, who are all these other people in my house now instead of [laughs], I mean, just transition from being in an office to working from home. But I do remember maybe, like, about six months in, starting to feel, yeah, some of the loneliness and the separation of just, like, not being able to do, like, quarterly team meetups or stuff like that. So, it's definitely been an interesting transition. For context, at this point, we kind of have a hybrid setup. So, we still have a significant kind of full-time remote contingent, and then four people who are in office locations, people joining for about three days a week in office. So, it's definitely an interesting transition and an interesting new world. [laughs] VICTORIA: Yeah. And I'm curious how you find the tech scene in Denver versus New York or if you're engaging in the community in the same way since you moved. SEAN: There definitely is some weirdness since COVID started [laughs] broadly [inaudible 42:21]. So, I moved here in 2020. But I'd been coming out here a lot before that. I helped to build an office here with Bitly. So, I was probably coming out once a quarter for a bunch of years. So, one parallel that is finally similar is, like, in both places, it is a small world. It doesn't take that long for you to be in that community, in either of those communities and start running into the same people in different places. So, that's always been [inaudible 42:42] and especially in New York. New York is a city of what? 8, 9 million people? But once you're working in New York tech for a few years and you go into some meetups, you start running into the same people, and you have one or two degrees [inaudible 42:52] to a lot of people, surprisingly quickly. [laughs] So, that's similar. But Denver probably is interesting in that it's definitely transplant-heavy. I think Denver tends to check the box for, like, it was part of why Bitly opened an office here and, to a degree, Datadog as well. I think of like, you know, if you're trying to recruit people and you previously were mostly recruiting in, like, New York or Silicon Valley; if you're based in New York, and you're trying to recruit somebody from Silicon Valley, and part of why they're looking for a new gig is they're burned out on Silicon Valley, asking them to move to New York probably isn't all that attractive. [laughs] But Denver is different enough in that in terms of kind of being a smaller city, easier access to nature, a bunch of that kind of stuff, that a lot of times we were able to attract talent that was a much more appealing prospect. [laughs] You'll see an interesting mix of industries here. One of the bigger things here is there's a very large government and DOD presence here. I remember I went to DevOps Days Rockies, I think, a few years ago. There was a Birds of a Feather session on trying to apply DevOps principles in air-gapped networks. That was a very interesting conversation. [laughs] VICTORIA: That's interesting. I would not have thought Colorado would be a big hub for federal technology. But there you go, it's everywhere. WILL: Yeah. SEAN: Denver metro, I think, is actually the largest presence of federal offices outside of the D.C. metro. VICTORIA: That's interesting. Yeah, I'm used to trying to recruit people into D.C., and so, it's definitely not the good weather, [laughs], not a good argument in my favor. So, I just wanted to give you a final chance. Anything else you'd like to promote, Sean? SEAN: Generally, not super active on social things these days, but you can find whatever I have done at seanoc.com, S-E–A-N-O-C.com for the spelling. And otherwise, if you're interested in some engineering content and hearing about some of those kind of bleeding edge challenges that I was mentioning before, I would definitely check out the Datadog engineering blog. There's lots of kind of really interesting content there on both, you know, things we've learned from incidents and interesting projects that we're working on. There's all kinds of fun stuff there. VICTORIA: That makes me think I should have asked you more questions, Sean. [laughs] No, I think it was great. Thank you so much for joining us today. I'll definitely check all that stuff out. You can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. You can find me on Twitter @victori_ousg. WILL: And you can find me on Twitter @will23larry. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening. See you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot, your expert strategy, design, development, and product management partner. We bring digital products from idea to success and teach you how because we care. Learn more at thoughtbot.com. Special Guest: Sean O'Connor.

Sean: How does company culture play into this? Alicia Have you seen company cultures do a 180-degree turn because you've accomplished taking them through this entire process? 00:00:13 Alicia: What I'll say is this I don't know if I've seen that type of a transformation, Sean, But what I do notice is a greater degree of transparency that may not have existed before and sometimes. It's not that people don't want to share. They don't know how to share or they may not understand the tools that are at their disposal to enable them to share information. I'll give you an example. With my team, we are fully remote. We're in three different countries. So how on earth can we be transparent? We have to rely on digital technologies. And one of the things that we use is this wonderful tool called notion. Are you familiar with notion? I see your smile already. 00:01:11 Sean: I'm a software guy. I love, you know, if I could use a lot of software, I'll use a lot of software 00:01:18 Alicia: A lot of people still haven't heard of Notion. They've heard of Clickup or Monday.com, but they aren't aware of notion but notion has been such a game changer for us, Sean because, as you know, it's such a visual tool and I really cannot imagine how we would be able to operate.  And this is not just, you know, I'm not getting paid by notion. You're not getting paid by the notion to say this. But truly, I cannot imagine how we would be able to function as a team cohesively if it were not for that tool, because we put everything in there. We have our processes in there. We have our production schedules in there, we have directories, we have us, we kind of use it as a CRM, our customer relationship management tool we use, we use it as a project management tool so we can track all of the different things we're working on. It has been such a game-changer for us. But it's also by leveraging that technology, it has enhanced our ability to be transparent, which ties back into your question about company culture for us. You know, I'll just use my own company as an example. Transparency is a huge part of our company culture. The other quality or element that I've noticed within my own company as well as with the clients that I work with, is that educational piece. Believe it or not, most people do love to learn. We think that as human beings, we're so wired to do things a certain way and only that way. And we resist change and it is true. We are human beings, we are resistant to change. But it all depends on how that change is being introduced to us. - - - Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack Leadership Stack Merch: https://leadershipstack.com/shop/ - - - Alicia Butler Pierre Website: https://www.eqbsystems.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliciabutlerpierre Twitter: https://twitter.com/alicia_b_pierre Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Alicia_B_Pierre

Sean: How do you adjust now that you know that? Okay, how she understands things and how I understand things and how she and I communicate are very, very different. She is an empath. She understands how you feel before you even say anything. Right? Just by reading your body language as you tell me straight to my face and I can't even feel anything. Right. So how do you adjust or how do you improve if that is the case? Michael: So for those empathetic people who are already emotional, so all of the emotion on earth is causing them to be even more emotional. And then even for the objective, task-oriented folks like Sean or myself, even the emotions are coming to the surface for us unexpectedly. Michael: And so it's partially this process of finding a middle ground with our partners or work colleagues, but it's also self-discovery for us because Jordan Peterson in his, you know, blogs and in his podcasts and all of these things, he talks about how that in order for us to be really. Formidable or for people to look up to us or for people to celebrate us. Michael: We need to be able to do a wide variety of things, but we need to be able to control how it is that we behave in certain situations. So what he's saying is, learn about yourself in a variety of ways and then apply that in a very controlled manner so that you become very powerful, that you become very formidable, that people really look up to you in a meaningful way. So part of it, Sean, is just being able to have the experience that doesn't make us weak. It actually makes us, over time, stronger. - - - Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack Leadership Stack Merch: https://leadershipstack.com/shop/ - - - Michael Seaver Website: https://michaelsseaver.com Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelsseaver Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaelsseaver/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MichaelScottSeaver/

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“How do we all become the best we can be and reach our potential as a team? It's a fascinating question, because it is so complex, and there's no simple answer,” shares Sean Murray, CEO of RealTime Performance, Inc. and author of If Gold Is Our Destiny: How a Team of Mavericks Came Together for Olympic Glory. Sean's professional background in leadership and organization development may not seem like the most obvious path toward writing a sports book, but when he was reading The Boys In The Boat about the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Sean realized that there was a lot to learn about leadership and teamwork from sports. This led Sean to decide to write his book based on the story of the 1984 US Men's Olympic team.  The title If Gold Is Our Destiny speaks volumes about what it really means to dedicate your life to being part of a team. It requires sacrifice, putting the team first, and really understanding your role in how it will all come together. It means always listening to your coach and growing into better individuals while growing as a team. This is true of both sports and business because in the business world, we are constantly working in teams. Leaders are always looking for ways to propel their teams forward and to strengthen their team dynamics. By looking at this story of a team that began in struggle, and seeing how they managed to work through their issues to become one of the best sports teams in the world, you can learn a lot about leadership and teamwork.  In both sports and business, we are often working together in teams to achieve a common goal. Individuals must put the team above themselves, fully respect the leader or coach, and be willing to sacrifice when necessary for the greater good of the whole. When we work together, we can overcome so many more obstacles than we ever could alone. Learning how to lead a successful team is critical to having a successful business.  Quotes: “If gold is our destiny, you have to work hard. If gold is your destiny you have to sacrifice, you have to put the success of the team above yourself. You've got to really listen to your coach. You've got to understand what your role is.” (6:54-7:06 | Sean) “How do we all become the best we can be and reach our potential as a team? It's a fascinating question, because it is so complex, and there's no simple answer.” (8:49-9:00 | Sean) “Of course, there's the individuals that make up the team, but it's really about the dynamics, the culture, the relationships, what you need to do as individuals to come together to reach your potential. It's one of the most difficult things we do. But it's one of the most prevalent in business today is we form teams all the time.” (11:41-12:10 | Sean) “In the larger sense, it's a story about how individuals come together to be a team and be collectively better than they can be individually to achieve something that they couldn't achieve alone. And to me, that's so important to being successful in life and business. And any way that we can get better at that and come at it from a different angle or try different techniques or tools, I think is well worth our time.” (39:22-39:55 | Sean) Links: Mentioned in this episode: Learn more about Mike Horne on Linkedin Email Mike at mike@mike-horne.com Find more about Leading People and Culture with Authenticity    Learn more about Sean Murray: Website: realtimeperformance.com   Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Sean: How do you know if you have it though? Naresh: I'll give you some signs. When other people want you, that's leverage when other people are recruiting. Hey, I need you to do this project. I'm on this tight deadline. I'll give you an example because my wife is a doctor here in the United States. And as I mentioned earlier, they just don't really understand these concepts of leverage and focus and all these different things. During the pandemic, the peak of the pandemic, the doctors who were working on SARS-CoV-2 patients, held a lot of leverage and they didn't utilize it. I think a business guy who was a doctor would have gone in and said, Hey, yeah, I'll work on these patients, I'll treat these patients, but you're going to have to pay me two times more at three times more or, you know, start your own practice immediately and say, Hey, I'm just going to go out on my own and I'll be able to service all these patients through this practice, right as an independent contractor or whatever. And this is a deal that we're going to do. And they could do that because they needed medical care. They needed as many workers as possible, at least here in the United States. They were flying in nurses and doctors and all sorts of people because there were so short-staffed. So in any environment where there's short staffing, that's an opportunity for leverage because it's like, Oh, now I'm valuable because they need me to work. And none of these people went to their bosses and said, give me a raise or I'll work. I'll put in this much time right now and see all these patients, but give me an entire month off later this year or sometime next year, this to me, is like a frequent negotiation with my clients. It's okay. Yeah, we'll do this. It's not just pay, but if you want us to visit you on-site, you got to fly us on this airline. You got to put us up in this hotel and you know, you've got to pay for all these different things. There was no leverage. There was no negotiation because you have to feel valued yourself. If you don't value yourself if you don't take yourself seriously if you don't respect yourself, then why should anyone else? So leverage first is going to come from you. And the way that you build that leverage up in your own head is by simply knowing that you're doing good work, that you offer good service, and that your work, your service, your product is actually of great value, and that the other party won't be able to survive without it. Sean: Yeah, that's when you got full leverage. - - - Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack Leadership Stack Merch: https://leadershipstack.com/shop/ - - - Naresh Vissa Website: http://nareshvissa.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nareshvissa Books: https://www.amazon.com/Naresh-Vissa/e/B00G5IU3C6%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Sean: How about your podcast? Can you tell us a little bit more about your podcast? So you started it during a time when you were in a transition in your life, I'd say a major transition because you finally decided that, okay, I probably don't need to work. What do I want to do? Right. And that's what you mentioned earlier. So why did you start that podcast? What's it for? What's your main purpose and who are going to be the people who should listen to your podcast? Yasi: Yeah, as you said at that time, I was questioning myself, what would I do if money's not a problem? And I have all the time in the world, right? Actually, even years before, I wanted to start a YouTube channel, because when I was living, you know, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sweden, and Singapore, I find it so many different experiences. I want to record it but I will always be very camera shy. And it really took a lot of time to edit, so I never really get it started. And I'm an avid podcast listener, so I listen to a lot of podcasts. Then at that time, just what came to my mind is like, Yeah, why not start a podcast instead of a YouTube channel? I thought it was a great idea because looking back, you see a lot of things happening in my life not just one moment, like, Oh, let's do this. It's a lot of things that happened in the past. So the dots started to connect. So in the past few years before COVID, I was traveling all around the world for different conferences. I met tons of people. I met hundreds of entrepreneurs, and I had great conversations with them, with them. I talked to them, I think, similar to how I interview people because I ask about their personal story, how they started with their business, you know, that I learned from them. So that's one thing. So I can do this. I feel comfortable. I enjoy doing this. And then secondly, I read a lot of personal development books in 2016 when I was working in Singapore, I worked in the other. The office is in a factory side, it's like almost close to Malaysia. So it took me one and a half hours every day on the road. So I was having my boss noise cancellation. I listen to audiobooks. I probably consume more than 100 books in that year. Then I thought I never had a mentor. Right? When you want to grow and learn something, you need to have a mentor in life. And it's not so easy for everyone to find a mentor in life because you need to have this vibe, and connection with them. But I learned so much from all the books and podcasts and I thought, okay, let me create this channel to extract all the knowledge and experience from my guests and then to help my audience so that they can learn from other people's experiences, even though they don't have a mentor or even though they don't know my guest in person, but they can learn from them. So that's the starting point of how I design this podcast interview style and focus on the topics that I am interested in. Because I thought if I'm interested in career, entrepreneurship, and money, there must be tons of people out there like I would be interested in these topics. And my initial idea is really like I create something that I enjoy doing. Then I would attract the right audience that will think of the same thing that I do. So that's how I started this podcast this way and this format and this content. - - - Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack Leadership Stack Merch: https://leadershipstack.com/shop/

Following Jesus has never been harder. In a culture that glamorizes sex, chases fame, and shames those who dont fall in line, it takes a rebel to be a Christian.In today's interview, Sean McDowell sits down with host Jerrad Lopes to encourage and inspire a generation of rebels who will dare to stand up to the madness in a just and loving manner.“We have to be living in a way that our kids find compelling” -Sean McDowellDo you think your kids think “I want what my parents have!”? Why or why not? And what can you do to enhance that further or change in your life to start that?Are you having Intentional spiritual conversations with your kids? How can you start or what are you doing that is working/not working?Are you willing to ask your kids the tough questions, and to listen well to what they are thinking?Do you listen to what your kids are talking about so that you can start conversation with them or do you only wait till they bring things up or talk to them about what you want?Are you prone to lecture rather than start conversations with your kids? How can you flip this habit to be more intentional about asking your kids questions?Do your kids know you love them, are on their team and are for them, and working for their good? How do they know? If not, how can you make this a priority for your kid to know this fully?Are you thinking Christianly or Biblically? Is there is a difference to you? How can you apply this concept in your daily life?Questions from Jerrad & Sean:What is the most effective way to pass on faith to your kids? (Sean)How do you start to have tough conversations with your kids? Do you initiate? Do they bring it up to you?(Jerrad)How do you measure success as a dad? When will you know that you did a good job? Or what are you aiming for? (Jerrad)Find a Dad Tired community near you: https://www.dadtired.com/meetup.htmlJoin the online Dad Tired community: https://connect.dadtired.comDo you believe in the Dad Tired ministry? Partner with us here: https://www.dadtired.com/give.html

Sean: With your 130 employees. You've got leaders there, some senior, some associates. I wonder, how do you try to make sure that they're growing, that they're learning new things, or for your leaders at least, how are you encouraging them to grow in their leadership? Read some leadership books, listen to these podcasts, or get some mentors to help them out. Rob: Yeah, that's a really good point. There is a book that I've been sending to some of the leaders, which is called How to Be a Great Manager. Very simple title, and it's part of a system called EOS, which is 'entrepreneurs operating system.' And so we're using that in our business, and that's like a system or a structure for your business. It's like an operating manual because what happens is you just run your business anyway or anyhow, there's no set way of doing things. Then that lack of structure is not very effective. So this EOS provides that structure and it provides like a meeting structure, like how should you run meetings? It provides a structure for how you're setting goals, how you sitting these when they call them rock tasks, but they're basically goals that you're setting for the year, for the quarter. You're doing this in a specific way and then you're training your team on how to do that as well. So you implement that same structure throughout the company and that becomes a very powerful way to run your business. So that works for any kind of business as well, not just tech businesses. Sean: Got it. And is this a resource that people could get online? Rob: Yeah, you can actually research EOS. It's something you don't necessarily need to pay for. You can just get one of the books and do it. They also have facilitators who help you out to implement it for yourself, but it's something you can just read about and do yourself. It's not that complicated, but it's having a way of doing things that's important, right? And then training your team in and what is the way that we do things and then having a certain structure around your company, like meeting rhythm is really important, having certain types of meetings that you do regularly and how are those meetings run? How do you make them efficient? That's really powerful. And then how do you delegate the responsibility in your company? Who's accountable for each area? That's part of this structure is having not just an org chart where you see like a traditional chart, but it actually shows you each person as they're accountable for what are they doing and making sure that each area of the company is handled by someone. Sean: How well were you influenced by this book? How much of it did you adopt Time Doctor, and how you're leading and managing the company? Rob: I'd say we're probably at about 70%, 60%, 70% adopting what they're doing, or I'd like to do it a bit more. I'd like to get it more deeply implemented in the company. - - - Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: How do you identify who's going to be a good leader or who's your potential leader? How do you process these things? Because we make wrong decisions about putting some people in the leadership role, and all they want is the title, the perks, right? And not about serving others. How do you know who's in it because they want to serve other people? Michael: Yeah, that's a great question. Mean Shawn, our company, we're not involved in that process. We get to an organization after a leader's already in place. Now, do I have my opinions? Can I tell pretty early on if I think somebody has what it takes to be a dynamic leader? So a transformative leader? Yeah, absolutely. But our team is not involved in that process. I will say that one of the things we work with teams on in rebel culture is around hiring and what's your hiring process looks like? All of this stuff goes back to culture. You're hiring process has to resemble. It has to mirror what it looks like to actually work there. So if your organization values data, your hiring process has to be rife with exercises where the potential leader is using data. If you value feedback, you've got to provide the person with feedback and you're taking notes on meticulous notes on how well this person responds to that feedback. I worked with an organization a few years back that valued feedback and coaching above all else. We did some interviews. I helped them design some of their materials and we did some interviews. And it was actually a really interesting process because folks would present potential employees, present performance tasks for us, and then we'd give them feedback. The feedback and their response to it held more weight than the performance task. Everybody was smart. Everybody did a good job in their performance task. What was more valuable was whether folks were nodding heads when we were giving them feedback. Were they taking notes? Were they asking follow-up questions with a reflection on their own work? The folks who did move much higher and much further in the process than the folks who didn't and acted as if that process, part of the process was a formality. So to answer your question, organizations have to hire people. Are there going to be some folks who just want the title, that slipped through? Absolutely. I've seen it. I know you have as well. The hiring process has to mirror the culture and you'll weed folks out right away, or at least many folks. And just recently, somebody, a team we were working with got a quote-unquote rock star to interview for them. They realized right away that this person was more interested in money than doing a great job. And money's great. I'm not knocking money, but this person was very focused on the dollars and cents, and this organization wanted somebody who is more focused on their product and their end results, and they didn't hire the person. And the person was shocked because of their reputation and in that industry, it didn't align with the organization's values and beliefs to hire him. And so he didn't get the job. Sean: That is how important that is. I agree with you, 110%. Your hiring process is super-duper important. It is critical to guard your house, and your culture. You know, in the preshow I mentioned that we are having a difficult time hiring people. We got so many applicants, so many, but it's hard to hire the ones who fit our culture. And the reason behind that is we are very intentional about our culture and SEO Hacker as well, and we are willing to be penalized. Because the workload is getting tough, we are willing to be penalized for that, for keeping our culture intact. - - - Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: How did they make this alive? Because too often do we see core values, mission statements, and purpose statements plastered on the wall. And that's all they are. Michael: They're espoused. They're not lived. I can't tell you how many organizations I go to in and out of education where folks can tell me what their core values are. They have them, but nobody can tell me what they are. It's just that's a big problem. Sean: Exactly. So, it's beyond just thinking about it and putting it somewhere. What did these organizations do to live them out? Michael: Yeah. So, one of the things we talk about in culture is we talk about this term called dust collector leadership. And it's for all the people who have a shelf filled with books on all these different leadership strategies and techniques and all those books are doing is collecting dust because they're not actually doing the stuff that the books say to do. Right. The first thing that's at the heart of this, Sean, is around something that we call fear forward. And I can't think of one example where somebody created a system and then did not implement it where there wasn't some level of fear that was blocking them from the execution right now. One could argue like folks are bad at scheduling their time. So of course, their vision is espoused and not lived because they don't have time to reference it repeatedly. Like all that stuff from my experience comes from a fear of owning I am the leader here. I am going to repeatedly message what matters. I am going to hold people accountable for what matters. This stuff doesn't happen organically. You know I bet many of your listeners know this. This stuff must be intentionally engineered. So, beginning every single staff meeting or 1 to 1 meeting with conversations about the vision and values, having the weekly email or the weekly staff meeting begin with conversations around shouting out colleagues who met the values for that week or however long it's been since you are all together. Referencing them in 1 to 1 meeting, right? Having consistent conversations. In some cases. We have leaders inside of education and outside who we have them meet, shout-out protocols. How many people today are you going to give a shout-out to? Three people, depending on the size of your team. If your team is 500, might have to do more than three people a day to get to everybody over the course of a week or a month. But all those shout-outs are grounded in values, grounded in vision, right? And so these are intentionally engineered opportunities. But it all, Sean, must start with all these rebel leaders having one thing in common. Regardless of industry, regardless of experience, regardless of skill set, they all are willing to put themselves out there, to be vulnerable, to look foolish, if their thing bombs. People don't like that feeling and these folks don't like it either. They're willing to do it. There's a willingness. We call it a rebel culture. We call it fear forward. We don't talk about overcoming the fear of rebel culture. That's not a thing we don't believe in that. Social media will tell you that and reality television will tell you that you can overcome your fear. Nothing gets overcome. You learn to live with it. You learn to act despite it. Right. And that's what these folks do. They still feel the same fear of the 50 sets of eyes on them in the staff meeting or how that email is going to be received. They fear forward, they act anyway because they know it's in the best interest of their organization. - - - Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: How do you look for those people who you mentioned could represent you could represent the brand well and could actually make sales because you're paying a first world country salary, which we're not really used to here in the Philippines. Bant: You know, it's a great question. One of the things I've found is you'll get a lot of people will tell you like,' oh, well, you need to go hire someone who really knows how to be - a veteran that can sell this or sell that. And when we've hired veterans, the people that are anywhere from 15 to 25 years of experience in, let's say, sales in the market they have not performed for us in any meaningful way. I would say that what you really just need to do is find someone who is going to be a very diligent team member, not too young, but not too old and that they're going to work with you guys in the Philippines to really structure kind of a lead generation system that can perhaps support their efforts. Don't expect any person that kind of says like, 'Oh, I'm Joe Smith and I'm going to walk you into this company and I'm going to walk into that company and I'm going to do this and that.' It's all BS they might get you into one company. It's going to be a slow, expensive, painful process. Bant: Don't expect that to happen magically. You have to build your own system, make sure that you have people that you can bring on and train, etc. Don't overpay if someone's not willing to structure a relationship with you that is a fair wage, but performance-oriented, they're probably not the right type of person for you. I would say for you as the founder, you should probably spend a little bit of time in those markets that you want to go to and get to know folks. Maybe you as a person that is the face of the business, maybe speak at a couple of events, those types of things. Get a better feel for where you're going and building in the future. Sean: That's very good advice. And I've always tried to avoid going to the U.S. because it's so expensive. The ticket prices are expensive. Speaking in events, it's well-nigh impossible if you're not in that circle. So but doing the due diligence. I get it. I get it. Bant: Yeah. I mean, look, I mean, even things like this, Sean, I mean, obviously, like, look, come to Miami, man. I'll show you around. Like, this is how you build relationships - you build networks. Bant: For me, that that has one of the best pieces of advice I ever received was from an early boss I had in the advertising world, who I noticed that he was always interviewing kind of like young graduates that would come from business school. And I always thought, 'what are you doing? Like you're always like making time for this.' And he said, You know, honestly, you have to basically be your own HR department. You have to make the effort to recruit and pull in and things like that. And so I think that it's the same thing with networking like you're just going to have to make that commitment and build those bridges because that's the stuff that will offer the opportunities. - - - Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: How were you able to get connected with venture capitalists in Silicon Valley? Jason: One very funny story. You just have to apply online, and it is also quick and easy. I think there are a lot of people who also applied to Y Combinator. Just send your application and then they will get back to you. You just need to return back their questionnaires and eventually they will call you. Like, for example, for me, when I started Pushcart, I applied for Y Combinator. They sent me their schedule, and the call is usually just 5 minutes. And then they would ask you questions if they decide to let you fly out to Silicon Valley or to meet with them in San Francisco. So eventually I got the green light and I flew in. They just called me and asked me a few questions. Then they got back to me after 24 hours. I cannot believe that within that 5-minute long call, they will let you fly into Silicon Valley, all paid for by Y Combinator. Jason: And they said, 'Josh, are you free to fly next week?' Then you wonder 'am I really ready to fly next week? Do you have the papers? Do you have the mindset? Are you prepared to fly? So eventually I was able to fly to Silicon Valley, and the next week I brought my co-founder. We eventually got interviewed by four of the panels in Y Combinator. Just from that aspect alone, they will connect you to a lot of investors now. They even connected us to one of the investors of YouTube. And these are very good people who also have deep connections in the Philippines. Sean: Wow. Interesting. So it's just really one email, right? Just doing it you know - just showing up. Jason: Yeah, just showing up. Just apply for it and pitch your idea. They won't contradict you. They will just listen to you. You just need to put in that effort. Sean: Got it. Got it. I want to rewind a little bit and talk about Tesla. So let's go back to the past, so what happened there? What were you feeling and how fast did you have to pitch your idea there? Jason: Honestly less than 5 minutes. They just asked me a few questions and they said 'okay. I'm good. I like your startup.' - that's how fast it went through. Jason: It was - maybe it's because we're backed up we were introduced to the right people, especially coming from the Y Combinator people. If they introduce you, they recommend it. It was just really quick, it's like you will have the proof of confidence. Sean: Wow. And how did it proceed? So you got the 'yes,' from the investor and from Y Combinator. How did it get all the way to here? How did they provide the funds, the mentorship and how did they connect you to the people they know here, and what happened afterward? Jason: Y Combinator was at the stage of being interviewed. So we weren't able to join the program, but eventually, they were very supportive. As in every quarter, they will get back to us. So even if you don't get into it, they will provide you support. Sean: Got it. Got it. Amazing. And that's very valuable, especially when you're starting out? Jason: Yes, yes. Because you will have that connection, you will have that network. At least you've gone to that round, you were able to experience it and you were able to tap the right people for your business. - - - Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: How do you prevent the power of being a leader from getting to your head? Alright, this is about ego. Le-an: Yeah, that goes back to the beginning of my story of like - when I became CEO, I was 20 years old when I became CEO. And I let the power go into my head immediately, and I had to be brought down also immediately. Basically, the fastest way to do that is to realize that you are not the person anymore who is going to create the results. You're actually the support now for the people who are creating the results. So that's the biggest thing that I still carry to this day is that I am only as good as the people that I support that I work with. That was the one that brought me down of realizing, 'oh, no, yeah, I might have been this amazing employee when I was still the employee. But now that I'm the leader, I can't think that way anymore. It's going to hurt me more and it's going to hurt other people as well. Le-an: So that was the biggest one of like, I was no one, that was kind of the thought in my head. I was really no one. I became CEO. Yes, because of hard work, but I still had a lot more to grow and improve. And also just keep that in mind of like - I can only be or the company can only be as successful as the people that I work with and the people I support. Sean: That's very good. And we have a lot of things in common, how we think and our weaknesses. So there were points in my leadership when it gets to my head, especially when people are just straight up going against the tide, you know, it ticks me off. So those are the times that I snap and it gets to my head and I just tell them off. I'm more of a straight shooter, so I could really pierce some people and upset them with my words. And those are the times that I would say, if I could turn back time and change them, I would change them and handle it very differently. Sean: And you're right in saying that if you realize that a CEO, the endgame is you're going to be helping your people and serving them rather than you being served rather than you doing the work. Then that really changes your perspective and helps you to realize that, 'Oh, okay, if I let this get into my head, I'm going to be doing this all my life until the day I die. I'm going to be working like a horse.' And that's not the future that I desire. Right? So we have to change and adapt and humble ourselves there. - - - Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: Causes for a person to be materialistic? Sean: I'd say two things. Number one is greed. Number two is lust. That's it. When you lust for things, you want to get them. You want to buy it. You want to own it. And when you have a lot of lust for things, that's greed. So I think those are two causes. Sean: The root cause would be the heart. The Book of Jeremiah Chapter 17 says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick, who can understand it. I can understand it sometimes and want to buy stuff. I don't even know why I want to buy stuff, even if it's not to impress other people. It's just sometimes you want to buy something useless. You know, I don't understand why I'm like that sometimes. Thankfully, ninety-nine point nine percent of the time I refrain from buying that thing. But yeah, so that's my take on that. Sean: How can one get over materialism? Sean: Have an eternal perspective. If you know that everything's going to burn at the end of the day, then you're not going to invest in this world, and the stuff's in this world, you're going to give. Like 10 percent, I give the God of everything I make. And then I also give to other people like pastors, missionaries to help further God's kingdom. And yeah, I make it a habit to give every month. And I know a lot of people who also have that much faith that they give their tithes and then they give and support pastors and missionaries as well. And God has blessed those people immensely. And I want to be as blessed as they also. The Bible says, give - literally, the Bible says this give and it will come back to you. Good measure. Pressed down, shaken together, running over, overflowing. So that's God's word, that God's promise. If you believe that, then it's going to be true for you. I know it's true for me. And the question is, is going to be true for you, right? Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: How can I encourage my team members to speak up? Sean: They're comfortable talking to me, but it becomes a challenge when we ask them to speak their mind in an app or platform. I guess you have to first, create a culture of safety, an environment of safety where people can speak up. That doesn't mean they're not going to be responsible about what they say, they have to be responsible about what they say. They can't just say things like, they can't just tell you that I feel like resigning and I feel like this, this, and this also feels the same way. Like they can't just say that, they have to qualify it really well. So those are things that they have to take responsibility for. Sean: All I'm saying is when you create a culture of safety, a psychologically safe zone where people can tell you stuff, they still have to be responsible about what they say. They can't cuss you, they can't say bad things to you. They have to respect you. They cannot behave in a way that is going to be a form of misconduct. Sean: So that said, make sure that as a leader, you listen to your people. And when I say, listen, you don't just listen with your ears, you listen with your hands also, you act on what it is that they're saying if it makes sense. If it makes business sense if it makes team sense if it makes cultural sense to your team. So I'm not telling you to be a subservient CEO or a subservient leader - that you are going to follow everything that they say, if that's the case you should have just worked as an employee rather than a CEO. You have to make sure that you are making the critical decisions that are best for the entire team, not just for one or two people who are telling you their opinions in that circle of the safety zone. Sean: So it is a tough dance that you have to do as a leader, but people will speak up if they know that you listen, you have a sound mind, you have wisdom, the wisdom of God and you actually act on the things that make a lot of sense for everyone. I think in SEO-Hacker, that's the kind of culture we have. People just speak up. They tell us what they think. In fact, they rate the management, they rate me and the other leaders. Can you believe that? Every month we get that twice, and when we get scores around 7 and 8 we already get weary? That's how we are as leaders and we really act on what we can. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: How do you plan all your content as a podcaster? Edwin: Real quickly. In my podcast, I planned around amazing conversations when I initially launched. And it was very intentional when I launched, I was looking to get to the Big Tech founders here in Toronto, Canada, and the US. Because it was very specific to business leaders, the business leadership genre is a very big space. But if you look at the people I interviewed, you could see there's some intention behind it than most of the companies they were in are tech businesses. And if it wasn't a tech business, it was a tech role or very specific. So that was my intention, how I created that. I've done many other podcasts now. When I got inspired, I did one on Spotify in December after we spoke to Sean and it's called "20." Edwin: And that's sort of me dabbling in my creative side. But it was a very specific topic on "20" because it was COVID. I wanted to share the five things I learned in 2020. And most people, I'm sure Sean, you've seen this where people at the end of the year, they'll write a blog and they'll write this, they'll do an Instagram Story and they'll do this. So what I did, as is I'm going to do a five-episode mini-series of the top five things I learned in 2020. Like, I literally did it over the weekend. I was so inspired. I allowed myself to geek out on the downtime of the holidays. That's how I planned that Sean: Amazing answer, dude. That's really, really good. I wish I could say the same for me and Leadership Stack, but how we plan our content is we get a lot of people contacting us for guesting so LinkedIn, email. I don't even know how to get in touch with us. I don't even know how they find out about the podcast, but we got a lot of people wanting to guest the podcast and we just schedule them out. We figure out who the best ones are and we schedule them. Sean: And also we figure out which ones would be able to work on my time because I'm also a very busy person, especially now when digital marketing is catching up, it's catching up. We're very late here in the Philippines, so now it's catching up surprisingly or unsurprisingly because of the pandemic last year. And we're just trying to schedule the best ones for me to be able to interview, when the date and time are set, I proceed to research about the person. Then I proceed to write questions and then brief the person, the guest on how the show goes. Sean: We also do the AMA's, the Leadership Stack lives like this episode, and this is going to be turned into an episode on Spotify and YouTube as well because of the content that we're able to produce with your help and questions. So this episode is going to be there someday. I don't know, two or three months from now, you're going to see Edwin again, recorded and YouTube and Spotify. That is how we do it. So there's not as much thought, effort, and preparation as Edwin do for his podcast, and I'm sure his podcast has a lot of beautiful episodes that you'll learn a lot from because of the - you know, Seth Godin who doesn't want to hear Seth Godin, right? I got to hear that brother. Sean: And yeah, we the podcasts that we do, we also want to make sure that it's also bite-sized, like what Edwin did. By the way, this is the best way to do a podcast or piece of content, whether it's written, it's a video or it's a podcast - when you're inspired, don't let that inspiration go when you're inspired. Grab that moment and produce. That's the best stuff you're going to be able to produce out there. So 100 percent agree with you there, brother. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: How can I make more enticing copies on my social media accounts? Sean: A lot of people forget social media is not about selling stuff. Social media is about connections, that's it at the get-go. And I was there when Facebook was starting. I was one of the people who hopped in. I was one of the people who ran ads for the very first time when Sheryl Sandberg finally released the ability to run ads on Facebook. I was there when it was full of Facebook games. I was there. So I've seen the growth of social media, and it didn't grow because it was a great place to sell stuff. Social media grew because it's a great way to connect with people, how you share your ideas, how you share memories, how you are able to consume other people's memories and ideas, and thoughts. It's about connections, so copies on social media that are meant for you to connect with other people, are the copies that will do really well. When you say enticing copy, it's not a copy that should sell, it's a copy that should connect to your target users. That is pretty much the only way you can do it to make it “enticing”. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: How do I, or all the business owners who are to actually, keep at the edge of our seats, not in paranoia, but in vigilance, in our own lives, in our own habits? What's the mindset that we have to have? Len: I think what I hear from you is, you know when I hear about where you might be becoming complacent. I don't think about you becoming complacent in terms of the business that you have - that business, that you have people running, You're in danger of becoming complacent in life. Right. Len: And you know, when you talk about what the mindset is, the mindset that I tell people is, and this is why this is so important. The goal, the end goal is not success. The end goal is keeping it. So becoming successful is not the pinnacle. It is the start. How do you keep that success in business and in life? Right. So you're at this position now where you have a successful business and you have taught people and you've given people the right skills and the right autonomy to be able to run that successfully. Len: So now what's your purpose? Right? So how do you remain useful to your family, to your friends, to whatever relationships you have? Right? How do you push beyond? How do you look at where that next step, right? The goal is not success, keeping it is. And success is not money. Success is happiness. Success is productivity. Success is a purpose, right? And so, you know, you said, you know, after 10, 11 years, I think you said you finally came up with a purpose for your business. Right? Do you have to start spending a little bit of that time thinking about what is your personal purpose? What is your purpose in life? Because what entrepreneurs have a tendency to do is define themselves as their business. But you are not your business. That is not your legacy. Your legacy goes beyond that. Len: And that's what you have to figure out is, what is my legacy? Do I want to create another business? Do I want to create ancillary businesses as I come out of this? Do I want to be a philanthropic person? Do I want to be, you know, the best father, or the best husband, or the best partner or whatever? I can be, right? What is your purpose that goes beyond that business? Because it sounds like you've done a great job to set that business up for success. And now it's like, what's the next stage for you? Len: So this applies to personal life as much as it does anything. We have a tendency as entrepreneurs also to further our business to the detriment of our personal relationships. Our personal relationships become second seats to what we're doing. And so, you know, here's a great opportunity to evaluate that for yourself. Where do you stand in there? Like how do you feel about that? What do you want to do about that? So, you know, the way to not be complacent is to continue to ask, why? Why am I doing this? Why am I here? Why am I moving forward? What am I moving forward towards right? And where could the threats come from? If you do that in your personal life, in your business, life will always continue forward. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: How much is too much to pay for self-improvement? What are the factors to consider before enrolling in a high ticket course, or hiring a mentor or coach? Toni: Interesting. Okay for me, in my experience, I've never paid for a coach or a mentor. I never hired one, although I do know that there are people who will accept mentees, and then there's like a fee in exchange. But I actually allocate a portion of my income to my education fund. So on that fund, I know that, for example, if I come across a seminar, a paid talk or a course that I want to be a part of, then I just tap into that fund because I know that fund is really reserved for that purpose. So it's a bucket that I replenish every month so that in case I come across just what I've said, like a mentor that I want to hire, or a course, I can just tap into that fund. So I guess it really depends on how much of your income you're willing to budget for that. But in your case, since you are a mentor to a million already. So what do you say about that? Sean: Actually, it's funny because a lot of people ask if I can mentor them, but I have rules if you want me to mentor you. It's not a lot. It's just three rules. Number one, what did you do about what we talked about? If we had the session already, what did you do about it? Because if you don't didn't do anything about it, then don't ask me to be your mentor or we can be friends, but not a mentor-mentee relationship, right? Number two would be, to ask me questions. Ask me your questions. So before we meet, I require you to have a list of 10, 20 questions or, you know, five questions, whatever it is you want to learn. And that's it. And number three, would be, when do you plan to apply all of these things? So it could be like questions first. When do you plan to apply? And then the next meeting, 'okay, what did you do?" just like that. It's actually quite simple how I mean their people. But if that isn't followed, then we shouldn't be mentor-mentee. And then I also don't book you. Usually, as the mentee, you book the mentor, you ask for the time. Sean: And then this year we're planning to professionalize. So it's the first time we're considering hiring an executive, you know, an EVP, an executive vice president to join the team. I had no idea. Again, I'm an idiot when it comes to that. So I hit up the president of Ayala Land International, Ms. Ana Tatlonghari. I ask her, 'Hey, can you just give me one hour of your time?' And she's like, 'Of course.' Toni: She's really open to it, huh? Sean: Yeah, I spoke. I spoke at their event like three or four years ago, and she's game, and I learned a lot. And right now, we're trying to figure out how we're going to meld that in. So. And guys here's the thing: I didn't pay anything for any of that. I didn't pay anything. But I love these people. They know if I could be them, I would. But they didn't ask for my money. And this is because these are people who also love helping other people. Now, nothing wrong with paying for self-improvement, having an education fund like Toni, actually, I would recommend you have that because when an opportunity comes that there's a really, really good webinar that you could enroll in, or a really good coach or mentor that you can get might be life-changing, but do your research first. Sean: "Okay, is this person really good to be a mentor? Does he or she really have the heart to help people or just for the money?" Because there's a lot of so-called "gurus" who are really con-artists" So there's a lot. I'm not going to name any. I'm just going to tell you, do your research. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: How do we improve our leadership expertise, how we lead other people, how we influence them on a deeper level, more than work and on the higher form of sort of principle? How do we elevate their principles to be better in terms of morality, in terms of what is acceptable to society at large? Is there a way for us to hone that? Alan: Yeah. When I think about influential and powerful expertise, I actually start you mentioned before adopting a geek perspective, right? So from a physical science perspective, right? Influence or the way they are referred to in physics would be, maybe 'power' is the change of someone's work over the change in time. Right. Alan: So in order to move something, we need power. in order to heat something, we need power. In order to change anything in the world, we need power in a social setting between people. We have the same sort of idea. I think leadership is really about changing people and influencing people. Alan: There are researchers who have identified probably about seven different forms of social power that are exerted in the world. Expertise happens to be one of them, but a couple of the others are things like coercion. Right? And this is an area that's really susceptible to fraud and manipulation and power. Right. It's this idea of coercing people into doing what you want them to do, which is sort of the antithesis of what I think of us as an expert influence. Alan: Expertise is more about information, power, and rewards right there. There are benefits to actually pursuing certain courses, and this is where you know it's hard to teach morality right in this world. The world is depleted of adequate levels of moral judgment, and people are doing what they can to raise to a level of power and influence, oftentimes very negatively. Alan: Unfortunately, expertise is used for some of the greatest advancements in the world, but expertise is also brought some of the worst catastrophes and destructions you know, that are known in humanity. Right. And so it's an instrument of tremendous influence for good and for bad, right? And I'll leave it to you and the audience to decide how they can influence moral agency and moral power in the world. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: How weighty was it that you knew what your expertise was? You knew that you were an expert in this, this, this, and that, so much so that you deciding on risking some of your hard-earned money seemed like the best thing to do. Alan: Yeah. What is that about entrepreneurs, right? Sean? I mean, why would someone do this? It's kind of masochistic, really. Right? It's really you don't know how much pain you're going to be inflicting on yourself when you do these things. And part of it is, I mean, candidly, it's somewhat naive, right? But I mean, in answer to your question, right? One of the attributes that people really hope to see in experts is the same thing that drives people into expertise. And it's this exuberance or confidence and your ability to change things, right? To do things a little bit differently and better. Right. And so that's really what it came down to, right? Experts are effective and influential if they're confident, and entrepreneurs will just absolutely fail if they're not confident, right? So I had some confidence. Maybe false, not well-placed confidence at the time, right? Because I learned a lot of things, right, but confident nonetheless. Sean: Okay, another thing that I'm wondering about because when you're an entrepreneur, you got to be good at selling. If you can't sell, there's no business, no customers, no business. Now it's from being an IT expert, in-depth you know it up and down. You mentioned database server time, that's like, I'm a geek, right? I'm a geek. I know a geek, when I hear one, we're both geeks and we geek out in what we know, we're experts that stuff. But when was it when you decided "I got to learn how to sell and I need to sell and I got to be good at it? I got to be an expert at it”? When was that time and how did you hone your sales skills? Alan: Well, it actually came to me, right? So I mentioned I was at Ford Motor Company and at that time, well, I mentioned this to you, maybe I should highlight this a little bit more. I was on the supplier's face of the business. I was communicating with suppliers and they were pitching to Ford Motor Company constantly, right. That they were selling to me, they were selling to Ford. And so I was able to observe all of these suppliers one after another sort of come in and talk about their solutions. And sometimes it's, you know, nuts and bolts and wheels. But sometimes it's, you know, consulting and, you know, a whole bunch of really strategic items. So I observed it from the buyer's side. But then when I went to the consulting company, I was on the selling side, right? I was pitching to large organizations for custom development, and I followed salespeople around for five years, helping pitch our solutions to large customers. And so that two-dimensional perspective on the selling process, as the buyer, and as the seller really opened this world or this idea of selling and producing revenue for me. It helped a lot. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: How can we better evaluate our employees? I would say, evaluate based on your core values. That's one that for me is very, very important. You don't have to copy our core values, right? I mean it would depend on your founder's DNA. I know a lot of companies here in the Philippines have malasakit. That's one of their core values and that's really great by the way. I'm thinking about incorporating that into our core values as well because that's a really good Filipino trait and word to have. Malasakit. And if you have people who have malasakit for your company, for your team, I think that's amazing. We don't have that yet in our core values, but we do have grit, respect for work, unity, being a challenger, clarity, and experimentation. Just six stuff, and we evaluate based on that. How well do you stand up when you make mistakes? That's grit. How early are you in terms of meetings? Are you on time? Do you log in on time? Do you really complete work on time? That's respect for work. Unity is about: Do you gossip? Do you confront people who need to be confronted? Do you allow incompetence to run amuck in your team? That's unity. Challenger is: Do you go the extra mile? If this is what's asked of you, do you do more? Do you work harder? Clarity is about making sure that when you say something, the other party understands what you mean. The biggest mistake in communication is the assumption that it already happened. So clarity is super important. And experimentation is all about trying out new things in the spirit of having a positive outcome, and not being afraid to make mistakes. We evaluate based on those values. For every person who asks me in my team, for example, for a raise or for feedback, we check how well they have done in terms of those six core values that we have. So I'd say always evaluate based on your core values and on what they bring to the table. At the end of the day, it's what they bring to the table. Of course, maybe you're wondering, where is competence in all that? If they're not competent, then they're bringing the company down. That's not a core value. It should be their permission to play for your team, right? If they're not competent, they really should not be in your team. Maybe you're wondering why is integrity not a core value.? Well, integrity, if people don't have integrity, they shouldn't be working for you, right? Because they're going to steal, they're going to steal time, they're going to lie, it just doesn't make sense. So it's a permission to play value. You have to identify the core values of your company based on what you really value, but you also have some values that are permission to play. That's the minimum thing that your people have to have, otherwise, they shouldn't be part of the team. Integrity is one of them and competence, of course, is another one. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Show Notes: 00:01:32          The family's Gut Reaction about 2022. 00:03:58          Goals for Shay 00:07:22          Mags' 2021 Review 00:09:36          Eddie “forward momentum.” 00:14:33          Dan: momentum, trajectory, and congruence. 00:16:43          Mags' last chance for teenage heartbreak. 00:20:04          Eddie's long-distance relationship with Morgan. 00:23:20          Dependent vs. Independence 00:25:53          "Can I see your insurance policy?" 00:29:00          Eddie talks about Maggie's success. 00:34:40          Listener question from Sean: How do you fix burnout? 00:40:45          Throwing out the garbage can be fun! 00:41:57          Eddie recognizing the struggle when easy things become hard. 00:43:45          New Year's memories and weird traditions. 00:46:30          Sparkler disasters! 00:47:53          Listener question from Marty:  Thoughts on letting your kids fail. 00:49:56          Everybody's different – The Clifton Strength's Finder personality quiz.  00:51:23          Dan and Eddie wired completely different – but find common ground. 00:52:28          Nertz 00:55:39          Eddie shares memories of Dad traveling when he was growing up. 01:00:34          The time a graphic artist drew our family conversation. 01:02:47          Words for 2022. 01:06:03          Mom, can you spare a kidney? 01:10:23          Eddie's recollection of mom donating her kidney. 01:16:33          Mags' murder podcast. “Murder isn't funny.”

Sean: How can I expand the reach of my business on social media? Erika: So first off, make your social media pretty. Kidding aside. Aside from it being aesthetically pleasing because it is important right now on social media and for people to notice you, then it has to look nice. But then at the same time, what do people get from what you post? So that people will be more interested in what you're offering. Keep posting that so you'd be able to reach the people that you want to reach on social media. I think if you're just starting, just choose one or two social media platforms that you want to focus on, like maybe Facebook and Instagram, because you might get overwhelmed if you're going to go everywhere else. Sean, what do you have to say about this one? Sean: I'm going to say the hard and painful truth about it, that you have to cough up money, that's how you do it. I mean, Facebook and Instagram is a for-profit platform and there is a balance that they're trying to tiptoe around. Look, a lot of people on social media, you and me included, we don't want to see a lot of ads. We don't want to see a lot of companies selling us products and stuff, right? So how Facebook prevents that from happening is by prioritizing supposedly your personal network, friends and family, and they make sure that everything that you're going to see that's not friends and family is paid. That's it. There's almost zero organic reach now for Facebook pages and companies. Almost zero because they did it that way that you have to pay for you to expand your reach because people don't like seeing a lot of ads. They don't like being sold to. They don't like seeing irrelevant stuff on their newsfeed. So as business owners, it's a pain for us because we want free reach. We want free stuff, free marketing, free advertising, and free placements. Sadly, that's no longer the case. But in the early days of Facebook, I've experienced that when one ad would cost you .0001 centavos. That was way back 2009. Erika: Really? Sean: Yeah, oh man, those were the days in which your organic reach could still skyrocket, but now you have to pay up. That's really it. Erika: But if you want to have a really fast reach right now, try to explore TikTok. I mean, I'm just starting advertising on TikTok. I should start doing it, but I feel so old. It's so hard for me to do that. I really have to learn it since it's one of my goals this year to work on my TikTok platform. But I've been hearing from a lot of business friends, coaches, influencers, and business owners, they have a really fast reach on TikTok. As long as you know how to do it, and it's bite-sized information so you can do a lot of things there. 00:03:19 Sean: Which reminds me, my team created a TikTok account. I tried it out. Shout out to Toni Aquino and Marvin Germo, who has been goading me on to go there. They've found huge success on that platform. I haven't yet. Let's see. You know, let's see. I think that if you're looking for organic reach, it is one of the platforms that actually can give that for now. I mean, YouTube is also really tough now so I heard TikTok is one of the platforms that you can go to. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: How can employers manage depression in the workplace? How can employers qualify feelings of sadness as reasons for employees not being able to come to work?   JM: So I think having that time in order for your employees to have that safe space for them to let you know what's going on in their lives. It's very important to manage depression even before it starts. Meanwhile, when there is already depression, it actually depends on the level of depression. There is depression that is still normal. “Normal.” But there is depression as well where it's already considered clinical depression. So when it comes to clinical depression, you need to be able to consult a professional already, professional help for that in order to help your employees and in order to manage depression. Besides what I mentioned earlier, what's important, not just for the employees, but for the employers as well is for you to really take care of yourself mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. So make sure that there's support for that as well for them to be able to know that there's support from the company. And there's also a way for you to help them. So there's a lot of things actually with depression, Sean. And just a few things in order for you to know if you're going through depression is that there are extremes. Okay? So if there are already extreme things in your life that are going on for more than two weeks already. Like if either you eat a lot or you don't have an appetite. Okay? Two extremes or you just want to sleep. All-day, you just want to sleep or you couldn't sleep. So extreme things. And if there's no longer passion to do the same things that you ought to enjoy before. So those are just some of the things that you can look for, a sign if you are having depression already, or if your employee is having depression already. So I hope that helps. Sean: That really does. I'm not an expert when it comes to depression. We've had a couple of people struggling with this actually. I wouldn't say I'm the most brilliant help they've ever gotten. But what I do believe about this topic, which is a sensitive topic, is that a lot of people tend to not feed their spirit. You know, it might be hard teaching to hear coming from me, but people who have faith, you know, who believe in God and believe in the spirit will understand what I mean. We're not just meat and bones. We're thinking beings with a spirit. We consider the heart and the brain as important parts of our functioning bodies. The spirit is also a very important organ that's invisible. You can't see it, but it is as important as your heart and as important as your brain. And the spirit needs to be fed so it has kind of like an appetite, like your stomach. And if it is not fed, I think that is where the depression creeps in because you lose the appetite to live. Life becomes bland. It's lackluster. It could be a slew of different triggers, but I think the root cause is always you're poor in spirit. You haven't fed your spirit. You haven't had the time to pause and think about what you lack in terms of faith, in terms of your walk with God, in terms of your personal growth and improvement. And a lot of people who struggled with depression, I believe, spend a lot of time not thinking. We have, as a generation, lost our ability to think, really think. And sadly that's because of the advent of the internet and unlimited entertainment that we have. We just don't need to think. We can be entertained 24/7 today. And that I think contributes to the spirit of depression. I can't really say much about it, but what I do know is part of it, maybe a good part of it is about the spirit. And you have to feed your spirit. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean McCabe is the founder and CEO of seanwes media, and Daily Content Machine. Sean is a prolific and successful creator, author, and influencer. His course, Learn Lettering, made $80,000 in the first 24 hours. For nearly a decade his podcast, blog, and courses have helped creators grow their brands, content, and skill sets.Sean's website is a treasure trove of courses and resources for anyone looking for business knowledge and creative support. Sean's book, Overlap, shows creators how to turn their passion into a successful business while working a full-time job. His podcast includes almost 500 episodes on content creation and entrepreneurship. His latest venture, Daily Content Machine, turns creators' best content into clippable moments they can share across their social media accounts.I talk with Sean about what it's like being a successful creator. We talk about growing your audience and connecting with them. We cover how to learn new skills fast, and about developing a growth mindset. We also talk about managing stress as a founder, how to handle burnout, and much more.In this episode, you'll learn: Why good writing is the foundation of great content How to connect better with your audience Leveraging short-form content to grow your brand Pricing at full value without feeling guilty How to avoid burnout, and what to do if you're already there Links & Resources Sean McCabe on The Nathan Barry Show episode 003 Craft + Commerce conference ConvertKit Enough Ryan Holiday James Clear Marie Forleo Ramit Sethi Sean McCabe's Links Follow Sean on Twitter Check out Sean on Instagram Sean's website Daily Content Machine Episode Transcript[00:00:00] Sean:If you are a founder, you should be in therapy. Full-stop. You need a therapist. I thought I didn't. I had a great upbringing. I'm all good. Everything's healthy. I don't have any problems. The problem was I didn't know the problems that I had. I didn't realize what I was stuffing down. I didn't realize what I was avoiding.There is so much to unpack that you don't know you need to unpack.[00:00:30] Nathan:In this episode I talk to my friend, Sean McCabe. We've known each other for seven years now. It's been a long time. We've been in a mastermind group together. He's actually been on the show before. Sean is a wildly talented designer. He got his start hand-lettering.I think last time he was on the show, years ago, we were talking about that aspect of his business and how he built this substantial course business. Selling courses on hand-lettering, on marketing, on writing. He's spoken at our conference Craft + Commerce, all kinds of things. Sean is one of the most prolific creators that I've ever known.It's also super fun that he's a friend and lives right here in town. We just have a great conversation. We talk about how you create content, which is one of those things that it's not even how you create content, it's why. Where that comes from. The internal drive in what you use. Where you choose to have as a source of fuel and energy to put into that creative output.How some sources are really good and productive, and others can be kind of like a house of cards, and it can be harmful. We also talk about scaling teams as a creator. How do you know when to build out a team around your business? He's done that two different ways. So I get to ask him about some of the things he's learned and applied differently.I'm going to stop there. There's a lot of good stuff. So with that, let's dive in.Sean. Welcome to the show.[00:01:59] Sean:Hey, Nathan, just saw you recently. We were playing volleyball, or something.[00:02:03] Nathan:Or something, like two days ago. You moved to my city. It's kind of…[00:02:08] Sean:Yeah. It's horrible. It's a terrible place. Boise. Don't move to Idaho.[00:02:15] Nathan:You mean Iowa? Boise, Iowa.[00:02:17] Sean:Iowa. Yeah. Don't, yeah. Did I do okay?[00:02:21] Nathan:Yeah. That's exactly what you're supposed to say. If you Google something about Boise, Google has the accordion of extra questions, or things you might want to know. One of them is, “Does Boise smell?” and it's just like auto complaints in there.And I was like, what is up with that? I clicked on it, and it's this satirical article that has 12 reasons you shouldn't move to Boise. One of them is the city dump is right in the middle of the city. Another one is like that the Ebola outbreak hasn't been fully contained yet.So it's not really safe. I think there was something about lava. Anyway, it's just an article about all the reasons to not move to Boise. So I think you're right in line.[00:03:08] Sean:Stay, away. That's what they tell me to say.[00:03:11] Nathan:Yes, but if someone were to ignore that and move to Boise, they could come to our weekly volleyball game on Wednesday nights.[00:03:19] Sean:It's casual. It's open.[00:03:21] Nathan:Let's try it. Yeah. It's been so fun having you and Laci here. It's also been fun because you started a new company. Your company is producing and editing and creating all the clips for this podcast. So, connections on so many levels.[00:03:37] Sean:Yeah. We produce this show, like the video show, the audio show, and then find clips and make those clips for social media. It's been great. We love this show. Our team's favorite content. So, I'm a little biased, but it's fun to be on. Because my team's going to work on this.[00:03:58] Nathan:Yeah, exactly. I made sure to spell your name correctly in the setup, and I know they'll get it all.I wanted to ask what sparked—like maybe first give a summary of Daily Content Machine, since that's what you're spending nearly all of your time on. More than a normal amount of time on. So, what sparked it, and what is it?[00:04:19] Sean:Fun fact. This is not the first time I've been on the show. The last time was episode three, 2,624 days ago.[00:04:30] Nathan:Give or take[00:04:32] Sean:I was doing different stuff then. It's been a crazy journey. Right now the newest iteration is an agency.We produce video clips. We turn long form video shows. If you have a video podcast or other kind of long form video content, we found that the hardest part is finding all the good moments in there, and turning those into short clips. That's what we do. I designed it for myself, really.I wanted it to be where you just show up, you record, and, everything just happens? What is your experience, Nathan, with having a video and audio podcasts made, and clips and all that published? What do you, what's your involvement.[00:05:14] Nathan:Yeah. So I think about who I want on the show, I email them and say, will you come on the show? And then I talked to them for an hour, and then I read no, either way. I don't even do that. Yep. That's my full involvement. And what happens is then really what I see is when the show comes out, which I don't touch anything from that moment on. I actually probably notice the show coming out like, oh yeah, that's the episode that we post this week. Cause we have a three week delay on our, production schedule. And so I noticed like, oh yeah, I had a David Perell on the show when I get the Twitter notification of like, David, Perell just retweeted you.And I'm like, oh, what did oh, right. Yeah. Because his episode came out and then every, I mean, David was especially generous. Right. But every clip that week seven in a row, he retweeted and posted to his, you know, hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers. Right. Cause it makes him look really good. It's clips of him delivering these, you know, soundbites of genius, perfectly format.And he's like great retweet share with my audience. I think that one, I picked up like hundreds of new Twitter followers, just, you know, maybe more just from, from, that. So it's a, it's a great experience. The side that I haven't done as much with that I really want to. and you and I talked about this a lot when we. Like early days of Daily Content Machine and what could it be? And, and then, getting my show set up on it is the transcripts in the show notes that you all do. cause first you found the most interesting points of the show and then second there's text versions of all of that. And then they're all like neatly edited and, and everything.And so,[00:07:01] Sean:A lot of re-purposing options.[00:07:04] Nathan:Yeah, so like if you ask the same question or a similar question, like, Hey, how'd you grow from a thousand subscribers to 10,000. Tell me about that process. If you ask that consistently, which I'm not great about asking the same questions consistently, but then over the course of 20, 30 episodes, you have this great library of answers to that question and you could make like compile it all, write some narrative and it's like, oh, there's an ebook that would be 15 pages long and could be a free lead magnet or a giveaway or anything else. It's just a total by-product of the podcast and Daily Content Machine. So I'm a huge fan. That's my experience.[00:07:42] Sean:Well, it's great to hear. yeah, we wanted to make it, I wanted to make it, so I just show up. I record myself doing a podcast with the camera on, and then I walk away. Like I don't have to, the footage sinks. It goes to the team. They produce it. They made me look good. They make me sound good. They find all of the best things. I said, things my guests said, they think about my target audience. What are their struggles? What are their goals? What do they want, what do they need? How would they search for it? How would they say it themselves? And they work together to come up with good titles for them, then produce it, flawless captions, you know, do the research, how's the guests build their name.How does their company name capitalize? Like make sure it's, it's all polished and then publish it everywhere. So I just show up once a week for an hour and record, and then I get to be everywhere every day. That's that's at least the goal. And I'm hearing you say like one of the benefits, but one of the benefits of finding clips out of your long form shows to post on social media is you give your guests something to share.And there's kind of two, two ways of approaching podcasts. And one is kind of the old school way, you know, People used to blog and the used to subscribe to RSS feeds and like, you know, that's how they consumed their content. And definitely you still want to build your own platform, have a website, have a blog, you know, definitely have an email newsletter on ConvertKit but now we're, we're posting Twitter threads. We're posting more content natively and people are consuming more natively on the platforms. So there's the old idea of, I have a podcast, here's a link, go listen to my podcast, go watch my podcast, go watch my video shifting from that to, Hey, why don't we deliver the best moments of the show?Because people are consuming short form content, and that's how they're evaluating whether they want to subscribe, whether they want to spend an hour listening in depth to that interview. We're giving them all of these entrance points and just providing value natively on the platform. Instead of asking them to go off the platform and interrupt their experience, it's here you go.Here's some value here's where you can get more.And, and that that's such a great way to. Bring new listeners on as well as to give the guests something to share, because think about the experience between a guest, being told like, Hey, your episodes out, will you, will you share a link to it? And they're like, Hey, I was on a show, go listen to the show.It's such a great interview. You know, we, we do it. We want to help out that, that person with the podcast. But imagine if the best moments that, where you said that the smartest things with all of your filler words remove and your tangents remove was tweeted, and there's a video right there. All you have to do is hit retweet.It's free content for you. It looks good. But then also for you as the show host, it promotes your show and gives you a new awesome.[00:10:28] Nathan:The other thing in it, like the retweet is fantastic, but a lot of people want that as original content on their social channel. And so having like the, the deliverable that I get from you all is, is. Yeah, it just shows up in Dropbox of here's all the videos for all the platforms and everything, you know, from my archives and all that.And I've sent those on to the guests when they're like, Hey, can I post this? Not every tweet. Like I want to post it with my own, title or tweaks on that. And so I can just share that whole Dropbox folder and they'll, they'll go find the exact thing they want to share and, and use it in their own softens.Like, yes, absolutely. Because the pre-roll or like the, or the post roll on that video is like, go subscribe to item newsletters. It's like, yes, please.[00:11:14] Sean:And it's not like Nathan, that you would have trouble getting guests, but if one had trouble getting guests for their show, or you want to get someone that's like really big, really busy, they get all kinds of requests all the time. Well, imagine if they're evaluating between these different shows, you know what, what's the audience size?What am I going to get out of it? You know, especially if you don't have millions of downloads on your podcast. Well, if you're providing these additional assets, like, Hey, we're going to make clips of this. You're going to get content out of this. It can help people make that decision to come onto your show as opposed to maybe another.[00:11:46] Nathan:Yeah, totally. I want to go, so somebody different directions. This is, we talked about an agency and the business that you're starting. I have a question that I've kind of asked you one-on-one sometimes. And I want to know why build a business with a team and like build this X scale of business rather than go the indie creative route.Right? Because if we want to, if you wanted to say independent, no team, you could probably make a business doing $250,000 a year. Work on it, maybe 20 hours a week, something like that, you know, hanging out in the studio, you'd still have your podcast. You could sit down and like, you're one of the most prolific writers I've ever met. so you could do a bunch of those, those things. And yet you keep trying to do and succeeding in doing these much harder businesses of building a team. And I have to know why.[00:12:39] Sean:Nathan, I don't know. I don't know why. I kind of know why, uh it's it's like it's going to get deep. I mean, it, it probably really goes back to childhood and being, being the oldest of 13 kids feeling like. I don't know if my parents are watching, but like, I felt this, this pressure to be successful, to be a good example, to be, to be a leader, you know, like to be productive.And, you know, I'm working through a lot of that stuff in therapy, like learning, like where did my motivations come from? And like, you know, it is this healthy because, you know, you know, my, my background of extreme workaholism for like 10 years, like, Nope, no joke. It was really bad. Like 16 hour days, seven days a week for 10 years, like all I did was work and like that's, that's my tendency.And I think something beautiful came out of that, which is this sabbaticals idea where since 2014 now I've taken off every seventh week as a sabbatical. So I work six weeks and I, I take off a week and we do that with our team and all of our team members. I paid them to take off sabbaticals and it's just been beautiful.The heartbeat of the company. And like, it's been really good for me as well in terms of, you know, burnout prevention and just unlocking my best ideas, but that's, that's my tendency. And, you know, th there's, there's all kinds of reasons. And, you know, there there's messages that we hear that maybe were said or implicit, you know, growing up that we internalize.And so I think, honestly, Nathan it's, it's probably just like chasing, like, I'm going to be dead honest, like, like it's, it's just like, I think of your post that post that you titled about enough, you know, and, you know, thinking through it, like, like if I were to just think of a number, you know, it's like, no, that's not enough, you know, and I know that's not healthy.So like, yeah, I could totally, I could totally do the solo thing. I could totally make 600. Work part-time, have less stress and maybe I should, you know, maybe I will eventually, but there's something in me that wants to build something bigger, but at the same time, it's just so much fun. Get it, like, I just love processes and systems and like, you know, building things that can scale.And so, yeah, it's.[00:15:08] Nathan:Well, let's lean into it more because I have the same thing on two different sides. Like I made the same leap from a solar creator to having a team. and there's sometimes I miss aspects of the solo creator thing. Like there's a level of simplicity and like, I look at somebody's product launch or something, and it does $25,000 or $50,000.And I'm like, oh, I remember when that amount of money was substantial in that it moved the needle for the business and like, and drove real profits. Now, like 25 or $50,000 gets eaten up by that much of expenses, like immediately, you know, cause the, the machine is just so much, so much bigger. And so I have the same thing of, of pushing for more and trying to figure out what. Like, what is that balance? And, and, yeah, I guess, how do you think about the balance between gratitude and enough and drive and ambition?[00:16:08] Sean:Yeah, that is a great question. It is. It is a balance. And as someone who has a tendency towards all or nothing thinking like, I'm, I just get obsessed. Like if I'm, if I'm about something like, I'm just all in, or I don't care at all. Like I'm really not in between. And that I think is a double-edged sword.Like it's a reason for my success, but it's also a reason for all of my downfalls and like, you know, going years without exercising and losing relationships and friendships, because I was so consumed by what I was building, you know, it is very much a double-edged sword. And so I think the answer is balance, you know, in what you're saying, w what do you, what do I think about the balance?I think it is a balance. It has to be, you have to be operating from a place of enough and then have things that are pulling you forward. You know, something that you're working towards having goals I think is healthy. You know, it's. Something that gets you out of bed in the morning. You're excited about what you're doing.You have this vision for where you're going, but it's operating from a healthy place of, I'm not doing this to fill a void in my soul. Right? Like I'm not doing this because I believe I'm not enough because I believe I'm not worthy of something. But, but because I know, yes, I matter I'm worthy. I'm important.And I'm excited. Like, I think that's the, I'm not saying I'm even there. I just think that's the balance to strike[00:17:34] Nathan:Yeah. I think you're right in this. It's interesting of the things that you can do in your, I guess, life, maybe the creative Dr.. I think there's a tendency of using that insecurity to drive creative success that can work really, really well for an amount of time. Like if you need to finish a book, grow your audience to a thousand subscribers, you know, like accomplish some specific goal.And he used the chip on your shoulder and the feeling of like, this person doesn't believe in me and that like triggers those deep insecurities on one hand, it's wildly effective and on the other, it can be super destructive and it's such a weird balance and place to sit in.[00:18:21] Sean:Yeah, a double-edged sword, for sure. Like it can, it can be what helps you succeed? And it can be your downfall. So you have to wield it wisely. unintentional illiteration you ha you have to be careful with that because it's so easy to just get consumed by it, to drown in it, to let this, you know, whatever it is, this, this, this drive, this motivation, the chip on the shoulder, whatever it is to let it take you to a place where you're just like, along for the ride, you know, on a wave, going somewhere on a, on a, you know, a tube floating down the river, right.You're just being taken somewhere, but are you being taken where you wanna go?[00:19:05] Nathan:Well, yeah. And then realizing, like, it might feel like you are up into a point, but then I guess if you're not aware of it and you're not in control of it, then you'll get to the point where the thing that you were trying to succeed, that the book launch, you know, hitting $10,000 in sales or whatever else, like that's not going to have any of the satisfaction and.[00:19:25] Sean:If I can take an opportunity here just to speak very directly to a point. If you are a founder, you should be in therapy. Full-stop like you, you need a therapist. I thought I didn't. I was like, I had a great upbringing. I'm all good. You know, everything's healthy. I don't have any problems. The problem was, I didn't know the problems that I had.I didn't realize what I was stuffing down. I didn't realize what I was avoiding. There's so much stress, you know, being a founder or even any, any C level executive in a company, like there's just so much going on, and you're responsible for so many things it affects your personal life. It affects your relationships.It affects how you see yourself. There is so much to unpack that you don't know, you need to unpack. And there's probably also stuff that, you know, you need to unpack. and Maybe you don't want to, but I went my entire life until the past year. Never going into therapy, never went to therapy. I'm like, yeah, that's great.You know, if you have some serious problems or a really bad childhood or whatever, like yeah. That's, you know, I support, it like positive, you know, like golf clap and I'm like, oh my gosh since I've been going on. I'm like I didn't know why I was doing the things I was doing, what my reasons were, what my motivations were, the ways that it was unhealthy to me, the way that it was affecting my relationships.So I just want to encourage everyone to go to therapy. I promise it's going to be beneficial[00:20:53] Nathan:Yeah.I cannot echo that enough. I've had the same experience and just having someone to talk through whatever's going on in your life, whatever, like even just interesting observations. When someone said this, I reacted like that. And that doesn't quite add up. Like, can we spend some time digging into that kind of, you know, and you realize that like, oh, that wasn't, that wasn't a normal, like healthy reaction.And it had nothing to do with what the person said or who they are or anything like that. I had to do it. This other thing, the other thing that I think is interesting about therapy is when you're following people online, you're partially following them for the advice and what they can do for you and all of that.But I think the most interesting creators to follow are the ones who are on a journey and they bring their audience, their fans, along that journey with them. And a lot of people are on a really shallow journey or at least what they put out online is a really shallow journey of like a, I'm trying to grow a business from X to Y I'm trying to accomplish this thing.And it's like, Like, I'm happy for you. There's like tips and tactics that you use along the way. And that's moderately interesting, but I think if you're willing to dive in on therapy and why you do, or you make the decisions that you do and what really drives things, it makes for as much deeper journey, that's a lot more interesting to follow. And all of a sudden the person that you followed for like learning how to do Facebook ads is talking about not only that, but the sense of gratitude that they were able to find in the accomplishments that they made or how they help people in this way or other things that's like a really authentic connection.And I think that, even though like growing a more successful business is not the goal of therapy and, and all of that. Like, it has that as a by-product.[00:22:42] Sean:It does. It definitely does. Although I'm, I definitely look at things the way that you're saying, which is like, what is. Productive output of doing this thing. And it's like, yeah, that's why I need to be in therapy to understand why I apply that lens to absolutely everything. but I I've found it immensely helpful.I would say I would echo what you're saying. in terms of sharing your journey, both the ups and the downs. I think that the highs of your journey are only as high as the lowest that you share, because otherwise it's just kind of it's, it's flat, you know, there's nothing to compare to like th th in the hero's-journey-sense you know, we we're rooting for the underdog who is going through challenges, and then we're celebrating with them when they have the wins.If you know, if you're not sharing the, the, the low points, it's not as relatable. Now that doesn't mean you have to share everything you're going through. You don't, you know, you can keep some things, you can keep everything personal. I'm just saying, if you have the courage to share what you're going to find is that you're not alone.You're not the only person going through these things. You're not the only person feeling these things. And sometimes the biggest failures or, or the things that, that hurt the most or the most difficult to go through when you share those, those can actually resonate the most. That can be where your, your community really steps up.And you, you feel that, more than any other time.[00:24:07] Nathan:Yeah. I think that, like I wrote this article a few years ago, titled endure long enough to get noticed, and it was just actually wrote it, it was off the cuff. I was on a plane just like needed to get something out that week. And it was an idea about serum on my head and I wrote, wrote it out, send it off.And, just the replies from it, because it took a more personal angle and it was talking about some of the struggles and a bunch of the replies were like, oh, that's exactly what I needed in this moment. Like, I was about ready to give up on this thing, you know? And, and that was that bit of encouragement. It ends up being this thing that feeds both ways. If you're able to take care of your audience and then if you let them, your audience can take care of you of saying like, oh, that that was really, really, meaningful.[00:24:49] Sean:Can I turn it around on you for just a second and, and ask, I, I know Nathan, you've been writing recently, you're on a bit of a streak and for those. Following your journey for a long time. They know you've, you've gone on streaks for periods of time. You made an app to log those things. We're talking about this recently.And I was just curious, what, what made you start writing again? And it may be, if you can touch on like the identity piece that you were sharing with me.[00:25:17] Nathan:Yeah.So most good things that have come in my business. Many of them, at least for a whole period of time, he came from writing. I wrote a thousand words a day for over 600 days in a row. And like, that was. Multiple books, a 20,000 subscriber audience, like just a whole bunch of things so I can work it from and everything else. And I've, I've tried to restart that habit a handful of times since then. And yeah, you were asking the other day, I'm trying to think, where are we out of the brewery? Maybe? I don't know.[00:25:51] Sean:Yeah. Something like.[00:25:51] Nathan:Well, I've all something. And you're just asking like, Hey, you're restarting that what what's driving that. And the thing that came to, I actually came to it in a coaching therapy conversation was like, I'm a writer. That's who I am. You know, it's part of my identity and yes, I'm also a, a creator and a startup founder and CEO and whatever else, but like, realizing that. I'm most at home when I'm writing, that's not what I'm doing. Writing is my full-time thing. And like, here's the cadence that I put out books, you know, obvious thing of like Ryan holiday, he's super prolific, like a book or two a year, you know?I'm not a writer in that way, but I, I have things to say and, words have an impact on people in the act of writing has such an impact on me that I realized that I feel somewhat of this void if I don't exercise that muscle and stay consistent of not just like teaching and sharing, but also taking these unformed thoughts that bounce around in my head and it, and like being forced to put them out in an essay that is actually coherent and backs up its points and like, Yeah, it makes it clear.So anyway, that's the, that's why I'm writing again. And so far it's been quite enjoyable. I'm only on, I think, 20 days in a row of writing, writing every day, but it's coming along now. I have to look. 21 today will be 22.[00:27:19] Sean:Nice. Yeah. Right. Writing is so great for clarifying thinking. And I love the, the identity piece. It's like, I'm a writer, you know, that's what I do. And I think it's interesting to think about whether it's kind of chicken and the egg, right. Maybe, maybe James clear would, would disagree, but like, does it start with a belief that you're a writer and therefore you write, or is it the act of writing that makes you a writer?And if you, if you aren't writing, then you're not.[00:27:50] Nathan:Yeah. I wrote something recently and maybe it's a quote from somebody of, if you want to be the noun and you have to do the verb, you know, and so we're looking for, how do I become a writer? How do I become a painter? How do I become a musician An artist, any of these things? And it's like, if you want to be a writer?Yyou have to write, you know, like, and I think we, we get so caught up in the end state that we start to lose track of the, the verb, the thing of like writers, write painters, paint, photographers, take photos, you know? And so if you're not seeing progress in that area, then it's like, well, are you actually doing the verb?And yeah, that plays a lot into identity and, and everything else.[00:28:37] Sean:I like what James, James clear says about like casting a vote for the person you want to[00:28:43] Nathan:Yeah, I think I referenced James on. So it's the, I reference you probably every fourth episode. And then James, maybe at like, just on alternating ones.So the thing that I quote you on all the time is the show up every day for two years, like I always had create every day as a poster on my wall, and I really liked the for two years, angle. And so I I'd love for you to share where does the for two years part come from and why, why that long? Why not for two months or two decades or something else?[00:29:16] Sean:Right. It really, the whole show up every day for two years, idea came from me, drawing letters, hand lettering. You know, you think of the Coca-Cola logo. That's not a font. That's, you know, customer. That's what I would do is draw letters. Like, like what you have behind your head, that type of style of lettering.And I just enjoyed doing that and I, it wasn't a job or anything, and I really didn't pursue it seriously for a long time, even though I enjoyed it as a kid, because I thought I could never make a living at this, you know? And it's that like productivity filter again, what can I be successful at? You know, as opposed to like, Hey, what do I enjoy?You know? And, it took an artist telling me, Hey, if you enjoy it, just create. because cause you enjoy doing it. Just create. I was like, yeah, I don't know why I needed that permission, but I did. And I just started creating and I was creating for me, like, because I loved it. And I was sharing on Instagram and Twitter and places like that, the drawings I was making, but nobody really cared or noticed for the first two years.And it, it, it, that was okay with me because I was doing it for myself. I loved the process. I love the act of. But somewhere right around two years, it was just this inflection point. It's kinda like you say, you know, like do it until you're noticed, right. And people started asking for custom commissions, do you have posters?Do you have t-shirts? And the reason I recommend that people show up every day for two years is it's not going to happen overnight. You know, hopefully in that time you find the reason for yourself that you're showing up. and the two years part is arbitrary for some people within eight months, they're on the map and people notice their work and maybe they could quit their job or, or whatever.Right. But two years is really just to give people a mark, you know, to, to work towards. by that time they figure out like, oh, it's not actually about two years. It's about showing up every day.[00:31:16] Nathan:Yeah. And a lot of what I like about two years is it since your time horizon correctly. and it helps you measure your like past efforts. I think about, you know, if you've thought about starting a, like learning a musical instrument or starting a blog or any of those things, you're like, eh, I tried that before, you know, and you're like, yeah, I showed up most days kind of for two months, maybe, you know, like when you look back and you analyze it, you're like, oh, I didn't show up every day for two years. And there's also sort of this implicit, I guess conversation you have with yourself of like, if I do this, will I get the results that I want? And cause the, the most frustrating thing would be to put in the effort and to not get the results and how the outcome you're. Like, I tried it for so long and I didn't get there. And so I believe that if you're doing something like creating consistently showing up every day, writing every day for two years and you're publishing it and you're learning from what you, you know, the results you try and consistently to get better, you almost can't lose. Like, I don't know of examples of people.Like no one has come to me. I actually emailed this to my whole list and said, like, what is something that you've done every day for two years, that didn't work. And people came back to me with story after story of things that they thought would be that. And then it like started working a year or year and a half in, or at some point in there because it's really hard to fail when you're willing to show up consistently for a long period of time.[00:32:54] Sean:And I think there's a point of clarification there kind of a nuanced discussion where some people might say, well, you know, where where's, where's the other end of the spectrum, where you're just continually doing a thing that doesn't work, you know, doing the same thing and expecting different results.And I don't think that's what we're talking about here. Like when we say show up every day, Showing up everyday to your craft, you know, for yourself to better yourself, whether that's writing or drawing or working on your business. This doesn't mean never course-correcting, this doesn't mean adapting or adjusting to find product market fit.We're talking about showing up for yourself. This doesn't mean even posting every day. It's not, it's really not for others. Like share what you want. If you want to tweet every day, if you want to blog or post your art every day, go for it. I actually tried that and, you know, it was pretty exhausting and that's part of why I made Daily Content Machine.I was like, how about I show up one hour a week and you turn that into Daily Content for me. but still on all the other days, I want to show up for myself. And, and often for me, it starts with writing as well. I think it all starts with writing, whether it's a business idea or a course or a book or content like writing is just the seed of all of that.So I like writing, not because I. It was born a rider or anything. I just see results from it. So for me, it's showing up in writing, even if I'm not posting that, or I'm not posting it now, you know, it's just for me.[00:34:19] Nathan:Yeah. And that's an important point because a lot of the time my writing is just chipping away at some bigger thing. Like some of the long essays that I've written have been written over the course of three or four months, you know, it's not like I got it together and like published it and it was ready to go.It was like an ongoing thing.What, like, what are some of your other writing habits? Because you're someone who has written a ton, I've seen you consistently write like 4,000 words a day for an entire month and stuff like that. yeah. When someone asks you, how do I become a better writer? How do I write consistently any of that? What are some of your tips?[00:34:55] Sean:Yeah. I'll tell you how not to do it, which is how I've done it, which is back to our earlier discussion. Just kind of all or nothing. my first book I wrote in 14 days, 75, 80,000 words, and my, my second book, which I still haven't edited and published. I was like, I want to show people that things take, as long as the amount of time you give them, how long does it take to write a book a year, 10 years a month?You know, two weeks, I was like, I'm going to try and write a hundred thousand words in a single day. So I live streamed it, and my idea was to speak it and have it dictated, right. Have it transcribed. I made it to 55,000 words. And these are like, it's, it's all you, you can find it. it's, it's coherent words like this.Isn't just feel like, like the book was in my head. I made it to 55,000. My voice was going and I'm like, I think I've got most of the book. I'm not going to kill my voice. And that's, as far as I made it. So I failed on the goal, but still got 55,000 words. But then for the next, like three, three or six months or something I hardly wrote.Cause I was just like, oh yeah, you know, look what I did. You know, I wrote all those words and it's like, no, that's not the right way to do it. Like I actually, I think there was a point to what I was doing and it was, it was a fun stunt or whatever, but I kind of regret that, you know, I wish I just stuck to, you know, you had that, that idea of like write a thousand words a day and this is something I would share with people as like an idea for starting out, Hey, try and read a thousand words a day.And I found out people would get stuck on that. They'd be like, I wrote 830, 2 words. I'm a failure. I'm just gonna give up and wait until the weekend when I have more time. And it's like, no, that's not the point. The point is to just show up and, and put some words there. So maybe for you, it's a time like write for 20 minutes, write for 15 minutes, write three sentence.And maybe you keep going, you know, but like put in the reps, show up, you know, put on the running shoes and go out the front door. If you don't run the five miles, that's fine. You know, walk around the block, but show up. And so I I've done it both ways and I don't prefer the stunt way where I write 50,000 words in a day.I prefer the, the, the ones where I write 400 words every single day, that week[00:37:06] Nathan:Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And I've, I've, had that a lot of times where I was like, oh, I can't write today because I, I wouldn't have time to hit 500 or a thousand words. And so that's something I'm doing differently this time around of like, look even a hundred or 200 is a, is a success, any amount of, of doing the reps as good.[00:37:26] Sean:I want to lean in on that idea of defining success as less. What I mean by defining success as less is, and this is especially helpful. If you're going through a hard time, if you're feeling burned out, if you're feeling depressed, w with remote work, growing and growing, you know, w we're commuting less, we have more time.We have more flexibility in our day, but we, we tend to fill that time with just more and more work. And it's really easy to get to the point where you feel overloaded. And you, you go into your day just too ambitious thinking. You can get too many things done and ending with disappointment. Like I didn't get all the things done, you know, and you're just on this perpetual cycle of disappointment every day, setting yourself up for disappointment, trying to do too much.And instead of defining success as less. And so if you're, if you're feeling depressed, I mean, this gets as small as today as a success. If you brush your teeth, like today's a success. If you shower, today's a success. If you walk around just your block, that's it not run a mile, you know, not come up with a new business plan or outline a whole course or something.Less defined success is less, when I would do podcasts, I, you know, a podcast is what an hour, maybe two hours or something like that. But it takes a lot of energy. If you've never been on a podcast, you know, it takes energy to record. And I would feel bad after I record a podcast, not getting as much done afterward, you know, like, oh, I didn't get that much done.I mean, I recorded a podcast, but then I was supposed to have this and this and this, and just beat myself up. And I realized like, Hey, that, that podcast I recorded, that's going to be heard by thousands of people. That's really high leverage work. And I brought my best self and I really showed up and I really delivered.And that was good work. And you know what, on days where I have a podcast, I'm going to define that day as a success. If I show up and record that podcast, anything else is a bonus. And, and you just make that smaller and smaller and smaller until it's accessible to you until it's attainable for you. So maybe it's like write three sentences.If you show up at all to your writing app and write three sentences, the days of success. And what you'll find is more often than. You'll keep going.[00:39:34] Nathan:I think that's so important in, and I imagine most creators have been in that position of no motivation feeling depressed. And then you beat yourself up because you didn't get anything done, like deriving yourself worth. This kind of goes back to the earlier conversation, driving your self worth from what you create can both be very powerful in that it can feed itself really well.And then it is also incredibly fragile. And I've gotten to that point where if you end up in the downward spiral version of that, then like not creating, not accomplishing something. Leads you to feel more upset and depressed and so on. And it like when it works, it works well. And when it stops working, it fails spectacularly.And I think you're right. That the only way out of it is to lower that bar of success to something crazy low that you can't consistently. And then, you know, gradually you're way out of it from there.[00:40:34] Sean:Yeah, you, you are more than what you do. You are more than what you create. You are more than what you produce. You are more than your job. You are not your company. You're not the money in the bank. You're not how much you make each month. You're not the decline in revenue from this month compared to last month.Like you're none of those things. You're a person you're a human outside of that with independent work. And that's such a hard thing to internalize, but, but if you can, I mean, you, you, you just become impervious to all the things that can come against you. You know, you just become unstoppable. Nothing's going to phase you.Like you can embrace the highs and embrace the lows and just ride the rollercoaster. And I'm just describing all the things that I don't know how to do, but I'm working.[00:41:20] Nathan:Yeah. It's all the things that we're trying to, like lean in on and remind ourselves of, in those, in those tough times, I have a friend who has his game, that he played his, a few little kids, and his sort of a little game that he plays with them over time. And he like in a playful, joking voice, he asked them like, oh, what do you need to do to be worthy of love? And it's like turned into the thing for they, like, they're like nothing, you know? And he's very purposefully trying to counteract this idea of like, oh, I need to earn worthiness. I need to earn love. If, if I like show up for my parents in this way, if I take care of my family in that way, if I'm not a burden on other people, then like, Then I'll be okay and I'll be worthy of love and all of that.And so he's just playing it, like making it a playful thing with his kids from a very young age to basically instill this idea of like, you are a complete whole person and you can't, like earn worthiness of love and you also can't lose it.[00:42:19] Sean:I'm just thinking of the titles for this episode, that my team's going to come up with, like how to be a founder worthy of love.[00:42:26] Nathan:Yes, exactly.[00:42:28] Sean:Don't use that title.[00:42:31] Nathan:Okay. But I want to go, you've built a, a team twice, for first for Sean West, as a business, you know, of the course and content, community business. And then now for Daily Content, I want to get into, like what you like, how you built the team differently between those two times and what you learned. but before we do that, let's talk about as a solo creator. When you're thinking about making that leap to something where you need a team to build it to the next level, maybe you're at a hundred thousand dollars a year in sales, and you're looking at maybe the roommate's eighties and the Marie Forleo's of the world where like a few, rungs above you on the same ladder.And you're like, okay, that would require a team. What are some of the things that you think people should consider in that leap?[00:43:22] Sean:My biggest mistake was applying the right advice at the wrong time.Like I'm not a, I'm not a reckless person. Like I'm going to do my research and learn and like get all the smart people's advice. And so every, every big mistake I've made was as a result of applying great advice from smart people at the wrong time.And so it's, and, and I don't think I've ever heard anyone really, really talk about this. There's a lot of people slinging advice who should really be asking questions, but at the same time, you can't even blame them. Cause like Twitter, there's no room for nuance. Like you tweet fortune cookie tweets, you know, with, with advice and like, hope that people apply it at the right time.Like, that's just kind of how it goes. But like, you know, to, to your point of like looking to other people and what they've built and like, oh, that's what I would need and stuff, you know, I, I heard things. Delegate, you know, you don't want superhero syndrome. Like you need to empower other people and delegate the things you're not good at delegate the things you don't like to do, delegate the things you're good at.And you like to do, but you shouldn't do because you're the founder and you need the vision, you know, like, so it's like delegate, delegate. And so, okay. All right. Hire. This is going to sound really stupid, but no one told me that you need to make sure the thing that you're doing is working before you hire, because hiring is scaling, which means to make something bigger.And if you've got a bucket at the beach and the bucket has holes in it, and you scale that bucket, you have a bigger bucket with holes. Like th th that's not better. That's like, do you, do you like the stressful problems you have now? How would you like problems with another zero on that? Like you have $30,000 problems.Do you want $300,000 a month problems? Like, you know, it's not fun. so nobody's told me that and looking back, it's like, it's so dumb. Like, do you think making this big. Automatically makes it better. It's just going to automatically make the problems go away. No, you need to, you need to scale. What's working, do more of what works and, and, and slow down and hold off and make sure the thing you have is working before you grow it.I don't know if I answered the question, but I'm just speaking to my past self.[00:45:32] Nathan:You totally did. So what are the things that, like, how does that play out as you're building Daily Content Machine, versus the previous team?[00:45:40] Sean:The difference here is my, my previous business required me to function and I hired people around me, you know, to support me. So I wasn't doing all the work, but I had to show up. I had to, you know, whatever I had to write, I, you know, come up with an email or blog or. Or live stream or podcast or whatever.It was like, it was built around me and there's nothing wrong with that. Like, that's totally fine. You can build a business where you do what you love and you're supported by your team. I just found that you can, you can do something that you love and burnout, like after you do that for years and years and years, it's not even that I don't like podcasting or I don't like writing cause I actually do what it ultimately came down to is that I don't like having to do it.And if I don't, if I don't, then everything falls apart. And so with this new business, the agency, it was like, okay, like the first thing I want to build from is this can't require me to function. It has to be built in a way that the team can run things where it's like, I don't have to be on the strategy call.I don't have to do the marketing. Like my face isn't necessarily the reason people are coming to. and that, that really shifted how we build things.[00:47:01] Nathan:Yeah. I mean, that, that's a huge thing. And like, I imagine you defining all of these roles and early on, you might be doing a bunch of them to test if it works and to build out the systems, but none of them are like defined by your own unique skillset. Like you actually I've loved watching your systems and the, as you've shown me behind the scenes, because you're breaking it down and you don't need one person who is a fantastic video editor and copywriter and project manager talking about that, actually, because I think so often we're trying to find the employee or the team member. That's like the, the unicorn perfect fit. And you've made a system that doesn't require.[00:47:42] Sean:Exactly. And we did start out that way, where, when, when I was initially hiring for, you know, this Daily Content Machine service that we have, what's involved in that process and we talked. Clients and prospects all the time that like the Mo one of the most common things they try to do is either build a team in-house that can find all the best moments scrubbed through the long form content, edit it.Well, you know, titles, research, all of that, the build that team in house, or hire a freelancer and the problems with either of those is like what I've identified as it comes down to the person doing, doing content repurposing well requires nine key skills among them like copywriting and marketing and design and animation and rendering, and like, you know, SEO and all of that stuff.And I'm not saying there's, there's no one out there with all those skills, but, but those people are doing their own thing most of the time,[00:48:38] Nathan:I think I'm a pretty good Jack of all trades. And I think if we get to five of those, probably maybe on a[00:48:45] Sean:You could probably do most, I can do most too, but I don't scale, you know, so I'm trying to, I'm trying to scale me. and the first thing I tried to do was hire someone who could do all the things like, okay, you need to be able to, and that very quickly was not the way that was not going to work.So we realized we need specialists. We need people who are really good writers. We need people who are really good animators. People who are good editors, people who are a good quality assurance, reviewers, people who are good project managers, you know, all of that. And that's, that's what probably sets us apart.You know, the most unique thing is like, we learn about your audience and we find all of the moments and like teaching people, I've talked to people who have their own teams, or they're trying to build teams for doing this. And that's the hardest part is how do you teach someone how to find those moments?Like video editing is commoditized. You can find a video editor anywhere, but what happens when you try and get a freelancer who can just chop up clips and animate it and put a slap a title on it? Yeah. Th they're not, they don't care about the quality. They're not capitalizing the book titles and the company names and spelling the guests.Right. You know, and the titles of the clips, that's like half of it, you know, like half of it is the title, because that's going to determine whether someone sticks around and clicks or watches or whatever, and they're not thinking the right way, or they're not finding the right moments. And so the person who's outsourcing, they're trying to go from, I've been doing this myself.I've been editing my own video. I've been scrubbing through my own long form content to now, okay, you have got this freelancer, but now you're a project manager and a quality assurance reviewer because their work isn't up to par. And so I have people asking me like, how do you teach people how to do this?Well, how to find those moments, what's going to provide value to the audience. How do you title it all? and that part, I'm not giving away because that's, that's our home.[00:50:33] Nathan:Yeah. And that, that makes sense. So you described Daily Content Machine as an agency and it is, but I was like, great. You're an agency. Here's my other idea for a show where. Like a dream it up and produce it. Or actually we build my website for me, like your, your designers on all that.Right. And your answer would be like a flattened and I think that's really important for the business. So can you talk about the difference between the agency that you're running in productized services and how you think about making that scale versus like a, an agency of, Hey, this is our hourly rate.These are the projects we're best at, but we'll kind of take on anything.[00:51:11] Sean:So maybe I'll I'll I'll title the clip of this moment, how here's, how you will try it like this. Here's how you create a six figure agency. And for. It is by saying no to almost everything and getting really specific about what you offer and to whom. So my previous, the previous iteration of my business, I was out of a scale of one to ten I was working at a level 11 effort, you know, to bring in six figures with this version of the business. It's like a one or two in terms of, you know, getting people to give you vast amounts of money. And the difference is in what you're providing and, and to whom. So you've kind of got this, this matrix of products or services that either make money for your clients, or they're just nice to have.And then on the people side, you have, it's a generalization, but people who have money and people who don't, and I was always playing on hard mode, you know, I was trying to sell like kind of more premium stuff to people who didn't have money. And I'm like, you know, feeling bad about not being able to give stuff to the people who don't have money.And it's like, you know, what a really great way to do this would be to provide premium services that make money for people who have. So I decided I'm going to start with six to seven figure business owners. What is it that they need? And what is it that, that I'm good at, you know, core competencies. And that's where we came up with this idea.And the hardest part has been not giving into shiny object syndrome. All of the things that we could do, all of the services that I want to build. And it's like, no, there's so much more juice in this one thing. If we just stick to this and just become the best at finding, identifying, and producing and distributing clips from long form content and just be really, really good at that.There's enough complexity in that, you know, and just see that as the game, like, how can we get really good at this? How can we sell this better? How can we deliver it better? How can we increase the quality and just getting really focused and aligning what you offer the value of that to the people you're offering it to within four weeks with just a page and a form.This was a six figure book.[00:53:16] Nathan:When I think about the price of the offering. So I think I have. for what I pay for and Daily Content Machine paying about $5,000 a month. Is that right? I think somewhere in there.[00:53:28] Sean:So, what we didn't say is you, you kind of talked me into, adding another service, which is, we also do the video and audio show notes, transcript, like podcast production piece. So like, we'll produce the full thing. You just show up and record sync the footage to us. We'll produce the show and we'll make the clips.That's actually been a really nice bundle, but I'm like, okay, that's it, that's it. You know? So you kind of have some extra services in there.[00:53:53] Nathan:Yeah.To be clear, you don't want to let your friends, even if they live in the same town, as you convince you to like change your agency,[00:54:00] Sean:Nathan's very convincing.[00:54:03] Nathan:I distinctly remember. I even invited you over for dinner and convinced you of it,[00:54:07] Sean:How am I supposed to say no,[00:54:08] Nathan:Exactly.[00:54:10] Sean:You made an offer. I couldn't refuse.[00:54:13] Nathan:But in that, so you're talking about like what you're selling to someone who might not be able to afford it, or like you might make a course that you charge $5,000 for that is absolutely worth every bit of that when in the right person's hand and apply it in the right way. But you're going to have a bunch of people trying to buy it, who like, aren't that person who's going to get the leverage to make it a clear 10 X value or something like that. And so you might have in this position where someone's like, oh, $5,000 is expensive. Should I buy it? I don't know. And you're like, honestly for you, I don't know if you should buy it.Like you're not in the target market and that's, that's $5,000 one time in the case of this. And this agency, this productized service, I guess, $5,000 a month. And so actually two of those clients, and you've got a six figure a year agency business. And it's just interesting. The thing that you said made me really drove home the point of, there's not necessarily a correlation between effort and income and, and effort and output. And so you found a model and kept, kept tweaking until you found one where it was like, look, there's a ton of work that goes into this, obviously. And there's a bunch of really smart people working on editing and transcribing and captioning and everything in the show. but like, it, it doesn't have to be crazy complicated, whereas some of the other business models that you and I have both tried have been way more effort for way less.[00:55:40] Sean:Yeah. And what can really hold you back is not realizing who you're trying to market to. And. getting Talked down in your prices by accidentally catering to the wrong people. So like people who can't afford your services, you could get on call consultation calls with them. And they're just like, I just don't have this much money and can you do discounts?And you, you almost start to feel bad. Like, you know, how can I charge this much? I must be charging way too much. And it's like, or maybe you're serving the wrong customers. Like, you know, when you talk to the right people, that may actually be really cheap. I remember when I started designing logos, this is like a decade ago.My first logo, I charged like 150 And then, once I sold that I got enough confidence to charge 300. And then I was like, I, you know what, instead of doubling again, I'm going to charge $750[00:56:30] Nathan:Ooh.[00:56:31] Sean:I did that. And you know, I'm like slowly building on my portfolio and I got up to like, $1,500 and clients were paying that and right around there, you start to get people resisting.Now you've got a price with a comma and it gives people. pause And they're like, can you come down? Can you do a little bit cheaper? And it's so tempting. You, you want to do that because you want the job. You, you want them to be happy. It could be a good portfolio item. And I remember just kind of fast forwarding through this, but like, you know, just mindset shifts and stuff.Eventually I got to the point where there was this startup out of San Francisco they wanted a logo. And I was like, this would be really valuable for this company, you know? And I somehow mustered up the courage to charge $4,000. And I found out later from a friend of a friend, you know, from someone that worked there that they thought I was like super cheap because someone else they knew or some other agency was going to charge $25,000 And I was like, wow, like I'm over here. Just like feeling bad about my prices, thinking I'm going so big. And really I'm. I was just serving the wrong code.[00:57:34] Nathan:Yeah. And it's so interesting because the person who's only able to pay $500 or only thinks the logo is worth $500. It's not that they're wrong or they're devaluing your service or something like that. It's that maybe it's for a side project or it's for a business that just got off the ground or any of that. And so it's not worth getting offended over or something like that. It's like, we just don't have product market fit, like product customer fit. It's not a thing here, you know, and my services are better for, you know, bigger, more established companies. So the saying no to, to, services, occasionally getting talked into specific services by your somewhat annoying local friends. but then where does it go from here as far as what are you looking to, to, to add more clients and, and keep scaling and growing?[00:58:30] Sean:Yeah. That's what we're trying to figure out right now is it's always tricky. It's a blessing and a curse when you have an audience, because it can kind of create false product market fit. Like you, you think you have something and then you exhaust your audience and then you're like, oh, like I kinda need to figure this out.You know, that's like, we're experiencing that right now because like, I was getting like 40% close rates on consultation calls on sales calls, and now we're not, and it's. Oh, no, like what's happening. And it's like, well, I think those people probably knew me for several years, you know? And then like, there's just all this trust and still Nathan we're a year in and we don't have, like, we don't have a proper website for, for the agency.It's like a page with a form. That's it? There's no, there's no examples. There's no case studies. There's no portfolio item and we've made it this far. but you know, when people don't know you, they need that social proof and they want the examples and they're looking for past versions of success. And like the sales cycle is a little bit longer.And so that's where we're at right now is like figuring out kind of like Mar marketing channel fit. And I know well enough to know, like it's better to, and back to right advice, wrong time. it's a good idea to be everywhere if you can, you know, cause different people consume on different platforms.Even if you don't use Instagram. Other people do, even if you don't use YouTube, other people do it's. Beyond LinkedIn, even if you don't, you know, that like there's, there's some, there's some sound reasoning to that at the same time. You don't want to try to do all of that all at once, you know, and, and spread yourself too thin, like pick one channel, do one channel.Well, and when you've got that down and it's easy and you have systems and it's not taking too much time, then expand to another channel with the goal of like, ultimately diversifying kind of like investments. You don't want to just diversify all at once. You know, like, like try some things out, you know, focus on one thing at a time, see what works for us.I, at least I know that much. And so it's like, okay, I'm not trying to do every version of marketing, you know, like, oh, do we do affiliates? Do we do ads? You know, do we do content? Do we do cold outreach? You know? I'm trying not to do everything at once. So we're kind of dabbling in one thing at a time and seeing what fits.[01:00:48] Nathan:So how many clients do you have now for the agency that are the consistent tenders?[01:00:53] Sean:Not a lot. It's still very small. And we've had like, I it's under a dozen cause like some, we had like several accounts, like not renew and stuff. So it's still very small. And for three or four months, I stopped marketing and sales completely because I did not want to break this thing with scale because I notice things in operation that were the operations that were not going well.I'm like, this is going to be really bad. Like if we just sign more clients, it's going to be really bad. So, I had clients pay upfront for like six months or 12 months of service, which kind of gave us time to focus on operations. And now everything's humming along smoothly. Like the systems we've built can support like dozens or hundreds of accounts, even like, we don't need it right now, but it'll support where we want to go.But it's still a very, it's actually very small, like again done, like almost no marketing a year end, still don't have a website. Like it's pretty much just been all internal focused.[01:01:52] N

Sean: How to foster employee loyalty? Loyalty is a two-way street. If you show it, they're going to show it back. If they don't show it back, those are particularly evil kinds of people. They pay evil with good, so get rid of them. But people who have a good heart, they're grateful, they have a debt of gratitude, that is what's important. For me, people have to have a debt of gratitude. I'm one of the people who have a debt of gratitude, that's why I also don't like owing people favors. I don't like owing people favors because I have a debt of gratitude and I feel like I have to pay it back. And some people, when they call the favor, it could be outrageous. You have to make sure that you have people in the team who have a debt of gratitude. They are grateful. They're thankful to you. They have loyalty to you for what you've done, for what you stand for, for the contributions you've done for the team and the company, for your character, and they respect you. All of those things play a huge factor. Also, if you have a certain employee in your team, who is disloyal to you, who gossips about you, who slanders you, especially if this person is in a higher position, like a leadership position, get rid of them. That's going to be a sickness and cancer in your organization. So that breaks down even the most loyal employees. That breaks them down. If you have someone in a leadership position, that's not loyal to you, get rid of them immediately. So yeah, there are so many ways. Showing your employees how good you are, and really, you know, having integrity. Being a one-man person at work, at home when no one sees you in your decisions, that is very important. Having integrity is very important. Serving and helping your people is also very important. Teaching them, making sure they learn the craft, making sure they're successful at work, at what they do, that fosters loyalty. There are so many ways to build it. And there are also so many ways that it could break down. Sometimes it's not your fault. Sometimes it's just because you're keeping disloyal or evil, particularly evil people in your team, especially in the leadership role. So yeah, I hope that answers your question. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: How do I know when it's possible for me to turn my hobby into a business? When there is a viable market. When they actually want to buy from you. When what they want to buy from you is something that you can source or produce. So speaking from one of the experiences that I have had, I turned my aquascaping hobby into a small micro-business. So I sell aquatic plants and livestock on the website, making the price very competitive by checking out what's in the market and it's doing quite well. It's doing quite well, I would say. Before I turned it into a business, I had an overflow of stock. And I know I'm going to have a weekly overflow of stock that I'm not going to use and I'm just going to throw away. So I decided to start the website so as not to throw away those plants and those fishes because they're overpopulating already. They're overgrowing the tanks that I have and it would be a waste. So instead of throwing them away, I put them for sale on the site. And I don't run ads. I don't want to oversell them. So I don't run any ads. It's just SEO. People search. They find the website. They add to cart, checkout, and we got a sale going for aquascape.ph. So for me, that's how I turned it into a business. I realized there's demand. And I realized that the competition is not really that great. They don't have their own website. They're not organized. And I figured that might be something that people would want to shop from, a really good website, good experience on mobile and desktop. And it just so happens that I have SEO-Hacker, and it's something that we can do. So there's my competitive advantage there. And we just shot at it, you know, gave it a shot and it's working pretty well. That's what I could say. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Welcome to the First State Kopites podcast. It's episode 8 of season 3 - a podcast for Liverpool supporters in Delaware and friends of Liverpool supporters in Delaware. Thanks for listening on your preferred platform, we are available on ALL of them. This week we are joined by Sean Costello - who recently joined the Delaware supporters group. We talk Sean's LFC story and then review the week just gone. Sean: How did you become a Liverpool fan? Favorite LFC memories experience of the Delaware supporters club? Week gone by: James Milner - cameo vs. Milan and the gnarly performance vs. Palace Champions League is back! I Rating the Palace performance - less than 72 hours later. Only goals from corners, only by African internationals - a return to our set piece dominance The value of our system over signing big name stars Week ahead: Norwich - how much do we care about Pep's trophy? Brentford away - 5.30 kick off, could require us to be up for this one..

Sean: How about the people who were so passionate and the purpose was clear at the get-go. I mean, I'm going to take you as an example since we already have your story here, you started out, you said you love your job. You were in your twenties and then moving to your thirties, forties, somewhere in between the line got blurry. It's not, I don't believe it's just, you're a bad boss, although that does contribute a lot to kind of mud - muddling, muddying down your passion in your purpose. Right. But somewhere in between, and this happens to a lot of people and they lost their passion because they lost their purpose. When does that happen usually? And what triggers that? Lou: Well often it's such an unseen thing that it can happen so slowly. It usually just gets eroded away over time. I think what happened to me was, and I don't think in my twenties when I was loving what I was doing, that I realized I was fulfilling my purpose. I was just doing what I loved and looking back now I can see that it was really aligned with my values. And I think then we change. We grow don't we - we moved to new jobs. We moved to different careers and we think that that's going to be the golden bullet and it isn't, the grass is always greener.  And that's the danger, I think because it can be very difficult to recognize that the passion and the purpose of, you know, disappearing because it can be such a slow, unseen process. And it can be, you can get 10, 20 years down the line, turn around and look back and go, how did I get over here? I was supposed to be over there and, and, and that's the danger because people don't realize it's happening. You know, when either they get so sick because they're so stressed out or whatever, or, you know, like hit a milestone birthday or something like that makes them just stop. Or, you know, the global pandemic has made a lot of people stop and reevaluate their life, that you can turn around and look back at your journey and say, was I really supposed to be here? And that's when it happens. But I think overall it's a slow sort of eroding of your purpose and your mission. Sean: And this is why it is so important to have, if not a daily then every other day, right. Just stop, pause, take a walk, think, breathe the fresh air, journal and realize, am I still on track with my life's purpose? Lou: Yeah. I couldn't agree with you more. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: How can someone protect their business or content idea from being stolen during pitching? When is it okay to steal and when is it crossing the line? I would say this rarely happens. I would say this rarely, rarely happens. So ideas are cheap. That's what I always say. Ideas are cheap. A lot of people have a lot of ideas. That's the truth. A lot of people have very nice ideas, maybe even brilliant ideas. But if nothing is done about it, it's just an idea, you know. The problem is there are some people who have an idea and they keep talking about it and they don't do anything about it. And then someone thinks that their idea is also brilliant and actually does something about it. That's when we say, oh, that person stole that other person's idea. But in reality, we have a lot of talkers, not a lot of doers. And these talkers talk a lot about their ideas. It's the doers who get to do the idea. So the usual case of this is there's someone who keeps talking about his or her idea, and you just keep talking and talking and sharing it with everyone. Unfortunately, within that crowd, there's someone who's really looking for an opportunity to do or start a business that is perhaps a new idea. We have some companies in our world today that actually were kind of like that, you know. They kind of stole the idea. We have Uber, we have Lyft, Grab, they have the same business model. But the first-ever one that did that business was actually Lyft, but we don't know them now because the others stole the idea and flew with it. That is what I think about this question, right? How do you prevent it from happening to you? Don't talk about your idea to people you don't know, people you don't trust. Have self-control. I know that as a founder and as a visionary, you might want to keep casting the vision, you might want to keep talking about it. Some founders, some visionaries, that's how they make it grow within their mind and heart that finally, because of telling themselves and other people repeatedly, they finally get the oomph, you know, the drive to do it themselves and to finally start it. That's how they build it themselves. But when you are that kind of person, and you keep doing that, or you start doing that, make sure you're doing it with the right people Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: How did you grow into this position? And this is a family business. I'm wondering, as someone who grew into the family business, what did it look like for you to be where you are right now? What did the journey look like for you? Charlie: Yeah. It's the phrase that comes to mind is that, it's both a blessing and it's a curse. And you know, it's because when somebody asks me, I'm 34 years old, they're asking me, how long have you been in the business? I've been actively working in the business for about 12 years, but I might answer 34 because I have been in this business since the day I was born. I have memories of going to the office with my dad when I was my kid's age, I've got a seven, five-year-old, and a one and a half year old. I remember going to the office with them. I worked in our warehouse in high school and in college, in the summers. So it's, I've just grown up and there's almost been an expectation. So to go work in it and also I've wanted to, I mean, I look at our executive team, which my dad is a part of. And I, you know, you grew up idolizing these people, for a great reason too. So I say that it's the blessing and the curse because being a family member, you're being held to a higher standard. And I hold myself to a much higher standard too. However, that can be too much. And I would say that that's been helpful to me, but also it's been a great teacher. I've been running the HR department. We call it team member services for about four years now. And if I didn't have the team around me, I would not be doing a good job right now. And if I wasn't given the training over the 12 years that I've been in the company I would not be sitting here talking to you because I have made huge mistakes. A lot of the mistakes, some mistakes that cost the business a lot of money, because of my borderline arrogance, instead of confidence, and trying to do things myself, as opposed to asking for help. And like, those are massive lessons that I don't know if I would have learned that, had I not been given the opportunity to fail, honestly. So I mean, that's the blessing of it. And you know, I think that when I was younger, I would have said that it's more a curse to work for the family side because you just, you know, maybe I should've been a doctor, maybe I should've been an attorney. Maybe I should have done other things. But now, as I was rolling it through a lot of these lessons and made a lot of mistakes and been able to make those mistakes and been supported by brothers in law, and older cousins, and my father and my aunt and my uncle. I really, I look at them with just sheer admiration that they let me go through this gauntlet and learn from it because now I have just a deep appreciation that I think working for a family business, it's the best thing in the world. Because you're, you're your own boss? The family is the boss. So it's just been this process of thinking it was more cursed. And now see that it's a total blessing. It's kind of a shame that there's not more family businesses in the world that are as big as we are, because most of them, when you get to our size to sell out. Because it's, it's very difficult, you have to swallow your pride and you have to put the foundation of the company and the priorities of the company before you're grown. I made that mistake and, you know, fortunately I worked for the family business that let me make that mistake. Because had I not been working for the family business, it probably would have ended a little differently. And I'm sure you can fill in the blanks of what I'm going to there. Right. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: How do you plan on communicating that purpose statement to the rest of the world? Minter: So the key point for me is having spent the time to figure out what your purpose is, until you've actually done a deep level of analysis and thought through what your personal purpose is. It will come out a little bit wonky when you try to say, this is what I believe. Cause you're lightweight. You haven't really thought through and it will end up feeling a little bit, you know, eye-rolly, you know." Right? Whatever." You don't want that. So the key thought is to have a depth to your thinking through how, why this purpose is your real purpose. Not just a nice to have, not just some charity. I want to give money to just because, oh yeah, I like it. But going go, going at a deeper level then afterwards. Like you were saying, you know, you need to do the finances. You need to do the HR. You need to do. I mean, all this other stuff, don't put the purpose in front and sacrifice the rest. Cause you've got to have a great product and service without that you won't exist. So you need to have that. Just like you also will need to have a brand. So at some level, the, I tend to want to say, you will find it when you are ready for it, to the extent that you are ready to do the work and you're ready to carve out the time. Maybe on your weekend, a couple of hours before your kids get up and write down on a piece of paper. What is my north? What are my three key values? How are those going to be exhibitable, demonstrable on a day to day basis those values? And I look at the south, which has stopped. What are the things that are stopping me from getting to my north and the limiting beliefs that I have? And then I think about the action plan. So I write about this in my new book. It's a whole process and it takes time. And until you've done that, the chances are it'll come off a little bit mild and meek when you're trying to express it to the rest of your team. Afterwards, what if you've got it and you really feel strongly about it. And then this is my business. That's going to help me get to this north. I'd rather show it in different ways. You need to act it rather than just speaking about it all the time, because it's much better to have other people say what you do rather than just say what you want. Catch me. So in this thing, you know, you need to model the behavior, you need to be showing. And other people say, "oh God, he really knows what he's talking." Then they will share the love afterwards, tactically speaking, storytelling regularly, going through the reason why I came to this purpose is this. And, you know, I mean, I can do the exact same thing for you, Sean, about my purpose. So I can tell you the exact path that I went through and I do it regularly in a written - in my book and I hammer it out. And if I were with my team. Of course, I wouldn't do it if it's the same team week after week, but systematically within with recruitments, come out with other portions of your life, that link in, because it's not necessarily just one story, you might have multiple versions of it, and you can share that. And sharing that shows your personality, who you are, not just like hardcore executive, get the numbers in bringing your vulnerability into it. And then people are going to connect into that in your team. And then they're slowly but surely won't do it overnight, slowly, but surely they hate now, Sean, you know, the other week you told me about your story. Can I tell you my story and then you have to be able to switch off and say, "yes, I'm ready to hear your story." You know, so you have to park this, you know, 25 minute call you have with the banker about to come up and all that kind of stuff to be able to listen in to whoever comes to tell you about their story. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: How did you figure out that what you were supposed to do and what you were called to do, is what you are doing now? And that's teaching others, inspiring other people, writing books, consulting, coaching, right, et cetera. Steve: I have met many, many wealthy people and many, many rich people and many people that are focused on even moderate wealth. And the materialism is again, one of those things where I said about my company, I was building a certain point. Is this all there is? I thought it was going to be feel better. And so what happens is we then want the next car, or the red car, or the bigger car. And that's because we all have this hole in our soul. It's part of our human condition. And as human beings, we all have this hole in our soul that we're trying to fill, with not feeling fulfilled enough. And so we feel that marketing advertising society, the way we fill that hole is more and more and more and more. And so that more and more and more is where we usually have our parents who have given us a trajectory of what's possible, if they believe in us have not, or what we see others doing. So what I had to know is that I always had to have mentors - since I didn't graduate college. I knew that I had to, if I didn't have generalized knowledge, I knew that I had to have specific knowledge. So I always sought out guides, mentors, advisors, and I was lucky enough that I found out early on that successful people also have egos like I had an ego, they just seem to deserve their ego more because they had the status. But I found that it's amazing how many successful people are willing to share their journey to share their path if you ask them, you know? And so I started realizing how much people are willing to share. And I got access to a lot of mentors along the way. And then I ended up hiring mentors when I was 26 or 27 is when I hired my first coach. And I've had a business coach or a life coach every year for 30 years. I've never not had a business coach or a life coach. And that person helped me do kind of like what we're talking about right now every week. You know, the first part is create the plan. What is it you want in your life, in your family and your relationships and your spirituality and your finances? How you serve the community. So I had to map all that out and tell this other person, these are the things I want. And that person that helped me keep accountable to staying on track to make those things happen. And it's a big, you know, that's a daunting thing to pay somebody to kick your ass. And that's kinda like what I realized it's like when you're in football or, you know, a coach is a pat on the back person, and it's also a kick you in the ass and also show you're made of more than you think you are. And so for me, having a business coach helped me. See more of what you're asking about. How did I know that? Because I knew was being called to something more. I didn't know what it is and I didn't know how to get there myself. So I had to have guides, mentors, and then from having guides and mentors and then tons of reading and tons of learning and trial and error, one thing just led to another. And when you realize, "Oh, I can do this. Oh God, maybe I can do that on a bigger scale. Oh God, I can do this." So it just led to one foot in front of the other. And then that increased more of my confidence and more of my faith and power of that. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: How do I look at fear in the face and turn it into fuel and overcome? Steve: Well, my answer to that is they're already doing it anyway. By them not being happy. They're already in fear. When you're not happy when you're unfulfilled. Here's how I look at it. Here is where we think we should be in life. Like we all have this vision of whatever it would be. Let's say it's status. It's a job. It's a relationship. It's a where you live, it's money. It's relationship with God, whatever we have this vision about where we think we - I should be there, like you see someone that "I could do that job, or I should have that house" or whatever it might be like, we have this vision about what could be possible, right. And then we know everything's possible in life, but then we're here. Like we're our reality is in the present every day I wake up, I have to pay these bills, I have a wife I don't love, my kids don't like me, whatever it might be. We're we're here and in between the space of where we envision our life to be. And here all in between that is that the Delta and that's where stress and fear live. What we have to realize is we have the ability to rise the tide. So as we squeeze fare out and turn it into fuel that on a basis of doing that, that you can create and make change. If you've not used to doing that, then I would say, stop in the mirror right now and realize. Okay. I am already breaking through fear. Because what's happening is each day that I get up and I'm not happy, that is a form of fear, unhappiness and unfulfillment is a version of fear. And you're allowing that fear to now be converted into what you do and go out into a job in which you don't like, go out into an industry and that you don't like, go back and go back into a marriage that you're not happy in and not choose to do something about it. What happens is when you choose to take action, fear, diminishes really quickly. Because once you get into action, as Napoleon Hill says in the book, "The thinking grow rich" is a book that Napoleon Hill in the United States wrote in the thirties, 1930s. And it's probably the greatest manual for the foundation of all self-development programs and positive thinking programs and business plans and life plans that have come after that. But you know, one of his simple quotes is, you know, success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal. And Paulo Coelho and the alchemist's book says once your mind is made up the universe conspires toward your success, so if you have a blueprint and a plan and you have a vision and you start taking some actions, boom, by getting into action, it really helps reduce the fear. So it's a matter of taking that vision of where we thought we should be. Mapping it out, writing out a plan, writing out a strategy, what would it look like? And knowing that what you can do in three years is pretty amazing. And it's always more than we think we can do. And that we always overestimate what we can do in a year, but start little. Start with, "Hey, I want to start getting out of my job, then start putting out resumes." And then from there, that action starts helping you start chipping away at fear and eventually a dam breaks and it just floods it down and it will turn into a reservoir of power for a short amount of time. And then it turns into fear again. So it's like these, these chunks that you just have to go, Oh, that's part of the process. Like I need that. Like, what I have realized is I have to have the fear to make it to the next place and I can't say that I enjoy fear, but I can tell you that I have made friends with fear. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: How is that matching with the advertiser? How is that going to happen? Is there a choice for them to choose who the advertisers are? How is the payout going to be? Jaime: Individual podcasters or like yourself become sort of able to put advertising into the new technology that's being built right now? So I think the landscape is completely different. I kinda liken it to games. So in the past, people always thought that only the bigger games get, you know, brand sponsorship and get lots and lots of money, but almost every game has a solution to monetize. Even if you create a very simple game and all you do is just basically serve a couple of ads. That's actually advertising dollars that's going into your pocket. And actually helps with the gains of monetization. So I do think podcasts, we'll go down this route where potentially, and every single podcaster, or we'll have the option to turn on and off monetization option. And it's just a matter of time. The way match cost works is very simple. So if you go to the website, you have an onboarding process. And so if you have a podcast or all you need to do is just and it's free. Create an account with Match Cast. First of all, you need to actually submit your RSS link. Or if in the event you actually type in your name, search for it and then create an account with a Match Cast, go to a verification process. Now I need to explain why the verification process, being on a platform, means that you might only see all your podcasts, but on the brand's side, they will actually see your podcasting feature when they search for podcasts. So they would search our platform for over 1.5 million podcasts. They might be looking specifically at you, you know, for example, business in the Philippines and entrepreneurship. And when that shows up, all the podcasts are in that category. Like in this case, Sean, if you are with us, your podcasts actually get featured right on top. And they will actually look at that and then you'll be saying, okay, I like this. Once they open it up, they can see your schedule, they will know. They can listen to some of the podcasts and you say, "Hey, you know, I like Sean's show. So I'm interested." They let us know. And we actually reach out to you for a native sponsorship. But what we're also planning is for the future. When you are with us, all on that podcast, it could activate automatic programmatic sponsorship. So what then you do is basically tell us that, look, I want to have sponsors within my show. I'm going to create ad breakers and you go in and put ads into those podcasts for me. And we will just do that with the ad campaign style that we have. So by actually adding yourself to our platform, you get discovered by all the brands that are using our platform to search, identify podcasts that are relevant for their brand. And they wanna kinda sponsor, or actually be able to buy spots directly into the podcast. And that's what Matt has really viewed as an intermediary of this advertising. More altruistically. I think that our goal is to actually make, you know, the necessity or rather the ability to become a full-time podcast or reality, perhaps in South East Asia, which I think, you know, that's already happening in markets like US and China, but we haven't seen that happening in Southeast Asia. And we think we can play a part in that. Just allowing people to have an alternative lifestyle beyond just, you know doing, but working on something that they are really excited about. Like creating a podcast that reaches to the homes of every single ear of every single listener that they have and makes a living out of that. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: How do you suggest that we are able to teach or to share our culture with this new hire? How can this new hire be immersed with our team's culture? Are there steps, softwares, et cetera that we can use and utilize? Brett: The first thing that has to happen is you have to define your culture because you can't teach it. If it's not defined. Osmosis isn't going to happen anymore. So without osmosis, we are lost. But if you define your culture, then you've got to document it. And so one of the things that remote companies do very, very well, the successful ones is documentation. And it's documentation to a whole new level to what we used to and what we typically would expect, even in a co-located environment. Let's assume you documented your culture. The best onboarding programs do not aim for productivity. Productivity is an outcome of aiming for removing anxiety, developing trust and building relationships with that new person. Relationships build trust, trust build success, trust builds the ability to work effectively. You need to help the new joiner understand the invisible currents. The way we do things around here of the culture. And typically remote companies use a buddy system for that. You need to allow the new joiner to demonstrate their strengths quickly, not start work, demonstrate their strengths. So you need to understand what their strengths are so that they can demonstrate it to you and to them. And then you need to create an environment of psychological safety, where the new joiner can be themselves and feel they can bring themselves to your work environment. Then you will get productivity. You have to remember that the onboarding experience serves as the first experience of your culture post interview. The whole point around doing this and documenting this is to overcome the loss of osmosis. If a new joiner joins the sales team and the sales team has seven people. If you don't document this and you don't demonstrate it effectively during the onboarding, that new joiner now has to call each one of your sales team and say, "how do you work?" As a new joiner, your colleagues will say to you, hi, if you want to know about how to work with engineering, look at this link. If you want to work on how to work with marketing, look at this link. If you want to understand our values, look at this link" and actually you will go and look at that page and then you will get drawn to other pages. It's very beautiful, it's actually poetry in documentation structure. It's beautiful the way you can get lost in the document. And so there is, the problem with office environments is the human being was actually the bottleneck. The bottleneck was my ability to get time to learn from you. Now at GitLab, there's no bottleneck. I can read and learn as much as I like. Obviously I'm not, you know, there are probably, I don't know, maybe four, 300 pages on the team, so you can go and learn. The whole team has documented it. So you can go and learn about who they are, where they work, what they like, where they live. You know, they, their jobs, what they do. And you can see the links that are important to them. You can go and you can go and understand how the dev ops works. You can go and see how - you can learn everything about the company. It's an absolute, you know, it's a serious competitive advantage. It is there. It's open. You can learn anything about that company? I do. I read it all the time. I just go and read the, get that manual for fun. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: How do you negotiate? David: So I think a lot of things depend on products. I value my product. Now I do offers. It's a marketing technique. I don't lie about that. That's true. I value every person that wants to start with me. But I have a pipeline that is thick enough, so I don't need the business. If you are worried about whether you should take the business or lower your price, because your pipeline isn't thick enough, you don't have enough people out there that want to work with you. So it's not a price problem. It's a prospect problem. So if your pipeline is fat, you can have follow-up systems where you don't need to worry about that, or you go into it and you practice out that. And this is what I do to a lot of people. If you will go in for the price and they're freaking out, mostly because they don't see the value or they're just being a chance. So you need to re-identify just because it looks like a cat doesn't mean it's a cat in sales. You look at a normal cat in real life. It's a cat. But because it looks like a prospect doesn't mean they are. So it's having these strategies. So when people talk about value, we have to go through - we identify with, 'is this prospect actually a prospect that we can close in the current state where they need and what we can deliver on?' If all of these boxes are checked and I am just sitting on this bed because they don't even know you well enough, they don't like you enough, or they don't trust you or something else is going on, they haven't done it. So the best thing to do is go through a series and steps, which you can go through to isolate each objection. And imagine that you're, you're trying to herd sheep down a corridor with loads of balls. You're ahead of the sheep. And you literally shut one door. If you shut that door, it stops in going through it. So one door in a sale will be interesting. Okay. Listen, before we go any further, what I want to do is I've gone down this road before and it's turned out actually, this wasn't a good fit. You also need to put a little note In your head, change our question, change our pre-call to make sure this happens never again. Or if it does have a third, then you just handle that. So that means you need to deal , get them in on the call with you whatever it is. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: How did it look like going from where you were? How did you become the sales person that you were? David: If you realize that it comes to the stage where a lot of people get high on their own supply. And in their mind, they heightened themselves up to being the greatest, or they get the bad case sort of the excuses or exercises where they just don't progress. I moved into sales and I wasn't great. I was okay. I was confident or enough for what I am getting, I was doing the work and I was looking around and I decided to door to door selling, I looked at other people in there, maybe hitting 5's or they were hitting 2's. And I'd be like "why?" I'm doing the work. I'm doing the effort. I'm smiling, and this and that - so there's something else. Now this is the point and this is the fork in the road, that so many people get to and it goes wrong. Because there's two sides of it. One side, they become blinkered to the problem. And they be like "it will be alright" and eventually all that happens is their expectation of becoming a five - an ideal person goes down so two is actually all right, they justify it. They find the excuses. They find the reasons and that screws them up for life. They stop pushing everyday. They start just getting used to being in the middle of the road everyday. Some days if they do fall they'd be like "yeah I nearly caught the top prize", or they look down at the people below them and go, "well, at least I'm not as bad as them." We've all heard these excuses. I wasn't like that. I was at the stage of where I'd been trained for the last four years, the patron side, but I'm good. I can be good and I can be better. But to become better, I had to either act better, I've got to do better. I had to stop giving myself the outs, I had stopped giving myself easy victories. Because in sales, the one thing we're good at is selling ourselves, you go into a sales room of low performers. I'll tell you what, there's a lot of explanations as to why no one's performing. Their leads aren't right. This is a right, the industry, the economy, my phone, I've got the wrong suit or my ties are the wrong color, they don't like my personality, blah, blah, blah. There's always things that come out. I need to commit to this. I need to craft myself and I've become a really good student. And I learned, like we said, earlier - podcast. I think that if you go back over the last eight years, the longest I haven't done a podcast or listened to a podcast or done something would be two weeks. Now that's the longest in probably 8 years? That's because I'm honest to myself. A lot of people say "oh no, I do it everyday. I don't do it everyday because sometimes I am too busy." But typically if you take a month - 30 days , I'll do it 25 hours out of 30 days, typically it is a podcast. Somedays there'll be two or three podcasts and sometimes, I wasn't going to do one. You become a student of the game and all these things change. And if you keep, if you keep fighting, if you keep getting in the ring, if you keep getting punch, there's two things that's going to happen. You could end up covered in bruises or you're gonna learn to move better. And so that was really what happened. So over time I became better and I made myself better. I become a student of the game and that delivers results. So I found teachers, I've found students, I've found mentors that could lead me to where I wanted to go. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Bill: Well Sean, I'm going to Boston with you. You know The Guy Who Manages The Red Sox, the Red Sox's manager, gave me a job as coach for as long as you're on the team. Sean: Look Bill, if you're the coach, you must know all the players. Bill: I certainly do. Sean: Well you know I've never met the guys. So you'll have to tell me their names, and then I'll know who's playing on the team. Bill: Oh, I'll tell you their names, but you know it seems to me they give these ball players now-a-days very peculiar names. Sean: You mean funny names? Bill: Strange names, pet names...like Dizzy Dean... Sean: His brother Daffy. Bill: Daffy Dean... Sean: And their French cousin. Bill: French? Sean: Goofé. Bill: Goofé Dean. Well, let's see, we have on the bags, Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know is on third... Sean: That's what I want to find out. Bill: I say Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know's on third. Sean: Are you the manager? Bill: Yes. Sean: You gonna be the coach too? Bill: Yes. Sean: And you don't know the fellows' names? Bill: Well I should. Sean: Well then who's on first? Bill: Yes. Sean: I mean the fellow's name. Bill: Who. Sean: The guy on first. Bill: Who. Sean: The first baseman. Bill: Who. Sean: The guy playing... Bill: Who is on first! Sean: I'm asking YOU who's on first. Bill: That's the man's name. Sean: That's who's name? Bill: Yes. Sean: Well go ahead and tell me. Bill: That's it. Sean: That's who? Bill: Yes. PAUSE Sean: Look, you gotta first baseman? Bill: Certainly. Sean: Who's playing first? Bill: That's right. Sean: When you pay off the first baseman every month, who gets the money? Bill: Every dollar of it. Sean: All I'm trying to find out is the fellow's name on first base. Bill: Who. Sean: The guy that gets... Bill: That's it. Sean: Who gets the money... Bill: He does, every dollar. Sometimes his wife comes down and collects it. Sean: Who's wife? Bill: Yes. PAUSE Bill: What's wrong with that? Sean: Look, all I wanna know is when you sign up the first baseman, how does he sign his name? Bill: Who. Sean: The guy. Bill: Who. Sean: How does he sign... Bill: That's how he signs it. Sean: Who? Bill: Yes. PAUSE Sean: All I'm trying to find out is what's the guy's name on first base. Bill: No. What is on second base. Sean: I'm not asking you who's on second. Bill: Who's on first. Sean: One base at a time! Bill: Well, don't change the players around. Sean: I'm not changing nobody! Bill: Take it easy, buddy. Sean: I'm only asking you, who's the guy on first base? Bill: That's right. Sean: Ok. Bill: All right. PAUSE Sean: What's the guy's name on first base? Bill: No. What is on second. Sean: I'm not asking you who's on second. Bill: Who's on first. Sean: I don't know. Bill: He's on third, we're not talking about him. Sean: Now how did I get on third base? Bill: Why you mentioned his name. Sean: If I mentioned the third baseman's name, who did I say is playing third? Bill: No. Who's playing first. Sean: What's on first? Bill: What's on second. Sean: I don't know. Bill: He's on third. Sean: There I go, back on third again! PAUSE Sean: Would you just stay on third base and don't go off it. Bill: All right, what do you want to know? Sean: Now who's playing third base? Bill: Why do you insist on putting Who on third base? Sean: What am I putting on third. Bill: No. What is on second. Sean: You don't want who on second? Bill: Who is on first. Sean: I don't know. Bill & Sean Together:Third base! PAUSE Sean: Look, you gotta outfield? Bill: Sure. Sean: The left fielder's name? Bill: Why. Sean: I just thought I'd ask you. Bill: Well, I just thought I'd tell ya. Sean: Then tell me who's playing left field. Bill: Who's playing first. Sean: I'm not... stay out of the infield! I want to know what's the guy's name in left field? Bill: No, What is on second. Sean: I'm not asking you who's on second. Bill: Who's on first! Sean: I don't know. Bill & Sean Together: Third base! PAUSE Sean: The left fielder's name? Bill: Why. Sean: Because! Bill: Oh, he's centerfield. PAUSE Sean: Look, You gotta pitcher on this team? Bill: Sure. Sean: The pitcher's name? Bill: Tomorrow. Sean: You don't want to tell me today? Bill: I'm telling you now. Sean: Then go ahead. Bill: Tomorrow! Sean: What time? Bill: What time what? Sean: What time tomorrow are you gonna tell me who's pitching? Bill: Now listen. Who is not pitching. Sean: I'll break your arm, you say who's on first! I want to know what's the pitcher's name? Bill: What's on second. Sean: I don't know. Bill & Sean Together: Third base! PAUSE Sean: Gotta a catcher? Bill: Certainly. Sean: The catcher's name? Bill: Today. Sean: Today, and tomorrow's pitching. Bill: Now you've got it. Sean: All we got is a couple of days on the team. PAUSE Sean: You know I'm a catcher too. Bill: So they tell me. Sean: I get behind the plate to do some fancy catching, Tomorrow's pitching on my team and a heavy hitter gets up. Now the heavy hitter bunts the ball. When he bunts the ball, me, being a good catcher, I'm gonna throw the guy out at first base. So I pick up the ball and throw it to who? Bill: Now that's the first thing you've said right. Sean: I don't even know what I'm talking about! PAUSE Bill: That's all you have to do. Sean: Is to throw the ball to first base. Bill: Yes! Sean: Now who's got it? Bill: Naturally. PAUSE Sean: Look, if I throw the ball to first base, somebody's gotta get it. Now who has it? Bill: Naturally. Sean: Who? Bill: Naturally. Sean: Naturally? Bill: Naturally. Sean: So I pick up the ball and I throw it to Naturally. Bill: No you don't, you throw the ball to Who. Sean: Naturally. Bill: That's different. Sean: That's what I said. Bill: You're not saying it... Sean: I throw the ball to Naturally. Bill: You throw it to Who. Sean: Naturally. Bill: That's it. Sean: That's what I said! Bill: You ask me. Sean: I throw the ball to who? Bill: Naturally. Sean: Now you ask me. Bill: You throw the ball to Who? Sean: Naturally. Bill: That's it. Sean: Same as you! Same as YOU! I throw the ball to who. Whoever it is drops the ball and the guy runs to second. Who picks up the ball and throws it to What. What throws it to I Don't Know. I Don't Know throws it back to Tomorrow, Triple play. Another guy gets up and hits a long fly ball to Because. Why? I don't know! He's on third and I don't give a darn! Bill: What? Sean: I said I don't give a darn! Bill: Oh, that's our shortstop.

Sean: How do you craft or help to craft the vision for a team? How does the process look like? What would you say about having to guide them as a business mentor or a coach in crafting the vision? Is it necessary to have a vision, a coach or a mentor for a business person to be able to craft an effective vision? Jeff: What I would definitely say the vision itself is very necessary, but at the same time, what would it be if I could tell you that your vision should fit on two pieces of paper? It should only answer eight questions. So it's first one is what is your core value? So we've kind of already talked about that before I'm feeling okay. Values of integrity, continuous improvement, simplicity. Things like that. What makes up who you are kind of a thing from a core value standpoint? Second question is, what is your core focus? From our business standpoint, we don't have the resources to be the sun with that much energy. We've got to focus on a limited amount of resources to say, okay, exactly, what is our purpose, our cause, our passion? What are we trying to do from a business standpoint and exactly what's the niche? What's the singular kind of focus that we're going after? And like we were talking earlier, anytime we're evaluating something new, a new product line, a new market we need to go back and look. Okay, does that fit our purpose? Does that fit our niche? Do we want to maybe venture out and widen that or whatever? But still most likely if it's not fitting that niche, that core purpose who we are, then it's not a good fit for us right now. So again, keeping that laser focus of our core focus right there as a business, then we look at saying, okay, what's your 10 year target and ten's really kind of number, but it's still it's, it's the big goal out there to say, okay, this is what we're trying to reach 10, 15, whatever the year is, it's still out there on the horizon. It's still kind of fuzzy. It's very high level. It's not a detailed plan or anything. We've got from a vision standpoint, like I said, what's the core focus? What's the core values? What's the ten-year target and the target market? So that really starts building out your vision there. And then the second page of it, the flip side here is where we say traction. Okay. Where do we need to be? What are our revenues, actual real numbers need to look like? What do our profits need to look like? What are key measurables in terms of number of clients, number of sales, number of products, markets, whatever the case may be? So having those specific goals laid out really from the idea, again, like I was saying with traction, we've got to get everybody working on the same page that we know. Again, this is my goal. This is my objective for this year. And then we're going to actually bring it back one more time, as in to say, okay, what's our 90 day plan because really 90 days is what we want to look at. If nothing else happens, this quarter. If I get these things done, it's a successful quarter 90 days from now. We're going to sit there. Okay. Re-evaluate. Did anything need to roll forward? What happened? Do we need to make adjustments? Plan out the next 90 days, what are the goals for the next 90 days? And just sit there and iterate, iterate, repeat. And then the last one is really a long-term issues list kind of thing, just a running, almost bucket list to say, Hey, what issues are we facing? What issues do we need to deal with? And just have those again, the idea is that, okay, they're on a list. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Powerful Job Pivots To New OpportunitiesWith a sudden job loss and downsizing sometimes you need to pivot. Digging back deep into your work history can make all the difference in the world. You can use your older experience to apply for current external jobs.Tune in to hear a story of transformation. Learn how one of Craig's Resume Master Class students powerfully pivoted to new opportunities.Chapters[00:00]Listener request from Sean: How can you use your existing skills to pivot to new job opportunities?[01:17]When it comes to a pending job loss don't get sucked into closed-minded thinking.[02:48]When you have lengthy employment experience you can struggle to build your resume for the outside world.[04:27]Feedback from one job recruiter confirmed David's struggles. His resume was filled with too much internal jargon.https://craigancel.com/landyourdreamjob[05:22]Sometimes for powerful job pivots you need to reach deep into your work experience.[06:12]Are you currently out of work and unsure how handle a job gap on your resume? Listen to episode 042 to some great resume and interview tips.https://craigancel.com/42[06:48]Just like a good picture has a strong frame to accent it, so too must your resume.[07:15]Less is more. And there's no exception when it comes to word count and resumes.[07:37]Bullets can be beneficial and effective if they're used properly. Don't let your resume suffer from 'death by bullet'.[08:48]Job description content is one of the two areas people have the most trouble with on their resumes.[09:37]The other area people have the most difficulty with on their resume is the summary section, highlight, or branding statement.[10:55]Bonus Tip: Do this first if you're struggling with writing your summary section, highlight, or branding statement. Create you job history first using accomplishments and benefits.[11:15]Avoid close-minded thinking, it can really shut down the creative brainstorming process.https://craigancel.com/27[11:37]Transformations can come from powerful job pivots. This can open you eyes to new job opportunities.[11:55]There's help if you're still struggling pulling your work experience and accomplishments out of your head and putting them down on paper.https://rmcenroll.com[13:06]We're always looking for your feedback and future show suggestions. @craigancelhttps://craigancel.comMentioned LinksFree Resume Excellence Tips DownloadCraig Ancel's Resume Master ClassCraig Ancel.comCGME: Episode 27 Close Minded ThinkingCGME: Episode 42 How To Handle Unemployment GapsEmail Craig: Craig@craigancel.com

Sean: How many more did you buy before you finally exploded and had 3,500 rental properties? Lane: Can I get one thing check, like I'm not like a wholesaler or a flipper. I buy and hold properties. I put down the 20% down payment and I could do that because I had a good paying day job where I was able to be frugal with my money and save it to put on down payment. I mean, I was lucky enough to be able to say that at least 50 grand a year to buy investments. So, but even at that pace, it took me about seven years to get up to 11 rental properties. You know, cause the first three years, you know, I bought one and then I had to wait a couple of years to buy the next one. It's not a get rich quick thing that's for sure. Sean: I'm sure and you do a lot of homework before you buy a certain property. What are some of the key things that you look at in order for you to decide once you put in the down payment? That's pretty much it, right? Cause that's, you know, the deal's done your money's there and you have to pay mortgage. So what are some of the key things that you look at before you finally decide, “aha, this property is going to be good passive income for me” ? Lane: I didn't know a lot of that stuff when I first began, but the kind of the biggest one is the rent to value ratio. We don't buy anything today that's not, that's under a 1%rent to value ratio. So you figured this out by you taking the monthly rent price, dividing by the purchase price. So for example, a hundred thousand dollar property that rents for a thousand dollars a month. That's a thousand divided by a hundred grand is 1%. So a lot of places like California, you might find a $400,000 property that rents for 2000 and 2000 divided by 400,000 that's half a percent. That ain't going to work for cashflow. You know, we got to kind of find properties that would make the numbers work out that way. And of course we try not to go into bad areas. We try and stay with good stable tenants, good areas, but we get that numbers where it works. Sean: So I'm wondering now how you manage 3,500 plus properties because you need to collect from your tenants. You need to make sure that you're able to address some of their concerns. That's a lot of tenants that you need to handle. How do you do it? Lane: Well, I don't do anything, man. I mean, I just have property managers to do it just like from the beginning for property managers, somebody who, you know, you pay. Usually about 10% of the rents and the property manage, they manage the tenants they manage the day to day. You know, they, the issues that happens at night, I don't really deal with any tenant tenants, termites or toilets, as they say. Today, we're kind of more running more of a sophisticated model where we bought in large apartments, we have more sophisticated commercial property managers, and we have another layer of staff in between there to direct the property managers around. You gotta be an investor, not a landlord, right? You gotta pay people good money to do this work for you. In that way you're able to scale. Most investors only have one or two properties. To me, that's not the way to do this business.

Sean: How did you jump from where I am right now To being where you are? Laura: I hated who I had become, you know what I mean? When I looked in the mirror, I just saw grumpy. Dirtbag looking at me and I'm like, I didn't like her. I wasn't proud of who I was being. That probably hurt the most. I remember leaving my first marriage and one of the major reasons why I wanted to end that marriage is because I didn't like who I was being. I think a big part of why I wanted to retire is because I didn't like who I was being. And I actually used to think that it was the company that made me that way. No. I made me that way. And also I believed a lot of the lies that society and culture told me for years about how I needed to be in a marriage and accompany, whatever.  So for me, I needed to figure out what all happy and successful people seem to have in common. I needed to figure that out. I needed to figure out, why is it that I've been to the retreats and I've gone to all these classes and I've done the Tony Robbins stuff, and I've done this lecture and this meditation and read that book. Why is it that I've done all these things and spent thousands and thousands of dollars in the pursuit of happiness, but I'm still an unhappy lump. Why what went wrong? What did I do wrong? Turns out it wasn't me. There was a lot of things that were actually missing. A lot of the personal development world exists based on one particular notion, which is:  You are broken. Buy my product. This will fix you.  And that upset me because part of the reason why I always loved doing things at my marketing company is because I wanted to do things with high integrity and stuff, things to people for the right reasons. And it's like, Oh no. Don't buy that magazine ad because the salesperson told you to. Buy the other one because I'm objective and I make money regardless of what you do.  High integrity has always been one of my major core values. I guess I just got like really frustrated and felt like I'd been lied to. And I thought it was, I actually thought it was the self-help world that lied to me. And that's where I began my journey turns out it wasn't the self-help world. There's a lot of amazing, amazing lessons out there. So many wonderful books and so many wonderful products and whatever. But if you take a look at so many of these different things, a lot of these now that I've written this book and done all this research, I can put a lot of those in the context of those are a really good step two. You need a really good step one, which is give yourself a solid foundation within your relationship with you. When you do that, you can take this course, that class, that meditation, this and that, it will mean more, it will land better. It will stick, and it will give you a much more permanent impression.  So back to your question, how do you do it? Figuring out where do I start? Right. That that's where I started. Okay. Well, here's the information. Here's where you start. Six habits is where you start. You read the book, you Oh wow. You do all the exercises they're free. And then you begin your mastery journey. I've got a thing that can help you with that. Or you can do it on your own, but at the end of the day, It's not called the six Epiphanes they're the six habits. What is a habit? It's something we do unconsciously and we do it automatically. This is like you get every day, get up every day, and brush your teeth. I do it every day without even, or, you know, you roll over in your sleep and you always cover up that one shoulder. It's a habit, right? That's what needs to be cultivated here is actual habitual behaviors that you no longer think about. That's the trick. And that's why, that's why it's the foundational element. Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)

Here's What You'll Learn in our Interview with Sean: How to grow your real estate portfolio through strategic investments How to structure rent to own deals How to grow a real estate investor group Running a successful realtor business and investing at the same time And much, much more! Sean has been playing in the game of real estate since 2008. Although he has worked with clients in many aspects of the business, Sean's focus is investment properties. Sean graduated from St. Francis Xavier, known as one of Canada's top Universities, with a degree in business. Upon completion of his degree, he stepped into the role of Corporate Sale Manager with Imagewear, leading a team of several sales people. Prior to Creativ Realty, Sean was President / co founder of Lease to Buy NB. Within 2 years, Sean and his company acquired/managed over 15 properties in locations all around Nova Scotia and New Brunswick; his business and knowledge of the industry only grew from there. Sean is always doing investment deals himself, typically making great returns. He has deep knowledge / experience on the risks associated with real estate and knows how to properly analyze all angles of a deal. Sean is a friendly, to the point kind of guy and has a true passion for helping people achieve healthy returns on their money through real estate. Sean is currently the President of the Moncton Real Estate Investors Organization Contact Sean: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MonctonREIO/ Website: powerteam.ca Email: info@powerteam.ca Sean's Number: 506-229-7711 Cameron's Number: 506-899-1270

Hello, Shenanites! In this episode, we talk about the perfect food, a spaghetti mess of code, and being cute. What’s the secret to feeling like a child again? Maybe somebody is just being grumpy -- go take a nap. Questions answered (abbreviated): - CreatorRedA: What's the coolest thing about using Gamemaker and what's the most annoying? - Flyhoppie Axerompa: Can you cover some tips/best practices for branching off and merging different versions of your project more effectively in Gamemaker? - cdcMully: EMPTY YOUR POCKETS RIGHT NOW! Anyone carrying anything weird or cool? Do you guys have any interesting every day carry items? - Sean: How as the experience differed from short term and long term projects? Do you prefer shorter projects, or do you think you'll solely focus on the larger long term ones? To stay up to date with all of our buttery goodness subscribe to the podcast on Apple podcasts (apple.co/1LxNEnk). If you want to get more involved in the Butterscotch community, hop into our DISCORD server at discord.gg/bscotch and say hello! Submit questions at https://www.bscotch.net/podcast, disclose all of your secrets to podcast@bscotch.net, and send letters, gifts, and tasty treats to http://bit.ly/bscotchmailbox. Finally, if you’d like to support the show and buy some coffee FOR Butterscotch, head over to http://moneygrab.bscotch.net.

We had a little "incident" before we started our recording. One of the microphone stands "somehow" toppled over and knocked over TWO bottles of beer... all over the table and my MacBook Pro! So far, the laptop is still working. Fingers crossed. Here's the video if you'd like to see the mayhem! (Click on the image to see the video of the Great Beer Spill!) NEWS [56:14] French air force get their colours wrong in Bastille Day mix-up [59:50] American Woman With Grenade Causes Panic at Austrian Airport [1:02:45] Video Taken from Inside the MartinAir that Crashed in South Africa [1:09:00] Searchers find fourth body after planes collide and crash over the Florida Everglades [1:16:58] Passengers apparently saw danger before pilot crash-landed in Alaska, NTSB says [1:22:56] Battle of Britain RAF Spitfire pilot Geoffrey Wellum dies FEEDBACK [1:26:42] Texas Charlie - The darker side of the beautiful art that is flight [1:31:25] Ben - Single Pilot Freighters [1:36:42] Nelson (Lisboa Nelson) - The Aviation Company he Works for reaches 100 years [1:39:11] Silviu - Useful Drone? [1:43:31] Liz - Helicopter Fuel Leak put 747-8F at Risk of Explosion [1:46:34] Mississippi Matt - Shark Week: Track Southwest's 5 shark-themed Boeing 737s [1:50:35] Nick - Question re: Smoking in the Cockpit [1:58:15] Plane Tale - Thar be sea monsters! [2:19:42] Sean - How is Medical Leave Handled? [2:31:40] John - Is it too late for me to pursue an aviation career? [2:43:30] Tim - Delta Quietly Removing MD-90s from its Fleet [2:50:13] Bill - Is It Legal to Fly Under the Golden Gate Bridge? [2:57:52] Tim - Now We Know what Dana's Doing VIDEO Audible.com Trial Membership Offer - Get your free audio book today! Give me your review in iTunes! I'm "airlinepilotguy" on Facebook, and "airlinepilotguy" on Twitter. feedback@airlinepilotguy.com airlinepilotguy.com ATC audio from http://LiveATC.net Intro/outro Music, Coffee Fund theme music by Geoff Smith thegeoffsmith.com Dr. Steph's intro music by Nevil Bounds Capt Nick's intro music by Kevin from Norway (aka Kevski) Copyright © AirlinePilotGuy 2018, All Rights Reserved Airline Pilot Guy Show by Jeff Nielsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Brace for impact! The Imaginauts return with a bit of a situation on their hands, as the ship is under attack my a disgruntled former crew member and they must divulge all the strange and wonderful things they've discovered on the topic of Military. Time is short and no one knows where the torpedoes are or how to activate the shields. With quick thinking, some good humour and cheap sound effects maybe the Imaginauts can live to laugh another day...In this episode:James - What's the stupidest military idea ever conceived?Phil - What's the nicest thing about war?Sean - How can our animal friends help us fight our battles?Got anything you want to say to us? Email babybeardmedia@gmail.comAlso, check us out on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram. 'Baby Beard Media' for all!

Brace for impact! The Imaginauts return with a bit of a situation on their hands, as the ship is under attack my a disgruntled former crew member and they must divulge all the strange and wonderful things they've discovered on the topic of Military. Time is short and no one knows where the torpedoes are or how to activate the shields. With quick thinking, some good humour and cheap sound effects maybe the Imaginauts can live to laugh another day...In this episode:James - What's the stupidest military idea ever conceived?Phil - What's the nicest thing about war?Sean - How can our animal friends help us fight our battles?Got anything you want to say to us? Email babybeardmedia@gmail.comAlso, check us out on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram. 'Baby Beard Media' for all!

Sean Douglas was suicidal at one point of time due to heavy drinking habit and series of negative thoughts. He has grown in alcohol and abusive environment at his home. This had deep negative impact in his life and he himself became alcoholic. But this is not what he wanted for himself in his life. One fine day he said to himself, "I am so done with this. I need to change the way I am living my life." He turned to timeless wisdom of great books and people who has shown him the way. He shares decisions we make in our life at the moment has impact in our future.  Today, Sean is a TEDx Speaker, owns a company The Success Corps to help other transcend their limits, Author of the book Decisions- The Power To Overcome Self-Defeating Behaviors. He is a United states Air Force Veteran deployed to multiple locations worldwide and has performed multitude of duties all over the world.  Some Questions I ask Sean: How was growing up in alcohol dominated and abusive environment at your home like? And how did that impact your thought pattern as a kid? Sean you spent four years as a Drill Instructor in Air Force Basic Training. What did you learn from that opportunity or experience in your life? What is the message you wanna give out to people who are hitting rock-bottom in their life like you did? Can you talk a bit about how can one hack his brain for success? What is one thing you are still struggling with? Time Stamps: 03:40 Sean Shares about his recent work and mission of his life. 04:37 He shares how he learned to get out of his own way to success while he was a drill instructor in Air Force. 05:41 Sean talks about how unstable and rough childhood he had and getting into alcohol addiction and family. 07:22 He shares about darkest phase in his life including almost killing himself. 11:39 How he was able to come out of alcohol addiction and suicidal thoughts turning to wisdom of books. 15:50 Sean's message to people hitting rock bottom- You have power to rewrite your own story. 17:27 How you can hack your brain for success. Sean gives an example. 22:53 Sean shares what self-defeating behavior is and how is book Decisions can help you come out of those behaviours. 29:24 He talks about his organization The Success Corps. 33:00 Enlightening Round. Show notes page: http://theinspiringtalk.com/sean-douglas  Attend Podcast Launch Workshop.: http://theinspiringtalk.com/workshop  Use Coupon code INSPIRING while checkout to get jaw dropping discount. Get free Audiobook on Audible. Subscribe, Rate and Review the show on: Apple Podcasts Stitcher CastBox on Android Play Music Follow The Inspiring Talk podcast on Facebook Twitter Instagram  

Key Takeaways (the TLDR Version): Start with the end in mind: What do you want to achieve with your show? How will you know if you've been successful after a year, or two years, or ten years? What are your goals? It helps to clearly define the answers to these questions before you start. When you start a podcast, you need to think about how you can provide something valuable to your listeners. Ask yourself, “What kind of person am I trying to reach, what are our common interests, and what am I going to give them? What do I want my show to do for them?” In order to start a podcast, you'll need: A overall topic or theme for your show, and a plan for the structure/format for your first few episodes A title, short description, and square cover art (3000x3000px jpg) for your show A way to record and edit audio so you can create MP3 audio files for your episodes (You'll want to use one microphone for each person, more on that later) Podcast hosting (an online hosting service (like Simplecast) for your audio files and an RSS feed so you can get your show into Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcast apps & directories) While podcasting isn't a quick or easy way to make money, you can make money with a podcast by selling advertisments, getting sponsors or partners, asking people to support you directly through Patreon (or some other tipping service), selling services or products to your audience, and so on. While the majority of podcasts being produced currently do not make enough to provide a full-time living, that doesn't mean you can't make money with a podcast, and there are plenty of other valuable things that you'll get from podcasting, including personal development, new skills, friendships, and more. Podcasting is a great way to build an audience: You’ll become known as an authority in your field, you’ll learn more about what you podcast about, you’ll build new relationships and make new friends, and you’ll gain a better understanding of your audience and what they want. The most common podcasting mistakes are usually related to producing shows with poor audio quality, not clearly defining your goals for yourself or your audience, or expecting big results right away. Now that you've got the outline for what you'll need to do to start a podcast, all you need to do now is take action. Set aside some time for planning. Write out your goals and the topics for your first ten episodes. Set up your gear and record and edit a practice episode. It's easy to spend hours and hours reading tutorials and listening to other people talk about podcasting, but the best way to get better is to just start doing it yourself. For my backstory and more about why I'm starting this podcast, check out the trailer for this show. My guest for this first episode is Sean McCabe, who produces online courses for creative professionals at seanwes.com. Aaron: Let’s talk about how we met. It was at a Dribbble meetup in fall 2013. We got introduced and you said you wanted to start a podcast. I asked what it was going to be about, and you said design and creativity. Why did you want to start a podcast? Sean: I had a lot of experience with client work, especially in the design world, and I was starting up my own business, but I had a lot I wanted to share on client work and professionalism in general. The reason I hadn’t done it before that point was because I wanted to be out of client work before starting a podcast about it. I wanted to do a podcast where I talked about design, client work, and professionalism, all in the context of business and creativity. Aaron: At the time, I was very interested in learning about those things. When we started the podcast, you were—and still are—very focused on providing value to the listeners. I was still in learning mode. I was more interested in learning and I was less focused on providing value. I've learned that when you start a podcast, you need to think about providing something valuable to the people listening to you. Sean: Now, when you say providing value, what do you mean? What’s the alternative? Aaron: In a lot of podcasts, I see that they’re not focused on what they’re giving, it’s more like they’re just hoping for attention. They’re not thinking about what the audience is going to get out of listening. Sean: It’s kinda like, “We’re just gonna show up and we’re gonna talk,” but they’re not thinking about what they’re going to give the listeners in exchange for their time, or the reason they’re showing up and talking. Aaron: Exactly. You have to ask yourself: What is someone going to take away from this podcast? When you start with that question, it changes everything. Sean: For this episode, we’re talking about who you are, who I am, why we’re doing this, and how podcasts changed out lives. What people might not know is that you started with an outline. We’re starting off with who you are, how I fit into this, why someone should start a podcast, who is the show for, what topics you’re going to cover in future episodes, and at the end you have takeaways. So you’re coming into this asking yourself, “Why should someone listen to this? Who am I trying to reach, and what am I going to give them?” I like how you’re starting this. Most people just jump straight into the gear. “Oh, you want to start a podcast? Let’s talk about mics.” I like that you’re taking one step back even further than that, and asking, “Why are you doing this?” Good Reasons to Start a Podcast 1. You can build an audience Aaron: First, you can build an audience. You’ll become known as an expert in your field if you share what you’ve learned. We know Sean as an expert hand-letterer because he’s podcasted about it and written a whole course about how to make a living as a hand-letterer. I was doing a little reading yesterday in preparation for this show, and I came across an article about why you shouldn’t start a podcast. The post basically said, “Podcasts aren’t a very effective way to reach people.” A bunch of people left comments saying, “But we found and started trusting you because of your podcast.” So I do think podcasting is a very effective way to build trust with your listeners. Sean: It’s very intimate. I don’t know about you, I think you have pretty good mic technique, but I’m about three inches away from my microphone. How many people do you allow to be three inches from your ear? I’d think most of them are pretty close to you, so it does have this kind of intimacy. 2. You’ll learn more about whatever it is you’re starting a podcast about Sean: Hang on; I thought you had to be an expert to teach stuff on a podcast. Aaron: Would you call me an expert at podcasting? Sean: I think of you as one. Aaron: Right, but that’s mostly because I started a website about podcasting and you know I’ve worked on podcasts full time for over a year now. There are still so many things I don’t know about podcasting. There are so many more things I’m going to learn because I’m starting this podcast about podcasting. This applies to anything you start a podcast about: You’re going to learn more about it. How many episodes of the seanwes podcast have you done now, 160? Did you have any idea when you started of all the different topics you were going to cover? All the things you were going to learn about and share? Sean: No way. Not even close. I had a few topics prepared, but there was no way I had 160 episodes of information to share with people, all I did was start off with a commitment to show up and podcast. You don’t have to be an expert to start a podcast. Aaron: Knowing that you had to show up and podcast twice a week put you in a learning mindset; as you’re going through the week, you’re paying attention to things, you’re writing stuff down, and you’re thinking about what would be good to put in your podcast. Sean: It changes your mindset. I’m glad you brought up the learning thing. So many people think, “I shouldn’t start a podcast. I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, I’m not expert enough.” You’re saying start a podcast to learn. I’ve had my mindset changed because I started a podcast. Everything is an opportunity to teach something. You see the world in a different sense; this is something that I could teach. This is something I could bring to the show. 3. Starting a podcast will help you make new friends Aaron: Another great reason to start a podcast is you’ll make new friends. Sean and I met because he was interested in starting a podcast. It turned into a close relationship that has benefited me in so many ways. In fact, he built a whole online community around his podcast. Tell me a little bit about that. Sean: The Community is a group of people who are, essentially, entrepreneurs—people in various stages of wanting to forge their own path, starting their own business, do their own thing, freelance, sell products, or teach other people. Maybe they’re still in a day job, but they’re working towards that. The Community is a bunch of people who have similar mindsets of sticking with their values, professionalism, and encouragement. It’s a very positive atmosphere. We stream all of the shows on the seanwes network live to the Community. Every weekday we have a show, there’s a topic, and everyone comes together to discuss that topic. We also have the live chat and mobile app available 24/7, so there’s people constantly connecting and discussing things. Aaron: This all happened because you decided to start a podcast. I know you had Twitter and Instagram followers, and people who emailed you, and that’s all great, but think about how many people have met and become good friends because of your podcast. You’re one of my clients now, but I’ve met other Community members, including Adam Martin, that have become clients as well. I’ve met so many people just from this one podcast. If you think about providing value and you care about your listeners, even if you just have 20 listeners in the beginning, get to know them and open yourself up to growing those relationships. It can be life-changing. Sean: You were talking about number of downloads, or someone was saying that podcasting is not really effective; but podcasts are so engaging. It’s very intimate. If you have 20 listeners, that’s incredible. That’s 20 people that allowed you to come three inches from their ear. You probably don’t have that many people in your life that are willing to listen to you, so for the people just starting out, don’t get caught up in the numbers. I say show up every day for two years, and don’t expect to see any results in that time. I didn’t discover some of the best, and my favorite, podcasts and TV shows until at least two years into it. I didn’t listen or watch from the pilot episode, like maybe some people are doing with this show or TV shows. A lot of the ones that end up being my favorites have been around for a few years by the time I listen. I get excited and I go back and I binge listen or I binge watch all of the episodes and I’m really into it. Now, I’m engaged. I remember this one podcast, I went back and listened to all of it—I think it was 90 or 100 episodes. They had this community (this was before I had my own community) and I was ready to join. I was so on board with what they were talking about. By the time I caught up, he’d been doing it about two years, and he said, “We’re moving on. We’re going to be doing other things. We’re not going to be doing the podcast anymore, thanks for listening.” I was so disheartened. I felt so let down. I had just discovered it, it was so new to me. Of course for him, he’d been showing up for two years. It felt like he’d been doing it forever. That’s what it feels like when you’re a podcaster or you’re a blogger and you’re showing up and you’re not getting those downloads or you’re not getting those numbers. Even if it feels like you aren’t getting results or as many downloads as you'd like to have, keep going. Do it for the people that are going to discover you in two years. Aaron: Do it for the five people that are listening and really like what you’re saying. Sean: They’re your ambassadors! If you don’t care about those people because the numbers aren’t big enough, you’re never going to get there because those people are the ones that are going to spread the word. Aaron: That leads to a better understanding of the people in your audience. If you start a podcast with them in mind and engage with the people that are responding—having conversations and asking them questions—you’re going to start to learn what they’re struggling with, what they’re having a hard time with, what they like about your show, and maybe what they don’t like about it. If you’re open to that conversation, you can start to refine and tailor your content to the people giving you feedback. Sean, people think you read minds because they ask a question and then you actually listen. People in the chat go crazy and ask, “How’d you know I was thinking about that?” and you say, “Well, you asked the question yesterday.” The key to a successful podcast or blog is doing it for the reader, not just showing up and writing or talking about only what you want to write or talk about. Which makes total sense when you think about it; you’re not the one that’s going to be reading your blog posts, the other people are! You want to write or podcast about what they want to hear. Show Up for 2 Years and Don’t Expect Results Sean: I still have this mindset. We have hundreds of people in the Community, I have nearly a million downloads on the podcast, and I’m still expecting no results. To me, the seanwes podcast is just getting started—we’re only 18 months in. We haven’t even started yet. That’s where my mindset is. Are we scaring people away? Were we supposed to tell them to show up and do two episodes, not two years? Aaron: No, I think this is something people don’t think about. I’ll say that this is intimidating to me, showing up for two years. Even thinking about showing up every week for two years is intimidating. You start to doubt yourself, or at least I do. I think, “How am I going to come up with a great show every week?” You really just have to go for it. I’m going to do it; I’m going to spend the time to prepare, and show up and listen to the people that engage with me. If someone asks me a question in the chat, if someone sends me an email, I’m going to pay attention to that. I’m going to use that to fuel future episodes. I’m getting to know my audience, I’m building relationships. That’s why I’m podcasting. Sean: And if you don’t have the answer to a question, you’re going to go find out. You’re gonna learn. Aaron: That way, it benefits me, too. It’s a win/win situation, but it’s still scary. I know you’ve had struggles with showing up. You’ve shown up on a Tuesday and said, “Guys, this is hard today.” Sean: I don’t know what I’m talking about on tomorrow's show, but I’m gonna show up and figure it out. Aaron: The cool thing is that now you have this community of people, your audience, that you can go to. You can ask them, “What are you guys struggling with? What should I do a show about?” They’re gonna tell you, and you’ve got some options there. That’s way different than sitting alone in your room and wondering what you’re going to do a show about this week. It’s gotta be about the audience. It’s gotta be about providing value, and building relationships. Who Is This Show For? Aaron: This episode is titled How to Start a Podcast, but there are so many things to talk about and while I can't cover everything, I do want to give you an overview of what the process looks like, and what topics I’m going to cover in future episodes. This show is for anyone who wants to start a podcast, but also for people who already have a podcast and want to make their show better. There’s going to be some overlap for people who are interested in audio in general, because the skills I’ve learned from editing podcasts have helped me when making video, when recording interviews, bands, demos, etc. I’m going to be covering a lot of stuff like that, in addition to other things I think will be helpful to podcasters. Topics I’ll Cover On This Show 1. Gear You have to record yourself talking, so I’m going to be talking about microphones. Sean: I’m interested in hearing how you address that, because there’s always the interesting “quality vs cost” issue. Aaron: People should invest in great microphones, but I realize that’s not a reality for a lot of people, so I want to go over the options. Like, if you only have $100, here’s what you need to buy. 2. Recording I'll be convering how to set the levels right for your mic, what programs you can use, how to record interviews over Skype, etc. 3. Editing Aaron: How do you edit a show without making it sound all chopped up and unnatural? Should you edit at all? I know there are a lot of podcasters that don’t think you need to do much editing. I don’t agree with that. I don’t think you have to cut out every little bit of silence, or every filler word or mistake. People have a natural way of speaking, and that’s fine, but there are things that you can cut out. Editing is about respecting the listener—cutting out super long pauses, or things they don’t need to hear like coughs, etc. It’s about polishing. It’s saying to the listener, “I care about this enough to give you the listener the best version of this that I can.” Sean: A lot of people might think that edited podcasts are super highly produced and it doesn’t sound natural, but people often say they don’t even realize this show is edited, and you say that’s kind of the point. Aaron: If someone listens to something that I edited and they notice the edits, then I’m not doing a good job. Sean: How do you like that, Aaron? If you do your job well, no one knows you exist. Aaron: I’m good with that. I follow some of the Twitter accounts of the shows I edit, and nothing makes me happier than to see someone saying, “Oh my gosh, the Shoptalk Show sounds so good, they’re doing a great job.” They don’t ever mention me, but I know they’re talking about my work. They don’t know they’re talking about my work, but I know what the show sounded like before I did the editing, mixing and mastering, and it makes me happy. The point is to make your listeners happy. I’m going to be going into a lot of depth about editing content, mixing and mastering, plugins, etc. 4. Writing and Preparing Show Outlines Aaron: I’m also going to be doing some shows about writing and preparing show topics and outlines. I’d like to have Sean on the show to talk about that topic, because he does a lot of preparation for his shows. Sean, you said something a couple weeks ago: start with the takeaway in mind. That really resonated with me. What’s the takeaway? It could be anything from how to launch a WordPress blog to how to design a header image for your blog posts. When you start with a single idea—a takeaway—you can get a whole show out of that idea. Break it down, write a couple of headlines or bullet points, then expand on that. It turns into an outline, similar to what I have right now. Sean: We’ve gone pretty far off of this outline, had side discussions, and none of this is scripted. A lot of people don’t want to prepare their show because they think it’ll sound scripted. We’re not talking about writing every word, we’re just saying have a takeaway so it’s not just showing up, turning on the mic, and hoping we get something out of it. You actually have a purpose for being there, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t have these little explorations and adventures along the way. Podcasting doesn’t have to be about being ridged and lifeless. Aaron: I love those side rails. It’s natural. You don’t have to stick to the script, this is a conversation. In some ways, it’s a live performance. We do it live and we’re streaming to people right now. You should be flexible, but you have to prepare beforehand. You have to know what you’re going to talking about, and what you’re going to be providing to the listeners. Sean: You want to have these little magical moments of spontaneity, but you can’t have spontaneity without structure, because then you have chaos, you have anarchy. Plan, not 100%, but plan a good amount of it, then within that structure you can have spontaneous moments. 5. Writing Great Episode Notes Aaron: I’m also going to do a show about writing episode notes, since they're great for a lot of reasons. 6. Sticking With It & Showing Up Aaron: I’m also going to be doing some episodes about showing up and sticking with it. It’s important to show up consistently. So just to recast: This is a show for people who want to do podcast, or have started a podcast and want to make their show even better, whether that’s gear, workflows, mindset, or motivation. Q&A Q: What’s the single most common mistake people make when starting a new podcast? Sean: I actually answered this in the chat earlier, but I wanted to know if you had another answer. I guessed that you would say, “Not preparing beforehand.” Was I right, or do you have a different answer? Aaron: You’re right, but I want to expand on that a little bit. It’s actually two things. You do need to prepare and plan out your show, but you also need to learn enough about recording audio to make something that sounds good, or at least something that sounds ok. When you start a podcast, you only have one shot to make a good first impression. Sean: We’ve got a couple of questions that are related to this. Cory asks, “Is it more important to just get started, and iterate, or to get started right?” Sarah asks, “What is the level of audio quality that you consider the minimum to start?” There’s this balance of getting started with whatever you have vs. having one chance to make a good first impression. Where do you fall on that spectrum? Aaron: You do need to prepare for the show. Write an outline and start with an idea. Even if it’s just 10 minutes. Whatever you feel comfortable with: If you can talk about a subject or explore some ideas and give some value to the person who is going to listen, that’s good. The audio quality minimum that you need to meet is you need to have some kind of microphone that is not the built-in microphone on your laptop or Apple ear buds. Also, make sure you record in a room that doesn’t have a lot of echo. You need to record in a quiet room that’s as “dead” as possible. Sean: If you’ve got a laptop, even a closet will work, because the clothes will absorb the echo. Aaron: You need to record in a quiet place without a lot of background noise. Make sure you don’t have AC running, fans, dogs barking, etc… Try to record in the quietest place possible. You'll need to learn about setting input levels. Some USB microphones have gain knobs, some don’t, and then if you have an XLR microphone (like the Shure SM7B mics that we’re using), you need to learn how to set the input gain levels right on whatever interface you’re using, so that your levels aren’t too hot or too quiet. That’s the starting point: Have an idea of what you’re going to talk about and then be able to record some audio that doesn’t sound terrible. Sean: That’s a decent answer without going super deep, which I’m sure you can and will dedicate entire shows to answering. Q: If you’re coming at podcasting from blogging, how do you adapt your mindset to the new medium? Aaron: If you’re coming to podcasting from blogging, you’re in a good spot. If you have a blog post, you can adapt that content to a podcast very easily. You can take the topic and turn it into a podcast epiosde. You could even just read the whole blog post like a script. Some people will enjoy hearing you read your blog post even more than reading it themselves. Different people like to consume content in different ways. Q: How long should my podcast be? Why are so many shows about an hour long? Can shorter or longer shows work and reach big audiences? Sean: There’s no golden rule that says you’ve got to hit 22 minutes, or you’ve got to go an hour and a half for anyone to care. It’s different for everyone, it’s different for every show. My answer—and this is the same for newsletters, blogs, landing pages, podcasts, etc.—is make it as long as it needs to be. Don’t force it to be 20 minutes if you have more valuable stuff to say, and don’t force it to be more than an hour because you think that’s what the more successful shows do. Share it with people, that’s why we invented to pause button—they can watch it, listen to it, or consume it whenever they want. They can stop at any point. Give it all to them and let them consume it the way they want to. If you have a lot to share, make it long and if you don’t, make it short, but don’t worry about it. If you have valuable information, don’t worry about going over some arbitrary threshold. Aaron: There have been a few podcasters that have asked me to cut an hour-long show down to 20 minutes. My first question is why? Why would you make this shorter if there’s good stuff? Why not focus instead on making it be the best show it can be; including everything that’s valuable and discarding or editing out the things that aren’t? Sean: I know that’s a rhetorical question, but I think the answer in people’s heads is, “Well, because so-and-so does it.” The successful shows they listen to are 20 minutes long, so they think that’s how long a show should be. The people that are thinking they need to make an hour long show are listening to hour long shows that are successful, and they don’t know about the ones that aren’t. It’s just a skewed confirmation bias; it comes as a result of looking to other people and trying to imitate their success when really, you should just be making the show you need to make, with whatever you have to offer to your audience. Aaron: I know that this first episode is going to be longer because you and I have a lot to talk about. But it’s a lot different when you are doing a solo show, or depending on who your co-host is. Either way, focus on making it good and make it only as long as it needs to be. Q: Should I have a co-host? Sean: Coby asks, “Is it more effective to get a dialog going by having a co-host or guests?” Aaron: It is easier. When you started the seanwes podcast, you were thinking about doing it solo. I said that I thought it’d be easier for you if I joined to ask questions and bounce ideas off you and have a conversation. What’s helped me (with starting a solo show) is thinking about what questions I’ve already been asked in emails. I started an email newsletter a few months ago. I started writing content for it, writing blog posts, and I asked people for their questions about podcasting. Some people responded, so I saved those questions, and made a note to do shows about them. That’s kind of a dialog, but I do think it’d be a little easier if I had a regular co-host. Sean: It definitely makes it easier. That’s not to say solo shows can’t do well. I think they can, but you can’t really beat a super good dynamic between people with complimentary personalities and perspectives. It’s so engaging, it’s so fun to listen to. It’s also kind of hard to create that magic. Like with Ben and I, if you go back and listen to the earlier episodes of the seanwes podcast, we didn’t have that magic. It takes time to develop that and to be able to riff off each other. It’s going to take practice, but it definitely helps having someone else on, and it helps to have a structure. Like we said, leave room for people to tell stories. You don’t have to script it all. Maybe have some planned questions, and some sort of conclusion in mind so it’s more cohesive. Aaron: You and I have complimentary personality types. You’re a little more introverted, thoughtful, and you plan ahead more. I’ve picked up some of these good habits you have, but I’m much more likely to speak before I think. When you’re choosing a co-host, I think it’s important to keep those things in mind. I’ve joked with my friend Cory Miller before about being the co-host on his new podcast, but I actually don’t think I’d be a good fit for him because our personality types are so similar. I think he’d be better paired with someone who’s a little bit more introverted. Sean: It’s like any kind of partner, whether it’s marital, business, or co-host. You have to think about that, and treat it kind of like a marriage. Q: Should I do my podcast in seasons? Aaron: Brent asks, “Showing up is very important, but what are your thoughts on podcasting in seasons? What if I’m interested in sharing content through audio, but don’t see myself becoming a full-time podcaster? Would audio snippets be a good medium? (e.g. a blog post in audio format?)” Aaron: I say do whatever you want and whatever makes sense for you, but... I’ve been having an ongoing discussion with my band about consistency. I’ve been trying to push them towards putting out content on a regular basis, because I’ve seen how well it works for podcasters, for people who do video, and for other bands. A typical release cycle for bands is an album once every couple of years, but I see that the bands that stick in people’s minds and have really engaged audiences are the ones that are putting out stuff on a regular basis. I would love to be in a band that puts out a song every week, like Jonathan Mann, who put out a song every day. How much attention does he get for that? I mean, we have the technology! There is nothing holding us back from recording a song every week. Sure, it may not be super high quality and it might not sound like it was recorded in a professional studio, but by doing something consistently and showing up and putting it out on a regular basis, you get better at doing that thing. If you want to grow an audience, if you care about making a name for yourself and a show that’s successful, then you need to show up every week. Sean: There’s nothing holding you back except your lack of commitment, and your planning to have pauses or seasons where you’re not committing. People think in weekly terms. Their life resets, they watch TV shows every week, it’s how they think. If you’ve got a show that’s every other Wednesday, or the second Wednesday of the month, that confuses people. You don’t want your audience to have to think. You have to simplify it for them. Wednesday: new show. Tuesday: new show. That way, they know what’s coming. People crave this. They want reliability and routine. They want to listen to their podcast or watch their show. Once they’re in, they’re in. They’re hooked. You’re three inches from their ear. You have an opportunity to speak a message to them and provide value. If you want to grow an audience, show up consistently. Instead of doing what’s cool, or what other people are doing, or doing what’s easy, or planning on not showing up, how about start with a commitment to show up consistently? That’s where your audience is going to come from. If you have a season, and you stop providing value, everything resets. Sure, you’re going to have some die-hards that discover you later, but it affects their perception of your brand and how committed you are. Next Steps: Now that you've got the outline for what you'll need to do to start a podcast, all you need to do now is take action. Set aside some time for planning. Write out your goals and the topics for your first ten episodes. Set up your gear and make a practice episode. It's easy to spend hours and hours reading tutorials and listening to other people talk about podcasting, but the best way to get better is to just start doing it yourself. If you have any questions or want to say hi, you can send an email to aaron@thepodcastdude.com or leave a voicemail at 817-381-8219. Feel free to ask questions or just say hi. I'll respond as soon as I have a free minute. Finally, there's a fantastic blog post series from Simplecast called Everything You Need to Start a Podcast. I'd highly recommend bookmarking that and referring back to it as often as you need it. And remember, no one gets everything right the first time. You're starting on a journey, so forward progress and taking action is pretty much always better than perfection. Good luck and happy podcasting. Cool Stuff to Check Out: Recommended Gear: https://kit.com/thepodcastdude Podcast: https://thepodcastdude.simplecast.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/thepodcastdude Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/thepodcastdude Successful Podcasting: http://successfulpodcasting.com Simplecast Blog: http://blog.simplecast.com/

CIA: Cinematically Informed Americans is a show on the Lucid Geek Speak channel of podcasts. Today we look at top 10 movies lists for all our hosts, Netflix recommendations, geek news, etc. Right Click HERE and select save link asNetflix Recommendations for Instant Streaming:Jordan:1. Butter2. Freaks and Geeks Fredd:1. Valhalla Rising2. UndeclaredChase:1. Merlin2. Robin HoodSean:1. Man From Earth2. House of Cards---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sean: Yeah, but the third one has the part where the kid points to his dick.Jordan: Look out for those Easter Eggs!---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Jordan: Next one I have here is another personal favorite of mine and I can watch it at any time: Killer Clowns From Outer Space.Fred: Wow. It's going to be that kinda party.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sean: Earth Girls Are Easy may be the only movie where Geena Davis is hot. (proceeds to emphasize about 5 times lol)Sean was right!--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Where the Buffalo Roam - Starring Bill Murray---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sean: I didn't think we were going to get any dick sucking of Wes Anderson until we got Shay in here.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sean: How are have you gotten in the Walking Dead Chase?Chase: Volume 3 or 4.Sean: Goddammit Chase!---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sean: Oh, Land of the Dead is the one where the Zombies were fucking playing instruments.Still ridiculous---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The kid from Near Dark and Teen Witch---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Fredd: (Star Wars) written by a fourteen year old with down syndrome.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Chase: There is only one Return, and that is Return of the King. (Indeed!)---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Just weird.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Fredd's shelter from Zombie apocalypse (Apparently, he's not worried about food)---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Patricia Arquette in Lost Highway---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Fred: I have Akira tattooed on my body.Sean: You do? (pause) You do!---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"George Lucas originally planned to film an adaptation of the novel The Hobbit. Unable to secure the rights, he wrote Willow, which shares many similarities with J.R.R. Tolkien's celebrated novel, and its sequel, The Lord of the Rings."---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Prolapse will never be stricken from the record!Sean speaks the truth! (watch it's mouth about 10 seconds in)---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Jennifer Lawrence hottest actress in HollywoodSean says, "she's adequate."---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Kevin Smith Podcasts---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Gambit vs Nightwing---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Stardust -  Four thumbs up from Sean and Chase---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------He wasn't even supposed to be there that day!Watch full movie on amazon streaming for 1.99Click here---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------On Netflix InstantClick Here---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Two things give Chase a boner: Dark Elves and GambitKeep that in mind Mrs. G---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Final Cut(Great concept!)---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Amanda Sifried---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Magnificent SevenClone Wars - Bounty Hunters---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Lobo (first appeared in Omega Men)---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Fred: (Water world) worth the price of admission to watch Kevin Costner drink his own pee!---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Flight of the Navigator---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Proof that Jennifer Garner is an uptight bitch---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------